﻿D
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CORNELL
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY﻿DATE DUE

GAYLORD
PRINTED IN U S /
Cornell University Library
D 921.161
Iptimaniee of court and society;
3 1924 028 166 068
31924028166068﻿﻿INTIMACIES OF
COURT AND SOCIETY﻿﻿﻿Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York
View of Rome from St. Peter's and Castle St. Angelo.
Little beggars “kicking their stout heels in the sun from
sheer delight of living”﻿INTIMACIES OF
COURT AND SOCIETY
An Unconventional Narrative
of Unofficial Days
BY
THE WIDOW OF AN AMERICAN DIPLOMAT
PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1912﻿Copyright, 1913, by
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
Published January, 1913
3C3/Sf<P>
K﻿TO
MY HUSBAND﻿﻿CONTENTS
CHAPTER	PAGE
I The Ambassador ....	1
II The Society of the Republic .	.	26
III	The Faubourg St. Germain .	.	48
IV	Papal Society of the Vatican .	.	73
V	Society of the King’s Court and the
Quirinal .....	86
VI	Nicholas II and His Coronation	112
Vn Court Life in St. Petersburg .	.	124
VIII A Bear Hunt—A Country House Visit 161
IX Berlin and the Court of the Kaiser .	173
X	The Imperial Family	.	.	.	192
XI	A Small German Court	.	.	.	208
XII	London Town and the Society of the
Court ......	218
XIII	London City and the Society of the
Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress .	250
XIV	American Money in European Society 281
XV	Life at Government House, Canada .	295
XVI	Washington Society—An Expatriate’s
Impressions .....	318﻿﻿ILLUSTRATIONS
View of Rome from St. Peter’s and Castle St.
Angelo ..... Frontispiece
FACING
PAGE
Madame Fallieres, Wife of the President of
France ......	38
The Duchesse de Rohan ....	48
Dining-room in the Chateau de Josselin .	58
Picture Gallery in the Chateau de Maintenon .	66
The Pope Starting Out for a Walk in the Vatican
Gardens ......	80
Count Gionatti, the Prefect de Palais to the King
of Italy, ......	90
The German Statesman, Prince von Biilow .	98
The Crown Prince of Italy in Officer’s Uniform .	106
The Czarewitch, the Heir to the Russian Crown .	112
Marble Entrance Hall, Vladimir Palace .	120
Dining-room, Vladimir Palace	.140
The Grand Duchess Vladimir in Russian Court
Dress .......	156
Trophies of One of the Count’s Successful Bear
Hunts .	.	166
The Kaiser as a Young Man ....	180
Invitation to a Court Ball in Berlin .	188
The Children of the German Crown Prince	196
ix -﻿x	Illustrations
Princess Luise, the Kaiser’s Only Daughter
The Late Consuela, Duchess of Manchester
The Russian Grand Duke Michael and his Mor-
ganatic Wife, Countess Torby .
Mrs. Asquith, the Wife of the Prime Minister,
with One of Her Daughters
Private Garden at Windsor Castle .
The Yeomen of the Guard or “ Beef Eaters ” .
Side View of Government House, Rideau Hall,
Ottawa ......
FACING
PAGE
204*
218
226
238
250
262
302﻿INTRODUCTION
This is an unconventional narrative of a few official
and many unofficial days, in five of the capitals of
, Europe, at Government House, Canada, and at Wash-
ington, D. C. It is a record of some twenty years of
wanderings, as a woman will sometimes go up and down
the world among her friends, with the unsought free-
dom from the sweet bonds of home-keeping service to
those she loves. It is a record of wanderings in pleasant
places where men and women are living out their lives
as the rulers of the nations, the fortunate ones of Fate
endowed with power and wealth, and playing their
roles upon the Stage of Life in the midst of pomp and
circumstance—but endowed also with the common
heritage of the cottage and the castle: the overwhelm-
ing temptations of primal passion, the petty weaknesses
of human nature, and the amusing indiosyncrasies of
race, of creed and class.﻿﻿I
THE AMBASSADOR
We were staying in New York when my husband went
over to Washington to learn the President’s decision
in regard to the appointment we had asked for in the
European service. We had good reason to think we
should get it, as my father-in-law had been one of the
celebrated men of his day, carrying his State safely
through the terrible days of the war, and had never
asked a political favour for any member of his family.
My husband made no pretensions to his father’s ability,
but he bore the famous name with honour and was a
favourite with the men of the administration. He had
asked only for a secretaryship, as he was young and
willing to work his way up. But he as well as myself
had been partly educated in Europe, then we had
gone over two years before on our wedding trip, so that
we knew its galleries and gardens, its streets and
monuments, the gay life of its big hotels, and had
peeped into the doors which had revealed a vista of
the interesting and fascinating experiences of diplo-
matic life.
But while we felt almost sure, there was still the
slip that can come between the cup and the lip, and
that morning, after he took the early express to Wash-
ington, I was so excited I could not stay indoors. I﻿2 Intimacies of Court and Society
ordered my horse and rode like mad through the park;
my pretty bay Dolly seemed to understand and tore
around for two hours until she stopped panting and
dripping with sweat and gave me a look of gentle re-
proach. Back I went after lunch, this time for a
walk, and there my husband found me late in the after-
noon. He tried to look non-committal, to tease me a
little, and began, “ The President said ”—then stopped
for one tantalising second before he drew my head
down and whispered in my ear—“ The President said
to tell you that every American embassy is American
territory, and if you have a son born over there it will
not prevent him from being President of the United
States himself some day.” He took me in his arms
right there in the shadows, but before two or three
astonished lookers-on who thought, I suppose, that we
were just engaged, and I whispered back, “ If I dared,
I would write to that dear man the President and tell
him I should like to kiss him the first time I see him.”
I am old enough now to be a grandmother, and the
husband and lover of my youth has been dead many
years, but it makes me a girl again, now that I have
brought myself to turn back the pages to those happy
days when we set out for the new life beyond the sea.
It is like the day which came at this time when my
mother gave me her wedding dress that had been her
mother’s, but which I had not needed for my own sim
pie morning ceremony. We went upstairs to the room
where the big cedar chest stood, brought from Eng-﻿The Ambassador
3
land by my grandmother fifty years before, and mother
softly closed the door behind us and opened the chest
with shaking hands. She was a widow just a few
months after the night when she became a bride and
had never been able to open the cedar chest before.
But, in her great mother-love for me, she lifted the
lid and took out the gown, the dried rose leaves from
her wedding bouquet clinging to the meshes of the
lovely lace and giving out the faintest breath of deli-
cate perfume, like the stirring fragrance of the
memories that crowd upon me as I write.
“ I have been selfish, you should have had it long
ago,” she said, when I protested that I could do with-
out it. “ One should always share the things that are
rare and beautiful in one’s life, even if the sharing
means pain at first. I am far happier in giving you
the dress than I have been in keeping it hidden away.
The lace is good enough for you to wear anywhere.
Your grandmother wore it at the English court.”
How thankful I should be for that lace, I did not
dream at that moment.
What a wealth of love and kind thoughts the family
showered upon us in getting us ready! If I had ac-
cepted them, I would have had all the jewels in my
husband’s family as well as in my own. But the widow
of an ambassador who was an intimate friend of my
mother’s told me that the minister’s wife under whom we
were to serve was very simple in her dress, and as she did
not care to wear much jewelry, I should wear less.
Later on I was to learn how rigid is court etiquette on﻿4 Intimacies of Court and Society
the subject of dressing, not only in dictating the par-
ticular style to be worn at each function, but in making
it an almost unpardonable offence for any woman at
court to appear better gowned than the queen. No one
must attempt to outshine her, although visiting Ameri-
can women, with their jewel boxes overflowing from the
collections of dethroned or hapless royalty, sometimes
do so, to the chagrin and embarrassment of the am-
bassador’s wife who presents them.
It was through my mother’s friend that I secured
my French maid, Marie, who knew almost as much
about court etiquette as a master of ceremonies, and
who was invaluable for my months of apprenticeship.
She came to me when we reached Paris, where I did
practically all of my shopping, and at first could hardly
say a word to either of us without calling us “ excel-
lency.” It was like a child’s new toy for a few days.
But when she began quietly instructing every servant
in the hotel to call us “ excellency ” as we passed, my
husband stopped it. For, of course, we were not “ ex-
cellency ; ” no secretary is properly so called. And
Marie slyly let me understand that she knew it as well as
I did. But her end was attained, for it brought us a
realisation of the new dignity. My husband had a habit
of wearing his hat at a little angle, which, with his
merry eyes, made him look decidedly rakish, but now
he took pains to put it on perfectly straight, and to
carry himself correctly. And he never embraced me
again in a public park, as he did that day in New
York.﻿The Ambassador
5
We began talking together in French, which we had
both studied thoroughly during our school days in
Paris, and our knowledge of this beautiful language of
diplomacy brought many charming experiences of in-
timacy among the people we met which we would not
have had otherwise. To-day, however, it is the fashion
to speak English in European society, and even at
court, although French still remains the official
language.
Our first impressions of actual connection with the
service were of the tremendous power and unique posi-
tion of the United States among the great nations of
the world. The wonderful country of the West, isolated
on either side by the sweep of a mighty ocean guarding
it better than an army of a million men, proudly stand-
ing aloof from the intrigues of the Europeans, a young
giant such as history cannot reproduce—the American
who sees it through the eyes of European diplomacy
realises best what it is and what its possibilities are,
possibilities as unlimited as the depths of the oceans
which dash against its shores.
The prestige of the American in the diplomatic corps
is undisputed. He stands for a government which
would probably hold the balance of power in an inter-
national difficulty, the only one whose independent pol-
icy is not influenced by desire for conquest, whose
financial resources could perhaps make or ruin a nation’s
credit in a day.
But in the mundane world of housekeeping, we often
found it inconvenient to belong to this land of golden﻿6 Intimacies of Court and Society
promise. Wherever we went, the house agents wanted
us to pay almost double, and we often had to do it be-
cause we could not sign a long lease. People who own
big houses are generally rich enough to live in them. If
financial reverses come, they try to sell such white ele-
phants; to rent them furnished is the last resort. We
could quite understand when they demanded a long
lease before going to the trouble of getting the place
in condition for a tenant, but few men in the service in
our day were reckless enough or rich enough to sign a
long lease. The changes and recalls were too swift and
sudden; there was many an office boy in New York
who felt more secure in his “ job.” The State Depart-
ment, then as to-day, gave no assurances, it being
definitely understood that the President reserved the
right to recall or change a man at any time.
Generally taking a furnished house, I never attempted
to hire the servants, although Marie, who fought so
many of my battles, often suggested it. But they were
usually included in the inventory, with a housekeeper
who was responsible to the owner. The French cook
always did her own marketing wherever we were living.
We knew she had a commission on every penny’s worth
she bought, and that, of course, it was added in some
subtle way to the bill. But it was a perquisite which
every good cook demanded and obtained, and I soon
learned how useless it was for me to attempt to change
any established custom of Europe, whether of the
kitchen or the drawing-room. The machinery, once
started, went like clockwork, and I had a peace and﻿The Ambassador	7
repose in my homes in Europe which I never had in
America.
But in all our troubles in getting settled, we had
no such an experience as befell one of our colleagues.
He rented an old palace which had, as often in such
houses, a number of inconvenient and useless rooms
which had not been restored for modem occupancy, and
which the family therefore never visited. The large
retinue of servants was retained, and it took the wife
some time to become accustomed to all the new faces in
the house, gardens, and stables. But after she had been
there a month, she was constantly meeting a man and
woman at the lodge gate who walked in as if they be-
longed to the place, but who she knew were not on the
servants’ roll. Upon investigation, she discovered that
they had been formerly employed by the owner, and
were then occupying rooms in the basement, living in un-
utterable filth with their five children and an old grand-
mother, the servants upstairs sending them food from
the kitchen. The ambassador ordered them out, but
they refused to go, declaring that they had permission
from the owner to stay. This really proved to be the
case, he taking the whole matter in a jocular mood, and
saying that it was a small thing for the rich American
to let them live in his basement, as he represented a
country where rich and poor were supposed to be equal.
It was only when typhoid fever appeared among the
children that the ambassador was able to get rid of
them.
Congressman Nicholas Longworth, when he went to﻿8 Intimacies of Court and Society
Europe on his wedding tour after marrying President
Roosevelt’s daughter, was so royally entertained by
the American representatives that he returned to
Washington, fired with zeal to provide our ambassadors
and ministers with suitable residences from the national
treasury. The bill was discussed in the House, but
there was, to the initiated, a startling lack of warmth
on the part of the men to be benefited. One heard
strange rumours that some of them would resign if they
could not rent their own homes and pay the rent out
of their own pockets.
I am quite certain that this was much exaggerated,
as any American diplomatist would welcome a change
which would add greater dignity to his post and to the
position of his country. But any one who knows the
life intimately, knows what a protection it is to the
man not to be dependent upon his government for his
home. If it belonged to the United States, there are a
dozen or two of his country people among the thou-
sands who go abroad every year who would expect to
send their trunks on and use it as an hotel where no bills
had to be paid. They are like the type of politician
which my husband used to joke about, the men seen at
every political convention, coming up with a clean shirt
and a five-dollar bill—and managing to get home with-
out changing either one of them!
The duties of a secretary are not of special im-
portance, unless he becomes charge d’affaires in the ab-
sence of his chief. And it is a good many years since
the ambassador or minister played the principal role in﻿The Ambassador
9
the affairs of his own government and the one to which
he is accredited. A man once sent off to his post, the
State Department leaves him much to himself until he is
recalled, the recall being frequently made by cable, and
sometimes falling upon his head like a bolt from the blue.
He is not the one who to-day makes the treaty; that is
done direct from Washington, although he is, of course,
kept informed of the negotiations. His despatches to
Washington are almost always behind those of the As-
sociated Press, as the despatches to the embassy or
legation from Washington are behind them. I hap-
pened to be in Europe in a diplomatist’s family when
President McKinley died, and our ambassador at the
post, one of the largest capitals of the world, received
his first news through a correspondent of the Associated
Press, who came to the house ten minutes before the
doyen of the diplomatic corps called to offer his con-
dolences, as etiquette required. The State Depart-
ment’s despatch came several hours later, and the am-
bassador narrowly escaped the grave embarrassment of
being informed of this important event by the repre-
sentative of another country.
The secretary has no credentials to present to the
sovereign, he and his wife are merely introduced when
it is convenient, and they do not go to the state dinners.
So it was a proud and happy day for me, several years
after our first appointment, when the gorgeous court
carriage, with the coachman in red livery and powdered
wig, and three lackeys standing on the footman’s box at»
the back, drew up before the house, a master of cere-﻿10 Intimacies of Court and Society
monies in full uniform coming to conduct my husband
to the King. An outrider went on before, and another
court carriage, almost as gorgeous, followed with the
secretaries of the embassy, the magnificent horses seem-
ing scarcely to touch the ground with their dainty
feet.
He had gone so many times as secretary in the train
of his own chief that I could follow the ceremony al-
most as if I had been there, could see the guard of
soldiers drawn up to salute as he passed into the court-
yard, could see him received in the ambassador’s room
with the prefect of the palace and two masters of cere-
monies, where the sun would be shining through upon
the yellow brocaded furniture and the famous Gobelin
tapestries, and where he would be met by the officers
of the royal household, all in their most resplendent
uniforms, with swords clanking as they came forward
to meet him, in his simple black clothes, but every whit
as distinguished-looking as any of them. In a moment
the doors of the throne-room would be flung open, the
King would be there standing on the throne with its
draperies of crimson velvet held back by gold clasps
mounted with the crown; he would be smiling cordially,
I knew, as he had been acquainted with my husband as
secretary, and had frankly expressed his pleasure at
the appointment. The others in the ambassador’s room
would get a look, then the doors would close, and the
new ambassador would be alone with the King.
I timed it so accurately, that I was at the window
just as the carriage returned. I ran impetuously to﻿The Ambassador
11
the door—and there was Marie, nearly bursting with
delight, and every blessed servant in the house, from the
butler to the little scullery maid, gravely bowing so
that their heads nearly touched the floor, and saying
“ excellency.” My husband’s eyes began to dance, and
I saw that he wanted to play some boyish prank and
shock them all; but he knew how they adored him, so he
walked past the long line with his head up, as he knew
they wanted him to do, and not until he was safely in
my sitting-room, with the key turned in the lock, did
he give way to shaking laughter.
When he had recovered, I asked, “ And what did the
King say? ”	“ His Majesty said several things,” he re-
plied, “ but the principal one was that he had the finest
baby boy ever born. He is the proudest father in the
whole world.” We could well believe it, for the baby
prince had arrived after many anxious years of waiting,
anxious years for the nation as well as for the King,
because the then heir-apparent had married a haughty
princess from a family once occupying half the thrones
of Europe, but bringing only misery and revolution with
their reigns.
How well I remember the infinite tenderness of my
dear husband’s voice and eyes as we sat there with
clasped hands, thinking no longer of the happiness of
the good King and Queen, but of our own great loss.
For the son who had come to us after ten years of mar-
riage had stayed only a few short days. I lived over
again, as we sat there, the radiant months of eager wait-
ing and sweet preparation, the secret consecration of﻿12 Intimacies of Court and Society
my mother soul, and the unforgettable moment when all
memory of pain vanished as they laid the precious, soft
little bundle on my breast. In the hour of our highest
honour and triumph, the wound struck deepest; it would
have seemed so much more worth while if our son had
lived!
The invitations to our first state dinner followed in
a few days after this. I had ordered a new gown from
Paris, but the morning of the dinner came, and it had
not arrived. We telegraphed to the dressmaker, and
she replied that it was on its way, and, as she had never
disappointed me before, I did not begin to worry until
the late afternoon. Marie chattered in voluble French
all over the house, and sent off a telegram on her own
account, giving the dressmaker, whom she knew in-
timately, a piece of her mind in such emphatic and
graphic language that, while, of course, I could not be
responsible for it, it considerably relieved my own feel-
ings.
The last train upon which the package could reach us
in time came in a few minutes after six; we sent a
servant to the station, but he returned empty-handed,
and Marie and I sat staring at one another in dumb
despair. My first state dinner, and nothing to wear—
could any situation be more tragic? Excuses were im-
possible, every one knew I was in perfect health, and
that very afternoon the Queen had recognised me as our
carriages passed near the palace, so it was very evident
I could not plead a sudden illness.
“ Marie, I simply must go and I simply must have a﻿The Ambassador
13
proper gown; what are you good for if you can’t help
me out at a time like this ? ” I said desperately and with
a good deal of childish pettishness, I am afraid. “ If
Madame will excuse me, I go away for five minutes to
think,” she replied humbly, as if she were to blame!
She came back beaming, a big box in her hands, ex-
claiming, “ Madame, we are saved! ” She had thought
of my mother’s wedding dress, which we had often looked
over and talked about, but which I had never worn. The
lace seemed too delicate and fragile for the crush of a
court ball, where a reckless foot would soon have ruined
it, and it had, besides, such an intimate association with
my mother’s sad life that I had always put it back rev-
erently in its box, preferring to leave it unworn.
But now it was the only thing at all possible, and
Marie had it out in a twinkling, measuring the train to
see if it were of the proper length, and holding it up for
me to put on. The white satin underdress had to be ad-
justed first, but, with her deft needle and a box of pins, it
soon was ready and she draped the lace on with the sure
touch and art inherent in the Frenchwoman. My hus-
band told me I had never looked better, which pleased
Marie almost as much as it did myself.
The excitement had made me so tired that, after we
reached the palace and stood waiting for the King and
Queen to enter, I said thoughtlessly to the Chinese am-
bassador, who was standing near, “ I would drop dead
if I had to stand this way with my feet bound like those
of the women of your country.” I remember that he
surveyed me with the calm, impenetrable gaze of the﻿14 Intimacies of Court and Society
Oriental, glancing then at a group of women in front
of us, whose tiny waists were quite out of proportion to
their shoulders, as he said quietly, “ Do you think our
custom of binding the feet more barbarous than yours
of torturing the body with steel corsets like that? ”
At dinner I recall that I sat opposite to Prince
Ferdinand of Bulgaria, who has recently proclaimed
himself Czar and showed a statesmanship strong and
shrewd enough to place him in the centre of the stage
of European politics. At that time, he impressed
neither my husband nor myself as possessing unusual
character or power. His face was prominently marked
with the long Bourbon nose and upper lip; he was very
much of a dandy, and inordinately vain of his hands,
which were as white and beautifully moulded as a
woman’s, with slender, tapering fingers covered with
curious rings.
We had entered the service with a definite idea of
what we sought, which was the opportunity of coming
into intimate contact with the men and women who
were the makers of the European history of their day,
and, with my husband at the head of his embassy, we
found all doors open in official life and in society. We
took at once a place of active leadership, not on account
of ourselves, but of the country we represented, and we
had too sensitive an appreciation of this fact ever to
neglect the duties which brought so many delightful
things, but which were also sometimes fatiguing and ex-
acting.﻿The Ambassador
15
I remember how keen was our delight in being finally
in a position where we could seek out the distinguished
men of science and the professions who did not belong
to the life of the court, forming a little circle of our
own among them. We were much astonished when one
of our American colleagues, a man for whom we had sin-
cere respect, told us that he did not consider himself
privileged to go beyond court life for his associates.
“ I am accredited to the sovereign and the court,” he
said, “ and should confine my intimacies within its lim-
its.” At that time, the court where he was stationed,
in the far North of Europe, was in deep mourning; there
were scarcely any dinners even, in the diplomatic corps,
and the season was so unutterably dull and stupid that
his wife had gone off to America to visit her children at
school. The ambassador himself spent lonely days and
nights in his big house, cut off by etiquette from enter-
taining the people of the court, and denying himself the
companionship of those whom he could have welcomed
informally, the celebrated physicians and men at the bar,
the authors and artists.
The ambassadors and ministers of the European coun-
tries are almost invariably from the historical families
of their nation, whose birth gives them at home a social
rank above the men of the professions who do not hap-
pen to be as well born, although often of infinitely
greater individual ability and achievement. It is from this
class of the professions that the American diplomatic
corps is largely recruited, and we could never regard the
deference they received from their colleagues who rep-﻿16 Intimacies of Court and Society
resented the old monarchies without a thrill of patriotic
exultation at the triumph of democratic principles. For
this very reason we considered it quite within our
province, if not an actual duty, to take pains to recog-
nise the men of Europe who stood for achievement
rather than birth, who were the exponents of the ideas
and ideals of America, the country where every man has
his chance.
Our years in Europe only strengthened our patriot-
ism, and we could never understand how any of our
American colleagues could enter so intimately into the
ideas of Old-World society as to lose their spirit of so-
cial democracy. We once met the wife of one of our
colleagues who told us that the thing she enjoyed the
most in Europe was the fact that people there were will-
ing to stay where they were born. “ It is such a
relief to live where people stay where they are put,”
was the way she expressed it. My husband, who some-
times gave himself the pleasure of saying what he
thought, a privilege not often accorded a diplomatist,
retorted, “ If everybody in America had stayed where
they were put, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin,
and a few others, for example, there wouldn’t be much
of a United States for your husband to be ambassador
from.”
American ambassadors in Europe have come and have
gone, some of them so rich that the sovereign himself
has felt comparatively poor beside them; but the fame
and standards of James Russell Lowell, John Hay, and
Andrew D. White have endured above all others, and will﻿The Ambassador
17
do so, for many years to come, as representing the
simplicity and genuine worth which Europe, in its
thoughtful circles, seeks with longing eyes in America.
And in this list I would include Alphonso Taft, the Presi-
dent’s father, who was our envoy in Russia for the
coronation of Alexander III, and who left an impression
upon the country which no succeeding American has
been able to efface. I learned this when I was there
many years before the son had risen to a place where he
could shed any lustre upon his father’s name.
The wife of a full-fledged ambassador has always a
list of women who want to be presented at court, and
with the American ambassador’s wife the list is a long
one. It is not the American temperament to risk losing
a thing by not asking for it, and with court presenta-
tions the wish is often so ardent that it becomes a
prayer, and then a threat if there is political influence
within reach.
The first man under whom we served had a rule that
no married woman was to be presented who was in
Europe without her husband. He and his wife were a
charming old couple, as much in love after their golden
wedding day as when they became engaged, and they
said firmly, “ A woman has no business being in Europe
without her husband, unless she is over here for her
health. And if she is ill, she has no business going to
court.” If we had had the courage of our convictions,
we would have made the same rule, and, however
mediaeval it seemed even then, a quarter of a century ago,
to Americans, it could be easily enforced to-day, with-﻿18 Intimacies of Court and Society
out protest, at almost any German or French embassy.
The American ambassador’s wife is usually very patri-
otic, although I am quite well aware that many people
question it. She is proud of the reputation her country-
women have established abroad for cleverness and
beauty, and willing to go out of her way to give as
many of them as possible the eclat and excitement of
going to court. But, according to etiquette, she can
make but two or three presentations at each court, and
these must be approved by the court chamberlain, while
there are sometimes a hundred applicants. She cannot
present a woman who has been divorced or been in any
way connected with a social scandal. She cannot pre-
sent the daughter of the most influential politician if she
is socially impossible. A politician who can stalk
through the departments at Washington in a free and
easy way, and make every man, from the President
down, feel his importance, can get nothing sometimes
for his family from the ambassadors.
A great deal of trouble comes through the letters of
introduction which the State Department gives to such
men for their wives and daughters. The men demand
them, and the Department is not in a position to refuse,
although it is well understood between the Department
and the embassy that the letter means nothing, that it
has, as it were, been obtained by coercion. But the
woman who brings it over has expectations of a court
presentation, and a round of gaiety with the aristoc-
racy, and often goes home in a towering rage of dis-
appointment.﻿The Ambassador
19
Until a few years ago, some of the governors of the
different States kept printed forms which were filled out
upon application to any respectable persons who ap-
plied, recommending them to the courtesy of our for-
eign representatives. But these letters were so numer-
ous that they became a veritable nuisance, and the State
Department ordered them discontinued. When it came
to a little humbug perquisite like that, the State Depart-
ment felt it needed it all!
It was during this period that a lady arrived one win-
ter day in the capital where we were stationed, armed
with such a letter. She went from the train to the
embassy, and a polite secretary told her that the am-
bassador was out, but would receive her any day be-
tween eleven and three, his office hours. She called
the next day at four, and was incensed that he had not
waited until she came. Early the following morning,
before any of the family were about at the house, Marie
knocked at my husband’s bedroom door to say that a
lady wanted to see him on urgent business. With his
usual kindness of heart, he hurriedly put on dressing-
gown and slippers, and went into the drawing-room,
where he found an excited woman pacing the floor.
“ Madame, what can I do for you? ” he asked in his
most sympathetic tone, really distressed at her agita-
tion, and thinking she must have met with some extraor-
dinary experience. She replied by enquiring haughtily
if he had received the letter of introduction she had
presented from the governor of her State, and the poor
fellow told her he had received it and regretted that she﻿20 Intimacies of Court and Society
had not called in office hours. “ What can I do
for you?” he asked again. “Sir, I want attention,”
she announced, drawing herself up, her eyes blazing
with indignation. My husband had by this time recog-
nised the sort of person he had to deal with, and as-
suming all the dignity possible in his negligee attire,
he went to the door and bowed her out, with, “ Madame,
if it is business attention you want, I shall be glad to
give it to you at my office in office hours. If it is social
attention you want, I don’t know you and I owe you
nothing.”
It was Marie, however, who gave the finishing touch
to the little comedy, as she showed the lady out of the
house. “ Would you like to have His Excellency send
word over to the palace that you would enjoy taking
breakfast with the Queen? ” she asked with a low bow
and a deference that was the height of impertinence. It
was as good as a play; but we had to make her promise
not to say such a thing again; she had become such a
privileged character that she might seriously embarrass
us some day.
Dear, faithful Marie! She died in our service, and
her last word was “ excellency ” to my husband, as he
stooped over and brushed back the gray hair from the
forehead already chilled by death. Neither of us could
hear the word for many a day after without a throb of
pain.
We were really much indebted to this lady who
wanted “ attention ” so early that cold winter morning,
because it was so amusing. My husband, who was an﻿The Ambassador
21
old friend of John Hay’s, was telling him the story one
day in London, Mr. Hay being then accredited to the
Court of St. James. He matched it with one of his
own about a man who wanted “ attention.” Shortly
before coming to London, Mr. Hay had been out in
Ohio on campaign business, and had exchanged a few
words with a local politician. After several years of
busy London life, he had forgotten the man’s very ex-
istence, when he received a letter from him, written with
the familiarity of a lifelong friendship, to say that he
was bringing a party of forty tourists to Europe, and
would be much obliged if the ambassador would show
them around the House of Commons and give them
tea on the terrace. He wanted, I believe, to announce
this pleasure on his prospectus.
Every embassy is sought many times during the
year by some one in dire distress for money. There
are numerous foreigners who want their passage paid
to an American port, having visions of streets stacked
with dollars which they can have for the taking. And
there are the many sad cases of young men and women
who come abroad to study, thinking they can live on
nothing, and get lessons from the great masters for
nothing. Or, they imagine that, once in Europe, some
way will be opened for them to earn a living and study
at the same time. The artistic temperament is unduly
optimistic as well as supersensitive, and sometimes
they come to the very verge of starvation before mak-
ing known their wants. There are clubs and societies
especially organized to protect and assist the students,﻿22 Intimacies of Court and Society
but in extremity it is the ambassador to whom they
appeal. And these men spend hundreds of dollars every
year in such charity, saying nothing about it, doing it
as a matter of course, and in addition to their large con-
tributions to every public form of such charity.
They are often imposed upon, it goes without saying,
and often treated with ingratitude. It is not that they
expect to be reimbursed; that occurs too seldom to be
looked upon as a usual thing. But there have been
many cases where they have sent home persons, desti-
tute and friendless in a foreign country, who consid-
ered the gift too lightly even to be acknowledged when
they were safe again among their own people.
Every diplomatic officer hears so many stories of
distress and has so many experiences with fraud, that
he becomes sceptical, in spite of himself, and learns
that one of his important duties is the power to say no.
But when any kind of a personal tie exists, he finds it
practically impossible to resist the appeal, and puts his
hand in his pocket as cheerfully as he can.
We had a friend who was occupying one of the posts
in the service at Paris during the time of an interna-
tional gathering, when a lady whose husband was a
prominent judge in the State which the diplomatist
called his home, came to Paris and took an expensive
apartment in the Champs-Elysees. She had an unim-
portant connection with the international gathering,
but considered it nevertheless necessary to live like a
princess, and to order a thousand dollars’ worth of
gowns which she could not pay for. In a few weeks﻿The Ambassador
23
she went to our friend, whom she had never known per-
sonally in America, and asked him to loan her money
for current expenses. He told her that she was living
a good deal better than he was, and that he could not
afford to keep up her establishment. She stayed in his
office for two hours, interrupting important business,
and went away very indignant.
The next week she came back. This time she asked
him to pay her debts and give her enough money to get
home on. She was tearful and repentant, and fearful
of what her husband would say and do about her ex-
travagance. But still the diplomatist could not be per-
suaded to help her.
She returned the third time, a cablegram in her hand
which read, “Your husband is dying; come at once.”
“ Now, will you send me home? ” she asked him, and he
said the only thing possible under the circumstances,
“ If your husband is dying, I certainly will.” So the
lady packed her new gowns and sailed gaily home,
cabling to her husband the judge, and he met her at
the pier when the boat reached New York, while the
man in Paris and his wife had the pleasure of reading,
in the American papers that came shortly afterwards,
descriptions of the gowns that were being worn by the
lady at the parties given in honour of her return from
Europe.
Personally, we were never ourselves greatly imposed
upon, and those of our friends in the service who were,
seldom complained, talking about it in their intimate
circle perhaps, but only to point a good joke against﻿24 Intimacies of Court and Society
themselves. I remember that our friend in Paris, for
instance, in telling about the lady and ber cablegram,
said, “ It was such a clever dodge that I wouldn’t have
minded so much if the judge hadn’t been a Democrat.
I wrote him a letter about it, but he never replied.
Probably he thought it was a good way to get even on
campaign scores.”
Thus the years passed, and there were so many
of them, and my visits home necessarily so short, that
it came about that I knew the streets of the capitals of
Europe as well as those in the town where I was bom,
and much better than those of New York or Chicago,
or the other large cities of the United States.
And there have been the happy days of the after-
wards; when, in my loneliness and restlessness, I have
come back again and again, free from the restrictions
of etiquette and the crowding duties of official hospital-
ity, and, with so many doors open in welcome, have been
able to pick and choose where I would pass my time
and with whom, as no diplomatist’s wife can always do.
It is of these later visits, so full of delightful in-
timacies, that I shall write in the chapters that follow.
And there are the days that come now and again,
about which I cannot write, when, with no one to say
me nay, I hide myself away with my memories and my
dreams,—down by the sea, in some busy port where so
many strange boats come in from far-off lands, that it
seems as if there must be one coming to me, from that
distant bourn where our loved ones go; or up on a﻿The Ambassador
25
mountain top, where the solitude brings me peace, and I
learn to be ashamed. For the memories are of things
so rare and precious, of a king so good and strong
who made me his queen of love; and the dreams are so
beautiful, of the day that is to come, when I shall see
him, and when a baby boy, with his eyes and hair, shall
fill my empty arms.﻿n
PARIS
THE SOCIETY OF THE REPUBLIC
There’s a merry sprite of gaiety, good humour, and
audacity hidden in the exhilarating air of Paris, touch-
ing with his magic wand all who enter within its gates.
If you come from sober London, or stolid Berlin, and
want to enjoy its society at its best, you come for a few
weeks of quiet assimilation.
In Paris, there is always the tout-ensemble of which
you hear so much in French art and Parisian dressing.
At the London opera it is Melba, Caruso, or Tetrazzini
whom you go to hear; in Paris it is the opera itself, re-
gardless of the star. And in Parisian life you are a
part of the great orchestra and you must become at-
tuned to the melody of the whole. You are an actor
in the drama, and you must learn the cue and the
lines.
In London individuality counts for success, and in
Paris a woman must meet its own requirements, super-
ficial but none the less searching. She must dress and
know how to dress; to be chic is nothing; every shopgirl
is that. She must be an artist, unoffending to the
masculine and feminine eyes that look upon the master-
pieces of the Louvre and the Luxembourg as often and
26﻿27
The Society of the Republic
with as much willing pleasure as upon those of the dress-
makers of the Rue de la Paix. She must cultivate that
sensitiveness to sight and sound, to colour and har-
mony, to the outward semblance, which makes the
Parisian’s heaven and hell. She must be gay, serious
not before anything of life and its problems, but only
before something marvellous in nature, art, or
literature.
To be shocked in London is fashionable. In Paris
it is the most hateful of unfashionable things—middle-
class. The Parisian never ceases to make merry over
the comparison. The “ Divine Sarah,” like all
actresses, is not received in Paris, but London, with its
paradoxes, opens wide its doors to her as to all cele-
brated artists. A story which has lasted twenty years
of telling relates to the time when she was asked to dine
at an English house, and sent word ahead that she was
bringing a friend. At the door the footman was ordered
to announce, “ Mademoiselle Bernhardt and her son.”
The man dropped dead, according to the tale, and the
host fell into a fit of apoplexy.
The chief contribution of a young matron to a
Parisian dinner party may be a story heard in London
only in the smoking-room. Life as it is, with its follies
and vices, is discussed as a matter of course. It is a
safety valve for temperament which the silent English
do not have, and does not indicate that the French have
any more of folly and vice, but only that it is on the
surface, where all the world may see.
Conversation in itself as a supreme accomplishment﻿28 Intimacies of Court and Society
is still the wonder of the Parisian world, even in the day
of bridge. One must learn to talk easily and
brilliantly; even the children of France do that.
A Frenchman kisses a woman’s hand when he greets
her in the house. He is a perfect cavalier and knows
her wishes before she has had the time to express
them. He has half a dozen plans for her pleasure in as
many minutes, a little dinner, or an excursion, a book
to be read, an introduction to some one of interest. If
you come direct from London, you reach instinctively
for your engagement book, and feel a little foolish
when you meet him the next week and find that he has
forgotten all about them. He is like a charming child
in his momentary desire to please you. You must not
expect him to remember.
It is the cup of the hour which is drained to the
dregs. There is no to-morrow.
You come, then, for a few weeks of assimilation. You
order your gowns, and you do some of the delightful
things that fill the time of the vast throng of ever-busy
visitors who may not know a soul in Paris.
These are the days when you go to the Forests of
Fontainebleau, or join the Sunday thousands at Ver-
sailles when the fountains play. Or, you take a penny
boat up the Seine to St. Cloud, and, with some one you
love, wander hand-in-hand like two school children
through its terraces and glades, missing nothing of the
once famous chateau in the wide-spreading woods flam-
ing in autumnal glory. On and on you wander for﻿29
The Society of the Republic
hours, drinking in the air like so much champagne, and
watching the trees wrap themselves deep in purple
shadows as the early twilight falls upon them. Then,
from the high embankment, you can look out upon
the pretty town of Sevres on one side, and see on the
other the myriad lights of Paris gleaming in the
distance. The river is full of little boats, alive with
line after line of flashing light, and you find a seat
among a crowd of artists in broad-brimmed hats and
flowing neckties, who clasp their sketchbooks tightly
under their arms, and throw a look backward as the
boat drops down into the midst of the light on its way
back to Paris.
You ride home on top of a slow-going omnibus, which
gives you the gorgeous windows of the florists and the
softly illuminated antique shops, like room after room in
a palace, as the lovely things in gold and silver, ivory
and bronze, form their pictures, with old tapestries, rare
prints and laces on the walls, and brocaded stuffs in
bright colours hanging carelessly across quaintly
carved chairs and oaken chests. The little old men
and women who tend them are a part of the picture,
too, and the treasures are a part of them. The next
day, if you go to buy a jewelled button or a piece of
lace, they will caress it tenderly as they give it up.
But they will hand it to you in a piece of common
newspaper, not being at all equal to spending a few
pennies for a proper wrapping.
It is like the love of the men of France for the﻿30 Intimacies of Court and Society
women whom they marry, full of words and ardent
emotion, but prudently regulated by the size oNke
dot.
Those are the days when you have plenty of time
for the Bois—if that could ever be. The Bois de
Boulogne—that noble avenue stretching from the
great structure of the Arc de Triomphe, and diverging
into woodland paths as far as the clear vision of the
bright French skies can reach, lined on either side
by stone mansions, the costliest in Paris. French purses
are not equal to them, only those of the enormously
rich Americans and the queens of the recognized French
world of the cocottes.
On the driveway racing motor cars and fashionable,
high-stepping cobs mingle with the tired, lean ani-
mals and shabby cabs which the casual tourists have
hailed. On the cinder path at one side, a cavalcade
of handsome horsemen, army officers in scarlet breeches
and navy-blue coats, or in dashing costume of sky-blue
cloth and gold braid, fitting their corseted, tapering
waists to perfection; on the promenade at the other
side, the loveliest, daintiest children in the world, proud
little gentlemen and ladies, with nurses in every peasant
dress of Europe.
Tall, broad-shouldered English and American men,
vigorous and alert, stride along, soon outdistancing the
small, elegant Frenchman, with a connoisseur’s eye for
every passing female form, walking slowly, young in
years, but worn out with pleasure.
The Bois—where one finds the people who float in﻿31
The, Society of the Republic
from the Gare du Nord, black and white, brown and
yellow, from Chicago and Cairo, Tokio and Constan-
tinople, from whence, who enquires? They are gone in
a few weeks or months, whither, who knows ? Scarcely
the tradesmen who supply their demands and gamble
on the payment. In a week they are installed near the
Etoile, with a retinue of servants, horses, and motor
cars. They give the big dinners at the fashionable
restaurants which one reads about in the papers, gath-
ering about them a motley array of bejewelled women
and blase men, whose titles are unrecorded in any book
of nobility. But they dazzle the eyes and enliven the
scene as they dash by in the Bois, the sun catching the
gold on their harness and revealing in the carriage
visions of lace and fur and ropes of pearls.
The Bois—where one passes the Parisian monde oil
Von s’amuse, a king, perhaps, a Russian grand duke, or
the ruler of a German principality, come to Paris in-
cognito, seeking the gay throng in the Land of For-
getting. One would meet them at such times nowhere
in the most distinguished society, only at the theatre,
the picture gallery, or in the Bois, a celebrated beauty
on the arm, whose home is probably one of the man-
sions nearby. It is kept up with a splendor worthy
of a Pompadour or a Du Barry. The best artists of
France have been proud to decorate it. And in its
salons could be found on occasion the most powerful
men of the time, taking their man’s privilege of paying
court to the queen of the cocottes.
She is the quintessence of Parisian audacity and﻿32 Intimacies of Court and Society
fashion. Any man of the Parisian world will tell you
about her. She may be a Spanish dancer, the daughter
of peasants. She is just as likely to be the daughter
of a general, a prince, or a bishop, with a good educa-
tion and a childhood of luxury, with refinement and
charm—with everything but a dot. And without a
dot she could not marry. She might, perhaps, have
been a governess or a stenographer, where her beauty
and distinction would have made her the easy prey of
men who would have flung her a few sous when they
grew tired of her and left her to walk the streets.
Honest she would certainly have little chance to be in
Paris. So she prefers to live in the Bois, and have
motor cars and a chateau.
The grandes dames of the capital are not too proud
eagerly to scrutinise her as she goes by, and to copy
her mode and her manner—as long as she is the vogue;
and not too proud to minister to the wretchedness of
her old age, probably spent in the lowest depths of
Montmartre, hatless and shoeless, her face grown
hideous from vice.
The Bois! Where one passes men who are husbands
and fathers, and women who are wives and mothers, be-
longing now only to those who are forgetting, and
hearing only the voice of the siren, vibrant with a
thousand charms of forbidden desire.
The Bois! Where one passes kings and queens in
exile, wearing brave faces and manners of the court,
with empty pockets and mountains of debts; where one
passes the well-known exiles from other lands, who have﻿33
The Society of the Republic
lost home and children and everything sweet and
precious by a few short nights of discovered folly—
who are the pariahs of England, that land sacred to the
eleventh commandment, “ Thou shalt not be found out.”
And one is glad for once that there is this Babylon of a
Paris to receive and understand them, and to give some
sort of a pitying welcome to the hearts that must so
often be aching, to the feet that must so soon have
grown weary.
Almost every winter, shortly after the New Year,
you can see driving in the Bois a tragic-eyed old woman
dressed in deep widow’s weeds, whose face, furrowed
with care, and figure bent with sorrow as well as age,
bear to-day little trace of the radiant beauty that
startled and enraptured the world when she became
Eugenie, Empress of the French. She is in Paris only
for a short time on her way to her villa at Cap Martin,
but those few days she passes in the Bois, or at her
hotel window in the Rue de Rivoli, her head in her
hands, her eyes gazing, gazing, upon the Tuileries
Gardens opposite, the garden spot of love and beauty
and power in her life.
In the Bois meet and mingle, and there only with per-
fect freedom, the different elements that go to make up
the society of Paris, unorganised, most of them con-
temptuous one of the other, and often as ignorant of
the other as if strangers from different lands. There
is the old nobility centred and entrenched in the
seigniorial hotels of the Faubourg St. Germain, living
behind high stone walls in a world apart from the﻿34 Intimacies of Court and Society
bustling, commercial, republican Paris, and in haughty,
bitter protest against the present regime; the descend-
ants of the ancient nobility who ruled in France before
the Crusades, and gathered around Louis XIV in the
court, the most splendid and cultivated, profligate and
frivolous which Europe has ever known.
There is the new nobility of the Empire, spreading
its dwellings along the Faubourg St. Honore, the fam-
ilies of Wagram and a hundred others, ennobled, made
rich and powerful by the Bonapartes, and deserting
them for the Republic when their fortunes were at
stake. There are the Rothschilds and other great bank-
ers of the class called Haute Finance, tolerated in the
society of that Paris for which they have done so
much, but which even to-day only condescends to the
Jew. Then there are the people of the Haute
Bourgeoisie or upper middle class, who in France, as in
every other land, are the workaday people of the pro-
fessions, of business and government, literature and art.
To the true American, this class in France is the,
most interesting and sympathetic of any to be found in
Europe. Elsewhere, they are patronised by the
hereditary leaders of society, who come into their own
position through the merits of their ancestors. In
France the leaders are the triumphant victors of work
and brains, the descendants of the peasants and the mob
that devastated their country and made its gutters
run with blood in their frenzy for “ Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity.” They are in possession to-day of France,
and Paris is the product of their passionate adoration﻿35
The Society of the Republic
—Paris, with its wide, clean streets, its wonderful
monuments, the prosperity that renews its art, en-
riches its literature, and splendidly subsidises its opera
and theatre. If they are a little vulgar in their exulta-
tion and not overly scrupulous at times, one can forgive
them.
The quarters of the departments of the government
and the homes of the cabinet ministers are the palaces
of the kings and the old aristocracy, filled with the
furniture, pictures, and tapestry chosen by the fathers
of the class who must to-day humbly beg for permission
to breathe the air of Paris. When you go to dine at
one of these palaces, you finger curiously your knives,
forks, and spoons, marked with the monogram of
Louis XVI or Napoleon III, and you meditate upon
the strange vicissitudes of fortune as you slowly drink
a liqueur from the cellars of Fouche, Napoleon I’s mag-
nificent minister of police, or a glass of choice wine
which Talleyrand, when he bought it, little thought,
would ever touch your lips.
Georges Clemenceau, the late Prime Minister, repre-
sents the possibilities of achievement to-day by the
upper middle class, and incidentally the things most
detested by the aristocracy. I once had a memorable
afternoon with him at his house in the Rue Franklin,
the street sacred to the name of our own great states-
man democrat. He is a man'in his early sixties, but
looks eighty, wasted and worn with disease, but keep-
ing at his post, a half-mocking smile and a joke eter-
nally on his lips, laughing at fate, the personification﻿36 Intimacies of Court and Society
of the French gaiety that could not be quenched at the
guillotine. He showed me his collection of rare Ori-
ental rugs and bric-a-brac, having time to be an author-
ity on the art products of the East; and confided to me
that his greatest ambition was not for success in states-
manship, but in writing—the Prime Minister who longed
to be again the journalist. I told him that Bismarck
said to a friend of mine a few days before his death,
“ When I was in politics, I always thought that my
passion was for a quiet country life. But now that I
have had it, I realise that my passion was always for
politics.”
Clemenceau speaks perfect English, learned in the
years he spent in New York as a young man, when he
was glad to work at translating for five dollars a week,
and where he afterwards found his American wife. But
he objects to using any language but his own, appre-
ciating the importance of keeping pure his literary
style, and waiting for the happy moment when he
can take up his editor’s pen again.
In the other European capitals, the daily drive of
the king and queen is a feature of the life. But one
misses it in Paris. President Fallieres takes a walk
every morning, but Madame Fallieres takes neither
walks nor drives.
A witty Frenchman once said that Paris was in-
vented so that foreigners should know nothing of
France, and Madame Fallieres belongs to that France
of the provinces whose life is a sealed book to most
strangers. It is the type of the Petite Bourgeoisie or﻿37
The Society of the Republic
lower middle class of the South, descended from gen-
erations of women honest and modest, whose existence
has been centred in the home, in keeping it in order,
overlooking the servants, and living close to the chil-
dren, a type conserved through generations and seem-
ingly as little impressed with the march of time as the
Sphinx of Egypt. Educated in the convent, and pre-
serving throughout her life the convent custom of
dressing in black, a devout Catholic, even if married
to a politician of the Radical party, the woman of this
class looks upon her home as a part of her religion,
the most important part, and she lives in it almost as
in a convent. Any kind of pleasure, even a promenade,
is unknown to her. She is always in the home, and
early in life loses the desire for anything else. “ When
you are in the home, the outside world does not trouble
you,” is her motto. The products of the vegetable
garden, the best way of turning draperies that have
become worn, recipes for jams and jellies, these make
up her life. She speaks when spoken to, and makes a
few shy remarks to her husband until he interrupts her
with an authoritative, “ Stop, that is enough.” The
husband is often a great talker, but in his home he talks
on heedless of his listener, and is astonished if she ex-
hibits powers of observation. He will then show a
certain respect for his humble companion, and may even
ask her advice at times, although seldom acknowledging
it before the world.
As politics is the sole passion of the South of
France, there are many women of this type in govern-﻿38 Intimacies of Court and Society
mental life in Paris, but not many of them have the
good sense of Madame Fallieres. She realises that she
cannot take the role of a great lady, and makes no
ridiculous attempt to do it. President Fallieres has
held numerous public offices, and she has had over
twenty years of Parisian official life. But she has
never become accustomed to it. When her husband was
President of the Senate, the palace that goes with the
office was much too splendid for her. What must the
Elysee be? It is one of the most magnificent resi-
dences in the world, reconstructed at fabulous expense
for Madame la Marquise de Pompadour, its very name
bringing up visions of prodigal display, of fairy fetes
and golden banquets, of Paradise and the Elysian
Fields.
We went to call upon her one day, this good, simple
woman of the South, with a provincial accent in which
the syllables fairly dance one into the other. Having
traversed three immense salons ornamented with superb
tapestry, we arrived at last where the mistress of the
palace was receiving, the names of the ambassadors
and ministers of the government being announced in
thundering tones by the lackeys. We found a little
woman, very plump and very dark, with regular
features and bright black eyes, her folds of black hair
slightly marked with grey drawn back in an old-fash-
ioned way. She was dressed with a simplicity entirely
provincial, and without a single ornament or jewel; and
she greeted her guests with a timid, sincere smile, and
a modest, deprecating manner, as if trying to excuse﻿Madame Fallieres, wife of the President of France﻿﻿39
The, Society of the Republic
herself for her surroundings. The strangers who filed
past her each took a turn in resting for a few seconds
in an armchair beside the big one of Aubusson, in which
she was seated.
She had nothing to say. She has never travelled
beyond France, as President Fallieres never did until he
came into his present high office. The last piece at the
theatre—she has not seen it. The opera—the presi-
dential box is seldom occupied by herself or her hus-
band. The latest book—she has no life of books.
Paris itself, she knows only in its streets and buildings,
nothing of the great Paris of the arts.
But she wore a certain happy air which I knew was
admiration for the husband who has mounted so high.
I expressed my own admiration for him, and she took
it with the pleasure of a bride.
At the Pantheon, during the ceremonies of the inter-
ment of Zola, when the shot of Gregori was fired,
Madame Fallieres heard it instantly and cried out,
“ Some one has shot at my husband.” She thought
of the tragedy of Carnot and suffered agonies during
the moments that passed before the truth could be
known. Speaking of it at this time, she said, “ Those
moments have more than outweighed any happiness I
have enjoyed at my husband’s success.”
When the late King and Queen of Sweden were in
Paris a few years ago, I watched her little figure hang-
ing, almost suspended, on the arm of the tall King, 'as
she walked down the banquet room through the saluting
crowd to the sound of the “ Marseillaise.” She had﻿40 Intimacies of Court and Society
nothing to say through the long dinner. The silence,
which in time became well-nigh funereal, was happily
broken by the fanfares of the band.
Very few of the monarchs who, for political reasons,
come to Paris as guests of the government, have the
art to take the initiative in supplying the amusement
which the host and hostess of the filysee are unable to
give. But the young King of Spain, although often an
official guest, never ceases to find entertainment. He
is full of youth and good spirits, dashes about the
streets in his automobile at break-neck speed, enjoys
everything, and sees the humorous side to the most
tiresome, pompous function. At a state dinner he
once sat near a remarkably beautiful and attractive
American woman, who diverted him so well that he told
her he hoped to see her in Madrid some day. She re-
plied that she hoped he would some day soon visit the
United States. To this he said, wrinkling his forehead
with gravity, but with a twinkle in his eyes, “ But you
know I couldn’t possibly come for several years. I
must stay at home with the Queen and add to our
family. It is our duty to the state.”
Madame Fallieres has the simplicity of dress and
manner which belong to her ideals as they belong to her
birth and class. She would gladly make the back-
ground of government social life less ceremonious and
pompous. But it is as solemn as in the days of the
ancient monarchy, and in sumptuousness unsurpassed
in Europe. And what figures one comes across in the﻿41
The Society of the Republic
midst of this splendour! What tragedies one could
relate of cheap elegance and paste jewels, of the latest
mode on ungainly figures, of Directoire gowns on one’s
laundress, as it were, the tragedies of trying vainly
to fit the picture to its gorgeous frame. And the
official hospitality of the state is full of the night-
mares of incapacity, and ignorance of les nuances in the
art of entertaining. Shortly after Madame Failures
took up her residence in the Elysee, she succeeded,
after a protracted struggle, in discharging the presi-
dential chef and installing her own time-honoured and
beloved cook, accustomed to the daily visits to the
kitchen of herself and her daughter—and how many an
official dinner guest has, since then, accepted the les-
son of experience and taken the precaution of eating
a hearty meal at home before starting out! I remem-
ber being at a state concert when the composer Mas-
senet sat down to play the accompaniment for one of
his songs, at a piano rented promiscuously for the
evening, and so cheaply made and so badly out of
time, that he jumped up in disgust and ran out of the
room in a rage. It took some moments to find a
young man who, having no reputation to lose, was
willing to attempt the accompaniment. It is useless,
however, for any one in the intimacy of official position
to convey even the gentlest of hints to Madame Fai-
lures, or to her daughter, so inseparable a companion
that she was hardly absent from her mother’s side for
a day until, at the age of thirty-nine, she became the
wife of the presidential secretary, Monsieur Lanes. To﻿42 Intimacies of Court and Society
any such delicate suggesting, they have both said,
“ We do the best we can.” And Madame Fallieres has
declared openly, “ Official life is not my life, and I have
never learned to like it or to feel at home in it. I
don’t know what to do for the great people I am con-
stantly compelled to have around my dinner table, and
I shall never learn. I would gladly exchange it all for
the simple little cottage in the country I had when I
was first married.” She and Madame Lanes industri-
ously and energetically devote their days to official
functions—to the opening of the Salon, where they are
taken in a mad gallop to look at each individual paint-
ing; to the Grand Prix at the Auteuil races, and the
Grand Prix at Longchamps, where they must receive
and congratulate the owners of the winning horses; to
the receptions of the Academie Fran9aise; to the cere-
monies of the 14th of July, anniversary of the Re-
public’s triumph; to the opening of charity bazaars,
the distribution of school prizes, the celebration of of-
ficial marriages, and to the funeral discourses for the
distinguished dead. They drive forth in pomp and
state, and return to dash through the gates of the
Elysee before a gaping crowd of the curious and a
retinue of magnificent flunkeys, who hasten to close the
ponderous doors which shut them in behind a huge
wall of formality, which no intimacy of lifelong friend-
ship or relationship could penetrate during the Presi-
dent’s term of office—as complete as that of the
Empress of All the Russias.
But Monsieur Fallieres continues the habit, estab-﻿43
The Society of the Republic
lished many years ago, of a brisk morning walk for an
hour or two, where one may often meet him shortly be-
fore noon, in the Rue Grenelle, in the Rue Vaugirard,
in the Bois, or over in the Montmartre district—a short,
thick-set peasant-politician, whose greatest pleasure it
is to delve among the old bookstalls of the boulevards,
or to enjoy the refinement of delight in a collection of
classic verses upon fine parchment and in a rare art
binding; a man of tender sentiment who, after his elec-
tion as President of France, was not ashamed to be
found with the tears streaming from his eyes, and to
return with youthful abandon the ardent embraces of
his friends. He has big, emphatic gestures, and a
gentle, musical voice, speaking even to-day the patois
of his province, having made no particular effort dur-
ing his years in Paris to get the Parisian accent. “ I
was a country lawyer, as you would say in America,
and I should like to know what I would have done
without that provincial accent? ” he once said, laugh-
ingly, to an American diplomat. “ I owed my bread
and butter to it.” His grandfather was a blacksmith
and his father a village recorder of deeds, and Monsieur
Fallieres never forgets that he is “ a son of democracy.”
He has Gambetta’s portrait over his desk, and his vis-
itors often have it pointed out to them with the remark,
“ He, also, was a son of democracy.” He goes every
year for a month or two to his little country place at
Loupillon to look after his vineyard—and one may buy
the “ vintage Fallieres,” at a slightly advanced price
for such an honourable name.﻿44 Intimacies of Court and Society
And both he and Madame Fallieres find many quiet
days during the spring and summer out at the presi-
dential chateau of “ Rambouillet,” within easy access
to Paris, and in the neighbourhood of some of the most
romantically beautiful and tragically interesting prop-
erty now in the hands of the Republic—“ Meudon,”
“ St. Cyr,” and “ Bellevue.” It was at that chateau
of Meudon that the superb Francis I established the
famous Duchesse d’Etampes; and Louis XV, the Du
Barry; and where “ Monseigneur le Dauphin ” held his
court, hardly less voluptuous and licentious than that
of his father, Louis XIV, at Versailles. It was there,
upon October 6, 1789, the day of the attack upon Ver-
sailles, that Marie Antoinette sent an agitated courier
to tell her husband to quit his hunting party without
a moment’s delay and seek safety before the expected
arrival of the Furies of the Halles; it was at Meudon
where Marie Louise and the little King of Rome, at-
tended by his grmde dame governess, Madame de
Montesquieu, spent the anxious days of the Russian
campaign. The chateau has been completely de-
stroyed, as also the wonderful chateau of “ Bellevue,”
upon which La Pompadour expended years of artistic
planning and millions of francs of the people’s money;
but you may look upon the marble from the old chateau
at Meudon in the arch of the Place du Carrousel, where
Napoleon I put it. St. Cyr was a wedding present
from Louis XIV to Madame de Maintenon—or, at
least, a present at the time the marriage is said to
have taken place; it was to St. Cyr that she transferred﻿45
The, Society of the Republic
her school for young ladies of poverty and noble birth
from the Chateau de Noisy, and which is still in ex-
istence, and where she retired upon the death of the
King; where also Napoleon I established the military
college which turns out every year 140 young officers,
and is under the close supervision of President
F allieres.
Rambouillet’s big, battlemented round towers are
about all that is left of the old mediaeval castle which
Louis XIV presented to his son by Madame de Monte-
span, the Comte de Toulouse, and which receives its
name from the family of d’Angennes-—a family in-
famous for the Jean d’Angennes who sold Cherbourg
to the English; and famous for the Madame Charles
d’Angennes, Marquise de Rambouillet, one of the most
profoundly intellectual and exquisitely feminine dames
de salon upon the record of Life, Marie de Medici’s ad-
visor in the architecture of the Palace of the Luxem-
bourg, and the friend of Balzac, Corneille, and Riche-
lieu, of Rochefoucauld and his chere amie, the match-
less Madame de Longueville, royal mistress and
cloistered nun. Rabelais was a frequent visitor at
Rambouillet, and Rabelais’s Cave can still be seen in
the garden; and in the park, a remembrance of Louis
XVI’s Ferme Experiment ale, and the Laiterie de la
Reine, which he made for Marie Antoinette—who was
delighted with it and with Rambouillet for the extended
period of a month, and then exclaimed petulantly,
“Que voulez-vous que je fasse dans cette crapaudiere?”
The chateau stands in the midst of acres of park﻿46 Intimacies of Court and Society
land, with avenues of stately lime trees, secluded walks,
and gardens full of rare flowers; and beyond it is the
great forest where Monsieur Fallieres often takes a
hunting party of government officials and men of the
diplomatic corps, an expert himself in the sport of
kings, having brought down many a stag and hun-
dreds of pheasants and partridges. At such times,
Madame Failures sends an occasional invitation to
lunch or tea to the women upon her official list, which
is eagerly accepted by the foreigner on account of the
opportunity it gives’ of Seeing the interior of the
chateau whose gates have been described “ as the
funeral arch through which the dynasties of France
have passed to the grave.” Francis I died at Ram-
bouillet, and the room on the first floor has been care-
fully preserved by the Republic. Catherine de Medici
and Charles IX were there when waiting for news of
the battle of Dreux, and Henry II fled there when
driven out of Paris. Napoleon I was at Rambouillet
when, as a conqueror, he signed the decree reuniting
Holland to the Empire; and there again, after the
battle of Waterloo, to join the frightened Marie Louise
—and to receive the next day the discarded Josephine;
there again, in 1815, to sign his second abdication and
plot for escape to America. Marie Louise met at
Rambouillet the Allied Sovereigns,and from there set out
for Vienna—and the obscurity of her second marriage.
Louis XVIII was never there, but Charles X loved it so
well that the Parisian mob of 25,000 revolutionists﻿The Society of the Republic 47
sought for him at once at Rambouillet—only to find
that he had fled and left behind his abdication.
What visions of the past you have, in this world
of ineffaceable memories of royal queens and reines de la
main gauche, whose brilliant mentality, captivating
charms, and alluring beauty will inspire the paeans of the
poets a dozen centuries hence—what visions of the
past, and to-day, what a bewilderment of disenchant-
ment, dishevelment of sentiment, in its regally furnished
salons, making your willingly obedient obeisance to the
virtues which would be so resplendent in another
framing—those of the good and kindly, simple and sin-
cere Madame Falli&res!﻿Ill
THE FAUBOURG ST. GERMAIN
The diplomatic corps is, of course, accredited to the
government, and it goes without saying that they are
punctilious in performing their duties as to official
calls, dinners, and receptions. But the representatives
of the monarchical countries take their pleasures so evi-
dently among the more congenial circles of the Fau-
bourg that a wag once started the report that the dif-
ferent nations would send two ambassadors to France
as at Rome, one for the government and one for society.
Many an unselfish diplomat has attempted to remove
the barriers between the two by inviting them both to
his house at the same time, but has given up in despair.
Any woman from the Faubourg who would go to the
Elysee would be the subject of an immediate and de-
nunciatory family council, and any American aspirant
for the Faubourg would no more dare be seen at the
Elysee than the Pope’s chamberlain at the court of
the King at Rome.
The government, however, even though the aristoc-
racy were willing to receive them, would decline to be
received. The line is drawn sharply and distinctly be-
tween enemies under a flag of truce. And one can
easily comprehend that the Republic has every reason
to look upon the nobility as an implacable foe that
48﻿The Duchesse de Rohan﻿﻿The Faubourg St. Germain	49
would overthrow and destroy it if given a chance.
The young men of the old families can give their
services to their country in the army and in diplomacy.
And a few have been able to get enough votes to be re-
turned to the Chamber of Deputies. But they are al-
lowed no offices of active influence.
I recall a dinner of an American woman living in
Paris, which included a cabinet minister and his wife,
and three or four members of the Faubourg St. Germain.
The hostess was fortunate enough to have a box at
the opera, and, as is so much the custom in Paris, we
finished the evening there. As we entered the box,
the young Marquis de M. whispered in surprise, with
a glance at the minister, “ He is really quite a gen-
tleman,” while the minister’s wife told me later on un-
der cover of the music, “ I have heard all my life that
the Faubourg was made up of worthless people, but they
don’t seem so despicable after all.” The minister
admitted that he had enjoyed the evening, but I noticed
that a political newspaper of the following day criti-
cised him for appearing in public in company with
two of the best known members of the royalist
party.
Madame Fallieres’ box at the opera was loaned to
me one evening, and I remember the amusing experi-
ences I had in making up the party. Half a dozen
people who were eager to hear the much-talked-of pro-
duction, given for the first time that night, and not at
all reluctant about sitting in the best box in the house,
dared not be seen in the President’s box. Their royal-﻿50 Intimacies of Court and Society
ist paper, the Gaidois, would certainly have discussed
it, and their friends taken them to task.
The old Faubourg has opened its doors very little
to the American colony, and this in spite of the steady
cannonading against its walls year after year by Amer-
ican millions. It has the reputation of being made up
of people who have neither money, power, nor brains,
but one must have a certain respect for any society that
refuses to be bought when it is starving. There are,
perhaps, a dozen or so American women who are actu-
ally at home in the Faubourg, and have an accepted
position there; most of them were born to position,
have lived in Paris for a quarter of a century, and en-
joy it as a refreshing change from New York because
in Paris they find what money cannot buy.
As to many of the rich Americans in Paris, they
would be willing to decorate their mansions with
orchids, to give a cup of tea to a duchess, however
dSclassSe she might be in her own circle. They are the
expatriates who try so hard to forget that they are
Americans, and include the small but conspicuous set
of American women who have been raised to the nobil-
ity by His Holiness the Pope, and whose husbands are
as likely as not back in the United States managing
drygoods stores or selling wholesale groceries. They
include also the husbandless married American women
in Paris, whom you meet sometimes at receptions,
gorgeously attired and blazing with jewels, sitting in
a seductive pose in a secluded comer of the conserva-
tory, discussing, with a sympathetic Frenchman the﻿51
The Faubourg St. Germain
well-worn theme of the unappreciative American hus-
band who cares for nothing but the making of money.
It is a subject in which the Frenchman is quite at his
ease through the initiation of numerous American
women; and he will be as sympathetic as she wishes,
even to the second volume, which takes up the subject
of the union libre in preference to the union legale. But
among themselves, Frenchmen speak of erecting a
monument to this unknown god, the American husband,
whom they know only through portraits hanging on the
wall in the Parisian home of the wife, and in the stream
of money which he sends her to fling away in a foreign
country. Full well they know that their wives would
never be given such liberty!
In the time of the old Due La Rochefoucauld-Dou-
deauville, French ambassador in London during the last
years of the third Napoleon’s regime, who died in the
summer- of 1908 at an advanced age, the Faubourg St.
Germain had a leader to keep up its traditions. He
lived like a patriarch in the Hotel La Rochefoucauld-
Doudeauville in the Rue de Varennes, the very heart of
the Faubourg, maintaining his own home like a prince
and building palaces in the neighbourhood for his chil-
dren when they married. His principal chateau
“ Bonnetable ” was kept up with equal state, and
both in town and country the aristocracy had a gath-
ering place in keeping with their old glory, and were
frequently brought into contact also with artists and
men o*f letters, intellectual and charming men and
women of the bourgeoisie. He was candidly not par-﻿52 Intimacies of Court and Society
ticularly sympathetic with Americans; they repre-
sented the ideas which he fought against in his own
country up to the day of his death; but he enter-
tained the American diplomats accredited to France
and the Americans in the circle of diplomatic society,
and I have some vivid memories of him at Bonnetable—
handsome and distinguished-looking, a courtier by in-
stinct and a man of deep cultivation, easily and natu-
rally grand seigneur from the traditions of inheritance,
and inevitably so from the strength of character which
directed his actions : the beau ideal of the ambassador of
aristocracy. Through his second marriage with the
wealthy Belgian Princesse de Ligne, he rehabilitated
the family fortunes devastated by the early Revolution,
and bought the old fortress-chateau of Bonnetable in
the Sarthe department, one of the most delightful
spots in France, with numerous little rivers winding
in and out among its hills and forests, and the chateau
itself a remarkably fine remnant of the Middle Ages,
whose turret bears evidence of many an armed siege.
He busied himself for the years of his early retire-
ment in the reconstruction of the chateau, making it
now one of the finest in Europe; and there he died, in
the midst of his books and paintings and objets d’art,
and surrounded by a patriarchal concourse of his im-
mediate family and relatives, who represent among
their titles the strongest defence of the monarchy in
France. There was his son and the heir to his own title,
the present Due La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville, whose
wife was a princess of the Radziwill family, one of the﻿53
The Faubourg St. Germain
proudest in the world; and the head of the house of
which he himself represented the younger branch, the
comparatively young Due La Rochefoucauld, who mar-
ried the American, Maggie Mitchell, the daughter of
Senator Mitchell. The old duke’s only child by his first
marriage with the Princesse Yolande de Polignac is
the Dowager Duchesse de Luynes, whose son, the young
Due de Luynes, has taken a wife from the d’Uzes family,
a sister of the Due d’Uzes; and whose daughter, Yolande
de Luynes, is now the Duchesse de Noailles, and mistress
of the famous Chateau de Maintenon, built for Louis
XIV’s reine de la main gauche. The ambassador’s
second wife, the Princesse de Ligne, a handsome, stately
woman, with exquisite manners, died in 1898, but she
lived to see her children all settled near her, one
daughter marrying her cousin, Prince de Ligne, and,
after both of her parents had died, divorcing him; and
the other daughter becoming Duchesse d’Harcourt. I
remember that the old ambassador considered it a not
unworthy achievement of his talents to have succeeded
in marrying his family so exclusively in the ancient
aristocracy. The American marriage of his kinsman
was a mesalliance in his eyes.
The architectural beauties of Bonnetable embody
some of the most gracious conceptions of the Renais-
sance, and in the grand salon there is a famous chim-
ney-piece carved with the Rochefoucauld and Ligne
coats-of-arms, but surmounted above the ducal crown
by a nude female figure, representing Beauty at her
toilette, holding in one hand a mirror, and in the other﻿54 Intimacies of Court and Society
a comb; a work of art which created furious gossip
when it was placed, as it bears an extraordinary like-
ness to Mademoiselle Sorel, of the theatrical world.
But what resistlessly held my attention was always
the family portrait gallery, of which the old duke was
inordinately proud, and where he would willingly spend
hours with an appreciative guest. The portraits and
the old ambassador, standing there among them, made
the bond complete with the seventeenth century court
days, sumptuous beyond compare, and so unutterably
tragic and terrible in their end. He had a portrait of
his grandmother, who, at fifteen, a tall, majestic girl,
was married by the Cardinal La Rochefoucauld to a
stunted, puny boy of fourteen, the future Due La
Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville. However, he grew to
masculine good looks and renowned charm, an emigre
of the Revolution, who fled to Venice, where, on ac-
count of possessing a title as grandee of Spain, he
ranked with the Doge. As this gave him the Doge’s
privilege of going through the gates of the city at any
time of night, his escort was much sought for by the
habitues of Venetian society, who enjoyed passing the
summer evenings at the villas beyond the city gates.
The bride of fifteen was an intimate of Marie An-
toinette’s circle, and when Paul I visited Versailles, it
was the young Duchesse La Rochefoucauld-Doudeau-
ville who was selected for the great honour of being the
queteuse or collector of the offertory after service in the
royal chapel, the Queen loaning her her own diamonds
to wear. She was a remarkable young woman, who﻿55
The Faubourg St. Germain
lived in the gay whirl of the Tuileries and Versailles,
but considered it wicked to go to the theatre, to play
cards, or to dance, and who spent her leisure moments
trying to convert the court—a monumental endeavour!
She went heroically through the terrors of the Revolu-
tion with her sister, the Comtesse de Montesquieu,
and in her old age the duchesse founded the sisterhood
of Nazareth, which sends out Catholic missionaries into
the Holy Land. There is also at Bonnetable a por-
trait of the ambassador’s father, the eccentric Due de
Sosthenes, the second son of the emigre duke and his
saintly duchess, and who married a daughter of the Due
de Montmorency-Laval, Madame Recamier’s lifelong
friend. Unlike his father and mother, who were friendly
to the first Bonaparte as a monarchical ruler, and un-
like his son, the ambassador, who represented Napoleon
III in London, the Due de Sosthenes was so hostile to
the Bonapartes that he personally helped to demolish
the statue of Napoleon I on the column of the Place
Vendome. He was Directeur des Beaux-Arts early in
the nineteenth century, when he ordered the dancers at
the theatres to elongate their robes, and tried to pro-
hibit the exhibition of nude figures at the Louvre. He
died many years before his son had finished the recon-
struction of Bonnetable—or one shudders to think what
might have been the fate of the undraped charms of
Sorel in the chimney-piece, surmounting the ducal
crown of La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville!
The Faubourg St. Germain, in other days so famous
for its grandee domes and their salons, has to-day, alas!﻿56 Intimacies of Court and Society
so few worthy of the name. The old Due La Roche-
foucauld-Doudeauville’s daughter, the Dowager Du-
chesse de Luynes, was scarcely twenty-one when
the Franco-Prussian War made her a widow, but dur-
ing the short period of her married life to one of the
most intellectual men of his time, a Member of the Acad-
emy as well as an archaeologist and historian of note,
she held a brilliant salon in Paris. Her husband’s
death drove her into the country seclusion of his
chateau “ Dampiere,” and there, among the thousands
of books in his library, and the works of art he had
gathered from the ends of the world, she has spent
most of her days since then with her two children—
and now her children’s children. Under the nom de
guerre of Yolande Dalbert, she has frequently ex-
hibited paintings at the Salon; she has travelled into
Africa along the tracks made by Livingstone and di
Brazza; and is occasionally seen in Paris—a dainty
little figure with a face full of temperament and energy,
and big, melancholy eyes to touch one’s heart and haunt
one’s memory.
The splendid Hotel d’Uzes in the Champs-Elysees
used to be a meeting-place of fame and fashion in the
salon of the Dowager Duchesse d’Uzes, a woman whose
accomplishments and charm place her beside Madame
Rambouillet and Madame Sevigne; but in a moment of
mistaken patriotism the hotel became a sacrifice for
royalist France; one sees before it to-day only the
equipages of the parvenu society into whose possession
it has passed, and the Duchesse d’Uzes has practically﻿57
The Faubourg St. Germain
disappeared from her position of society leadership.
But she is still the most famous horsewoman in France,
a queen of Amazons, and a grandmother who rides to
hounds with the ardour of youth, and still seen, al-
though infrequently, driving four-in-hand in the Bois;
a sculptor, author, inveterate reader, and traveller; and
a gentle sister of charity, who for many years has gone
twice a week among the unhappy victims of cancer in
the hospitals, giving them the sympathetic tenderness
and practical service of a really great soul.
About the only salon, properly so called, in the
Faubourg to-day, is that of the Duchesse de Rohan,
the daughter of the Marquis de Verteillac, and an
heiress who brought to her husband as a dot her father’s
mansion in the Boulevard des Invalides, transformed
now from the Hotel Verteillac into the Hotel de Rohan,
a Louis XVI palace of stone near the dome of gold
under which Napoleon I lies buried, and with spacious
gardens at the back which take one far away from the
city’s roar and traffic. Within, there are immense re-
ception rooms hung with Gobelin tapestry and filled
with rare furniture, and a veritable museum of valuable
paintings and souvenirs of travel from kings and
queens, cabinet ministers, musicians, and poets; and
upon Madame de Rohan’s regular reception days, the
dignified lackeys in the family livery usher in a dis-
tinguished throng, which makes its way up to the hostess
—a small woman to whom middle age has brought a be-
coming embonpoint, but has not destroyed the radiant
smile of youth which discloses lovely pearly teeth, nor﻿58 Intimacies of Court and Society
dimmed the sparkling dark eyes, which flash with a
vivacity as sprightly and merry as those of a Louis XIV
duchess. In the throng, one would find at times almost
every one worth knowing in Paris, and representative
of all classes—except the government. Independence
is one of Madame de Rohan’s marked traits of char-
acter, but not even she can so far forget the inher-
itance of her class as to have the conviction to accept
or the courage to receive the government. She has,
however, had the independence to attempt the recog-
nition in society of well-known actresses, as is done in
London. Sarah Bernhardt was her guest of honour
one afternoon, and the few callers were carefully
selected from a large list, that no woman would be
invited who was likely to turn her back upon the divine
Sarah-—and among those who came there were very few
who did not! With the most gifted artists of the
Comedie Fran9aise, the experience has been much the
same—the Faubourg does not want the actress. And
when one remembers the inherent intimacy of genera-
tions in France between the stage and the jeimesse doree,
one can easily see why the Parisian grandes dames do
not want the actress in their midst—and what embar-
rassing places society functions might become for the
men!
Then, upon other unannounced days, the cosy little
sitting-room at the end of the house sees many an
intimate gathering of congenial souls, when one can
admire at one’s leisure the chef-d’oeuvre of art in the
house, Vigee-Lebrun’s portrait of Madame Du Barry, a﻿Dining- room in the Chateau de Josselin, the Brittany estate of the
Due and Duchesse de Rohan﻿﻿59
The Faubourg St. Germain
radiant apparition under a big summer hat, which ia
fine enough to hang in the Louvre—and over a cup of
tea one may discuss philosophy, poetry, philanthropy,
politics, with some of the most interesting and witty
people in Europe. The Duchesse de Rohan speaks per-
fect English, an uncommon accomplishment even among
the best educated of the French; she is genuinely sym-
pathetic with Americans, but especially appreciative
of the American man, whose praises she is never weary
of singing. She often has said, “ Ever since I have
been a matron, I have been helping to marry off my
friends, and I know dozens of the prettiest, sweetest
girls in France who can never get a husband because
they cannot get a dot. But your American men marry
without a dot—how wonderful! And then their wives
come over here all alone and have a new gown every
week from the big dressmakers we ourselves cannot af-
ford to patronise more than once a year. A French-
woman could not dream of greater bliss than to be mar-
ried to an American man! ” She never advises the
union of Frenchmen and American women. I remember
that she said one day, “ The Frenchman is brought up
to consider himself the most important person in the
family, and when he marries, his French wife takes it
for granted that the menage shall exist according to his
wishes, however small or large the dot may have been.
If the husband loves the country, the wife lives in the
country, although she may herself detest it; if it is the
city the husband prefers, she passes her life there.
But the American woman is the one in her own nation﻿60 Intimacies of Court and Society
who is always first, who receives a better education, and
the advantages of travel, and who dictates to the man.
There cannot be two to be first in any menage—voila! ”
Over in Brittany down by the sea, rising up among
the rocks tier on tier, are the round towers of the
granite fortress-chateau of the Rohan family, “ Josse-
line,” rebuilt early in the fourteenth century after
Henry II of England, in one of his campaigns in Brit-
tany, had stormed and destroyed it; to-day, very little
altered in its exterior except that the warlike fortifica-
tions have disappeared and the rough outside walls
bear the softening touch and colour of clinging vines
and tendrils. Inside, it is a comfortable abiding-place
of modern conveniences, whose rooms see many a gather-
ing of Parisian society for house parties in the sum-
mer, a princely hospitality which several of the Amer-
ican diplomats in Paris have chosen as their final pleas-
ure in relinquishing their posts and taking leave of
France, going down to Josseline for a few days before
boarding the steamer. The old salle de garde of the
chateau is now the salon, and the most interesting of all
the rooms, with its low beamed ceiling, which carries
the coats-of-arms of the houses allied to the Rohans:
those of Charlotte d’Orleans, Duchesse de Lorraine, and
niece of Louis XIV; Marguerite, Duchesse de Rohan,
the daughter of Sully; and the family arms of La Roche-
foucauld, Montmorency, Navarre, Leon, Bretagne, and
a dozen others among the oldest in France. It is at
Josseline that Madame de Rohan finds the leisure and
the inspiration to write the little poems which have a﻿61
The Faubourg St. Germain
place in the best magazines of Paris, to work in her
studio, or out of doors, upon the sketches which dis-
play real artistic merit, to plan the executive manage-
ment of her numerous Catholic charities in Paris and
among the country folk about the chateau, to enter
into the political studies of her husband who, although
a pronounced royalist, is still a member of the Cham-
ber of Deputies; and to follow the fascinating fad of
the study of costume, with a collection ever increasing
of little dolls in the peasant dress of Europe, in the
battle garb of the old warriors, and the modem adorn-
ments of the present age in different countries.
The most amusing circle of the Faubourg St.
Germain has been dubbed the Faubourg Revolte, and
is led by a group of young married women, most of
them related to the old Due La Rochefoucauld-Doudeau-
ville, and growing up under his influence in the gather-
ings for young and old which were so famous at Bonne-
table. The members of the Faubourg Revolte would
be the first, however, to disclaim any of the strong
intellectual attainments of the old ambassador; and
they voice the spirit of modern society in Europe, in
declining to be bored—to be bored by people because
they have happened to know them since they were bom,
or to be bored by things because they happened to have
been approved by their grandfathers. They include
among their number the Duchesse de Rohan’s only
daughter, the Princesse Murat, the American girl who
was bom Maggie Mitchell, and who is now Duchesse La﻿62 Intimacies of Court and Society
Rochefoucauld, and the wives of the young Due d’Uzes,
Due de Luynes, and Due de Noailles; and they form a
coterie which leads the smart set of Paris, where gaiety
sometimes runs riot. The dressmakers look to them to
establish their most pronounced fashions after the
actresses have introduced them; and the tailors look to
their husbands to set the masculine mode, in the morn-
ing promenade of the Bois, or the afternoon in the Rue
de la Paix, at the race course, or watering-place.
Among them the American Duchesse La Rochefou-
cauld takes her place without affectation or hauteur;
her petite figure is that of a French marquise in an old-
time painting, and her natural piquancy is the heritage
alike of American birth and the highest Parisian man-
ner. She brought her husband no dot, and the duke is
himself a poor man for his position, but their interna-
tional marriage, which was a desperate love match, is a
very happy one. They live in Paris in the Rue Con-
stantine, just off the Boulevard St. Germain, as it turns
into the Rue Grenelle, where the Republic’s flag waves
over a line of old palaces made into official homes. And
they also keep up the Chateau La Rochefoucauld in the
Charente department of France, the most mediaeval-
looking place imaginable, of solid stone in the severe
style of the sixteenth century, upon an elevation of
thirty feet or more above the old keep of the fortress
days, with massive turrets lifting themselves high in
the air, and the picturesque valley of the Tardaire ly-
ing at the chateau’s feet. But they seldom entertain
there on a large scale, the head of the La Rochefoucauld﻿63
The Faubourg St. Germain
house being, in the first place, a quiet domestic man,
who really cares very little for society, and especially at
the present, since the death of his only son, a hand-
some, charming little boy, who was the sole heir to the
title and estates in the direct line.
But the young Due and Duchesse de Luynes give
notable country entertainments at “ Dampiere,” a
chateau whose fa9ade resembles that of the destroyed
Tuileries, and which belonged in its early history to
the Cardinal Charles de Lorraine; brought into the de
Luynes family by Marie de Rohan, Duchesse de Luynes,
and en seconde noce Duchess de Chevreuse (the title of
the Lorraines), who made her son by the Due de Luynes
the master of the Lorraine chateau-ifortress of
Dampiere. And at the Chateau de Maintenon, which
the Due de Noailles possesses through his ancestress,
the niece of Madame de Maintenon, there are country-
house festivities, in which Americans are sometimes, of
late years, included, balls and private theatricals which
are on a scale in keeping with the chateau, one of the
most regal in Europe. It is, of course, inseparably
linked with Louis XIV’s life there with his favourite;
his bedroom is to-day the principal salon, where hang
portraits of himself, taken alone and with his mistress,
as well as portraits of Louis XII, Louis XIII, Francis
I, and Henry IV, which Louis XIV gave to Madame de
Maintenon; and the private chapel has still its raised
seat or “ tribune,” where the King could sit and watch
the workmen at the aqueduct at the same time he was
hearing the numerous masses which Madame de Main-﻿64 Intimacies of Court and Society
tenon prescribed. But aside from its historical inter-
est, it is in itself a place of surpassing loveliness, the
situation made enchanting by nature with the conflu-
ence of the rivers 1’Eure and Voise, and the walls
of the chateau veritable gems of Gothic architecture,
rising majestic in the midst of gardens and avenues of
trees which were laid out by Le Notre, the landscape
artist of Versailles. The grand staircase of the chateau
is a marvel of the Renaissance building, and the old
salle de garde, which has become a modern dining-
room, is decorated with rare woods in contrasting
colours.
The picture gallery, which contains a good collection,
is, however, a modem acquisition, the work of the father
of the present Due de Noailles. He was a contem-
porary of the old ambassador, Due La Rochefoucauld-
Doudeauville, and his son-in-law, the Due de Luynes,
father of the present Duchesse de Noailles, and, like
them, savant as well as elegant. But in his royalist
hatred of the French Republic, he felt a perhaps ex-
cusable contempt for the republic across the sea, al-
though one of the fairest flowers of all the de Noailles
was the Marquise de Lafayette, whose husband fought
so gallantly for America’s freedom. I remember that
the old Due de Noailles’ satirical epigrams on the sub-
ject were famous in the Faubourg circles of his day.
He affected great respect for the ancient republics of
Athens and Florence, but said that they bore the great-
ness of the thing of precious value, while the United
States had the renown merely of the huge: the mon-﻿The Faubourg St. Germain 65
strosity in size to which belonged the elephant and the
whale!
Among the chateaux of the newer nobility, whose hos-
pitality is naturally less entrenched about with the
prejudice of royalist bitterness, is “ Groisbois,” the
property of the Prince de Wagram, a tall, erect old
man, still devoted to the hunting field, and every sea-
son adding to his trophies of the chase upon the walls
of the chateau dining-room. His daughter, the
Princesse Jacques de Broglie, is the chatelaine of the
chateau, and its sumptuous doors are often opened—
a sumptuous palace in the depths of the country, full
of memories of the first Prince de Wagram, Napoleon
I’s great general, and of his chatelaine, Madame Vis-
conte, one of the beauties of her time. Upon the very
day that the avaricious and pretentious Fouche, its
former owner, sold Groisbois to Wagram, a postchaise
from Paris stopped at the door, and Madame Vis-
conte entered upon the arm of the general; and one
can to-day walk along the terrace where they so often
sat together, and where Wagram laid the laurels of his
victories at the feet of his mistress. Marie Louise,
with Madame de Montesquieu, stayed at Groisbois just
before leaving France forever, saying, “ We are here
with the Emperor’s best friend ”—a friend who soon
deserted to the republic!
Then, in the midst of the Parisian surroundings of
the Bois, is the old chateau “ La Muette,” a hunting
lodge when Francis I followed the chase in the Bois, and
a royal dwelling which Marie Antoinette occupied the﻿66 Intimacies of Court and Society
night of her arrival in France and the day before her
marriage; owned to-day by the Comte de Franqueville
of the family of Erard, the mechanical genius, who pro-
duced the piano. The Comtesse de Franqueville is an
Englishwoman, the sister of Lord Selbome, lately Brit-
ish governor of South Africa, and the daughter of the
first Lord Selborne, who was Lord Chancellor of Eng-
land, and one of the few English friends of the anti-
slavery cause of the North during the American Civil
War. The house, with its big park, in which 3,000
of the armies of the Allies had dinner al fresco in 1815,
form together a country estate in town, and during the
winter season there is a series of dinner parties at La
Muette, which bring together many well-known people
of diplomacy, literature, and art. And, since the sep-
aration of the church and state in France, La Muette,
on account of its spaciousness and the possession of a
private chapel, as well as its convenience to Paris, has
become practically the official mansion of Catholicism.
Comte de Franqueville entertained there for a week in
1906 four cardinals and eighty bishops of his church;
and almost any afternoon, when one would be going
there to call, one would meet a quiet-faced nun coming
in or going out, or see a frocked priest reading his
breviary as he strolled in the park.
I was staying for a few days with some French peo-
ple when they gave the coming-out ball for their only
daughter, a gifted, lovely girl of eighteen, who had a
dowry of a million francs left to her by an American﻿Picture Gallery in the Chateau de Maintenon, the home of the
Due and Duchesse de Noailles﻿﻿The Faubourg St. Germain 67
aunt by marriage, who had failed to give an heir to the
old title, or even to be blessed by a daughter.
In the ball-room the mothers sat around the wall in
frigid silence and strained anxiety, taking mental notes
on the eligibility of the young men and the dot which
each girl would be able to bring to her husband. The
little Marguerite was the richest one in the room, and
many a jealous, envious glance did she receive. Both
the girls and the young men were shy and awkward un-
der the battalion of maternal eyes over against the wall
—who could blame them? In the midst of a dance
there was a great commotion on the floor, a pearl neck-
lace had broken, and every one was scrambling for the
scattered gems when the girl herself sobbed out that it
was not hers, that it had been borrowed. Her mother
turned crimson with anger as those sitting near her
gave her pitying glances, in which there was a decided
touch of malice, that she had been discovered in a
trick to make her daughter appear richer than she
really was.
After every one was gone, and I was upstairs before
my fire, brushing out my hair for the night, I heard a
light step behind, and two soft arms were around my
neck and a soft cheek laid against my own. It was
Marguerite, and she wanted to talk about the party,
but the beginning and ending was about my own coun-
try, where the girls were able to get married without a
dot. “ And the men often, really often, marry just
for love? ” she asked for the hundredth time, her pretty
dark eyes wide with wonder. “ Why, I never even﻿68 Intimacies of Court and Society
heard of a girl among my friends who could get mar-
ried without a dot. They must be extraordinary men,
those American husbands! ” Then, as a very great
secret, she brought out a little poem she had written
in the park a few days before, describing it in its spring-
time freshness, lying in the midst of the noisy, dirty
city, when the great trees clasped arms overhead in the
broad avenue, and the wild flowers carpeted the lawn, a
poem as dainty as a violet hidden in the grass in the
morning dew. She had a genuine gift for writing,
and, after years of pleading, had been allowed to study
at home the great masters of ancient and modern litera-
ture. But the family never discussed it, and would
have denied it to most of their friends.
“ They would never get me married even with my dot,
if people knew about my writing,” Marguerite said
frankly, as I tucked her in her own bed, the beloved
poem under the pillow. “ But the American girls can
really and truly get married just for love? ” she mur-
mured again wistfully. And I told her again, “ Just
for love, dear heart,” as I kissed her good-night.
Marguerite and I went to lunch one day over in the
Boulevard St. Germain with an old man of eighty and
his wife, a prince distinguished as a diplomat during
the Empire, which he served faithfully in various for-
eign missions, but condescendingly enough, and only be-
cause the success of the royalists was so hopeless. The
princess had been no less noted for her beauty and tact,
and European society of her day knew no more brilliant﻿69
The Faubourg St. Germain
entertainments than hers. When the republic came in,
they refused to swear allegiance, and gave their fortune
to the Orleans party, passing now their old age in an
attic. The chateau of his fathers, which had opened
its doors in welcome to a dozen kings, the old diplomat
sees to-day in the hands of a Parisian shopkeeper, who
has gone to enormous expense to put the newest, most
resplendent gold in the entrance decoration and about
the roof, where it can be seen a mile away, and who
spent a year in making the stained, ancient stone walls,
with the wonderful toning which centuries had given
them, and which artists came from over the seas to ad-
mire—in making them as hideously white and dazzling
as the cutlery and glass in his emporium.
We made our way up to the fifth floor of a dilapidated
mansion, where there was no sign of a carpet visible
about the halls, but where the stairs were made of Italian
oak and the balustrade inlaid in perfect workmanship.
A tiny, grey-haired serving woman curtseyed as she
opened the door, and in the little salon our host met us
with a deep bow, and raised our hands to his lips with
grave ceremony. He was small and slender, but with
the unmistakable something which we call a “ presence,”
for want of a better name. No room, however large,
but would have seemed occupied when he entered iti The
princess was small, also, but exquisite in form even
to-day, and with a delicate colour coming and going on
her smooth cheek, while her bright, black eyes sparkled
with intelligence, vivacity, and humour.﻿70 Intimacies of Court and Society
The salon held a piano, where the prince said he
beguiled many a lonely hour, and portraits of the il-
lustrious men and women of his house, aristocratic,
proud faces delineated by famous brushes, and peopling
the narrow room vividly, startlingly, with echoes of
other days and manners. In the dining-room our
friends had conserved their one remaining treasure, a
collection of cameos, for which they had been offered
many times a sum large enough to keep them in com-
fort for the rest of their days. It was a collection
which Lorenzo the Magnificent might have envied, and
there were, indeed, two jewels from his store, a four-
teenth century cameo showing a Medusa head cut in
emerald, and an onyx pendant of Augustus Caesar, en-
circled with precious stones, which bore the Medici
name Lavr. Med. engraved in the corner. And there
were three originals of the replica cameos jealously
guarded as originals at St. Petersburg, Vienna, and the
British Museum in London, which that wily Italian of
the last century copied perfectly, and then gave to
turkeys to swallow, having discovered that the only
thing needed to take away the extreme high polish and
give them the touch of the veritable antique, was a few
hours in a turkey’s gizzard. The grandfather of our
prince had been ambassador at Rome when the Italian
died, and had secured the originals for much less than
the replicas had been sold, remorse and a Catholic
priest with the last sacrament for those about to die
having greatly assisted at the bargain. Pale yellow﻿71
The Faubourg St. Germain
and honey-coloured chalcedony, the lovely violet of
fluor-spar, the red of the sardonyx, and the creamy
tints of the onyx set the meanly furnished room aglow
with splendour.
I have never been able to remember what we had
to eat that day! I have visions of dark-red claret
showing in soft, warm tints through tall crystal bottles
at each place, and of a big bowl of beaten brass, thin
and worn, in the centre of the table, from which trailed
some sweet-swelling roses, a tinge of bronze on their
yellow petals; of a delicate Venetian lace cloth and
Sevres dishes, just enough for the four of us at the
table, which Louis XV had sent himself direct from the
Tuileries; a vision, later on, as we descended the dark
staircase, our hands on the inlaid balustrade, of our two
old friends beaming down upon us, the prince looking
as if he had stepped from the frame of one of his an-
cestors, holding high a heavy silver candlestick to light
our way.
It was just before I left Paris that I saw them again,
one night, in a crowded salon at a private view of pic-
tures. No one seemed to notice them, a shabbily dressed
old man tenderly guiding an old lady on his arm, who
wore an ancient sealskin cape which no American
millionaire’s wife would have dared offer to her maid.
The elegantly dressed women and their immaculate
escorts jostled unconcernedly against them to get in
closer range of the pictures. But there was no picture
on the walls comparable to the one they made. Tears﻿72 Intimacies of Court and Society
sprang to my eyes as I watched them. They were a
remnant of that France, full of wrongs unsupportable,
but also of surpassing charm—gone now, never to
return.﻿IV
ROME
PAPAL COURT OF THE VATICAN
Going often down to Rome, loving the book of history
that unfolds its illuminated pages at every turn, loving
the peace and repose which still linger by the banks of
Horace’s Tiber, loving the frank cordiality of its
people and the soft glory of its skies—I must yet al-
ways have a week or two of disillusion, of disenchant-
ment. Arriving cross and fatigued after the long jour-
ney south in the dirty train, there is nothing about the
modemly commonplace railroad station to soothe you.
The cadaverous, brutally beaten cab horses are some-
thing you must get used to seeing without a shudder.
The rippling syllables of the liquid Italian tongue you
must hear shrieked at you in the harsh cries of a hun-
dred street vendors, and shrieked at you in the draw-
ing-room as well as in the street. You must crucify
your Anglo-Saxon ideas and ideals, and forget about
it, you must cease to be outraged in what you see and
what you hear. You must learn to accept with the easy
nonchalance of tolerance the code of the Latins, to
which they say they have as much a right in their own
country as you have to your own. You must not be
insulted when a Roman prince condescends to the man-
73﻿74 Intimacies of Court and Society
ners of a stable boy and ogles you in the Corso, when
your Italian servant helps himself out of your purse,
when the shopkeeper charges you two prices for one,
and then gives you your change in bad money besides.
You must learn to do the same thing yourself, if you
can. If you want to enjoy Rome, you must learn to
do in Rome as the Romans do.
There is the vast, low-lying Campagna, where the
city gates finish the world of Rome and civilisation;
without is the desert, wild and deserted on the west
clear down to the sea, the snow peaks of the Alban
Mountains cold and barren to the south, and the gloomy
stretch of the Ciminian Forest to the north; a desert
full of its own peculiar charm and mystery later on, but
at first bringing to me only mournful sensations, even a
thrill of terror. I wander out the Porta del Popolo to
the great Castle of St. Angelo, surmounted by its heroic
bronze figure of the archangel Michael, sheathing his
sword, as Gregory the Great beheld him in a vision
over four hundred years ago, and come back past St.
Peter’s, the most famous church in Christendom, rising
upon the site of the gardens of the emperors—and see,
sheltering now in its shadow, nothing but poverty and
swarming squalor, even in Raphael’s palace nearby,
built by the master Bramante himself. Afterwards,
when I go that way again, I remember that poverty and
squalor are the birthright of these people, not to be
sold for such a thing as a mess of pottage, with soap
and water thrown in; and that the whining beggars
who dog my steps are sleek rascals all, kicking their﻿75
Papal Court of the Vatican
stout heels in the sun from sheer delight of living. I
learn in time to pass them by unmoved, to fling a dis-
dainful wave of the hand to their muttered offerings of
five hundred prayers for my soul’s salvation in return
for a single small centesimo. I learn in Rome to do as
the Romans do.
There are the two diplomatic corps at Rome, the so-
called “ black court ” accredited to the Pope at the
Vatican from the Catholic countries, and in perpetual
mourning for the loss of the temporal power; and the
“ white court,” made up of the diplomatists accredited
to the King at the Quirinal from all the governments
of the world, Catholic and Protestant. But as the
King is Catholic as well as the Pope, Catholicism
naturally permeates all society as it permeates all the
life; and it gives me always among my first and final
memories of the narrow, cobbled streets, where the
Madonnas of wood and porcelain look down in wan
decay from high niches in the walls—the flashing pic-
tures made by the bands of Catholic students from the
different nations, in bright red gowns, or blue, or grey,
wending their way in the daily promenade to the Villa
Borghese or the Appian Way. Among your most in-
teresting invitations will be those for the ultra-fashion-
able masses at the Pantheon, especially of recent years,
the Mass in commemoration of the death of King Um-
berto, which comes towards the end of the winter sea-
son, and is one of the few ceremonials of state and
(Splendour left to the modem Roman life. The Pope
sends his own choir from the Sistine Chapel, and the﻿76 Intimacies of Court and Society
noble pagan temple with its ancient walls of Augustus
and Agrippa receives an exclusive gathering of society
habituh and officials in full-dress Uniform, of the gov-
ernment, the court of the King, and the whole diplo-
matic corps accredited to the King, who kneel on the
porphry and granite pavement close to Raphael’s tomb.
A long cordon of soldiers lines the streets of approach
and exit, and the ambassadors with their suites have
the right of way—flying off in motor cars, followed by
their young secretaries, handsome, graceful courtiers
garbed in the height of the mode in the cut and decora-
tion of their gay uniforms, exchanging greetings
with the well-dressed, chattering crowd, and scarcely
out of the church before the inevitable cigarettes
appear.
If you are not rabidly anti-Catholic, you soon drift
into its fashionable ways, you are glad to leave your
card upon the cardinals and archbishops whom you
happen to know, and eager to accept invitations where
they will be found. They live in state, as their posi-
tion demands, with the households of royal princes, and
in pcdazzos furnished with regal magnificence and the
exquisite taste of the connoisseur. Their hospitality
is extended only to men, but women frequently receive
them in a quiet way for a game of whist or bridge in
the evening, played in a separate room from the other
guests, as when royalty is entertained. And it is still
a ceremony of importance to receive a cardinal which
one witnesses with a sigh for the days when it belonged
among so many stately customs which the present gen-﻿77
Papal Court of the Vatican
eration has impatiently swept aside. His big lumber-
ing carriage with its mourning livery of the “ black
court ” deposits him at the palazzo of his hostess, an
august figure robed in scarlet followed by his suite, and
he makes a royal progress as he ascends the stairs, a tall
footman walking upon either side to hold aloft a flaring
candle in a high ecclesiastical candlestick. It is not
every hostess who possesses them, but her sharp-witted
major dorwo knows where they can be obtained; he
produces them in no time, and anything else necessary,
and is honoured for life if His Eminence gives him the
veriest glance at the foot of the stairs.
But the Pope is a voluntary prisoner in the Vatican,
and is seen no more upon the streets, and the Catholic
ceremonials of pomp and pageantry which were the
glory of Europe as well as the glory of Rome, have
forever departed—as well as the days when every man
and woman who sought even a recognition in society
knew that it was en rigueur to attend the Papal audi-
ences, sitting humbly in the antechamber for three or
four hours. The famous Pio Nono (Pius IX), who
deserted the Quirinal upon the approach of Victor Em-
manuel II, used to make a wonderful progress through
the streets upon Christmas Eve. After the clanging
of a thousand bells from all the belfries of the Holy
City, the gala carriages left the Vatican, carrying the
Pontiff and his suite for the midnight Mass at St.
Maria Maggiore, the Swiss guards surrounding the
carriages and filling the streets, their helmets and long﻿78 Intimacies of Court and Society
halberds shining out beneath the torches, and the mem-
bers of the Papal household wrapped in Spanish cloaks
over their black satin clothes, high ruffs, and the heavy
gold chains about their necks. The Catholic soldiers
of Europe, following the example of Charlemagne,
fought for the privilege of assisting at the Christmas
Mass of the dawn in the Papal chapel, the chosen one
drawing his sword from its scabbard at cockcrow be-
fore the altar, and reading the gospel of the day from
the open book of the Mass, afterwards receiving from
the Pope a sword which had been blessed and a hat of
crimson velvet lined with ermine.
Prince Torlonia, the Papal banker, pandered to the
fastidious and extravagant tastes of the Pontiff, and
contributed to the splendour of church ceremony by
sending the santo bambino (the image of the Holy
Child) to the sick for their consolation, in a carriage al-
most as magnificent as the Pope’s, the bambino robed in
silk and covered with diamonds. The Torlonia balls and
dinners were hardly excelled in the olden history of
Rome, and were compared to the feasts of Lucullus,
and the prince created a sensation whenever he rode
through the streets. But it was, after all, only the
sensation of the parvenu, and he was but one of many
Roman princes who made their leisurely way down
the Corso, their path cleared by running footmen
and mounted grooms with staves striking out right
and left, whose gilded coaches had their three powdered
footmen at the back, one more than a cardinal, and
who, if they chanced to meet the Pope, dismounted to﻿79
Papal Court of the Vatican
pray in the street, kneeling upon a gorgeous pillow
carried by a lackey, while another held an umbrella over
the bared head.
Leo XIII, Pio Nono’s successor, was a man of the
same temperament and ideas, and in his early years he
played much the same role as the supreme head of so-
ciety as well as of the church, even though confined
within the boundaries of the Vatican. This is the
largest palace in the world, with over a thousand apart-
ments, with art galleries, museums, libraries, chapels,
and residences splendid enough to rival those of the
richest and proudest city of the world. Upon its
piazza an army of twenty thousand men could be
drawn up, rank and file, cavalry, infantry, and artillery;
and its gardens are so extensive that Pius X takes an
automobile upholstered in white velvet when he wants
to make a tour of them, and its park lies so hidden in
its forest depths that it shelters a villa into which he
moves when summer comes and he needs a change of
mountain air. Catholic ambassadors in court uniform
and bands of pilgrims pass daily in and out, and at
certain times all the members of the College of Car-
dinals may be seen dismounting from their carriages,
sweeping past you with majestic aloofness, their wide
mantles of scarlet brocade caught by the air of move-
ment and spreading themselves out on the broad mar-
ble steps like glorious winged creatures from another
world.
I remember seeing Leo XIII upon his ninetieth birth-
day, a day when Catholic princes and dukes gathered﻿80 Intimacies of Court and Society
in the Eternal City from every quarter of the world,
and the dignitaries of the church traversed continents
and crossed the seas to present their congratulations.
Double rows of Swiss guards lined the entrance to the
Vatican, wearing the odd costume designed by Michael
Angelo, with bagging trousers and full sleeves, made of
dark-blue cloth patched with brilliant red and white,
and answering my questions in German—much to my
astonishment, until I remembered that they were re-
cruited from among all the Catholic countries. The
corridors were half-full of soldiers, Italian this time, but
singularly empty of visitors. However, when I reached
the Sala Ducale, the reason was apparent; I was very
late, as most of the people expected had already ar-
rived, an hour before the time appointed. This ante-
chamber to the famous Sistine Chapel was, with the
Sala Regia, originally intended for the reception of
ambassadors, and it was filled that day with the most
distinguished among the thousands of visitors in Rome.
The national types represented were from every land,
but there was a common mark of aristocracy in bear-
ing and language—that is, at first.
The tickets issued filled it scarcely more than half
full, and there was a good view for every one toward
the front, where the Pope would appear, making his
progress through the room. But no one seemed to
think this could be so, and some of the early comers
among the women had brought campstools with which
they had barricaded the front, while their escorts
formed a bodyguard to protect them. When the situ-﻿Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York
The Pope starting out for a walk in the Vatican Gardens﻿﻿81
Papal Court of the Vatican
ation was realised, a fusillade of stinging rebukes was
hurled upon the front. Devout young priests in
parties made determined onslaughts upon the territory.
Elegantly dressed ladies madly sought to win its ground.
Gentlemen in silk hats pushed toward it with strong
masculine arms and big masculine feet. But it re-
mained Victorious and serene. Several times it rose to
its feet and the crowd surged forward with impetuous
glee. But in vain—the campstool was an excellent
weapon of defence.
The Pope was an hour late, and during the inter-
vals of battle I heard all the court gossip of Europe,
quickly moving tongues speaking in the universal soci-
ety language of French, divulging the most scandalous
things and sparing no one.
The ambassadors and officials of the court began ar-
riving, and went direct to the Pope in the Sistine
Chapel, escorted through our room by the chamberlains,
looking like pictures come to life from the fifteenth cen-
tury, with high-neck ruffs, black velvet breeches, and big
buckled shoes, the ambassadors resplendent in gold lace
and jewelled orders, and their wives with fortunes rep-
resented in their black lace mantillas, the head-dress
of the Papal court, and the gems worn with them.
But the gowns, always black, were old-fashioned in
style, and as shabby as etiquette would allow, gar-
ments preserved for this one ceremony year after year.
There were several well-known beauties, young ones, and
maturer ones who challenged in the strong light of day
the betrayal of their rouge and enamel, as they turned﻿82 Intimacies of Court and Society
their faces toward us and sent smiling glances from
brilliant eyes to masculine friends as they passed.
At last the Swiss guards dropped their arms in a
quick salute, the thousands of people in the outer
rooms began to shout, and we knew that the Pope was
coming. I had a rapid vision of faces, most of them
old, most of them keen and strong, of robes of ermine,
of black velvet or flaming scarlet, cries of “ vive le
Pape,” of cheers in a multitude of different tongues.
And then the Pope appeared, the cardinals walking be-
fore the sacred chair, which was carried high above the
crowd, immense peacocks borne upon either side, and the
Pontiff himself in robes of dazzling white, the head
shaking beneath its triple golden crown, the mouth
loosely open, and the long slender hand trembling with
extreme old age as it was extended in blessing. The
demonstrations of the people moved him profoundly,
he rose to his feet, his thin form shaking, and stood
with arms outstretched as if to clasp them all to his
wasted bosom. The eager crowd vainly sought to
kneel, but could not, so great was the stress. He fell
back exhausted upon his chair, and slowly disappeared
from view.
It was some years later, when I went one morning
with a small party of friends to pay my respects to Pius
X, and we were ushered into a room where we soon saw
him coming from his own apartments through a long
line of doors, a stooping figure not very tall, clad all in
white, except for his red shoes, the big jewelled cross
about his neck, and the big jewelled ring upon his hand.﻿83
Papal Court of the Vatican
He walked slowly, years and anxiety having left their
mark upon the once vigorous frame and the placid
face. There was a young girl with us on her way to
Paris to enter a convent school, and he spoke at length
with her, giving her his blessing with his hands resting
tenderly among her dark curls. He left us to make a
tour of the other rooms beyond, filled with large gath-
erings of people all in black, rooms from which there
was no sound save the ticking of the Florentine clocks
upon the mantels, and the clicking of the rosaries which
the faithful ones carried in their hands to be blessed.
When he returned on his way back, the little girl ran
impulsively to meet him, and he gave her a bright smile
that banished for the moment the lines of deep care.
As we came out and walked down the steps, the sun
streamed through the myriad-coloured windows at the
top, and the perfect purity of the cold white marble
was flooded with bright sunshine and glowing colour,
as if the asceticism and austerity of the great church
with its vows of celibacy and renunciation, had been
touched by the warm, pulsating life of hearthstone love
which the peasant may know, but not the priest.
But outside the Vatican and near the Porta del
Popolo, the Pope’s two aged sisters live in an apart-
ment near the sky, where they can see his windows
day and night. They do their own housework the same
as fifty years ago, when their brother was an unknown
student, and two or three times a week they come over
to the Vatican about seven o’clock in the evening, in
their quiet dress, practically the dress of peasant women,﻿84 Intimacies of Court and Society
bringing him handkerchiefs they have made or socks
they have knitted for him. It is just before his light
supper, but they never stay for it; Papal etiquette for-
bids. They talk in the Venetian dialect, which he loves
so dearly, and about the Venice he can never see again,
either living or dead, and then they wend their way
back to the top of their house to watch his windows.
Pius X makes no state appearance to an assembled
multitude in St. Peter’s, as his predecessors did, and he
does not come in the pomp of a crowned sovereign be-
fore tens of thousands of kneeling subjects in the piazza.
But every night just before going to bed, he stands
for a moment before his window and turns his face
over to a window in the distance, where two gentle
old women, the beings he loves most in all the world,
are watching for him.
Leo XIII set his decree sternly against the mingling
of the two courts, the “ blacks ” and the “ whites,” but
the present Pope, a man of the people, who had no
desire for the Triple Crown, taking it with a sad heart
in response to the demands of the College of Cardinals
which found him the only one its members could agree
upon—-let it be known soon after his accession that he
would not be displeased if the two courts met at the
same houses. One night at the close of a ball, as the
footman calling the carriages shouted, “ The Spanish
ambassador’s carriage,” he was answered simultaneously
by two coachmen, “ Which Spanish ambassador? ” For
they were both there! It was an event in the history of
Roman society, although one would have to know how﻿85
Papal Court of the Vatican
strong and bitter had been the marking line only a
decade ago, to realise what an extraordinary change
it indicated. To-day, the aristocracy of the “ black
court ” openly complain, “ There is no longer any so-
ciety of the Vatican,” and the “ blackest of the black ”
appear at so many of the “ white ” houses that they are
humorously spoken of as “ grey.” The dames d’honr
neur of the Queen dance with the Papal diplomats at
a dozen balls during the winter season—and there is
now but one Spanish ambassador accredited at Rome.
But as far as diplomatic etiquette is concerned, the
representatives of the two courts are strictly persona
non grata the one to the other, this being a mere formal-
ity, but for that very reason creating a diplomatic
situation which is the most delicate in Europe. More
than one ambassador, or his wife, or his secretary, has
had to be reminded at the last moment that a friendly
hospitality planned for was enough tinged with the
official to be possibly interpreted as an offence either
to the Pope or to the King. Thus, when the first Lin-
coln birthday banquet was given recently in Rome un-
der the auspices of the American ambassador, and
Archbishop Ireland, who happened to be in Rome, was
invited to make the principal address, no one realised
what a blunder it was until an intimation came from
the Quirinal that it would be an affront to the King.
The ambassador was accredited to the King, and the
guest of honour at the banquet could not be a member
of the Papal court as, of course, the archbishop was
when in Rome.﻿V
SOCIETY OF THE KING’S COURT AND THE
QUIRINAL
I have always come into monarchical Rome direct from
republican Paris. In Paris, art, in the hands of a far-
seeing government of the people, has laid out smooth,
splendid streets, inviting you as with a trumpet call to
join the gay crowds that throng them, built monuments
of beauty and inspiration in public places to chal-
lenge your eye and arrest your mind; filled the parks
with merriment-making casinos flashing out a hundred
charms of diversion. The republic wants its people,
wants you to forget, wants you to exclaim every hour
of every day, “ Paris! how seductive with the lure of
the present, how enchantingly fresh, how young you
are! ” But in Rome, the people are to remember; an
astute monarchy bids them remember when Rome was
not a small, politically insignificant Papal State, but
imperial Rome, proudly perched upon her seven hills,
Rome, the mistress of the world. Excavations get
enormous official donations, learned societies of an-
tiquity are fostered at the public expense; Rome is
made the centre of that Italy whose fatal gift of
beauty was her funeral dower; the sacred shroud of
historical association is hung over the city as a na-
tional drapeau; government and people wrap them-
86﻿87
King's Court and Quirinal
selves in it as in the toga, trade upon it commercially
as the stocks and bonds of prosperity, join together,
vie with one another in forcing from your lips, “ Rome,
how old, old, old you are! ”
But it is the new men of new Rome who have done all
this, and they care little for the old things that are
useless. The Roman prince rides forth in state no
more. The busy streets are crowded with merchants
from Turin, Milan, or Naples, whose ancestors were
peasants, perhaps, a century ago, whom the prince
might have kicked like a dog out of his path on the
street. They are senators and they sit in the Chamber
of Deputies, they are generals and ministers of the
crown. They sometimes have the Order of the An-
nunciata, and they and their wives can sit down in the
sovereign’s presence, while princes and princesses must
swallow their bitter chagrin and stand. Among the
thousand balconies of the Corso, where the palaces of
the families of Chigi, Sciarri, Doria, Ruspoli, and The-
odoli used to be the envy of the world, with their pic-
tures, tapestries, and bronzes, where several hundred re-
tainers were housed, and splendour and opulence were at
their height—how few of them are even opened to-day
in the simplest hospitality, in how many does gaunt
poverty stalk the only guest!
It was about a decade ago when, during a visit in
Rome, I attended a banquet at the Capitol, going in
under a purple silk canopy extending over the passage
from the weather-beaten statue of Marcus Aurelius,
which rises majestically upon the Capitoline Hill before﻿88 Intimacies of Court and Society
the old hall of the senators. The tables were laid in
one of the sculpture rooms: there was the bronze boy of
Pythagoras extracting a thorn from his foot, the youth-
ful, bent-over head, and slender body ideal in their
Greek beauty, and as immortal as the gods; and
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Marble Faun of Praxiteles,
with the same grace and clinging atmosphere of un-
tamed, woodland things that Miriam and Hilda found
in it, and in Donatello; but supreme above them all
was the Dying Gaul, sitting on his shield, uncon-
quered, and as unconquerable as the barbarian of free-
dom and democracy was before decaying Rome—and is
to-day. Afterwards, some friends took me where the
civic council of present-day Rome sits in the room
where Petrarch was crowned; and then we climbed to
the top of many stairs to the apartment of the mayor
of Rome, the syndic, as he is called, to see where his
windows commanded one of the most superb of views,
under the moonlight, of Caesar’s Forum, where Mark
Antony made his impassioned speech, and of the
huge Coliseum stretching its great bulk in the distance
like the skeleton of a mammoth gladiator, whose bones
lay whitening in the desert. The syndic was then
Prince Colonna, not a typically-looking Italian, as his
skin and hair were blond, and he wore the English-
man’s monocle to set off his well-balanced head and
thoughtful face. But he was distinguished not less for
his intelligence and patriotism than for his exquisite
manners and quiet air of le grand seigneur, and he was﻿89
King’s Court and Qmrinal
typically “ the son of many princes.” But following
him in office, Signor Nathan has come to preside over
the destinies of the city, a rich Jew, who has preserved
the name and the faith of his English mother—that is
all they know about his lineage in Rome. Rumour says
that he is the son of Mazzini by a secret tie during
his exile in London. But the mayor himself does
not say, and people do not seem to trouble even to
ask, so careless of lineage is the political Rome of
to-day.
I have sometimes wondered if this indifference to
lineage has had anything to do with the extraordinary
popularity of the American, for it is undeniably the
fashionable thing to be an American to-day in Rome—
along with the nouveaux riches among the English mid-
dle classes. Englishwomen have intermarried at Rome
for centuries, but until recently they were from the
great Catholic familes of the nobility—like the beauti-
ful and hi^h-spirited Princess Borghese, the daughter
of the last' Catholic Earl of Shrewsbury, about whom
many a stirring story is told. She was walking alone in
the street one day upon an errand of mercy, when she
was followed by a well-known dandy, who failed to
recognise her under her heavy veil. Waiting until she
was directly in front of his club, where half a dozen
of his friends were watching, the princess suddenly
lifted her veil and handed him a piece of money as if to
a beggar, making all Rome shake with laughter at the
man’s expense.﻿90 Intimacies of Court and Society
There are about a dozen American princesses to-day
in Rome, and almost as many more who were English;
and I think it would be difficult to find a good-looking
English or American girl with even a modest com-
petence who has had a season there without at least one
proposal to remain forever. The nobility are, in them-
selves, like all Italians, the simplest, most unassuming
people in the world; and while I am so often longing
in other cities for Thackeray and a new “ Book of
Snobs,” I remember no such times in Rome—except
among the Americans or the English. One was at a
large reception, a few years ago, given by an English-
woman, which I took in, in going down a list one spring
afternoon. Inconspicuous and apparently untitled peo-
ple were wandering aimlessly about unintroduced and
forlorn, while the hostess was saying, “ Dear Countess,
do stay, the Princess has promised to look in late.”—
“ Dear, dear Marquise, please don’t go, the Princess
positively promised me she would come.” And from the
corner issued the well-known nasal twang of one of my
countrywomen recently united to a scion of an ancient
house, “ He sez to me, sez he, Marquise-.” I caught
something about “ Louvre ” and “ art,” and then, as I
drew nearer, these words of wisdom, “ But I sez, sez I,
1 Count, after you’ve lived in Rome, you don’t care for
the art in the Louvre—that’s what education does for
you!’” Not being a countess or a marquise, I was
allowed to find my unobtrusive way out fifteen minutes
after I had entered, and met the princess going in, a
genuine, intellectual woman, with whom I had had many﻿Count Gionatti, who, as the Prefect de Palais to the
King of Italy, is the most important Court official of
monarchical Rome. His wife was Miss Kinney, of New York﻿﻿91
King’s Court and Qmrinal
talks on subjects far deeper than snobs. She gave me
an amused, flickering smile as she glanced in and whis-
pered, “ Are they all, all, English and American? ”
The coachman who was taking me on my round was,
so my friends had informed me, the heir to one of the
oldest titles in Italy, the heir to nothing else, how-
ever; and the lady who came every Monday for my
laundry was born a countess. But I had the feeling, as
I drove away, that it might mean a little, after all, to
be a princess in Rome.
My recollections of the Quirinal go back to the latter
years of King Umberto’s reign. Italy was not par-
ticularly important diplomatically, especially to the
United States, and while the American representatives
were sometimes men of birth and cultivation, like Wal-
dorf Astor for instance, they were again sometimes the
reverse. One of them was persistently making the faux
pas of asking the King how his “ wife ” was, to which
King Umberto, with a smile, invariably replied that
Her Majesty was well, although at the time Her Maj-
esty was not his wife in the real sense of the word—and
the whole court knew it. And there was a young secre-
tary who allowed the Queen to receive letters from auto-
graph fiends who desired her autograph—and enclosed
stamps for the reply!
The Americans married into the Italian aristocracy
were en evidence at Queen Margherita’s court as at
Queen Elena’s, and acquitted themselves with credit.
In the immediate entourage were the Princess Vicovaro,﻿92 Intimacies of Court and Society
whose husband was a member of the Cenci family, and
who came herself from the Lorillard Spencer family of
New York; and the Princess Brancaccio, nee Miss Hick-
son Field of New York. And among Margherita’s in-
timate friends was the Countess Gionotti, who was Miss
Kinney of New York, the wife of the prefect of the
palace, who serves now in the same capacity under Vic-
tor Emmanuel, a handsome woman, whose soft grey
hair of later years has added a new charm to her face,
and whose home in the celebrated Palazzo Colonna, re-
cently come into her possession, is stately, and at the
same time unpretentious. The Princess Brancaccio had
lived in Rome since her childhood, and she stepped
naturally and simply into her place at court; she was
always to me one of the sweetest and most generous-
minded of women. But she became very much of a
personage, her father having presented her with a big
palazzo, and the wherewithal to sustain a princely posi-
tion. She and her husband did a great deal to make
horse racing the popular amusement it has become in
monarchical Rome, their coach and four galloping
through the streets to the Derby at the height of the
•spring season, carrying the leaders of society whose
presence at the course proclaimed it the fashionable
event even before royalty had appeared.
Queen Margherita was somewhat vain of her un-
deniable good looks, although the limbs were too short
for the size of the head and figure, and she appeared
well only when sitting down. Umberto’s habit of neg-
lecting his appearance was a trial to her, and when his﻿93
King’s Court and Quirinal
stiff, wiry hair, standing up straight over his head,
had become very grey, she often tried to get him
to dye it, sending into his dressing-room every dye
upon the market. One day he had them all brought
out, and shortly after her pet dog, a white Spitz, ran
into her room perfectly black. The King followed,
laughing at her dismay, and said, “ You see, Mar-
gherita, I would look just as ridiculous.”
The most interesting man of Umberto’s entourage
was his famous Prime Minister, Crispi, who was re-
sponsible for Italy’s union with Germany and Austria
in the Triple Alliance, and for the marriage of the
then heir-apparent, Victor Emmanuel, with the Princess
Elena of Montenegro; and the most discussed woman
of Margherita’s court was Crispi’s wife, Donna Lina, as
she was called. Crispi had fought with Garibaldi and
his army of the red shirt for an Italian republic, and
his wife at that time had been like Garibaldi’s Anita,
donning the red shirt and fighting by his side. But
when the monarchy came in and Crispi swore allegiance
with his well-known declaration, “ The monarchy unites
us, the republic would divide us,” he forgot to make
another equally important declaration,—to legalise his
marriage under the laws of the new government by
registering it before the civil magistrates. It was an
easy escape from matrimonial bonds which many men
took advantage of, and among them was the Italian
lawyer, then the husband of Donna Lina, a rosy-
cheeked, buxom beauty with snapping black eyes, the
daughter of the lodging-house keeper where Crispi﻿94 Intimacies of Court and Society
made his home. They were free to marry under the
civil law, and they did. But it was not until Crispi
became President of the Council of Ministers that Donna
Lina was allowed to appear at court. She then re-
quested a private audience of the Queen, and greeted
her effusively with, “ At last I have the honouF of speak-
ing to Your Majesty,” to which Margherita replied
stiffly, “ I am too well aware of my duties as the wife
of a constitutional sovereign to refuse to see the wife
of the president of the council,” and walked away. But
Donna Lina had her revenge many times, as Crispi re-
ceived the Order of the Annunciata, the highest in
Italy, which was founded in 1362 by Amadeo VI of
Savoy, called the “ Green Count ” from his costume.
Members of the House of Savoy belong to it by right
of birth, and the distinguished men upon whom it is
bestowed are styled “ cousins of the king,” and have
the right, which is shared by their wives, of sitting down
in the sovereign’s presence. At the court balls, Donna
Lina could enter the Queen’s private circle and make
herself as obnoxious as she pleased—which she did,
speedily and energetically. Any one who entertained
the King had to invite Crispi and Crispi’s wife with
him, which created a hundred tragically humorous situ-
ations, one hostess declaring, “ I have the blood of the
old Roman emperors in my veins, and I will not receive
this woman.” But she did! Donna Lina’s daughter
was among the beauties of Italy, and the day before
her marriage to Prince Lingualossa, which was cele-﻿King's Court and Quirinal * 95
brated in state, Crispi and Donna Lina received the
sanction of the Church upon their own marriage.
Crispi was secretive and reticent and savagely sensi-
tive regarding any implication against his public integ-
rity, and he had almost nothing of personal charm, but
I was proud to know him, and was always intensely im-
pressed by his brutal strength of intelligence. On ac-
count of his part in the Triple Alliance, he was about
the most hated man in France, but in Italy he was often
spoken of as “ the last of the patriots.” The jealous
Mazzini, however, dubbed him “ the grave-digger of the
House of Savoy,” the cardinals, alarmed at his success
in the establishment of the monarchy, called him “ the
Satan of the Italian drama,” and my Roman friends of
the aristocracy, shocked at my acknowledging an ac-
quaintance with him, told me, “ He is a good minister,
but no gentleman.”
I saw him at his home, “ Villa Lina,” at Naples,
shortly before his death, when he rose with tottering
steps from his invalid’s chair to come to meet me, his
grey lounge suit hanging loosely over his large frame,
and dark glasses shielding the eyes, his white hair
heavy upon the singularly shaped head—but the face
that of an old, old man, old even for one of eighty, who
is still able to live. His study was in disorder, as he
had left it forever; the inkstand was empty and dried
up. and the photographs of his two best friends, Bis-
marck and Gladstone, always upon his desk, were cov-
ered with dust. Pompous liveried servants were all﻿96 Intimacies of Court and Society
over the place, but his wife was not at home. His
library, covering one floor of the house, was about the
only possession he had to bequeath to her—and she was
already negotiating to sell his secret papers.
Crispi has often been compared to Bismarck, but
the history of his career is more like that of the Italian
painter Andrea del Sarto, the artist who could paint
no Madonna without picturing the same sensuous face
of the woman to whom he clung in helpless infatuation
as she dragged him down and further down, until he
forgot his country, his honour, his friends; the woman
who betrayed him, who robbed him, and who left him
to die, as he had lived chiefly for her sake—alone.
The German statesman, von Biilow, as a young
diplomatic secretary at Rome, extremely handsome,
with a patrician manner and bearing, and a passionate
love for music that made him one of the most sought
after men in society, played much the same role in ob-
taining his wife, the Italian Princess Maria Camporeale,
as Crispi did for Donna Lina. The princess, when
scarcely more than a child, had been married off by
her parents to Count Charles von Doenhoff, old enough
to be her grandfather, but rich; she was lovely in per-
son, and one of the best amateur musicians in Rome;
and she and Biilow, singing and playing together, soon
conceived for each other the most genuine, sympathetic,
and permanent attachment, a grande passion such as
only rare souls are capable of appreciating. They
recognised it as such, declared it openly, and left Rome
together, without any attempt at secrecy, to force the﻿97
King’s Court and Qidrinal
husband to divorce her. Few people at the puritan-
ical German courts of those days would have given much
for Biilow’s chances of advancement. But his father,
the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Prussia, was in a
position to protect him, and his talents were such
as to make his retirement a grave diplomatic blunder,
while the years of unquestionable fidelity and devotion
between him and his wife atoned for much. They led
a congenial, irreproachable life, singing and playing to-
gether, that being the relaxation in which Billow finds
even to-day the most pleasure, and one was seldom
seen in public without the other. He went back to
Rome in 1893 as German ambassador, and both he
and Madame Billow were received with open arms by
the most exclusive set in society. Since his retirement,
they have returned to Rome to live, having bought the
famous Villa Malta, at the head of the Via Capo le Case,
which once belonged to King Louis of Bavaria, and
which stands in the midst of a garden of several acres
of roses. Princess Biilow’s mother, Donna Laura
Minghetti, now the widow of her second husband, the
Italian Premier, retains much of the extraordinary
beauty and wit which made her Roman salon celebrated
throughout Europe; and upon her eightieth birthday
she attended a dinner party en decollete, which dis-
closed the finest shoulders in the room. It is said in
Rome that she has received the homage of every great
man in Europe—possibly a slight exaggeration!
Crispi made many efforts to arrange a marriage be-
tween Victor Emmanuel and a princess of Germany﻿98 Intimacies of Court and Society
or of England. But they declined the honour of as-
suming responsibility in Italy’s precarious position,
and the heir-apparent was allowed to make the love
match of his own choosing against the wishes of his
family. But Crispi advocated it—although Rudini
was the Premier in office when it was consummated—be-
cause the Montenegrin princess was a Catholic, al-
though of the Greek church, and not of the Roman,
and therefore without entanglement with the Vatican,
and because she was so healthy, coming from a family
free from any taint of scrofula, the curse of all the old
royal houses. I remember very well when Elena made
her first appearance at the Roman court, walking into
the concert room of the Quirinal as if she were in a
dream. The daughter of an untutored ruler in a small
mountain state in the Balkans, who dispenses justice
at the open door of his house among his rude shepherd
subjects, she had been married for love and nothing
else, and to a man who would one day make her a queen.
How many queens in all history have held such a cup to
their lips! But her striking brunette beauty and shy,
diffident manner had the refreshing appeal of a sweet
mountain rose, and looking at the bridegroom’s anaemic,
expressionless face and stunted figure, one could not
help but feel that he and not she had made the better
bargain. King Umberto was enough of an authority
on female loveliness openly to admire her, and the men
of his family, the Duke d’Aosta, the second heir to the
throne, and his brothers, the Duke d’Abruzzi and the
Count de Turin, gave her a gallant deference with the﻿The German statesman, Prince von Biilow, who since his
retirement has gone to Rome to live, having found his
wife there under romantic circumstances﻿﻿99
King’s Court and Quirinal
friendliest appreciation. Queen Margherita received
her with a certain dignified graciousness, but no cordi-
ality, and the Bourbon princess, the Duchess d’Aosta,
with something like open contempt, speaking of her in
private as the “ shepherdess.” Her lack of s avoir
faire was somewhat inexplicable, as she had been edu-
cated in Russia in the family of Alexander III, her
sister having become the wife of the Russian Grand
Duke Peter. But she has never been able to assume
the regal air. Shortly after her marriage, the bride-
groom took her to Naples, and they attended a gala
performance at the opera. The mayor of the city
entered the royal box to pay his respects, and Elena
rose from her seat to return his bow, an act of gentle
kindliness, but too much of a condescension, so her
husband thought, pulling her down with a mighty pull
that nearly upset her, chair and all.
In Montenegro the women are almost the slaves of
the men, the popular proverb being, “ My wife is my
mule,” and Elena’s father had given her as a wedding
present a decree of protection for the peasant women
of his country. It was a sentimental offering of love,
but not of much material benefit to a royal bride; the
Czar, however, had offered her a dowry of a million
roubles (half a million dollars), and the bridegroom’s
refusal to allow her to receive it was much applauded
at the time. When her husband offered her
a present after the birth of her first child, the
little Yolanda, who was so unwelcome to the nation
praying for an heir, she established the “Yolanda﻿100 Intimacies of Court and Society
School ” in Montenegro, which the peasant girls reach
from all parts of the mountains, coming down in their
picturesque dress and bare feet, learning to cook and
sew, to embroider and weave the multi-coloured rugs of
the Orient, by which they can earn their daily bread.
But Elena has conquered her haughty enemies with
the one weapon she brought unheralded to meet the
intricate difficulties of her position. It was love, and
it has given her such happiness in her home that the
women who were contemptuous are now envious in look-
ing upon what so few of them possess themselves in
this fair, lax-living Italy, faithful husbands and do-
mestic joys that endure. Elena is in constant terror
that her husband will have the same fate as his father,
and several times when he has been late in returning
from an engagement, he has found her in convulsions of
hysteria, convinced that he had been killed. The King
shares the same fear of assassination, and since he was
a young boy he has instructed the men in his suite to
keep close behind, saying, “ If I must be stabbed, don’t
let it be in the back.” It is a terrible shadow over
any home, but most women would prefer it to the pro-
longed desire that death would bring the release their
church denied them from an unfaithful husband they
had learned to abhor—which is the position of thou-
sands in Italy.
Queen Elena was almost the first to take succour to
the frenzied, desperate survivors at Messina; and I
always like to remember her there, in her cotton dress
and nurse’s apron, undisturbed when a maniac clutched﻿101
King’s Court and Quirinal
her as she passed by, putting her hands behind her
when the commander of the American relief vessel was
presented, because they were covered with blood from
the wounds she had been dressing—a heroine of the cen-
tury, to be placed beside the good Queen Eleanor of
England, the wife of Edward the First, who saved his
life by sucking the poisoned blood from his side as
he lay dying upon the battlefield.
Every spring morning, about ten o’clock, the King’s
motor car can be seen at the Villa Margherita, which
stands in the new quarter of the town, and the highest,
at the top of the Via Veneto; the royal bugle call
announces his entrance, and he and his mother sit'out
upon the flower-screened balconies back in the seclu-
sion of the gardens, the city descending downwards
from the hills in every direction. About the same
time, Queen Elena, in a short skirt and blouse, comes
into the Quirinal gardens—protected from the public
gaze by high stone walls—with her children and their
English nurse, and plays about with them in the sun-
shine. She has a little automobile which she runs about
the garden, and generally without accident, although,
when she was learning to use it, the King being upon the
seat with her, she ran it up against a big tree and
nearly killed them both. Sometimes the nurse reads to
the children in English, and then the mother brings
out her embroidery frame and sits with them. Each
one of the four children has an outfit of embroidered
bed linen and coverlets which she has made, the royal
monogram in heavy white satin, with the dove of peace﻿102 Intimacies of Court and Society
hovering near the crown. She has a small kitchen in
her apartments, and sometimes cooks Montenegrin
dishes for them, and she has written a charming little
poem for her children, which was published privately,
dealing with a child’s questions about the mysteries of
life. Indoors she generally has a pair of scissors close
by to amuse herself and the children by cutting out
designs from paper—often handing them around to
her ladies-in-waiting.
When the warm days of the early summer come, the
children go every afternoon to the Villa Savoie, the
King’s country residence near Rome, and often to the
Castel Porziano by the sea, a drive of fifteen miles
from Rome, where the King hunts for wild boar in the
forest. He owns also the romantic Island of Monte
Cristo in the Bay of Tuscany, where there is a little
house among the rocks, and large stretches of land for
agricultural experiments, and he takes his family when
he goes there for a few days’ visit without a suite. And
when the family go to Raconigi, near Turin, in July,
the ancestral home of the House of Savoy, they lead
the simplest life imaginable, with not even a lady-in-
waiting for the Queen, and as few servants as possible.
They used to be fond of their villa near the sea at San
Rossare, just out of Pisa, where the Queen could in-
dulge in her favourite sport of fishing for eels; but Turin
is full of socialists, and their newspapers boldly ad-
vocate an Italian republic—so the royal family go to
San Rossare no more. And they never go to the royal
palace near Milan, the scene of Umberto’s assassina-﻿103
King’s Court and Qiurinal
tion, and not often to Venice, but early in the autumn
they go from Raconigi to their little country villa,
Santo Anna Valdieri, in the Italian Alps, then to Cas-
serta, between Rome and Naples, the most beautiful
of all the royal palaces, with a magnificent park and
a large house famous for its marble staircase. But not
until they are back again in Rome for the winter do
they bother themselves with a suite. They never pay
visits to their subjects either in town or country, on
account of the fear of assassination at an unguarded
moment, it is supposed; and the last time the Italian
sovereigns appeared in this way was when the German
Kaiser was in Rome for the silver wedding anniversary
of King Umberto and Queen Margherita, in 1893, and
Prince Doria opened his historical palace in the Corso
in honour of the event.
The King welcomes any excuse which frees him from
the necessity of giving the state dinners and balls, and
a pretext is frequently found—the depleted condition
of the treasury being always a raison d’etre for official
economy. These functions, when they are given, are pri-
marily for the officials and politicians, and are ex-
tremely unpretentious and unconventional, compared
to those at the other capitals of Europe. But the court
season is eagerly welcomed in monarchical society, be-
cause it gives to the women who have the entree the
satisfaction of publicly proclaiming the fact. Rome
has become the garden of rehabilitation for the declassee
grandes dames of the world, who have only to advertise
their ardent sympathy for the Pope and a real or﻿104 Intimacies of Court and Society
imaginary friendship with one of the cardinals, to ex-
culpate themselves for not being received by the King
and Queen—and then make their way into the innermost
recesses of the fashionable fold, where they find numer-
ous congenial spirits with the same history as their
own. But they seem unable to face the situation with
equal glib plausibility when the actual invitations ap-
pear from the Quirinal, and court costumes are being
discussed—generally preferring to pass that particular
winter upon the Riviera or in their beloved Paris.
The season at the Quirinal begins on New Year’s
Day with an afternoon reception for the dignitaries of
Italian official life, followed by a dinner in the evening
for them. The next evening, the members of the diplo-
matic corps and their wives call to pay their respects,
and some time during the month there is the diplomatic
dinner for the chefs de mission and their wives. A
daughter in charge of her father’s house cannot take
her mother’s place at the Italian court, as at Wash-
ington, where a furious tempest in a teapot raged a few
years ago when Count Cassini became dean of the corps
diplomatique, and his adopted daughter of sixteen took
precedence of all the women of the corps. The Queen
takes a personal interest in these diplomatic dinners,
and sees to it that the menu is entirely in Italian, and
that only Italian wines are used, the five wine glasses
at each place being decorated to represent a series of
Italian hunting scenes. And she makes a point of
wearing a gown with a cachet distinctively Italian. The
table, generally decorated in roses, is laid in the throne-﻿103
King’s Court and Quirinal
room, and is often in the shape of a horseshoe, as this
brings the guests closer together. The Queen sits op-
posite the King, and he sits with his face to the win-
dow which fronts the east, there being a superstition
in the Catholic House of Savoy that the sovereign
should sit looking toward the Holy Land. But in any
room the King always places himself in view of the
window—where he could see any would-be assassin who
might creep in unawares. English has of late years
become the popular language at the dinners, and any
one revisiting the Quirinal after an absence of ten or
fifteen years would be astonished at the progress Eng-
lish has made. The King speaks it perfectly, as his
mother does also, but Queen Elena is not a linguist
except in the Slav tongues. One of her greatest ac-
complishments is the mastery of the Russian language,
and Alexander III often said he would be glad if he
could speak it himself half as well.
Following the diplomatic dinner comes the one given
in honour of the members, of Parliament, and then
those for the military and naval officers, to which are
invited the foreign military and naval attaches. Later
the King and Queen give a small official dinner for the
court of Queen Margherita, who never appears at func-
tions connected with her son’s court, except it be a
baptism; and then the Queen gives a state luncheon
for the wives and widows of the high function-
aries of state, in which are always included the
widows of the men who have received the Order of
the Annunciata.﻿106 Intimacies of Court and Society
The court balls begin early in the new year. The
guests, arriving, fill the long salle de garde at the
Quirinal, and upon the walls, where the firearms might
have hung in the olden days, you see now some of the
most gorgeous, glowing Florentine tapestries in ex-
istence, hundreds of years old, but still like paint-
ings softened by the gentle, harmonising touch of a
decade or two. This room is full of guests, with
crowds of men, deputies and senators, perhaps, who
have come without ladies, and stand watching the
toilettes appear as long cloaks are laid aside. In the
corridors leading into the ball-room, you pass through
a long aisle made by lackeys in blue plush breeches and
white stockings, and red coats trimmed with silver, all
over six feet tall; a battalion of them commanded by
several ushers with gold instead of silver braid upon
their coats. They take your invitation card and give
you a dance programme, a dainty souvenir generally in
the shape of a silver book. Through a reception room
hung with Gobelin tapestries, and furnished with rose
brocade, you reach the ball-room.
Three immense Venetian glass chandeliers flood the
room with soft light, bringing out the crimson shades
of the hangings and the many hues of the fragrant
flowers piled against the walls on gilded mantel shelves.
The state chairs for the King and Queen are at one
side, facing the windows, and there are several rows of
benches for the women who do not care to dance. The
adjoining rooms are crowded with the men who have
come alone, and who therefore cannot enter the ball-﻿Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York
The Crown Prince of Italy in officer’s uniform﻿﻿King’s Court and Quirinal 107
room before the ball opens, as the room is too small for
many lookers-on.
I remember it as a splendid sight, Italian female love-
liness being proverbial, and the women wearing ex-
quisite costumes upon the few occasions when they have
a chance to show them—there is no display at the opera
and the races, as in London and Paris. There were
hundreds of dashing army officers in gala attire, with
spurs and clanking swords, and one of them, a young
lieutenant, with all the fascination of the Italian mili-
tary man, made his way over to me to entertain me
until the King and Queen appeared. I had been spend-
ing some time in the Forum, and referred to a disputed
historical question—but he regarded me with smiling
eyes, clasping his hands in the favourite Italian gesture,
as he lifted his shoulders: “ Ah, madame, you forget
our Roman sunshine and how dearly we Romans love
it! There is no time for the Forum—it is years since
I have been there—when the sun is shining and I can be
out in it on the Pincian Hill or the Villa Borghese.
Now, the Germans and the English, they have long, ,
dark nights, and they stay indoors and read and grow
wise. But we Romans—no! ”
The uniforms of the diplomatic corps were striking,
the English ambassador in red, the Chinese in flowing
silken robes and tiny round hat, surmounted by a col-
oured glass ball like a plum, attended by his secre-
taries, whose rank was indicated by the size and shape
of the ball; the Turkish ambassador, wearing his fez
and a long black coat with the high collar, such as﻿108 Intimacies of Court and Society
Catherine de Medici made famous. Close to where I
was standing I noticed a young girl in a striking cos-
tume exaggerated in style, her “ pompadour ” in front
extravagantly high, the coil at the back extravagantly
low, sitting, the centre of an admiring group, including
her father and mother and an ambassador. I knew her
to be an American, because no other girl could have
held such a circle and dispensed her smiles with the
poise of a queen. The ambassador, looking admiringly
at her slender figure in a soft, clinging white robe, said
with a bow, “ Mademoiselle is a Botticelli maiden to-
night.” She swept him a curtsey in return and replied,
with pretty impertinence, “ Thank you for saying I
look five hundred years old,” which somewhat visibly
disconcerted him, and made most of us who heard it
rather gasp. But just then my friend, the lieutenant,
approached her unexpectedly from behind, and in-
stantly a delicate flush suffused her face. It pro-
claimed how much of a child the American girl queen
really is, with all her aplomb—and her blushes are the
unfurling of the flag where innocence and chastity
dwell.
Count Gionotti, the prefect, appeared at the door
leading from the private apartments, which was the
signal for the appearance of the King and Queen. Two
masters of ceremonies followed the prefect, and two
gentlemen of the military household in full uniform, of
course, came after. The orchestra, screened in a gal-
lery high above every one’s head, struck up the grand
march as the sovereigns entered, the Queen, lovely and﻿109
King’s Court and Quinnal
beaming, her train, heavy with its weight of gold em-
broidery, held up by a master of ceremonies. The
King was in military uniform, and wore the slender
gold chain around his neck of the Order of the An-
nunciata, and on his coat was pinned the white cross of
Malta and the silver star of the Order of St. Moritz.
In the days of Queen Margherita’s regime, she
opened the state balls with a royal quadrille, dancing
with the dean of the diplomatic corps, or some member
of her family. King Umberto was a soldier, and not a
dancing man, and he never took part, but it was a
graceful spectacle of movement and colour; the source
of anxious hours to the palace officials, however, as
something generally happened at the last moment to
make a vacancy, and the number was so small of those
eligible to participate. Neither the present King nor
Queen dances, and now, as soon as they have entered,
the ball is considered open. Between the dances they go
about separately through the rooms, speaking in-
formally and cordially to almost every one, especially
the ladies, their frank kindliness giving the tone to
the whole evening’s pleasure, and dancing going on as
merrily as in one’s own private house—a unique experi-
ence to the visitor familiar with the etiquette sur-
veillance of other courts.
After the balls come the afternoon teas at the Quiri-
nal, including some twenty-five or thirty women at a
time, who are on what is designated as the “ private
list ” at the palace. The guests walk up a winding
stairway graceful in its architectural lines, but not﻿110 Intimacies of Court and Society
imposing, or they can go up in the elevator, a sumptu-
ous affair upholstered in red brocade, which is at this
end of the building; and all find themselves in an ante-
room, where there is a marble figure in the centre of a
young Bacchante mother offering grapes to the rol-
licking baby in her arms, and where the maids are
ready to take the wraps. Going into the drawing-
room, they join a little party standing waiting for the
Queen. It is called the “ Salle Peri,” from the artist
who decorated it; with rich Gobelin tapestries hung
upon the walls, and as window draperies, soft rugs on
the floor, and slender gilt chairs and sofas of the Em-
pire period, upholstered in tapestry. I remember it
with two high Empire screens making cosy comers at
one end and an immense Cloisonne vase, with another
one of the same size in a curious Chinese design, hold-
ing palms spreading their branches up to the ceiling.
Between the windows and underneath the mirrors were
odorous flowers, where, at the top of the glass, the
artist had entwined garlands of golden roses around the
pictures of men and maidens painted there in the style
of Watteau’s festive scenes, altogether a delightful
room, comfortably large, but small enough to be cosy.
When the Queen came in, and you could look at her
closely, you could see in her eyes the reflection of a
nature sweet, gentle, and good. She is taller than the
average Italian, and the difference between her height
and her husband’s is a constant embarrassment. Her
greetings are unaffected and sincere, and she is likely
to spend the time talking about household affairs and﻿Ill
King3s Court and Quirinal
babies, the two topics of universal feminine interest the
world over! At one tea she talked at length about
cooking, the things she liked to eat, and how they were
prepared. At another she singled out a tall girl and
said, smiling, “ Will Mademoiselle please stand up by
me? I want to see which is the taller.” The girl proved
to be, and the Queen, delighted, exclaimed, “ Well, I am
happy to find one woman at court who is taller than
myself.”
As I came away from one of these teas, an official
of the household, who was an old friend, happened to
be in the palace, and he took me into the wing of the
building where preparations were being made for a
state dinner that night. He gave me a peep into the
serving-room, full of dishes and champagne bottles
packed in ice, scurrying waiters rushing in and out—
and it was the old throne-room of Pope Pius IX!﻿VI
RUSSIA
NICHOLAS II AND HIS CORONATION
I well remember the first time I saw Nicholas II, as it
was upon his coronation day. Along with the many
other unofficial foreigners whom the prodigality of
Russian hospitality made welcome, I went up to Mos-
cow in May, 1896, taking a leisured route from War-
saw to follow the path of Napoleon I in 1812 through
Vilna and Smolensk, and then on by slow accommoda-
tion train, which paused at midnight at the outskirts of
Moscow, near the Sparrow Hills. The Kremlin, upon
its acropolis, lay before us, as Napoleon and his mar-
shals gazed upon it, a royal domain of palaces and
churches isolated from the city proper by a fortified
wall sixty feet high, and with domes of gold which
gleamed out under the soft moonlight like the fairy
roofs of an Aladdin’s Land. But soldiers patrolled
back and forth, visible even in the distance at midnight,
and sentries, silently marching back and forth along a
narrow beat, guarded every line that led up to it for
hundreds of miles, upon every highroad and narrow
footpath, on the south to Warsaw and to Kief, “ the
Jerusalem of Russia,” to Vladimir and Nijni Novgorod
113﻿Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York
The heir to the Russian Crown, the Czarewitch, feeding his pet sheep upon the
Imperial Estate at Peterhof, A snapshot by his father the Czar﻿﻿Nicholas II and His Coronation 113
on the east, and clear to St. Petersburg on the west;
and now they swarmed through our train with ferret
eyes, to look the haughtiest unflinchingly in the face.
I had come to join some friends, an official at court
and his wife, members of the ever increasing Russian
colony of Paris, who think nothing of making the long
journey back and forth every year, and whom I found
had characteristically allowed their villa to be filled
to overflowing with relatives and Russian acquaintances,
arriving unannounced with huge trunks and bandboxes
in preparation for the festivities. Our host and hostess
were to go into the coronation church, called a
cathedral, but holding not more than one hundred per-
sons, who had to stand during the service, and includ-
ing for this occasion only the special envoys, the am-
bassadors, and the imperial household. The rest of us
had seats upon the diplomatic tribune erected in the
open square just opposite the famous Red Stairs, from
which the procession would start—where, upon the land-
ing at the top, the czars of ancient days were accus-
tomed to sit for the personal homage of their subjects,
and where Napoleon, followed by his generals, marched
proudly in to take possession of Moscow and, as he
thought at the time, to add the throne of Russia to
his other conquests. Upon the morning of Tuesday
the 26th, we were in our places at 7:30, which had
meant breakfast at six o’clock, and maids and valets
in attendance at four. And, as the fashionable Rus-
sian is seldom abed before 3 a.m., most of the party﻿114 Intimacies of Court and Society
made sure of being up in time by not going to bed at
all, beginning with an impromptu dance at midnight,
and sitting at the card tables an hour or two later,
changing then one festive garment for another. In-
side the Kremlin, we found ourselves in company with
at least ten thousand spectators who had left their car-
riages at the gates and, holding up the coveted ad-
mission tickets, had been divided off from the surging
crowds extending in dark masses beyond the city to the
fields of the Devitche Monastery, where the populace is
always feasted after the coronation.
As the ticket holders appeared at the passage lead-
ing up to the tribunes, they were met by graceful young
masters of ceremonies in white and gold costumes and
cocked hats with waving plumes, who directed their
progress by ebony wands tied with ribbons, and spoke
the traveller’s own language, whatever it happened to
be, with perfect ease. From our elevated position we
could look down upon every detail of movement within
the Kremlin and out upon the hilltops beyond it, alive
with people, even to the mansions upon the Sparrow
Hills, turning their spy-glasses in our direction. In
our enclosure the red-coated Cossacks of the Don were
ranged along the sides of the square, a solid phalanx
that stood motionless and silent during the whole morn-
ing; and the royal path to the coronation church,
marked by red velvet carpet, was lined on either side by
the Imperial Guard, the tallest and handsomest men
in the army, wearing high boots and gilded helmets sur-
mounted by the double imperial eagle, and embroidered﻿Nicholas II and His Coronation 115
scarlet cuirasses over their white uniforms. One comer
of the square was filled with the platform for the scarlet
trumpeters and the enormous trumpets shining in the
sun like burnished gold; and already the choir boys,
in robes of scarlet and black, were gathering at the
doors of the coronation cathedral, and the two other
cathedrals of the Kremlin, the Church of the Archangel
and the Church of the Annunciation. The sky was in
an amethyst haze of full-blown spring and beautifully
bright, making our position in the open one of security,
and as the heat advanced toward midday, the decolletage
of the women, a court regulation, became increasingly
comfortable, although increasingly incongruous. The
glare of the sun was almost blinding, beating down upon
the nineteen gilded domes of the cathedrals, their walls
in fresh coats of white, and the white bell towers, and
upon the palace walls, newly painted in red. There
were thousands upon the other tribunes of the square,
and thousands upon the ground at our feet, men and
women from every country on earth, it appeared, and
of every national costume of Muscovy and its conquered
nations. As we waited for the Czar, I studied the
people of All the Russias—Laplanders from the Arctic
Ocean and the White Sea, Finns from Bothnia, and
Germans from the Russian provinces of the Baltic;
Greeks, Turks, and Armenians from Odessa and Sevas-
topol; Black Sea Cossacks, and Arabs from Bokhara,
once the Athens of Central Asia; dwellers from ill-
fated Poland, the kingdom of Georgia in the Caucasus,
and the Tartar kingdom of Kazan, whose crowns are a﻿116 Intimacies of Court and Society
part of the imperial crown of Russia; wine merchants
from Astrakhan on the Volga, “ City of the Golden
Horde; ” Persians from the Russian petroleum fields
of Baku, and mining magnates from the gold, malachite,
and emerald mines of Siberia, belonging to Russia in
Asia, which exceeds the whole area of Europe by two
million square miles; East Indian traders, who were
Russian subjects from Orenburg; Chinese from the
desert steppes of Gobi and from Kiakhta, where Russia
is merged into China; Tartar priests or lamas from
Urga, the sacred city of the Mongols, and prosperous
Tartar peasants from the Ural Mountains, where the
traveller may see the marble obelisk facing upon one
side Europe and upon the other Asia. And there
seemed to be hundreds of men in bright coats and
kaftans from Bulgaria, Servia, and Montenegro, whose
rulers are nominal vassals of the Autocrat of the
Russias.
At nine o’clock the diplomatic corps arrived, having
left their carriages outside the enclosure, and the
Czar’s bodyguard, in striking uniform of blue trousers,
silver helmets, and belted white tunics, made a path
through the crowd for them to enter the church; a dis-
tinguished procession made up of men who were
among the most highly representative of their
nations, and whose breasts were covered with
jewelled orders denoting long and honourable
service. The secretaries and attaches were in our
tribune, and the chiefs, as they passed us, doffed their
plumed hats, and their wives, beautifully dressed and be-﻿Nicholas II and His Coronation 117
jewelled in court costumes, bowed and smiled to re-
peated salutations, holding up their fans to shade the
eyes from the terrific dazzling light, as the hot sun merci-
lessly beat down upon the gold domes and the white
walls. They had scarcely passed before the three
Popes of the Russian Church, the Metropolitans of
Kief, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, robed in cloth of
gold from head to foot, came from the church and stood
like pillars of fire in the sun to receive the Dowager
Czarina, who had descended the Red Stairs and was
walking to the cathedral under the royal canopy or
baldachino of cloth of gold, which had been used for her
own coronation. Its gilded and carved posts, inlaid
with jewels, were carried by pages, and, as it passed us,
we could see where it was embroidered with the royal
arms and the royal crest, and decorated with the royal
plumes in orange, black, and white, twelve in number,
to denote a dowager empress. The Kremlin bells were
ringing out with thunderous peals, the bands had struck
up the national anthem, and the people were shouting in
a mighty volume that drowned every sound as she
advanced, preceded by heralds, whose gigantic white
plumes almost covered their cocked hats, and then by
the uniformed gentlemen of her household; a little
woman of lofty mien, whose face was full of the pride
of ruling and the determination not to lay it down,
her diamond crown, from which the hair fell uncon-
fined, catching the sun in a thousand flashes of dazzling
radiance, as she bowed right and left, her robes of
golden tissue and ermine sweeping out behind her. At﻿118 Intimacies of Court and Society
the church door she kissed the cross held up to her,
and disappeared within.
There was almost an hour of waiting, during which
the Metropolitans, in their golden robes and high jew-
elled mitres, covered with magnificent gems worthy of
an imperial crown, and followed by attendant clergy in
jewelled vestments, came along the length of the royal
path and sprinkled it with holy water, going then into
the cathedrals and scattering it there. Finally, the
Czar and Czarina came down the Red Stairs, their
progress along the corridors within the palace itself
proclaimed by a succession of cheers, answered outside
by deafening shouts; and the trumpets and bands an-
nounced their appearance below as the big Ivan bell
and all the chimes of the Kremlin rang out, and the
hundreds of thousands of people beyond the walls join-
ing in with tumultuous cheering, which must have been
heard to the Sparrow Hills. They took up their posi-
tion beneath the baldachino of cloth of gold like the
Dowager Czarina’s, but displaying sixteen plumes in
the royal colours, and the procession moved on toward
the church along an avenue of flashing sabres, the her-
alds, in short jackets emblazoned with the royal arms
and big cavalier hats heavy with plumes, coming first;
after them the entourage of grand dukes and princes,
the generals-in-chief of the army and the admirals of
the navy, and then the sovereigns, keeping step to the
slow rhythm of the bands, and followed by a suite made
up of all the grand duchesses, their long velvet trains
encrusted with jewels, held aloft at each corner by﻿Nicholas II and His Coronation 119
little pages in picturesque dress, and each one attended
by the officials of her own household. The sovereigns
were uncrowned and the Czarina wore not a single
jewel, her hair severely parted in the middle, and fall-
ing down to her waist. Arriving at the church door,
the Metropolitans sprinkled them with holy water, they
kissed the cross, and slowly entered the church, filled
with the small number privileged to see the actual
coronation. The consecration within lasted fully an
hour; its termination, upon which the Autocrat does the
crowning for himself and for his consort, being indi-
cated to us at eleven o’clock by the solemn tolling of
the Kremlin bells and the firing of cannon salutes from
without the walls—when the whole throng, filling the
tribunes and encamped upon the ground below, rose as
if by one simultaneous movement, and fell upon their
knees, an extraordinary spectacle of devotion which
alone would have made the morning memorable.
About half-past twelve the Dowager Czarina emerged
from the church and was escorted back to the palace
as the artillery saluted and the crowd huzzahed, and
at one o’clock the sovereigns appeared again and took
up their position under the baldachino, upon their
heads the crowns just placed there, and the Czar car-
rying in one hand the imperial sceptre, and in the
other the orb ol' empire, a flaming mass of rubies and
diamonds, emeralds and sapphires. The procession
made its way back to the palace, but going first into
the outer court, where an enormous tribune had been
erected for just this momentary view, and then into the﻿120 Intimacies of Court and Society
two other cathedrals of the Kremlin to pray at the
altar. The Czar was deathly pale from his long fast-
ing and the jewelled burden which he carried upon his
head and in his hands and in the heavy robes of cloth
of gold and ermine falling from his shoulders, and once
or twice he faltered and seemed about to faint. But
a grand duke upon either side quickly leaned over and
supported his arms, and he passed safely within, to the
thunderous waves of greeting from cannon, chiming of
bells, and human throats that swept out and over the
great city, the river, and the mountains for miles be-
yond.
We watched the guests from the church follow him
up the Red Stairs into the palace, and in a few mo-
ments the three thrones carried in, the two for the
new sovereigns, of ivory and gold, set with precious
stones, and the Dowager Czarina’s, the one presented
by the Shah of Persia, set with two thousand rubies
and one thousand diamonds, which is exhibited in the
Treasury. Our tribune emptied slowly, and we our-
selves followed into the palace, where my host took me
for a peep into that famous apartment, the audience
chamber of the ancient czars, used now only for the
sovereign’s coronation breakfast. It was filled with
princes, priests, and ambassadors, and I saw the Czar
being served by his nobles, each course brought up to
him by the head of an old house which had, in gen-
erations past, fought to the death for the establishment
of this privilege. But the gentlemen who were taking﻿Marble Entrance Hall, Vladimir Palace﻿﻿Nicholas II and His Coronation 121
the role were so unaccustomed to it that they were sup-
ported on either side by a footman, and we saw the
Czar watching the progress of the soup with many an
anxious look, as if in doubt that it would ever reach
him. Among the priests were a dozen or more from the
Orient, whose religious vows made it a sin for them to
look upon the face of a woman; and it was amusing to
watch them, as, whenever a lady approached, they
deliberately turned their backs, not altogether an easy
feat to accomplish, as they dared not present their
backs to the Czar.
Our own breakfast came later in company with the
diplomatic corps in the “ Gold Court,” just off the
picture gallery, and I remember that the doyen of the
corps, an ambassador with souvenirs of half a dozen
kings, told me that the coronation of the Czar would
remain the surpassing event of a lifetime; one could find
it equalled only in history in the Roman Empire at
its height, or Solomon in all his glory. Afterwards,
the sovereigns made a tour of the principal rooms, and
I saw more closely the magnificent crowns upon their
heads, the Czar’s resembling the dome-shaped patri-
archal mitre, carrying upon its summit a cross in five
great diamonds supported by a big uncut ruby which,
together with the other jewels of the crown, are valued
at half a million dollars, while the famous Orloff dia-
mond surmounted the imperial sceptre, the largest of
all the crown diamonds of Europe, formerly the eye of
an idol in an Indian temple, and worth in itself over a﻿122 Intimacies of Court and Society
million dollars. The Czarina’s crown was a mass of
great diamonds perfectly matched; and I saw hundreds
of jewelled kokoschmicks, or high court head-dresses, of
the Russian women, fashioned entirely of big stones of
exquisite water—it seemed impossible even to hope to
see the like again!
The Czarina was easily the most beautiful woman to
be seen, and many spoke of her as the artist’s ideal of
the queenly queen. But her loveliness had nothing of
the vanity which seeks a public homage; it had rather
the appealing gentleness which made her mother, under
the happy freedom of English skies, the most beloved
princess of her day; and to me she was more the type
of the sheltered woman to be mated to a Brutus of lofty
soul, to whom he could say, with a tenderness immortal
beyond the centuries of any empire’s span: “You are
my true and honourable wife, as dear to me as are the
ruddy drops that visit my sad heart.” Her face upon
her coronation day was charged with profound emo-
tion—it has haunted me ever since. It was like the
face of a martyr walking with measured steps to her
funeral pyre.
And the man who was the centre of the gorgeous pic-
tures, whose autocratic aloofness and sanctity of per-
son were proclaimed by every possible accessory of
pomp and sacred ceremonial, produced in himself no
illusion of royalty such as may impress and thrill even
the most democratic when face to face with a king who﻿Nicholas II and His Coronation 123
is really kingly- His narrow forehead and receding
chin, visible even behind the beard, spoke little of in-
telligence and nothing of power; while the insignificance
of his small form was emphasised beside the tall men
of his family, splendid-looking fellows, all over six feet.﻿VII
COURT LIFE IN ST. PETERSBURG
Moscow I had seen only at the coronation, when the
throngs of travellers made it for the time being the
most un-Russian of cities. But I shall never forget
the winter afternoon I arrived in St. Petersburg. I
knew my London, Paris, Berlin, and Rome, and looked
upon myself as a seasoned European; yet in the first
drive through the streets of the northern capital, I felt
a million miles away from it all. The enormous padded
coachman on the ambassador’s sleigh, and the footman
in the outlandish garb of the ancient Russian chasseur,
with his hunting dagger dangling from his belt, proudly
sported, both of them, the American colours in their
cockades. But it only enhanced their strangeness. The
domes and towers of the churches, overlaid with gold
leaf or blue enamel, flashed out above the snow-
enmantled city. Unfamiliar Slavonic letters were over
the dingy little shops. Curious Asiatic types of men
and women leisurely made their way on the Nevski Pros-
pect, seemingly untouched by the intense cold, peasants
in dirty sheepskins and high felt boots, army officers,
stout and red of face, sauntering with a military swag-
ger, their overcoats carelessly hanging half over the
shoulders, saluting in an absent-minded way the in-
feriors who touched their caps. The tall Cossack strode
124﻿125
Court Life in St. Petersburg
quickly by, his wonderfully inlaid silver sword clank-
ing at his side. Other Cossacks were astride in the
street, sitting their horses with the ease of the Red In-
dian, scowling under their astrakhan caps, as fearless
as the Arab, as proud as Lucifer—and as cruel as
Death. At every comer there was a gaunt beggar
with tin cup held humbly out, condemned in this man-
ner by the church to expiate a sin. Carriers leaving
the shops to deliver goods, and customers going in to
buy, paused upon the threshold to cross themselves be-
fore the ikon, or sacred picture, suspended in the build-
ing. Along the Nevski there were numerous ikons on
view upon the street, and every one stopped before them
in passing to cross himself, fine ladies and gentlemen in
their carriages, the drosky driver, the men on top of the
car whose long seat faced upon that side. A multitude
of tiny sleighs glided noiselessly along close to the
pavement, drawn by shaggy little Finnish ponies, look-
ing like white bears as the snow settled upon their backs,
the one small seat generally occupied by a couple cling-
ing tightly to each other for safety as well as pleasure.
Their drivers, the huge, greasy ichvorsticks, sullenly
dodged the merciless whips of the private sleighs and
troikas, giving them the middle of the road, as required
by law. A troika sped ahead of us, bells jingling and
snow flying from the hoofs of the three coal-black stal-
lions, the centre one trotting with his head under the
high arched collar, and the outside ones in a wild can-
ter, the fat driver, his cap filled with peacock feathers,
standing up to direct them. Pedestrians crossing the﻿126 Intimacies of Court and Society
street were likely to get the upraised whip, but it never
descended upon the horses, the big, gentle Orloffs, taking
the mad pace with an ease and grace that made me cry
aloud with delight.
The young secretary from the embassy, who had
come to the station, smiled at my enthusiasm and tucked
the fur robe closer in. It was bordered with sable,
the richest, softest, most costly fur in the world, and
never in extreme caprice of fancy had I imagined hav-
ing sable carriage robes. But I recalled that I had
been told I should find life in St. Petersburg with a
background of magnificence seen in no other place in
Europe; and I knew that the American ambassadors
there had been for a number of years men not only of
distinguished talents, but connoisseurs in the art of
princely living, possessed of wealth and willing to pour
it out that the prestige of their great country might be
fittingly maintained.
This was one of the fortunate times when our am-
bassador was able to be properly housed. He had
taken his residence on a short lease from a member of
the Russian nobility, who had had several disastrous
seasons at Monte Carlo, paying an enormous rental,
more than the official salary, and living in it in mo-
mentary anxiety of being turned out.
St. Petersburg was at the height of its season, and
the Palace Quay, the fashionable afternoon promenade
and driveway along the Neva, daily made a noble set-
ting for an animated picture not to be excelled in any
part of the globe. Upon one side extended the man-﻿Court Life in St. Petersburg 127
sions of the aristocracy, all veritable palaces, although
not allowed to be so called unless the home of a mem-
ber of the imperial family, marked over the doorway
by the double-headed black eagle. The Neva was
frozen many feet deep in ice, a smooth white road clear
out to Finland, while across upon the other side lay
the grim-looking fortress which has hidden so many
mysteries, and the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul,
surmounted by its golden spire, where the Romanoff
czars lie buried. Peter the Great’s equestrian statue,
the charger reined in upon the brink of a rocky prec-
ipice, raised its granite height in the perspective, and
close at hand was the big Winter Palace, the St. Peters-
burg home of the Czar. The Empress Mother was
often seen going to and fro, attended by a lady-in-wait-
ing, in a low Russian sleigh, drawn by clean-limbed
black Orloffs, the huge-sided coachman in flowing beard
and four-cornered crimson cap, the little gilt tassel
dangling from the corner directly in front of his eyes,
while upon the narrowest of footboards at the back,
where the flying snow found frequent lodgment, hung a
tall Cossack in livery of red and gold, the imperial eagle
in black upon his cuffs and collar. The Emperor and
Empress were sometimes out about three o’clock, their
sleigh joining the multitude of others darting back and
forth, richly caparisoned and piled with handsome furs,
the police clearing the way, and the finely matched team
racing ahead. The ambassadors and ministers turned
out as an important social duty, the padded coachman
wearing plumes in the colour of his master’s country,﻿128 Intimacies of Court and Society
and wide yellow stripes across his back, and the chasseur
in gaily coloured greatcoat, big buckled belt, and
ferocious dagger; their splendid horses and appoint-
ments indicating their importance next to the sovereign,
and making their appearance one of the sights of the
city.
And among the smartest of the sleighs and troikas
were those of the three American-born women so prom-
inent in St. Petersburg society: Princess Serge Belo-
selski-Beloserski, the daughter of General Whittier of
Boston; Baroness Hoenegen-Hiiney, who was married
at the American Legation when her father, Mr. Lathrop
of Detroit, was the American minister to Russia; and
the Princess Michael Cantacuzene-Speransky, the
daughter of General Frederick D. Grant, whose aunt,
Mrs. Potter Palmer, gave her a handsome dot upon her
marriage. The most important of the three was the
Princess Beloserski, as her father-in-law was a member
of the Emperor’s household, and the family itself long
famous for its ambassadors and statesmen. But it is
no less famous for its romantic marriages and for the
prodigal hospitality which had made it bankrupt, al-
though possessing a principality in northern Russia
and mines of iron in the Ural Mountains. Prince
Serge’s mother was a sister of General Scobeleff, the
hero of the Russian conquests in Turkestan, an extraor-
dinary man, who rose from the peasantry to exalted
military rank, and placed his relatives close to the
throne. His other sister became the wife of the royal
Duke of Leuchtenberg, and was accounted the loveliest'﻿129
Court Life in St. Petersburg
woman of her day in Russia. The Beloserski family
mansion on the Palace Quay is now owned by the im-
perial family, and the young Prince Serge was, for his
position, a poor man, who made a love match without a
dot. Princess Serge was very popular, a tall, slender
brunette, whose face was full of charm, if not actual
beauty, and who had the additional charm of being not
ashamed of having been bom an American! Baroness
Hiiney also held a good position at court, as her hus-
band, formerly a captain in the Guards, had become
an equerry to the Emperor. His estates were upon the
Baltic in German Russia, and he himself was a good-
looking man of the German type, devoted to his well-
dressed, vivacious wife, who was so popular during her
father’s regime that it is said she could have married
any man in St. Petersburg.
The Count Speransky, whose female descendants
merged their identity through marriage into the Bul-
garian house of Cantacuzene, was the son of a priest
who became a celebrated statesman under Alexander I,
and the Cantacuzenes have also had their noted men.
But it was interesting that the American princess was
less indebted to any prestige her husband’s family could
give her than to her own distinguished ancestry as a
grand-daughter of a President of the United States;
the Russians, with their democratic reasoning, saying
that only royalty could be considered superior. The
dowager princess, the mother of Julia Grant’s husband,
I remember as a delicate Dresden-china little old lady
of French birth, and very much grande dame, whose﻿130 Intimacies of Court and Society
salon was supposed to have some political influence, as
it was the rendezvous of the diplomats who extolled the
Franco-Russian alliance; as well as where one heard
the latest French music and the latest gossip from
Paris.
The American girls married to Russian diplomatic
officers were, of course, not in St. Petersburg, al-
though at this time there was a great deal being said
about Madame Bakhmatieff, the daughter of General
Beale of California, and the sister of Mrs. John R. Mc-
Lean, her husband being, so rumour had it, designated
ambassador in Washington to succeed Cassini. But
the Russian Foreign Office preferred to send him as
ambassador to Japan after the war, his long diplomatic
experience in the East doubtless making him partic-
ularly valuable at the Mikado’s court.
It was upon the Russian New Year, two weeks after
the one in our calendar, that the season began. Every
one in the diplomatic and official world, the army and
the navy, presented their congratulations at the Win-
ter Palace, the Russians at eleven o’clock, as the sover-
eigns passed through the state apartments to attend
Mass in the palace chapel, and the foreigners at twelve
o’clock, as the royal procession wended its way return-
ing. The afternoon was the busiest one of the year,
the ambassadors and secretaries taking separate car-
riages from their wives, and driving about in as much
haste as dignity would permit, to write their names upon
the callers’ book at the palace of each member of the
imperial family, and to call personally upon their own﻿Court Life in St. Petersburg 131
colleagues. Etiquette required that it must all be
done between two and six; and every one arrived home
exhausted, just in time to dress for the first state ball.
This was a general mustering of society, some four
thousand people, whose equipages created intense ex-
citement in the crowded streets near the Winter Palace,
as their drivers made the rush in quick succession up
to the entrance, and discharged their passengers as if
shot from the mouth of a cannon, into the shelter of the
protecting canvas. The big palace doors opened and
shut almost as quickly, and the guests trooped up the
marble stairs, where for three flights up the walls on
both sides were lined with the huntsmen, grooms, and
all the staff of the imperial hunt, in dark-blue or green
kaftans, edged with gold lace, the jockeys in richly
embroidered jackets, buckskin breeches, and topboots.
The St. Nicholas Hall, with its sixteen windows over-
looking the Neva, and colossal sideboards laden with
gold plate, upon which, according to one of the oldest
Russian customs, bread and salt had been offered as
homage to the sovereigns by different citie? throughout
the empire,—had its gold and white walls hung with
garlands of fresh flowers; and it was flooded by thou-
sands of electric lights, reproducing all the beauties of
the ceiling decorations upon the polished inlaid floors.
The St. George’s Hall and the Concert Hall opened out
upon it, and a large conservatory was transformed into
an Italian garden, a single incandescent light from
above shedding soft rays like moonlight through the
tops of the palms and over splashing fountains and﻿132 Intimacies of Court and Society
marble statues. The Czar and Czarina made their
entree with much state, and opened the ball, changing
partners three times during the polonaise promenade,
and followed by a long line of splendidly dressed women
and diplomats in white kneebreeches and gold-em-
broidered coats. Supper was spread at small tables
of crescent shape, it being contrary to court etiquette
for any guest to turn his back upon another, the
Czarina upon the dais in the St. George’s Hall, with sev-
eral ambassadors ranking according to seniority in
the corps. The tables in one hall were overshadowed
by gigantic palms reaching almost to the ceiling of the
two-story chamber; and in the other, a tall laurel tree
issued from the centre of each table, and the party
dined in charming seclusion beneath its branches.
Invitations to the other court balls followed im-
mediately after, decreasing in size and increasing in im-
portance, and any one’s position could be easily ascer-
tained by knowing which of these balls they attended.
The last ball, including some two or three hundred
guests, was called the “ Hermitage ” ball, because the
supper was laid in the long salon of the great gallery,
the original “ Pavilion ” built for Catherine II, where
she spent her evenings in conversation with the philoso-
phers and famous artists attracted to her court from all
the capitals of Europe—transformed to-day into an ex-
quisite little ball-room of white marble with graceful gal-
leries in gold trellis work, a floor inlaid with mosaic, a
delicately murmuring fountain falling softly from one
shell into another; and an enchanting view from the﻿Court Life in St. Petersburg 133
windows, away from the glowing interior full of the
movement and brilliancy of a ball out upon the ice-
bound Neva. But it seemed almost a sacrilege to be
occupied there, even with the most classic of entertain-
ments, and the most epicurean of feasts, in the presence
of the treasures upon the walls. The imperial gold
plate was used, and everything was gold even to the
tall vases holding the flowers and a tiny fountain in
the centre of the Czarina’s supper table upon the dais,
throwing an exotic fragrance into the air. And the
Czarina herself wore cloth of gold, the long train
trimmed with sable and gold flowers, where, in the centre
of each, there was a big jewel glowing. For a diadem
she had selected the historical one of Catherine II,
made up of several rows of enormous diamonds, alter-
nating with rows of pear-shaped pearls set so lightly
that they trembled at the slightest movement, and wore
with it a wide parure of the same design in diamonds
and pearls over the neck and shoulders, with the sleeves
caught up by diamond and pearl agrafes. The ball
was so small that, when she entered, every one could
see her well, and there was a hushed exclamation, “ The
Empress! ” She was a picture which, with the sad ex-
pression upon her gentle face, made her look like a
Byzantine Madonna come down from among the jewelled
ikons of a cathedral. The maids-of-honour gave
vivacity to the background, dressed all alike in ruby
velvet with a miniature of the Empress, encircled with
diamonds, upon their shoulders, and with veils of soft
tulle falling from the hair down upon the trains, look-﻿134 Intimacies of Court and Society
ing like rosy clouds as the light caught and blended
them.
Military men abounded, the Hussars in green, the
Lancers in scarlet, the Cossacks in red and silver, and
the Imperial Guard in white. The Czar wore the uni-
form of a colonel of the Uhlan regiment of the Lancers,
with topboots, trousers of light-blue, and a short coat
of darker blue, cut away in front to disclose the scarlet
waistcoat, and with gold epaulettes and a light cav-
alry sabre. He walked about during the supper, at-
tended by a master of ceremonies, following the ancient
imperial custom of the host who must look to the com-
fort of his guests; a slender, mild figure, low-voiced
and sad-eyed, the solemnity dispelled, however, when-
ever he smiled. He has dispensed with the bodyguard,
which used to follow his father upon such occasions,
and excited the liveliest attention among newcomers,
consisting of immense negroes as handsomely formed
as could be obtained, and as black as were ever born,
usually dressed in loose red trousers and bright cash-
mere shawls draped about their huge bodies. As they
never did any work, they were not supposed to be overly
popular with the palace servants, and one night, when
they were costumed in dazzling white, and naturally
made a sensation, an envious servant who was passing
with the fish sauce for the supper, pretended to slip, and
then spilt the contents of his dish completely over one
of them.
Nicholas, in going from one room to another, created
excitement and general unrest, however, for as soon﻿Court Life in St. Petersburg 135
as he approached a table, every one had to stand and
enter into conversation if he intimated his desire to
talk; the guests had to keep their eyes open to watch
for his approach, and the servants, never knowing ex-
actly where he was, were in constant terror of knocking
into him. He would sometimes exchange a few words
of greeting, and the courtiers would carefully impress
upon you that his wonderful memory never allowed him
ever to forget the name and the nationality of a re-
turning guest. But a diplomatic friend of mine, at one
of these balls, was once favoured by the imperial notice.
“You have just arrived, I believe,” said His Majesty;
“how do you like St. Petersburg?” “I like it very
much, sire, but—I have been here for ten years! ” con-
fessed the diplomat.
This little familiarity of speaking to people at the
balls is, however, about the only one the Czar indulges
in outside his own family. Nicholas I visited his min-
isters, his friends, and the ambassadors at their own
homes for ceremonial entertainments, and without warn-
ing, for small friendly gatherings, especially if there
was to be a musical programme that interested him—
the servant at the door giving three rings to the house
bell to warn the hostess of his arrival. King Edward
and the Kaiser have both followed the same custom—
an honour not without embarrassment to the hostess, it
might be mentioned.
But to Nicholas II all such pleasures are unknown.
There are no state dinners in St. Petersburg, as at the
other European courts, to which the ambassadors are﻿136 Intimacies of Court and Society
invited. They see very little of him, in fact his isola-
tion is almost complete. The American ambassador
whom he has most liked personally was in St. Peters-
burg for several years, but never dined with the sov-
ereign. When he took the long journey to the Crimea
to present his letters of recall, the Czar having gone
there after the season, the ambassador was invited to
lunch—an unusual honour much commented on in the
diplomatic corps.
Many blame the Czarina for the Czar’s isolation.
But the Czarina is not to blame. It was at one of the
state balls, brilliant and magnificent in its prodigal dis-
play, a symbol of what vast wealth and limitless power
could call forth, that an incident occurred which made
us all remember the hissing, hideous serpent of revolu-
tion and anarchy coiled in the innermost recesses of the
political life, a menace and a terror to the imperial
family. All the guests were gathered, standing in com-
plete silence as the doors were thrown open for the
entrance of the sovereigns. Just as they stepped across
the threshold, there was distinctly heard in the hushed
room a sharp, unexpected click-click. It was only the
electric light as an extra battery was turned on; but
the Empress uttered a cry, and the Emperor staggered
and turned deadly pale, while a moment of agonising
fear held the roomful of guests.
And yet a high Russian official said to me an hour
later: “ There is no such a thing as public sentiment
in Russia. Public opinion throughout the Empire is
controlled by less than four thousand people, three-﻿Court Life in St. Petersburg 187
fourths of whom are in this room to-night! ” How-
ever, at the Hotel d’Europe, when I was calling on
some friends, an inoffensive old lady from Boston, with
two debutante nieces, my attention was caught by a
curious apparition in the wall near the ceiling—a small
piece about two inches square silently vanished, and a
human eye took its place. Meeting my frightened,
startled gaze, it was gone in a flash, and the wall re-
mained intact.
The season, as far as court ceremonials go, is very
limited, but I happened to be there at the time of an
extra fete, the baptism of one of the four daughters
of the Czar, whose arrival created such indescribable
agitation in a nation clamouring for a boy. The
christening, however, which came within the regulation
time of the following fortnight, was attended with all
possible eclat, and was a miniature coronation pageant.
When, with some Russian friends, I joined the crowds
going out to the country palace at Peterhof to see the
arrival of the official guests at the church, the whole
city of St. Petersburg seemed emptied into its village
streets, and the road between was a long procession of
vehicles. The imperial family were conveyed to the
church in gilded state coaches, each drawn by six horses
and attended by Hussars and Cossacks; the tiny grand
duchess, in a special coach with white horses, resting in
blissful ignorance of passing events upon a pillow of
cloth of gold, in charge of the Princess Galitzin, the
Mistress of the Robes. For an hour or more there was﻿138 Intimacies of Court and Society
a stream of men in brilliant uniforms and women in all
the splendour of court costume; then the Emperor ar-
rived and escorted his mother into the chapel. But the
rules of the Russian Church forbid the presence of
either parent during the actual ceremony, so he retired
while the Metropolitan of St. Petersburg immersed the
child. Then, while the cannon boomed all the way from
Peterhof back to the capital, the Emperor returned to
the church for Mass—after which the Dowager Empress
carried her small grand-daughter up to the altar and
decorated her with the grand cordon of the Order of
St. Catherine. It is the highest to which a Russian
woman may aspire, and generally obtained in its lower
order when the girl is assuming the dignity of a tiara
and the sweeping yards of a velvet court train. But
her small Imperial Highness accepted the honour with
serenity, and was vastly entertained by the pretty rib-
bon and sparkling order.
Afterwards the congregation in the chapel became
the Emperor’s guests at lunch in the palace, and then
went up to the supposedly happy father to present their
felicitations. His disappointment, nevertheless, was
apparent, and he said to one of the ambassadors—with
a hopeful smile—“ We must try again! ”
The winter season once launched, entertaining went
on with a verve typical of the Russian passion for
pleasure. There were fetes indoors and out, and fash-
ionable people scarcely saw the daylight for weeks at
a time during the six hours of the winter’s sunshine, un-﻿Court Life in St. Petersburg 139
til later on, when the long white nights descended upon
the Land of the Midnight Sun, and we had to draw heavy
curtains across the windows to darken the room when
we went to bed. There was many a night drive to the
“ Islands,” a merry party enveloped in furs packed into
the troika, bells jingling and snow flying as we dashed
over the lonely road, with dinner at the end at a big
cafe, amid a blaze of light, perfume of flowers, and the
wild music of a gipsy band. These gipsies had a way
of rhyming your name into a verse which startled you
with its weird effect until you learned about their trick
of discovering it beforehand. There was skating to
music in the short afternoon, and parties to the ice-
hills at night—going like the wind down mountains
of ice, the man sitting on the front of the tiny sleigh,
and the woman kneeling behind, her hands tightly
grasping his arms. Dancing was at its height at two
or three o’clock in the morning, and card-playing as
well, the stakes running high, borrowing going on
promiscuously—and the women seldom paying back.
Carloads of rare flowers, orchids, and immense roses
came up every week from the Riviera to decorate the big
houses thrown open, and we would come home from
cotillions with our arms filled with favours of sum-
mer flowers. The dinner tables were laid with del-
icacies in fish, fowl, and fruit from every comer of the
world, with fresh Russian caviare and the king of Rus-
sian fish, the sterlet of the Volga, so expensive as al-
most to be worth his weight in gold. A foreigner was
often made acquainted with apples, peaches, and pears﻿140 Intimacies of Court and Society
bearing photographs of the imperial family, the picture
laid on while the fruit was ripening, and producing a
perfect silhouette—costing about one dollar each, but
common enough upon a Russian table in the depths of
the northern winter.
An invitation to dine, sent out at the opening of the
season, frequently meant that one was expected every
week upon the night indicated; one went if one could
in an easy, familiar way, and the banquet was always
spread. One knew that many of these prodigal hosts
and hostesses were nearly bankrupt, that the peasants
on their estates might be starving, and that the humble
tradespeople were often not paid for years. But the
splendid, radiant pictures were there, the sumptuous,
sensuous life beckoned, the reckless generosity was ir-
resistible in its appeal. Philosophy could be left for
other, more barren hours.
Masterpieces from the celebrated dressmakers of
Paris and Vienna set off the dark beauty of the Russian
women, carried out in designs often extreme in their
audacity, but worn with perfect sang-froid, in spite of
the well-known sentiments of the Czarina. She showed
her marked displeasure one night as two young matrons
entered the ball-room together, dressed alike in filmy
clinging black lace, the low decolletee held up by a nar-
row band of flashing diamonds across the snowy shoul-
ders. But, after a momentary buzz of excitement at
her frown, the gowns were the success of the evening.
Fortunes in rare furs, long cloaks, shvbas, and
mantles were piled high in the halls below, while up-﻿Dining room, Vladimir Palace, showing against the wall the plates of gold upon which,
according to ancient Russian custom, bread and salt have been offered to the
family as tokens of homage during journeys throughout the Empire﻿﻿141
Court Life in St. Petersburg
stairs, in the ball-room, the display of jewels was half
barbaric. The men sometimes wore almost as many
as the women, appearing in court dress with their
breasts half covered with orders blazing with precious
stones. In afternoon dress, you might see rubies and
diamonds in their studs and cuff links, and they would
likely offer cigarettes from a gold case strewn with the
monograms of various friends traced in jewels, a pop-
ular Russian fashion. There were many stones un-
familiar elsewhere in Europe except to the connoisseur
—the wonderful Siberian gems: the green nephrite,
which is one of the heaviest stones in the world; the
aquamarine, which is, what its name implies, a stone
which mirrors the colours of the sea; the jacinth, re-
flecting the variegated tones of the hyacinth; the beryl
and topaz in unusual shades of green, yellow, brown,
and blue; the rose-coloured tourmaline, the chrysolite,
with the delicate tints of the olive; and the rare alex-
0
andrite, which is emerald-green in the sun, but suf-
fused with lilac or amethystine under the electric light.
But it was an American-born duchess who outdid
even the Russians one season, making a tremendous
sensation at a court ball so loaded down with her great
tiara and high dog collar, her stomacher and ropes of
famous pearls, that she rivalled even the Empress—to
the embarrassment of the ambassador who presented
her, and who realised what a serious breach of etiquette
it was. It was some time afterwards that a jeweller in
Paris, bursting with pride over the achievement, told
me how he had gone to London to make imitations of﻿142 Intimacies of Court and Society
the celebrated jewels especially to be worn at this St.
Petersburg ball, the duchess being afraid to take the
genuine ones upon such a long journey up into the wild
and barbarous North. The ruse was never suspected
in St. Petersburg, because a great lady of Russia would
seldom condescend to wear imitations, as is frequently
done in England at court when all the world knows that
the real gems exist. The Russian must have not only
an enormous collection of stones, but they must be
enormous in themselves; nothing small appeals to her
bizarre fancy. After a ball at one of the embassies in
St. Petersburg, a newly arrived secretary was about
to throw into the waste-paper basket an emerald as big
as a pigeon’s egg. He thought from its size that it
could not possibly be genuine—but the owner had a
string of them a yard long.
Russian society, although the most exclusive in
Europe as far as the sovereigns are concerned, is in it-
self the most democratic. Princes are as common as
grasshoppers in Kansas—and, one might almost add,
as unimportant. A foreigner who particularly wished
to have such a high-sounding title upon his servant’s
roll, could undoubtedly secure it by the payment of a
few extra roubles. The law of primogeniture does not
exist; every son of a prince becomes himself a prince,
and every daughter a princess, while the property is
divided equally. The old families were the rulers of
the nation from the time of Rurik up to Peter the
Great, when the Russian proverb, Le czar a ordonne,﻿Court Life in St. Petersburg 143
mats les boyards ont approuve, was swept aside by
Peter’s ruthless hand. They were also rich, the nobles
or boyards, as their serfs numbered up into the millions,
and, being bound to the land, created a certain entail,
which kept the land from being sold. But Alexander
II, in giving freedom to the serfs, presented them also
with the land upon which they lived, and the nobles
quickly spent the money they received as compensation
and seldom accumulated any more. Since then there
has been a rapid multiplication of titles, and a rapid
division and subdivision of property, until to-day there
are comparatively few of the famous old names which
carry with them any estates. The merchants are be-
coming the landed proprietors, and some of them have
presented jewels to their wives which rival those of the
Empress; but they still retain their identity with the
village where their fathers lived as vassals, and there-
fore still count among the “ peasants.” There is no
upper middle class in Russia; a family is either of
the peasantry—although this term has now a very wide
inclusion—or of the aristocracy. And at court no
one has precedence according to inherited rank, only
according to official position in the government. Any
cabinet minister may take his peasant-wife upon his
arm, and present her to his sovereign, and she will share
his position without demur—a striking difference from
Austria, where the husband’s distinction of ancestry or
official achievement gives to his wife no privileges of
the court which she does not have through her own
birth.﻿144 Intimacies of Court and Society
Democracy is as striking a characteristic of the Rus-
sian aristocracy as is their extravagance. The foreigner
must make the first call, but it would be difficult to find
a Russian great lady outside the circle of the imperial
family who would sit at home and arrogate to herself
the privilege of receiving but not returning calls. An
American girl once told me she had time to compose an
epic poem during the chilly and ominous lapses in con-
versation while calling in London. I have often won-
dered what she would say after calling upon the Rus-
sian women, who are ready, at a moment’s notice, to
discuss in the friendliest way with any stranger the
geography, literature, and art of any country in the
world, and in its native language. They are not
“ princess,” “ countess,” or even “ madame,” to one
another but “ Marie Vassilievna ” (Marie, the daughter
of William), “ Natalea Ivanovna” (Natalie, the
daughter of John), in the affectionate and familiar
Russian style of address. A man may amuse himself
all evening trying to discover the last name and the
rank of his dinner partner, the introduction not having
disclosed it. And also with the woman, as the man is
known in the same way, as “ Michael Ivanovitch ”
(Michael, the son of John), “Serge Nicholaievitch ”
(Serge, the son of Nicholas), etc.
The houses are open all day and all night for calling,
and you cannot merely leave cards and pass on, as in
other countries. If your friend is not at home, some
one else is sure to be, and you will be received. You
seat yourself, upon arrival, in the great hall, and the﻿Court Life in St. Petersburg 145
footman becomes a clever lady’s-maid. He begins by
taking off your big fur boots, then he unties the Oren-
burger shawl which envelops your head under your fur
cap, and is tied behind, and then he frees you from
your heavy shuba or long cape with high fur collar.
The shawl and the shuba are de riguewr, and it is a
dangerous experiment to try to wear a hat in the win-
ter. You ascend the broad stairway, your toilette
achieved, and pass through one, two, or three salons.
In the last you find the family, mother, children, aunts,
cousins, etc., etc., gathered around the tea table and
the samovar. It may be twelve o’clock at night, but
to all intents and purposes you have come for an after-
noon call and a cup of tea. You sit for an hour or
two talking with comparative strangers, taking your
tea. The Russians are capable of drinking from ten to
fifteen cups, the first with cream, perhaps, the next
with j am or lemon, then with cognac, an endless variety.
All the family matters are discussed and settled in your
presence. You are treated as one of them. At last
you retire at one or two o’clock in the morning, hav-
ing spent a quiet evening and having had a glimpse of
the warm-hearted Russian nature, childlike in its sim-
plicity. It is in this respect a nature more approach-
ing the American than any to be found elsewhere in
Europe. And there are other surface characteristics of
the two peoples which are identical, due to the same
expanse over a vast stretch of territory and the imagin-
ative temperament and passion for personal freedom it
engenders.﻿146 Intimacies of Court and Society
“ You have a saying, ‘ Time is money,’ but if we had
as much money as we have time, we would all be rich,”
was the way a Russian once wittily expressed to me
the difference between his countrymen and the Amer-
icans. And, as to the women—as far as is the East
removed from the West is the American, with her cool
and calculating brain, seldom surcharged by any
overpowering emotion even in the truest, purest love;
and the Russian, who has the sensuous ardour of the
Orient with the intellectual virility of the Occident, un-
restrained by appreciation of the moral principle. It
is a duality of the mating instinct which yearly gives
to Russia several thousand children bom among the
most aristocratic in the land to mothers without the
marriage ring. There is a public feeling of humanity
which goes to the extreme of generosity and deals with
the subject with infinite delicacy. Infanticide, among
high and low, is considered the most hideously conceiv-
able of crimes, and practically unknown. Thegovernment
cherishes for the state its future servants and soldiers,
appropriating the tax upon playing-cards, a million
or two dollars a year, for the foundling hospitals of
Catherine the Great at St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Society itself is sympathetic and compassionate. And
following the example of Napoleon I, who, during his
occupation of Moscow, benevolently bequeathed to the
foundling hospital his two children by Russian mothers,
born after his departure, it has become no special dis-
grace for the Russian seigneur to do the same. The
socially elect among the women, however, have the﻿147
Court Life in St. Petersburg
friendly protection of secret lying-in wards, where no
questions are asked, and where a woman of the nobility
may have special comforts and special means of
oblivion. The child may be claimed, for ten years by
whomsoever will present the little piece of pasteboard
upon which is recorded its number—and nothing more.
In St. Petersburg one hears it said that different women
in society have such a piece of pasteboard hidden away
among their private papers, or, perhaps, in their jewel
boxes—where they can see it every time they are ar-
rayed en grande ternue for the balls and the dinners
they would have to relinquish by its open acknowledg-
ment. But, after all, they carry the scandal with proud
indifference, and may, perhaps, in middle life and deeper
maternal craving, arrange to include the child among
their own household as a footman or a lady’s-maid, if
the resemblance is not too startling and the husband
enough complaisant.
In certain sets among the aristocracy, where the hus-
band would no more go without invitation into his wife’s
boudoir than she would use his private entrance com-
municating direct to his apartment—one can imagine
a meeting between a woman and a man whose mere
passion had long since turned to dust and ashes in
their mouths, covertly surveying with eyes of guilty
fear and newly awakened parental love, a young girl
or a stalwart youth, with form and features of un-
mistakable lineage and cultivation—a mirror of
their own—but doomed forever to wear a servant’s
garb.﻿148 Intimacies of Court and Society
It is through this splendid, dissolute pageant of life
that the Empress moves, a cold, silent, disapproving
figure. The Czarina is without political influence,
although this is due to her timidity and not to her lack
of intelligence. But it has given carte blanche to her
enemies, enemies so numerous and so malignant that
they accused her of smuggling into the palace the
baby boy who is now the heir-apparent, to replace the
baby girl to whom, they said, she had really given
birth. Half English, half German, and seemingly un-
able to interpret in the least the Russian character, so
thoroughly Oriental at its depths, she has uselessly
endeavoured to pattern her court after the ideas of her
grandmother, Queen Victoria, a pattern, by the way,
which even the English women would not accept. One
of her first decrees was to forbid dancing and cigarette
smoking among the women attending her Sunday re-
ceptions—when the Russian court has danced and
smoked on Sunday for generations before Michael
Romanoff was elected to the throne by the boyards
and established the present line of czars. She also tried
to abolish society gambling—when gambling has been
from time immemorial the national vice. In every fam-
ily mansion of importance there is a jewelled ikon
as old almost as time itself, handed down from gen-
eration to generation, as the one possession too sacred
to sell under any condition of poverty. But young
men of the household in need of money to pay their
gambling debts have often been known covertly to sub-
stitute imitation stones for the real; and I remember﻿Court Life in St. Petersburg 149
that during ray visit there was great rejoicing among
some of my friends over the return of a prodigal son
who had ruined himself and his father by gambling—
which was later turned to grief and rage when it was
discovered that, as he stooped to kiss the family ikon in
token of repentance, he had cleverly extracted with his
teeth the big diamond of the Madonna’s crown—and
staked it at his club in a game of cards.
Upon one or two occasions during the state balls the
Czarina commanded carriages to be called for certain
ladies whose costumes gave them the appearance of
courtesans. And St. Petersburg has not yet forgot-
ten how she dismissed from a ball the Grand Duke
Paul, her husband’s uncle, and the lady he had upon
his arm, at that time the wife of Colonel Pistelcorps, but
who appeared wearing the jewels of the grand duke’s
dead wife, the daughter of the King of Greece. It was
in vain that Colonel Pistelcorps was summoned and de-
clared that Madame Pistelcorps had received the jewels
with his consent. The couple were ordered to leave at
once. The grand duke, a handsome fellow, only a few
years older than his august nephew, the Czar, and a
man of a certain sense of honour, retained through a
thousand escapades—and probably ten thousand
temptations—considered that the publicity of the in-
sult forced him to make reparation. He left not only
the court, but the country, taking Madame Pistelcorps
with him, and, after her husband had generously con-
sented to divorce her, for a generous compensation, she
became the grand duke’s morganatic wife, with the Ba-﻿150 Intimacies of Court and Society
varian title of Countess Hohenfelsen, with a stately
establishment in Paris and wealth to meet her fondest
dreams. As she was the daughter of a railway en-
gineer in extremely modest circumstances when she mar-
ried her first husband, who had at that time no idea
of inheriting the small fortune which later came to him
from a distant relative and lifted him up into the so-
ciety life of the army—it is probable that Madame Pis-
telcorps has many times been grateful to the excess of
zeal manifested by Her Imperial Majesty, the Empress.
There are dozens of stories current in Russia of plots
against the Czarina’s life, the most authentic, the one
concerned with the death of her little niece, the only child
of her brother, the Grand Duke of Hesse, and his di-
vorced wife, the daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh of
England. The child was under the father’s care for six
months during the year, and he had taken her to St.
Petersburg to visit her aunt, when she suddenly died
in convulsions after eating a poisoned apple in the
Czarina’s boudoir, the largest and finest one upon the
plate, and doubtless placed there' for the Empress.
Among a people madly extravagant, she has Queen
Victoria’s weakness for petty economies, and has been
known to order the St. Petersburg shops to send their
newest designs in baby bonnets for her inspection, and
then returned them after copying off the most charming
of the patterns. She designs many of her most elab-
orate gowns, and has designed all the fur garments
which fill three or four large rooms, and are worth a
king’s ransom in themselves; and the court jeweller﻿151
Court Life in St. Petersburg
seldom has the privilege of planning her ornaments, a
drawing from the Czarina’s own hands being given with
the order. She has a favourite set of aquamarines
from her own design, a diadem and devant de corsage,
with the stones set in the midst of leaves marked with
diamonds, a beautiful and original pattern, of which
any jeweller might be proud. But such small pleas-
ures she probably arrogates to herself as innocent di-
versions, for her contributions to charity are generous
enough. Her knowledge of money matters is certainly
not extensive, as, speaking of a new American ambas-
sador, she said to a woman of the court, “We hear
he has an income of fifty million roubles [twenty-five
million dollars] a year!”
She has followed the fad of the imperial family of
presenting to one another jewelled Easter eggs con-
taining inside some mechanical toy, but has never at-
tempted to design any of them, one of the court jewel-
lers being kept busy all the year in working out new and
interesting ideas for them. Her own collection, espe-
cially those given to her by her husband, has been ex-
hibited at different times to privileged people. Upon
the Easter of his coronation year, the Czar gave her
an egg of yellow enamel, the coronation colour, the
jewelled diadem with which she was crowned repro-
duced in miniature at the top, while inside the egg was
a perfect copy of the coronation carriage she used in
making her state entry into Moscow, made of gold and
red enamel, with red velvet seats, a beautifully hand-
painted door to open and shut, and gold wheels to turn﻿152 Intimacies of Court and Society
around. In 1900, when the Siberian railroad was the
important thing of the year, he gave her at Easter an
egg of gold, encrusted with jewels, containing inside
a whole set of railway carriages and engine, with the
mechanism so complete that they were taken out and
ran along the table. Another year the egg was dec-
orated with roses formed of diamonds and lilies-of-the-
valley in pearls, while a tiny spring hidden under a
ruby brought out the miniatures of the Czar and the
children; while at another year the egg was of rock
crystal, surmounted by the imperial crown in diamonds
and emeralds, and rested upon a pedestal of gold, which
turned upon a pivot, bringing into view the photographs
upon ivory of the numerous royal palaces showing
through the crystal.
The interior of the Winter Palace is, in its daily
routine, quite like a German settlement, as most of the
servants are from the Czarina’s home in Hesse, or from
the German provinces of Russia upon the Baltic. But
English is the language of the father and mother and
children in the family circle, which is, by the way, as
affectionate and intimate as one finds in humbler and
happier walks of life. The mother is constantly with
her children, and, upon the rare occasions when she re-
ceives an ambassador’s wife, she passes directly into the
audience room from her boudoir, and different ones
among them have heard in retiring a tiny piping voice
imploring, “ Oh, please, mamma, I do want to see the
lady.” The “ ambassadress ” is sure to record her
audience among the events of her life; but it is probably﻿153
Court Life in St. Petersburg
more of an event for the Empress to see and talk di-
rectly with a woman from the far-off world of her girl-
hood days of freedom, and for a few moments to forget
that she dare not taste of a single dish until a trusted
servant has first examined it, and that among her own
subjects she can detect so many averted, disloyal eyes.
Considering the complex character of the Russian
women of the aristocracy, their versatility in accom-
plishments, and intelligence often profound, their com-
plete mastery of the arts of fascination, and their dom-
inance in political influence, it is extraordinary that
the two women of the court who most accurately por-
tray this Russian type, and are most powerful on that
account, should both be foreign-born—the mother of
the Czar, and the German wife of his uncle, the Grand
Duke Vladimir. When the dainty Princess Dagmar of
Denmark became Empress of All the Russias, no one
thought of her except as a lighthearted, merry creature,
with inexhaustible energy for gaiety, who could busy
herself all morning with family affairs, skate all after-
noon with the utmost enthusiasm, and arrive at a ball
as fresh and sparkling as a girl—and dance all night.
Her husband, Alexander III, once amused himself by
seeing how long she would dance, so he dismissed the
musicians slowly one by one, until only one was left,
the Empress all the time dancing merrily away wholly
unconscious of the flight of the hours—or the musi-
cians. The state balls are always opened by the Polish
Mazurka, so difficult that few except the natives of﻿154 Intimacies of Court and Society
Russia ever learn to do it well. But no one dances it
even to-day to greater perfection than the Dowager
Czarina; and to have seen her in the heydey of her
beauty, dancing it with Prince Dolgoruki, the Master
of Ceremonies, and the handsomest, most graceful man
at court, taking the intricate steps with an exquisite
abandon and skill, was a sight incomparably charming
and duplicated nowhere else in Europe. As the young
wife of Alexander III, she assumed her role with a
natural dignity which was astonishing when one remem-
bered her comparatively simple bringing up, as far as
royalty was concerned. But her inner self, not known
until after her husband’s death, was a revelation. Still
devoted to the pursuit of pleasure even in advancing
years, she has been able to cope with the shrewdest
political intriguers in Russia; she sees everything, knows
everything, and is the one power always to be reckoned
with. She is a woman of excellent mind, far superior
in this respect to her sister Alexandra of England, but
with more force of character than deep intelligence.
She never dominated the masterful Alexander III, but
her son has always been like putty in her hands, and
whatever his political actions may be, it can safely be
conjectured that they have received her approbation.
She was undeniably a faithful wife, but she quickly
assimilated the ideas of her husband’s nation; she has
never defended anything improper, simply conveniently
declined to see it, and, with philosophical toleration,
has never undertaken social reforms. She has never
been sympathetic with her daughter-in-law, and the﻿155
Court Life in St. Petersburg
young Czarina owes much of the difficulty of her posi-
tion to her husband’s mother—although the mother’s
political influence with the Czar could be easily swept
aside if the wife would exert herself and form her own
cabal, punishing her enemies and rewarding her friends.
But as the older woman’s power has grown, the younger
has shrunk more closely within the narrow limits of
her domestic life, timidly seeking to shield herself from
the menacing storm.
In a short audience in St. Petersburg with the
Dowager Empress one afternoon, sitting upon a high
cushion, as is her custom, in order to make herself look
taller, she talked with much intelligence about America.
She frankly disapproved of American methods of rear-
ing children; she thought they had too much liberty.
“ My sons were not allowed their separate residences
until they married,” she said. “ I was advised to grant
them each a separate home and their own entourage
when they became of age, but I would not. They lived
with me.” Her voice, extremely musical, had a curi-
ous guttural timbre that one would always remember,
and her eyes were soft and appealing—her son the Czar
has inherited both. But I wondered if strength instead
of weakness might not have been his with a different
training, having more scope for independence and
initiative.
At a dinner in St. Petersburg in honour of a visiting
royal prince, the gentleman who sat next to the Grand
Duchess Vladimir was tactless enough to remark, hold-﻿156 Intimacies of Court and Society
ing his champagne glass up to the light, “ What is the
matter with it, it doesn’t sparkle? ” The trouble was
probably due to the chef having sent in an inferior
wine, while charging his master for the best—but the
hostess, hearing it, flushed with anger, whereupon the
grand duchess, with inimitable tact, to save the situa-
tion, as well as coquetry, put her little finger into the
glass and asked, “ Now, have I made it all right? ” Al-
though a grandmother and now a widow, she is still
beautiful, and one of the best shots in Europe, her
gowns and jewels are celebrated, and the entertainments
at her house are the most original and dashing of the
season. They are so small and exclusive that they give
a cachet second only to a formal acceptance by the
Empress.
I remember what a sensation was caused when the
grand duchess received Madame Witte, who had never
been able to be received at court. Madame Witte is
herself an extraordinary woman—that is to say, strik-
ingly Russian—a Jewess of humble birth, who was
familiarly known to the young men of the aristocracy
as La belle Matilde, but whose natural intelligence
was so great that she mastered several languages and
mastered the intricate problems of Russian politics,
until she gathered around her as confidential friends
the most distinguished statesmen, and was supposed to
know more cabinet secrets than any other woman in the
country. M. de Witte’s devotion to her lasted for
many years, until, in middle life, the marriage took
place, but when he announced it to the Czar, His Maj-﻿The Grand Duchess Vladimir in Russian Court Dress﻿﻿157
Court Life in St. Petersburg
esty said coldly, “ The Empress and I offer you con-
gratulations and regret that we shall not see Madame
Witte at court.” The Emperor’s brother, however,
the Grand Duke Michael, whose kind heart is often ex-
pressing itself in service to others, interested himself in
the matter to such an extent that the Empress con-
sented to receive Madame Witte’s young lady daughter,
whom Witte had formally adopted and informally
acknowledged as his own—and who is now married into
a family of the old aristocracy.
Witte was at that time at the zenith of his power,
and when the Emperor, after a cabinet conference, said
that the Empress would be pleased to see Mademoiselle
Witte at the next court ball, the minister replied with a
quiet dignity, which had its touch of hidden humour,
“ My daughter goes no place without her mother.”
But it was not long afterwards that some public funds
under the control of the finance minister, Witte, were
entrusted to the Grand Duke Vladimir, who found it
convenient to use them to pay his gambling debts.
There were a few days of suppressed agitation over his
probable disgrace—and then the Vladimir palace was
thrown open for an unusually brilliant and exclusive
reception, where Madame de Witte was received with
marked cordiality and adopted into the inner circle of
the court!
The Vladimir palace is on the Palace Quay, over-
looking the Neva, and was built when the grand duke
brought his German bride to Russia. Going up the
broad stairs of Italian marble, with a marble nymph﻿158 Intimacies of Court and Society
upon either side peeping from behind green foliage, and
where long mirrors give you back your photograph
framed in flowers, you pass some fine Gobelin tapes-
tries at the top, and enter a spacious drawing-room.
It is hung in rich red velvet and has a curious ceil-
ing of oak, heavily encrusted with gold, and contains
three large cabinets filled with the grand duchess’
collection of jewelled flowers, the gold stems rising
from tiny pots of rock crystal, the leaves formed of
jade, and the petals of the roses, orchids, carnations,
hyacinths, tulips, violets, etc., made of enamel laid
upon gold with a ruby, a diamond, or an emerald at
the heart of the flower. The family dining-room
opens into the drawing-room where, upon the wall
above the comfortable American fireplaces, there are
a hundred or more plates of gold, upon which bread
and salt have been offered as homage to the family
in their journeys among the cities of the empire. And
the walls are ornamented with a unique Russian de-
sign in gold, which is repeated upon the stamped
leather of the furniture. In the different rooms there
are rare collections of old Russian things, but the ban-
quet hall is the only one entirely in the style of the
country. There a porcelain stove reaches almost to
the ceiling, elaborately painted in the half Eastern, half
Western style of the Russian artists; the ceilings and
walls are covered with variegated woods from the Rus-
sian forests; and there are large paintings of native
scenes which are among the chief treasures of the
house. But it is in the ball-room where the family have﻿Court Life in St. Petersburg 159
won their social triumphs with numerous bals masques
organised by the bachelor son of the house, the Grand
Duke Boris. The two ball-rooms are divided by a row
of white marble pillars, and with the music-room con-
necting, all decorated in white and gold, with painted
Cupids upon the ceiling carrying garlands of roses and
delicate draperies trailing in soft clouds around the
crystal chandeliers. In the private apartments, which
are thrown open for a ball, there is a winter garden,
where the family generally gather for afternoon tea,
and various sitting-rooms opening one into the other,
one, however, particularly charming, which, I remember,
was hung in pink brocade and furnished a la Pom-
padour, and which the mistress of the palace used as
her boudoir. There the inquisitive guest might find the
latest books on bridge and poker, with volumes of
Russian poetry, and novels in German, French, and
Italian, and not far away the Lutheran chapel, built
for her as a bride when she deliberately refused to en-
ter the Russian church. Beyond the boudoir is a
marble swimming-pool modelled after the celebrated
ones at Peterhof where she takes a cold plunge every
morning, and beyond that a studio, where she spends
an hour or two every day.
But her most intimate room is the Moorish room of
the palace, where the fantastic domed ceiling and walls,
inlaid with red and blue, paled in interest before the
great collection of royal photographs filling one whole
corner of the room, nearly every royal personage of the
time, but not as one would see them at court or in their﻿160 Intimacies of Court and Society
photographs sold in the shops—the Czar smiling like a
boy, and the Kaiser, moustache and military swagger
subdued, lounging in a careless attitude; the unhappy
Queen of Portugal as gay as a girl; even the melancholy,
timid Czarina radiant and animated, the grand duchess
herself as a tiny little girl with her mother, in a quaint
German dress, and a big hat in her hand.
At a fancy dress ball I remember seeing her for a
few moments standing in the centre of this room, the
thick fur of a white bearskin at her feet, with the
ferocious mouth open and the terrible teeth hanging
out, her luxuriant, regal figure clothed in the gorgeous
blue robes of the native Russian costume, the gown and
head-dress, kakoschnick, ablaze with jewels, and the
long velvet train carpeting the floor behind her. She
stood the personification of Russian femininity, enchant-
ing in its touch of barbaric wildness and its tinge of
Oriental voluptuousness—the strong face calculating,
yet careless, showing a nature swept by the hot fires of
the South, yet as cold as the North—one of the most
remarkable women of her day, portraying a combina-
tion of contradictions best described—as most Russian.﻿VHI
A BEAR HUNT—A COUNTRY HOUSE VISIT
My bear hunt is one of the most interesting experiences
of a lifetime—but it began in an opera box. I had
been to dinner at a Russian house, in a lofty dining-
room hung with paintings signed by names famous in
Russia, but scarcely known beyond its borders, the
doors and windows draped with the hand-wrought stuffs
that come from Bokhara, and the butler and his as-
sistant, flashing-eyed, low-browed Cossacks in their na-
tive dress, bagging scarlet trousers, high boots, and
silver swords. Then we put on coats and fur mantles,
shawls and carriage boots lined with fur, making our-
selves unwieldy and unrecognisable in a dozen wrap-
pings, were tucked into the sleighs so that we could
scarcely move or breathe, and drove off to the opera.
There two or three servants from the house awaited us,
helped us out of the ponderous things, tied them up in
sheets, and sat down upon the floor with them, in com-
pany with a crowd of others who were there for the
same purpose, attending with Slav-like, dumb obedi-
ence until we should need them again. We had come
to see Pushkin’s opera, “ Eugene Onegin,” set to
Tschaikowsky’s melancholy music, and the imperial
ballet in one of its most enchanting pantomimes. The
161﻿162 Intimacies of Court and Society
imperial box, which was close to ours, was occupied that
evening by the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess Vladi-
mir, and upon the front row in the body of the house
were the six army officers acting as their escort, their
son Boris among them, all in closely fitting red trousers
and gold-braided coats, and looking as if they had tasted
of every delight of life, the utter ernmi upon their jaded
faces making more of a tragedy than the one we saw
depicted upon the stage. At the end of the first act,
the grand duke rose in his box and disappeared, and
the line of six were upon their feet in the same instant,
their swords rattling and the jewelled rings upon their
fingers gleaming, standing there straight and stiff, un-
til he returned, when they dropped into their seats with
an automatic movement, like puppets in a toy parade.
The same thing happened at the end of the second act,
and I was enjoying it with childish interest, when one
of the men of our party, Count-----, a member of the
Cabinet, whose distinction in statesmanship was as
nothing in his own eyes compared to his record in big
game shooting, begged to be excused. He had that
morning received news of a bear in the forest some fifty
miles away, and was starting for the hunt at midnight.
In a second, forgetting everything but the momentous
fact that a real bear hunt was suspended before my
vision, I had seized his arm and begged to go. And
although he had been bear-hunting from his seventeenth
birthday until that time, which was close upon his sev-
entieth, and had never before dreamed of the idea of
taking a lady along, he suavely and cordially assented﻿A Bear Hunt—A Country House Visit 163
without a moment’s hesitation—as a Russian would
smilingly do to oblige a feminine friend—even if it
meant his immediate ruin!
There was an hour of hurried preparation in getting
back to the hotel for a change of clothes, and, finding
a native maid who was equal to the demands of the ex-
pedition, then a slow railway journey to the village
nearest to where the bear had been seen. The count
had telegraphed on ahead, and the station master’s wife
had a bedroom prepared, where I had a few hours’ sleep,
while the count made the arrangements outside, which
consisted chiefly of sending word to all the men and
boys of the village to be on hand in the morning. They
came trooping into the station by the dozen as we were
eating our improvised breakfast, and I remember the
look of consternation which passed from face to face
when I held up my coffee cup to drink to my friend’s
good luck, and the sudden exclamation of dismay from
the hunter himself. To the superstitious Russian, it
is the worst possible bad luck to wish a sportsman good
luck, just before starting out. The count wore a rough
fur coat and stout boots, but had brought along his
sable-lined overcoat for me, and some high fur boots,
and quantities of white sheets, which he and the maid
wound round and round me from top to toe, giving me
two holes for my eyes and one for my nose. Then they
deposited me in a low sledge filled with straw, which was
drawn by two enormous Russian hounds, the count
meanwhile putting on a loose white linen cloak over his
fur, with a hood which concealed the face. As we﻿164 Intimacies of Court and Society
plunged into the depths of the snow-covered forest, we
seemed a part of it, which was exactly the cunningly
devised plan of the sportsman to hide us from the no-
tice of the bear. The peasants were scattered about,
roping in a wide area of a mile or two, to enclose the
prey, the rope decorated with a multitude of tiny
flaunting pennants in bright colours to catch his eye.
Then they would go back to where he was sleeping in
his berlogi or winter quarters, and raise a hue and cry
to frighten him out. I was put up against a snow-
laden tree, where a dozen bears would have passed me—
as long as I stood perfectly still. This was the sole
admonition of my friend, somewhat troubled at the last
moment at the possibility of not returning me safely
back to my hotel.
The men moved silently through the solemn, mys-
terious pine forest, flooded with sunlight and laden
with the fragrance of absolute purity, while the king
of game birds, the wide-winged capercailzie, took his
flight with a soft tok-tok to say good-bye. For one
swift moment I caught a glimpse of a streak of fleeing
red fur, as a fox took his departure, leaving behind him
a neat track imprinted in the snow, and the white flash
of a disappearing hare, given his own snow-coloured
protecting coat in winter, although in summer he is a
ruddy brown. And a peasant, whispering, pointed out
the track of an elk, one of the many who roam from
forest to forest through Russia and Finland, their regal
heads thrown back, with the soft eyes ever upon the
alert, and the majestic horns outspread.﻿A Bear Hunt—A Country House Visit 165
It was an age of suspense in the dead silence of the
snow forest, before I heard the noise of the hue and
cry in the far distance, continuing faintly, and then
more distinctly, and coming nearer and nearer to where
I stood, too excited to be frightened, but with a white-
robed peasant crouching as protection behind me, his
gun underneath his coat. Finally, “ bang ” went the
count’s rifle, from an angle where I could not see, then
“ bang ” once more. Then the whole forest seemed
suddenly to suspend its breath.
At last the great mangy beast came into view and
stumbled past me, snorting and moaning and moving
his head from side to side, but blindly, and seeing
nothing. His track was marked by a thin line of
blood, but when he dropped, it was into a pool of blood
covering the snow like a crimson carpet, as he groaned
and moaned in the anguish of his farewell to life. A
crowd of peasants came running up and, after them, the
count, but he understood my unspoken wish, and poor
Bruin was allowed to die in peace. But a moment after
they had surrounded him, with long sharp knives in
their hands. It seemed but an instant after I had
turned my head away, so as not to 'see what they were
doing—they laid the skin at my feet.
And its glossy fur rests beneath my chair as I write
these lines.
The St. Petersburg season, so brilliant and costly, is
necessarily short. Upon these brief months of gaiety
is spent everything that can be raked and scraped to-﻿166 Intimacies of Court and Society
gether, and then the family often retire to their coun-
try estate. Country house visiting is rare, and the
Russians do not take the pride and interest in their
country homes that the English have always done, and
latterly the Americans. They prefer to know you and
to be known from their life in town. But there they are
cosmopolitan, with the language and social arts espe-
cially of the French, tabooing their own language as
fit in talking only to the servants. It is in the country
where one finds them really Russian.
It was in March, and the season in town had waned,
although the grip of winter had not relaxed, when I
found myself early one morning at a small station in
the steppes after a night’s journey. The country
place of my friends, Prince and Princess ------, who
were taking me home with them, lay nearly two hours
away, but the troika stood ready, having been sent
overnight. At the station there was plenty of hot tea,
tea such as one gets only in Russia, and soon the horses
started across the snow—snow in front, around, behind,
snow covering the ground for miles and miles, a veritable
wilderness of snow, snow! The horses seemed to pick
their way by instinct, for the path was often oblit-
erated, and soon we passed through a village where the
cottages stood upon the snow; no trees, nothing but
snow, snow. The curtains were drawn at the windows,
and apparently all the cottagers were asleep. But sud-
denly there was a terrific din, and we were surrounded
by an army of wild-looking dogs, which sprang yelling
at the horses’ noses, trying to bite them. They looked﻿Trophies of one of the Count’s successful bear hunts. A peasant
huntsman on guard﻿﻿A Bear Hunt—A Country House Visit 167
fierce enough to terrify any one, but the driver was as
cool and collected as though he had only some playful
puppies gambolling about him. He gave the reins of
the plunging horses to the prince, and then, standing
on the steps of the troika, threw out his knout, with its
lash fifteen feet long, to drive off the dogs. They fell
away, howling with pain, and we soon left them far
behind. We raced through another village like the
first, where the thatched roofs came down to about
three feet from the ground, but the dogs did not molest
us there, then over a frozen river, and so fast through
the gates of the park that we had but a glimpse of
the stone lions which guarded it. Then, faster than
ever, up and down hill, fairly flying over the ground,
and then to a stop, sudden and exciting, before the
broad steps of the house. The servants were waiting
for their master, who became in a moment the mediaeval
boyard, and, as he dismounted from the sleigh, they
bent to kiss his hand as in the old days of serfdom.
Russian country houses are not old, as a rule, because
they are generally built of wood, but this one dated
from the time of Catherine the Great. She gave it to
one of her brave—and amorous—generals, and his
descendants, the present owners, had fitted it up in
keeping with the period, essentially French. Marble
steps led up to the terrace, where we entered through
long glass doors into an immense hall, with countless
small tables and settees. My bedroom was correspond-
ingly large, you could have danced a cotillion in it. The﻿168 Intimacies of Court and Society
family coat-of-arms and the prince’s monogram were
painted in gold in the hall and above the entrance to
many of the rooms, and they were upon every piece of
china in the dining-room and upon every napkin. But
they were most interesting, carved in the mantels above
the big fireplaces, woven in the rugs upon the floors,
or set in the beautiful stained-glass windows. The
princess’s bedroom was hung in rose brocade and fur-
nished entirely in rose, with a toilet set of solid silver
in antique Italian style, which was a gift from her
father, a rich Moscow merchant, whose fortune had re-
habilitated the prince’s position and his family estate.
She had ravishing dressing tables draped with rose silk
and lighted by tall silver candelabra, and every conceiv-
able article for the toilet. But the prince’s plain bed-
room was fitted up for a soldier, with swords hanging
at the foot of the bed, and his sitting-room was filled
with a collection of antique armour.
It was a quiet, unconventional visit, and each per-
son followed his own sweet will. For several days I
never saw the princess before twelve, although I knew
she was up early, attending to her household duties, and
had an hour or two in her studio, being devoted to art.
But later she initiated me into the mysteries of Russian
housekeeping, and showed me where, in the servants’
quarters, the spinning and weaving were going on in
preparation for the summer, and huge caldrons, where
the “ solid soup ” was being prepared, of mutton and
beef and hare, with many kinds of fragrant herbs boiled
down, and cooled until solid enough to be cut with the﻿A Bear Hunt—A Country House Visit 169
knife, and sealed up until needed in the months that
followed.
In the afternoons we sometimes drove through the
forest; silent and mysterious it was, and I was glad not
to be alone, although the horses were as swift and sure
as Arabs. The library was the rendezvous for the late
afternoon, and there we had tea at five, English after-
noon tea, with the difference of the samovar, instead
of the steaming kettle, lemon for the tea, and sweets,
candied peaches and pears and strawberries, every fruit
almost in preserves, so rich and withal so pretty, that
they seemed too good to eat. In the library, with its
walls and ceiling of carved wood, we lounged or read
in the midst of books in many languages, rare old manu-
scripts upon the shelves, and bronze figures of warriors,
poets, and musicians, Catherine and her friend, the gen-
eral, among them, looking coldly down upon us. To
the left of the library lay the picture gallery, where
Catherine figured again, resplendent in her imperial
robes, and generations of family portraits hung quite as
in an English ancestral hall. Glass doors opened out
from the library upon a portico supported by marble
columns, the steps took one. down to the terrace, and
beyond there was a tiny path along the river. And
everywhere, snow, snow.
The prince and princess had no children at home,
but we were a numerous family. The princess had a
distant relative, a young widow, with her four chil-
dren, who were poor, and who made their home upon the
estate, with a suite of rooms in the big house, and every﻿170 Intimacies of Court and Society
consideration and comfort; and there was the prince’s
sister, who had been a teacher in St. Petersburg for
thirty years—a rich and beautiful child when her
father’s serfs were freed, but now a broken-down school-
room drudge. Then there was the old governess, whom
the princess had had for her own children, and who was
passing her fortieth year in the family circle, an old lady
of eighty, to whom the princess always sent up an ample
meal. Had the family been poor, she would still have
been cared for, with the same expression one receives in
the households of the poor aristocracy, where one finds
the same boundless charity. “ She is poor and old and
helpless; what can I do but take her in ? ”
Strange faces often appeared at the table, Russian
guests who came uninvited, but were welcome, relatives
or friends or, perhaps, only mere acquaintances, pass-
ing that way, and unable to get lodging elsewhere. It
was like a glimpse of the Middle Ages, when the modem
hotel was undreamt of, and the wayfarer was refreshed
at cottage and castle.
Dinner was at seven, a cosmopolitan meal, served
with ceremony and with half a dozen servants in the
room; but, before we took our places, we gathered in
informal fashion around the buffet, where the zakuska
of smoked herring, caviare sandwiches, pickled mush-
rooms, and vodka was served as an appetiser. At table
we began with the soup, generally having with it a tiny
hot scone filled with chopped meat, and the soup itself
of cabbage, or of beets, when there would be a thick
sour cream for it, which I ate politely in much the﻿A Bear Hunt—A Country House Visit 171
same way that Becky Sharp ate the famous red pepper
at Joseph Smedley’s invitation. The Russian fowl was
tender and toothsome with pickled cherries, and I re-
member the roast mutton, stuffed with buckwheat, and
the cucumbers always on the table, carefully prepared
for the winter use. There is a Russian proverb,
“ Everything is nothing compared to eternity, but
eternity gives place to a salted cucumber.”
At the end the children and gentlemen would all go
up to the princess, kiss her hand, and thank her for
the dinner in the gracious Russian fashion, and the
very religious ones would cross themselves before leav-
ing the table. And at ten o’clock there was tea again,
with cold meat, cheese, and sweets in abundance, with
the old governess—who came downstairs for the even-
ing—to serve it and wash our cups and saucers of
Dresden china in the samovar bowl without leaving her
seat.
In the evenings the peasants, in their picturesque
garb, would sometimes come timidly in and up to the
master for certain favours or advice, and at eleven
o’clock the table was always cleared for the inevitable
game of cards, played lazily and amicably, with cigar-
ettes lighted and discarded, one after another.
Indoors, in the daytime, one might imagine for a
while that one was in Italy, France, even in England.
The home life was that of people who have visited many
countries, become acquainted with many national cus-
toms, and able to give any traveller a touch of his﻿172 Intimacies of Court and Society
native life, a breath from his native land. Out of
doors one saw always the Russian peasant dress, and
Russia was everywhere. But it was at night, as we
lay in our spacious chambers, that we realised most
that we were in the heart of the Russian country, for
there the wild winter birds in the forest began their
cries, and the forest itself, under the moonlight, gave
forth pictures weird, even terrifying—ice and snow as
far as the eye could reach—and did not that cry sound
like a wolf—was not that sound the step of a bear?
Then we heard the night watchman call out, and the
answer of the master that all was well. Then we went
to sleep. To dream of Russia? Ah, no! to dream of
home scenes and home faces—to forget that we were in
the wild Russian country.﻿IX
GERMANY
BERLIN AND THE COURT OF THE KAISER
In coming to Berlin from any part of Europe, one has
for a while a bewildering feeling of insecurity in one’s
social moorings. One’s French is not universally use-
ful, every one at court is supposed to know German,
and the language tabooed with contempt in St. Peters-
burg as fit only for business dealings with the men who
have captured the country’s banking and its commerce
—comes to you in Berlin vibrant with the note of chal-
lenge, shrill and dominating, its amazing contortions
and combinations of syllables, its turnings and twist-
ings of the resounding r-r-rh rolling out like a paean
of conquest.
The religion a la mode of complaisance or scepticism
of Paris, the cold, punctilious church-going of Rome
and London, and its supercilious amusement at Non-
conformist warmth, to which one becomes habituated
with years, and accepts as a matter of course—it drops
from you like a threadbare garment consumed in the
flame of Luther’s burning torch. How like part of an-
other world it seems, when you take up your abode in
one of the ultra-smart, exclusive little hospices of Ber-
lin, where you have eloquent morning and evening
173﻿174 Intimacies of Court and Society
prayers, and count among your cards to dinner and to
lunch weekly invitations to “ come for hymns.” It car-
ries one back to the small towns of thefarWest, where the
Methodist camp meetings are the rendezvous of society.
You smilingly tolerate it in Berlin as a diversion and
idiosyncrasy of race, but you soon discover that it is
only one of many tokens of Teutonic virility and
depth of thought which accepts a thousand restric-
tions of etiquette, but none of shams and surface
things.
Your superficial chatter about books and people does
not interest those serious-eyed Germans, fresh from their
mental gymnastics with Kant and Hegel; your bel esprit
falters and disappears before their ponderous question-
ings. But so also melts your English reserve before
the masculinity towering above you in a giant’s mag-
nificence of physique, but looking down with the senti-
mental softness of a schoolboy. You are touched by
the sacredness of the Teuton’s grande passion for his
music, even the frivolous jeunesse doree possess this
immortal gift; and the debauch of concerts which in-
toxicates and befuddles your foreigner’s brain, the Ber-
liner takes in unemotional potations night after night
during the length of the long season, and emerges with
his musical digestion unimpaired.
But after a few dinings out in the world of official
life, all things of digestion appear possible to him,
whether of the brain or the diaphragm. So you think,
as you watch him making his vigorous, stolid attack
upon monumental feasts that would stupefy with horror﻿Berlin and the Court of the Kaiser 175
a Parisian Sybarite, eating his way solemnly for three
mortal hours through a dozen different courses with a
dozen different wines—and a secret tip to the butler for
champagne in his water glass. He rises unabased and
unscathed, not even jocosely “ mellow,” escorts you
steadily to the drawing-room door, kisses your hand
with the malzeit of ceremony, and walks off to coffee,
liqueurs, and cigars with the unconcern of everyday
things.
In the circles about the court every one has his
proper place, in a settled scheme of functions and
functionaries as immutable as the laws of the Medes
and the Persians; and the “ Frau Privy Councillor ”
and the “ Frau Staats Minister ” complacently hold
their humdrum sway unaffected by costume combina-
tions of purple, pink, and emerald green, by embonpoint
and the absence of a waist line, by such little things as
loveliness of face and form, a pretty art in repartee, or
brilliancy in hospitality. Smart, handsome young of-
ficers, le dernier cri of dandyism and conceit, pay per-
functory, funereal court, very evidently “ by com-
mand,” to femininity possessing neither youth nor
beauty, the soft allurements of virtue, nor the enticing
bewitchments of vice—but which is “ Excellency ”—
all of this and nothing more!
I was young and unimportant when I first visited
the Berlin court, and I remember that the weapons of
womanly conquest—good looks, Parisian toilettes, in-
tellectuality and spirituality, sympathetic and matured
in charm—were all so useless for a grand succes, that﻿176 Intimacies of Court and Society
for a week I thought I should die of chagrin. But it
was all so unutterably comic—with no one with the
slightest glimpse of humour to see—that in the end I
felt I must live to laugh.
The story of a court season is to-day the same as
twenty years ago, in all its important things, in spite
of the growth of the city into a durably built imitation
of an ugly mushroom town, and its ceaseless striving
for plutocratic power. The American ambassador is
one day “ master of his own front door,” with a princely
mansion for his dwelling, and the next day finds it sold
over his head, the same as his colleagues throughout the
world; and the Berlin wag has a chance to tell his old
tale about the foreign gentleman arrested for loitering
all night in the Tiergarten, and his plaintive reply to
the policeman’s threat, “ Go home; I can’t go home. I
have no home. I am the American Ambassador.”
The Kaiser grows a little greyer year by year, but
otherwise he changes not, or, rather, is the same ever-
changing, whether among his thousand different uni-
forms, his fifty different castles, his yachts, and his
motor cars, or among the multiplied diversity of his
accomplishments and his moods. His familiar figure on
horseback in the Tiergarten comes and goes with the
rising and the setting of the sun, his withered arm skil-
fully braced to deceive the multitude and hide his own
bitter mortification. At court, now as always, he is
attended by Count von Eulenburg—a distant relative
of the central figure of the Eulenburg scandal—pre-
ceding him in the procession to the throne, his knee-﻿Berlin and the Court of the Kaiser 177
breeches, white silk stockings, dashing array of medals,
and high Louis XVI wand of office, seeming to know
nothing of the flight of time, as his tall, handsome figure
shows nothing of the weight of his seventy years. And
the Countess Brockdorff attends the Empress the same
as when Augusta Victoria assumed the imperial robes.
The Empress seldom appears any more on horseback,
a loss in every spectacular military review, as she made
a strikingly handsome appearance, sitting her steed like
a Diana.
She has almost no social existence apart from her
husband, except the little evening teas to which she in-
vites a few old friends who are interested in her char-
ities, or, perhaps, in mourning, and cannot therefore go
to the Schleppen Cour. They congregate about nine
o’clock in the Louis Quatorze salon of the Schloss, which
is in gold and white brocaded hangings, and, after the
Kaiser has finished his dinner, and she is at liberty,
the Kaiserin comes in. The servants pass around
tea and, later on, some wine; there may, perhaps, be a
little music, and upon rare occasions there may be a
few men. But His Majesty never comes. He says
frankly, “ I don’t care for women ”—which nobody be-
lieves to be really true!
The imperial court at Berlin is so modern itself that
it has no traditions to conserve, but over in lovely little
Dresden there is, on New Year’s evening, a picturesque
ceremony, a relic of the mediaeval ages, full of poetry
and romance. In the olden days it was the custom for
the courtiers to go to the king’s palace at this time,﻿178 Intimacies of Court and Society
and they paid their respects as he sat playing cards be-
neath the candlelight; and to-day, if you are invited
there to court, you file past a group of three or four
card tables; the King and his suite, every one intent
upon the game except the King, whose aide-de-camp
stands behind his chair and whispers the card for him
to throw. For the King must nod to each one of the
several hundred people who file past him, the ladies, with
their long trains folded and hung over their arms, ex-
cept it be a princess, who has the right to sweep past
with her train on the floor. The candles still light the
room, but there seems to be a million of them in a
soft, mellow flood radiating from crystal chandeliers.
Slowly the King throws down a card from his hand,
then bows as a curtseying lady catches his eye, then an-
other card—another nod—another card—another nod.
The game at the tables goes on all evening, until the
long procession has come to an end, and—like it has
always been for hundreds of years—the King’s card
score is always the one that wins.
The life of the old-fashioned aristocracy goes on in
Berlin the same to-day as fifty years ago, among im-
poverished dignitaries of the state, the army, and the
navy, who grudgingly offer each year the smallest
number and the most economically appointed dinners
and receptions possible under the rigid etiquette, which
forces them to entertain their colleagues and superior
officers. The pomposity of these affairs would some-
times be appalling, if not so amusing because so char-
acteristically German. One can almost imagine one-﻿Berlin and the Court of the Kaiser 179
self back in the old days, when princesses promenaded
up and down the Linden in cotton frocks and cotton
gloves, and when the old King of Prussia and his chil-
dren went to the Christmas fair and carried home pres-
ents and gingerbread tied up in brown paper parcels.
The German diplomatists intime in these circles, the
representatives of the small states which make up the
empire, embody all the nation’s passion for the dignity
of officialdom, and are the most distinguished appearing
men of the Berlin corps. I have in mind one old fel-
low, tall, angular, but graceful, who would winder into
the drawing-rooms of his friends with sublime and de-
lightful nonchalance, his small Blenheim spaniel tucked
into his waistcoat, and take up a position in the middle
of the floor before levelling his eyeglass for a steady,
unblushing inspection of the guests. The gold bracelet
on his wrist would slip up and down, and the antique
rings covering the third and fourth fingers up to the
knuckles displayed to the best advantage. He was
never presented unless he asked to be, but if his gaze
encountered a woman friend’s, he would wander over
and say, “ Is it really you ? ” then seat himself with a
gradual down-letting impossible to describe, the little
Blenheim peering out with impertinent big eyes and ugly
nose, growling if any one approached. But his master
would sit there calmly aloof until a maid brought him
tea, and the hostess came his way, while I would nestle
down in some comer and watch him with fascinated curi-
osity. And I have seen more than one foreign am-
bassador follow him and his kind in Germany with won-﻿180 Intimacies of Court and Society
dering, admiring eyes—the highest product of social
aplomb,
It is in these drawing-rooms where you meet the
long-haired, aesthetic masculine beings whom you have
perhaps noticed skating in the Tiergarten, their long
coats flapping in the breeze; and dozens of young army
officers, whose cheeks are scarred with wounds from
many duels. They talk Wagner and Schopenhauer
with serious appreciation, and whisper in the fraulem’s
ear, in the midst of the waltz, spinning her giddily round
and round like an animated top, “You are as beauti-
ful as (ecstatically)—as a dachshund!”
It is their supreme compliment.
A friend of my mother’s was among the first of the
American girls to marry into official life in Germany,
and, with her daughter, herself the wife of a German
prominent in diplomatic affairs, and a woman now
with married daughters of her own, I have passed many
happy and interesting days.
Those were the days when William the First was
Emperor and Augusta Empress, the ambitious, intel-
lectual woman who was proud to say that, as a young
girl, she had known Goethe, then an old man. His pri-
vate life she never thought of criticising, according to
the German standard of that day, and of this, which
gives every freedom of rapid living to the man, but none
to the woman. But she tried to make her court a
model of purity, and banished any woman touched by
scandal. Yet, as human nature is the same at every﻿Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York
The Kaiser as a young man﻿﻿Berlin and the Court of the Kaiser 181
court and in every cottage, it is not changed by royal
decree.
Women like the American Countess von Hatzfeldt,
with the bewildering, bewitching beaute de diable—and
temperament to match—soon came under Augusta’s
displeasure. The daughter of a Parisian actress, and
a rich, indulgent American father, she had not long
been introduced at the German court before her lively
escapades excited and amused us. Her husband adored
her, and even after she went off with a young army
officer, he took her back—when he found her one winter
evening kneeling before him in the snow as he left his
house—tenderly drew her up into his arms, and carried
her indoors. It was a little drama of the nobility of
man’s rare forgiveness, but it soon became a tragedy
of the woman’s usual paying, when Bismarck offered
Hatzfeldt the post as ambassador to London, but, act-
ing upon the commands of the Empress, demanded
that he divorce his wife. Hatzfeldt refused point-
blank, but the insistence of the countess won the day,
the legal separation was made, with all the world to
know, and Hatzfeldt was officially alone in his hos-
pitalities of the diplomatic world of London. His di-
vorced wife was frequently with him, and he lived
with her openly upon her country estate, and, at last,
when there were grandchildren about their knees, they
were remarried, and one of the most extraordinary do-
mestic situations of Europe was adjusted. One meets
sometimes to-day with the countess, privately in the
homes of her Berlin relatives, a stooping figure, un-﻿182 Intimacies of Court and Society
sightly spectacles over her eyes, worshipped by her
family, ostracised eternally at court, her purse open to
every beggar, her debts forever huge.
The present Kaiser, Augusta’s grandson, has done
his best to emulate her example of austerity at court.
But he likewise has had to endure many things, and life
has gone on much the same, fast and furious where men
and women were reckless and conscienceless, whatever
their birth or high degree.
The days of the Empress Augusta and the Chan-
cellor Bismarck were the days when a German diplomat
who married an American knew that it meant his resig-
nation to Bismarck, who would have nothing of the
“ rule of petticoats ” he thought she represented, but
the days also of the power and prestige of the Amer-
ican Countess von Waldersee, a relative of the imperial
family through her first marriage with Prince Frederick
of Schleswig-Holstein, a dainty, delicate little figure,
with soft, innocent blue eyes and a placid brow, who
never cared to wear the magnificent jewels every one
knew she possessed, nor to dress with any pretence of
style, a Puritan come to court fresh from prayers and
meditations.
One was glad, those days, to laugh at such small
things as von Moltke’s extreme economy, with his wig
which never grew grey with his age, and to weep over
the romance of the Emperor, who, on his ninetieth birth-
day, was found with the portrait of the dead Princess
Radziwill clasped to his heart, as she had looked in her
far-off youth and beauty and radiance of love for him.﻿Berlin and the Court of the Kaiser 183
I remember as a young girl that we used to walk softly
in the Rauchstrasse, near the Tiergarten, to see the
splendid old tree which had been the scene of their
rendezvous, and which was never disturbed during his
lifetime, although occupying a valuable building-site.
It was in the middle eighties when I first saw William
the First and Augusta, at a ball given in one of the
provinces during the army manoeuvres by the landtag
(state legislature) of the province. The night before
the ball we had the zapfenstreich, which was the concert
given by the bands of the army corps marching to the
accompaniment of torchlights to dispel the darkness;
and for the ball we went to the theatre belonging to the
royal castle of the province, where there was an im-
mense tent erected in the garden, under which a thou-
sand people were assembled. The theatre was at the
top of the building, and underneath it was a large hall
which led directly into the garden, the walls having
been knocked out for this special occasion. The royal-
ties were grouped together in the hall, surrounded by
the local dignitaries, and the landesdirector’s wife had
the supreme honour of her life when the Emperor gave
her his arm to open the ball. Down the middle aisle
they marched, then up and down the sides of the room,
the Emperor, tall and stately, and almost benevolent-
looking, with his white beard and bushy side-whiskers.
In the procession were his two brothers, Carl and Al-
bert, all three of them over six feet tall, magnificent
and majestic figures. Afterwards, there was supper
upstairs in the theatre, where the stage was a mass of﻿184 Intimacies of Court and Society
flowers around a big, high-spouting fountain, arranged
there temporarily at great expense. And a party of
us sat for hours in one of the theatre boxes, looking
down upon the brilliant scene.
It was at this time, during the army manoeuvres, that
I first saw the present Kaiser, then a young colonel of
the Leib Guard Hussars at Potsdam, distinguished-
looking in his uniform, with red coat, black trousers
trimmed with gold, and topboots bordered with gold,
but much shorter than the men of his house in the pre-
ceding generation. He was extremely musical, had
charming manners, was very amenable to regimental
discipline, and took his place behind his superior of-
ficers without show of demur. He had nothing to say
in the government, of course, and little to say to
any one in fact. Upon this occasion he appeared to
be enjoying himself to the full, but apparently he did
not, as, under his regime, the provinces no longer en-
tertain their Kaiser. He does it all himself. But no
one can say that the old order may not come back.
It might be returned to-morrow—no one can ever know!
Bismarck I never saw in society either in Berlin or
any place else, but I remember hearing him in the
Reichstag upon that famous day when he was speak-
ing for the enlargement of the army, and thundered out:
“We fear God, but no one else in the world.” His wife
received once a week at her house in the Wilhelmstrasse,
but it was a quiet, unpretentious gathering always, and
generally rather dreary. Neither she nor any one else
had a salon those days as in Paris during the same﻿Berlin and the Court of the Kaiser 185
period. She was supposed to be so domestic as to be
hostile to her husband’s political career, but after his
fall she was the one of the two who was the more bitter.
Those were the days when the beloved Frederick was
crown prince, and his English wife, Queen Victoria’s
daughter, was like a cagfed bird, vainly beating her
wings against Germany’s prejudice and hatred; when
she rode out in her state coach, attended by a young
page on the steps, von Seckendorff, to whom she was a
deity, and who gave her his life with an absolute devo-
tion wonderful to behold. Up to the time of his re-
cent death, Seckendorff was one of the greatest orna-
ments of Berlin society, a genuine connoisseur, and a
practical artist as well, a slender man, with blue eyes
and a fresh complexion, the out-of-doors habits of an
English sportsman, and the most sincere friend Eng-
land has had in Germany for a century. He was a man
of noble heart and soul, a fit mate even for an empress.
If he inspired in the Empress Frederick that extraor-
dinary second passion which comes sometimes to a
woman, generally for a man much her junior, and
rekindles the fires of her beauty, intelligence, and charm
for the brief period of mating before the fire dies out
altogether—if, in her later years, unhappy and es-
tranged from her son, a comparatively young widow,
to whom life must still have meant the eagerness for
love and happiness—she found it in a secret marriage
with Count von Seckendorff, who can be anything but
glad?
I happened to be in Berlin when, as empress, she﻿186 Intimacies of Court and Society
held the only court of her brief regime, at two o’clock
in the afternoon, sitting on the throne robed in black
from head to foot, and her face hidden by a crape veil,
while a long procession of women, likewise veiled in
crape, filed past the throne, their black gowns high in
the neck, and skirts banded with crape a quarter of
a yard wide, and long folds of double crape falling upon
the floor the length of court trains. No one who wit-
nessed it will ever forget that spectral procession. There
was not a yard of crape to be bought in all Germany
for weeks afterwards!
Turning back, my memories take ine to an early
evening in January over twenty years ago, when my
husband and I, in our quiet rooms in one of the then
fashionable hotels in Berlin, were getting ready for the
first court function of the year. I believe it is now al-
most universally called the Schleppen Cour, because the
court trains (schleppen) make there their only appear-
ance of the year; but we in those days spoke of it as the
Defilir Cour, it having been such a short time since the
new order had been established, which holds up to
to-day, the Empress Augusta becoming too old for
the fatigue of passing through the lines of curtseying
ladies ranged along each side of the presentation-room,
and receiving them instead in a defile past the throne.
The time of which I write was, of course, after Will-
iam II had come to the throne; he was considered un-
tried and immature, and Bismarck was still the master
of the empire. But I remember with what nervous
haste we hurried through our dressing that night, ap-﻿Berlin and the Court of the Kaiser 187
palled at the possibility of arriving late before this
haughty-eyed young man, already the exponent of
“ Ich und Gott ”—and how we laughed at the way my
little German maid jumped as if she had been shot
when we heard the horn blast of the Kaiser’s carriage,
as he drove furiously down the Linden, coming in from
Potsdam for the court. Personally, I was as much in
awe of him as was my little maid, and am still to-day,
seeing him everywhere when in Berlin, in imagination or
reality, as one sees—and feels when out of sight—the
martial figure over the Brandenburger Thor towering
over the city, a commanding guardian spirit.
I remember that my dress that night was of rose
silk with duchess lace flounces that went round and
round the narrow skirt like a corkscrew, and with a
bertha cut off below the shoulders. How old-fashioned
it sounds-—and how grand I thought it was! The train
was of rose velvet embroidered in seed pearls—no
modish American woman would wear it to-day at court.
And yet it seemed then too beautiful to put on, as it lay
the length of the sofa and two or three chairs besides,
and as we spread it out on the floor and the cord was
adjusted around my shoulders.
My husband, interrupting his own dressing, came in
from his bedroom and helped pin me up, with strong
safety pins hidden at the top to make it tight to my
dress. Being a foreigner, I did not have to follow the
German rule of a train from the waist, and I did not
have to wear the regulation German court head-dress.
Together, he and the maid folded the train like a big﻿188 Intimacies of Court and Society
bedspread or a huge tablecloth, and then hung it over
my arm, which began at once to ache in anticipation of
carrying such a load for two or three hours. After
which, how humbly he asked me to help him with his tie,
kneeling down so I could get at it, how he patted me
gently and said it was perfect when I did the best I
could, with my hands shaking with excitement, and how
I discovered him at the last moment covertly rescuing
it from where it had lodged under his ear. But he ig-
nored the incident, kissed my hand with a gallant air,
and said gravely, but with a tell-tale twinkle in his
eye: “ The really beautiful part of this gown is the
inner lining—or shall I call it the filling, my dear? ”
At last we were off, driving out in a blinding snow-
storm, a gaping crowd at the hotel doors giving us a
cheer. And at last we had passed the guards, and
were in the midst of the blazing lights of the palace, in
the midst of the brilliant gala uniforms of the
diplomatic corps—in the midst of the staid and solemn
movement of scene so characteristic of the country of
savants and philosophers—where pleasure is taken in
the matter-of-fact way of bread and butter and beer,
not like the Parisians or the Romans take it, delicately
and fastidiously as one does patS de fois gras, or sip it
daintily and slowly as one does sparkling champagne,
with mounting vivacity and animation of charm.
There was little display of jewelry among the women
•—a really handsome tiara created a sensation. For
poverty was then about the only possession of the old
families; they had, many of them, given up to the﻿Invitation to a Court Ball in Berlin﻿﻿Berlin and the Court of the Kaiser 189
state their jewels and family plate during the war
of 1812, and had again made enormous sacrifices in the
Franco-Prussian war. And it was before the modem
fashion of paste gems and borrowed gems, in every
capital and at every court. Berlin jewellers, in com-
mon with those of London, Petersburg, and Rome, had
not yet begun to rent out their precious stones, book-
ing them weeks in advance as an impresario does a vari-
ety actress, and making tiaras at court these days as
common as cabbages in Covent Garden market.
Finally I found myself making my way between two
rows of court pages in the line up to the throne, and
two imposing-looking gentlemen of the household, one
on either side, were spreading out my train on the floor,
moving their long wands skilfully under the heavy
velvet.
The lady just ahead of me, a stout Frenchwoman
of the provinces and the bourgeoisie, whose husband had
suddenly become a power in politics, sedately carried
a train showing the wide white muslin border along the
edge, put there by the dressmaker to protect it in the
making, and which the owner apparently thought to
be part of the decoration. It was so amusing that I
forgot where I was, and looked around to find my hus-
band and prove to him, what I had often contended,
that the genius for clothes was Parisian, not French—
then I saw the Emperor frown and the Empress dis-
play the tiniest shadow of a smile on her good-natured
face—and then I was myself before the throne. I won-
dered afterwards that I had not forgotten my curtseys,﻿190 Intimacies of Court and Society
as an agitated lady with defective eyesight had done
the year before, and was reminded by a startling and
imperious “ Good-night ” from His Majesty when she
found herself quite beyond the imperial dais.
Being foreigners, we went before any of the Ger-
mans, and, as we would have had to wait an hour or
two for supper, which came when the ceremony of
presentation was quite finished, we were back at our
hotel by half-past nine and having a modest little meal
in our rooms, a hot-water bottle against my arm, quite
worn out with carrying the train. In the present day
it is the fashion among the foreigners who go to the
Schleppen Cour to dash through the streets from the
palace in motor cars hung with flowers and ablaze
with lights, and fill the big restaurants for supper,
where all the world and his wife may gaze upon their
finery in ill-concealed envy.
The court balls, following soon after, had the addi-
tional note of brilliancy lent by the presence of the
German army and naval officers, who are too numerous
to be included at the other. The Germans are passion-
ately fond of dancing, and the polonaise and lanciers,
quaint old dances recently revived at court, they ac-
complish with grace and beauty, the officers going
through the pirouettes and chassez-croisez in high boots,
spurs, and swords, with incredible ease. One is not
allowed to reverse at a court ball in Berlin—it is the
imperial code of ultra modesty, and it is often safer
for a foreign-born woman to stand by and look on
than take the chances of being reprimanded by a lady-﻿Berlin and the Court of the Kaiser 191
in-waiting because her skirts twirled around her ankles
and showed her stockings. To the German woman, the
faster she can be spun the greater her joy. To swoon
almost with dizziness places her in the seventh heaven
of delight.
But the most brilliant spectacle of the winter was the
gala opera in honour of the Kaiser’s birthday, when,
from one of the stalls allotted to the ladies of the
diplomatic corps, I looked down upon the parquet
thronged with the uniformed men of the imperial gov-
ernment, the senate, and municipality of Berlin, with
the boxes filled with cabinet ministers, ambassadors, gen-
erals, and admirals. Into the royal boxes, looking truly
majestic and imperial, came the Emperor, bowing with
the regularity of a man chopping wood, and the
Empress, the King of Saxony, the King of Wurtem-
burg, and almost all the grand dukes of the empire, in
Berlin to pay homage to the Hohenzollern chief and his
consort. They all bowed to the right of the gallery,
and the rows of women swept down in a simultaneous
movement, charming to behold; then to the left, and
jewels flashed and decorations glistened as the lines
swept down again in soft billows of lace and satin.﻿X
THE IMPERIAL FAMILY
My husband was an authority upon a certain phase
of international law then occupying the attention of
Germany and the United States, and the Kaiser sent for
him through the American minister—it was before the
post was raised to the rank of an embassy. But when
he was in the palace, and just about ascending the
stairs leading up to the audience room, he was sud-
denly confronted by the little Crown Prince, riding
madly down on the balustrade, and saluting as he
rolled off at the bottom—to be caught by a palace
servant and carried back, howling and struggling. My
husband was kept waiting fifteen minutes in the ante-
room, while a very audible chastisement took place be-
hind the closed doors. And when His Majesty
finally received him, with face flushed and eye flash-
ing, he seemed to have forgotten entirely about the
subject of international law—for he spent the entire
hour in a dissertation on the necessity of paren-
tal discipline—to a man who had no children of his
own!
Cecil Rhodes, some years afterwards, was telling us
about his audience with the Kaiser, remarkable because
the visitor was allowed to do most of the talking.
Rhodes had gone to Berlin to inspect some electrical
192﻿193
The Imperial Family
works near the city, and the Emperor sent for him
through the British ambassador, who, however, made
his demands for court dress so imperatively that Rhodes
refused to go unless in his “ everyday ” clothes. I re-
member Mr. Rhodes saying that he was so annoyed at
the ambassador’s “ flunkeyism ”—as he called it—that
he went further than he ought to have done, and pur-
posely walked into the audience chamber with his slouch
hat tucked under his arm, and sat down at once, which
happened to be before the Kaiser did. But, naturally
enough, this independence quite won William II’s heart,
and he entered into a long and intimate conversation
about English affairs, finally demanding, “ Now, why is
it that I am not popular in England? ” The South
African was enough of a diplomat to reply that His
Majesty had many friends in England, but the ques-
tion was persisted in, and then followed up with,
“ What can I do to make myself popular? ”	“ Sup-
pose you just try doing nothing,” Rhodes had an-
swered before he thought. The Kaiser frowned om-
inously, his piercing eyes upon his visitor; then he
slapped him on the back and broke into laughter. He
saw the joke.
However, Rhodes in his turn became embarrassed,
and he got up to go, saying that he was due out at the
electrical works, which brought out a volley of more
questions, and the Kaiser confessed that he had never
seen them and had no idea they were so important.
“ The next morning,” Mr. Rhodes said, “ I was not yet
up when one of the Emperor’s aides-de-camp, an old﻿194 Intimacies of Court and Society
friend of mine, burst into my room and dropped ex-
hausted into an easy-chair. ‘ See here, Rhodes, how
long are you staying in Berlin? ’ he asked me, and when
I naturally enquired why he wanted to know, he said
that he hoped if I did stay, I wouldn’t be giving the
Kaiser any more free advice; they had all been up
since four o’clock that morning dragging themselves
through that electrical plant.”
If he takes the notion, the Kaiser may keep a dis-
tinguished foreigner waiting in Berlin for a week to be
received—but I believe it is not always whimsical con-
trariness, and that he frequently has a slight cold and
wants to wait—until he is able to do all the talking.
But it is never safe for a celebrated foreigner, espe-
cially an army officer, to stop in Berlin without the
proper clothes, in case the Emperor wants to summon
him to an audience. A friend of my husband’s, a noted
American general long since retired from the service,
was unofficially in the German capital for a few days,
and, not having his uniform, was considerably dis-
concerted when the ambassador informed him that he
was invited to be the Emperor’s guest at the military
manoeuvres at Potsdam. He went, of course, in plain
clothes, and explained the situation with many apol-
ogies, but was told, with a cordial smile: “ It doesn’t
make the least bit of difference. I would be glad to see
you in your nightshirt.”
It would be difficult to find a more thorough aristo-
crat than the Kaiser. With himself it is forever, “ Ich﻿The Imperial Family	195
und Gott,” and he takes care that his crack regiment,
the Garde du Corps, shall be as exclusive as any in
Europe. Astride upon a royal charger, clad in their
cuirassier uniform of white, his head thrown back, his
eyes gleaming under the helmet of shining brass, crested
with the Hohenzollern eagle, he is the majestic war lord
of mediaeval times in its perfect embodiment.
His officers are the pick of the empire’s ancient
lineage, but in building up Berlin he has been shrewd
enough to recognise the uses of democracy. As an am-
bassador remarked—after he was out of the service—
“ The Kaiser visits and receives wherever he has an axe
to grind.” He has built up a plutocratic Berlin, raised
coal barons to the rank of princes, and feasted in his
palace the mighty bankers who, in other years, stood
fawning and cringing in the anteroom. Their wives
and daughters give superb balls and theatricals, which
make a Berlin season to-day a thing of magnificence
and splendour, and their sons are setting up racing
stables and affecting the monocle and the swagger of
the English sportsman. It is all a change to add
gaiety and cosmopolitanism to the German capital, but
it will never be genuinely attractive to the cosmopol-
itan until one meets there at court the eminent men and
women of learning, received on equal terms as in Lon-
don and Paris.
I said to my husband a good many times that I en-
vied him his introduction to the Crown Prince, but my
own was not without incident. He had then become﻿196 Intimacies of Court and Society
himself a father, and capable of being as grave and dig-
nified as any state ceremony demanded of its heir to
the throne, but still unable, happily, to repress en-
tirely the natural gaiety and spontaneity of his dis-
position. I had gone to a diplomatic ball, where he
was expected, but had not seen him, and remarked to
my escort in a disappointed tone that I had come on
purpose to see the Crown Prince—had he appeared?
The gentleman had scarcely time to whisper, “ Why,
there he is, right at your elbow,” when he came up,
made a profound bow, with his heels clicking together
in the most approved German fashion, laughing and
holding out his hand, “ Good-evening, madame; I am
the Crown Prince.” He had on the dress uniform of a
naval officer, a short jacket with white military col-
lar braided in silver, his “ ventilation ” uniform, he
calls it, because there are no coat-tails, and he can
wear it open, and he walked about unceremoniously,
pumping his arms up and down in his favourite gesture,
making his bow before half the women in the room, re-
membering their names, and beaming down upon them
with his bright boyish smile, appealing in its simplicity
and genuineness. His tall figure is excessively thin,
and the face, with its big, blond moustache, is far from
handsome, and he himself would be the first to declare
that his intellectual capacity paled into insignificance
before his father’s. But he is adored throughout the
length and breadth of the empire, and will ascend the
throne as “ The Well Beloved.”
It was good to see him and the Crown Princess﻿Copyright by Underwood & Underwood. New York
The children of the German Crown Prince: Prince William, five years old and a future
Kaiser; Prince Louis Ferdinand, aged four; and Prince Hubertus, aged two﻿﻿The Imperial Family	197
dancing together, her numerous dimples twinkling in
and out like so many stars, making her face prettily
piquant, and her soft eyes full of tenderness and sweet-
ness. Both of them were missing at supper time, and
we discovered that the hostess had arranged a table for
them and a few of their intimate friends at the top of
the big house, in the children’s nursery, where the
sounds of their hilarity could not penetrate below.
Under their influence there has actually developed a
“ smart set ” at the Berlin court, a thing one would
have thought, in the days of the Empress Augusta, im-
possible ever to come to pass. They have set the rage
for Parisian dressmakers and Viennese tailors, for bright
little dinner dances, elegant and vivacious, and, like the
Faubourg Revolts of the young Parisian aristocracy,
they refuse to be bored by people or by things not
entertaining in themselves, but tolerated hitherto be-
cause they, had a dozen generations of time behind
them.
It was the Crown Princess who started the fashion
for wearing picture hats with ball dresses, when they
were staying at Heiligendamm, a little resort on the
Baltic; coming to a dance in a white silk frock with a
big hat of white and pink roses. Her cousin, the Duchess
Antoinette of Mecklenburg, wore a hat of yellow silk
gauze, the same material as her dress, and all the young
ladies of the entourage, hearing of the proposed in-
novation, followed it. The tout-ensemble was charm-
ing, but dancing was difficult. However, it was far
away from solemn Berlin, and the merrymaking went﻿198 Intimacies of Court and Society
on fast and furious. One evening the Crown Prince
started a series of bicycle races round and round the
pier, and the next night several of his friends came
upon the scene with wheelbarrows. The Duchess An-
toinette was taking a ride, a young guardsman steer-
ing the barrow, when he suddenly tumbled over into the
sea and was rescued in the midst of a gale of laughter,
which redoubled when he declared that he and the
duchess had arranged the whole thing beforehand.
The Crown Prince admired enthusiastically his great-
uncle, King Edward, and philosophers who want to
speculate upon his position in Germany when he be-
comes emperor have only to study the career and in-
fluence of Edward VII. As emperor he will be the
leader of society in Europe, and he will be held in deep
• affection by all classes in his empire, as he has taken
the time to go among them in his simple, unaffected
way, with that bright, kindly smile which wins hearts
among his father’s bitterest enemies; and the grave,
delicate questions of state will be left in the hands of
German statesmen. Germany will lose the strong and
extraordinary personality of the Kaiser, so respected,
and even feared, in Europe, and the dominating person-
ality since the death of King Edward, but it is not at
all likely that Germany will suffer. German states-
men have a passion for the Vaterland, and will not be-
tray her interests. And the Crown Prince has shown a
marked tendency to accept advice from those older
and wiser than himself—a quality in the ruler which
would have saved Germany difficulties in several ex-﻿The Imperial Family	199
tremely delicate situations, had the present Kaiser pos-
sessed it.
The Crown Prince came of age in 1900, and a year
or two later it was discovered that he was in debt some
$20,000; and he was sent on a long sea cruise as a
punishment. But his mother and father were largely
to blame. As a boy he was always kept upon a very
small allowance; his father believed in making it small
for the sake of discipline, and his mother for the sake
of economy. Then he was suddenly made Governor of
Pomerania and Prince of Oels, which brought with it
large revenues. This money seemed to him an enormous
sum, and the first year or two he spent it recklessly.
But one hears nothing of his extravagance these days.
As an all-round sportsman, the Crown Prince is King
Edward’s equal. He is a dead shot, and when he was
nineteen he killed eight boars during one hunt near
Berlin. He can ride like an Indian, and can keep his
seat on the wildest colt in his father’s stable. His feat
in riding his horse up the steps of the palace at Pots-
dam is well known. The way he handles the ribbons
over a four-in-hand is one of the sights of Berlin. He
is fond also of driving tandem, but loves best to be on
the back of a horse. He is an expert swordsman and
swimmer. But a favourite pastime is playing tennis;
he is one of the best tennis-players in Germany, but
refuses to play with a person who is willing to let him
win because of his rank.
At Bonn he did not make a brilliant record as a
student, being more interested in athletics, and it must﻿200 Intimacies of Court and Society
be confessed that he was more interested in having a
good time. Once when it was reported that he was ill
in bed, he was really enjoying the sights of gay Paris,
having managed to elude the professors and slip away.
His father discovered it, of course, and the young man
had un mauvais quart d’heure. But he could not be
induced to believe that he had done anything so very
wrong, and he maintained his position with tenacity.
Although so extremely popular generally, he was not so
with the students at Bonn, but that was probably be-
cause he declined to drink as much beer as German
students think is necessary to an education, and be-
cause he rebuked a student one day who told an indecent
story at a banquet.
His greatest accomplishment is his music. He has a
Stradivarius violin which belonged to Queen Louise, and
he prizes it more highly than even his horses. He will
practise upon it for hours, and then take it under his
arm to the house of a friend. He has composed sev-
eral things for the violin. But he does not care for
Wagner, which pleases his father—the Kaiser having
long ago settled Wagner’s place in history for all loyal
subjects. The Crown Prince is a sunny-natured fel-
low, with the kindest heart imaginable, and a poetical
temperament that makes him think all women are
angels. As a young man he was easily susceptible to
feminine charm, and it is doubtless true that he has
sown his wild oats. But when one considers the fact
that the most beautiful and fascinating women of soci-
ety and the stage will spend years trying to attract﻿The Imperial Family	201
the attention of a royal prince, and scheme to inveigle
him into an intrigue, the remarkable thing is that he
has not horrified Europe and indulged in the open and
shameless excesses so well known to exist among royal
princes. But he has always been devoted to his
mother, in spite of her trying to keep him in leading-
strings. He has always had a special salute for her,
which he gives no one else. His friends say that he
never tried to conceal anything from his mother nor
from his father either, even when he knew the Kaiser
would regard as a disgraceful escapade what was in
reality nothing but a boyish prank.
The woman who will share his throne will wield a
great influence upon the nation, because the Crown
Prince has a nature which demands a woman’s sym-
pathy. And the Crown Princess has the happy com-
bination from her German father of sense and stability,
and from her mother the vivacity and charm which
have made the Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia fa-
mous. The average German madchen has not enough
of the coquette about her to have pleased Prince Wil-
helm’s fancy. He has been attracted momentarily to
several American girls, who have thrown themselves at
his head. But the American girl herself he does not
understand, nor particularly admire. He is somewhat
afraid of her.
Women in the everyday walks of life who have a
day at home may take the domestic delight of getting
the house in readiness for their friends and receiving﻿202 Intimacies of Court and Society
them when they come to call, but etiquette does not
allow an empress such pleasures. Every one who goes
to court in Berlin must call upon the Kaiserin at the
beginning of the season, but it is her mistress of cere-
monies, Countess Brockdorff, who receives them for her,
a tall, stately woman, whose black hair has grown gray
in the royal service, and whom strangers at court
recognise at once by the black lace scarf which she
wears draped from her hair and falling below her waist.
You call at her apartment in the Schloss on Monday,
Thursday, or Saturday, from three to five, giving your
card to a lackey at the door, who takes it to a gentle-
man-in-waiting sitting at the hall table, and who en-
ters it in the visitors’ book. You are then escorted
through several rather commonplace-looking salons of
the Schloss; you make your entree before the mistress
of ceremonies, who is delighted to speak English,
French, or German, as you prefer, who is charmed that
you will be seen at court this year, and who then passes
you on to the ladies of the entourage who are assisting
her. You look in vain for a fragrant cup of tea, and
fifteen minutes later make your adieux and depart, as
it is expected you should do.
Countess Brockdorff is always present at the cere-
monies of state, and at the Schleppen Cour, when
presentations are made before the throne. She stands
just behind the Empress and whispers the name into
her ear, as Count von Eulenburg, leaning on his long
wand of office, does to the Emperor. There are also﻿The Imperial Family	203
Countess Keller and Fraulein von Gernsdorff, who are
hofstaatsdamen (ladies-of-state), and whom the Em-
press has living with her the year around, giving each
of them a private apartment in the Schloss at Berlin
and at Potsdam, with a lady’s-maid and a lackey from
the royal servants, and an automobile or a carriage
from the royal stables, as well as a large salary and the
promise of a pension upon retirement. Then she has a
hofdame and two ehrendamen (ladies-of-honour), who
alternate in service for a few weeks at a time. One of
them, Countess Bassewitz, is celebrated for her tall,
blonde beauty and chic dressing, somewhat in contrast,
it must be confessed, to many of the women of the Ger-
man court. When the Kaiserin’s daughter made her
appearance in society, Fraulein von Saldem was chosen
by the mother as lady-in-waiting, and she is seldom
absent from the side of the princess.
This young lady lives with her parents and has no
establishment of her own, but she has her own “ house-
hold,” quite another thing, occupying a large suite of
rooms with her bed-room and sitting-room, a bed-room
and sitting-room for her lady-in-waiting, a bed-room for
her personal maid, and keeping still intact her beloved
schoolrooms, which her mother long ago taught her to
love, with their books and flowers, and embroidery
frames.
The princess has been strictly disciplined, but her
mother allows her greater freedom out at Potsdam than
in Berlin. A year or two ago, when her father sur-﻿204 Intimacies of Court and Society
prised her on her birthday with an officer’s uniform^
and presented her before a regiment of tall soldiers at
Potsdam as their commanding officer, she raced ex-
citedly after the ceremony through the Schloss and up
into her mother’s apartments, where the room was full
of ladies taking tea, and burst in, dishevelled and wild
with delight, her pet dachshund in her arms panting
as hard as herself. She was not reproved, as every one
thought she would be.
When the court goes into residence at Potsdam for
the summer, the Empress’ is openly contented and
happy, for out there she becomes as much as possible
nothing but the wife of her husband and the mother of
her children. The park has romantic stretches of
water and forest, and her apartments overlook Fred-
erick the Great’s “ Sans Souci,” with its memories of
Voltaire, and its manufactured ruins, which Frederick
had built to finish off the landscape. Each of the mar-
ried sons has his own palace at Potsdam, but the fam-
ily circle is complete almost every evening; every one
dresses simply, and the Kaiser expects to be treated as a
country gentleman by his entourage. In Berlin he de-
mands the homage of the sovereign; at Potsdam, the
light-hearted gaiety of private life.
It is when living at Potsdam that the Empress sends
for her old servants to come and visit her. She makes
a point of knowing all the royal servants personally;
if they become ill she goes to see them, and when they
are too old to work she pensions them off. The wages
are good, and the presents at Christmas time, in ac-﻿The Kaiser’s only daughter, Princess
Luise, wearing the uniform of the Black
Hussars. “The death’s head” on the
military hat was adopted in the war of 1812
against Napoleon I, when the regiment were
Rough Riders, giving no quarter to the
enemy﻿﻿The Imperial Family	205
cordance with German custom, are, to an American,
enormous.
The Empress has a retinue of kammerfrauen (cham-
ber-maids), who take care of her dresses, although not
as many as the Kaiser needs of men servants for his
extraordinary and imposing wardrobe of uniforms.
They are servants by name and servants in a sense, for
the position forfeits the right to go to court, as in
England, when a nobleman enters the retail trade. But
the kammerfrauen are often the daughters of impover-
ished military men of high rank. They have a good
salary—and all the gowns of the imperial wardrobe!
The Empress wears her dresses only a few times, and
her maids are then allowed to sell them for their own
benefit. It is not at all an unusual thing to see Her
Majesty’s gowns on other ladies, although never worn,
of course, in her presence.
It is a trusty kammerfrau who is responsible for the
Kaiserin’s jewels; they are carefully examined after
being worn, and locked up in the strong room, where the
gold- and silver-ware is kept. Then the Empress has
a multitude of jewels, which are sewn on her gowns, a
collection of several hundred small diamonds, for in-
stance, with a setting at the back like a button, so that
they can be easily fastened on a court train or used in
forming a panel design down the front of the gown.
These must be counted before the dressmaker takes
charge of them, and counted again when removed from
the dress. The gowns themselves are hung in a long
room lined with wardrobes, and there is a special room﻿206 Intimacies of Court and Society
for the hats, each one in a glass compartment fitted
with milliner’s stands, where the violet sachet bags are
kept fresh and fragrant.
The household linen is made especially with the
Hohenzollern crest woven in the damask, and it is all
kept under lock and key in cedar chests built in the
walls of the linen-room, and given out by the ober-
beschliesserin (upper linen servant), or by one of her
faithful unter- (under) bescMiesserinnen. This is a
room which the Empress enjoys visiting and personally
supervising, often spending an hour there looking over
the things as they come in fresh from the laundry, each
article tied up by the dozen, and those which are badly
worn are judiciously darned and mended with true
housewifely forethought.
The laundries both in Berlin and at Potsdam are
models of electrical machinery, the plans having had
the personal attention of the Emperor. The clothes
are cleansed by electricity, there are big electrical
“ drums ” in which they are dried in a jiffy, then they
are run off on a mangle, and folded with lightning
rapidity.
The ordinary rich man’s household has a butler of
august appearance, whose solemnity is unimpeachable,
but at the Schloss there are several haushofmeister who
perform the butler’s duties in keeping household ac-
counts, superintending the setting of the tables, and
pouring out the wine at luncheon and dinner. They
announce the guests who are commanded to the Schloss,
and lead them up in faultless style to the court equerry,﻿207
The Imperial Family
who receives them for the sovereigns; their livery of
black satin breeches and pink silk stockings, and black
coats trimmed with silver buttons, adding not a little
to the beauty of the tout-ensemble. Each one of the
haushofmeister has a staff of assistants belonging to
the second rank of palace servants; their black coats
are nearly covered with wide gold braid. And then
come the lackeys who, during the winter season, multi-
ply about the Schloss by the dozen, obsequious creatures
with the agility of a jack-in-the-box, whose ambition
reaches no prouder height than their livery embroidered
in red arabesques and the black eagle of the Hohen-
zollem family.
Since the days when the Kaiserin was Princess
Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, her masses of
grey hair have added distinction to her appearance, and
she has unconsciously assumed a more regal bearing.
But she is the same quiet, simple, home-loving woman.
She never mixes in politics, has no particular intellectual
aspirations, although a trifle bigoted in her religion,
perhaps. Her face glows with sweetness and amiabil-
ity, softening perceptibly the effect of the Kaiser’s
stem immobility, and creating an atmosphere of peace
and happiness throughout her household. Restless
women of her own country join with those in other
countries to decry the narrow orbit in which she re-
volves. But in the midst of unhappy queens, she has
reigned supreme in her husband’s heart, and is as happy
and proud with her tall sons and slender young daughter
as the humblest of her subjects.﻿XI
A SMALL GERMAN COURT
A moment of intimacy with a friendly person will
come sometimes in the midst of the greatest formality
and ceremony. And one evening, in Berlin, it somehow
happened, as we were all crowded together at a ball,
one of the princesses whose husband ruled in his small
state, a Russian by birth, whom I had known in her
own land, and a beautiful young creature with rebel-
lious dark eyes and a determined chin, said to me sud-
denly, “ Will you spend a few days in the country with
us next week? I am bored to death.” My face very
evidently expressed my surprise, because she added
quickly, wilfully tossing her head, “ Yes, I know it is
an indiscretion of etiquette, but will you come? ” And
I replied as quickly, “ It is a command, Highness, which
I am only too happy to obey.”
The next week, after a short railroad journey in
the early morning, I arrived at a little station as ugly
and modern-looking as Berlin itself; a lady-in-waiting
met me, and in fifteen minutes we were transported into
another world, full of the charm of antiquity, and were
driving along an avenue of stately lime trees up to the
castle. It was a romantic structure of a hundred
rooms or more, with an old Roman tower at one cor-
ner terraced as a winter garden, nestling upon the side
208﻿A Small German Court
209
of a hill covered with fragrant pine trees, while at the
back a great forest stretched for miles into the coun-
try. Part of it had been enclosed as a private park,
much against the protests of the citizens, who thought
the Prince had no right to do it, and had protested in
vigorous Teutonic language, but the main road travers-
ing it was open to the public from sun-up to sun-down.
A river wound its way around the foot of the hill, and
lost itself in the recesses of the forest.
At the gate the guard saluted as we entered the
simple porte-cochere in the architectural style of Fred-
erick the Great, with the family arms above it, and we
clattered into the courtyard, around which were built
the kitchen premises, a blacksmith shop, and a machine
shop; and then, still clattering over the rough cobble
stones, we came into the inner courtyard under an arch-
way, where the family arms were also displayed, and
entered the castle. The white stone staircase was
simply carved, but at each landing there were marble
statues and big marble vases filled with masses of hot-
house flowers, warm and vivid against the whiteness.
I was soon in my sitting-room, which gave a lovely
view out upon the park and the river, and down upon
the winter garden, which was protected by glass all
around, and had a little outside door, where a sentry
kept constant guard. It led to the postern gate, which
closed the second court, and was the private entrance
where the family passed in and out. It was only
about half-past ten upon a winter morning, but the
Prince’s carriage stood before it ready to take him for﻿210 Intimacies of Court and Society
his usual morning drive, the coachman in the livery
used only for the family or royal guests, with a broad
gold band around the hat and a gold cord hanging like
an epaulette across his shoulder, and, as he drove off,
the whole guard of eight stood at attention at the
postern gate. The Prince’s father was still alive, but
the death of his wife had freed him from a bond he had
never cared to assume, and, after twenty-five years of
solitary state at the castle, he had resigned in favour of
his son and married a woman of noble birth he had
loved since a boy, but could not raise to his own rank.
He still kept his own apartments upon the first floor,
and joined his son’s family for a few weeks every year,
spending the rest of the time in happy obscurity with
his new wife near Dresden. It is an idiosyncrasy of the
German law that the woman of royal blood who mar-
ries beneath her assumes at once her husband’s rank,
as the Kaiserin’s aunt, the wife of the celebrated sci-
entist, became plain Frau von Esmarch. But a royal
prince cannot give the stamp of royalty to any woman
by marriage, however great his love.
When eleven o’clock struck, the butler of the house-
hold, old Fritz, made his appearance, as he did every
morning, to announce the hours of the meals of the day
—although they probably never varied once in a
decade—and to tell us what to wear at dinner each
night, full decolletee only for especially distinguished
guests. I remember how much he amused and de-
lighted me, old Fritz, a stout little man of seventy or
more, walking a little lame, but with enormous dignity﻿A Small German Court
211
not in the least disturbed by his ludicrous chocolate-
colored wig. At meals he was by far the most im-
portant person in the dining-room, standing in the cor-
ner in the black uniform of an English butler—or an
American diplomat—carrying in one hand a high silk
hat and in the other a long stick topped with a big
gold knob—taking infinite trouble and making no end
of noise trying to keep the other servants quiet—say-
ing “ sh! ” in a tone loud enough to be heard through
a dozen doors! It made us all laugh, of course, and
the children would say, “ There goes the Nieser
[sneezer].”
The next day was Sunday, and a busy day in the
castle, as the Prince insisted upon all the servants go-
ing to church, even to the coachman—and if a guest
had asked for a carriage on Sunday the Prince would
have been shocked. But one of the gentlemen-in-wait-
ing and the governess stayed at home, because the old
court chaplain had declined to give them communion,
as they did not belong to the Lutheran Church, al-
though they were Protestants. The villagers crowded
into the castle chapel, the servants filling the gallery,
and the Prince and Princess and their suite in the court
box, a long, roomy place reached by its own private
door, at the back of the building, and behind the peo-
ple, and with a glass window opening into the
auditorium—which could be easily closed if the Prince
found the prosy sermon too much for his nerves. It
was early in the new year, and the gloomy church was
gay with Christmas greens.﻿212 Intimacies of Court and Society
I was shown over the castle that afternoon, and it
was also festive with its Christmas greens. The
Princess’s boudoir, a cosy little room furnished in the
Russian style, was pretty, with a bower of mistletoe
built from the centre of the ceiling among the electric
lights. And as every member of the household had
had a Christmas tree, there were many of them still on
view. In the Ahnen-saal (ancestors’ hall), hung with
the family portraits and used for the state banquets,
there were half a dozen big trees as high as could be
taken through the doors, covered with glittering orna-
ments and shaded with candles, where they had dec-
orated the room when the Prince and Princess had re-
ceived their friends on Christmas morning, the*nobil-
ity of the neighbourhood, the officers and their wives
1 from the garrison, and the officials from the nearest
town. Every one in the castle had been remembered
with numerous presents, the Princess going to Berlin
a month in advance to select them, after her maid had
gone the rounds to discover what each one wanted.
The ladies-in-waiting had some really valuable pres-
ents, a new gown displayed upon a mannikin, sets of
books, and boxes of gloves—a thoughtful gift, as gloves
were en tigueur every night for dinner. A large room
had been set aside for the tableg filled with gifts for the
servants, and there they had all gathered the night
before Christmas, cooks, housemaids, footmen, garden-
ers, stableboys, etc., the kammerdiener (head servants)
carefully aloof from their inferiors, the ordinary diener,
but each going up to shake hands with the Prince﻿A Small German Court
213
and receive the envelope containing his present of a
piece of money in gold, and then to kiss the Princess’s
hand. It was a typical Christmas celebration of Ger-
many, where the habit of giving presents is a national
burden, but the Princess had been courageous enough
to object to receiving presents from the court and the
servants—a happy change from many other establish-
ments among royalty and the high nobility.
The first day I arrived Fritz had brought up an
imposing card from the office of the hof-marschall
(grand master of the court), announcing that he had
the great honour to be commanded by the Prince and
Princess to invite me to a court concert upon the Tues-
day evening of the following week, and that I would be
expected to wear decolletee. Preparations had been
going on for it for a week, and, as the day drew near,
Fritz’s importance and pomposity visibly increased—
it was worth a long journey to see.
The guests began arriving before our dinner was
announced, as there were only three carriages to be
hired in the village, and only a dozen or so possessed
among the aristocracy. So each one made seven or
eight trips up to the castle, with the father and
mother, aunts and uncles, and numerous cousins, while
the officers of the garrison rattled up in relays in a
wagonette. From a secret vantage ground above, one
of the ladies-in-waiting and I watched them throng-
ing into the long hall, where gloomy armoured figures
kept their guard of centuries. Almost all of the men
were in uniform, in active service or the reserve, but﻿214 Intimacies of Court and Society
one especially I noticed, a picturesque figure in scarlet
coat, black trousers, and cocked hat, with a black rib-
bon around the neck and the white cross of the Knight
of St. John of Malta, the humane and compassionate
order that accepts comradeship only among those of
noble birth. Bustling about trying to make the people
comfortable were the court officials, their coats covered
with gold braid, and among them the men who were
honorary gentlemen-in-waiting, indicated by their two
gold buttons on the back of the black coat, and high
collar covered with embroidery.
It must be confessed that, according to American no-
tions, the women were not well dressed, either with taste
or style. They all seemed long-limbed and short-
waisted, the mammas very fat and dumpy, the young
girls fresh and unspoiled, but lacking, even they, in del-
icacy of outline. Greeting one another and gossiping at
a furious rate, they were all the time very evidently tak-
ing mental note of the company assembled, as it meant
infinitely greater prestige to come to the castle to a
small concert than to a large state ball.
In the music-room, the village orchestra was as-
sembling upon the stage, and I almost gasped at the
prospect—a village orchestra! But I forgot that
such a one in Germany may rival our great ones in
Philadelphia or Boston, and that many a great artist
has made his debut at the state concert of a small Ger-
man court. The Prince was himself an excellent musi-
cian, and spent hours at his piano over the Wagnerian
themes, although it was not etiquette ever to speak to﻿A Small German Court
215
him about it, as he did not care to pose as a musician,
and would stop playing if he thought any one were
listening. He was far from being a rich man, and the
castle showed many evidences of economy. The Prin-
cess had her clothes made at home by a little sewing-
woman, and a fashionable American “ shop lady ” would
have dubbed her extremely dowdy. But the Prince set
aside each year a generous amount for his concerts, and
made them worthy of any capital or any society in
Europe. A celebrated singer had been brought from
the Berlin Opera for this night, and had accepted the
engagement with alacrity.
We sat at dinner through the same slow, laborious
meal as if nothing were happening elsewhere, although
it was enlivened by the costumes which every one had
donned in advance. But we heard the servants open-
ing the two large connecting salons, between the hall
and the music-room, which had splendid white marble
columns supporting the roof and with walls hung with
wonderful old tapestries representing the Siege of Troy.
At eight o’clock the people were received there by the
grand master of the court, the grand mistress, with the
ladies-in-waiting and the equerries. Then the arrival of
the Prince and Princess was announced by three loud
taps on the floor from the other side of the door, and
they entered, preceded by the grand master walking
backwards with the utmost ease and elegance. Every-
body was standing, of course, and it was amusing to
watch the high officials whose rank entitled them and
their wives to sit close to the royalties, waiting for a﻿216 Intimacies of Court and Society
nod from the Princess before taking their seats. It
would have created gossip for half a dozen years if a
person not entitled by rank had been invited to a front
seat-—but still no one dared to sit down without that
gracious little nod!
After the programme, and during the supper, the
Princess made her circle and sent for those whom she
wanted to see, a presentation many of the young girls
had been looking forward to since they began playing
with their dolls. In gilt chairs around the walls were
the stout and comfortable-looking mothers, where, be-
tween dances, the army officers presented themselves,
punctilious in their attentions, the young girl who
was the object of it all standing shyly in the back-
ground, devouring the uniform with enraptured
eyes.
I have often wondered how many matches were made
that night. I think old Fritz could tell me. I saw him
a dozen times in as many different places, his chocolate-
coloured wig awry, his eye a little unsteady from
too much champagne-tasting, but his immensity of
dignity and importance increasing as the evening
advanced.
The Princess had the Russian passion for winter
sports, and the next morning she sent word for me to
join her and the children out in the park, where a to-
boggan slide had been made along the hillside. It was
the only moment during my visit when I saw her as the
free and careless girl I had known in Russia, and I
shall not soon forget the picture she made, sliding down﻿A Small German Court
217
the hill in boots, leggins, and knickerbockers, a Rus-
sian shawl about her head, and shrieking with laughter.
Then, suddenly, there appeared upon the scene the widow
of one of the hof-marschalls, out for a walk in this se-
cluded spot, an august old lady, who would have gladly
passed her life prostrate before a royal throne. I
thought at first she would drop dead from seeing the
Princess in such a plight. But she recovered herself
and fled, in a terror of disillusion. Poor Princess, no
wonder she was bored to death.﻿xn
ENGLAND
LONDON TOWN AND THE SOCIETY OF THE
COURT
It has been for years a diversion to me, and a study in
social stratagem, to watch certain American hostesses
finally firmly established in King Edward’s favour, ap-
proach to London, the Mecca—like a play beginning
in the small towns and suburbs, until it bursts upon the
metropolis in the full glare and glitter of proud suc-
cess—by such routes as hotels in Paris, villas on the
Riviera, chalets in Switzerland, or palazzos in Venice;
and from royalty to be picked up any day on the Con-
tinent for a round of good dinners and open purse-
strings—to London and to the King.
Yet the American without particular prestige who
does not aspire to leadership receives a welcome denied
to the English knocking at their doors. She is taken
upon her own personal merit of accomplishment and
charm, with the cordial condescension which considers
lineage and the honours of achievement—or the lack of
them—of no special importance unless of English birth!
Equipped with a few good introductions, a respectable
—or unpublished—past, an address in Mayfair or Bel-
218﻿The late Consuela, Duchess of Manchester﻿﻿London Town and the Society of the Court 219
gravia, a few decolletee gowns not too chic to excite
envy, and half a dozen dinner-party stories, and any
woman is launched for the season. If she have the
courage to cut every woman dead not likewise equipped,
and to lift her head a little higher than the most super-
cilious, bepowdered, velvet-breeched footman, she may
hope to be-a genuine success, and to lay the foundation
for delightful, life-enduring friendships.
And who would not have a London season who could?
The sternest cynic could not rightfully condemn the
devotion of money, brains, and ambition to such an end
as London means. London, to which every diplomatist
looks for the triumphant finale of his career, willingly
exiling himself to the Sandwich Islands or Afghanistan
at thirty, to work his way up and prove himself worthy
at sixty of the honours and dignity of the Court of St.
James. London, where society is of so much conse-
quence that Parliament for years used to suspend its
sittings for Derby Day, where Mr. Balfour’s September
round of golf at Berwick is gravely planned for by a
Conservative cabinet, where a risque play gets on the
boards of the theatre because the dramatic censor is off
on a yachting trip; London, where Disraeli made the
Prime Minister the exalted leader of fashion next to the
throne, where a great statesman is a great dandy, and
as proud of his social success as of an historical speech
in Parliament, and famous as a good shot or in private
theatricals.
The London society of Beau Brummel and Beau﻿220 Intimacies of Court and Society
Nash, of Count d’Orsay and Lady Blessington, of Lady
Holland and her salon, of Mrs. Montague and the Blue
Stocking Club, of Chatham and Macaulay, of Peel and
Lord Lytton, of Thackeray and Robert Browning—
it is the same London society to-day. And whether it
is from a steamer at Liverpool, with New York and sky-
scrapers behind me, or from a Channel crossing with
continental hotel labels covering my baggage—I always
get into London with the same sigh of content. But
before plunging into the stream of its life, I shut my
eyes for the “ cold douche ” from undemonstrative Eng-
lish friends, who will not display the affection they feel,
and, after five years of absence, respond to my effusive
greetings as if I had dined with them just the night
before.
Your native tongue falls gently and musically upon
your ear in the soft, broad vowels of the English ac-
cent, and you breathe the sweet air of wholesome, un-
artificial things, and contemplate anew with wonder
and delight the magnificent creatures which generations
of out-of-doors living have produced, tall, straight-
limbed, clear-eyed, and clear-brained men and women,
veritable gods and goddesses compared to the puny
Latin types.
I find it an easy duty to appear downstairs at break-
fast and shake free from the lazy continental habit of
coffee and rolls in bed, and a morning of slipshod
negligee; to shake free also from the license of speech
of the French and the Romans, and put a bridle upon
tongue and vocabulary in the midst of Anglo-Saxon﻿London Town and the Society of the Court 221
thinking that is clean and pure, and with a people who
have the grace to be ashamed of their sins.
After the pseudo counts and marquises of the Con-
tinent, whose titles no one can positively dispute because
no one has a book of proof—it is refreshing to swing
into the atmosphere of honesty that bluntly demands to
know who and what you are, that catalogues a man with
his lineage and possessions, and his claims to notice, in
a book on peerage or a “ Who’s Who ”—with a nation
genuine enough frankly to avow, “ We are a race of
snobs.” And, after the impecunious grande dame of
Italy, the declassee one of France, and the unripe one of
American millions, you enjoy knowing the one of Eng-
land, who is still secure in the possession of wealth and
reputation, and whose patronising contempt for her
social inferiors is like the English lawns and lovely
hedgerows—after centuries of careful cultivation, the
finished work of art!
London society to-day is undeniably affected by the
democracy of riches, as is every society of Europe; but
it is still a something preeminently worth while by
men and women of brains and achievement, of charm
and beauty, of wealth and lineage. And in spite of the
fact that the state and splendour of the court of King
Edward, the Grand Monarque of modern days, were
much in the hands of hosts and hostesses who came from
the great Jewish banking-houses of the Continent, from
the United States, South Africa, or any other place
where millionaires make their “ pile,” yet London re-
mained even then the one capital where it was aristo-﻿222 Intimacies of Court and Society
cratic to be poor and equally fashionable to be re-
spectable. The English court of King Edward’s day
was one of the most cosmopolitan in history, including
exiled royalty, such as dethroned monarchs and pre-
tenders, and Russian grand dukes who have married
without leave, like the Czar’s cousin, the Grand Duke
Michael, who, with his morganatic wife, the Countess
Torby, are bright, particular stars in society’s firma-
ment; the exponents of science, literature, and the
drama; and giving its approving st&mp of welcome to
the race of Jews, seldom admitted elsewhere at court
The oldest and most famous families of that unimpeach-
able record of lineage, the Almanach de Gotha, found
London just as much to their liking, although success
there had to be won individually; an ambassador or a
foreign prince was sometimes less of a social figure than
a diplomatic secretary or a captain in the Guards.
Mere millionaires did not “ arrive,” however much
has been said to the contrary—a Rothschild was a
grand seigneur perfected in the social graces before he
became an intimate of the King. “ But you are not in
the Almanach de Gotha,” an impertinent aristocrat said
to one of them. “ No, nor in the Almanach de Gol-
gotha,” was the retort.
Every person who has been presented at court is
technically “ in society,” and never seems to discard
its badge or its interests. Army officers in India,
younger sons gone as ranchers to South Africa,
colonial governors all-powerful in Canada or Australia,
plan for years for a trip “ home,” and a fashionable﻿London Town and the Society of the Court 223
round in the London season. Edinburgh professors and
Dublin doctors, who have made a stir in the world of
learning, take a court presentation and a month of soci-
ety as the recompense of labour. Young men rising in
the world of law or literature look to society as the
final goal. Financiers in the City try to get rich
enough, singers famous enough, artists eccentric enough,
to be noticed by society. The editor of a dominating
daily put the price of his paper’s political allegiance
in an hour of crisis upon his election to an exclusive
club. The latest hero of exploration and the latest
star of the stage ascend a ladder of fame which reaches
to an imposing array of dinner cards—and to the King.
Members of Parliament give their teas on the terrace of
the House of Commons, where any man’s political
distinction could be gauged by the social distinction of
his women guests.
Grandfathers of eighty and fathers of sixty are
actively and individually in London society, with or
without their wives and daughters, handsome and im-
maculate, accomplished and witty, with their books of
engagements carefully perused. Young ladies of name
and position, whose families in the country do not care
for Town, come to London these days and take a flat or
a house, with a retinue of servants, a carriage, or a
motor car, to do the rounds of the season. Old ladies
whose families have long since married and dispersed,
realise at last the joys of freedom and of fashion, stop-
ping at their clubs, where you can find them at intervals
between parties, in the smoking-room puffing cigarettes﻿224 Intimacies of Court and Society
and reading the racing-news. Middle-class millionaires
and struggling gentlefolk put their sons’ names down
for Eton soon after they are born, and send them on to
Christ Church to acquire the Oxford manner and an
acquaintance with the young peers, regarding the double
acquisition and its entree into the London drawing-
rooms as the ultimate heritage of good fortune and
parental care. And the mother has finally the un-
speakable delight of seeing her son galloping up and
down Rotten Row in company with a nobleman’s
daughter—and, as he screws his monocle in his eye and
surveys the promenaders with a cool, insolent stare, she
draws herself up and gazes proudly forth upon all the
world, with a look unmistakable of: “ Well, we are get-
ting on! ”
Society is a pageant which all the world may see
every afternoon during the season in Hyde Park as the
carriages pass: high-stepping cobs and the latest style
of cart, lumbering coaches and powdered footmen or
diminutive “ buttons ” in agonies of importance, lux-
urious motor cars and shining victorias, all wending
their way through the drives past the masses of rhodo-
dendrons, or over the five-arched bridge crossing the
Serpentine into Kensington Gardens.
On Sunday morning, at church parade, the carriages
pass unladen, and people throng the broad walks: young
duchesses who are smart, and old ones who are dowdy;
old titles and vacuous-eyed youth, and new titles with
snow-white hair over lofty brows; the simplicity of
moneyless greatness and the ostentation of rich medi-﻿London Town and the Society of the Court 225
ocrity; the hauteur of assured position and the calculat-
ing bows of climbing; coquettish grandmothers in rouge
and coloured hair, looking at age as a hateful hag, with
debutantes round and rosy trying to be serious and
severe; women magnificently dressed with taste, or glar-
ingly without it, men stalwart and imperious, invariably
well dressed; both listless or alert, dull or intelligent,
insignificant or mighty, some among them famous, and
others merely well advertised.
It is a pageant in Hyde Park at the end of May
or the first of June, with the imposing procession of
thirty or forty splendid drags at the meeting of the
Four-in-Hand Club, the ribbons manipulated with the
ease and grace of skill, sometimes by a man, sometimes
by a woman, as the sleek, spirited horses show their
mettle in the streets when the tooting horn clears the
road. It is a pageant at Newmarket, and among the
coaches, brakes, and equipages of every description at
Ascot, with a myriad of human beings to cheer the King
when he rides out in state attended by the master and
huntsmen of the Royal Buckhounds.
With the opening of Parliament, in February, the
season may be said to have begun. In March or April
the King and Queen hold their first courts at Bucking-
ham Palace, and the ball of gaiety goes rolling from
that time on, gaining in speed and increasing in size
until June beholds the zenith. You begin in a leisurely
manner among old friends, with a few luncheons and
dinners, and with evening parties, when you have time to
appreciate the charm of the streets and the parks under﻿226 Intimacies of Court and Society
the mellow moonlight as motor cars fly by, and hansom
cabs, with the soft jingling of bells, and glimpses of
floating lace and sparkling gems. But you soon find
yourself with multiplying engagements, meeting new
people, asking them in or going to them, until at last
you are in a mad race, faster and more furious as the
days come and go, keeping a book of appointments hour
by hour like a commercial traveller or a labour dele-
gate, passing in and out of famous old houses full of
wonderful treasures of art and of memories, in much the
same galloping way as a Cook’s tour through the
rooms of the Louvre; small intimacies impossible, your
complexion taking on shades of green and yellow, eyes
weary, and voice worn, your head in a whirl and your
senses dull and dazed—like the dervish dance, which
moves from its languid and measured steps up to its
final gyrations and the denouement when the dancer
falls faint and exhausted upon the floor.
The London court of which I know, belonged to King
Edward’s day. Buckingham Palace became invested
with the friendly air of intimacy which one takes in the
homes of one’s responsive friends. The stately rooms
at receptions and balls held brilliant gatherings crowd-
ing up the marble stairway where the ceiling shows the
soft fresco figures of Morning, Noon, and Night, pass-
ing through the sculpture hall and the green drawing-
room panelled with mirrors, and into the throne-room,
with its crimson walls, Italian gilding, and white marble
frieze of “ The Wars of the Roses,” its fragrant flowers
and a thousand electric lights breaking into radiance﻿The Russian Grand Duke Michael and his morganatic
wife Countess Torby, who live in exile in England. The
Countess is the granddaughter of the celebrated Russian
poet Pushkin﻿﻿London Town and the Society of the Court 227
overhead. For the state balls, foreign guests having
the diplomatic entree went in by the garden entrance,
where the forty acres of lawn and forest trees and
lovely flower beds opened a wide vista, and the supper
was laid in the green drawing-room and the “ Garter ”
room. The big ball-room on the south side of the palace
was filled with women magnificently gowned, as even the
dowdiest Englishwomen contrive to be in evening at-
tire, and with men from every high walk of life, with
the good looks, tall stature and general air of easy ele-
gance which seem to be, almost universally, the at-
tributes of the English gentleman upon his native soil.
Society was led by the old Duchess of Devonshire,
the “ double duchess,” as she will go down in the an-
nals of the court, a German woman who captured two
English dukes, the seventh holder of the Manchester
title and the eighth of that of Devonshire. She was
probably as remarkable a woman as the English court
has ever known. And her wedding in 1892 to Devon-
shire was certainly a remarkable spectacle to those
guests who recognised the acquiescent face of the mid-
dle-class beauty whom the aristocratic bridegroom had
loved for many years, but refused to marry, and who
brought her numerous offspring to grace their father’s
union with a woman belonging to his own rank in life.
The duchess was a political intriguer to be reckoned
with, and she exercised great influence over the duke,
but she could never sufficiently arouse him from his
chronic ennui to accept the office of Prime Minister,
which might have been his for the asking. He would keep﻿228 Intimacies of Court and Society
a political henchman waiting six months for an answer
to an important letter of advice; the advice would be
an invaluable document when it arrived, only the gov-
ernment could not be jogged along by such a lazy steed.
The* duchess was intellectually a learned woman, but a
butterfly as well; she ruled society with an iron hand,
but with grace and charm. Devonshire House in Pic-
cadilly, London, which is a veritable country estab-
lishment in the heart of Town, and Chatsworth up in
Derbyshire, one of the largest, richest, and most impos-
ing places to be found in the world, were presided
over by a woman who appreciated their literary and
art treasures, but appreciated also the splendour and
gaiety of society made possible by wealth in such a
stately setting.
Mrs. Asquith, as brilliant as Lady Blessington, filled
a role at court long vacant, it having been some years
since the Prime Minister’s wife had been a social figure.
Mr. Balfour was too much wedded to his pianos—feel-
ing compelled to have two in his sitting-room—and
wedded to golf, to have had time to choose himself a
wife; and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was a wid-
ower. Mrs. Asquith was popular with King Edward,
and amused him, for, while her husband was thundering
in the House, “ The Lords are impotent, the Commons
are supreme,” Mrs. Asquith was cleverly contriving to
place the marriageable members of her family among
the lords, in company with the one-time Radicals who
“ foamed as patriots, to subside, as peers.”
Queen Alexandra was a vision of youth and beauty﻿London Town and the Society of the Court 229
unchanged by the passing of the years; such a queen as
a king would choose from among all the world to add her
loveliness to the stately pageants of his throne—and the
last among women to share his heart. Edward set the
pace for a more epicurean menu than George Ill’s,
who was never happier than when eating boiled
mutton and turnips. A London concert became a pri-
vate performance of operatic stars and virtuosi, shoot-
ing parties and week-end country-house gatherings were
as costly almost as the royal balls. But while no court
in Europe was more elegant and imposing, there was
none more democratic and less austere. The King was
a friend of the people, and at the same time a thor-
ough aristocrat; a formidable diplomat, and able to
manipulate the pawns on the international chessboard
with the shrewdest of statesmen, but equally a con-
firmed devot of pleasure, and a connoisseur in gowns as
well as waistcoats; a man of strong passions, and
delicate susceptibilities, whose best friends in the days
of his power were the men who stood by him before he
ascended the throne, and the women who were young
with him and whose charms of youth had long since
His appreciation of American women is well known,
and during his reign the American ambassador was so
thoroughly persona grata that it gave all Americans
presented there an enviable status they did not receive
elsewhere. One met the King often in an informal
way, although he achieved the difficult success of close
intimacy in his circle without destroying the isolation﻿230 Intimacies of Court and Society
of the monarch which monarchy demands. About the
only thing that could disturb his good-natured attitude
toward his friends was a false move during a game of
bridge. One evening his partner played a jack instead
of a king, to his great annoyance. “ Pardon, sire, but
it is so difficult to tell the king from the knave,” she
said with quick audacity, and was repaid by a hearty
laugh instead of a frown at the faux pas.
He had the reputation of never forgetting any one
he had ever met. But that would have been herculean
even for him. I remember when he was being enter-
tained by an American-born hostess who had as her
house guest an old friend of her father’s, a Civil War
veteran and editor. The King noticed him in the draw-
ing-room, and a presentation followed, at which the
usual formal speeches were made of mutual pleasure at
the meeting. “ But it is not the first time I have met
Your Majesty,” the American said, and the King, much
surprised, asked where it had been. “ It was in New
York in 1860, then in Washington, and I was on the
train with you from Washington to Cincinnati,” the
editor replied. The King advanced a step nearer and
laughingly shook his fist in the other’s face, exclaim-
ing, “ And were you a member of that terrible news-
paper gang that dogged my footsteps?” The editor
had to confess that he was, and the King, amused, began
discussing his American experiences. He had forgotten
the editor, but he remembered several beautiful and
fascinating girls he had danced with, and enquired about
them.﻿London Town and the Society of the Court 231
After a few busy seasons under the wing of an habitue,
you have souvenirs of almost every one of importance in
English life. In diplomatic society, French is spoken
more than it is in Berlin. The accomplished French
ambassador, Monsieur Cambon, has been stationed in
London since 1898, but has steadfastly declined to
bother to learn English. As Sir Edward Grey, the For-
eign Secretary, has never bothered to learn French, per-
haps the entente cordiale between the two nations has
the better stood the test of time, the diplomatic pour-
parlers having been on the broad and general lines
merely of friendship. Sir Edward Grey says that if he
had had any idea of becoming Foreign Secretary, he
would have applied himself in his youthful educating
days to the mastery of French—quite a different boy
from Winston Churchill, who said when he put on long
trousers that he would have to hurry up with his
political career because he was not physically robust.
“ I have no idea I shall live to be an old man, and I
must be Prime Minister before I die,” was the way he
expressed it.
I remember Churchill (the Englishman) as a young
fellow, very much in society when he wished to be—and
as any cousin of a duke could be—but an enfant ter-
rible to many a hostess, leaving his manners at home
when he went out to dine, and apparently some place
else when guests came to his mother’s house. Shortly
after his return from South Africa, he offered to show
me his interesting souvenirs of the Boer War. But when
we were en tete-a-tete, he became so absorbed in discuss-﻿232 Intimacies of Court and Society
ing the question of Boer government that I found my-
self, to my amazement, listening to an oration of three-
quarters of an hour. He turned his back upon me,
striding over to a long mirror, to deliver it to his own
reflection there, with numerous gestures and facial con-
tortions, wheeling around at the finish to say, “ It just
occurred to me what a capital speech that would make
in the House of Commons some day.” (This was be-
fore he had ever won a seat.) “ I wanted to get it fixed
in my mind before I forgot it.”
But I confess to a genuine admiration of his tremen-
dous power of application and proved ability. His
superiority to his cousin the duke is a striking proof
of the injustice of the law of primogeniture; and when
Marlborough tries to make a speech in the House of
Lords, Churchill rushes over from the Commons, wildly
“ wig-wagging ” to him to stop—for the sake of the
family prestige. Churchill’s marriage was a love match
with a penniless girl, who as a debutante of beauty
and intellect won many admirers but somewhat tardy
suitors, on account of the stories floating around for
years about her equally beautiful and intelligent mother.
Churchill’s own mother, the American, is now close to
sixty, but astonishingly handsome, her brilliant dark
eyes and supple figure showing the joie de vivre of a
girl—in spite of the fact that fate has dealt her some
hard blows.
Another enfant terrible, but of quite a different type,
is John Sargent, a greatly sought after dinner guest,﻿London Town and the Society of the Court 233
because so difficult to get, his open indifference to the
frivolous, pretty women of his canvases being almost
as famous as the portraits themselves. A friend of
mine, a woman with a deep, thoughtful nature without
a trace of coquetry, and a distinguished pianist, had
invited me one winter to join her at Venice. Sargent
happened to be there, and, as the two had been friends
for years, they played duets every evening. He played
remarkably well, and it acted upon him like a draught
from Lethe’s springs, putting to sleep the cold, cynical
man of the world whom society knows, and giving me
glimpses of rare charm and the undisciplined heart of a
boy, his big frame and serious face responding to the
call of Wagner’s genius with tremulous joy. It was
shortly after this that I was in London, and he readily
consented to show me over his studios, the one at his
house in Tite Street, Chelsea, with a background of
furnishings necessary for the dainty, fastidious women
who sat to him there; lofty frescoed walls, old rugs, and
delicately hued hangings. He opened and shut the door
carelessly, and went out as if he were glad to get away;
and when I stood in the other studio, I knew it to be
the home of his deepest, truest art. It was hidden
away in a corner of Chelsea, where no street sign in-
dicated a public place. Not even Sargent’s best friends
would dare betray its whereabouts without his consent.
There was not a rug on the rough floor, only work-
benches such as one sees in a carpenter’s shop, dozens of
knives, chisels, saws, and hammers; and there was a
workman smoothing out thin strips of wood and pre-﻿234 Intimacies of Court and Society
paring plaster of Paris. It was a studio barren and
bare of ornament or beauty, but dedicated to the god
of labour and to Sargent’s highest aspiration of art-
sculpture.
He was charmingly expansive, even communicative,
and, when I left, asked me to come again whenever I
wished. I did not go again for several years, but one
day the impulse was too strong to be resisted, especially
as he never appeared in the houses of his friends, his
portraits were no longer seen at the Academy, and it
was announced that he refused to paint them any more.
His assistant, a young Italian with a liquid touch to
his broken English, opened the door, and, recognising
me at once, admitted me quietly into the room. Sargent
was on top of a tall ladder, his coat was off, and he was
working furiously with the clay upon a large reredos
against the wall. He did not see me at first, but
when he did, I began in the confident tone of old ac-
quaintance, “ Dear Mr. Sargent, I came to --------.”
The sentence was never finished, for it was an enraged
lion who cast unrecognising eyes upon me, a genius in
a paroxysm of arrested inspiration, who thundered out:
“How dare you come here?” “John Sargent, how
dare you speak to me like that? ” I answered back, and
then, to my own astonishment and his utter dumfound-
ing, I burst into a torrent of tears. I made for the
door, but there the Italian stood entreating: “ Please
don’t go until he has had a chance to apologise. He’ll
be so sorry if you do.” The big man at the top of the
ladder had descended, had frantically rushed into an-﻿London Town and the Society of the Court 235
other room for his coat, and now stood before me,
bowing, with his heels together in the military manner
he had learned as a boy in Italy, saying, “ Please for-
give me for being so rude and irritable. I am sorry, I
am very sorry, I am very, very sorry.” It would have
been ludicrous, if not so charged with sincerity, two
middle-aged people standing there acting like children,
the woman mopping her inflamed eyes, the man blushing
like a schoolgirl, clicking his heels together as he bowed
again and again, saying gravely and imploringly, “ I
am sorry, so very sorry, so very, very sorry.” “ But
why did you do it P ” I finally asked, and he answered
at once, “ Because I am tired to death of people; all I
want is to be alone.” We shook hands on that, I
turned to leave—and he softly closed the door.
After a few days in London I like to go on to some
friend’s country house, one among the many where
leisurely living is the art, especially of the English, and
where I can sit before a bright fire in a chintz-covered
drawing-room, with rare prints and china on the walls,
and let my eyes drink in lovingly the peacefulness of the
gardens and smoothly rolled lawns, and the nobility
of the big oak and yew trees in the park, encircled with
its stone wall or high green hedge.
I am calling to mind among pleasant memories one
such visit, which took me up into the hills when all the
London world was going northward for the autumn
shooting. The “ dowager’s house ” of the duke’s estate,
where I was staying, was a quaint little mansion, to﻿236 Intimacies of Court and Society
which my friend, a childless widow, had retired when a
distant couSfri had succeeded her husband ;its gabled roof
peeped out from the ivy, its doors were entwined with
clematis, and an enchanting garden led you down by
secluded paths to the banks of the river, and then out
into the fields and meadows. The cottages in the tiny
village about us were embowered in honeysuckle,
clematis, or old-fashioned roses, where the bees hummed
all the day long, and against the garden walls the plums
and apples were trained, hanging ripe and luscious, in
purple and golden glory. You had to ring a bell at
the postoffice before you could buy a stamp, and in the
one grocery shop you might help yourself to all the con-
tents and ring to say good-bye.
The shooting lodge, where the sportsmen were housed,
was high above us on the moors, and over a thousand
feet above the level of the sea, while the ancient baronial
hall of the family, which I had come particularly to see,
was a short walk through the fields from our garden.
It was in perfect repair, although no longer habitable
and suited to modem needs. But a few years before,
at Christmas time, the banquet-room had been aglow
with light for an old-time feast; great Yule logs were
rolled into the fireplace, dogs stretched themselves be-
fore it, and servants hurried to and fro, the walls were
hung with crimson, and the minstrels’ gallery was once
more occupied with a band of merry players. At the
solid oaken table on the dais, the duke sat as the lord
of the feast, with his guests about him, and the steam-
ing boar’s head, a huge apple in its mouth, and its﻿London Town and the Society of the Court 237
ears entwined with green, was carried in with state and
served up with a song; and an old loving-cup of pewter,
filled to the brim with spiced ale, was passed along.
At midday, as I looked at it, the Hall stood out clear
against the sky, its grey walls freed from the rosy
curtain lifted high above it, while at its back the forests
rose tier on tier, in vivid, then sombre shades of green,
almost black as they met the sky. It was the charm
of Nature in her mildest, most pacific of moods, and as I
gazed at the place once an impregnable fortress, but
now unprotected save by friendly thought, and wan-
dered through its rooms where ladies used to sit over
their tapestry frames, or sing softly to the spinet’s
chords, rooms associated with bygone days of splen-
dour, but bare and deserted now, although guarded by
such jealous care—I would always think of some proud
beauty, grown tired of caprice and tired of folly, com-
ing at last, in humility and trust, to rest among those
who cherished her. In crowded London I was glad
of companionship, but here I wanted to be alone. The
voice of Nature spoke so clearly, falling upon my jaded
spirit like a loved voice of memory from out the years.
It spoke so variously, in the woods where my quiet step
disturbed the pheasant and the squirrel, fearless and
untamed; on the beetling crags of the moors, where the
heather waved in bloom, in the meadows where the wind
made scarcely a sound as it touched the leaves so gently,
and where the crystal water of the river flowed on its
winding way to the sea with hardly a ripple that could
be heard.﻿238 Intimacies of Court and Society
After the shooting party had dispersed and the host
was at liberty, the dowager drove me up to the Lodge
for a garden party. The road through our village was
lively with carriages and motor-cars from every part
of the county, and every villager seemed at the cottage
windows to see the “ gentry ” pass. So we chose a
circuitous route that wound round and round the hills,
until village after village stretched far below us, and
the houses and the cattle in the meadows looked like toy
things used by a child. A private road through an-
other estate was opened by a little old woman, who
emerged from the gatekeeper’s lodge and made a suc-
cession of curtsies as we passed through; and as we
took a secluded drive traversing the park, the fallow
deer came close up to the carriage, regarding us curi-
ously with big, tender eyes, while the ground ahead be-
came suddenly alive with rabbits, springing from the
grass, with their short tails flashing out.
A red-coated regimental band made a patch of
brilliant colour upon the terrace, with the highest peaks
of the mountains behind them as a background, and
our host himself, as he stood at the entrance to the
garden, surrounded by his tall sons and daughters, made
a picture I shall not soon forget, his gentle old face
aglow with pleasure, his slender figure erect after a long
and strenuous life, and his blue eyes as mild as they
were keen—such a man as every New-World student
should meet, a poet as well as a statesman, and the in-
carnation of all those kindly English influences of an-﻿Mrs. Asquith, the wife of the Prime Minister, with
one of her daughters﻿﻿London Town and the Society of the Court 239
cestry and favoured place, without their arrogance and
their vice.
One of the sons took me for a stroll through the
gardens, where the guests were sauntering in groups,
coldly indifferent to any one else’s existence, but with
the subdued satisfaction of expression which the most
emotionless English countenance assumes under the
benign patronage of a duke. It was refreshing to see the
girls, not sophisticated young ladies in coiffures and
trains, but innocent children, with their hair flying over
their shoulders, their cheeks like rose petals, themselves
as sweet and modest as violets; and boys home from
Eton or Winchester, who had the manners of a Chester-
field, and were able to lead their mothers’ friends in
to the tea-table with the assured dignity of experience
in the school of good form. The Church of England
clergyman—to be met less and less frequently every
year in London society—was omnipresent, in the coun-
try still the beau ideal of young matrons and tender
maidens, an accomplished dinner guest, and an orna-
ment in the ball-room, skilful at golf and bridge. And
there was the old-time Conservative Member of Parlia-
ment, a personage yet among his own people in the
country, a stately oracle, whom it is an honour to
meet, representing the traditions of the class that hon-
estly believes Radicals and middle-class Nonconform-
ists can hardly get to heaven except by special dis-
pensation. At Westminster, these days, he is sadly
out of place even in his own party, where he feels the﻿240 Intimacies of Court and Society
yoke every minute of Joseph Chamberlain’s power,
“ the middle-class upstart,” and “ the buttonmaker of
Birmingham,” from whom Lord Salisbury prayed to be
delivered.
The most interesting of all to me were the young
Englishmen who, after a season or two, avoid the Lon-
don drawing-rooms, realising that they are but putty
in the hands of the experienced women of the world they
encounter there, but who fail to captivate their hearts
or meet their ideals. To them belongs the young peer
in possession of the ancestral home of his fathers, and
an entailed estate whose revenue would suffice half a
dozen times over for his genuinely simple tastes. With-
out the light-hearted gaiety of the Latin, which enjoys
pleasure for itself, and too unalterably clean-minded to
be vicious—he has been everywhere, seen everything,
done everything—sucked the orange dry and thrown it
away in disgust. But beneath an exterior Greek in its
contempt for humility, he has a kind heart and a ro-
mantic one, and a code of honour of a Chevalier Bayard.
He is the young peer who often marries the chorus girl,
whose struggles and courage appeal to him as much as
her beauty does, and who surrounds her with such re-
spect and fidelity that womanly virtue, character, and
dignity often make a response astonishing to see.
With no stimulus to effort, he is the most emwi-ed
individual on the face of the earth. Yachting, deer-
stalking, watching his racing colours win at Newmarket
or Epsom Downs, shooting big game in India or the
Rocky Mountains, in a box at the opera, or remodelling﻿London Town and the Society of the Court 241
an old palace in Venice, he is equally blase and bored—
unless he is needed to fight for his country, when he is
transformed into a demon of activity, a dare-devil of
courage, and the most splendid of gallant heroes. Six
feet of handsome, charming, inaccessible inanity, as ex-
quisite in appearance as a worshipping valet can make
him, his monocle drops mechanically from his listless
eye, as, with his hands in his pockets, he wanders oc-
casionally into the House of Lords and looks about him
with a weary air.
He is the “ heavy swell,” like unto whom the New
York and Newport dandy would so gladly be, and can-
not, having inherited along with his millions of dollars
the energy and enterprise of the detested middle-class
which built them up.
But since Queen Mary came to the throne, I have
many times called to mind the county “ dowagers ”
whom I saw at the duke’s garden party. For they,
young, old, and middle-aged, married or single, belong to
the elect in Queen Mary’s eyes. They were all-powerful
at Queen Victoria’s court. But when King Edward came
into his own and brought to the court the cosmopolitan
society he had long made fashionable away from the
court, the party of the dowagers retired to the country,
realising that their economically arranged parties would
be passed by and their strait-laced notions laughed
to scorn. They preferred the aloofness of county
homage, where a trailing velvet gown and a modest tiara
sufficed for five years of dinners and chaperonage at
balls. And in their morning and afternoon dressing﻿242 Intimacies of Court and Society
they gloried in monstrosities of taste and battles of
colour combinations to flaunt more openly their dis-
dain of the court’s smartness. In the country they re-
mained powerful to ignore and condescend, and they
had a chance to forget the existence of such a person
as Lloyd George, and that he could casually decline in-
vitations from any duke in the realm, being manifestly
of so much more consequence!
These great ladies of the old school, some of them,
like Queen Mary, young in years, are serene-faced
women holding aloof from frivolity and cherishing
ideals of high breeding, birth, and position. Among
their dependents, they are sympathetic and wisely help-
ful; pensioning old servants, caring for the sick and
the infirm, and regulating the well-being of their tenants
with a personal interest one finds no place in the world
as in England among their class. They are loyal friends,
and one’s memories of intimacies with them are of the
kind which neither absence nor circumstance seems to
affect, and which touch the deepest chords of the heart
and intellect—if one can shut one’s eyes to the lamp
of the inner shrine, which proclaims an imperishable
contempt for everything not English.
Under the regime of Queen Mary many of the Circes
and Sybarites have fled. Those remaining wrap their
mantles of the sacred English eleventh commandment—
“ Thou shalt not be found out ”—tightly about them,
clutching it with feverish care. And the dowagers have
returned to court!
But the rules and regulations of virtuous conduct﻿London Town and the Society of the Court 243
have never been the rules and regulations of royal
courts. The memories that throng Buckingham Pal-
ace, St. James, Windsor, and Hampton Court are of
pomp and vanity, license and scandal, the flowers that
have always flourished at the courts of kings. Buck-
ingham Palace itself rises upon the site and takes its
name from the home of the Duchess of Buckingham,
who was James II’s daughter by Catharine Sed-
ley, created Countess of Dorchester; while St. James
Palace has been the home of as many royal mistresses
as it has been of kings—of Mademoiselle Schulenberg,
whom George I brought with him from Hanover, and
made Duchess of Kendal, as well as the home of Miss
Brett, his English common-law wife; of Mrs. Howard,
whom George II made Countess of Suffolk; and
Miss Vane, who there, in her maid-of-honour room, gave
birth to a child by Frederick, Prince of Wales. St.
James Square and Park—of how many frail beauties do
they speak—of the mansion of Arabella Churchill, the
mother of James II’s son, the Duke of Berwick, and
the stately home of Charles II’s Duchess of Cleveland,
of Nell Gwynn, the orange girl made Duchess of St.
Albans, of Louise Renee de Querouaille, made Duchess
of Portsmouth, and Frances Stewart, Duchess of Rich-
mond, whose face and figure Charles immortalised
through the centuries as Britannia on the English
coins. All of them and many more like them, founded
powerful ancestral houses, in some occasional genera-
tions extremely virtuous, but steadfastly in all genera-
tions inordinately proud of their bastard royal blood!﻿244 Intimacies of Court and Society
One dares to be gently amused even at virtue if it be
displayed at the court of kings—and at the great ladies
of Queen Mary’s court. For if any among them had
to choose between contamination by either of the two
Radical demagogues, Winston Churchill or Lloyd
George, they would unhesitatingly decide upon the first,
the cousin of a duke. They believe him to be a political
hypocrite, blatant with unscrupulous ambition. Lloyd
George may be sincere—but he is of common birth. To
be associated with the first would only corrupt their
morals—their manners would yet remain unstained.
The new court will be preeminently the court of the
Queen. The King is a simple country squire. He has
travelled, but not for personal pleasure. The reading
of books brings him no thrill of delight. He frankly
confesses that he knows and cares nothing about art.
The accomplishments of conversation, of dancing and
dining, mean nothing to him.
It was early upon the February morning when
King George was to open his first Parliament, and I
was with an old friend in the crowd around Westminster.
We tried to get through and up into the royal gallery,
but a burly policeman blocked our progress. “lama
peer,” my friend said quietly, but with a certain ring
in his voice, and the man pushed the people right and
left to make way for us. Once inside, he picked up
from a bench, where it had been, left for him, a big red
bag containing his robes, then we passed the hall where
the King and Queen were to sit in state, and he pointed﻿London Town and the Society of the Court 245
out the different peeresses already in their places there,
looking very grand in their court gowns, jewelled tiaras,
and ostrich feathers, and very cold as well, with bare
arms and neck. The little gathering of women crowded
into the small space of the royal gallery, where the
peers may invite their friends for such an occasion as
this, made me think for a moment that I was in a late
Victorian drawing-room. There are numerous women
in London society more important these days than any
peeress in leading the mode, but this was not their day,
and they were wise enough to stay at home. It was
the mustering of mothers, sisters, and cousins of the
peers and peeresses, who came to see their relatives pass
in triumph, not to try to outshine their rivals. And
the old regime asserted itself with such evident delight
in its return to glory, wearing its old clothes with
haughty consciousness, and the coiffure “ Alexandra,”
tabooed by fashion long ago, although still worn by
Queen Mary and the small coterie among the aristocracy
who refuse to be smart.
Mrs. Langtry, in the days when she was the toast of
the town and the chere amie of King Edward, then
Prince of Wales, was hurrying, a tardy guest, one
windy night to a large reception, but, forgetting to
close the windows of her carriage, she entered the draw-
ing-room with her lovely hair in shimmering riot about
her face, and the next day the coiffure “ Alexandra ”
was supplanted by the first of the many innovations of
dressing the hair. Up in the gallery, that morning,
when an elaborate coiffure and an unmistakable Parisian﻿246 Intimacies of Court and Society
toilette came into view among our members, there was
such a levelling of lorgnettes as at an extraordinary
apparition.
But the extraordinary apparition to me, as the peer-
esses swept past us to take their seats near the throne,
was that so many among the younger women were alien
by birth to the British aristocracy. With three Amer-
ican duchesses, there seemed few among the rest who
did not come from English millionairedom of trade,
from the United States, or from the variety stage. It
was interesting to watch them and see how they took
the difficult role to which they had not been born. We
were all naturally most interested in the ladies of the
stage, who have made the dowerless love matches of the
peerage, and whom you see only on such occasions as
this, almost never at a general gathering of society or
at court. Their daughters may be received—but them-
selves, never.
The Duke of Norfolk came in, wearing robes as
ancient as his title, and a smile upon his dark face
usually so sombre. He bustled about, whispering di-
rections here and there, and looking responsible for
everything, as, indeed, he was. The Lord Chancellor
came along to put himself among the others at the
door to await the King and Queen, who had already ar-
rived and were in the robing-room. His big head in its
judicial wig was imposing, and his robes were held up
by an attendant whose struggles made us all smile, as
the Lord Chancellor walked very fast, then stopped very
short, to speak to various friends. Then there was﻿London Town and the Society of the Court 247
Lord Winchester carrying the Cap of Maintenance,
gracefully indifferent as from a family accustomed to
this hereditary function from generation to generation.
And I caught a glimpse of the Crown flashing with big
diamonds, the holder’s robes nearly falling off his shoul-
ders as he adjusted the red velvet band around his neck,
which held the cushion that held the Crown.
The soldiers from the Tower, the “ Beef Eaters,”
formed an aisle up and down the room through which
soon marched a body of army officers. An old man in
court dress with duchess lace about his wrists and
throat, and diamond buckles on his slippers, made me
rub my eyes and think I was in another century as he
walked past with mincing steps. The boy pages, in
their quaint costumes, every one admired, but they kept
discreetly at a distance until the King and Queen were
ready for them, as English children do. A funny little
man in gorgeous uniform, stumbled in, in a dazed sort
of way, and was put in his place when the procession was
forming, standing there, still dazed and helpless, while
the others wandered about, taking their places only at
the last moment. A splendid-looking old warrior, his
breast covered with medals and orders, was gossiping
with a woman friend when another officer drew him away
to point out a discovery at the door. And before us
all they nearly doubled up with laughter—at a lady’s
powder puff in a little blue silk bag. If the gallant Ed-
ward had been there to come upon the scene, wearing his
Order of the Garter, Horn soit qui mal y pense, he
might have again turned feminine embarrassment into﻿248 Intimacies of Court and Society
lasting glory, and instituted “ The Royal Order of the
Powder Puff.”
It was getting late, but at last there was a blast of
trumpets, every one was on the alert, the great doors
were thrown open, and a long procession began march-
ing past us, and finally the King and Queen. They were
clasping hands and bowing right and left, as the men
saluted and the women dropped low curtseys, the Queen
stately and erect, her beautiful figure a worthy setting
for the royal gems she wore for the first time, her face
somewhat shy and timid, and yet resolute and severe;
the King sober and visibly oppressed. They kept step
together, but still the Queen appeared to take the lead.
I was reminded of the first time I had seen them, years
ago, when, as Prince and Princess of Wales, they opened
a new public building in one of the London suburbs
and afterwards went into the managers’ private room
to sign the register. The Prince, diffident as usual, was
staring around him instead of writing his name, when
I heard the Princess whisper, “ Buck up, George.”
We in the gallery could see very little that was hap-
pening in the House of Lords when the King and Queen
passed in and took their seats upon the throne, so, after
the procession passed, many of us hurried down the
stairs lined with soldiers of the Royal Horse Guards, to
see the street procession upon its return to Buckingham
Palace. Outside there were state coaches galore, with
bewigged coachmen, and a formidable array of soldiers,
mounted and on foot. The crowd was dense, and, to
escape it, I took refuge for a moment in one of the﻿London Town and the Society of the Court 249
numerous lanes running through Whitehall to the Em-
bankment. The King’s own band, mounted on splendid
horses, was playing a lively air to announce his de-
parture. And here, in the lane, the cockney girls were
gaily dancing a jig to the music. If the royal musi-
cians had known it, how disgusted they would have
been.﻿XIII
LONDON CITY AND THE SOCIETY OF THE
LORD MAYOR AND LADY MAYORESS
The London of “ London Town,” Park Lane, Berkeley
Square, and Carlton House Terrace, of St. James’s
Place and Buckingham Gate, the London of lineage and
Society—Society with a capital S—of fashion and
elegance, of the belles and the beaux, correctly dom-
iciled close to the sovereign, and passing its leisured,
licensed existence in the often incorrect life about the
court—looks upon “ London City,” that ancient quar-
ter of business presided over by the Lord Mayor, as an
unknown region with childish memories of visits to the
Tower Und St. Paul’s Cathedral, a district given over
to despicable “ trade ” where a horde of men from re-
spectable, middle-class, uninteresting Suburbia, descends
every morning, feverishly hurrying persons of impos-
sible manners and impossible clothes, who stream in over
Westminster, London Bridge, Blackfriars, and Cannon
Street, and stream out again every night. It is a place
where the sovereign must put in an appearance at least
once during the reign in a sort of penance of popularity,
and where cabinet ministers and ambassadors accept
dinners from people they would never dream of “ know-
ing ” as far as Society is concerned. It is a dark abyss
from which there has frequently arisen an enormously
250﻿Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York
Private garden at Windsor Castle﻿﻿London’s Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress 251
rich stockbroker or a man who was “ something big in
the City,” who has bought his way into the aristocratic
houses and been snubbed in the Park by his dinner
guests. It is a vortex into which a democratic and
eccentric younger son has sometimes descended when
the eldest-born succeeded to the title and estates, and
from which he has frequently emerged with a City heiress
whose connection with “ trade ” has been a guilty
burden which the family have carried with fortitude
and resignation—unless they could triumphantly pro-
claim that it was the trade which is not “ in trade,”
whose millionaires scorn the Lord Mayor’s baronetcy,
pose as public benefactors of the nation, and accept
from a grateful sovereign their rightful baron’s title
and a position near the throne—in other words, the all-
conquering, the aristocratic Beer!
The London of the “ City,” the Bank of England, and
the Stock Exchange; of the Lord Mayor’s residence,
the Mansion House, and the Guildhall; where the civic
business is carried on, the home of kings and courtiers
until the Stuarts sought the green fields and cowslip
meadows of modem Belgravia and Mayfair—its old
landmarks remain unchanged. Travellers to-day pick
their way through the busy crowds where its streets
have resounded with the chariot wheels of the Romans,
the eagle carried high before their marching columns;
and reverberated with the mighty tread of the gallant
Crusaders, bearing the banner of the Cross; where royal
jousts and tournaments were fought in hot and bloody
battle upon the sand thickly spread over the pavements﻿252 Intimacies of Court and Society
of stone, the King watching from the side and the Queen
high above in the balcony of the church of St. Mary-
le-Bow; where an impregnable wall and four fortified
great gates around that one wonderful square mile pro-
tected the “ citizens ” who wore the garb of the livery
companies or Guilds, and protected the River Thames,
filled with their fleets of merchant vessels seeking the
ocean paths to Antwerp, to Italy, to the Orient, to bring
back the wines and linens of France, the silks and spices
of Venice, the gold of Arabia, and the gems of the
Nile.
The Guildhall still remains, the walls in the crypt the
same as when they withstood the fierce flames of the
great fire of 1666, and the banquet-hall carefully pre-
served, where many a king has come with ceremony
and retinue to be feasted with more than kingly opulence
while the conduit in Cheapside ran with wine free to all
who chose to drink; and where many a king has been a
suppliant for money before a beggar boy turned
merchant prince—Edward I with his crown to place in
pawn, James I and Charles I with the royal jewels of
the realm. And when the sovereign at Buckingham
Palace follows the example of his predecessors since the
far-off days, when Guildhall was built, and punctiliously
comes for hospitality and a royal address, with all the
trappings of royalty in an important visit of state, he
is received with the same pomp and circumstance by
City councillors in flowing mazarine gowns, aldermen
in scarlet and sable, and a Lord Mayor in his historic
blue-black gown half covered with gold lace, a costly﻿London’s Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress 253
badge of distinction, of whieh, by act of Parliament,
there are only four allowed in the kingdom, for the
London Lord Mayor, the Lord Chancellor, the Vice
Chancellor, and the Master of the Rolls—and wearing
the solid gold collar and jewel of office worn by every
Lord Mayor since the reign of Henry VIII, so superb
with its magnificent diamonds that many a king must
have coveted it for the jewels of his crown. The City
trumpeters in their Tudor costume announce the ar-
rival of the royal guests at the Guildhall porch and at
the top of the steps, and the Lord Mayor leaves his
dais and goes to meet them, with pages to bear his
train, attended by his private chaplain and the City
Marshal, the mace of civic authority carried before him,
and the pearl sword, presented by Queen Elizabeth in
the wild days when no man of position ventured abroad
without protection.
And the humorous idiosyncrasies of English society
disclose themselves to-day at the Guildhall around the
Lord Mayor and his court, and at the Mansion House,
where he welcomes the condescending great ones of the
earth in a succession of luncheons and dinners dazzling
in appointment and stupendous in number, the same as
when Dick Whittington bought the favour of Henry V
by throwing upon the spice-wood fire the King’s bonds
for a huge sum of money loaned. Lord Mayor Thomas
Gresham, equally with Whittington, the hero of Lon-
don City glory, was a foundling left to die in the
meadow, and rescued from starvation by an old woman
attracted to the spot by the loud chirping of grass-﻿254 Intimacies of Court and Society
hoppers; and he became so enormously rich that his
fleet of merchant vessels was as mighty as a royal navy;
he acted as stockbroker and Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer to Henry VIII, and supplied funds without
stint to that amorous, extravagant monarch; and he
built the first Royal Exchange or bourse, which Queen
Elizabeth, in 1571, opened by herald and trumpet,
coming in state from her palace, Somerset House in the
Strand. He was rich enough to have Turkey carpets,
when rushes were good enough for the king, and power-
ful enough to have bankrupted the kingdom. He could
have been a Cosmo de Medici, the merchant-banker who
founded a dynasty of popes, royal dukes, and queens;
a John Fugger, the weaver of Augsburg, whose de-
scendants in Bavaria have feudal lordship to-day over
50,000 dependents. He could have made London City
as independent and democratic as Bruges, Ghent, and
Ypres, whose burgomasters, when in Paris at the court
of John II, haughtily left their costly cloaks of velvet
and ermine upon the seats in the banquet-hall, a present
to the king, who was too poor—or too careless—to
provide cushions upon his seats. But he was content
with the title of “ Sir,” the lowest in the gift of the
sovereign, and with seeing his grasshopper emblem sur-
mounting the Royal Exchange. He lived with magnifi-
cence at Osterley Park, near London, now the home of
the Earl of Jersey, and even to-day one of the finest
estates in England; he loaned his town house to Ann
of Cleves, when she came to marry Henry VHI, and
he imported at great expense a pair of Spanish silk﻿London’s Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress 255
stockings for Edward VII—leaving the status of the
English merchant exactly where it was, and where it
still remains, a state of bondage to be despised by a
noble sovereign and his noble court, unmindful of the
old saying: “ If princes and people stark naked should
go, who could their gradations of dignity know? ”
The Lord Mayor is still the product of middle-class
brains and ambition, climbing slowly up upon the City’s
official ladder, chosen first as alderman for a City
ward, and then as high sheriff before being eligible to
become Lord Mayor. In these later years the religious
barriers of the olden time have been removed. He can
be, and is sometimes, a Catholic. And even a Jew may
now fill the Lord Mayor’s office, taking precedence in the
City of all royalty but the sovereign, and at St. Paul’s
Cathedral taking the throne opposite the Bishop of
London, and with precedence of the Archbishop of Can-
terbury. And he lives in supreme military and civic
authority close to the Old Jewry, where the terrible
massacres of the Jews began the night of the coronation
of Richard Coeur de Lion and continued until there was
scarcely a Jew alive in all England—while Richard rode
off to the Crusades to rescue from the Saracens the
t
Holy Land, the home of the Jews. The Lord Mayor
pays out of his own pocket for sumptuous hospitality
generally as much and sometimes even more than the
£10,000 of his salary. He is a man of business honour
sans reproche, and middle-class respectability of the
Ten Commandments unimpaired; tenacious of the rights
of the City, but not less so of the immunities of rank,﻿256 Intimacies of Court and Society
to which he hopes with the Lord Mayor’s baronetcy ul-
timately to attain. He has all the proverbial, tradi-
tional English contempt for the middle class, persuaded
that the thing universally throughout the centuries in
his country proclaimed so despicable, must, perchance,
despicable be.
I remember that I had my first glimpse into the soci-
ety of the City at the Guildhall ball in 1887, in honour
of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, when there was such an
array of royalty at home and abroad that the West
End was ready to know any one who knew an alderman
from whom to beg, borrow, or steal a ticket; and I was
unimportant enough to be glad of a seat in the gallery
below the orchestra, and enthusiastic enough to go down
every day for a week to watch the elaborate prepara-
tions. Carpenters had been busy there for many a
week, connecting outlying buildings to the Guildhall
proper, putting down a dancing-floor over the stone
one, where traders still come to-day for the authorized
measurements of inches, feet, and yards to settle dis-
putes in business transactions; and decorators had hung
the walls with velvet and tapestry, and upholstered the
rooms as for the home of a king. A squad of police-
men kept back the curious ones in the ever-present
crowd, who had no sponsors among the rotund, conse-
quential aldermen and councillors who arrived in their
carriages and pairs to watch operations, the hanging of
flags and banners, the placing of palms and huge flower-
ing plants, rose trees and orchids, and entwining the pil-
lars with wreaths of primroses and violets. The Queen﻿London’s Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress 257
herself was not there; she had just made her appear-
ance at the Mansion House to commemorate her Jubilee
after opening the Queen’s Hall of the People’s Palace
in Mile End Road; but the Lord Mayor proudly took
the lead to the supper-room with the Queen of the
Belgians, and the Lady Mayoress with the old King of
Denmark, father of the then Princess of Wales, now
the widowed Queen Alexandra, and followed by King
George of Greece, King Leopold of the Belgians, the
old King of Saxony, the Prince of Wales (King Ed-
ward), the Crown Prince of Portugal (the assassinated
King), the old Duke of Cambridge, the Duke of Con-
naught, the Grand Duke Serge of Russia (who was as-
sassinated), the Princess of Wales, the Crown Princess
of Germany (the Kaiser’s mother), the Crown Princess
of Portugal (the exiled Queen Amelia), the Duchess of
Teck (mother of George V’s Queen Mary), Princess
Christian and Princess Beatrice (Queen Victoria’s
daughters), the Duchess of Edinburgh and the Duchess
of Connaught, and the Queen of the Hawaiian Islands,
scarcely forgotten even to-day by the Washington gov-
ernment, a dusky beauty much bejewelled, legally as
much a sovereign as any of them, and treated as such.
Then came a train of ladies- and gentlemen-in-waiting,
of equerries and maids-of-honour, of princes and dukes,
of City aldermen, bankers and merchants with their
princesses and duchesses of trade. City wealth and
display vied with royalty that night, and masculine and
feminine royalty vied one with the other with thousands
of gems to make a brave showing in a foreign land, in﻿258 Intimacies of Court and Society
necklaces, bracelets, and brooches, in jewel-encrusted
court swords dangling from the belt, and in the dec-
orations of every court of Europe. There were the
jewelled orders of the English Knights of the Garter,
the (French Legion d’Honneur, the Black Eagle of Ger-
many, and the Golden Fleece of Spain, the Knights of
the Redeemer of Greece, the Knights of the Sword of
Sweden, the Knights of the Tower of Portugal, the
Knights of Dannebrog of Denmark, the Scottish
Knights of the Thistle, and the Irish Knights of St.
Patrick—the whole making a dazzling pageant en-
circled above by the blazing jewels of the women flash-
ing from crowns, coronets, and tiaras. It was such a
dazzling pageant as the world has scarcely seen in the
ball-room—and composed of power and grandeur which
is, to-day, most of it, after tragedy and sorrow, nothing
but dust and ashes and the shroudings of the tomb!
Then I remember that I was at the Guildhall in De-
cember, 1901, for the luncheon given in honour of the
Prince and Princess of Wales, now the new King and
Queen, after their return from India and Australia, on
my way there passing through streets hung with flags
and bunting, from York House clear up to the Guild-
hall; and into the Library and the dais of the Lord
Mayor and Lady Mayoress, through courtyard and
corridors lined with artillerymen, and the members of
the London Fire Brigade. Every guest was in the room
before the Prince and Princess and their suite and a
mounted escort of the Life Guards arrived, the Lord
Mayor with his suite, with the sheriffs and an imposing﻿London’s Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress 259
reception committee at the door to meet them, and the
City trumpeters breaking upon the dead silence of ex-
pectancy with thunderous, ear-splitting blasts. They
were escorted inside and up to the dais of the Lady
Mayoress, the trumpeters marching before, and the
Princess accepted a huge bouquet of mauve and white
orchids from the Lord Mayor’s daughter. The Town
Clerk loudly called for silence—there was scarcely a
whisper which he could have heard—and the Recorder
read a loyal address, which he handed to the Lord
Mayor, who handed it to the Prince, who handed it to
his equerry—who probably thoughtfully misplaced it
before the day was done. The Prince replied, assuring
the Lord Mayor, the Lady Mayoress, the sheriffs, the
aldermen, the councillors, and the guests that he was
delighted to be there, and appreciated the honour, his
kind, honest face and handsome eyes full of sincerity
and gentle pleasure, while the Princess smiled her char-
acteristic, stereotyped, emotionless smile. From the
Library they were escorted into the Guildhall proper,
with the City trumpeters, the Lord Mayor, the Sword
Bearer, the Mace Bearer, the City Marshal, and the
forty members of the reception committee to show them
the way; and every one had lunch with all the formal-
ities and traditional rites of City ceremony. Some
of the greatest men of the Empire were there, Lord
Salisbury as Prime Minister, portly and pompous, with
the brow of a giant intellect and the haughty glance of
a feudal lord; Joseph Chamberlain, his Colonial Secre-
tary, whom he detested personally as an upstart, but﻿260 Intimacies of Court and Society
dared not ignore, a merchant like every other Eng-
lish merchant, happiest when not reminded of the fact,
his eyes shrewd and fearless, the face even then sickly
and aging, the monocle and the orchid boutonniere pre-
cisely in the same position as for the last forty years;
Lord Rosebery, fastidious in manner and in dress;
the eighty-year-old Canadian, Lord Strathcona,
to-day over ninety, as unpretentious and genial
as when he was a poor Scotch lad, with his for-
tune and his honours all to achieve; John Morley, with
more of the student’s aesthetic face and manner than the
lawgiver’s; and Leopold de Rothschild, typically a
banker and typically a Jew. The hall was filled with
tables filled with guests of importance, the toilettes and
jewels of the women made a splendid spectacle alone;
and the men, of course in levee dress, army uniform, the
scarlet robes of the aldermen, or the blue of the com-
mon councillor. After luncheon there were toasts, to
which the Prince, Lord Salisbury, Mr. Chamberlain,
Lord Rosebery, and the Lord Mayor responded, and in
which even the most casual foreigner would have felt
the divine fire of empire building, which the genius of
Salisbury fostered, and the genius of Chamberlain would
have led to triumph if the fates had been more kind
to him in their priceless gift of health. Then the Prince
and his suite, with the Prime Minister and an entourage
of statesmen, went into the Library for coffee and
cigars; and the Princess and her suite, with the Lady
Mayoress and her suite, went into the Guildhall Art
Gallery, transformed into a drawing-room, where they﻿London’s Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress 261
had coffee, and where the Prince joined them to take
leave of the Lord Mayor, the Lady Mayoress, and the
loyal citizens. After they were gone, intimate friends
of civic sovereignty rushed in to sit in the chairs upon
which royalty had just sat, to smell the flowers they
had deigned to smell, to finger the solid gold spoons
with which they had stirred the cup; then everybody
drove home through streets packed with people kept
back by hundreds of policemen, trying to face the gaze
of the populace with an air of sang-froid, as if lunching
with royalty were a commonplace thing of the every
day.
But it was a compatriot, one of the few American
women who have married into the rich bourgeoise of
England, who led me deep into the romantic world rep-
resented by the picturesque offices handed down un-
changed through the centuries, and gave me an intimate
entree into the society of the City. As I review to-day
my memories of a hundred or more festivities, there is
still the feeling which I had at the time in each one of
them, as of a journey into another land, in closing the
carriage-door at Mayfair and opening it before the
Guildhall or the Mansion House—and the remembrance
of the remark I heard as a young girl from a fascinat-
ing young rake in the Guards, that “ London was com-
fortably big enough for any one to lead a double life! ”
I remember, too, that the first time I was the Lord
Mayor’s guest at the Mansion House was for the most
important affair of the year, the Easter banquet, and
that we met as perfect strangers, he having sent me the﻿262 Intimacies of Court and Society
invitation card through the influence of my compatriot
upon the demand of an alderman who had the ancient
right to bring a certain number of women friends.
“ Coaching orders ” they are still called, although the
Lord Mayor no longer sends a coach to fetch the lady
and take her home. There were nearly four hundred of
us, members of the diplomatic corps, the Archbishop
of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and numerous of-
ficials of the London hospitals, for the Easter season
has always been associated in the City with the institu-
tions for the care of the sick; and all making first our
appearance in the Grand Saloon, where the tapestries
hang, woven upon the looms of Old Windsor, com-
memorating the visit of Queen Victoria to the Mansion
House in 1887. The doors at the back were quietly
opened, and that famous individual, “ Wynnie,” the
head butler of thirty or more administrations, came in
and said, “ Dinner is served, my lord.” The Lord
Mayor gave his arm to the Archbishop’s wife, and he
his arm to the Lady Mayoress, and the procession
wended its stately way, led by the City Marshal, a reg-
ular army officer in military uniform of scarlet and gold,
with the Mace Bearer and the Sword Bearer, and the
Lord Mayor in his most royal of civic robes, and the
diamond badge of office, made up of the rose, shamrock,
and thistle in gorgeous gems, encircled by the City
motto “ Domine, Dirige Nos,” in two or three hundred
diamonds.
The dinner was laid in the Egyptian Hall, where all
the banquets are held, a nobly proportioned room in ex-﻿Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York
The Yeomen of the Guard or “ Beef Eaters,” in costume of Henry VIII, the
regular guard at the Tower of London, but a part of the ceremonial pageants
of the state balls, the opening of Parliament by the King, etc.﻿﻿London’s Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress 263
ecrable taste of mural decoration, with a vaulted roof
and two rows of lofty columns, and a stained-glass win-
dow representing the signing of Magna Charta filling
one of the end walls. It is lighted from the outside,
and that evening shed a dozen soft shades of colour
upon the head table, challenging the rosy glow from
the immense silver candelabra, six of them, each with
six branching arms; and along the sides of the cone-
shaped figure, formed by the other tables which carried
the same scheme of candelabra and shaded branching
candles. The dining-room was en fete with masses of
flowers, and gold and silver plate and shining crystal,
and there seemed to be a regiment of tall footmen in
gala livery of powdered hair, velvet coats, white knee-
breeches, silk stockings, and big, buckled shoes, the Lord
Mayor’s two personal lackeys behind his chair and that
of the Archbishop, the Lady Mayoress’s behind her
chair, and those belonging to the aldermen behind their
chairs—looking very grand and getting in the other
servants’ way,—and those waiting at table moving noise-
lessly in and out under the direction of Wynnie, without
whose thin, severe elegance in grey side whiskers and
black coat, the Mansion House would be an unfamiliar
place.
Instead of the usual glass finger bowls, we had gold
dishes with rosewater, one for each table, bearing in-
scriptions that they had been presented by former Lord
Mayors, beginning in the days when glass was more rare
and costly than gold, and Wynnie offered a snuffbox
to each of the men, another relic of the byegone days.﻿264 Intimacies of Court and Society
There were toasts, of course,—the ghosts of the City
Fathers would turn in their graves if there were a Man-
sion House banquet without toasts—and the loving-cups
were sent down the tables, filled with spiced wine im-
memorially termed “ sack.” My immediate host, the
alderman, said that this custom dated from Queen El-
frida, who had her husband, King Edward, assassinated
while draining his wine-cup at the banquet board—
and that ever after there was a sacred law in England
that a man should be immune from attack while drink-
ing with his friends.
Other years followed when, during the few weeks I
generally managed to spend in London every season or
two, the Lord Mayor was an acquaintance, and I was
an eager partaker of civic hospitality; and then one
year, when I stayed my wanderings for a considerable
time, I discovered that the incoming Mansion House
host was an old friend. I did not arrive in time to wit-
ness the ceremony of his election, when the gallery at the
Guildhall is generally crowded with ladies watching the
thousands of members of the Guilds come to choose two
among the twenty-six aldermen eligible to the office, to
send in to the aldermen to choose the one and leave the
other, sitting in state in their gilded chamber, with the
door locked and the City Marshal on the outside, his
sword before the big keyhole—and every one outside
in the hall knowing beforehand which will be the one!
They cheer him gallantly when he appears on the left-
hand of the Lord Mayor to make a dignified promenade
down the historic hall, have the chain of the new of-﻿London’s Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress 265
fice put around his neck, and ride off in the gilded state
coach to the Mansion House to lunch. But I arrived
in time for Lord Mayor’s Day, the ninth of November,
when, rumour hath it, the new Lord Mayor lies awake
all night for the rapturous moment of the first greet-
ing from his valet’s lips, “ Good-morning, MY LORD.”
It is the day when he drives in state, about two o’clock,
from the Guildhall to the Law Courts for official recog-
nition before the Lord Chief Justice, and in the even-
ing presides at the Guildhall banquet, invariably at-
tended by the Prime Minister and the Cabinet—a day
which yearly passes with the languid, supercilious no-
tice of Mayfair and amid the wild excitement of the
cockneys.
The pageants associated with this day have prac-
tically passed into oblivion with their heterogeneous
crowd of attendants made up of liveried servants and
Roman lictors, crusaders, and dancing satyrs; and the
Guilds attended by citizens dressed to represent their
trade. The Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress no longer
go in barges on the River Thames to Westminster, as
they did for centuries, up to 1857, when the supreme
control of the Thames passed out of the hands of Lon-
don City; and for many recent years the Lady Mayoress
has not been included in the procession, although she
used to be escorted from her residence to the Guildhall
by a guard of honour, in a carriage drawn by four
horses and preceded by the City officials and the Scots
Greys.
Upon this particular ninth of November, when my﻿266 Intimacies of Court and Society
friends took up their roles, a private carriage called for
the new Lord Mayor about ten o’clock in the morning
to take him to the Guildhall, where the procession to the
Law Courts was formed. The bells of the City rang
out their greeting, and a dozen brass bands kept up the
merry din as, accompanied by the aldermen and the
Corporation in their own carriages, he took his first ride
through the crowded streets, decorated in his honour,
sitting in the gilded state coach, drawn by six horses,
his private chaplain beside him, the Sword Bearer and
the Mace Bearer upon the seat opposite, and the City
Marshal in front upon horseback; the old coach, which
cost something like £1,000 in 1757, and has cost
about £100 a year for repairs ever since, lumbering
along under the guidance of the bewigged fat coach-
man—who always gets, a tip of a guinea upon this oc-
casion—and with two lackeys riding behind upon the
rumble—who get a guinea between them as a tip. It
is a gentle way of “ breaking in ’’ the new magistrate to
the delightful prerogative of his year of office, when he
signs his name about 30,000 times, and generally pays
out of his own pocket some £10,000 for the privilege.
The Lady Mayoress stayed at home until about five
o’clock, answering a few among the hundreds of letters
and telegrams of congratulation. Her six maids-of-
honour for the banquet that night, daughters of her
husband’s civic friends, had long ago been chosen, and
their costumes designed, and her own court dress to be
worn again later, when presented to the Queen, had
been for several days spread out in one of the guest﻿London's Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress 267
chambers, with every detail complete. I saw her for a
few moments in her private room at the Guildhall be-
fore she went down to take her position upon the dais
in the Library, the maids-of-honour buzzing about in
excitement, and the lady’s-maids setting the dresses
right and arranging the trains before the long mirrors
which lined the room. She was a gentle, refined woman,
a “ lady ” by the canons of American life, although
without lineage, and therefore not, according to the
English. But for that one year she would take prece-
dence of the Princess of Wales within the boundaries
of the City, and at court would rank as the wife of an
earl. I dropped her a curtsey, with a “ Good-evening,
my Lady Mayoress,” to which she replied, with a bright
smile full of tender humour and with some happy tears
in the eyes, “ I have known for years that this night
would come, but now I feel for all the world just like a
little Cinderella transformed by a fairy wand.”
Her husband, a man of powerful build with the broad,
low shoulders and short muscular neck, the markings of
endurance and passion, and the strong jaw of the
fighter, did not belong to that small aristocracy of City
wealth and privilege where son has succeeded father in
the business firm and the Lord Mayor’s chair, but had
made his own way up, beginning at ten to support his
mother, an errand boy in the business where he was now
a white-haired partner. To the casual eye his face was
cold and hard, and men seldom attempted to cheat him.
But a crying child upon the street would have known at
once that he was a friend, and in the quiet circle of his﻿268 Intimacies of Court and Society
home his eyes were often lighted by the dreamy fire of
imagination, the vision of the poet, but not less so of the
self-made man. He stood upon the dais in the Library,
where the arched ribs of the roof are supported by the
coats-of-arms of the twelve great Guilds commemorat-
ing the dignity of trade, behind him the stained-glass
window bearing the emblems of the dyers, pewterers,
butchers, barbers, carpenters, and other lesser Guilds;
with Milton and Stow, representative of the City’s lit-
erary glory, upon one side, and Whittington and
Gresham, of its merchant glory, upon the other. The
trumpeters announced the arrival of the Prime Minister,
and he and his Cabinet made their way up to the dais,
deferential and ingratiating, coming as every Cabinet
of every king is glad to come to the Guildhall to seek
the City’s support and confidence and the prestige
which it gives the Government before the world. The
Prime Minister gave his arm to the Lady Mayoress,
and the procession made its way into the banquet-room.
Ladies and gentlemen from every rank of society and
political distinction were there, foreign ambassadors
and peers, the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-Gen-
eral, the Cabinet in their Windsor costume of dark-blue
and gold braid designed by the Prince Consort, and far
from handsome, but the whole picture, as the nine hun-
dred guests were seated at table, one of extraordinary
brilliance. Upon high stools at either end were the
immense “ barons of beef,” each weighing about 150
pounds, carved according to ancient usage by officials
appointed to this delicate task. The upper gallery, sup-﻿London’s Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress 269
ported by the giant figures of Gog and Magog, which
used to adorn the old pageants, was given over to the
orchestra, but the lower gallery was full of spectators,
while the small one overlooking the head table was used
for the maids-of-honour, who have their dinner in a
private room, and then appear in the gallery, their
bouquets hanging over the railing.
When the Lord Mayor lifted up the loving-cup to
start it upon its rounds, I saw that his eyes had a soft-
ened, far-away look. It was the supreme moment of
his life, the one moment for which he had spent years of
sacrifice and struggle. And I knew that he had for-
gotten the famous room, with its monuments to
Chatham, Canning, and Wellington, its pervading air
of romance and history, and its ghosts of the Black
Prince, Lady Jane Grey, and Bloody Mary; had even
forgotten that throng of powerful men whom any king
would have been proud to welcome at his board—and
that he longedf for his mother who, many years since,
had folded her tired hands in eternal peace, and saw
himself a hungry, shivering little errand boy, running
about Fleet Street and Comhill, always listening for the
sound of the bells from St. Mary-le-Bow, and hearing
in their sweet tones the same message they gave Dick
Whittington, “ Turn again, Lord Mayor of London! ”
Mansion House comer is one of the noisiest and dirti-
est in all noisy, dirty London. The fine sculpture over
the front portico, representing the goddess of the City
trampling upon her enemies, is so begrimed as almost﻿270 Intimacies of Court and Society
to be defaced, and so continues year after year. But
every November the Corporation tries to make the in-
terior spotlessly new and clean, from the kitchens in
the basement, with ranges big enough to roast an ox,
and stewing-tanks laid down over a series of furnaces,
up to the Lord Mayor’s enormous state suite, with its
handsome fittings in bathroom and dressing-room. The
Lady Mayoress commands the decorations and altera-
tions in the private rooms on the second floor, the break-
fast-rooms, the dozen or more bed-rooms, the billiard-
room, but especially in the boudoir, the one particular
spot of home in the barn-like palace. This, my friend,
greatly daring, had entirely in white, ordering herself
the white flowers which were eyery day fresh in the vases
and bowls, and making it all the year look to me like
a ball of unsullied snow in the midst of a coal mine.
She brought her own linen, china, and silver for the
breakfast, the one meal the family had in private, and
her own staff of servants, supplemented by men and
maids whom she, or, rather, Wynnie, could depend upon.
The ordinary livery and the gala livery, which is good
enough for the household of a king, must be new with
each new Lord Mayor, as the servants claim them as
perquisites at the end of the year—silk stockings, cocked
hats with gold bands, velvet coats, and everything else,
the background of magnificent flunkeyism which inspires
reverential awe in the untutored soul; and, with the tax
levied upon liveried servants, together with the generous
wages and unstinted food and drink of a millionaire’s
office, costs the Lord Mayor between two and three﻿London’s Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress 271
thousand pounds—and answers in part the question one
hears constantly among the ignorant: “ Where does all
the money go ? ”
Wynnie is invariably retained, although his post is
no sinecure. I told him one day that he ought to re-
tire and write his memoirs. And what secrets he could
tell! Exactly how much is eaten and drunk under the
time-honoured phrase, “ eats like an alderman and
drinks like a fish.” How many and how tempting were
the bribes offered by various young “ swells ” of the
Piccadilly Clubs to be disguised as dining-room foot-
men when beauty and the drama, several years ago,
lunched at the Mansion House. How many requests
does each Lord Mayor have, to change the whole per-
sonnel of the Bank of England, the Mint, St. Paul’s
Cathedral, and the Royal hospitals, from obsequious
guests whispering between the courses into the ear of
Wealth and Power. What is the difference in the ex-
pression upon the faces of the outgoing and the incom-
ing Lord Mayors when the head butler announces for
the last time to the one and the first time to the other,
“ Dinner is served, MY LORD.” But Wynnie was not
to be seduced into the path of fortune and memoirs.
He told me, with his gentle smile, that he would prefer a
little cottage in the country and a garden full of roses.
The everyday catering for the establishment was ar-
ranged for in advance from the firm of caterers which
has served the Mansion House almost as long as it has
stood, which gave to it a Lord Mayor in 1814, and
whose little shop in Cornhill is among the relics of the﻿272 Intimacies of Court and Society
district. They supplied a regular chef with his own
staff, who early every morning sent up the menus for
the day by the housekeeper. For the official banquets
and balls, there was a separate chef and a separate
kitchen staff. A member of the firm would come for the
order, and they supplied everything but the plate and
the wine. This last, the Lord Mayor had laid in long
ago, with the certainty before him of needing it in due
course of time, sending in consignments of special
brands chosen with the utmost care, regardless of ex-
pense, and locked up in his own vault among the miles
of wine cellars underneath the house—sharing the base-
ment with the wretched creatures imprisoned in the cells,
as in the dungeons of the feudal castles, awaiting trial
before the Lord Mayor when the morning dawned.
The daily round of the Mansion House, as I knew
it so intimately that year, went with as much reg-
ularity for my friends as for the City policemen on
duty, one of whom every hour of the day and night
had to press a peg in the clock in the Egyptian Hall,
with only three minutes of grace for delay. However
late they were kept up by official parties, they had to
be up early the next morning to meet the multitude of
engagements made weeks in advance; the valet and the
lady’s-maid in charge of wardrobe-rooms at the top of
the house, where civic robes in violet and scarlet, velvet
court costume with frills of lace, and feminine dress for
eivery conceivable function, were in constant use. The
Lady Mayoress attended to her own mail after break-
fast, weeding out some fifty or more begging letters﻿London’s Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress 273
which, with a feeling of hopeless impotence, she
despatched down to the Justice Room clerk, who admin-
isters the too well known “ poor box.” The private
secretary, Sir William Soulsby, who has served suc-
cessive Lord Mayors since 1875, was a regular guest
to lunch, with the private chaplain, who has his own
suite of rooms at the Mansion House and a personal
servant, the City Marshal, the Sword Bearer, the Mace
Bearer, and the Justice Room clerk, a small suite com-
pared to that which the Lord Mayor of the ancient
time had to welcome daily to his board, some twenty-
five persons whose dinner was stipulated to cost not less
than £2, with as much wine as they cared to drink.
During my friend’s regime, places were always laid in
addition for a dozen or more guests, from all classes
and occupations, from the Viceroy of India to an
Australian cricketer or a veterinary surgeon who was
an authority upon cattle disease. There were the lead-
ers of every social, philanthropical, and charity move-
ment under the English sun and fog, and a multitude of
clergymen, from the Bishop of London to the struggling
young curates preaching the several sermons to be
given in the City until the Day of Doom, because pro-
vided for in perpetuity in the by-gone days, in memory
of the delivery of the English nation from the Gun-
powder Plot and the Spanish Armada! In the course
of the year, some 25,000 people passed in and out for
lunch, dinner, or tea, and there was scarcely a week
without some sort of a public gathering in the Egyptian
Hall, in all of which the Lord Mayor and Lady﻿274 Intimacies of Court and Society
Mayoress had to lend their presence upon the platform
and head the subscription.
There were many regular dinners, luncheons, and
balls coming in the routine of the year’s work, for the
aldermen and the common councillors, the Prime Min-
ister and the Cabinet, the Lord Chief Justice and the
judges, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the bishops.
But the children’s fancy-dress ball, which comes shortly
after Christmas, was the happiest and most charming
party of the year, and we had a merry time getting
ready for it, with a number of young men friends to
act as stewards with long white wands, to marshal the
partners, selecting the very tiniest to lead the grand
march past the dais, and seeing that the little people
who had green tickets for that particular supper hour
went in at the proper time, the blue at another, the yel-
low and white when they were expected; and that the
Punch and Judy show, the conjurer and the photog-
rapher in their different rooms, had their delightful
mysteries revealed.
I remember that the Lady Mayoress went to count-
less meetings at institutions connected with the City,
to the Ragged School, the London Hospital, the Guild-
hall School of Music, where there was the inevitable
little girl to present the inevitable big bouquet; and
that I was often in the Lady Mayoress’s “ Closet ” at
St. Paul’s, up some funny little steps behind the choir,
and close to the Lord Mayor’s throne. But I was most
useful when she needed an unattached friend to pass
the evenings with her when her husband went alone to﻿London's Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress 275
numerous men’s dinners, and to the banquets of the
wealthy old City Guilds, upon which something like
£100,000 is spent every year, mammoth orgies of eat-
ing and drinking which Thackeray described as “ mon-
strous belly worship.”
It was a peculiar sensation which invariably seized me
as, late at night, we would sit alone up in the boudoir,
and I realised that I was miles away from the habita-
tions of my friends. There was never a blade of grass
in the neighbourhood, and a rosebush in its smoky air
and dusty soil would soon have become as dead as the
ancient ones of the Temple Garden hardby, where the
adherents of the Houses of York and Lancaster plucked
their white and red badges in the War of the Roses.
Underground railways from every district of the
metropolis rumbled away, and the noise of the traffic
never ceased. But Wellington’s equestrian statue
looked down only upon banks, upon the Bank of Eng-
land, which is the guardian of some £23,000,000 in gold
and bullion, upon the Mint where it is coined, the Stock
Exchange, where it is bartered back and forth, with
nods and careless words, upon rows of banks among
which, it is said, a million pounds in trade or paper
changes hands every working-day—upon the streets of
a Midas kingdom that could literally be paved with
gold!
The year drew to a close, and the eventful hour of
hours arrived. The Lord Mayor was made a baronet.
A few days later we were on the train speeding up﻿276 Intimacies of Court and Society
to the North, where I had a lifelong friend, a university
professor of Latin, who had disappeared from the busy
haunts of men to enter the service of a distant relative,
an earl, whose old books and property deeds he had
spent years in arranging and deciphering, receiving a
little cottage in the country, £100 a year, and the title
of “ antiquarian.” London had not seen him for a
quarter of a century, but the historical societies often
appealed to his wisdom, and the “ Peerage ” would
never have thought of disputing his information upon
lineage. The Lord Mayor’s name was, in itself, one of
the best and oldest in England, a family proud of an
ancestress who had been the mistress of a king, but never
accepting a marriage out of its class. He had heard
vaguely that his grandfather had eloped to Gretna
Green with a farmer’s daughter, and been disowned.
The Lord Mayor wanted to see the Antiquarian. He
spoke to me about it with a slight embarrassment, but
it was something of which he was not ashamed. “ I
have known the power and the prestige of wealth, now I
want its poetry, for myself and for my son,” was the
way he had expressed it. And I had understood.
It was in a tiny, odorous parlour that we met the
Antiquarian. He came in hesitatingly, blinking his
short-sighted eyes for better recognition; his face seemed
very red, but I knew he was only blushing! A wide
forehead, always white, no matter how red the face be-
came, projected over shaggy grey brows and clear blue
eyes, soft and shy you thought them at first, but in
truth they were keen and observant as a deer’s at bay.﻿London's Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress 277
The face and head were odd in shape, with a prominent
nose and a delicate mouth, which its owner had tried to
hide with a moustache and to guard with a quizzical
smile, like a sentinel, to mislead the enemy. Over his
shoulders, stooped from many hours spent over manu-
scripts, a shabby coat hung loosely, almost like a monk’s
robe. He held in his hands my letter just received, ex-
plaining the object of our visit, and the long, slender
fingers clasped one another nervously over the paper,
as, for a moment, he stood silently regarding the
Lord Mayor.
They were like solitary inhabitants from different
planets: the one in his threadbare coat, austere, ascetic,
with an air of the hauteur of class; the other, whose
diamond cravat pin was more than equal to the cottage
and its contents, and the garden land in which it lay,
standing with his strong hand upon the back of a
chair in the unconscious attitude of command, a man of
sixty whose blood still beat fast and furious with the
youthful joy of living and the conqueror’s joy of battle,
his strong face, with its lines of achievement, prosper-
ity, and practical sense turned squarely forward, the
steely eyes in their coldest glance of scrutiny and judg-
ment.
The Antiquarian led the way up to his den on the top
floor, reached by crooked stairs very steep and old,
and he was soon showing us a pile of old charters he
was at work upon, musty pieces of ancient sheepskin
covered with exquisite monastic lettering as fine as﻿278 Intimacies of Court and Society
print, and, to him, as legible. Hanging by slender
strips were seals of wax, stamped often with the royal
marks of King Stephen, King John, or Henry VII. He
read them off quite glibly, referring once in a while to
the dictionaries for an obsolete word. Failing to get
assistance there, he “ dug it out ” himself. He scoffed
at the idea I humbly advanced that he must have spent
years under some celebrated master of this particular
study. “ What I know about antiquity and antiquities,
my friend, is not to be learned from teachers or books.
There are the muniments, here are the documents, you
must decipher them yourself.” When he spoke, his
nervousness vanished. He had the boldness of the
authority, the decision upon mooted questions of the in-
vestigator, the enthusiasm of the lover.
The charters were too precious to be long on view;
as carefully as a mother would lay her babe to rest
did he put the box away and lock it up. Then he piled
upon the table bulky volumes containing his memoranda
of the Earl’s muniments, in which the lettering bade
fair to rival the work of the monks themselves, and then
volume after volume of family history, architectural de-
scriptions, critiques, and essays. From the depths of
his capacious cupboard he produced etchings and photo-
graphs in illustration which he had gathered from the
bookstalls of London, and some even from France. At
the very last he brought out his most cherished pos-
session, his history of the principal village of the Earl’s
estate, and its connection with the nation’s history,
written on foolscap through five hundred pages. It﻿Londons Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress 279
was ready to be bound without printing, and would
have no duplicate. It had been a labour of love for
ten years.
The maid brought us up some tea, but he forgot to
touch it—he always forgot it. I forgot mine, because
I was studying his face with affectionate solicitude,
noting that he seemed greatly aged since last we had
met, and, with a sudden throb of pain, I doubted
if the dear old Antiquarian would be there when I came
again, after a voyage to and fro across the sea. The
Lord Mayor, who had transacted his business down-
stairs, had scarcely spoken upstairs in the den, and he,
too, was forgetting his tea, a thing I had never known
him to do before. He sat near the window facing the
brilliant garden, where a circular lawn laid its velvety
carpet in extensive lines for such a modest dwelling. A
high stone wall screened it securely from view, but we
could see over it to the river, sinuous and silent, broad
paths along its banks, which its lovers had made. Its
white stone bridge crossed it on the crest of a hill just
beyond the garden wall, and other hills, rising proudly
and falling deep into narrow valleys, stretched in the
distance till they met the forests and the moors, and
were lost in the sky. Hill, forest, and moor were
wrapped in purple clouds, enveloped, but not obscured,
as the pungent greens came forth, just a tinge of purple
clinging to them. And even as we looked, the sunset
came out above it all, sending out rosy drifts to edge
the purple with lines of fire, while the radiant ball sank
gently to earth. He gazed out upon it, then back into﻿280 Intimacies of Court and Society
the little room upon the old Antiquarian, absently stir-
ring his tea and lovingly fingering his manuscript-book.
He looked at his gold watch hastily, snapping it shut,
which aroused the Antiquarian from his reverie. “ We
must hurry to catch our train,” the Lord Mayor said,
apologising with something like agitation in his voice.
He carefully adjusted my furs, for we were starting
out for a long autumn evening journey, and turned up
the sealskin collar to his coat. He was silent in the
train until we had nearly reached London again. Then
he said, with a sigh, “ I wonder which of us has chosen
the better part, and if I wouldn’t choose his, if I could
do it again? ”﻿XIV
AMERICAN MONEY IN EUROPEAN SOCIETY
Society is a game everywhere, as every one knows, the
same as the steel business is a game, or as marriage
is a game, and in Europe society is a game played by
the best and brainiest of the men and the most intel-
lectual as well as the most fascinating of the women,
a game worth the time, patience, and money of any one.
It was inevitable that the great surging tide of Amer-
ican life and ambition, especially in these later years of
enormous prosperity, unobstructed by internal war,
national poverty, or class discontent—it was inevitable
that it should sweep in tumultuous, mighty waves upon
the shores of Europe, inexorably drawn by Europe’s
Old-World loveliness and repose, the dignity and gentle-
ness of its daily life, its allure de noblesse. It was
a thing written in a giant’s hand on the Book of
Fate.
In describing the social glories of present-day society
in Europe, what chronicler can omit the history of the
American invasion, their entertainments not excelled
in the homes of the princes of the blood royal, the Amer-
ican-bom duchesses and countesses who congregated at
court, presenting a wondrous array of diamond tiaras,
ropes of pearls, ruby necklaces, and stomachers of em-
281﻿282 Intimacies of Court and Society
eralds—a phalanx of Money that overshadowed and
overawed.
Who expects to find an English family of the old
nobility moving these days into Park Lane, or a French-
man setting up his household gods in the Parisian
quarter of American millionaires, the Avenue du Bois
de Boulogne?
Who expects now to find an ambassador at any cap-
ital in Europe who lives more splendidly and enter-
tains as much and as splendidly as have certain Amer-
icans ?	“ The Corps is designated these days as the
American Ambassador and the rest of us,” are words
spoken softly, but none the less bitterly, by many a
diplomat when on leave and back at his own court.
And while the secretaries of other ambassadors live in
an apartment as feudal retainers under the roof of
their chief, the secretaries of the American take
their own houses, have their own retinues, and main-
tain a social leadership to which the others do not
aspire.
If you are an opera-goer in London, you will see at
different times almost the whole of the diplomatic corps
in ordinary seats on the ground floor, arriving un-
noticed from their—in comparison—modest dwellings in
Belgravia and Mayfair. It is the man from the United
States, living in a palace imposing enough for a king,
who takes his seat in the best box in the house, while
officials and lackeys pass the word along: “ Make way
for the American Ambassador.” His German colleague,
with a house in Carlton House Terrace, has a stately﻿American Money in European Society 283
mansion, but he shares it with his secretaries and the
embassy offices; while the famous Albert Gate House
of the French Embassy is far from the small radius
which any American ambassador would choose to con-
sider a proper place to live.
But there is no more absurd illusion in existence than
the idea that Americans were ever really welcomed into
the inner circle of court fife in any monarchial coun-
try, or that American women ever conquered there by
beauty, charm, or intellectual gifts alone. Had they
been as beautiful and conscienceless as Helen of Troy,
as masterful and versatile in enchantment as Cleopatra
—what would it have availed among women, the
arbiters of recognition? Would not these very gifts
of fascination arouse jealousy and the desire of
revenge?
No, no, they had to bring money, more of it than
their rivals could muster, and spend it more ingeniously,
more amazingly, than their rivals dared.
Those among them who are to-day landed in the
haven of refuge, who were so preeminently powerful in
King Edward’s circle, calmly recognised this fact, and
owed their success to their ability to play the game ac-
cording to the rules—to give something that was wanted
—to buy in the coin that would be accepted—rules of
any game imposed by that always-to-be-obeyed old
master, Human Nature.
The most recherche dinner among the many given in
honour of the late King Edward at Biarritz was Mrs.
Potter Palmer’s, when the dozen guests around the table﻿284 Intimacies of Court and Society
merrily picked their own cherries from dwarf Japanese
trees imported from the Orient especially for that oc-
casion, and costing one hundred dollars each. No one
but an American would have thought of such a thing,
and, thinking of it, no one but an American would have
paid for it.
If you can, in fancy, lift yourself above the house-
tops of active participation in affairs, and with a de-
tached and philosophical attitude, survey the move-
ment and development of American social conquest in
Europe—what is Money but the symbol and instrument
of conquest, and the only one that could be used?
In Europe aristocracy, prudently fortified by wealth,
has always condescended to everything but itself. The
old painters, portraying the triumphant death of a
saint, would indicate the degree of holiness and its
recognition, by the number of royal personages in the
death chamber. One of the celebrated abbesses of the
mediaeval church is represented breathing her last while
no fewer than six royal ladies, their crowns on their
heads, stand over her bed, giving her humble eyes an
enraptured foreshadowing of that Heaven to which her
soul is speeding. When the Romans acknowledged the
supremacy of Grecian culture, by taking away to
Rome its marvellous treasures, they did not at the same
time grant equality to the Greeks, but led them in
chains to grace their triumphs, or made them suffer
inhuman wrongs as galley slaves. From the time of
Dante and Shakespeare, of Michelangelo and Rubens,
down to the present day, intellectual gifts and achieve-﻿American Money in European Society 285
ments have, in Europe, bowed the knee in homage
to aristocracy entrenched behind a bulwark of
riches.
It is within the experience of the present generation
in England that the few men of the nobility who de-
voted their lives to the study and practice of medicine
were ostracised, sometimes disinherited by their fam-
ilies, as having brought disgrace upon an unblemished
name; while to-day it would not be difficult to count a
score of peeresses who would not allow a clergyman or
a university professor to sit in a carriage with them
except on the opposite seat, and who would gladly place
these custodians of learning below the salt at the dinner-
table if they dared.
It is an introduction to Royalty which a German
professor accepts as the crowning reward of his life,
meekly thankful for an honour which his wife is not
allowed to share with him, of jostling the fashionable
mob in palaces whose owners may not possess one tithe
of his learning, but who never accept him as an equal
or deign to cross his own threshold.
Thus, when it came to pass that Americans sought
personal recognition in Europe, how else could they
get it except to buy it, and not in the coin of culture,
but of cold cash? What else could they have brought
that Europe would have accepted for admittance into
the inner citadel? Lineage—we did not possess it.
The culture of the Grecian Golden Age—of what would
it have availed to-day in Europe at court, in reality,
any more than in Rome two thousand years ago ?﻿286 Intimacies of Court and Society
I have never yet passed a season in the cosmopolitan
society of London, Paris, or Rome, where Americans
are so victoriously en evidence, without being startled in
my complacency of national conquest by hearing some
one say, surveying me or a compatriot with a bewildered,
puzzled air of newly-acquired conviction, “ You are the
first American I have ever known; if they all are as
refined and cultivated, I should like to know some
more! ”
Benjamin West, a little Quaker boy from Pennsyl-
vania, succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as President of
the English Royal Academy, and was buried with na-
tional honours at St. Paul’s Cathedral; John Sargent
is the best portrait painter of the world, and Pierpont
Morgan is one of the most discriminating and distin-
guished collectors ever known—but I have seen all over
Europe, in art journals and above art shops, such ad-
vertisements as: “ To Americans and Connoisseurs.”
It is but one among many evidences that what culture
we do possess, Europe in general does not accept seri-
ously. And en passant, to be gently satirical at our
own expense, money, not culture, was the magician’s
key, and the only one to be forged which we our-
selves could have presented in Europe with any con-
fidence of ultimate success. What does success mean
to us as a nation unless “ it pays ” ? How many men
and women there are among us who have written great
books and conceived great thoughts, but who find them-
selves in an old age of poverty, of infinitely less conse-
quence than the rich old farmer who has not read a book﻿American Money in European Society 287
for forty years, and who spends the closing days of his
life sitting on his back porch chewing tobacco and
throwing com to his chickens!
It can readily be seen with what alarm, almost con-
sternation, the custodians of monarchial society have
viewed the American success. For they stand for
everything monarchies dare not countenance, if they
wish to maintain their own balance of power. Self-
preservation is the first law of nature. Institutions
built upon the foundation stone of class privilege and
the rights of lineage cannot be expected to welcome the
element of democracy, that, grown now to such enor-
mous power, has already, through its indirect influence
upon their own people, brought so much of threatening
disaster and annihilation. The recent enforced retire-
ment from the German Cabinet of Herr Demburg, the
Colonial Secretary, the greatest financier of the Father-
land, but a man of humble birth, revealed anew to the
world how unsoftened, even by patriotism and the na-
tion’s vital needs, is aristocracy’s hatred and fear of
democracy.
Any one in touch with the inner history of the French
Republic’s official life knows how bitter, how humiliat-
ing, have been the struggles of the President and his
wife to obtain recognition of equality among the men
and women ruling in other countries, not through the
voice of the people, but by the assumption of “ right
divine.” When the Franco-Russian alliance was
formed, President Loubet paid his memorable visit to
St. Petersburg as the guest of the Russian nation. He﻿288 Intimacies of Court and Society
went alone, because the existence of the President’s wife
was officially ignored by the Cabinet on the Neva, and
the Cabinet on the Seine could not afford to take cog-
nisance of the insult, the treaty being of too much im-
portance. But when the Czar was in Paris soon after-
wards, the Czarina accompanying her husband as a
matter of course, Madame Loubet took a quiet but posi-
tive stand for recognition, the first President’s wife to
do so, and, in obtaining it, raised the prestige and
dignity of the Republic in the eyes of all of
Europe.
One night at the opera, the Czarina, entering first the
presidential box, seated herself at the front, and care-
fully spread out her skirts so as to force Madame Lou-
bet into a chair just behind her. But the chair was
gently pushed forward, and the dauntless Frenchwoman,
the wife of a man of peasant birth, sat side by side
with the Empress of All the Russias. There was a mo-
ment of agitated silence among the retinue, then the im-
perial petticoats made way, democracy established its
right, and an international victory was won.
The haughty femininity of the Old World, secure in
its strongholds, and the final court of appeal in all
things of social recognition—how was it ta be con-
quered by the New except by Money, for more splendid
homes and entertainments, by gowns of more costly
material, and more of them, by the conscious superi-
ority which these bring to the woman—to give her
courage to look down her nose at a duchess!
The American invasion of the London West End takes﻿American Money in European Society 289
up, these days, at least a column every season in the
society discussions of every respectable newspaper in
Europe and the United States; one million dollars is
said to be a conservative estimate of the sum paid in
house rent by these visiting hostesses. The Duke of
Beaufort and the Duke of Abercorn—selecting two
names at random—have seldom condescended to receive
Americans at their table, but they are nervously anxious
each year until an American millionaire has been in-
duced to give a rental for their town houses for the three
months of the season which is large enough to pay the
expenses of the establishment for the current twelve-
months. And Ascot landlords have been numerous who
maintained a flat in Paris or a villa on the Riviera from
the proceeds of Ascot week—and a rich American
tenant.
Foreign correspondents in the United States now
punctiliously cable home and European editors gravely
comment upon the sailings from New York during the
summer season, when a thousand persons spending on
an average of a thousand dollars each, start every week
for European ports. New York’s billionaires are re-
ported as crossing the Atlantic in suites of rooms which
cost from five hundred to a thousand dollars for each
member of the family; and the luxury of Rome in the
days of the later Empire is to be eclipsed in the new
mammoth vessels, with complete private flats for pass-
engers, several cafes and restaurants, glass-covered
winter gardens, swimming-baths, ball-rooms, and skat-
ing-rinks.﻿290 Intimacies of Court amd Society
American correspondents in Europe, on the other
hand, ecstatically record the enormous purchases in Paris
of gowns and jewels by American women, thereby giving
the custom house officials many a welcome tip, and the
purchasers many an unwelcome hour of annoyance and
disgust—and keep the wires busy with such important
news as details about Henry P. Whitney’s shooting-box
and the pitch of costliness to which sport in England
has attained when an American is willing to lay out
over fifty thousand dollars upon his grouse moor for
one season alone; of Alfred Vanderbilt’s houseboat at
Henley, a sumptuous floating palace, unequalled by
anything of its kind in Europe; of the train of six or
eight motor-cars which the late W. B. Leeds used for
himself and his baggage when travelling in Italy; of the
velvet curtains which seclude Walter Winan’s horses in
his stables at Olympia during the London Horse Show.
It is understood that every hostess in Europe is ac-
customed to the arrival and departure of American
guests by special train at the trifling sum of a few
hundred dollars for an hour or two’s run up from the
country or down to the coast to meet a steamer. And
one hears that the waiters in the big hotels are not fin-
ished in their accomplishments until they can attend
with perfect ease to the multifarious demands of the
millionaire American youngster. He is usually drawn
in a lordly pose, lying in bed—where he has probably
been spanked and left by his unsuspicious mother—and
employing the interim by ordering everything on the
dinner menu from the sleek and solemn servant who,﻿American Money in European Society 291
with his napkin over his arm, stands in an attitude of
abject humility before the young Croesus.
Household servants of all kinds are supposed to be
debased and debauched by American money, from the
major domo in the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg,
who skilfully made a tiny nick in every piece of one of
the imperial dinner services so that he could surrepti-
tiously sell it to the secretary of the American Embassy
—to the page boys attached to King Edward’s suite at
Marienbad, who sold to silly American women the dis-
carded straws which His Majesty used in drinking his
lemonade. And it was, I believe, a set of rich Amer-
icans who, several years ago, started the custom in
England at the fashionable country-house parties, of
leaving behind in tips to the servants the same amount
of money as the week-end’s accommodation would have
cost at the best hotels; and now the old-fashioned
dowagers and their penniless daughters who, a few years
ago, would have considered an American acquaintance
as an “ indiscretion,” find themselves, to their unspeak-
able chagrin, omitted from many a country-house list,—
to make way for American money.
An evening party at Rome, a decade or two ago, with
sandwiches and a good wine to wash them down—now
it means a hot supper and such amazing menus that
aristocratic and poverty-stricken Rome has closed up
its ball-rooms in the old palazzos, formerly so famous
for hospitality, and withdrawn from the scene. “ We
cannot compete with the Americans ”—one hears the
same plaintive lament from London to Rome.﻿292 Intimacies of Court and Society
Every capital of Europe has its social queens who
are poor, and its parvenu millionaires who are vain
petitioners at their doors; but a large number of these
social queens have taken their defeat with the pluck of
true sportsmen, have quickly, with wisdom and fore-
sight, accepted the situation—and to-day will sell their
entree to any American who wants to buy. They ac-
knowledge that they cannot do without their accustomed
rounds of pleasure, of dinners, balls, and hunting. So
they get it all and make a good living besides by bring-
ing out their “ dear kinsmen ” from the States, and sur-
rounding the susceptible young girls with a band of
needy noblemen who would consider working for a living
a disgrace, but marrying for money their legitimate
goal. One must not look too closely at this immaculate
masculinity, or their shoes will sometimes be found
patched beneath their white gaiters, and under the
brave array of spotless high collar and fashionable cuffs
with imitation bejewelled links, and carefully brushed
coat buttoned closely in, there is, perhaps, an econom-
ical absence of linen which an American clerk would
despise.
A Spanish princess who, in the United States a few
years ago on an official mission, haughtily turned her
back upon an “ innkeeper’s wife ”—who is at the pres-
ent moment one of the great ladies of Europe, by virtue
of the judicious spending of her American millions—
the princess has, among the many others, so far suc-
cumbed to the charms of American gold that to-day, in
Paris, any hostess in the colony who knows the proper﻿American Money in European Society 293
channel of approach can get her as the guest of honour
-—with a little “ souvenir ” of a gown or two from
Paquin or Worth. The hostess is carefully punctilious
to send an account of her party to the journalists for
publication in Paris, and cabling to New York—un-
aware of the smiles among the people who are “ in the
know.”
Smug, middle-class people with smug, middle-class
notions, and smug aristocracy that has always been
rich and knows nothing of the tortures of poverty’s
privations—are horrified that the boastful American
phrase, “ Money talks,” has been such a siren’s voice
in nobility’s ears. But they cannot understand. It is
like the judgment of a plain-faced, anaemic old maid
upon the temptations of a superbly beautiful young
woman, untutored and unprotected, quivering with vi-
tality and joie de wore.
Ah, the people who understand, how few they are!
I often think of a lovely woman, a belle and a toast,
who became terribly disfigured through a railway ac-
cident, and refused for years to be seen at all by
strangers, and by her friends only at night in her own
home under candle-light—and who silenced my remon-
strances with a stern, bitter outburst, “ How can you
know that you wouldn’t do exactly the same thing your-
self if you were IP ”
Tout comprendre est tout pardormer.
The obeisance of Old-World lineage before the shrine
of New-World wealth is full of pathetic appeal to the
sympathetic and psychological mind. But, speaking﻿294 Intimacies of Court and Society
with the utmost seriousness and philosophical aloofness,
ignoring—or frankly despising on both sides—the
minutice of motive and the finesse of manoeuvre, it is,
nevertheless, true that the American victory has meant
an enormous increase in the dignity and accepted im-
portance of the United States. For, it has been among
nations who, aeons ago, decreed that recognition at
court should be the pinnacle of prestige. And it has
opened the magic doors to democracy’s wealth in
Europe, and brought a very universal, although re-
luctant, admission of the fact that a splendid com-
mercial generalship, which gives sustenance to thou-
sands of workmen and the vitality of prosperity to the
whole nation, is equal in greatness to any military gen-
eralship ever glorified in a country’s history, and fit
to mate with it on equal terms.
And even we Americans of lineage and the stiff pride
of poverty, who live in Europe as exiles because we
feel that we might almost as well be dead as not to be
rich in the United States, there has been wrung from us
the tardy acceptance that American money, even in its
most blatant, brazen vulgarity—and, of course, much
of it is neither blatant nor vulgar—but that even when
it is, it means the triumph of brawn and brains, of com-
mon-sense notions and democracy’s opportunities—and
that there are many things in the world worse than that
—many things, after all, worse even than vulgarity.﻿XV
LIFE AT GOVERNMENT HOUSE, CANADA
Tubning back the pages to my Canadian days, there
come up memories of Ottawa and Quebec, with lofty
mountains and boundless rivers, and men of humble
birth whose ambitions were as high and as boundless; of
vast stretches of ice and snow, swiftly-running sleighs
with magnificent furs; and winter dwellings of summer
heat, flimsy summer garments, and hot-house flowers;
memories of official life which had their own exciting in-
terest ; ceremonials baked in the oven of solemnity and
pomposity, but served up in the piquant sauce of demo-
cratic verve, a delicious mixture of Buckingham Palace
and the American backwoods; memories of a society so
youthfully unsophisticated that the suave politesse of
exaggeration, which is the language of European courts,
is taken au pied de la lettre; and memories of days, all
too few, fragrant with the peculiar Canadian charm of
life among the seigniorial families, exhaling still the at-
mosphere of dignity and class privilege brought from
France during the reign of Louis XVI, and untouched
by the disillusions and upheaval of the Revolution.
There rise up pictures of enchanting scenery, vistas of
sentiment and romance—such as I remember from the
flagstaff of Government House in Ottawa, where the
Governor-General’s ensign floats from dawn till dusk
295﻿296 Intimacies of Court and Society
when he is in residence, and which I saw for the first
time one winter afternoon, grasping the staunch old
staff and silent with emotion. Over the treetops lay
the Ottawa River, marking a line for miles through the
plains to the St. Lawrence, crowded then on the late
afternoon sunset with countless little sleighs, their
tinkling bells coming across the frosty air in faint
musical cadence, the Habitants and their wives going
home from Ottawa to the little village whose church
spire was the landmark on the hill.
But never to be forgotten are the bewitchments of
“ Our Lady of the Snows,” whose fascinations remain
unchallenged, the Canadian out-of-door pleasures
charged with the sweet wholesomeness of youth’s purity
and a youthful nation’s unmarred soul—not the same
of the winter-land of Russia, where roue and society
courtesan must always probe into the stream of gaiety
for the innuendo of carnal things, seeing even the
most innocent delights with jaundiced, blase eyes, and
tasting them with carmine-painted lips.
To-day, where is the jaded pleasure-seeker or the
blase courtier who would not welcome a season at Gov-
ernment House, “ Rideau Hall,” as it is called in Ot-
tawa—where, during the weeks of the ceremonies and
gaieties of the winter Parliamentary session, there is
such a stream of important guests from all parts of the
world that a royal prince could not be accommodated
for more than a few days’ visit, and the household’s in-
timate friends can expect to be stowed away at night in
the bathrooms. To beautify Rideau Hall and make it﻿Life at Government House, Canada 297
worthy of its visitors, the Governor-General strips his
English ancestral home during his term of office of its
finest paintings and engravings, its costliest rugs and
hangings and objets d’art, its old family silver and
splendid china. And he is himself among the pick of
ligence and great ambition; a man to whom birth and
experience have brought an appreciation of the pomp
and circumstance necessary to the ambassadorial
role, but whose temperament and training have
developed camaraderie, a rare combination in any
European diplomat, but especially rare among the
English.
Some years ago, when the new Governor-General in-
cluded in his household an old friend from London, I set
sail with them all, one late autumn day at Liverpool,
for the land of snow and sunshine—a voyage which I
remember chiefly for the hours of solitude which Lord
X, the Viceroy, demanded, striding up and down the
deck with a look of abstraction to seaward, his brows
knit in meditation, thinking gravely upon his mission—
the wooing to monarchial allegiance, not an immature
maiden coy, yet eagerly responsive, but a dame become
rich and powerful and confident of her charms. In the
household there was first the military secretary, a well-
known officer, whose duties were much the same as first
secretary to an ambassador, who must be able to become
charge d’affaires at any time, and who would be likely
to be ambassador or viceroy himself some day; and his
wife, who would have to assist at all official hospitalities,
and be in attendance upon Lady X when she appeared﻿298 Intimacies of Court and Society
in public. They had, however, their separate house
and establishment, although in the same grounds with
Rideau Hall, and with constant communication. There
were the three aides-de-camp, young army officers, gay
and debonnaire, who formed the executive management at
Government House, the kitchens, stables, gardens, and
skating-rink; and included in their triumvirate accom-
plishments the Scotch economy to produce the scheduled
number of receptions, dinners, and balls within the
scheduled money appropriation, the Irish “ blarney,”
which is warranted to lubricate the most cumbersome
official machinery, and the English aplomb, which gives
a soldier the courage to look calmly into a cannon’s
mouth, and a viceroy’s A.D.C. the courage to suggest'
to his superiors in the household who shall and who
shall not have the entrSe, unmoved by a battalion of
lovely feminine eyes, indignant, pleading, even weeping.
The “ triumvirate ” had a taste for diplomacy, a smat-
tering of drawing-room French, and a passion for'
dancing guaranteed not to diminish with a round of
the dullest “ official ” partners, or until % a.m.
six nights in the week, in the ball-room or upon the
ice.
They were boyish enough to feel at first somewhat
oppressed with their dignity and the demands which.
they supposed etiquette made upon them to pay punc-
tilious court to “ official ” ladies, however unattractive,'
and to no others, however young and seductive. But
an extemely pretty and vivacious Ottawa girl, a belle
with former A.D.C.S, although not in the least “ of’﻿Life at Government House, Canada 299
ficial,” finding herself ignored by the “ triumvirate ” at
a gathering of society soon after their arrival, said to
one of them quite openly, “ The Governor-General will
let you dance with me once if you are really good! ”
And after that the A.D.C.s allowed themselves some-
times to be as other men and yield to the charms of
youth and beauty.
There was also the Governor-General’s private sec-
retary, a timorous little man of comparatively humble
origin, who regarded his chief with sacred and solemn
awe—and who, later on, when we landed at Quebec,
turned purple with rage when the western senators
slapped His Excellency on the back to demonstrate the
force of their welcome. There were governesses for the
young children of the two families, the viceroy’s and
the military secretary’s; a tutor for the boy preparing:
for college; and for the young lady daughter just
presented at the English Court there was a chaperon,
a cosmopolitan woman thoroughly conversant with of-
ficial life. And, lastly, there was a supposedly faithful
retinue of old English servants, headed by a majestic
butler and a difficile “ lady ” cook to whom the A.D.C.s
paid assiduous court as one of their important duties,
and whom they planned carefully to conceal from the
eyes of envious Canadian and American millionaires
who might happen to be cookless and not too scrupulous
during visits to Rideau Hall.
The pier at Quebec was thronged with Cabinet min-
isters, senators, and civic dignitaries, impatiently walk-
ing up and down, and talking rapid French and Eng-﻿300 Intimacies of Court and Society
lish indiscriminately; magnificent big men in physique
and in brains. The cannon from the Citadel boomed
out with its quick salute the moment the Governor-
General stepped on shore, and kept booming away as the
Lieutenant-Governor escorted him through an aisle of
stalwart, strapping soldiers, the pick of the garrison,
to the official carriage and its double team of prancing
horses. And Lord X beamed with boyish pleasure at
the surging masses of people emptied into the quaint
grey streets, cheering and throwing up their hats—as
the carriage made its way up to the Citadel, laden high
with bouquets presented to Lady X, and passing under
a great arch of flowers and autumnal foliage, which is
nowhere as beautiful as in Canada.
The Governor-General assumes office the moment he
lands, according to Canadian custom, and Lord and
Lady X were to stay at the Citadel for a few days—
their trunks unpacked—to receive deputations, deliver
addresses, and visit institutions, while most of the rest
of the household made themselves into a merry little
yachting party up the St. Lawrence over to Ottawa
and Rideau Hall, to get it in readiness. A week later,
as I was passing through Ottawa en route to New
York, the military secretary’s wife and one of the
A.D.C.s met me at the station and regaled me with
an amusing portrayal of their woes. Rideau Hall is
prepared by the government with everything needful in
the way of big furniture, but each Governor-General
brings the small things of civilisation and etiquette—
and these had not arrived. So that when Lord and﻿Life at Government House, Ccmada 301
Lady X came in from Quebec, dashing up to the house
with great eclat in the state carriage and four, they
had to eat their first dinner in Government House with
pewter knives and forks, and one pewter spoon apiece,
which the butler handled as if it were poison when he
removed it to be washed and brought back with each
course. The kitchen range had refused to do its
duty, and the cook had threatened to leave on the next
steamer—but the A.D.C.s had sworn there was none
for a month, and the comptroller had searched the dic-
tionary for phrases of blatant flattery of the lady’s
carroty locks, ever afterwards described as “ Titian
gold.” Then the military secretary had received in-
timation that a few dozen among the Ottawa residents
wished to pay their respect at once—so the “ trium-
virate ” had manoeuvred the loan of cups and saucers
and spoons, which had been called for ahead of time
by servants from the owners, who mistook the hour
and came just as the last callers were accepting their
last cup of tea.
Several months later, going up to Ottawa again, for
the parliamentary gaieties, I remember the wonderful
beauty of the drive in the snapping, exhilarating air,
twenty degrees below zero, the trees with every branch
and twig encrusted with crystals sparkling like dia-
monds beneath an enchanting blue sky, like the decora-
tions of a fairy play; and the winter curtain overhung
with icicles of the Chaudiere Falls tumbling from three
different directions into the big cauldron, the foam of
the water caught in the ice. Superb bearskin rugs kept﻿302 Intimacies of Court and Society
us warm and cosy in the sleigh as we dashed along the
white road, over the bridge, up the hill rising on the
east bank of the untamed little Rideau River, and
through the unpretentious park gates, where there is no
sentry to challenge or salute, but where the British
coat-of-arms proclaims the official residence—and up to
Rideau Hall. It is a modest, unimpressive house of
grey stone full of unexpected architectural oddities and
peculiar chimneys, as if a dozen different occupants
had fashioned it bit by bit—which is exactly its history
—and seeming that day to be lying in the lap of the
park among the cedar and pine trees, stretching out
their thin arms lovely and graceful with soft, feathery
masses of snow pillowed against them.
Outside the entrance a city policeman patrolled as
sentry, in long overcoat and astrakhan cap, his
moustache covered with ice; and indoors the butler and
a footman took our wraps, and I had my first look at
the little orderly who had been secretly nicknamed “ A
Quarter-to-three,” from the way he pointed out his
toes—a brave little sergeant who had seen regular
service in India and wore with much simple dignity
his uniform of blue trousers and red tunic.
There was a dinner party the night of my arrival,
and I recall how punctilious we all were to be in the
drawing-room before Lord and Lady X came down, and
how carefully we made our curtseys to them, the repre-
sentatives of Royalty, going then into the dining-room,
which was hung in red and, seemingly, for the express
purpose of framing the picture of the Italian Cardinal,﻿Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York
Side view of Government House, Rideau Hall, Ottawa﻿■m﻿Life at Government House„ Ccmada 303
who was among the guests. His long scarlet robe and
big, jewelled ring were striking and picturesque, but not
more so than his thin Latin face and deep-set dark eyes,
childishly ingenuous and fathomless in the same mo-
ment. He had come with the French-Canadian Prime
Minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, of whom I always think
as one of the most elegant and fascinating men in the
world, his keen grey eyes kind but penetrating, the
famous little grey curls clustering around the tiny bald
spot on top of his head, slender in build, and clean
shaven, and with a radiant smile which brought out a
flash of response in every woman’s eye. The flowers
were superb, the conservatories having been stripped of
their best in honour of the Cardinal; and the A.D.C.s
and I exchanged amused smiles at the handsome china
marked with the Viceroy’s family coat-of-arms, and
the fine old silver—we were thinking of that first din-
ner and the pewter spoons. And brilliant and cosmo-
politan as the party was, I would gladly have ex-
changed it for a sight of the butler carrying out and
bringing back those pewter spoons, his nose disdainfully
in the air!
The next afternoon at three o’clock there was the
state opening of Parliament, and at Rideau Hall we
had late luncheon, we women coming down en decolletee,
according to the etiquette of the ceremonial—and the
dazzling sunshine mercilessly exposing its incongruity
until some one hurriedly drew down the blinds and
turned on the lights. The Governor-General was, of
course, the last person to leave the house, as every﻿304 Intimacies of Court and Society
one was supposed to be in the Senate Chamber to re-
ceive him upon his arrival, even his wife. But we knew
the moment of his departure, as it was heralded by the
first gun of an artillery salute fired from Nepean Point,
which backs upon Parliament Hill, a royal salute of
twenty-one guns, as he made his progress up the Hill,
in a four-horsed sleigh guided by postilions and sur-
rounded by a glittering escort of helmeted cavalry-
men. We ourselves, following in the train of Lady X,
drove to the side of Parliament Hill to the house of
the Speaker of the Senate, where we laid aside our long
cloaks, and then went into the Senate Chamber, already
crowded with people, all the women on the lower floor
in evening-dress; Lady X, on the arm of the Prime
Minister in his official uniform, escorting her up to the
throne, and the rest of our party finding seats near it.
Standing around the throne were the members of the
Cabinet in court costume, the senators, the Chief Justice
and judges of the Supreme Court in their official robes,
the Apostolic Delegate of the Catholic Church in robes
of scarlet and mauve, his chaplain in attendance, near
him the Archbishop of Ottawa, in black gown and lawn
sleeves, and his bishop’s ring en evidence, the Mod-
erator of the Presbyterian Church, and the General
Superintendent of the Methodist Church; the Consul-
General from Japan, diminutive and impassive, in dark-
blue uniform braided with gold; the German Consul-
General, in army uniform; the American, in his stereo-
typed black clothes.
Then, at last, the Governor-General made his entree,﻿Life at Government House, Canada 305
in court uniform, with his cocked hat under his arm,
his face seeming to grow in dignity and gravity with
each step toward the throne—but this, he told us after-
wards, was because his tight collar was about to choke
him. Mounted upon the throne, he put the hat on
while he read his speech; but every time he said, “ Gen-
tlemen of the Senate,” off would come the hat—then
“ Gentlemen of the House of Commons,” and off came
the hat again; while the House of Commons, standing
at the bar, were crowding in like so many schoolboys.
He gave it in English, and then in French—with the
bobbing and the bowing and the hat off and on all over
again. Then came the President of the Senate with his
speech in English and in French, with every other word,
“ His Excellency the Governor-General ”—and each
time off came the hat of His Excellency the Governor-
General. I often wished I had counted the extraor-
dinary number of those hat salutes!
He drove home again in state, with the band playing
“ God Save the King,” the guard of honour saluting,
and crowds in the streets cheering—and with the cocked
hat off and on every five minutes.
That evening at dinner it was evident from his fatigue
that he found it somewhat trying to represent in his
person the person of his sovereign, and he quoted Lord
Dufferin’s definition of a Canadian Governor-General,
“ who was like the humble functionary we see super-
intending the working of some complicated mass of
chain machinery, merely walking about with a little tin
vessel of oil in his hand, putting a drop here and a﻿306 Intimacies of Court and Society
drop there to stop the creaking ”—in other words, very
frequently taking off his hat.
The State Drawing-Room, with several hundred
“ court ” presentations, came soon after, to which Lady
X had been looking forward with terror on account of
the almost dangerous fatigue to a delicate woman of
standing on the throne for three hours to receive and
acknowledge the curtseys. But an enterprising florist
contrived a tall semi-seat for her, which looked like a
pillar of flowers on the throne, but had the top scooped
out so that she could easily rest in it without any one
knowing the difference, and giving her bows almost auto-
matically—as Queen Victoria used to do when driving
through the parks in London, sitting on a cushion
furnished with automatic springs, which kept her head
in gentle motion all the time.
It was at nine o’clock in the evening in the Senate
Chamber, and we had an early dinner at Government
House, Lady X beautiful and truly royal in shimmer-
ing chiffon and cloth of gold, her three ostrich feath-
ers and veil held in place by a diamond tiara, and a
diamond necklace worth a king’s ransom clasping her
throat—the only woman allowed a court train on ac-
count of the multitude of men as well as women to be
presented. Lord X was in court dress, with white satin
breeches, white silk stockings, and diamond buckles on
his shoes, and his breast covered with orders; and, as
before, he was the last to leave. But he and his wife
met at the Speaker’s house in the Parliament Buildings,﻿Life at Government House,, Canada 307
and entered the Senate Chamber arm-in-arm, the doors
ceremoniously flung open, and Black Rod preceding the
procession, walking backward, as if it were the most
natural thing in the world to do; the General of the
Canadian Army and his military staff of twenty or
more handsome officers in gala uniform, and then the
Governor-General and Lady X and the official suite,
through an aisle lined with soldiers clear up to the
throne. From a private entrance, a little door to the
right of it, the Viceroy’s family and the house guests
came first, and were presented, our old friend the mili-
tary secretary announcing our names with elaborate dis-
tinctness and a covert smile. We took up a stand-
ing position near the throne, and were soon joined by
the senators with their wives and daughters, who en-
tered through the same door; and after them, through a
private door at the bottom of the room, came the mem-
bers of the House of Commons, with their wives and
daughters, and the army officers, with the ladies of their
families, making their way up with bows and curtseys,
and backing out as best they could.
The big entrance doors were guarded by orderlies un-
til the general public could be admitted, which, in this
case, was a mob of people extending in a long line out-
side in the halls, winding in and out through the
buildings, crowding and pushing; young ladies groan-
ing over the crushing of their bouquets, and old gen-
tlemen groaning over the crushing of their corns.
They had been there for hours, and we saw them pa-﻿308 Intimacies of Court and Society
tiently and impatiently waiting when we ourselves ar-
rived. Every man and woman in Ottawa seemed to be
there, for a “ court ” presentation!
When they were finally admitted, we watched them
come up to the throne: a long line made up of women
sometimes dressed with exquisite taste, and again with
the absence of it; great wealth with gorgeous jewels,
and modest means with pretentious imitations in paste
gems and cotton velvet; the women almost always self-
possessed, even when they forgot their curtseys and
merely said “ How-dye-do ” before the throne, but the
men almost inevitably looking bored and foolish, and
as if they were unwilling victims upon the altar of
feminine aspiration. Every one in our party was re-
marking upon the beautiful bouquets, but the loveliest
and largest ones were carried by two well-dressed ladies
whose faces were perfectly familiar, but whom none of
us could recall—until we saw that they were the wife
and daughter of the head gardener at Rideau Hall, and
high in the favour of the military secretary. I re-
member a short, stout lady in tight white satin, who
made an extremely deep curtsey, then—horror of hor-
rors—there she stuck, and we all gasped. But she
finally managed to get up and away. And another
woman of huge dimensions, magnificent in cloth of gold,
which rivalled Lady X’s, but so violently decolletee that
some sporting young senators near us put up bets, with
the odds five to ten, that the dress would fall off before
the evening was over—and afterwards paid the lady such
marked attention, in order to watch the bet, that she,﻿Life at Government House, Canada 309
deluded creature, considered herself the belle of the
ball.
We had a royal princeling who was doing the “ grand
tour,” and arrived at Rideau Hall in time for one of the
state functions—entering the rose-embowered ball-room
in the state procession after Lord and Lady X, fol-
lowed by his three A.D.C.s in the uniform of their home
regiments, like the military secretary and the Gov-
* ernor-General’s A.D.C.s—members of Parliament and
senators in uniforms resplendent in gold braid and gold
buttons, making deep bows, and their wives dropping
carefully practised curtseys and displaying to the best
advantage costumes ordered from Paris and London,
and jewels gorgeous enough for any court. The Prince
was a charming young fellow of simple manners, who
danced in the quadrille d’hormewr with such delightful
deference to Lady Laurier’s elderly sprightliness that
every “ official ” woman in the room demanded a dance.
■*
He went through it all with beautiful politeness, but I
saw him turn many a pathetically envious look upon his
A.D.C.s, who were flying from one pretty girl to the
other; and about midnight I heard him say to one of
them in Italian, “ Thank goodness, this show is about
over.”
Finally the band played “ God Save the King,” and
the ball was closed by the Governor-General and Lady
X leaving the crimson-draped throne and the state pro-
cession going out—then, fifteen minutes or so later, we
of the household trooped back, even Lord X and the
•Prince, and had three or four delicious waltzes in the﻿310 Intimacies of Court and Society
big room to ourselves, and then into the racquet court
opposite, which had been turned into the supper-room—
where we devoured another supper without the restraints
of etiquette, crowding around the Governor-General’s
big round table in the middle of the room, which earlier
in the evening had been sacred to officialdom. Outside
the snow lay two feet deep as far as the eye could reach;
inside, we threw off protecting scarfs and shoulder
draperies on account of the heat, and greedily con-
sumed luscious fruit from South America and Cali-
fornia, caviare from Russia, and champagne direct
from France, and took away as souvenirs bunches of
gorgeous big roses fragrant with summer perfume.
As in every official household during the weeks of the
“ season,” there is at Rideau Hall a regular programme
of festivities, with a dinner party nearly every night of
the parliamentary session. The most important of
these during my visit was a man’s dinner of over one
hundred, which we women folk did not attend; but we
had a peep into the ball-room, where the table was laid
with the gold plate belonging to Government House, the
big loving-cup in the place of honour in the centre, and
the walls of the lofty room, supported by its flat pillars,
hung with flags and shields bearing the emblems of the
different provinces of the Dominion. There was also
the children’s fancy dress ball, a regular function to
which the Ottawa little people look forward during the
whole year—when the most wonderful procession formed
a grand march in the racquet court, past the Governor-
General and Lady X—“ Alice in Wonderland ” and﻿Life at Government House, Canada 311
“ Alice in the Looking-Glass,” with “ Mad Hatter,”
“ The White Queen,” “ The Cheshire Cat,” “ The Rab-
bit,” and a gay little “ Pack of Cards,” a troop of
“ Brownies,” “ Little Red Riding Hood,” and “ The
Babes in the Woods.” There was a merry dance and a
host of good things to eat—and, at the end, children
who were tired, and tiny ones who were asleep, and dis-
hevelled ones hunting for lost crowns and robes and
slippers, but all supremely happy and reluctant to
leave.
I remember that I had my initiation into the winter
sports at a ski-ing party after lunch a few days fol-
lowing my arrival, one of the “ triumvirate ” having
measured my height to get the length of the skis, and
helping me put them on outside the house, then giving
me a long pole to which I clung with fierce affection
as we all made our way through the park gates and
along the road to the steep hill. We began to climb
crab-like, and my escort tried to help me—but I told
him I preferred to die alone. At the top of the hill
some one said “ Go! ”—and away we went at terrific
pace—and, of course, I lost my balance and tripped
up the person directly behind me, an extremely con-
ventional English gentleman of middle age, and a
brand-new title of nobility—who had to be dug out from
where he was buried in the snow, nothing visible but
a portly leg and a green golf stocking wildly waving in
the air. I thought he would never forgive the in-
dignity, but before the afternoon was over every one
else had taken more or less the same pose, which some-﻿312 Intimacies of Court and Society
what appeased him. Getting back to the house, we had
to be “ broomed down ” to free our garments from the
snow before venturing in. We shed our sweaters, fur-
caps, and leggins, and then had tea in the drawing-room,
so rapacious after the violent exercise that we swept
the cupboard bare. I remember the drawing-room as
beautifully furnished and, on gala occasions, stately and
imposing, but ordinarily it was comfortable with rose-
coloured chintzes over chairs and sofas, a big fire leap-
ing and crackling in the grate, and every afternoon the
tea-kettle puffed away and the family gathered uncere-
moniously around it—although never beginning until
Lord X had come in, even if he were late. Lady X
adored her handsome, brilliant husband, and delighted
to pay him reverence upon any and all occasions—al-
ways curtseying to him in public with a deep reverence
his valet could hardly have excelled.
We often at night had an “ electric show,” a pastime
peculiar to Canada, some one rubbing his feet on the
carpet and then touching your hands, your nose, your
cheeks perhaps, and producing an electric spark, so elec-
trical is the Canadian winter air. From the hot-metal
fireplace we had many an electrical shock; and, holding
a piece of wire in our hands and touching the gas
burner, after rubbing our feet on the carpet. It was a
favourite “ turn,” if there were newly-arrived house
guests, to take a book with a gilt pattern on its cover,
then to plunge the room into darkness, and with a fur
glove vigorously rub the book on its inside cover, and
watch the gilt pattern display itself in electrical sparks.﻿Life at Government House„ Canada 313
We often went for snow-shoe walks, a fascinating pleas-
ure, but almost a necessary means of locomotion some-
times; and we had many a sleigh-ride to places of
interest in the neighbourhood—one, which I remember,
when we started at eight o’clock in the morning and
drove out to see the mysterious cave near the Gatineau
Rapids, twenty miles over frozen river and through
trackless “ bush ” in winter garb, and twenty miles home
again. Lord X was ardently fond of skating, and we
often had a private little skating-party in the after-
noon or at night in the skating-rink inside the park,
which was flooded for these occasions—and afterwards
into the house for something to eat, and generally into
the ball-room for an impromptu dance to finish up, the
exhilarating air making an almost obsolete word of
fatigue. And there were several large parties, but still
unofficial, so that the poor Governor-General could skate
as much as he liked with ladies who had skill and beauty
to recommend them.
Rink House, where the guests were received by the
host and hostess in long fur coats, was hung with
Chinese lanterns, hundreds of them, and the park was
also illuminated, while a huge bonfire blazed up at one
end of the grounds, and the ice palace was ablaze with
electric light. Besides the big rink, there was the small
rink, hidden away in a little island of trees, and nearby
a tiny log hut, warm and inviting, where you could get
wine and sandwiches—and the fur-clad band, stationed
in Rink House, faint and indistinct in the distance—an
ideal spot on a moonlight night for a brave man and a﻿314 Intimacies of Court and Society
fair maid to plight their troth. The big toboggan slide
was lighted with flaming torches on iron stands deeply
embedded in the snow, with a climb of at least fifty steps
to the top—then flying down like the wind, dark
shadows from the fir-trees making mysterious ghost-
like forms to frighten you as you plunged past—with
every one tumbling off at the bottom, shrieking with
laughter and covered with snow. There was generally
a skating-march to open these carnivals, the Governor-
General leading off with the best woman skater, fol-
lowed by a long procession, each one carrying a little
blazing torch, the skating costumes bright and gay,
trimmed with beautiful fur, and the rhythmical, grace-
ful movements in perfect time and poise—beginning in
pairs, in fours, in eights, then round and round, and in
and out of the maze, ending up in pairs to start once
more—to dance Sir Roger de Coverley, to waltz on the
ice, cutting roses and double roses, the lily, the sham-
rock, the thistle, and, as a final accomplishment, to
skate the outside edge backwards to the strains of the
“ Blue Danube.” One night a “ star ” skater, in moc-
casins and skates, danced the Red River Jig as the In-
dians were supposed to dance it—but it was nothing
more than the Irish Jig!
I recall a memorable fancy dress skating-ball—
memorable to me, although there are, I believe, a dozen
as brilliant every winter in Canada—when I sat with
the Governor-General’s wife on the balcony of the big
public hall overlooking the rink, where thousands of
skaters were gathered for the fete—and saw the ball﻿Life at Government House„ Canada 315
opened with a Louis XV quadrille, in powdered wigs,
knee-breeches, and Pompadour petticoats. Afterwards
the Governor-General and his A.D.C. put on black
dominos, and skated recklessly and promiscuously with
queens and squaws, Dolly Vardens and ladies a la Wat-
teau, and a Cinderella who vanished at midnight, while
cavaliers and Chinamen, Indian braves and Spanish
grandees, joined in the headlong rush for her slipper.
A few weeks later I was at the Citadel in Quebec, the
Canadian Gibraltar, which covers forty acres in a laby-
rinth of ditch and earthworks, rampart and bastion, and
has been the Governor-General’s official residence in the
province since the destruction of the Chateau of St.
Louis—and I saw there one of the noblest vistas to be
found in the world. There are deeply-embrasured win-
dows in the long drawing-room of the official quarters,
at one end facing the St. Lawrence, and opening out
upon an immense platform big enough for a fancy dress
ball or a charity bazaar, and here, from the King’s
bastion and the flagstaff, the Union Jack floating beside
you, and great black cannon from the Citadel frowning
down, you see at your feet far beneath the old world
and the new, ancient, beautiful Quebec, city of a thou-
sand vicissitudes of fortune lurking behind her pali-
sades, her wharves around the Cape Diamond, and her
houses clustering up its heights like Athens about her
Acropolis, a panorama which at night takes on the
grandeur of mystery as you look down five hundred
feet into the dark abyss which flashes out a myriad lights
from the city, the mountains, and the river.﻿316 Intimacies of Court and Society
In the days that followed, I travelled in the Viceroy’s
train to many places in Quebec. One morning a party
of us, with fifty sleighs, each driving tandem, went out
to Montmorency to lunch, then to see the Falls make
their furious plunge of 170 feet downward into the
earth, with a curtain of frozen spray rising up in front
—then to see the toboggan-slide, made out of a huge
cone of ice 180 feet high—and then home through the
moonlight, joining another party, with hundreds of
sleighs and thousands of bells, for a snow-shoe torch-
light procession—a weird line of white coats and scar-
let caps and flickering flambeaux winding in and out
among the trees and the mountain like a trailing, fiery
serpent. The Governor-General and Lady X made
visits of state to universities and orphan homes, and
to cloistered convents where they entered under the priv-
ilege given the Viceroy of New France as representing
the sacred person of their Catholic king; to insane
hospitals, where we were in terror of having things
thrown at our heads; to bazaars and exhibitions, where
we examined everything punctiliously, and the people
examined us. There was always a dais prepared for
the Viceroy and Vicereine, a thousand people, more or
less, with whom they had to shake hands; addresses to
be made and addresses to be received—from obsequious
old civic potentates trembling with gout and importance,
to white-clad little convent girls whose rose-wreaths
quivered upon their timid heads as they dropped their
pretty curtseys, spoke their automatic “ pieces,” and
bravely announced with the inevitable bouquet to Lady﻿Life at Government House,, Canada 317
X, Ce sont des roses sans epines que Von vous of re au
Canada.
In the olden days of New France its governors went
out as reluctant exiles from the families of de Bourbon,
Conde, Montmorency, and Richelieu, standing on the
Grande Place of the Chateau of St. Louis in Quebec,
where Champlain had planted the golden Fleur de Lis
to flaunt the defiance of the conqueror, and receiving
the keys of the fortress and the homage of their sov-
ereign’s subjects, attended by bewigged and beplumed
courtiers longing to return to the delights of Versailles,
surveying with contempt—and noses buried in per-
fumed mouchoirs—the defiant Indians, naked and
tattooed. It was the Canada of Voltaire’s scorn, the
“ fifteen thousand acres of snow of which France is
well rid,” and which Madame de Pompadour turned
over to England with a sigh of relief, after Montcalm’s
disaster, “ that at last the King can have a chance to
sleep in peace.”
But when the English Governor-General and his wife
finally said good-bye to Canada, with a tremendous ova-
tion and a deluge of bouquets, it was with tears in their
eyes for all the world to see, in leaving the post which
is now one of the few roses sans epines in the gift of
any government.﻿XVI
WASHINGTON SOCIETY—AN EXPATRIATE’S
IMPRESSIONS
It was a good many years after our official life in
Europe began before I was able to go to America
again, and I remember that when we engaged our
passage, I had begged for the slowest boat on the slow-
est line. I wanted time to think, to adjust my mind.
I found myself looking forward to the return with a
depth of emotion which surprised even myself. I
thought I had conquered my homesickness long ago.
My husband was sympathetic, but also amused in his
masculine way, and reminded me of a remark we had
heard one of my countrywomen make when she acci-
dentally met in Europe two acquaintances from her
own city. Greeting them with an excess of cordiality
that apparently astonished them, she said, “ I am so
homesick I could embrace a lamp-post or kiss a dog
from home.” Quite naturally, they wondered which of
them was the lamp-post and which the dog.
As the screws turned in their monotonous round
that drew us steadily nearer and nearer to New York,
my mind often went back to a memorable conversation
I had had as a young girl in Washington with an Amer-
ican ambassador who had served at two of the largest
318﻿Washington Society	319
capitals in Europe, and was acquainted personally
with many of the American women living permanently
abroad, and the American girls married to important
men there. It was the beginning of the era of the
American wife of the foreign diplomat, and, as we
went down the list, it was already astonishingly long and
imposing. I was exulting over what seemed to my
vivid girlish imagination would be a veritable invasion
in Europe of my country’s ideas and political prestige.
But the old ambassador put his hand affectionately on
my arm—he had known me since my babyhood days—
and said, “ You are quite mistaken, my child. An Amer-
ican woman married to a Frenchman soon becomes a
Frenchwoman, not only before the law, but in fact.
And so with the one who marries a German, an English-
man, a Russian, an Italian, even more so than the women
of Europe who marry outside their country. How
much of it is due to what I was about to call the Amer-
ican woman’s fatal gift of assimilation, I cannot say.
But it is a subject I have studied long and at first
hand.”
Then, in his kind, fatherly way, taking infinite
pains with a young girl, as often a distinguished
old man will do, he went on to say that my
opinion was sustained by no less a person than Bis-
marck, the Iron Chancellor, at that time in the
midst of his sway not only in Germany, but through-
out Europe.
Bismarck was distrustful of all women, but partic-
ularly of Americans. Nothing could have induced him﻿320 Intimacies of Court and Society
to send a man with an American wife to Washington.
He was fully convinced that if trouble arose between
the two countries, she would turn traitor to her husband
and his cause.
“ The American woman’s fatal gift of assimilation,”
as the old ambassador had expressed it. What marks
had it made upon me? I could not know.
But when, late one afternoon, as the sun was setting,
spreading its rays softly over the water, dropping
gently down, a huge ball of fire, and a multitude of
white birds, their wings touched by the glow, were
hovering near to give us token of land, I caught the first
glimpse of the gleam of light sent out from the torch
of the Goddess of Liberty in New York Harbor. To
the wanderer long absent, what a sensation, exquisite,
incomparable! Memories of long-forgotten days of
my childhood, memories of ancestors whose names had
before meant nothing to me, leaped into my conscious-
ness, linking me with bonds forged generations ago
with my native land.
The great-grandfather who had fought side by side
with Washington in the Virginia Assembly, and who
gave up his life at Valley Forge, but whose grave I had
never troubled to go and see. The grandfather who had
gone down with his ship in the War of 1812; my father,
who carried a bullet from Shiloh to the day of his death;
the uncle who lay on the Chickamauga battlefield, a
bridegroom of a month, and the girl-bride who, with eyes
that could never weep again, hunted three days and
nights for his mutilated body—this America, it was﻿Washington Society	321
theirs—bought with their blood. And they welcomed
me back.
And my grandmother, who drove her carriage alone
with her two babies from the Ohio backwoods, through
the wilderness beset with Indians, to her old home in
Boston—with the fearless courage and simple trust in
God which the women of that day possessed, and welded
into the vital breath of the nation’s power with suffer-
ing and privation—I could never be an alien when she
welcomed me back.
I came down to earth with a start as my husband
gave me a gentle shake and, with an understanding
look, said, smiling, “ Yes, it’s all very fine and splendid,
but don’t forget the dog and the lamp-post.”
At the wharf we found about forty newspaper re-
porters who wanted interviews, and particularly the im-
pressions of the young girl I was chaperoning over, the
daughter of an old friend, and a countess in her own
right. As she:was in short skirts and pigtails, and just
out of the convent, her impressions, consisting prin-
cipally of seasickness, did not seem particularly valuable
or interesting. But the men followed her to the hotel
and succeeded in seeing her when I was out and turn-
ing their cameras upon her. They proclaimed her a
beauty and an heiress, and she has never been able to
live down the reputation, although neither one nor the
other in point of fact.
Washington, with its smooth, green lawns and squares,
is like a huge park, and its distance from commercial﻿322 Intimacies of Court and Society
activities, noise, and dirt makes it unlike any other
American city of equal importance, and unlike any
capital of Europe. And any foreigner who sees it to-
day would be impressed with the nobility and dignity of
its architecture, and the treasures in art which its pub-
lic buildings and private mansions hold in their interior
decorations. In Europe they have preserved all that is
old, the hideous old with the beautiful old. Washington
architecture is the product of the American art genius
of the present day, which is keenly sensitive to the best
of the old, but courageous enough, imbued enough with
the independence of new-world thought, to reject every-
thing old but the best. “ The best that money can
buy ” has been the motto of a billionaire government
and billionaire individuals in Washington.
I think, however, that most Europeans miss the proper
setting for these modem palaces. A Venetian palazzo,
a French villa, and an English country house can be
found crowding close upon one another, each one per-
fect in itself, but needing the seclusion of a sweeping
park and stone wall or hedge around it. But the pro-
verbial generosity of the American will always make
him willing to share even his lawn and front-door steps
with the stranger passing by, as he shares all the rooms
in his house with the members of his family, eliminating
doors, and having only his office downtown, where he
can lock himself in and be alone.
And in its life you see in Washington the whole of
America, as in no place else in the country, and much
more representative than London is of the English, or﻿Washington Society	323
Paris of the French. The Republic sends up to Paris
its provincial men to sit in the Senate and Chamber of
Deputies, but they are not in society, which is still con-
trolled by the old families of the monarchy, and you do
not come into contact with them in an intimate social
way, except the leaders—the Prime Minister and mem-
bers of his Cabinet. In London, the members of Par-
liament are not at all representative of the districts
they stand for, and often do not live in the county. A
man with a London residence may sit in Parliament for
a borough he has never seen until the vote-getting days
began.
But Washington brings together men from every
State in the Union, who embody the life of the place.
The congressmen and senators from Maine are products
of their district, with the ideas and the twang that go
with the men from Maine. And so with Texas, Cali-
fornia, and Michigan.
It seems somewhat absurd to consider New York the
social centre of American life instead of Washington.
In Europe, the King and Queen lead the society of their
country, and in America the President and his wife lead
it. They do not in France, but conditions there are
quite different where the remnant of the monarchy still
flaunts the republic. Washington society may never
be as elegant as the exclusive circle that is supposed
to constitute New York society, but there can be no
question about its being more important and repre-
sentative.
Fastidious Americans will tell you that Washington﻿324 Intimacies of Court and Society
is the most vulgar place on earth. But it is not vulgar,
it is merely common in the sense that it belongs to the
common people who make up the great bulk of the pop-
ulation of the United States, the land of the middle-
class, land also of the millionaires of chewing-gum and
plug tobacco! If you expect to find perfection of man-
ners among Washingtonians in general, you are dis-
appointed. The wife of one of the most noted of its
men used to pick her teeth with a steel hairpin taken
from her coiffure, in the privacy of the family circle,
I have seen her do it dozens of times.
But you are equally disappointed if you expect to
find perfection of breeding among the aristocracy of
Europe, as any one knows who is acquainted in Ger-
many, or Russia, or among the Latin races. There used
to be a mot current in London that the one reason the
orchestras played so loudly at the big restaurants was
that the other guests might not have to hear the Ger-
mans eat. And once at an Italian villa I sat for a week
opposite at table to a Neapolitan prince who industri-
ously employed his toothpick in his ears every meal-
time before using it in his mouth.
And I well remember dining at a celebrated French
house where one of the daughters reclined on the sofa
after dinner and kicked off her slippers at her brother
as the coffee was served.
In making house visits in Europe, one sometimes
has to go through a process of fumigation afterwards,
and I well recall that once, when discussing with an
English nobleman just returned from Russia, the old﻿325
Washington Society
saying, “ Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tar-
tar,” he said, a little coarsely perhaps, “ I don’t know;
when I was visiting in their houses, I was too busy
scratching myself.”
Americans can point with pride to the fact that theirs
is also the land of the millionaires of bathtubs and many
famous brands of soap.
I remember that we landed in America on New Year’s
Eve, and that the next morning we hurried over to
Washington, as my husband was anxious to pay his
respects to the President at the annual New Year’s re-
ception. The train was late, so, instead of going with
the diplomatic corps, he took a carriage from the hotel
and drove at once to the White House. The negro
coachman left him at the steps, and he walked leisurely
through to the drawing-room, where the President
stood, surrounded by a throng of people. He recog-
nised my husband and, struggling to get forward a lit-
tle, held out his hand with a smile of welcome. But just
then some one pushed brusquely ahead and got the hand-
shake. It was the negro coachman, and, as he turned
around, he patted my husband familiarly on the shoul-
der and said, “ Now, boss, your turn next.”
This was only one among the many incidents that
made a new awakening for me to the new spirit of ir-
reverence for dignity and authority which has grown
up in America since the war, and which I had not
known there before my marriage, but with which Wash-
ington life soon made me painfully familiar. The old﻿326 Intimacies of Court and Society
South maintained standards of courtesy which were the
outward semblance of the spirit of reverence for place
and power. It seems to have been swept away, at least
for the present, the good thing with the bad, when the
evils of Southern life had to go. Then the tremendous
influx of emigration in recent years, which has brought
the worst and not the best element of Europe to Amer-
ican shores, has undoubtedly had its influence.
The new spirit seems to be epitomised in Washing-
ton official life, the sentiment that in the great republic
one man is as good as another under the primary stand-
ards of equalisation in the vote and the dollar. As no
man can have more than one vote, there is no rivalry
for superiority there, it is only the man who has more
dollars that is better than you are.
I suppose this new spirit is the license with the lib-
erty, the thorn on the rose of freedom. As a con-
scientious student of my own country in the life re-
flected at Washington, and seeing it through eyes
grown accustomed to European differences, I used often
to speculate as to how much this spirit of irreverence
had to do with the personal ambition which sends a man
from the labourer’s ditch up to a governor’s chair or a
seat in the United States Senate. In Europe the ditcher
seldom looks further than his spade and his shovel, and
the man in high place above him, to whom he doffs his
cap in deep humility, is a being of another sphere. The
man at the bottom has no more aspiration, in general,
to sit side by side with the man at the top, than a shell-
fish has of becoming a whale. Perhaps if the American﻿327
Washington Society
ditcher had too much awe and reverence for the gov-
ernor or the senator and his place, he might never
dream of attaining to such heights. But surely a little
would never hurt him.
From another point of view, this spirit of present-
day Americanism has certainly had much to do with the
social success of American girls in European society.
The world takes you at your own valuation, after all,
and when American women refuse to say “ Your Grace ”
to a duchess, maintaining, “ she is no better than I am,”
she is likely to think the same thing herself and invite
them to dinner, while the middle-class person of her own
nationality who would expire if she forgot to say “ Your
Grace,” is given three fingers to shake and a condescend-
ing nod.
In Europe every one who has had much experience at
court realises what the “ feeling for royalty ” is. You
are in touch with it on every hand, and unconsciously a
genuinely loyal American may acquire it when intimately
associated with people among whom the feeling is in-
herent through centuries of affiliation with court life.
It marks the tone with restraint and deference when
speaking of the royal family, the obeisance when ap-
proaching them, the formality and dignity when ad-
dressing them. And to the ambassadors, judges, and
others in high office, one gives instantly the same rever-
ence, as the representatives of the royal house, as well
as the representativs of authority.
I remember one evening reception in Europe soon
after the allied troops had returned from China, bringing﻿328 Intimacies of Court and Society
with them, as everybody knows, many rare treasures
stolen from the imperial palaces. The reception was at
the home of a member of the diplomatic corps, and a late
arrival was the Chinese ambassador, appearing for the
first time after the termination of the war. A few mo-
ments after he had been welcomed, and as he stood sur-
rounded by a group of distinguished people, who were
congratulating him upon the return of peace, an Amer-
ican woman was announced.
The ambassador caught sight of her instantly, and
his agitation was painful to see. For she wore the
coronation robes of the Empress of China! They had
been looted from the palace through the connivance of
an army officer, who had openly boasted of the splendid
bargain he had made for them.
The woman was actually making her way up to the
ambassador when he sank trembling into a chair, and
a member of the American embassy staff rushed up
and led her in another direction, while the host told a
footman in an audible voice to order the lady’s car-
riage. She left the house, and we all thought it the
most disgraceful thing we had ever witnessed. But in
speaking about it in America, I was astonished to find
many people take the woman’s part.
The average American is ready at any instant to pro-
claim from the housetops that he belongs to a country
where every man is his own sovereign. The sentiment
which would make a Chinaman even of the highest caste
(refrain from touching the coronation robes of his
empress, the representative to him of divinity, and which﻿Washington Society	329
would make him prefer death any day to seeing them
desecrated, is something incomprehensible to most Amer-
icans. If a woman wanted to wear them to a party in-
stead of a Paquin gown—they wouldn’t especially ad-
mire her taste—but why shouldn’t she?
The White House reception in January in honour of
the diplomatic corps, is one of the most brilliant gath-
erings of the season. The conservatories in the presi-
dential mansion furnish gorgeous orchids and other
rare flowers, which brought forth exclamations of ad-
miration as we saw them banked high up on the mantels
in masterpieces of floral decoration in the Blue Room
and the East Room. The gowns of the women made
a beautiful dispilay; they would have created comment
in any capital of the world, and they were worn
with that dash of individuality which one invariably as-
sociates with American women and their clothes. Army
and navy men in full dress uniform attended in large
numbers; it was a pleasure to watch them, straight and
tall and graceful as the American officers are, with the
keen, free glance of the eyes, the easy, fearless carriage
of the shoulders, and the head thrown back to look the
world straight in the face, which marks the American
man in every walk of life.
I think the members of the diplomatic corps in Wash-
ington are much kinder to Americans than the Amer-
icans are to one another. If a girl is an ornament to
a drawing-room, they do not ask about her grand-
father, and they don’t care particularly what sort of﻿330 Intimacies of Court and Society
manners the mother has. I remember that I was stand-
ing one day with an American friend admiring the
statue of one of her ancestors which adorns Washing-
ton, when she said, with a pardonable touch of hauteur,
“ It’s a comfort to me to think I have ancestors who
were not butchers, bakers, or candlestick-makers, like
most of the people here.” “ But what is America but
the land of the butcher, baker, and candlestick-maker? ”
I was moved to ask. “ Don’t they elect the men in of-
fice and hold the offices themselves? Are they not the
princes of the stockyards, and the railroad kings ? Isn’t
this the one country under the sun that belongs to
them ? ”
When President Roosevelt invited to dinner an im-
mensely rich man who a few years ago was working
in a Western mine with a pick in his hand, there was
a wave of resentment all over Washington that the
President had given social recognition and prestige to
a parvenu. But the man had won his fortune by
energy, character, and financial capacity of a high
order, and no one had ever questioned his methods or
impeached his integrity. He was a parvenu, but, at
the same time, he represented the things most essentially
American, and was a product of those opportunities
which are the glory of the country.
To Washington any one can go, and, with sufficient
money to rent a big house and keep a good table, can
soon make a place in the society of the city. Old-timers
have not yet forgotten the debut of the family of a
rich congressman from the far West, not so many years﻿Washington Society	331
gone from Ireland but that the brogue was still in evi-
dence, and how their mansion became known as the
“ Irish Embassy.” And it is not so many years ago
that four charming young women, all sisters, but with-
out father, mother, or any social sponsors, took them-
selves to Washington, built a big house in Massachusetts
Avenue, and sent out invitations broadcast to people
they did not know. They were bright and gossipy,
read a great deal, and somehow managed to secure the
lion of the day for their Sunday afternoons. They
were naturally very much discussed, but they were also
a great success. Members of the diplomatic corps
flocked to their house, although it was really astonish-
ing how little was known of their history.
Our diplomatic confreres in Washington confided to
us that the reason they did not entertain more in Wash-
ington, on a large scale, was because any one was at
liberty to come. There was a great ball one year at
one of the Oriental embassies, and people took advantage
of the fact that no English was spoken by the servants
to rush to the place. The ambassador saw with dis-
may the spectacle in the dining-room, and, belonging to
the most polite nation in the world, he hit upon an in-
genious plan to rid himself of the unwelcome guests. A
large quantity of red pepper was secreted in a jar and
started burning, and in fifteen minutes five hundred peo-
ple were sneezing their heads off. Some facetious per-
son said it was an epidemic of influenza descended upon
the house, and in five minutes there was a stampede.
In returning to Washington after my long absence,﻿332 Intimacies of Court and Society
I realized that the influence of the woman is shown there
in society as in no place in European official life, ex-
cept, perhaps, London. And, in spite of the fascinat-
ing and unscrupulous women lobbyists, many of whom
have all the gifts of birth and breeding, with the reck-
lessness of forfeited position, and, in spite of the pres-
ence in the departments of numerous women whose be-
ing there is an open scandal and an insult to the wife
of the senator or congressman who appointed them—
notwithstanding these grave evils, I would say that the
general tone of society was unusually pure. A mar-
ried man does not have much of a recognised life en
garpon, as in Europe, or even in New York and Phila-
delphia. When he goes to entertainments, he is gen-
erally seen with his wife in the homely, comfortable way
of middle-class people, which may not be especially in-
teresting at all times, but which will always stand for
happy homes.
The hostess is as vital a factor in a man’s success
as his own ability. An unpopular wife can almost ruin
a man’s career.
In calling upon the congressmen’s wives, I had rev-
elations about the women who form no tangible unit in
society, who are a part of it as it were, without being
in it. They were too poor to entertain or take any sort
of a definite position, and I often found them in cheap
boarding-houses, living in one or two rooms, with a
large family of children, spending their lives in going
over to the House looking at their husbands sitting there
doing nothing, then going back home perfectly happy.﻿(Washington Society	333
They were not women of cultivation, because often they
had given their youth and strength in helping make
their husbands, cooking, washing, ironing, baking, sew-
ing—a servant an unknown quantity in the household.
There could be little question that often the men were
unworthy of such sacrifices and were machine politi-
cians of the worst type. But I used to think that these
loyal women who had worked so hard for their com-
mon husbands—common in aspiration as well as in
breeding—would be likely to have some really great sons
to give to the nation.
Looking at it from our European standpoint, we
didn’t find that society in Washington was very deep,
and in reviewing my memories there is not much that has
“ stuck.” If one is amusing, one is a success for a day.
Then some one else appears and takes the centre of the
stage. People do not seem to read very much, there is
no opera, and few theatres. You belong to a small in-
timate circle where the same people see one another three
or four times a day, perpetually meeting and spending a
great deal of time in idle gossip. The diplomatic
women seem constantly at battle over some question of
precedence.
There are, of course, the big official dinners and
receptions where you meet the nofed men of the country,
but you do not see them elsewhere as you do in European
society. It is one of the most difficult things in the
world to give a successful ball in Washington, because
there are so few available—and presentable—men, ex-
cept the attaches of the embassies and a few stray con-﻿334 Intimades of Court and Sodety
gressmen. Society, in the dignified and noble interpre-
tation of the word, such as one finds in Europe, is un-
known in Washington or elsewhere in America.
The diplomatic corps is received with open arms in
Fifth Avenue and Newport, but New York has learned
that it must go to Washington for its plunge into of-
ficial society, instead of expecting Washington to come
to it.
Going over to New York for a dinner party one
evening, my hostess said, “ We are going to give you the
most important man in America to take you out. He
may be a little absorbed, but it is a great honour to
meet him.” When he was presented, I saw a wizened
little man with beady black eyes and a common face,
who hardly gave me a word during the whole evening,
and who apparently knew nothing but railroads. They
said he owned more thousands of miles of them than any
other man on earth, and was worth billions of dollars.
“ But have you no longer any American gentlemen
who live with their friends and their books, and have
a few people in to dinner now and then to talk art and
literature and statesmanship ? ” I asked them, and re-
ceived a blank look and incredulous smile in reply.
Then I inquired about a friend of my father’s who
held one of the most important banking positions in
New York, and they told me, “ Oh, poor old Tom, he
isn’t in our set any more; you know he has only sixty
thousand a year.” I hunted him up, and went to dine
one night in a big, old-fashioned house which was one
of the stately mansions of my girlhood, but which my﻿Washington Society	335
fashionable friends considered quite beneath their no-
tice to-day. How glad I was to see it, even in its old
ugliness, for its big, heavy, walnut and mahogany fur-
niture was not altogether beautiful, except beautiful to
me as representing the old, simple days. We had shad
instead of the eternal terrapin calculated at so many
dollars a plate, and a good claret instead of cham-
pagne. I watched the fine old face, a little stern per-
haps, but clean and strong, and with a quiet dignity
of repose which was as refreshing as it was inspiring—
and delightfully old-fashioned. I had a feeling of hav-
ing taken a long journey back through the years, and
of having been travelling in another world, as I left the
house and was whirled away in an automobile to Fifth
Avenue again.
Although an American to the innermost fibre of my
being, I did not seem to be able to feel at home there
when I went back. My friends who were in what they
called society—and I am not speaking now merely of
Washington—seemed frantically trying to make the
debit and credit pages tally in their social ledgers, in
giving a dinner wherever they had had one, in paying
back a luncheon where they had received one. They
would ask me in for what they called “ a quiet cup of
tea,” and I would find a hundred women whose gowns
looked fresh from the Rue de la Paix, taking a cup of
tea perhaps at the end of an elaborate course of salad,
ices, and bon-bons, where God’s sunshine was shut out,
and the electric light turned on, and where the presence
of a man created a sensation.﻿336 Intimacies of Court and Society
Society as I have come to know it in Europe, as in-
cluding all men and women really worth knowing,
whether from the point of view of intellectual attain-
ments, or merely beauty, fashion, and charm, I did not
find at home. American statesmen and the great finan-
ciers are not in it, unless occasionally dragged in in
what might be described as a semi-conscious state, the
celebrated writers and painters avoid it.
In Europe, if I meet at dinner an interesting man
or woman, it follows quite as a matter of course to ask
them in for a cup of tea and a chat. It may be a
leader of fashionable society, or the most talked-of man
in the parliament of his country, but they are quite con-
tented to come for half an hour’s talk about things we
may have in common, and to accept a cup of tea and a
piece of cake. When I was in America, and wanted
to see the intimate friends of my girlhood, I felt I had
to give an order to a caterer ten days in advance and
receive them in my latest gown from Paris.
As we sailed back to the other side of the world, I
said good-bye with disillusion and a good deal of relief.
And we both eagerly hailed the prospect of living again
in Europe, where there still remain some millionaires
who are nobodies.﻿﻿*﻿﻿tiSMt;