The royal train, in which I made many journeys, is, as may be imagined, “replete with every modern convenience” of travel, but this did not prevent it oscillating, banging and shaking to an appalling extent. One was hurled backwards and forwards and jolted and jerked with every form of movement known to science. Sometimes we seemed to be moving over rippled granite, and then a horizontal spasm mixed up with weird scrunchings seized the whole train, which appeared to be having some kind of hysterical fit. Occasionally we pulled up with a jolt and jar and remained stationary for a few minutes, before resuming our shuddering, jerking journey, which stretched out every mile into a nightmare length.
Time seems interminably long in such circumstances, and the weary hours dragged on very slowly. An attempt at undressing forced into the foreground the question of how—in view of the difficulty of taking off clothes—one was ever likely to be in a favourable position to put them on again. Brush and comb, hairpins, all went sliding gently away on to the floor; and after washing in a basin in which a miniature tempest of soap-tipped wave-crests was raging, I renounced the adventure of undressing as one needing more intrepidity than I possessed, and lay down uncomfortably in most of my clothes to wait for morning. Through the ventilator came a choking, smoke-laden odour. The pillow, covered with beautifully fine linen, on which I laid my head was hard as the nether millstone and productive of a dislocating feeling in the neck; the sheets and blankets were of the finest and best, but no one wants to go to bed in one’s garments of the day. We were due to arrive in Wildpark, the station of the New Palace, somewhere about eight o’clock—nine hours more of the terrible shaking. I lay down and turned out the electric light, and became for the rest of the night a mere oscillating body, whirled continually back and forth through space. Fortunately the dawn comes early in August, and at the first faint greyness of the atmosphere I sat up giddily and watched the flat Prussian dew-bathed landscape glide by, so different from the hilly region we had come from the night before. Somewhere about five o’clock a low tap comes to my door, and “Nanna,” with her finger on her lip, hands in a cup of tea which she has managed to produce from somewhere.
“I knew you’d not sleep much,” she whispers. “Did you ever know trains shake like this one? You’d think they’d manage to take His Majesty along at a more comfortable pace, wouldn’t you? A royal train indeed! Enough to shake you to pieces.” “Nanna” loses no opportunity of drawing comparisons to the disadvantage of the German nation, which she considers hardly worthy to be governed by the illustrious family she serves.
I drink her tea with much appreciation, and she comes and sits beside me and converses, or I might say talks—for it is more outpouring than conversation—in a hoarse whisper, so that she may not disturb the gentleman who is supposed to be sleeping in the next coupé, but is probably lying awake yearning for the end of the journey.
The greyness of the fields departs, they are threaded with gleams of colour as the sun slowly penetrates the clouds; great wreaths and ragged eddies of mist begin to rise, cattle stand about half plunged in an ocean of vapour, the peasants are at work, women with red handkerchiefs tied over their heads kneel among the bright green of the potato crops; the dreary night has departed, a new day is born.
The train rattles and jerks its way along. “Nanna’s” voice continues to croon in my ear words of warning, admonishment, advice. I listen without hearing or comprehension. Her voice is as some soothing accompaniment to my thoughts, giving a pleasant sense of companionship without exacting much attention.
Somewhere about seven o’clock another soft tap is heard and the door slides back, revealing a footman with another tray of tea and Zwieback—those nice brown crunchy toast-like biscuits which pervade the Fatherland.
“You’ll have your proper breakfast when you arrive at the New Palace,” whispers “Nanna,” “but you’ll not get it much before nine. You’d better have some more.”
I accept the fresh tea with pleasure, and listen as I drink it to the movement in the corridor. There is a sliding of doors, a sound of subdued voices—everybody is getting up. Nanna disappears to dress her Princess, who has slept soundly all night—happy capacity of childhood!—and when I peep out into the corridor I see some of the ladies-in-waiting already dressed, looking rather wearily out of the window. A man comes in and makes my bed-clothes disappear in some miraculous manner, leaving behind him, instead of the two sleeping berths, in one of which I had lain awake so long, just the ordinary seat of a first-class carriage, of which the upper berth now forms the padded back.
Some of the ladies kindly come and sit beside me and point out interesting objects of the landscape. The Countess is one of them, and grows quite excited when at length a round green dome is visible over some trees.