As we pass our schoolroom window I perceive the Ober-Gouvernante standing there, and it suddenly strikes me—I had quite forgotten for the time—that we are due to begin lessons at eight o’clock and it is now a quarter to. Appalling thought! Well, we shall obviously not be there. I dismiss any misgivings as I realize the rapture expressed in the Princess’s back; and when for an instant we have a chance of speech together, I carefully refrain from mentioning the tutor and the vacant schoolroom.
The line of waiting guns on the artillery field drawn by funny little rough Siberian ponies, who look very strong and unkempt and are driven by men in khaki, strike the Princess as something very unusual. From babyhood she has been familiar with troops on parade in their gayest, most expensive, least practical uniforms, or with troops at manœuvres on the march, dusty and sunburned and travel-stained; but never before has she seen men stripped of the superfluities of the barrack-room, prepared simply for the grim realities of war in a far-away country. All the beautiful reds and blues left at home, the shining guns painted khaki-colour, the men in loose almost ill-fitting garments sitting on these queer little horses. It is very unfamiliar—almost unnatural. The fine young commanding officer makes his report to the Emperor. The horses have only been a fortnight under training, but already acquit themselves well and trot and gallop past in an exemplary manner at the word of command. The little ceremony is soon over, the small group cheer their Majesties heartily, and as the Emperor departs he calls out “Adieu, Kameraden,” and as with one voice they answer “Adieu, Majestät.” We leave them standing on the sky-line, brave, plucky youths burning with zeal and patriotism. They fade into the blue background; and while the Emperor and Empress prolong their ride a little farther, the Princess and I trot the nearest way home to those deserted lessons.
The gardens of the Neues Palais are separated only by a slender railing from those of the small Palace of Sans Souci, notable as the residence of Frederick the Great. On the hill behind the Palace, almost over-shadowing it, stands the famous windmill, the centre of certain legendary and probably apocryphal tales. The Palace of Sans Souci and its beautiful grounds—called the Neuer Garten—remain always open to the public, and on Sundays they are crowded with tourists and visitors from the surrounding neighbourhood. It is the day when the big fountains play, one of them decorated with flowers, seen dimly through the falling water; the day when their Majesties are sure to drive or walk through the gardens to the Garrison Church, which they usually attend in Potsdam, where Frederick the Great lies buried. Still more it is the day when with good luck the Princess may be seen driving with her Turkish ponies. For it must be realized that Germany—not possessing an early closing day or a Saturday half-holiday—spends its Sunday afternoons for all its Protestantism in the pure pursuit of pleasure. Extra trains, extra steamboats, extra trams are run, the open-air restaurants do a roaring trade, every public garden, every road is overrun with perspiring families, and with soldiers walking out with stodgy-looking maid-servants in tartan blouses and tight green cotton gloves.
On Sunday the Princess and Prince Joachim entertain their small friends to tea and supper. First of all they take them for a drive somewhere in the neighbourhood, to the huge delight of the tourists, who shriek and cheer and wave pocket-handkerchiefs and rush apoplectically, with the greatest risk to their health, from remote corners of the Neuer Garten, scudding, these fat fathers and mothers, in their hot Sunday clothes along the sandy walks, yelling breathlessly to each other “Die Prinzessin! Die kleine Prinzessin. Ach! wie niedlich!” They are enraptured with the lovely ponies and the blue-lined victoria and the little fair-haired Princess, who usually has two friends stuffed tightly in besides her, while a carriage follows with some more, and Prince Joachim has his cartload of boys.
It was remarkable that, however much we attempted to let the boys play by themselves and keep the girls to purely feminine amusements, it invariably ended in the amalgamation of the two parties; that the running and jumping, the gymnastics over the parallel bars, the games of hide-and-seek were always keener and swifter when the Princess was taking part. There were few boys who could beat her at that age in running or jumping, and when the Prince’s Governor jeered at a boy for behaving like a Mädchen, it was easy to retort that one Mädchen could out-jump and out-run all his boys, and that he had better speak more respectfully in future of the sex.
CHAPTER IV
DIVERSIONS OF THE KAISER’S DAUGHTER
SHORTLY after our return to the Neues Palais a small niece of the Empress, the child of her sister the Duchess of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, came to spend a week or two with her cousin. Her visit marked the last expiring effort of the Princess to take an interest in her dolls, of which she possessed many very beautiful specimens.
But though she was an amused spectator of the unflinching realism with which Princess May—an inventive child whose doll-children suffered many and varied experiences—shaped the fragments of her dream of human life, the stormy cross-channel journeys, the illnesses and cheerful funerals of her large family, it was plain to see that she was not in any sense a real partaker in the small comedies and dramas.
Live animals had always from babyhood been her great passion. On dogs and horses she lavished all the superfluous affection of her heart. Dolls had never been to her more than a transitory amusement, thrust on her by other people rather than chosen by herself. She was exceedingly hurt at receiving one the following Christmas, sent by an affectionate but injudicious aunt. It nerved her to make a clean sweep of the whole lot, and they were divided among various children’s hospitals. The Empress sighed over this further emancipation of her small daughter, but saw its inevitability.
About this time the Emperor, who was staying a few days at Cadinen, his country house in East Prussia, where he carries out farming operations on a large scale, sent the Princess a present after her own heart—a tiny dimpled pigling of tender years. From my bedroom window I suddenly caught sight of this infant swine as, looking newly scrubbed and washed, with a bit of blue ribbon tied round the tender curve of his tail, he sprinted across the Hof pursued by several footmen and the two Princesses, who had decreed that exercise must be necessary for him after his cramping railway journey in a tiny crate. Viewing his innocent infantine chubbiness as he darted between the legs of the pursuing lackeys, even the sentries on duty were forced to relax their military sternness and smile at his baby antics as he rushed about, evading capture for a time.