The Princess was charmed with “Papa’s Scherkel,” and rather annoyed at not being allowed to have him in her own rooms; but he was comfortably installed in the stable at Lindstedt, a villa belonging to the Emperor standing close to the gate of the Neues Palais, where, being a pig of placid disposition, he put on flesh at a rapid rate, quickly losing the innocent gaiety of his early days, and developed weight and fatness day by day, so that towards Christmas the usual tragic fate of pigs befell him. His mistress suffered no sentimental regrets with regard to his death, eating without a qualm the savoury sausages he provided and retaining a grateful memory of the nice sum he brought her—for naturally, although she never paid for his keep, she demanded and received the sum for which the butcher purchased his remains.
“I wish Papa would give me another pig,” she has been heard to sigh when money was scarce. “He was so useful.”
But no other pig arrived. He remained the first and last of his tribe.
The Duchess of Albany and her daughter Princess Alice (now Princess Alexander of Teck) were for a short time living in Potsdam, while the young Duke of Coburg, the son of the Duchess, was undergoing his year of military training. He afterwards went as a student to Bonn at the same time as the Crown Prince and Prince Fritz—and eventually married the eldest sister of little Princess May of Glucksburg, while her second sister, Princess Alexandra, married her cousin Prince August Wilhelm, the fourth son of the Emperor.
Princess Alice of Albany and her mother were great favourites at the Neues Palais, and frequently visited the Empress. One day they were invited to meet her at the Marmor Palais, the palace formerly occupied by Their Majesties when they were first married, before their accession to the throne. It had remained empty since that time, though now occupied when they are in Potsdam by the Crown Prince and Princess and their family of little boys.
Beautifully situated about two miles away from the Neues Palais, on the border of a lake (the Heiligen-See), it was there that the Empress passed the happiest years of her married life, and that most of her children were born. She always revisited it with much pleasure mingled with many regrets.
A large party of children had been invited, as it was the Princess’s birthday; and after playing madly about in the garden, they all had tea in the big marble dining-room which overlooked the lake, where swans were sailing majestically up and down the clear blue water. After tea Princess Alice invented a delightful new game for the children. The idea was to put on the enormous felt slippers provided for the boots of the tourists who come to inspect the palace, so that they may not scratch the beautifully polished inlaid parquet floors; and when everybody had stuck their feet into these enormous over-shoes, they began skating madly after each other, headed by Princess Alice, rushing round and round the various salons which opened out of each other, so that they could keep up the race without interruption. The sight of so many rather small people with such disproportionately large feet tearing after each other at break-neck speed was irresistibly comic, and the Empress and the Duchess were convulsed with laughter. It was rather a violent game for a warm September day, but when they grew tired of it they still played, with the greatest energy, musical chairs, post, and blind man’s buff, the sun pouring gaily in at the windows all the time.
A month or so after this party took place, about the middle of November, the weather suddenly changed. It began to freeze hard, and for six weeks there was ice everywhere, and everybody was able to indulge in skating.
When the lessons were over we used to jump into a carriage with our skates and were driven to Charlotten-Hof, a small palace in the park of Sans Souci, where was a large sheet of water now converted into the most beautiful black ice. Nobody was particularly expert on skates, but all were keen to learn; and the Princess and Prince Joachim, after a great many tumbles, managed to get along at a good pace, though their style was hardly of the best. The weather kept beautifully clear, with very little snow, and there were some very merry skating parties, including the late Sir Robert Collins, gentleman-in-waiting to the Duchess of Albany, a very graceful expert performer on the ice, and Lady Collins, who like the rest of us did not skate very well, but perseveringly kept on trying. The Governor of the Prince made many attempts to learn, but never got much farther than an ungainly shuffle, for which he always apologized, saying that at any rate it kept him from freezing.
Sometimes the Crown Prince would bring a few of his friends to play hockey, but as no one knew much about rules it was rather a wild and dangerous game.