CHAPTER VI
BERLIN SCHLOSS
THE Prussian Court is awakened on New Year’s Day by the sound of trumpets blaring forth old German chorales as the band of the regiment in garrison slowly marches round the whole palace playing solemn and stately music.
The previous evening, or somewhere in the small hours, in the society of a few intimate friends, everybody has partaken of Pfanne-kuchen—a sort of round dough-nut—and Punch, a comparatively harmless German variety of that insidious beverage, but still not to be drunk lightly and unadvisedly if you would avoid a next morning’s headache.
It is customary also to send pictorial postcards inscribed with New Year greetings to all acquaintances in the palace. Footmen are constantly arriving from the princes with these small offerings, which usually have some reference to the recipient’s peculiar idiosyncrasies. One New Year’s Eve, having retired earlier than the occasion warranted, I was awakened from my first pleasant dreams by an urgent rapping on the outside of the double doors which shut off my bedroom from the outside world, and a masculine voice responded to my startled inquiry, saying that he had something to deliver to me from His Majesty; so quickly rising and huddling on a dressing-gown I hastened to receive from a Jäger an envelope bearing the imperial cipher, which contained a picture-postcard of the “Hohenzollern” inscribed in his own handwriting with the New Year wishes of the Emperor.
Breakfast is a hasty and early function on the first day of the year, for at eight o’clock the royal special train containing the whole of the Imperial Family and the suite, footmen and maids in attendance, is off to Berlin for the Gratulations-Cour, when all the foreign ambassadors in their State carriages surmounted by bewigged coachmen and footmen in bright red, blue, or yellow uniforms drive from their respective Embassies to wish His Majesty the usual compliments of the season. Christmas is essentially a private family festival, but the New Year is ushered in with much public ceremony.
Joyous crowds line Unter den Linden to watch the pageant pass; all the shops are closed and an air of hilarious festivity pervades the streets. A constant stream of vehicles, many of them of the rather shabby horse-droschky type—for few residents of the German capital keep their own carriages—are converging towards the Schloss, all containing officers in full uniform, or functionaries of various departments bent on the same errand.
It is a big, square, rather ugly grey pile of buildings, the old Berlin Schloss, standing straight on to the street on all sides but one, where it is skirted by the narrow river Spree. Inside is a rather gloomy, sunless courtyard, paved with cobble-stones, in the centre of which is a statue of St. George and the Dragon, the latter curling uncomfortably round the hoofs of St. George’s horse, an estimable quadruped which, instead of shying, as our ordinary experience of horses would lead us to think that it should do, gallantly aids its master’s spear-thrust by dancing a kind of tango on the dragon’s vitals.
Along one side of this courtyard, situated in the basement of the Schloss itself, close to and on a line with the Hohenzollern Treppe, the recognized door of arrival for the Empress and her children as well as for the ladies and gentlemen of the suite, are the barracks for the Schloss Guard. While the Court is in residence the guard spends its time in perpetual rushes and drummings, for no princely personage can arrive or depart without that long line of soldiers presenting arms to the throbbing drum-beat accompaniment. It sounds intermittently from early morning till late at night: the constant rapid beat of feet on the cobble-stones as the soldiers snatch their arms and fall into line, the silence, the military command, and then the long continuous rumble, while the royal or princely personage of whatever size or age, descends from his or her carriage, salutes, and disappears into the Schloss up the very plain and simple stairway leading to the apartments of the Royal Family. All coachmen when driving royalty wear a broad hatband embroidered with the Prussian Eagle—what is called a Breite-Tresse—which can be easily removed if necessary, leaving uncovered the plain silver band which denotes the presence of only obscure individuals who are spared the more onerous honours.
A deep archway leads from the large courtyard into a smaller, more secluded one, where is the entrance to the staircase which the Emperor uses. On each side of the large “Hof” are big, heavy, iron gates kept by soldiers, who all day long close and open them to the passing carriages and other traffic.
On New Year’s morning the courtyard is pervaded by footmen in gay uniforms with very chilly-looking pink silk legs, who pick their way gingerly over the round cobble-stones, hastening here and there in a very busy preoccupied manner.