A few days afterwards comes the anniversary of His Majesty’s birthday, which is kept with great zeal and earnestness from early morning until night. It begins with congratulations at 9.30 for the household only. On tables arranged round one of the smaller salons are spread out the various gifts received from family and friends. In her childish days the Princess’s present was always a source of anxiety. Sometimes it took the form of a blotting-book, the cover worked or painted by herself, or a photograph frame, or perhaps a sketch of her own, something costing little excepting the expenditure of time and patience. The Emperor was always very pleased with his daughter’s gift—he valued it more than the silver statuettes, the oil-paintings, jewelled cigarette-cases and costly things lavished on him by the other members of his family.
On the evening of the birthday there is the usual performance at the Opera, where the audience is composed only of those officially invited, and the house is garlanded and scented. On one birthday, however, for some reason an evening concert in the Schloss itself took the place of the Opera. It was held in the beautiful Weisser Saal, and I listened to it from one of the little Loge, or boxes, of which there are two set into the wall. This occasion was especially memorable on account of two rather startling incidents which happened during the progress of the concert. Several soloists sang, and there was a large band of string and wind instruments. During the playing of an orchestral piece, a door opened in the empty musicians’ gallery, which ran across the Saal at right angles to the box where I was sitting, and I was startled to see a man enter on hands and knees and creep slowly and stealthily along the floor across to the opposite side. Following him a few paces behind, in the same stealthy manner, came a fat, unwieldy woman. They were distinctly visible through the white marble balustrades as they moved slowly along, the woman getting into constant difficulties with her skirt, which much impeded her progress. Could this perhaps be the preliminary to an Anarchist bomb? was the first thought which crossed my mind. The rotundity of the woman was reassuring. She did not look to be of the stuff of which conspirators are made, but nevertheless her movements were decidedly suspicious. I touched the hand of the lady with me, who had long been attached to the Court. She had not yet seen the two grovellers on the empty gallery floor. I nodded in their direction. She started when she caught sight of them, and an angry flush of indignation overspread her face. She whispered to me that they were the wife and son of a Kastellan, one of the officials who have certain portions of the Schloss under their charge. They had chosen this extraordinary manner of seeing and hearing something of the festivities—very foolishly, as it proved, for the Emperor himself perceived them and sent to make inquiries, with the result that the unfortunate husband and father of the guilty pair as nearly as possible lost his comfortable position as Kastellan, while the son—a young man old enough to know better—was severely punished, and the wife fell into disgrace and was for a long time looked at askance by her colleagues in the castle.
At the same concert, one of the chorus-singers went out of his mind. At all State concerts there is a long interval in the middle, when the Emperor and Empress move round among the invited guests, chatting to each in turn. Not till His Majesty commands is the signal given by a gentle roll on the drum for the concert to recommence. On this occasion, after a very short interval indeed, the drum was heard and everybody hurried back in some surprise to the red velvet chairs, from which they had risen to wander about and talk.
The Emperor knew that “some one had blundered,” as he had given no order to continue; but perhaps not unwilling to have the proceedings curtailed, he let the mistake pass, and shortly afterwards returned to his place beside the Empress. But the person who had given the signal was a singer of the chorus, who for some time had been giving his friends cause for uneasiness. After drumming energetically for several minutes he fled from the Schloss, pursued by one of the pink-stockinged footmen as far as the courtyard gates, where the unfortunate man escaped in the darkness into the crowd of the street.
The birthday of the Empress, which occurs in November, was always celebrated at the New Palace. The most striking among her presents were the dozen hats given by His Majesty, invariably chosen by himself. They were arranged on stands on the billiard-table of the room where the “birthday-table” was erected—a table beautifully enwreathed and garlanded by autumn leaves, intermixed with fruits, bunches of tiny red crab-apples, clusters of green and black grapes, small melons and gourds. It is a perilous business for any man to set out to buy a dozen hats for his wife without consulting her tastes and wishes on the subject, but the German Emperor is not a man to recoil from even such an enterprise. Though the hats were always very beautiful, and obviously the most expensive of their kind, they always raised, I found, certain doubts and queries in the mind of the feminine observer.
Does any woman in the world, be she ever so much an Empress, really desire to have hats thrust on her by the dozen without any “trying on” or any of that delicious hovering between two decisions which makes hat-buying so thrillingly charming—above all, without reference to the costume with which the head-gear must be worn, whereof it should be the fitting corollary and completion?
The ordinary masculine mind is not sufficiently subtle to number among its greatest achievements the purchase of successful feminine millinery; even an Emperor ought to realize the limits of his sphere of activity. But William never did. Every year, year after year, there were the dozen hats, all much of the same type, all be-feathered, be-ribboned, be-decked with tulle or chiffon or embroidery, whichever happened to be uppermost in the scheme of fashion. The Emperor enjoyed being complimented on his taste. He liked to feel that great minds can stoop successfully to occupy themselves with trifles. He was delighted to see his wife looking well in one of his gifts. The hats always seemed to be holding the birthday reception; they filled the foreground to the exclusion of the other marvellous things, diamond and pearl ornaments, jewels of every description, which His Majesty also showered on the Empress with lavish hand.
On the evening of Her Majesty’s birthday a performance was usually given in the pretty little Rococo Theatre of the Palace, built by Frederick the Great. Though the piece was necessarily simple, owing to the absence of up-to-date stage-machinery and accommodation for the actors, yet the little theatre was the scene of many brilliant and pleasant gatherings.
On one occasion the King and Queen of Norway were present at a performance there, soon after their accession. They stayed some days at the New Palace, of course with their little son Olaf, a most amusing, quaint, old-fashioned little child, who charmed everybody, especially the Emperor, with whom he chatted in a confidential, fearless manner, treating His Majesty as a friend and companion, and inviting him to help in building his house of bricks. The small boy came once or twice with the Princess into her sitting-room, where he overwhelmed her with an avalanche of questions regarding her canary, pursuing his investigations into the remotest details of its life and ancestry, and asking questions which no one could reasonably be expected to answer.
After the Emperor’s birthday the Season is in full swing. There are four State Balls and various “Cours” and “Levées”; but the Balls are the chief events of the season. With that thoroughness which distinguishes all he does, the Emperor does not permit any dancing at his Court which fails to come up to a certain standard of excellence. Every young débutante, every young officer anxious to dance before royalty, must first satisfy the fastidious judgment of the Court Dancing-Mistress, who holds several Tanz-Proben or trial dances in the Weisser Saal. A few years ago the Court Dancing-Mistress, Frau Wolden, now dead, was only less of a personality than His Majesty. Once indeed, in an agitated and forgetful moment, it is whispered that she sank on to the throne itself. She upheld with a stern hand the dignity of the Court, and her scathing remarks on the attitudes and steps of certain young provincials of both sexes who thought to introduce fashionable irregularities into the lancers, at once made them realize their error. What her real age was cannot with certainty be told. She owned with pride to seventy, and would lift her silk skirts and show her wonderfully fine ankles in a graceful tip-toe turn as if in derision of awkward flat-footed youth. To the day of her death she retained all her marvellous grace of movement. Twice a week she came to the Castle to give dancing lessons to Prince Joachim and the Princess. Other little boys and girls of the same age were invited to complete the class, and were drilled by the old lady in the intricacies of the minuet and gavotte, which quaint old-world dances are invariably danced at the Berlin Court Balls, and are from a spectacular point of view the most beautiful of any.