Her home was for some years in a large farmhouse belonging to the Crown known as “Bornstedter Gut,” lived in for some time by the Emperor and Empress Frederick. The ground-floor was inhabited by the bailiff and his family. The rest of the house belonged to the Princess, to whom it had been lent by her brother-in-law the German Emperor, with whom she was a great favourite, in spite of the fact that on nearly every possible subject their views clashed uncompromisingly. She furnished it all according to her own taste, doing her shopping in Berlin like any ordinary Bürger-frau among the crowd of other buyers. She loved the realities of life, and refused to have things made easier for her because she was the sister of the Empress. Only seven years older than her eldest nephew, the Crown Prince, she was from childhood the delightful play-fellow of the children of the Empress and of her other sisters, Princess Frederick Leopold of Prussia and the Duchess of Schleswig-Holstein.
I first saw her at Bornstedt, where I had come to fetch my little Princess, who had been spending the afternoon with her aunt. The carriage I was in drove past a big farmyard, where waggon-horses were being harnessed, up to the door of a big stone house pleasantly shaded by chestnut trees. As I got out of the carriage a sudden irruption of screaming children, boys and girls of all ages in a state of extreme heat and untidiness, among whom I recognized my Princess, burst from the dark doorway of a cow-house, and trampling and stumbling over heaps of farmyard litter, fled with shrieks up a perpendicular ladder into a hay-loft. They were followed at a short interval by a lady clad in a tweed skirt, a striped blouse and a Panama hat, who likewise flew up the ladder with remarkable agility and disappeared. Uproarious screams were presently heard issuing from the loft. They were evidently playing Versteckens, and my coachman confided to me that the lady of the ladder was Princess Féodora herself.
The Princess disliked the ordinary court circle, with its cramped, narrow views, and loved to surround herself with clever, unconventional people, whatever their rank in life. With her it was a positive obsession that all her royal nephews and nieces should know life as it really was, not as seen blurred and transformed through a court atmosphere, with the hideous, ugly realities of existence hidden away and covered up. She taught them many perhaps disagreeable truths about themselves, which they would have heard from no one else. The trend of modern thought and contemporary politics both found in her an earnest and intelligent student. With poverty, with humble folk, she had an intense sympathy, a passionate tenderness for all simple struggling existences.
Although possessing a conspicuous sense of humour, in her books she wrote only of the sombre side of life, the bare starving sand-dunes of her native Holstein, the resinous breath of its pine-woods, the chill sad beat on the shore of its grey sea-waves. She depicted the strenuous toil, the unrelieved labour, the sordid existence and struggles of the peasantry.
“The only truths in life,” she makes one of her characters say, “are founded upon Work. Everything else is false.”
In “Tante Féo’s” company the little Princess had the privilege of seeing the first aeroplane flight of her life made by Orville Wright, who had installed himself and his machine on the Bornstedter Feld, where he was instructing the German officers in the art of flying.
One day at the end of September 1909 came a telephone message from one of the Princes in Potsdam, saying that Orville Wright was flying on the “Feld.” Without delay two “autos” were ordered by Her Majesty, one for herself and her sister and the Princess, the other for the suite; and the palace buzzed like a hive while footmen flew about summoning the ladies to get ready at once. The two professors who ought to have been instructing the Princess in literature and history were sent off to the scene of action in a carriage (a propitiatory proceeding suggested, I believe, by the Princess herself, who never failed to display a certain diplomatic tact), while Mademoiselle and I huddled on our outdoor things and tied motor-veils with tremblingly excited fingers. It was de rigueur to get excited over flying, and nothing annoyed the Princess more than an attitude of philosophic calm.
We picked up Prince August Wilhelm and Prince George of Greece on the way, and sped onwards to the big cavalry-exercise ground, over which the cars bumped at a furious pace. When we arrived, however, there was no sign of Mr. Wright. A gentleman appeared, who announced with a pronounced American accent that all flying was finished for that day, as the police had gone home again and there was no one to keep the crowd from straying on to the ground. But Her Majesty particularly wished Princess Féo to see a flight, as she was going away the same evening, and there was a discussion as to whether soldiers should be summoned from the adjacent barracks to keep the course. The American gentleman seemed to think that would make no difference to Mr. Wright, but at last a man was sent to his tent to announce Her Majesty’s arrival, and presently he came along buttoning up his leather jacket as he walked—a quiet, taciturn individual who spoke in rather a soft, gentle voice when he spoke at all, which was not often.
Some policemen on bicycles had materialized out of the surrounding landscape, and began to drive the crowd back to the road, where they were kept penned up by the arm of the law while we stood in the middle of the field to watch the flight.
A few days later the Emperor himself went with the Empress and Princess to see Wright fly. It was the middle of October, when the days are getting short, and there had been some delay in starting, so that as the cars tore on to the Feld the sun was setting in great clouds of scarlet and purple, and night fast approaching. Wright was waiting beside his machine, and after a word with the Emperor put on his jacket and goggles, and in a few seconds the motor began to hum steadily, the propellers whizzed round, and the huge machine moved along smoothly and swiftly up into the darkening heavens. Its wide-spread planes showed blackly for a moment against the intense sunset background, then it went droning round the immense space, rising higher and higher towards the stars, which were now shining brightly in the deep blue of the sky. For nearly half an hour, away above our heads, the machine circled and dived and rose again, humming smoothly and sleepily in the distance, then coming nearer with a threatening murmur, to rise and disappear again into the darkness, reappearing presently like a gigantic moth. At last it descended, dropping lightly within a few feet of us. The crowd on the edge of the field cheered heartily.