Royal christenings are usually celebrated in the long Jasper Gallery in the New Palace, a magnificent apartment which, owing to its length, was the favourite scene of indoor sports for the Princess and her friends when wet weather prevented their indulgence outside. Only the week after the christening sack-races were held in the stately apartment, and the mirrors which had lately reflected the stately tread, the brilliant uniforms, and the trailing dresses of courtiers, now duplicated and reduplicated a seemingly endless procession of wildly-hopping maidens with jerking pigtails, who, shrieking with laughter and accompanied by many tumbles, bumped along over the marble pavement to the goal. The seventy-five Stifts-Kinder had been invited to the palace; but the afternoon turned out hopelessly wet, so that the “Gymkhana” which had been planned had necessarily to take place indoors or not at all, and the Jasper Gallery proved itself an excellent place for egg-and-spoon races as well as for the needle-threading and bun-eating competitions.
A few rooms near the Gallery had been once occupied by Frederick the Great. One of them still contained his harpsichord, and in another, row upon row, were left the books he loved—all in French, not a single German one amongst them. Sometimes the children would storm violently through these older rooms, where all was left as much as possible undisturbed, just as they had been when used by Frederick. They wakened up for a few moments the sleepy, stifled atmosphere of the shut-up apartments, the faded green silk curtains waved and trembled as they passed boisterously onward; once I saw the yellow parchment label bearing the old King’s handwriting drop from the back of a book in the glass case, shaken from its timid, precarious hold by the rush of active young feet. They were eerie places, where one did not care to linger long alone when the shadows of night were falling. It was so easy to imagine a bent old figure, in a crushed-looking cocked hat, in rusty knee-boots, in a blue-lapelled riding-coat, peering round the corner to see who was disturbing the silences, watching the flight of that impetuous child of his house as her laugh echoed back towards the deserted rooms where the air had for a moment been startled into movement by the tones of her gay voice and the sound of her footsteps on the polished floor.
CHAPTER XI
WILHELMSHÖHE
THE most agreeably situated of all the various dwelling-places occupied in the course of the year by the Emperor William and his family is without doubt the splendid palace of Wilhelmshöhe, standing on the hillside amid beautifully wooded scenery within two miles of the town of Cassel, which can be seen from its upper windows, sheltered snugly in a long depression of hills, its red roofs lying warm across the soft blueness of the distant mountains behind.
The Court stays here every year during August, when the damp heat of the New Palace, which lies so low, becomes too suffocatingly unbearable. The Emperor in Wilhelmshöhe changes his uniform every afternoon for an ordinary flannel or tweed suit, and wearing a Panama hat, tramps energetically among the woods and hills, working off a little of the adipose tissue which, in spite of his activities, has in the last year or two made some slight encroachment on his straight, lithe figure. He has a horror of growing stout, and keeps the enemy at bay with characteristic pertinacity.
Once at a fancy-dress ball given by Prince Adalbert, his sailor-son at Kiel, the Emperor came to it, unknown to the guests, wearing the dress of his own ancestor the Great Elector, a full-bottomed flowing wig and the long coat and breeches appropriate to the period. During the first part of the ball the dancers were masked, and the Emperor was talking with a lady who, believing him to be the Crown Prince, whom she knew very well, said to him archly:
“Your Imperial Highness is splendidly disguised. How did you make yourself appear so stout? A little cushion stuffed inside somewhere, I suppose?”
His Majesty told this story against himself several times, especially when the lady, who previous to her marriage was attached to the service of the Empress, happened to be present. He would roll his eyes in pretended anger while he said:
“Of course there was no cushion—there was only me; but I believe she said it on purpose. She knew who it was all the time.”
It was a toilsome business to tramp so many miles in the hot sun, and though the Empress herself was at that time a good walker, she had hard work to keep up with her energetic husband, while the Princess frankly confessed that she was half dead after one of “Papa’s” brisk constitutionals. Elderly Germans, especially at Court, do not walk much habitually. They occasionally take exercise of the kind as a “cure,” making it into something of a solemn, ponderous rite, strolling along under the forest trees hat in hand, with frequent pauses to look at the scenery; but this is not what the Emperor understands by walking.