At home he inspires much the same charm that he does abroad, and sometimes the same irritation. Unexpected people, whimsical people, are necessarily alternately irritating and charming just as their moods happen to please or displease the circle of people whom they affect. He is a man who is bound to get somewhat on the nerves of those who surround him, to make his service laborious to his servants, his secretaries, his courtiers, who live in a state of continual apprehension, fearing that they may not be ready for some sudden call, some unanticipated duty. There is no more alert place in the world than the Prussian Court.
“We are like the Israelites at the Passover,” grumbled one lady: “we must always have our loins girt, our shoes on our feet—shoes suitable for any and every occasion, fit for walking on palace floors or down muddy roads—our staff in our hand; nobody dare relax and settle down to be comfortable.”
The Emperor disapproves of people who want to settle down and be comfortable. In a jolly, good-humoured but none the less autocratic kind of way, he sets everybody doing something. He likes to keep things moving, has no desire for the humdrum, the usual, the everlasting sameness of things.
No one who knows the Emperor intimately can fail to see how early English influences have helped to mould his character, how intensely he loves and admires English life as apart from English politics, for which he has a perplexed, irritated wonderment and contempt.
“Not one of your Ministers,” he said to me on one occasion, “can tell how many ships of the line you have in your navy. I can tell him—he can’t tell me. And your Minister of War can’t even ride: I offered him a mount and every opportunity to see the manœuvres—‘Thanks very much for your Majesty’s gracious offer—Sorry can’t accept it—I’m no horseman unfortunately.’ A Minister of War!—and can’t ride! Unthinkable!” He gave his short, sharp laugh.
But life as lived in the English country-side has for him irresistible charms.
When some years ago he for a few weeks occupied Highcliffe Castle, near Bournemouth—a proceeding which very much annoyed a section of his subjects, who considered that Germany possessed just as many “eligible residences” for the purposes of a “cure” as did England, of whom those Germans who know least of her are naturally most suspicious—his letters to Her Majesty, portions of which she occasionally read aloud at supper, showed how absolutely he enjoyed that peaceful, comfortable, untrammelled, simple country-house life: how the beautiful gardens—there are no beautiful gardens in Germany—the product of years of thought and labour, a growth of the ages, imbued as they are with the glamour and mystery of the past, appealed to the artistic side of his soul; how “thoroughly at home"—his own expression—he felt there, how rested and refreshed in body and soul.
He wanted the Empress, if only for a week, to come and join him, so that she might share something of his delight and pleasure in the old house, in its wealth of memories, its many treasures of art and historical relics; but there was the difficulty of accommodating the suite, the ladies and gentlemen, the maids and footmen, with which royalty can never dispense, however simple in its own personal needs it may be.
So the plan fell through—the time was too short to arrange matters; but the Emperor in his letters described in minutest detail everything that happened there—his delight in the pretty English children he met, his pleasure in the tea he gave to the boys and girls on the estate, his astonishment at their well-dressed appearance, their reserved, composed manners, at the way in which they sang grace, at the clergyman who controlled the proceedings and knew how to box and play cricket. It is quite impossible to imagine a German Pastor who can play cricket, and as for boxing ...!
“Poor Papa!” said the Princess, “he is quite broken-hearted at leaving his dear Highcliffe.”