“There, the General has again had no luck!” they would remark; and it became quite monotonous to see the General depart, all smiles, in his green uniform amid a chorus of “Waidmann’s Heil,” and watch his return sadly and slowly in the dusk of evening.
The Emperor likes to be identified with successful people of every class, to feel that he has contributed something to their success, to indicate to them further channels of improvement. There are probably few successful artists, architects, engineers, or shipbuilders who have not been at some time indebted to the Emperor for many professional suggestions. It is a matter of common knowledge that all architectural plans for Government buildings, post offices, railway stations, barracks, etc., are invariably submitted to His Majesty—a censorship productive of many terrors and much apprehension in the official mind, for the question of expense is ignored and the Imperial blue pencil strikes out perhaps the toil of months, substituting something maybe less adequate to the intended purpose. Yet, on the whole, this autocratic method has been productive of much good: it has saved the nation from the frightful utilitarian atrocities of the inartistic Town Council, whose hideous square piles of bricks lie like a nightmare on the public conscience. If the Emperor often misses the best, his taste is at any rate on a sufficiently high level of excellence, and it improves with advancing years.
Among the many artists, some good, many of mediocre talents, to whom he has given his patronage, the famous László has painted the most successful portraits of the Kaiser and Kaiserin, and their daughter. Perhaps the most charming of all is that of the young Princess with her hair falling over her shoulders and her hands full of flowers. She and Herr László were very great friends, and it was amusing to hear the Princess attempt to talk about Art—for, to tell the truth, her efforts at drawing had, at that period, not advanced very far. László wished very much to see her productions, and she one day brought him a few rather smudgy charcoal sketches which many people had pronounced “quite nice.” László, however, left her no illusions on the subject. He looked at them and smiled, and laid them down and said, “Well, shall we get on with our picture now?”
The Princess once gave him a doll dressed in Rococo costume, and he painted its portrait in oils and sent it to her on her birthday. It is now one of her most cherished possessions. László’s portrait of Her Majesty was an excellent likeness, and conveyed that air of stately dignity and placid calm so characteristic of the Empress, one which no other of her portraits possesses. Besides these three royal sitters the Crown Prince and Princess too were sketched in oils, and the resulting likeness of the Crown Prince was extraordinarily clever, conveying the curious cat-like, rather mesmeric look of his eyes. It was almost too good a likeness, and many people disliked it extremely—it was so unlike the rather quiet, absorbed expression that most artists give to His Imperial Highness.
To see the Emperor with children is always amusing. His own, with the exception of his little daughter, he has kept as they grew up sternly to their duties, first as schoolboys, then later on as officers in the army. Only of his little girl—now a little girl no longer—has he been heard to relate infantine anecdotes, to tell of her tiny imperious ways and childish wilfulness. But none of them, though they all adored “Papa,” were ever familiar with him. They all were brought up to believe him the most wonderful person in the world, but in that they were not so very different from a good many other children. To see the Emperor with his grandsons is perhaps one of the pleasantest sights in the world; to hear them explain their picture-books to Gross-Papa, to watch them gravely saluting each other when they meet in uniform, or to see the four small boys in white sailor-suits stooping in turn to kiss His Majesty’s hand. They are on the very best of terms, for Gross-Papa has a wonderful knack of finding his way to childish hearts.
The Kinderheim at Rominten is a kind of crèche, established by the Empress for the tiny children, where, when their mothers are working in the fields, they can be cared for by a trained deaconess, who is also the depositary of sundry medical stores supplied by Her Majesty for the use of the villagers.
Every year, on the Sunday before the departure of Their Majesties from Rominten, a small festivity taking the form of a children’s tea is given here by the Emperor and Empress, and His Majesty may be seen in his green uniform, distributing hunks of cake to each sunburnt child; and when their wants are temporarily satisfied, nothing pleases him better than to thrust huge slabs of sticky currant buns into the unwilling hands of the attendant ladies and gentlemen, who, receiving the unwelcome gift with a forced smile, take an early opportunity of surreptitiously slipping it back into the tray whence it was taken.
On the occasion of one of these teas a small boy of six, thirsting for notoriety, barred the Emperor’s path at the moment when he was on the point of leaving the feast to step into the hunting-cart waiting outside with keeper and guns to take him to a part of the forest some miles away, where a lordly “eighteen-ender” was wont to browse at sunset.
This child, who possessed a phenomenal memory, burst into the recital of a poem, to which the Emperor, expecting every line to be the last, lent at first a sufficiently attentive ear; but as time went on, the poetic effusion, which described with unnecessary wealth of detail the events of the recently celebrated Silver Wedding of Their Majesties, seemed to expand its scope and gather strength and volume with each succeeding verse, while the Empress, aware of the portentous length of this rhyming masterpiece, tried to stem the flood of poetry by suggesting that the rest might be said another time.
But the sturdy young peasant, completely absorbed in his task, continued relentlessly, in his broad East-Prussian accent, his eyes faithfully fixed on the toes of the Emperor’s boots. His Majesty, like the Wedding-Guest, “could not choose but hear,” and if he did not listen like a three-years child, at any rate bore manfully with the ceaseless monotone. At last it suddenly descended two tones, stopped, and with a wooden bow the young reciter concluded his stupendous effort, and his Imperial auditor, throwing thanks and praise over his shoulder, went off to deal with the stag, while the small boy retired shamefacedly into the crowd covered with glory and stuffed with cake.