strike him as out of place—“so direct and forcible; couldn’t have been better.”
Perhaps the Emperor’s martial comment was caused by his knowledge that in four days’ time he proposed to make his daughter Colonel of the Second Hussars, stationed at Danzig, the regiment of which his mother, the Empress Frederick, had also been colonel. On the birthday of the Empress, October 22, the news was announced.
A rumour of the event had taken wind, but the strictest secrecy was enjoined, and the necessary saddlery and, still more important, the necessary feminine uniform had been all prepared, the latter without any “trying on.”
It took three maids, several ladies, and at the last moment the patient ministrations and advice of the Emperor’s Leib-Jäger, to get the Princess satisfactorily into that uniform.
It was fearfully tight under the arms and round the neck, and the new patent-leather boots pinched horribly, so that the radiant glow of satisfaction in the glory and honour of wearing it was tinctured with some pain and discomfort, for the day was unusually warm, almost oppressive, and the heavy cloth loaded with astrachan, the hot fur cap with its skull and cross-bones (the emblem which gives the regiment its name, the Toten-Kopf or Death’s-Head Hussars) combined with the cumbersome habit-skirt, weighted the Princess almost beyond endurance.
All the officers of the regiment had travelled from distant Danzig, a twelve hours’ journey, to be presented to their new colonel; and the Empress’s birthday table, with the usual dozen of new hats, received hardly any attention at all, every one being absorbed in the “new recruit” to His Majesty’s forces.
“She will ride at the head of the first regiment that invades England,” said the Emperor gaily to me.
“Yes, I hope so. Then we shall be delighted to see it,” was the only possible answer I could find.
“Oh yes! You will receive her with open arms, no doubt,” he laughed, but looked as though he were not quite sure of the matter.
But when his daughter the following year accompanied her parents to England for the unveiling of the Queen Victoria Memorial, although she did not arrive at the head of her regiment, she nevertheless managed to subjugate and be subjugated by that portion of England which came within her sphere of influence.