For the rest, the Prince Ferdinand who first affronted the eyes of the rough Bulgarians was an exquisite, with artificially waved and golden locks, white hands with long slim fingers, a small waist confined by obvious corsets, and cold blue eyes that sparkled with self-esteem.
A quarter of a century has not served to modify the dominance of his all-pervading nose, though it has altered the rest of the man in no small degree. The long fair moustache and the delicately tended imperial have given way to a thick crop of grey hair, and a carefully trimmed and pointed beard. His pinched figure has expanded into a burly stoutness, his fine hands have gone plump and coarse; he is no longer the “Prince Charming” of the adventure of 1887; although he still preserves his personal vanity—for not long ago he had a journalist sent to gaol for nothing more than making some rude remarks about the length of his nose. The Ferdinand we are now to see surrounded by his home influences is a man who affects the manner of a bluff country gentleman.
Ferdinand allows the peasants to kiss his hand.
Of course it is not possible to speak with any confidence of the manner of a man so entirely artificial as Ferdinand. He has a separate manner for every occasion and for every person with whom he comes into contact. As we have seen, his manner to the Sofiotes is ever one of aloof and portentous gravity. This pose of the monarch absorbed in the affairs of State is not an original one. It is copied from the Kaiser, who has for many years taken the utmost pains to avoid smiling in public. Not long ago a photographer, to whom the Kaiser was posing, startled him into a smile by the imperious manner of his instructions. All the prints made and the negative itself had to be destroyed.
The same pose of a man immersed in matters of superhuman importance has suited Ferdinand very well in Sofia, and I have shown that it has served very well to impress the people of that city. But when he was under a cloud, and forced to remain entirely at his country palaces, one found him doing the heavy benevolent father of his people, with the unfortunate Bulgarian peasants as his victims.
The two palaces between which he divided his time were that of Vrana, a suburb of Sofia where he has an estate at the foot of Mount Vitosch, and Euxinograd, the “Sandringham” he maintains on the border of the Black Sea, which was recently shelled with good effect by the Russian fleet.
Here you might have seen Ferdinand, gotten up in a shooting suit, with gaiters, thick leather gloves and a heavy stick, walking about the farms of the peasants and prodding the cattle in the ribs with a knowing air. Nice clean old peasant women were kept always at hand, to kiss his finger graciously extended to them, and to impress any foreign visitor with the urbanity of this monarch, and the good terms on which he existed with the simple country folk.
Let me quote his English biographer:—
“For the country people the King was a gentleman farmer, knowing everything about agriculture, tobacco-growing, wine-growing, the state of the markets, and most pleasant to gossip with. Every village on the railway line or country road along which the King was coming would turn out its crowd of people to salute him. In an automobile journey he would stop to watch or chat with labourers at work in the fields, or at some hamlet where the teacher took care to have his young folk lined up in front of their seniors. A pathetic love for childhood is one of the distinctive traits of Czar Ferdinand’s character.”