Lord Clarendon also told the Queen that the Princess was appreciated and beloved by all classes. Every member of the Royal Family, he said, had spoken of her to him in terms of admiration, and through various channels he had had opportunities of learning how strong was the feeling of educated and enlightened people towards her.
There is significance in the English statesman’s reference to “educated and enlightened” people. He must have been aware that the majority of Prussians of that day were neither educated nor enlightened in his sense of the words, and that the Princess was really only appreciated by the small intellectual group who were flattered by the recognition which she and the Crown Prince bestowed on them. But Lord Clarendon was perhaps disposed to see everything en beau, for the Crown Princess mentions that the King and Queen showed a marked cordiality to him, contrasting with the stiff etiquette observed in their reception of the other Ambassadors.
To return to the Crown Princess’s account of the coronation. She contrives to give in comparatively few words an unforgettable picture of the coup d’œil in the chapel—the Knights of the Black Eagle in their red velvet cloaks, the various colours of the uniforms, and the diamonds and Court dresses of the ladies, all harmonised by the sun pouring in through the high windows. The Princess says that she herself was in gold with ermine and white satin, while one of her ladies wore blue and the other red velvet. “Dearest Fritz was in a great state of emotion and excitement, as we all were.” The King looked so handsome and noble with the crown on, and the moment when he put the crown on the Queen’s head was so touching that there was hardly a dry eye in the chapel.
The Princess’s keen sense of humour was stirred by the large assemblage of princes and other notables. “Half Europe is here, and one sees the funniest combinations in the world. It is like a happy family shut up in a cage!” and she mentions as an example the Italian Ambassador sitting close to a Cardinal. There is also a young prince of Hesse who nearly dies of fright and shyness among so many people; he at once excites the sympathy of the warm-hearted Princess, though she herself had no experience of the agonies of shyness.
But the Princess was even more diverted by a compliment which the King paid her:
“The King gave me a charming little locket for his hair, and only think—what will sound most extraordinary, absurd, and incredible to your ears—made me second Chef of the 2nd Regiment of Hussars! I laughed so much, because really I thought it was a joke—it seemed so strange for ladies; but the Regiments like particularly having ladies for their Chefs! The Queen and the Queen Dowager have Regiments, but I believe I am the first Princess on whom such an honour is conferred.”
Possibly the Princess thought at first that she was being appointed honorary cook to the regiment! In any case it is curious that she should not have known of the custom of conferring such distinctions on Royal ladies, which obtains in the British Army as well as on the Continent.
We have no means of knowing how the Crown Prince and Crown Princess regarded the new King’s declaration at Königsberg—that declaration which amounted to an explicit assertion of the divine right of Kings. But in Queen Victoria’s Letters there is a curious revelation of the anxiety with which Her Majesty regarded the constant attacks of the Times on everything German, and particularly everything Prussian. She even wrote to Lord Palmerston about it, suggesting that he might see his way to remonstrate with the conductors of the journal. “Pam” did see his way, and he got an entertaining answer from the great Delane, then at the zenith of his power, which he forwarded to her Majesty. The editor says that he would not have intruded advice on the Prussians during the splendid ceremonies of the coronation “had not the King uttered those surprising anachronisms upon the Divine Right.”
We learn from a letter written by Lord Clarendon to Queen Victoria that the Crown Princess was much alarmed at the state of affairs in Berlin at this time. The King saw democracy and revolution in every symptom of opposition to his will. His Ministers were mere clerks, content to register his decrees, and there was no one from whom he sought advice, or indeed who was capable or would have the moral courage to give it. The King would never accept the consequences of representative government or allow it to be a reality, though at the same time he would always religiously keep his word and never overturn the institutions he had sworn to maintain. Such was this experienced statesman’s diagnosis of the situation, arrived at after an audience of the Crown Princess.
The Princess celebrated her twenty-first birthday on November 21, 1861. In the letter which she received from her father, almost the last which he was ever to write to her, one detects a pathetic note, as if the Prince, wearied and out of health, actually foresaw his approaching death and wished to give her his parting counsel and blessing: