“One of these paintings was of a warrior holding a flag, inscribed Es lebe der König. The second a soldier looking upward. He has been wounded, and he wears a bandage across his brow; a sunset sky for a background. This is inscribed Nun danket alle Gott. The third is another soldier looking down on a newly-made grave. Of these three I thought the second by far the best. There was another painting, also by the Princess, representing the Entombment.”
The visitors were taken out driving: “We could judge of the popularity of our hosts, for everyone that we passed stopped to bow to them, and those who were in carriages stood up in them to salute as the Prince and Princess passed by.”
The arrangements about meals seem extraordinary to modern taste. Lord Ronald says:
“Tea was served at ten in the evening in one of the rooms on the ground floor of the Palace. They call it the Apollo Room, I believe. It was a curious meal, beginning with tea and cake, followed by meat, veal, and jellies, and two plates of sour cream. For this repast one was not expected to don one’s evening apparel a second time.”
The visitors breakfasted upstairs with the Crown Prince and Princess and their children, in a room lined with pale blue silk framed in silver—not, perhaps, the best possible background for “the Princess in her favourite pink-coloured dress.” Then, “the Princess showed us her private garden, and here she picked a clove, which she gave me with her own little hand.”
Lord Ronald mentions the children with approval, but Putlitz, whose visit was much longer, got to know them really well:
“July 2.—The Royal children are very charming and well trained. The Crown Princess is strict with them, which is very praiseworthy in so young a mother, who is relieved by her rank of the duty of taking an active part in their education, for which she has not the time. People will indeed be surprised at this talented and cultured nature, when once her will has full scope.”
The children on their side seem to have taken to Putlitz with enthusiasm. He gave the boys rides on his head, and he records with pride that “they came running from quite a long way off when they caught sight of me.” He also records an accident—little Prince William being thrown from his pony—which must have reminded the mother of that day at Windsor when she was so distressed at a similar though more dangerous mishap to her brother, the Prince of Wales.
One morning after breakfast, says Putlitz, he met the Crown Prince and Princess on the terrace, “both full of almost infantile gaiety.” Soon afterwards the children appeared. Prince William was riding his pony, when his hat fell off and hit the pony between its ears; the animal reared, and the Prince was thrown off on his back. Both parents remained quite calm, and apparently took no notice; whereupon the Prince mounted again and went on riding. It is not difficult to imagine the mother’s pang of terror beneath that outward calmness. Well may Putlitz praise the sensible upbringing of the children, which made them perfectly natural, well-behaved, and obedient.
But it is the remarkable personality of the Crown Princess which chiefly interests this literary man turned courtier. One moment she is instructing him to write to a poet and thank him for a copy of verses; at another she is arranging a picnic party in her own little garden near the Palace. Someone, generally Putlitz himself, reads aloud after tea, and if the poem or story is pathetic the Crown Princess is moved to tears. At other times they have music, generally glees, followed by good talk on literature or on contemporary politics and personages, about whom both the Crown Prince and the Princess speak with a candour which astonishes Putlitz. He cannot praise enough this delightfully informal, unaffected, and yet exquisitely cultivated and intellectual family life: