Morier parted with the Crown Prince and Princess on December 15, and it is on record that the Princess wept bitterly on saying good-bye to him. Bismarck and his followers were proportionately delighted at getting rid of him. But their joy was premature, for the Athens appointment fell through, and Morier was finally transferred to Darmstadt as Chargé d’Affaires, a change due to the personal intervention of Queen Victoria.
It must be remembered that Bismarck generally looked at things from a personal point of view. He had found by experience the value of secret agents, of whom he made constant use, and so he believed that every one whom he disliked, whom he feared, whom he wished to conciliate, made use of them too. To his mind Robert Morier was a secret agent, and it was his great desire to isolate the Crown Prince and Princess from everyone who did not belong directly to his own party.
While at Darmstadt Morier remained in touch with the Crown Prince and Princess, and it was he who advised the selection of Dr. Hinzpeter as tutor to their eldest son, afterwards the Emperor William II. Dr. Hinzpeter, who had been a friend of Morier for some time, was an authority on national economy and social reform, as well as a man of the highest personal character.
In the summer of 1865 Frau Putlitz and her husband were the guests of the Crown Prince and Princess at Potsdam. This time it is the wife who records her impressions in a series of letters to her sister. She was quite as fervent an admirer of the Crown Princess as Putlitz was, and her letters really supplement and complete his letters, for they supply the feminine point of view.
Frau Putlitz was perhaps most impressed by the Crown Princess’s versatility—the ease with which she could turn from a gay and smiling talk about bulbs, for instance, to the serious discussion of the profoundest subjects of philosophy. Naturally, this feminine observer notes the Princess’s style of dressing, which she greatly admires as being both simple and perfect. “There is,” she says, “a charm about her whole presence which it is impossible to describe.” Her way of speaking, too, was fascinating, and though she declared that her German had an English accent, Frau Putlitz found it delightfully soft. Shakespeare the Princess frequently quoted, and one morning she read long passages with an expression which was warmly approved by the dramatist, Putlitz himself, who might be allowed to be a good judge. Frau Putlitz thought that the special charm of the Princess consisted in her entire simplicity and naturalness, which was exemplified in her never uttering banal, used-up phrases.
Of the children we have some glimpses; they are described as perfectly charming and very lively. The Princess told Frau Putlitz how anxious she was to have Prince William educated away from home with other boys of his own age, and this intention, as we know, she afterwards carried out in the case of both Prince William and Prince Henry. Little Prince Sigismund is pronounced to be really a delightful child. The Princess spoke with deep feeling of her father, whom she scarcely mentioned without tears, and she brought out all her souvenirs of him which she kept with loving care.
We are also shown the Princess among her books and pictures, the Princess singing old Scottish ballads and English hymns, the Princess painting flower-pieces, and above all the Princess as a gardener. Frau Putlitz compares the neatness of the Princess’s own little garden, laid out by herself, to that of a little jewel-box. Enormous strawberries grew on beds of white moss under the beech hedges, and a gigantic lily brought by the Crown Prince from Hamburg was exhibited with pride. Frau Putlitz was surprised at the Princess’s practical knowledge of horticulture, and the thoroughness with which she set about it.
These are not, to be sure, matters of great importance in themselves, but it is interesting to see how completely the charm of the Princess’s personality fascinated both husband and wife, who were by no means ordinary observers.
CHAPTER XII
THE AUSTRIAN WAR: WORK IN THE HOSPITALS
WE come now to the outbreak of the war with Austria, which arose directly out of the war with Denmark, and which, as we now look back upon it, seems to fall naturally into its place as part of Bismarck’s politique de longue haleine for the unification of Germany.