Potsdam has had but scant justice done it by foreigners. The town is almost surrounded by the river Havel, which here broadens out into a series of winding, wooded lakes, surrounded by tree-clad hills. The Potsdam lakes are really charmingly pretty, and afford an admirable place for rowing or sailing. Neither of these pursuits seems to make the least appeal to Germans. The Embassy kept a small yacht at Potsdam, but she was practically the only craft then on the lakes. As on all narrow waters enclosed by wooded hills, the sailing was very tricky, owing to the constant shifting of the wind. Should it be blowing fresh, it was advisable to sail under very light canvas; and it was always dangerous to haul up the centre-board, even when "running," as on rounding some wooded point you would get "taken aback" to a certainty. Once in the fine open stretch of water between Wansee and Spandau, you could hoist every stitch of canvas available, and indulge with impunity in the most complicated nautical manoeuvres. Possibly my extreme fondness for the Potsdam lakes may be due to their extraordinary resemblance to the lakes at my own Northern country home.
The Embassy also owned a light Thames-built four-oar. At times a short, thick-set young man of nineteen pulled bow in our four. The short young man had a withered arm, and the doctors hoped that the exercise of rowing might put some strength into it. He seemed quite a commonplace young man, yet this short, thick-set youth was destined less than forty years after to plunge the world into the greatest calamity it has ever known; to sacrifice millions and millions of human lives to his own inordinate ambition; and to descend to posterity as one of the most sinister characters in the pages of history.
Moored in the "Jungfernsee," one of the Potsdam lakes, lay a miniature sailing frigate, a complete model of a larger craft down to the smallest details. This toy frigate had been a present from King William IV of England to the then King of Prussia. The little frigate had been built in London, and though of only 30-tons burden, had been sailed down the Thames, across the North Sea, and up the Elbe and Havel to Potsdam, by a British naval officer. A pretty bit of seamanship! I have always heard that it was the sight of this toy frigate, lying on the placid lake at Potsdam, that first inspired William of Hohenzollern with the idea of building a gigantic navy.
The whole history of the world might have been changed by an incident which occurred on these same Potsdam lakes in 1880. I have already said that William of Hohenzollern, then only Prince William, pulled at times in our Embassy four, in the hope that it might strengthen his withered arm. He was very anxious to see if he could learn to scull, in spite of his physical defect, and asked the Ambassadress, Lady Ampthill, whether she would herself undertake to coach him. Lady Ampthill consented, and met Prince William next day at the landing-stage with a light Thames-built skiff, belonging to the Embassy. Lady Ampthill, with the caution of one used to light boats, got in carefully, made her way aft, and grasped the yoke-lines. She then explained to Prince William that this was not a heavy boat such as he had been accustomed to, that he must exercise extreme care, and in getting in must tread exactly in the centre of the boat. William of Hohenzollern, who had never taken advice from anyone in his life, and was always convinced that he himself knew best, responded by jumping into the boat from the landing-stage, capsizing it immediately, and throwing himself and Lady Ampthill into the water. Prince William, owing to his malformation, was unable to swim one stroke, but help was at hand. Two of the Secretaries of the British Embassy had witnessed the accident, and rushed up to aid. The so-called "Naval Station" was close by, where the Emperor's Potsdam yacht lay, a most singularly shabby old paddle-boat. Some German sailors from the "Naval Post" heard the shouting and ran up, and a moist, and we will trust a chastened William and a dripping Ambassadress were eventually rescued from the lake. Otherwise William of Hohenzollern might have ended his life in the "Jungfernsee" at Potsdam that day, and millions of other men would have been permitted to live out their allotted span of existence.
Potsdam itself is quite a pleasing town, with a half-Dutch, half-Italian physiognomy. Both were deliberately borrowed; the first by Frederick William I, who constructed the tree-lined canals which give Potsdam its half-Batavian aspect; the second by Frederick the Great, who fronted Teutonic dwellings with façades copied from Italy to add dignity to the town. It must in justice be added that both are quite successful, though Potsdam, like most other things connected with the Hohenzollerns, has only a couple of hundred years' tradition behind it. The square opposite the railway really does recall Italy. The collection of palaces at Potsdam is bewildering. Of these, three are of the first rank: the Town Palace, Sans-souci, and the great pile of the "New Palace." Either Frederick the Great was very fortunate in his architects, or else he chose them with great discrimination. The Town Palace, even in my time but seldom inhabited, is very fine in the finished details of its decoration. Sans-souci is an absolute gem; its rococo style may be a little over-elaborate, but it produces the effect of a finished, complete whole, in the most admirable taste; even though the exuberant imagination of the eighteenth century has been allowed to run riot in it. The gardens of Sans-souci, too, are most attractive. The immense red-brick building of the New Palace was erected by Frederick the Great during the Seven Years' War, out of sheer bravado. He was anxious to impress on his enemies the fact that his financial resources were not yet exhausted. Considering that he already possessed two stately palaces within a mile of it, the New Palace may be looked upon as distinctly a work of supererogation, also as an appalling waste of money. As a piece of architecture, it is distinctly a success. This list does not, however, nearly exhaust the palatial resources of Potsdam. The eighteenth century had contributed its successes; it remained for the nineteenth to add its failures. Babelsberg, the old Emperor William's favourite residence, was an awful example of a ginger-bread pseudo-Gothic castle. The Marble Palace on the so-called "Holy Lake" was a dull, unimaginative building; and the "Red Prince's" house at Glienicke was frankly terrible. The main features of this place was an avenue of huge cast-iron gilded lions. These golden lions were such a blot on an otherwise charming landscape that one felt relieved by recalling that the apparently ineradicable tendency of the children of Israel to erect Golden Calves at various places in olden days had always been severely discountenanced.
In spite of the carpenter-Gothic of Babelsberg, and of the pinchbeck golden lions of Glienicke, Potsdam will remain in my mind, to the end of my life, associated with memories of fresh breezes and bellying sails; of placid lakes and swift-gliding keels responding to the straining muscles of back and legs; a place of verdant hills dipping into clear waters; of limbs joyously cleaving those clear waters with all the exultation of the swimmer; a place of rest and peace, with every fibre in one's being rejoicing in being away, for the time being, from crowded cities and stifling streets, in the free air amidst woods, waters, and gently-swelling, tree-clad heights.
A year later, I was notified that I was transferred to Petrograd, then of course still known as St. Petersburg. This was in accordance with the dearest wish of my heart. Ever since my childhood's days I had been filled with an intense desire to go to Russia. Like most people unacquainted with the country, I had formed the most grotesquely incorrect mental pictures of Russia. I imagined it a vast Empire of undreamed of magnificence, pleasantly tempered with relics of barbarism; and all these glittering splendours were enveloped in the snow and ice of a semi-Arctic climate, which gave additional piquancy to their glories. I pictured huge tractless forests, their dark expanse only broken by the shimmering golden domes of the Russian churches. I fancied this glamour-land peopled by a species of transported French, full of culture, and all of them polyglot, more brilliant and infinitely more intellectual than their West European prototypes. I imagined this hyperborean paradise served by a race of super-astute diplomatists and officials, with whom we poor Westerners could not hope to contend, and by Generals whom no one could withstand. The evident awe with which Germans envisaged their Eastern neighbours strengthened this idea, and both in England and in France I had heard quite responsible persons gloomily predict, after contemplating the map, that the Northern Colossus was fatally destined at some time to absorb the whole of the rest of Europe.
Apart then from its own intrinsic attraction, I used to gaze at the map of Russia with some such feelings as, I imagine, the early Christians experienced when, on their Sunday walks in Rome, they went to look at the lions in their dens in the circus, and speculated as to their own sensations when, as seemed but too probable, they might have to meet these interesting quadrupeds on the floor of the arena, in a brief, exciting, but definitely final encounter.
Everything I had seen or heard about this mysterious land had enhanced its glamour. The hair-raising rumours which reached Berlin as to revolutionary plots and counter-plots; the appalling stories one heard about the terrible secret police; the atmosphere of intrigue which seemed indigenous to the place—all added to its fascinations. Even the externals were attractive. I had attended weddings and funeral services at the chapel of the Russian Embassy. Here every detail was exotic, and utterly dissimilar to anything in one's previous experience. The absence of seats, organ, or pulpit in the chapel itself; the elaborate Byzantine decorations of the building; the exquisitely beautiful but quite unfamiliar singing; the long-bearded priests in their archaic vestments of unaccustomed golden brocades—everything struck a novel note. It all came from a world apart, centuries removed from the prosaic routine of Western Europe.