This privileged position in the affection of his parents, aye, and it may be added in the hearts of the German people, is due in a large measure to Prince Henry's education. He was brought up, so to speak, at sea, and the moral profession is of all others the one which calls forth all the best qualities of a man, develops manliness, and diminishes pride and affectation. Before he was twenty years of age, he had twice circumnavigated the globe, visiting every corner of the earth, and carrying the flag of Germany into regions where it had never been seen before. This in itself was sufficient to interest Germans in the young prince, the first of his house to seek adventures in such far distant climes; and this healthy, manly, interesting mode of life was compared to his advantage with the somewhat dissipated existence of a young army officer, which his elder brother, prior to his marriage, indulged in at Berlin.
Occasionally, stories reached the public through the press of feats of gallantry performed by the royal sailor, such as the plunging overboard once in a squall, and at another time in shark-infested waters, to save drowning sailors; while every incident which thus became known concerning the young prince served to confirm his countrymen in the belief that he was endowed in an altogether exceptional degree with those qualities which we are so fond of ascribing to "those who go down to the sea in ships." These long sea voyages had, moreover, the effect of keeping him clear of all those court and political intrigues with which Emperor William was surrounded, as if with a very network, prior to his accession to the throne; intrigues, I may add, which since William became emperor, have been devoted to many a futile endeavor designed to create mischief between the two brothers. It is probable that they will have less effect than ever from henceforth, since William, now that his eldest boy has attained his majority, will have no longer any reason to apprehend the possibility of Henry's undoing, in the capacity of regent, all the work that he, the kaiser, has accomplished during the eleven years of his reign; indeed, now that this danger is eliminated, the two brothers are likely to become more intimate than ever, and the Court of Berlin will probably see much more of the sailor prince than heretofore. Henry is the very life of his brother's court, as he is not only extremely fond of making fun, even at the expense sometimes of his majesty, especially about the excessively earnest attitude which the emperor assumes, with regard to the most trivial questions. Absolutely unconventional, save on his own quarter-deck, he carries about with him an atmosphere of brightness and breeziness which is almost as infectious and as bracing as a whiff of sea air.
For all his love of skylarking, and the freedom of his manners, his name has never been associated with any questionable story, save by the gutter element of the Parisian press, which endeavored to drag him into the Dreyfus case by declaring that Germany's strange attitude in the affair was due to the alleged knowledge the French War Department of terrible immorality proved to have been committed by Prince Henry during frequent secret visits to Paris. Of course there is not a word of truth in these contemptible stories, and the prince's reputation as a perfect husband and a healthy-minded gentleman, stands high, even in Berlin, where people are overfond of scandalous gossip. Certainly there are plenty of stories current about the pranks that he has played, but these are all of an innocent and boyish character. The prince creates the impression of the most complete wholesomeness; his six feet of well set up manhood, his bright eyes and clear, tanned skin, seem the outward and visible sign of a thoroughly clean and sound mind; common sense, frankness, fearlessness, dignity and kindness, are written in his every feature in a way that reminds people vividly of his lamented father; while the easy movements of an athletic body, always apparently in the pink of condition, are evidently allied to the smooth serenity of a mind confident in itself, but modest with the humility of knowledge.
After having said so much that is pleasant of the prince, I must, in pursuance of my determination to give the shadows as well as the lights of my portraits, admit that there are two particulars in which Prince Henry cannot be said to shine. One of these is public speaking, and the other is shooting; he is as unfortunate in the one respect as in the other.
His only public utterance of any importance was made at the time of his departure for China, when he addressed the emperor in such extravagant terms, referring to his "consecrated majesty," and so on, that it created mingled feelings of amazement and amusement from one end of the civilized world to the other! There has always been an impression in my mind that there was in this extraordinary speech just a suspicion of a disposition to guy his brother: for not only were the terms that he used entirely foreign to his character,—their outré tenor bordering on the ridiculous,—but it is impossible for anyone who has ever heard him chaffing his seasick brother while out yachting, putting his head in at the cabin door every now and again, and calling out, "Well, Willie, how do you feel now, and what has become of your imperial dignity?" to believe that he was really serious when he so solemnly ascribed divine attributes to this selfsame Willie.
I heard that after the prince's arrival in China, where banquets were given in his honor by the German and English leading colonists, he was repeatedly asked to make a few remarks in reply to the toasts drunk in his honor, but that on each occasion he politely informed his hosts that he would see them in Jericho before he got on his feet to address them. "Only once in my life," he was wont to say, "did I make a speech, and I shall never hear the end of that to the close of my days!" A little later on, when the Shanghai correspondent of the London Times was presented to him, he himself referred to this most celebrated and oft-quoted speech by inquiring good-humoredly, and withal plaintively, "By the way, don't you think your newspapers have roasted me enough about it?"
With regard to his shooting, there is no scion of royalty who has been the cause of more gun accidents than the prince. He had not attained his majority before he managed, while shooting in the game preserves of his uncle, the Grand Duke of Baden, to wound a gamekeeper so severely that the man was crippled for life, and has since been in the receipt of a generous pension from the prince. Then in Corfu, while clambering up a steep hill, he had the misfortune to unintentionally discharge his gun, the lead lodging in a Greek gentleman who was following a few feet behind him and grievously injuring him; while at a later period he succeeded in inflicting serious damage upon a Turkish dignitary appointed by the Sultan to attend him during his shooting trips in Syria. It is of him, too, that is related the story of how, when asked as a youth of twenty, by Queen Victoria, during one of his stays at Balmoral, what sport he had had while out deer stalking, he replied proudly: "Well, grandma, I did not succeed in killing a stag, but I hit quite a number." It is recorded that there was a painful silence after this remark, and that the prince was not again urged to go out deer stalking during his stay at Balmoral!
Princess Henry is probably the least favored, both as to beauty and brilliancy of intellect, of the daughters of the late Grand Duke of Hesse, and of his consort, Princess Alice, second daughter of Queen Victoria. Her three sisters, the Grand Duchess Sergius of Russia, Princess Louis of Battenberg, and the young czarina, are renowned for their loveliness and their cleverness, the latter inherited from their talented mother; whereas Princess Irene and her brother, the reigning Grand Duke of Hesse, take far more after their father. Princess Irene was born in 1866, during the Seven Weeks' War, when her father was called upon to fight his own brothers in the Prussian army, and his brother-in-law, the late Emperor Frederick, then Crown Prince of Prussia. Her baptismal sponsors were the officers and men belonging to the two cavalry regiments under her father's special command during that war:—there is no other princess in Europe who has ever had two entire regiments of cavalry for godfathers! The name of Irene was bestowed upon her by way of gratitude for the restoration of peace, and she used always to be known in her young days at Darmstadt as the "Friedenskind," or "child of peace." After her mother's death from diphtheria, it was the latter's eldest sister, the now widowed Empress Frederick, who endeavored, as far as possible, to look after the children, and it was perhaps this that led to Prince Henry's falling in love with his cousin. The match was strongly opposed by Prince Bismarck, partly upon the ground of the close relationship of the parties, but mainly on account of his hatred for the reigning house of Hesse. But when Prince Henry declared that he would remain single all his life unless he were allowed to marry Princess Irene, consent was given, and the wedding took place at Charlottenburg in the presence of the dying Emperor Frederick, this being the last public ceremony at which he was present. One of the saddest of sights, indeed, was that presented by "Unser Fritz," almost too weak to stand, giving his voiceless blessing after the ceremony to his favorite son, and to his new daughter-in-law, who, having been born in a time of war and misery, was entering upon her new life as a wife at a time when the whole nation was once more sorrowing. While Princess Irene is perhaps less attractive than her sisters, she is more interested in philanthropic movements than any other member of her family, and at Kiel, where she makes her home, she is greatly liked, especially by the poor. She is a magnificent equestrienne, and a very clever shot, being infinitely more successful in this respect than her husband, who is so devoted to her that he bears this superiority with the greatest equanimity.
Although Prince Frederick-Leopold has certainly relieved himself from any imputation of effeminacy by the conspicuous part he took in the long-distance rides between Berlin and Vienna, and by his magnificent horsemanship, yet he does not convey to people the impression of manliness that constitutes so distinguishing a characteristic of his cousins, Prince Henry and the kaiser. He is lacking alike in virility and intellect, and seems to have no other aim and aspiration in life than to live up to his name and reputation as the leader of masculine fashion or "Gigerl König," which may be rendered into English as "king of the dudes." They say at the Court of Berlin that he is so particular about the fit of his clothes that he will never remain seated for more than five minutes at a time, not even when traveling, for fear of spoiling the crease in his trousers or of making them baggy at the knees! He does not attempt to disguise the fact that the faultlessness of his coats or of his uniforms is an object of paramount importance. These are, however, very harmless weaknesses, which are more than atoned for by the fact that he is an excellent father and husband, but the obstinacy of his temper and his vagaries as a leader of masculine fashion at Berlin have often been a source of impatience and irritation to the kaiser. It is only just to lay stress on his excellence both as a husband and a father, as all sorts of stories have been circulated, not merely in the foreign press, but also in the German newspapers, charging him with intemperance and with brutality towards his wife, who is a younger sister of the empress, such as to necessitate the intervention of the kaiser.
These stories are pure calumnies, and originate in a confusion between the prince and his father, the celebrated cavalry general. The latter, popularly known as the "Red Prince," was the commander to whom Metz capitulated in 1870, and was not only noted for his hard drinking, but likewise for his rough usage of his amiable and formerly lovely consort when he was in his cups. He is credited with having frequently beaten her, either with his fist or with his riding whip, when crazed with drink; and it is no secret that she left him on three occasions with the avowed intention of securing a separation and even divorce, and was only persuaded to return to her husband by the entreaties of the old emperor.