It was Countess Waldersee who revived all the inherited and latent religious tendencies of his character.
Up to the time when he ascended the throne, Prince William and his consort were constant and devout attendants at the prayer-meetings held in the salons of the countess, and if he remains to this day a remarkably religious man, with a sufficient regard for scriptural commands to have shown himself a more faithful husband than any other prince of his house, either living or dead—if, to-day, piety is fashionable at the court of Berlin instead of being bad form, if the building or endowment of a church, or of a charitable institution, is regarded as the surest road to imperial favor, it is due to the influence of William's American aunt, the daughter of that New York grocer, the first Princess Noer, and who is to-day Countess of Waldersee.
It is natural that the influence exercised over William and his wife by the countess should have given rise to the utmost jealousy, especially on the part of his mother, Empress Frederick, and during the hundred days' reign of her lamented husband, she availed herself of her brief spell of power to secure the virtual banishment of the count and the countess from Berlin, by causing the field marshal to be transferred from the chieftaincy of the headquarter staff to the command of the army stationed in Altona. Moreover, she did not hesitate to denounce the influence of the Waldersees as disastrous, as illiberal, and in every sense of the word reactionary, and if her husband, Emperor Frederick, was led to share her views concerning them, it was because of his disapproval of the movement against the Jews in which the countess had figured so conspicuously. It is a peculiar fact that although Emperor William has always remained on the most affectionate terms with the Waldersees, and never loses any opportunity of manifesting the warmth of his affection for them, he has never repealed the decree of banishment to which they were virtually subjected during his father's reign. He has transferred the field marshal from one post to another, but he has never appointed him to one which would admit of his coming back to live in Berlin. I cannot help thinking that the emperor resented the imputation that he was subject to the sway of his wife's aunt, and was offended by the articles which appeared at one moment both in the German and foreign press intimating that she was the power behind the throne. He is sufficiently jealous of his dignity to object to be considered as subject to the influence of anyone, be it man or woman, and one of the chief causes of the dismissal of old Prince Bismarck was precisely because so long as he remained in office there was a disposition to regard the kaiser as a mere puppet in the hands of the old statesman.
It is this aversion to being considered as swayed by any other influence than his own that has led the emperor on so many occasions to adopt a course diametrically opposed to that urged upon him by his clever and masterful mother, a woman with the most powerful intellect and the least tact to be found in all Old World royalties. It was this, too, that led the emperor to banish, just a trifle unjustly, the pretty and dashing Countess Hohenau from his court. She had been guilty of no indiscretion with regard to him. She had done nothing wrong, and she was not only a brilliant ornament of the imperial entourage, but likewise a relative of the family. But he banished both her husband and herself almost at a moment's notice, owing to the fact that in the anonymous letters circulated at the time of the so-called Kotze scandal, he was mentioned as altogether infatuated and subjugated by her beauty.
Count Hohenau is the half-brother of that Prince Albert of Prussia, who is now Regent of the Grand Duchy of Brunswick. Old Prince Albert of Prussia, his father, was married to the eccentric and half-crazy Princess Marianne of the Netherlands. Not long after the birth of the present Prince Albert, she lost her heart to such an extent to a chamberlain in her household that her husband was compelled to divorce her, whereupon she contracted a morganatic marriage with the gentleman in question, and lived and died at an advanced age only about twelve years ago.
Prince Albert, the elder, thereupon married morganatically a young girl of noble birth of the name of Baroness Rauch, whose family had for more than one hundred and fifty years occupied leading positions at the Court of Berlin. On the occasion of her marriage to the prince, she received from the Prussian Crown the title of Countess of Hohenau, and the children whom she bore to Prince Albert the elder are now known as Counts and Countesses of Hohenau. The elder of these Counts Hohenau bears the name of Fritz, and his wife, before their banishment from the capital, was one of the most dashing and brilliant figures in the ultra-aristocratic society of Berlin. No entertainment was regarded as complete without her presence, and in every social enterprise, no matter whether it was a flower corso, a charity fair, a hunt, a picnic, or amateur theatricals, she was always to the fore, besides being the leader in every new fashion, and in every new extravagance. Although eccentric—she was the first member of her sex to show herself astride on horseback in the Thiergarten—and in spite of her being famed as a thorough-paced coquette, and as a flirt, yet no one ventured to impugn her good name, until the disgraceful anonymous letter scandal; and both her husband and herself naturally resent most keenly that without any hearing or explanation they should have been banished from the court, and sent to live, first at Hanover, then at Dresden, but always away from Berlin and Potsdam, solely on account of an anonymous letter.
The sympathy of society in the affair was all with the Hohenaus, who although absent from Berlin, may be said to have taken the leading part in that great controversy which is known to this day as "the anonymous letter scandal," and which not only divided all Berlin society into separate hostile camps, but led to innumerable duels, some of them with fatal results; to the imprisonment of some great personages; to the ruin of others, and in one word to one of the most talked of court scandals of the present century. In fact, the anonymous letter affair, many of the features of which remain shrouded in mystery to this day, played so important a part in the history of the Court of Berlin during the first decade of the present emperor's reign, that it deserves a chapter to itself.
What, however, I wish specially to impress upon my readers is that in spite of the many scurrilous stories that have been circulated on both sides of the ocean concerning the alleged intrigues of Emperor William with the fair sex, since his marriage, nearly eighteen years ago, his wedded life has been singularly free from storms, and exceptionally happy. In fact, there are few more thoroughly-devoted couples than William and Augusta-Victoria, who is to-day far more comely as a woman than she was as a young girl. So domestic, indeed, are the tastes of the kaiser, so excellent is he both as a husband and a father, that his home life may be said to atone for many of his political errors and shortcomings as a monarch. His loyalty towards his consort is all the more to his credit, as the Anointed of the Lord in the Old World are exposed to feminine temptations in a degree of which no conception can be formed in this country. In most of the capitals of Europe it is in the power of the sovereign to make or mar the social position of any man, and of any woman. Social ambitions coupled with an exaggerated degree of loyalty will lead many a beautiful woman to cross that border line which separates mere indiscretion from something worse, all the more that the reputation of being the fair favorite of a monarch, and able to influence his conduct, is regarded as a title to prestige, and has the effect of converting the fair one into one of the acknowledged powers of the land.
For an ambitious woman it is something to be treated by statesmen and the representatives of foreign governments, as the power behind the throne, and provided this power is wisely exercised, the intimacy of the lady with the monarch is regarded by high and low with something more than mere indulgence.
History has given so lofty a pedestal to Madame de Maintenon, that there are many women who are eager to emulate her rôle in present times, and to likewise figure in history. That is why royal personages, and especially kings and emperors, are exposed to such extraordinary temptations.