Hagerup was so touched when I took the plates to him that I saw tears in his eyes. The Baroness de Buxhoevenden remained very friendly to me, 'because,' she said, 'she loved my wife so much.' Not long after, she died in Russia, heartbroken. She had faced the inclemencies of the weather and the first outbreak of the Revolution (she was a sane woman, an imperialist, but one who would have had imperialism reform itself, well-read and deeply religious) to see her daughter, the young Baroness Sophie, who was one of the maids of honour to the late Czarina. This young lady was ill and imprisoned with the imperial family. She was the only child of the Buxhoevendens—their son, a brave soldier, having died some years before. You can imagine the anxiety of the Buxhoevendens when the unrestrained ferocity of the mob in Petrograd broke out. Madame de Buxhoevenden could not see her daughter, though, thanks to the American Ambassador, who never failed to do a kind thing for us in Copenhagen, she managed to have a message from her. A lover of Russia, like her husband, of order, of reason in Government, she died.
With all the Russians I knew, love of country was a passion. They might differ among themselves. Meyendorff might look on Bibikoff as a 'clever boy' and smile amicably at his vagaries; Bibikoff might declare that 'Baron Meyendorff had, as St. Simon said of the Regent d'Orleans, all the talents, but the talent of using them'; but they were fervently devoted to Russia. They were in a labyrinth, and, as at the time of the French Revolution, everybody differed in opinion as to the best way out. It was from the Russians I first heard of Prince Karl Lichnowsky. I think it was Meyendorff, who once said: 'The Austrian Ambassador to London and Prince Lichnowsky are such honest men that the Prussians find it easy to deceive them into deceiving the English as to the designs of Germany!'
One great difficulty would have stood in the way, had I, as Dean, been willing to accept the kindly hint of the king and attempt to arrange that all the corps should go as usual together at New Years and on birthdays to Court. There was the conduct of the German Government to the French Ambassador at the opening of the war. It was frightfully rude, even savage, and unprecedented. It shocked everybody. It will be difficult to explain it when relations between the belligerents are resumed again. It seems to be a minor matter, but it corroborated the variation of the old proverb,—'Scratch a Prussian and you find a Hun.' The tale of the insults heaped on the French Ambassador is a matter of record for all time.
Judge Gerard has told his own story.
The Russian ladies coming out of Berlin were treated no better than a group of cocottes driven from a city might have been. The condition of the Russian ladies when they reached Copenhagen was deplorable. They all possessed the inevitable string of pearls, which every Russian young girl of the higher class receives before her marriage. These and the clothes they wore were all they were allowed to bring out of the super-civilised city of Berlin. It did not prevent them from smiling a little at the plight of the old Princess de ——, one of the haughtiest and richest of the noble ladies, who loved the baths of Germany more than her compatriots approved of. Her carefully dressed wig—never touched before except by the tender fingers of her two maids—was lifted off her head, while the German soldiers looked underneath it for secret documents!
From all this it will be seen that, notwithstanding the politeness of the representatives of the Central Powers in Copenhagen, it would have been impossible for the diplomatic corps to unite itself in the same room, even for a moment.
Everybody went to see Mr. Francis Hagerup off; but this was at the railway station, where people were not obliged to seem conscious of one another's presence. This would have been impossible at Court.
Social life in Copenhagen has fixed traditions (very fixed, in spite of the democracy of the people); they make it delightful. Society is all the better for fixed, artificial rules. They enable everybody to know his place and produce that ease that cannot exist where there is a constant expectancy of the unexpected; but they were not proof against the savagery which Germany's action had indicated.
When Count Szchenyi's mother died, his colleagues, disliking the action of his country as they did, sent messages of condolence privately, through me, then a 'neutral.' When Madame de Buxhoevenden died, deep sympathy was expressed by the diplomatists on the other side, but the utter disregard, on the part of the Germans in Berlin for the ordinary decencies of social life caused society in Copenhagen to become resentful and cold and suspicious whenever a German appeared in a 'neutral' house. It seemed incredible that hatred should have so carried away those around the German Emperor, who had formerly seemed only too anxious to observe the smallest social decencies, that the civilised world was willing to retort in kind.
Even in the convents, the German Sisters were 'suspect,' and it took all the tact of the Superiors to emphasise the fact that these ladies by their vows were bound to look on all with the eyes of Christ. 'Yes,' a Belgian Sister had answered, 'with the eyes He turned to the impenitent thief!'