Royal Highness

by Thomas Mann

It may be added that I use the word “drapery” not only as a figure of speech. The Prince wore a crimson mantle on this occasion, a sumptuous and theatrical article of raiment, which his father and grandfather before him had worn at their coming-of-age, and which notwithstanding days of airing, still smelt of camphor. The crimson mantle had originally belonged to the robes of the Knights of the Grimmburg Griffin, but was now nothing more than a ceremonial garb for the use of princes attaining their majority. Albrecht, the Heir Apparent, had never worn the family one. As his birthday fell in the winter, he always spent it in the South, in a place with a warm and dry climate, whither he was thinking of returning this autumn too, and as at the time of his eighteenth birthday his health had not permitted him to travel home, it had been decided to declare him officially of age in his absence, and to dispense with the Court ceremony.

As to Klaus Heinrich, there was only one opinion, especially among the representatives of the public, that the mantle suited him admirably, and he himself, notwithstanding the way in which it hampered his movements, found it a blessing, as it made it easy for him to hide his left hand. Between the canopied bed and the bellying chest of drawers in his bedroom, that was situated on the second floor looking out on the yard with the rose-bush, he made himself ready for the show, carefully and precisely, with the help of his valet, Neumann, a quiet and precise man who had been recently attached to him as keeper of his wardrobe and personal servant.

Neumann was an ex-barber, and was filled, especially in the direction of his original calling, with that passionate conscientiousness, that insatiable knowledge of the ideal, which gives rise to the highest skill. He did not shave like any ordinary shaver, he was not content to leave no stubble behind, he shaved in such a way that every shadow of a beard, every recollection of one, was removed, and without hurting the skin he managed to restore to it all its softness and smoothness. He cut Klaus Heinrich's hair exactly square above the ears, and arranged it with all the assiduity required, in his opinion, by this preparation for the Prince's ceremonial appearance. He managed that the parting should come over the left eye and run slanting back over the crown of the head, so that no tufts or wisps should stick up on it; he brushed the hair on the right side up from the forehead into a prim crest on which no hat or helmet could make an impression. Then Klaus Heinrich, with his help, squeezed himself carefully into his uniform of lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards, whose high-braided collar and tight fit favoured a dignified bearing, put on the lemon-coloured silk band and the flat gold chain of the House Order, and went down to the picture gallery where the members of the family and the foreign relations of the Grand Ducal pair were waiting. The Court was waiting in the adjoining Hall of the Knights, and it was there that Johann Albrecht himself invested his son with the crimson mantle.

Herr von Bühl zu Bühl had marshalled a procession, the ceremonial procession from the Hall of the Knights to the Throne-room. It had cost him no little worry. The composition of the Court made it difficult to contrive an impressive arrangement, and Herr von Bühl especially lamented the lack of upper Court officials, which on such occasions made itself most severely felt. The Royal Mews had recently been put under Herr von Bühl, and he felt himself quite up to his various functions, but he asked everybody how he could be expected to make a good impression, when the most important posts were filled simply by the master of the Buck-hounds, von Stieglitz, and the director of the Grand Ducal Theatre, a gouty general.

While he, in his capacity as Lord Marshal, Chief Master of the Ceremonies, and House Marshal, in his embroidered clothes and brown toupée, covered with orders and with his golden pince-nez on his nose, came waddling and planting his long staff in front of him behind the cadets, who, dressed as pages, and their hair parted over the left eye, opened the procession, he pondered deeply over what came behind him. A few chamberlains—not many, for some were wanted for the end of the procession—their plumed hats under their arms and the Key on their coat-tails, followed close at his heels, in silk stockings. Next came Herr von Stieglitz, and the limping theatre-director in front of Klaus Heinrich, who, in his mantle between the exalted couple, and followed by his brother and sister, Albrecht and Ditlinde, formed the actual nucleus of the procession.

Behind their Highnesses came von Knobelsdorff, the House Minister and President of Council, his eye-wrinkles all at work; a little knot of aides-de-camp and palace ladies came next: General Count Schmettern and Major von Platow, a Count Trümmerhauff, cousin of the Keeper of the Privy Purse, as military aide-de-camp of the Heir Apparent, and the Grand Duchess's women led by the short-winded Baroness von Schulenburg-Tressen. Then followed, attended and followed by aides-de-camp, chamberlains, and Court ladies, Princess Catherine, with her red-haired progeny, Prince Lambert with his lovely wife, and the foreign relations or their representatives. Pages brought up the rear.

Thus they went at a measured pace from the Hall of the Knights through the Gala Halls, the Hall of the Twelve Months, and the Marble Hall into the Throne-room. Lackeys, with red-gold aiguillettes on their brown coats, stood theatrically in couples at the open double doors. Through the broad windows the June morning sun streamed gaily and recklessly in.

Klaus Heinrich looked round him as he processed between his parents through the dreary arabesques, the dilapidated decorations of the show-rooms, now not favoured by kindly artificial light. The bright daylight cheerfully and soberly showed up their decay. From the big lustres with their stiff-bound stems, stripped of their coverings in honour of the day, rose thick forests of flameless candles, but everywhere there were prisms missing, crystal festoons torn, so that they gave a canker-bit and toothless impression. The silk damask upholstery of the State furniture, which was arranged stiffly and monotonously round the walls, was thread-bare, the gilt of the frames chipped off, big blind patches marred the surfaces of the tall candle-decked mirrors, and daylight shone through the moth-holes in the faded and discoloured curtains. The gold and silver borders of the tapestry hangings had torn away in several places, and were hanging disconsolately from the walls. Even in the Silver Hall of the Gala Rooms, where the Grand Duke was wont to receive solemn deputations, and in the centre of which stood a mother-of-pearl table with stumpy silver feet, a piece of the silver work had fallen from the ceiling leaving a gaping patch of white plaster.

But why was it that it somehow seemed as if these rooms defied the sober, mocking daylight, and proudly answered its challenge? Klaus Heinrich looked sideways at his father…. The condition of the rooms did not seem to worry him. Never of more than medium height, the Grand Duke had become almost small in the course of years, but he strode majestically on with head thrown back, the lemon-coloured ribbon of the Order over his general's uniform, which he had donned to-day, though he had no military leanings. From under his high and bald forehead and grey eyebrows, his blue eyes, with dull rings round them, were fixed with weary dignity on the distance, and from his pointed white moustaches the two deep furrows ran down his yellowish skin to his beard, imparting to his face a look of contempt. No, the bright daylight could not do any harm to the rooms; the dilapidations did not in the least impair their dignity, they rather increased it. They stood in their discomfort, their theatrical symmetry, their strange musty play-house or church atmosphere, cold and indifferent to the merry and sun-bathed world outside—stern background of a pompous cult, at which Klaus Heinrich this day for the first time officiated.

The procession passed through the pairs of lackeys, who, with an expression of relentlessness, pressed their lips together and closed their eyes, into the white and gold expanse of the Throne-room. A wave of acts of homage, scrapings, bows, curtseys and salutes, swept through the hall as the procession passed in front of the assembled guests. There were diplomats with their wives, nobility of the Court and the country, the corps of officers of the capital, the Ministers, amongst whom could be descried the affected, confident face of the new Finance Minister, Dr. Krippenreuther, the Knights of the Great Order of the Grimmburg Griffin, the Presidents of the Diet, dignitaries of all kinds. High up in the little box above the big looking-glass by the entrance door could be descried the press representatives peering over each other's shoulders and busily writing in their notebooks…. In front of the throne-baldachin, itself a torn velvet arrangement, crowned with ostrich feathers and framed with gold fillets which would have been all the better for a touch-up, the procession divided as in a polonaise, and went through carefully prescribed evolutions.