King Gustavus V, who took the oath of office within a few hours of his father's death, has suffered something resembling his father's fate as Crown Prince. Overshadowed by the more brilliant gifts and more attractive personality of the parent, he was for years spoken of in rather a disparaging manner in Sweden, while in Norway he harvested outright hatred in return for his determined upholding of the union. On frequent occasions during the last decade of his father's reign, he acted as vice-regent while his father was sick or traveling, and in this way he found chances to display qualities that gradually changed the popular regard of him from one of suspicion to one of hearty respect. His near-sightedness, his serious-mindedness, have militated against him, but it seems probable that he will prove the very best ruler Sweden could desire at the present juncture. He is slow to make up his mind, and will not do so until he has searched every phase and detail of the problem before him, but once he has come to a conclusion, he pursues his path without looking to the right or left.
Gustavus is fifty years old, tall, rather dark, quite unassuming, and is essentially democratic, while seeming the opposite, whereas Oscar was aristocratic, although he made much of the people. Like all other Swedish kings, Gustavus adopted a motto when he ascended the throne; it is "With the People for the Fatherland"—not inappropriate in view of his inheritance of a problem clamoring for solution, the extension of the suffrage and a more direct representation of the people in both the upper and lower houses of the Riksdag. The new king, who possesses an uncommon amount of energy, may probably be depended upon to accomplish this reform.
There is neither pride of an objectionable type, nor any tendency to tyranny, nor one strain of arrogance in the new king. He may not be able to draw upon such ripe culture or upon such fine talents as the monarch who preceded him, yet the Swedes have no fear that his love of truth and justice will not outweigh this deficiency and probably make him a more practical ruler. As for the French descent of the Swedish royal house, neither the present nor the late king have ever been ashamed of their ancestry, or forgotten that the first Bernadotte on their throne was one of Napoleon's greatest marshals.
Never will Gustavus V be able to give to words or actions that brilliantly original and kingly tone for which his late father was so admired everywhere. That, to the mind of all beholders, is to be the drawback of his reign, for he is the merest mortal; where his father was the luminous angel. Where Oscar would have been finely eloquent, Gustavus shows himself merely sensible. Oscar's temper was heated, his emotions were forever coming to the surface. Gustave is, if more poised, less interesting. He has always been addicted to manly sports and exercises. He has often been observed to "put up" an excellent game of tennis at the club in Stockholm. But he is without the alert and springy step of the old Oscar, whose muscles remained taut and elastic almost to his dying day. Gustave lacks the literary aptitudes of his late father, likewise, who left a well-filled book of verse which admirers all over Europe did into French, German, Italian, Danish, and even Hungarian. Gustave has not inherited his mother's musical genius, either. She was at one time a devotee of Wagner, a disciple of Kant, and always a pious evangelical of the German cast. From both his parents Gustave received every encouragement to proficiency in music. Music, to the late Oscar, was, both in theory and practice, an essential element in the intellectual life. Gustave is less the artist than the practical king.
He encourages international congresses of every kind to come to Sweden; he helps the universities and the cause of education throughout his kingdom; he feels his father's interest in Hedin's travels through central Asia, but he can give no creative impulse after his father's grand fashion. Oscar was the man of ideas, the vitalizer of projects literary, musical, dramatic and scientific. He made Stockholm the capital of the whole intellectual world. Gustave is very courteous, affable in a dignified way, impressive as he opens the Riksdag in royal ermine. He has commenced his reign in simplicity, rising at eight, breakfasting on coffee and rolls, reading the morning papers until ten, and reviewing the military with a conscientious assiduity. His note is repose both in manner and in speech, in striking contrast with the late Oscar, who was majestic in the very way he had of eating cold meat at supper, and whose height of six feet three towered, almost without the drooping heaviness of age, till his seventy-ninth year. Notwithstanding the adverse comparison with his parent, one has but to see Gustave's face, with its determination and refinement, to feel a certain assurance as to Sweden's future.
It is a curious fact that there has been such a dearth of girls in the Swedish royal family, the only princess of the house being the Crown Princess of Denmark, a daughter of the late King Charles XV. The present queen has only sons: Crown Prince Gustavus Adolphus, wedded to Margaret of Connaught; Prince Wilhelm, who was recently married to the Russian Princess Marie Palvona, and Prince Erik, now about twenty years of age. The present Crown Prince and Princess are seemingly perpetuating the tradition, as their first child is a lusty little son.
Queen Victoria is said to be endowed with an instinct for business of every kind far finer and more efficient than that of her husband, and it is to be regretted that her health is so frail that she is obliged to spend much time outside her husband's realm, and the duties of her royal dignity devolve upon her daughter-in-law, the Crown Princess. It is very satisfying to the Swedish people that by a strange play of circumstances, the claims of the extinct House of Vasa,—the last direct descendant of which passed away a few days after King Oscar, in the person of Carola, Dowager-Queen of Saxony, and daughter of the deposed King Gustavus Adolphus IV of Sweden,—are again restored, and that the reigning House of Bernadotte and the ancient House of Vasa have become joined through the present Crown Prince. It is something to consider, too, that Adolphus V is the first of the Bernadotte dynasty in whose veins, through his mother, Sophie of Nassau, there flows royal blood.[k]
CHAPTER XII
CHARITABLE AND BENEVOLENT INSTITUTIONS
This is the age of munificent benefactions in aid of science and learning. The Rhodes scholarships, Mr. Carnegie's free libraries and educational endowments, the Duc d'Aumale's gift to the French Academy of his fine chatteau at Chantilly, with its magnificent historical and art collections; many institutions founded in the United States and elsewhere by multi-millionaires for the advancement of knowledge, are a sign of the times. They foreshadow the abolishment of pauperism and its attendant charities to give place to beneficent institutions, and Norway and Sweden are abreast with other countries in this movement. Apart from charitable institutions and endowments for the maintenance of hospitals and asylums, of universities, scholarships and fellowships, which the generosity of former generations has secured, the present generation has seen noble donations made by private men for more special objects, having the general advancement of knowledge in view, such as the encouragement of scientific research and the support of voyages of geographical exploration. Nordenskiöld's Arctic voyages, his and Palander's navigation through the polar northeast passage in the Vega, Nathort's exploration of King Carl's Land, the Swedish expedition to the Antarctic regions under Otto Nordenskiöld, which has lately returned after two years' adventurous exploration in Graham Land and the discovery of King Oscar Land, Sven Hedin's travels in Central Asia, which have had such important results and made his works so widely read—all these were undertaken as the result of such aid. The latest case in point, Alfred Nobel's foundation of annual prizes for the reward of scientific discovery, of literary merit, and humanitarian endeavor, deserves special notice. The annual distribution of these prizes, each of which represents a small fortune ($41,500), has of late years fixed the attention of the learned world on the Swedish literary and scientific bodies, and the Norwegian Parliamentary Committee, who were entrusted by him with the difficult and invidious task of awarding them.