Memories of the Kaiser's Court by Anne Topham

Author:Anne Topham [Topham, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Reference & Language, Reference, Fiction & Literature, Classics
ISBN: 4064066169220
Google: XEUcvgAACAAJ
Publisher: Good Press
Published: 2021-05-19T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X

ROYAL WEDDINGS

ROYAL betrothals and weddings have within the last few years been of frequent occurrence at the Prussian Court. Many people seem doubtful as to whether these marriages were the result of political arrangement or of the mutual attraction which is the chief factor in such affairs where humbler folk are concerned. Of my own personal knowledge I am able to affirm that politics and worldly considerations have had nothing to say in the matter.

German royalties are peculiarly fortunate in having an unusually wide range of choice. The Fatherland is rich in numerous prolific princely families, quite unremarkable for wealth or extent of territory—some indeed are conspicuously poverty-stricken—but all of them classed as ebenbürtig, that is equal in birth, to royalty, and therefore the female members are eligible as brides for the occupiers of the most powerful thrones. The Empire has long been the happy hunting-ground for would-be bridegrooms.

The first royal Verlobung which took place within range of my cognizance was that of the young Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, son of the Duchess of Albany, who was staying in Berlin Schloss at the same time as the two nieces of the Empress, the Princesses Victoria and Alexandra of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg—two bright, pretty, fair-haired girls who had come to spend the season at Berlin with their aunt.

The Princess burst into my sitting-room with the news one evening.

“Dick and Charlie are engaged,” she said, skipping about all over the room. “Isn’t it nice? Just think! Dick and Charlie!”

“Dick” was the pet name of the Princess Victoria, the eldest of five sisters.

I expressed my astonishment and pleasure at the news, and the Princess gave me several reasons why she was not so surprised as some people, although I am convinced that she really had known very little beforehand. But at any rate she thought it most interesting that they should become engaged “in Mamma’s sitting-room.”

The following September the Crown Prince announced, in a series of laconic telegrams to his friends, his own engagement to the young Duchess Cécile of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

“We are engaged.—William and Cécile,” was the message sent by the happy Braut-paar.

The Crown Prince had from early youth been frequently in love with various pretty young girls within the range of his acquaintanceship. But these harmless little love-affairs, so frank, so delightfully obvious, and so soon dispersed into thin air by the advent of some new and equally ineligible charmer, culminated at last in his meeting with the young Duchess Cécile, a dark-eyed, clear-complexioned, tall, slim maiden, just out of the schoolroom.

Any one seeing the happy pair together need not have troubled to ask if they were in love with each other. It was palpably the case, and they had not the least desire to conceal the fact. When the young Braut came to stay at the Neues Palais after her engagement, a very small party—just the ladies-in-waiting and the two young Princesses—were dining together in the Apollo-Saal, for the Emperor and Empress were absent for the day. Suddenly a great clattering

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