The Kaiser's Confidante by Richard Jay Hutto

Author:Richard Jay Hutto
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland
Published: 2017-01-18T16:00:00+00:00

The royal visitors arrived the next day in “an elegant state carriage, with servants in grand livery,” and stayed for more than an hour. Mrs. Lee, who did not speak German and suffered from increasing deafness, stayed in her room but was particularly pleased to write to her cousin, “Directly on the two Royalties reaching here, they enquired about me, and on leaving the Crown Princess said she had been disappointed in not seeing me.” Mrs. Lee then quickly added to her cousin, “I don’t relish blowing my own trumpet—hope the sound may die out before it gets over the water!”5 During Princess Helena’s visit she asked Mary to arrange to invite a few people in to meet her. As Mrs. Lee recorded the conversation, “‘Certainly,’ said Mary, ‘But who would your Royal Highness like to meet?’ ‘Oh, well, dear, just invite whom you like.’” So Mary set plans in motion for a “soiree” on the evening of March seventh.6 Royal visits became so commonplace that Mrs. Lee merely mentioned rather than described them. Her correspondence boasts many instances of royals “dropping by” unannounced, in addition to young Wilhelm, as well as several written “summons” for Mary to visit the crown prince’s palace. At one point Mrs. Lee wrote home, “The last royalty that found himself in Alfred’s bedroom was the Duke of Connaught [Prince Arthur, Queen Victoria’s third son]—he asked to see Mary, told her he had heard his sister Princess Christian speak so often of her, that he wished to make her acquaintance himself.”7 The only day on which Mary turned down any invitation was for Sunday, which she declared should be spent in prayer. She broke her own rule on only very limited occasions and could rarely be persuaded to do so even by a royal summons. As her mother wrote of Mary’s invitation to a “grand dinner” hosted by the emperor, “Being Sunday Mary could not think of going—Alfred respected her feelings and said he would have her excused, which he did—no easy matter, as an invitation from Royalty amounts to a command. Mary has taken pains to have it understood here, she cannot enter into visiting on Sunday. I must confess from the Empress down, her motive is appreciated.”8 Even when Mary was awarded in 1884 the Order of Louise, an order of chivalry limited to 100 women, she asked to be excused as the ceremony was to be held on a Sunday; the emperor agreed to award hers separately on a weekday.9

Only a few months after Princess Helena’s visit, much of the Royal Mob was to be in Darmstadt for the marriage of the eldest daughter of Princess Alice, Queen Victoria’s second daughter. In 1861, when the Queen’s beloved consort (and first cousin), Prince Albert, contracted typhoid fever, it was their young daughter, Princess Alice, who nursed him back to health earning eternal gratitude from both her parents. The next year she married a relatively minor royal, Prince Louis, heir to the Grand Duchy of Hesse.

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