Читать книгу Secret Memoirs - Henry W. Fischer - Страница 18

The result shows in the character of rulers—Why English kings and princes are superior to the Continental kind—Leopold's awful revenge—Mother acts the tigress—Her mailed fist—"I forbid Your Imperial Highness to see that dog."

Castle Wachwitz, April 21, 1893.

If my Diary ever fell into plebeian hands, I suppose such stories as the above would be branded as rank exaggerations.

A Queen endangering life and health of her children by a form of punishment otherwise known only in the prize ring.

An Imperial Highness using her diamonds to graft scars on the cheeks of a little girl!

Royal children beaten worse than dogs, deprived of sleep, subjected to cold and damp and, withal, given over, bound hand and foot, so to speak, to the tender mercies of low-minded, unworthy, and even dangerous persons without manners or education.

And, to cap the climax, a Royal maid in the first blush of budding womanhood grossly repulsed and physically attacked when she appeals to her mother for protection; that child locked in a room with her would-be ravisher and obliged to defend her honor by a threat of murder.

Only the uninitiated—men and women living outside the pale of royal courts—will deem such things impossible. Let me tell these happy ignoramuses that all through the nineteenth century the princes and princesses of Europe were brought up to the tune of the whip and of physical and mental humiliation. It was the fashion.

The only eminent monarch of the immediate past—Frederick the Great—was all but flayed alive by his father when a boy and young man—emulate the second King of Prussia's brutalities and your offspring will be destined for greatness, argued princes.

The first Emperor William of Germany had a gentle mother, my famous namesake; he was always a gentleman. The Russian Czars, Paul, Nicholas I, and Alexander III, were brought up with the knout, their preceptors used the boys at their sweet pleasure. The first turned out a madman; the second a brute; the third his people's executioner.

Czar Paul would run a mile to cane a soldier who had a speck of dust on his boots. My grand-uncle, Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria, sometimes travels tens of miles to box the ears of a member of his family.

Francis Joseph had a cruel bringing up.

At the Royal Library in Berlin I saw the manuscript of Les Mémoires de ma vie: la princesse de Prusse, Frederice Sophie Wilhelmine, qui epousa le Margrave de Bayreuth—the original, unedited save by the corrections of the authoress. A good many passages of this "most terrible indictment of royalty" reminded me of home. There is even a parallel, or a near-parallel, of my own case just recorded. The Princess Wilhelmina's all-powerful governess was Madame Leti, who pummelled the child "as if she had been her mother." This Leti was undoubtedly a Sadist; to inflict torture, to practice refined cruelties was a joy to her. Not content with whipping the little girl, she added, shortly before her dismissal, some poisonous matter to Wilhelmina's wash water "that gnawed the skin and made my face all coppery and inflamed my eyes." This species of wickedness, at last, resulted in the discharge of Leti, "but she decided to leave me a few souvenirs in the shape of fisticuffs and kicks. She had told my mother that I was suffering from nose bleed and punched my nose whenever she was unobserved. During the last week of her stay at the palace I sometimes bled like an ox, and my arms and legs were blue, green and yellow from her kicks and cuffs. I am sure if she could have broken my legs with impunity, she would not have hesitated a moment to do so."

History and the court gossip of the day afford plenty of precedents for what happened to me and my brothers and sisters in Salzburg. Indeed, Prince Albert, Consort of the late Queen Victoria, was the only royal father of the first half of the century that used the rod in moderation. To my mind that is one of the reasons why English kings and princes are so far superior to the Continental kind.

But to return to Salzburg.

Leopold had it all his own way for a quarter of an hour, as none of the servants would interfere in favor of the hated chaplain and mother was engaged in her oratory in a far away part of the castle. So my brother kicked in the door and went for the cowering brute again, raining stripes on every part of his bloated body, alternately using the whip and the whip-end. Undoubtedly Leopold would have killed him then and there if his boy's strength had not given out. He left him more dead than alive, bleeding and moaning.

I will never forget the spectacle when Leopold came down the stairs after leaving the chaplain's room. I and my brothers and sisters were huddled together behind our ladies in the blue ante-chamber. A dozen or more lackeys stood in the corridor, whispering.

Leopold's face was deathly pale as he descended the stairs, and blood was dripping from his whip, reddening the white linen runners protecting the carpet. He wore his army uniform, that should have saved him from violence at any rate. At that moment I prayed my sincerest that father would come home. I would have thrown myself on my knees and told everything, servants or no servants. But mother came instead.

She was fully informed and she sprang upon poor Leopold like a tigress, knocking him from one end of the corridor to the other with her diamond-mailed fist. It was terrible, and all of us children cried aloud with terror. But the more we cried and the more we begged for mercy, the harder were the blows mother rained upon poor Leopold's face and head. His blood spattered over the white enameled banisters and doors until finally he was dragged out of my mother's clutches by an old footman who placed his broad back between the Imperial Highness and her victim.

Now, it was the rule in our house that the whipped child had to ask our mother's forgiveness for putting her to the trouble of wielding the terrible back of her hand.

Six weeks Leopold stayed at Salzburg after the scene described, and daily my mother urged him to beg her forgiveness. The boy stood stockstill on these occasions, never twitching a muscle of his face and never saying a word in reply. During all these six weeks he waited on mother morning, noon and night, according to ceremony, but never a word escaped him, never did he look in her direction unless actually forced to do so. He played the deaf and dumb to perfection.

Father must have thought that Leopold got enough punishment, for he never mentioned the matter to him and forbade the servants to even allude to the court chaplain. Mother, on her part, placed the chaplain in charge of two skilled surgeons and sent every little while to inquire how he was doing.

On the third day she said to my father at table, that she was going to pay a visit to the court chaplain.

"I forbid your Imperial Highness to see that dog," said my father in an icy voice that brooked no reply. "I will have his carcass thrown out of here as soon as his condition permits."

That was the only time I heard father speak like a sovereign and man.

That Leopold nearly killed the scoundrel, as he promised to do, is evident from the fact that the court chaplain lay in the castle three weeks before he could be transported to a monastery. Some monks—for none of the servants would lend a helping hand—carried him away by night and none of the children ever saw or heard of our tormentor again.

The only sorry reminder of the episode is the estrangement of Leopold and our mother. Though mother tried her hardest to win back the boy's confidence and affection, he remained an iceberg towards her, ceremonious but cold, polite but wholly indifferent.