Princess of Belgium Louise

On the morrow of such a painful episode in the life of two newly married people I witnessed with bitter grief the preparations for my departure to Austria. Never was Belgium so dear to me; never had she appeared more beautiful.

Concealing my tears, I said good-bye to all those who had known me as a child and a young girl, and who had loved and served me, and to all the familiar objects in the ChÂteau of Laeken, where everything appealed to my affection. Little did I foresee that I should be looked upon one day as a stranger there. What do I say—a stranger? No, as an "enemy," rather!

We departed, according to the expression sacred to custom, on our honeymoon. But there are honeymoons and honeymoons.

I should have liked to have taken certain personal maids with me. I was not allowed even to dream of such a thing. The Coburg Palace had its own servants. It was explained to me that the introduction of a strange element would break the domestic harmony of this high-toned abode. I had therefore to content myself with a Hungarian maid, quite a proficient person, but who was not like one of my own faithful servants.

And everything was the same. My tastes, my preferences only passed muster after having been approved by a family council.

Unfortunately the austerity which prevailed in this family council chamber did not reign in the palace at all hours and in all the rooms. This I soon discovered.

But before arriving at the Coburg Palace we stayed at Gotha, where Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg, the Prince Regent, and his wife, Princess Alexandrine, gave their niece a warm welcome.

The duke was a true gentleman, one of the personalities of his time, who became one of my favourite uncles. He spoke, with affection, of his friend Count Bismarck, and then touched on less serious topics, as I was curious to know about the people and things belonging to this Germany to which I found myself so closely related by marriage.

I have already said that it was as natural for me to speak German as it was for me to speak French, since it was the general rule to do so at the Court of Brussels. Has not Belgium everything to gain by being bi-lingual and by serving as an intermediary between the Latin and the German countries? Less than Alsace and Luxembourg but nevertheless a little like them, should she not benefit by the two diverse cultures?

On leaving Gotha we went to Dresden, thence to Prague, and finally to Budapest and glowing Vienna.

Let us pass, however, from these princely visits and the sameness of their receptions to more intimate things. The interest in speaking of these consists in the necessity for me to lay bare my slandered life, and to relate how, having fallen from heaven, I rose to a belief in better things.

But years and years were destined to pass before my existence was again embellished by a glimpse of the ideal, apart from the joys of maternity.

My first recollection of something amiss in my rÔle of Princess of Coburg is, that every evening at our formal banquets my husband took care that I should be served abundantly with good wines. I ultimately became capable of distinguishing a Volney from a Chambertin, a Voslaver from a Villanyi, and one champagne from another.

The body thus trained to the practice of something more or less akin to gluttony, the soul of necessity followed its example. I extended my range of literature, and I became familiar with books which the Queen and the Princess ClÉmentine would not have believed could have been given me by the person by whom they were put into my hands.

In the days of my open rebellion people were scandalized by certain liberties of speech and manner which I wilfully exaggerated. But who first taught me them? And, once again, where should I have gone and what would have become of me if God had not put in my way the incomparable man who alone had the courage to say to me: "Madame, you are a King's daughter. You are about to go astray. A Christian woman revenges herself on infamy by rising above it and not by descending to its level." And so, stunned and intoxicated in every way, I reviewed the family of Coburg and their various palaces and castles. Finally I found the palace in Vienna which was destined to be my principal residence.

I positively turned cold on entering it. The palace certainly looks imposing from the outside, but the interior is most gloomy, especially the staircase. I only like the salon in "point de Beauvais" originally intended for Marie Antoinette and her ladies-in-waiting.

My room made me shudder. What? Was this really the setting which had been prepared to receive the freshness of my seventeen years! A student of Bonn, where the prince had graduated, might have liked it, but a girl, who had only recently become a young woman!... Impossible. Try, then, to imagine a fairly large room, the walls fitted half-way up with small cupboards of dark wood with glass doors, and blue curtains behind which I never wished to look! Certain pieces of furniture were Gothic in style. In the centre of this paradise stood an immense glass case full of souvenirs of the prince's travels; stuffed birds with long beaks, armour, bronzes, ivories, Buddhas and pagodas; my heart sickened at the sight. And, worse than all, there was no private entrance or annexe, only a narrow dark corridor, which was used by the servants. To get to my room I had to pass through that of the prince, which was approached through a kind of salon; all the rooms communicated and showed not a vestige of taste. Massive old furniture upholstered in rep a century old was offered to the eyes of youth! All was old, ordinary, sombre. Hardly a flower, nothing comfortable, nothing matching. As to a bathroom, there was not a sign of one. There were only two baths in the whole palace; they were far away from each other, and of positively archaic construction. And, as for the rest—it is better left unsaid!

My first active objection was to this anti-hygienic organization, and the lack of necessities for my immediate use. This state of things almost broke my heart. I was told, however, that the illustrious grandparents were quite content with what had been given me.

One knows that use is a second nature. Princess ClÉmentine did not notice the things which troubled me, and even the glass case with the stuffed birds charmed her. She admired her son's collection, fortunately without knowing or understanding all that it contained, as in our palace of Budapest I saw some very unique pieces; souvenirs of Yoshivara which a young woman could not look at without blushing, even after an expert hand had lifted the veil from her inexperienced eyes.

What a school! However, thanks to the Bacchic rÉgime organized by my husband, things went on indifferently well after the storm of our dÉbut in domesticity.

Our fundamental incompatibility first appeared at the Coburg Palace in the presence of the Princess ClÉmentine, over a cup of cafÉ-au-lait. On our honeymoon the prince had told me that a well-born person should never drink black coffee. Such is the German conviction. Germany can no more imagine coffee without milk than she can imagine the sun without the moon. However, ever since I ceased to take nature's nourishment I have never been able to drink milk, I have never drunk it, and I never do. My husband took it into his head that he would make me drink milk, especially in coffee, as, if he failed, the traditions, the constitutions, and the foundations of all that was German would be shattered.

The discussion took place before the Princess ClÉmentine, who always drank milk in her coffee. But her affectionate kindness could not overcome the stubbornness of my stomach. I could see that I was offending her. Her son became furious to the extent of saying most painful and unpleasant things, and I answered him in like manner. The princess, although deaf, felt that something was the matter, and we restrained ourselves on her account, but the blow had fallen; henceforth we both had cafÉ-au-lait on the brain!

I relate little episodes like this because life is a mosaic of small things which cement great desires or high sentiments, and which of themselves express the daily necessities to which we are slaves. Human existence is a tragedy or a comedy in two acts which take place in the drawing-room and the bedroom. The rest is only accessory.

What a bungle nearly all people of exalted rank make in fulfilling the obligations of appearing to live! We forget the words of Franklin: "Time is the material of which life is made."

I reproach myself bitterly to-day for having led such an empty life, for having lived such an existence of anguish of mind. I have not sufficiently known the true life, which is that of the soul; if I had realized this, with what distinguished personages I might have associated, with what authors, scholars and artists have surrounded myself!

But could I really have done so?

My highest desires were criticized, contradicted and repulsed.

The prince, my husband, from the standpoint of his superior age, instructed me in everything.

People were afterwards astonished at my expenditure—at my numerous gowns....

Oh, God! I nearly became mad through the force of this continual restraint. One fine day I burst my bonds!

Oh! this palace of Coburg, this residence where the slightest frivolous fancy, the smallest evidence of Parisian taste imported from Brussels, provoked harsh words; this soupÇon of a dÉcolletage which caused jealousy; this desire to live a little for myself, without being submissive to the rigorous routine of a barracks which aroused such storms. Mon Dieu! when I think of all this—the stuffed birds, the unhealthy books, the dirty jokes, and the daily miseries of my life—I am at a loss to know how I endured it. I ask myself how I could have resisted so long? It was worse in the long run than being shut up in the madhouse. The crime is sometimes less horrible than the criminal. There are moral deformities which constitute an offence at every turn, and in the end one becomes exasperated with them. I do not know to what extremes I should have gone if this life had continued. I have always looked upon the strength which permitted me, at the age of twenty, to break away from my princely cage as a direct help from Heaven. Even had I been able to foresee to what excess hatred and fury would reach, I would still have broken away. A palace can become a hell, and the worst hell is that where one suffocates behind gilded windows. Titles count for nothing—a bad household is a bad household. Two people are united, the same chain holds them irrevocably together. Certain couples manage to get on, others cannot. It is a question of temper and conditions. Neither the prince nor I could accustom ourselves to the differences which separated us. This permanent conflict, which was at first latent and which afterwards became open war, daily widened the abyss between us into which so much finally disappeared.

But amidst all this bitterness my days had their golden hours. Everything was not disagreeable. Storms sometimes have a ray of sunshine. But those I experienced were of the most devastating nature!

I have said that I respected Princess ClÉmentine and that I was attracted to her, but her deafness, which sadly aggravated her natural dignity, and her spirit of another age which made her always appear to be living in state and etiquette, often repulsed my natural outbursts of affection. Every time when the prince and I arrived at irreparable differences, and my mother-in-law, because of her great age, submitted to the influence of her son, I still could not help feeling towards her the same sentiment of gratitude which I had for her former kindness and her superiority of mind.

PRINCE PHILIP OF SAXE-COBURG

Besides my husband, Princess ClÉmentine had two sons and two daughters. One of her sons, Auguste of Saxe-Coburg, was to me what Rudolph of Habsburg would have been, a brother-in-law who was a brother. Until his death, which took place, if I remember rightly, in 1908 at Paris, where, under the name of Count Helpa, he lived a life of pleasure and mixed in the best society, he retained the same affection for me that I had for him.

The three other Coburgs, Philip, Auguste and Ferdinand, did not resemble one another either physically or morally. Auguste was like the Orleans family. In him the blood of France triumphed over the blood of Germany. In the veins of Ferdinand, who became the adventurous Tsar of Bulgaria, I do not know what blood flowed. Let us pass on quickly. I shall have occasion to return to him and his throne of surprises when I speak of the Court of Sofia.

Of the two daughters, Clotilde and AmÉlie, the latter lives always in my memory. A gentle victim of love for an excellent husband, she died after losing him. United to Maximilian of Bavaria, the cousin of LouisII, AmÉlie was a lily of France that strayed into Germany. She had the good luck to meet a being worthy of herself in the patriarchal Court of Munich, which Prussian folly has rendered so unhappy. They loved each other and they lived for love, concealing their happiness as much as possible. Maximilian died suddenly—thrown from his horse whilst riding. AmÉlie was inconsolable and did not long survive him.

The idea never struck her brother Philip, her brother Ferdinand, or above all her sister Clotilde, that one could die—or live—for love!

Our double connexion with the house of France brought me a happy diversion from my troubles at the Coburg Palace, as well as in the country, in the shape of visits of members of the Royal family whom I had more or less known in my youth. The springtime of my life was full of their marks of affection.

I have seen the birth of the hopes of my niece DorothÉe, the daughter of the Archduchess Clotilde, my sister-in-law, when she became engaged to Duke Philip of Orleans.

I confess I had no faith in the future, being sceptical as to Royalist France, and doubtless it was an effect of the general surroundings, but I fancied that the gold lilies embroidered on the robe of the beautiful bride would have vanished from her train long before she reached the ElysÉe, the Tuileries or the Louvre. I could not, however, see without emotion the closed crown which adorned the "queen" on the day of her wedding.

Ah! this dream of a crown; how many heads it turns, or rather how many heads it has turned! For now one is obliged to reflect on things in general, and although I am a stranger to French politics I owe as much recognition as consideration to the Republic, where I have found, together with the security of just laws, the respect due to misfortune, and the courtesy which Republicans know how to extend, even to princesses. Still I cannot help following the career of the "King, in anticipation"—my nephew the Prince of Orleans, with some degree of curiosity.

For him everything happens on the banks of the Seine, the Garonne, the Rhone, and the other watercourses of the most beautiful country on the face of the earth; but the worst that I wish Philip of Orleans is that he should never have to exchange his yachting cap, which becomes him so well, for the crown of Saint Louis. He is certainly handicapped in life. More than ever to-day when it is advisable for a king to have a queen. But fate has willed that the great marriage of Philip of Orleans and Marie DorothÉe of Habsburg, which was one of the joys of the Coburg Palace, and the occasion of the most gorgeous receptions, should turn out contrary to what it promised.

On one occasion I counted the Royal or princely houses wherein the wind of discontent already whispered. I arrived at a startling total. Taking it all round in every kind of society, the average number of happily married people is not very high. But the nearer one gets to the people, and to their good sense and work, the better does family life become, because they tolerate each other's failings much more wisely and agree to help each other, until they finish by knowing a kind of happiness, which is only achieved by the knowledge of common imperfections.

My life at Coburg would have been still more painful if from time to time it had not been varied by changes of residence and travel.

In order not to digress from the family circle, I will only say a few words about three towns where I had relations, and where I stayed with them, or near them, as Princess of Coburg—Cannes, Bologna and Budapest.

First, I will mention Budapest, which was one of the most attractive cities of the world, and will be again when the reign of Bolshevism is over. In the old Buda the ancient East has left its traces; in Pest, the modernity of the West has become apparent. I knew something of it in 1918.

I loved Budapest, and I preferred the small Coburg Palace in the Hungarian capital and its charming receptions to our home and our entertainments in the capital of Austria. The atmosphere was different from that of Vienna, and I was pleased to find myself in the neighbourhood of the good Archduke Joseph, my mother's brother, who was so warm-hearted and so dear to me. His palace was at Buda, and his chÂteau was some hours' distance from the town. They had no disadvantages except as dwellings of my aunt and my sister-in-law Princess Clotilde, who were very different from the affectionate and sincere AmÉlie.

The archduke was a kind man who did not misjudge or censure my extravagant fancies.

In the first year of our marriage my husband and I spent the anniversary of my birthday, February 18, with the archduke at Alauth. There had been a heavy fall of snow the day before, and I said, "I do not want any presents, but please let me drive a sledge to-morrow; I have such a wild wish to drive one; it will be my first experience!"

The Archduchess Clotilde was usually an open-hearted person, but she was nevertheless endowed with certain straight-laced characteristics, and she frowned severely.

It was no use to beg or to implore. The prince forbade the sledge drive. They metaphorically relegated me to a dark cupboard with dry bread to eat; they kept me under such close observation that I could not go out at all, either on foot, on horseback, or in a sledge.

The archduke arrived on the scene. I was still furious.... Oh! certainly, it is evident that I did not look on the bright side of things; my character has always been one which resented foolishness and wickedness.

The archduke questioned me. I told him the whole story. "Louise," he cried, "you are right a hundred times; first of all because at your age and when one is pretty, as you are, one is always right. We will go out at once for a drive in the snow."

He rang, and ordered two Hungarian horses to be harnessed to a large sledge fit for the chariot of Apollo, in which he seated me, wrapped in my furs. He took the reins and we drove off at great speed, accompanied by a confidential servant. I felt myself akin to the angels. My puritanical sister-in-law and my puritanical husband dared not say a word.

Society at Budapest was less submissive to Court ceremonial than that of Vienna, and it was in consequence natural and more audacious. I remember a certain ball on the Ile Marguerite, the pearl of the casket of the Danube, when the prince was angry and did not wish me to waltz. I was inundated with invitations, to which my husband replied by saying that at the Court of Brussels I had only learned to dance the quadrille and the minuet!

The quadrille! The minuet! People were quite worried. They understood what it means to waltz in Hungary, and a waltz on the banks of the Danube to the strains of gipsy violins is a thing which cannot be surpassed. And now—now—they import from America dreary stuff, dull and epileptic in movement, and they call it by all sorts of names after trotting or galloping animals out of Noah's Ark. The waltz will always remain as the incomparable queen of dances to those who know how to dance.

One of those who asked me to dance was bolder than the rest, and, taking no notice of the prince's excuse, he said: "But surely Her Highness knows how to waltz," and at these words I was swept away from the domain of authority by my audacious partner, a Magyar, who thus hurled me into the whirlpool of the dance. I confess I never stopped dancing for the remainder of the night. The prince was furious, but as he was overwhelmed with compliments on my beauty and my success, he was obliged, nolens volens, to smile!

I recall the scene which took place at our departure. Fortunately we were asked to embark on a wonderfully illuminated boat which took us along the beautiful river to the nearest point to our palace, and this delightful journey was made to the sounds of the music, sometimes wild and sometimes languorous, which can only be heard to perfection in this country.

Had it the effect of Orpheus's lute? I was not condemned to die at sunrise like poor Scheherazade. But why did she not dance instead of relating stories?

At Bologna and Cannes I saw a section of society which has now disappeared. This was to be met with at the residence of the Duchesse de Chartres, and at the Duc de Montpensier's at the Caprara Palace. In Italy certain of the greatest Italian aristocrats were surrounded by the noblest names of France; on the CÔte d'Azur it was more of a butterfly world, in which shone some of the most resplendent Parisian beauties.

Where should I be if I allowed myself to evoke the shades of many of those whom I have known during my lifetime? Already all is silent, already forgetfulness has begun. Oh, vanity of vanities! But at least I will say how much I was enchanted by Cannes, and by the refined taste of French elegance. The war has transformed this town, once sought after by the Élite of society. I have read that, overrun and noisy, it has lost the discreet cachet which was once its particular character and charm. What a pity!

There is everything and yet nothing to say about the life of worldly people who are merely worldly people and nothing more. True, I could fill a library were I to describe in detail the fashionable records of my past. But of what interest would that be? I should but pander to the social curiosity that is satisfied by the reports of the doings of society, which, knowing the necessity of polishing its lustre daily in order to retain its brightness, provides the newspapers with the names of the people it receives, and the details of the receptions it gives—merely to satisfy that commonplace curiosity which is, unhappily, the foundation of human nature, and its desires and self-esteem.

It will be better perhaps for me to terminate this rough sketch of my life as Princess of Coburg, before coming to the events which led to the final dÉnouement, by a few facts concerning my children. I have been, I believe, a good mother. I have wished to be, and I have, at least, the feeling that I was a good mother for a very long time. I lavished much care and tenderness upon my children.

This will only appear natural to women whom maternity makes true women, and to whom it represents honour and glory. They must, however, allow me to say that maternity is sometimes more difficult than one thinks, when one has to consider the difficulties which are often raised by the father of the child—there are situations when being a mother is a constant trial.

Happy are those whom a peaceful and normal life allows leisure to watch beside a cradle. Nevertheless, I knew happiness with my first-born son Leopold, who saw the light in 1878 at our ChÂteau of Saint Antoine, in Hungary. The Queen was present, very delighted at being a grandmother. The arrival of this child, a boy, heir to the titles, appendages and functions of the family, temporarily appeased the quarrels between the prince and myself. There was a lull in the storm, which lasted for some little time. The influence of the Queen had its effect upon my husband. I myself, absorbed by my maternal duties, made great resolutions to be patient and wise in the future.

I dreamt wonderful dreams beside the cradle of my son.... Oh, cruel fate, against which I was destined to be powerless. When he grew up, and as the influence of environment exerted itself, Leopold became less and less my child. I wished him to be loyal and courageous. Was he not to carry a sword? What a knightly soul did I not wish to forge in him! But his father claimed the right to guide him. Very soon he belonged to me no longer.

Leopold reached the age of reason just when I had thrown off the shackles of an existence which had become atrocious. He believed that, having refused to continue to be the Princess of Coburg, I had thereby appropriated the hundreds of millions which one day should have come to him from his grandfather, and which I should throw to the winds by my folly. So I have known the hatred which nature cannot conceive—the hatred of a son for his mother. I have shed the tears which are shed by mothers who are struck down by their own flesh and blood. But God knows that each time my children, infatuated with the greed for money, which is indeed the root of all evils, have made me suffer, I have always forgiven them.

When Leopold died in such a frightful way that I cannot even mention it, he had not belonged, in my belief, for a long time to this world; but it was not I who was affected by this terrible punishment which terminated the lineage of the eldest scion of the house of Saxe-Coburg. He who was stricken was the father who had formed this misguided son in his own likeness!

I think he has survived in order that he may have time for repentance.

When my daughter Dora was about to be born in 1881, I had such a dread of the presence of her father that I did all I could to hide the imminent hour of my deliverance. I did not wish the prince to be near me at this painful moment; I wanted him to go out, in ignorance that I was in the throes of travail. It happened in this way. The birth took place in our palace at Vienna, and I quite succeeded in astonishing my world. I evaded, during the time of my suffering, a presence which could only have aggravated it. The midwife who was with me had not even time to go and fetch the Royal Accoucheur, who arrived after it was all over.

Dora was my second and my last child. She promised to be a pretty girl; she was taller than myself, very fair and rather shortsighted. She had the misfortune to marry Duke Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein, brother of the Empress Augusta, the wife of WilliamII. "Misfortune?" my readers will say; "that is the usual opinion of a mother-in-law." They will see later that the word misfortune is conformable to the facts which touch contemporary history. I will say nothing more.

My daughter has no children. If she had, they would have been told that their grandmother was the most wicked of women, if not the maddest, because she often said to her son-in-law, as well as to the Prince of Coburg and certain dignitaries of Vienna and elsewhere, who were the accomplices and agents of the persecution by which she was overwhelmed:

"You have only one end in view, and that is to take away all that remains to me—my liberty. But there is justice and you will be punished!"

They have been.

Ah! if instead of making me suffer martyrdom, or allowing me to be made a martyr, some of my own relations had dared come to me, openly or in secret!... I am a woman, I am a mother. I do not affirm that I was not guilty of wrong. I only affirm this: they always lied to me. They always talked to me of the honour and virtue of the family, but, above it all, I heard the cry of "Money! money! money!"