The Three Emperors Page 18

  “I can’t tell you,122 my dear Nicky,” George wrote from Sandringham, “how pleased I was to see you these few days in Petersburg, although it was all so terribly sad … you have always been so kind and dear to me; ever since we have known each other, I look upon you, if I may do so, as one of my oldest and best friends.”

  * Kschessinska parlayed her way to being one of the stars of the Imperial Ballet and eventually bagged her own grand duke husband.

  * Rumours that he might have been caught up in a scandal surrounding the male brothel at Cleveland Street have been convincingly scotched by his biographer Andrew Cook. He had, however, it seems, managed to catch gonorrhoea.

  * This was another unhappy royal marriage: Sergei was a chilly, authoritarian homosexual, who had no idea how to communicate with his wife. Ella, however, became very popular with the rest of the Romanov family.

  * This was true. The shah had shouted at his servants, spat out his food, belched in public, groped women and advised Bertie (who was highly amused) to execute the Duke of Sutherland because he was too rich.

  * According to the British ambassador in St. Petersburg, Gladstone had apparently become bizarrely popular in Russia because he’d said that the Russian government’s treatment of prisoners in Siberia was no worse than the British shooting of three Irish tenant farmers at the so-called Michelstown massacre in 1887.

  * The two would split several years later when Ducky ran off with Nicholas’s cousin Grand Duke Kirill, for which Nicholas exiled him from Russia.

  * He had come by100 train with Heinrich, Wilhelm’s brother, bringing the latest British bestseller, The Prisoner of Zenda, an adventure novel about romantic but untrustworthy eastern Europeans.

  6

  WILHELM ANGLOPHILE

  1891–95

  In the months after Bismarck’s dismissal it became clear that Wilhelm was not about to launch any cataclysmic wars and that he wanted England as an ally. Instead of appointing the alarmingly hawkish General Waldersee as his new chancellor, he chose a liberal army general. Leo von Caprivi was a surprisingly radical, well-regarded, if politically inexperienced, soldier who had done a good job of running the German Admiralty. The new regime, which was called “the New Course,” seemed to promise a more inclusive government, less reliant on Bismarck’s right-wing Junker elite, and a raft of social and education reforms based on Wilhelm’s ideas, alongside anti-protectionist measures to improve Germany’s fractious relations with its near neighbours. Hand in hand with this liberal turn was a new foreign policy orientation towards England. Wilhelm, it was said in the embassies of Berlin and Vienna, intended to be “his own Minister for Foreign Affairs,” though he’d appointed an Anglophile foreign minister, Adolf Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, who was also from Catholic Baden rather than Prussia, as “a sort of undersecretary to carry out the orders.”1

  Within three months of Bismarck’s departure Britain and Germany had signed an agreement, the Heligoland Treaty, whereby Britain handed over the tiny rocky island of Heligoland in the North Sea and recognized German dominance in South-West Africa, while Germany recognized Zanzibar in East Africa as a British protectorate and renounced claims to other African territories that German and British would-be colonists had been arguing over, including Uganda. Wilhelm was delighted. He had decided that Heligoland was the perfect sea anchorage for a future German navy. He hoped that the new treaty would be the first step in a closer relationship between the two countries by which Britain would support Germany’s quest for colonies abroad and would eventually join the Triple Alliance with Germany, Italy and Austria. The treaty was far from popular in Germany, however. The increasingly voluble German colonial movement regarded any renunciation of claims to parts of Africa as a bad thing, and even neutral onlookers saw it as an indication of how far the new German regime was willing to go to buy British friendship. Within the Berlin court, moreover, and among the traditional ruling elite and the army, there were many who deplored Wilhelm’s liberal turn.

  Still, the young kaiser was certainly a vibrant public force, and popular. He moved across the public stage in a blur of activity, constantly travelling, constantly seen—because constantly photographed. There he was at the head of a column of immaculate German soldiers, ever the army officer; or visiting a factory—daringly modern and energetic; or devotedly surrounded by his six tall, healthy sons—the father of the fatherland. Even his moustache—teased into the shape of a wide up-thrusting “w”—was so famous it acquired a name: Er ist erreicht! “It is achieved!” Manipulated through the miracle of pomade—its key ingredient the remarkable new product, petroleum jelly—it was the very model of a modern moustache, a controlled riposte to the great bushy, biblical patriarch beards and side-whiskers of the previous generation.*

  The kaiser addressed the publics of Germany and beyond, constantly. The speeches, hundreds of them, were reported exhaustively in the press, reaching a larger audience than any monarch had before. Sometimes they were alarmingly bellicose, sometimes they claimed a divine mission, always they were full of confidence, revealing a man equally at home with tradition and the pulse of the new age. He was, he told an audience in Düsseldorf in May 1891, “an instrument of2 the Lord without regard for views and opinions of the day;” but, he told a teachers’ conference in 1890, “I believe I3 have rightly understood the aims of the new spirit and of the century which is now nearing to a close.” There was no other monarch in Europe with such an instinct for publicity, image and presentation. And the image promised much: that he might reinvent monarchy for the twentieth century; that, as one British magazine had it, he was “at least … a man4 of strong character, possibly with a touch of true genius;” that he would unite a country that had not resolved its many internal differences; that he would lead Germany to the very top of the world powers.

  Prussia had a tradition of austerity and simplicity. Wilhelm wanted an end to all that. His monarchy would be lavish, large, extravagant and public. He, Dona and their children moved into the vast baroque Neues Palais in Potsdam and the 650-room Berlin Schloss. Millions of marks were spent on renovations and extensions; heating, electric lights and bathrooms were installed. More huge sums were spent on the new imperial train—eleven gilded carriages, one big enough to contain a table seating twenty-four; and a new royal yacht, Hohenzollern, in cream and gold. It was the biggest private royal vessel afloat, large enough to sleep eighty guests and staff. Then there were the no-expense-spared racing yachts, all called Meteor, designed to beat Bertie’s racers. Living on such a grand scale had drawbacks: at the Berlin Schloss the kitchens were so far from the dining rooms (a mile) that food was invariably cold before it got to the table, though Wilhelm didn’t really care about what he ate. The royal apartments, by contrast with the private rooms of the Russian and British royal families, were large, grand and full of gilt—as if Wilhelm had no interest in private life or family intimacy, as indeed, he did not really.

  He didn’t spend much time with his family. Soon after his accession he established a habit of travelling almost incessantly, mostly without Dona. Even when he was at home, she often—to her own disappointment—saw him only for breakfast and perhaps a ride after lunch. Forced to stay in Berlin with her and his entourage, he would complain about the unutterable boredom, while she longed for his company. Nor did he have close relationships with his sons. They seemed to feature more as a photo opportunity than as part of a close family. Only his daughter Victoria, the youngest, as “Little Willy,” the crown prince, later wrote, “succeeded from childhood5 onwards to win a warm place in his heart.” From the boys he expected total obedience; in order to speak to him they had to apply first for permission from their tutors or military governors. Aged ten they entered either the army or the navy and were packed off to cadet school in Plön near the Danish border—there were none of the civilian influences his mother had visited upon him. The crown prince in particular resented his father’s distance and strictness. From his early twenties he would
do his best to rebel against his father. It was Dona who provided the boys with their emotional nourishment—she was loving and devoted, but stultifyingly traditional—and their outlook. Deploring Wilhelm’s moments of Anglophilia, she had taken care, she told one of Wilhelm’s ministers years later, “that her sons6 would think differently.” Dona’s relationship with Vicky eased after Wilhelm became kaiser but she was careful never to leave her children on their own with her mother-in-law for fear they might absorb her dangerous liberal impulses. Three out of six would later flirt—or more—with Nazism.

  The young “Siegfried” came to England for his first proper state visit in July 1891. The streets of London were decked out with garlands and banners carrying the words “England and Germany; the peace of Europe.” Crowds gathered outside Buckingham Palace to get a glimpse of the glamorous young emperor and his world-famous moustache. The British press were almost unanimously enthusiastic about the visit. “The importance7 of the Emperor’s visit to England … is at once a solace in the present and a hope for the future,” noted the London Standard. “He will be able8 to judge for himself … how keen and strong is the sympathy that unites the two great European branches of the Teutonic race, and how little either branch can afford to part company with the other,” intoned The Times. (Only the left-wing paper Justice, which saw in Wilhelm’s assertive pronouncements “the old jackboot9 junkerism” and a dangerous appetite for autocracy, and satirical magazines such as Punch, which had from early on found the kaiser’s Wagnerian grandiosity too tempting not to ridicule, dissented.) He almost brought the house down at a huge banquet at the Guildhall when he told a cheering audience of the great and good, “I have always felt10 at home in this lovely country, being the grandson of a Queen whose name will ever be remembered as the most noble character … and whose reign has conferred lasting blessings on England. Moreover, the same blood runs in English and German veins … I shall always, as far as it is in my power, maintain the historical friendship between our two nations … My aim is above all the maintenance of peace.”

  Unsurprisingly the British were extremely curious about this paragon. At a soirée given by the society hostess Lady Londonderry, the Liberal politician and intellectual John Morley observed him closely:

  He is rather short;11 pale, but sunburnt; carries himself well; walks into a room with the stiff stride of the Prussian soldier; speaks with a good deal of intense energetic gesture, not like a Frenchman, but staccato: his voice strong but pleasant, his eyes bright, clear, and full; mouth resolute, the cast of face grave or almost stern in repose, but as he sat between those two pretty women … he lighted up with gaiety, and a genial laugh. Energy, rapidity, restlessness in every movement from his short, quick inclinations of the head to the planting of the foot.

  Everything bespoke purpose, but the perceptive Morley also mused, “I should be disposed strongly to doubt whether it is all sound, steady and the result of a … right coordinated organization.” Lord Salisbury’s clever, elegant nephew, Arthur Balfour, was impressed by Wilhelm’s “extraordinary energy,12 self-confidence and interest in detail,” and his conviction that “he has a mission from Heaven.” This, Balfour mused, might send him and his country “ultimately to Hell,” but also, “may in the meanwhile make him do considerable deeds on the way there.”

  Wilhelm’s visit was not so joyously anticipated at court. “They are all13 very much bored at the Emperor of Germany’s visit and are dreading what he will say and do,” the queen’s new lady-in-waiting, Marie Mallet, wrote in her diary. “The more I hear of him the more I dislike him, he must be such a despot and so terribly vain. However, poor man, he has a most insipid and boring wife who he does not care for and from whom he escapes by prancing to the four corners of the world.” The queen had been inflamed by regular letters from Vicky complaining about Wilhelm’s latest exploit, banning his sister Sophie from Germany because she had converted to the Greek Orthodox Church. She was also irritated that he had ignored her request to delay his visit by several weeks, while she hosted the wedding (which she’d masterminded) of another grandchild, Mary Louise,* to Prince Aribert of the small German duchy of Anhalt. She’d told him his presence would upstage the bridegroom’s parents, but he’d insisted on coming anyway. Edward was disgruntled because barely a month before the kaiser had sent him a scolding letter about his involvement in the Tranby Croft affair, the gambling scandal in which Edward had been caught up and which had exposed him to sheaves of criticism in the British press. Wilhelm told Edward he was unsure whether he could continue to associate with him. The letter was really an aggressively timed reminder that the kaiser could pull rank whenever he wanted.

  But, as Victoria’s Russian daughter-in-law Marie observed to Wilhelm’s sister Charlotte, however much in his absence the queen might denounce “that dreadful tyrant14 Wilhelm who always takes things so badly and makes rows about anything,” when he arrived it would “all disappear.” He seemed able to charm her every time—but then his admiration for her was always palpable: he told his friend Philipp zu Eulenburg, “How I love15 my Grandmother, I cannot describe for you. She is the sum total of all that is noble, good and intelligent. With her and my feelings for her, England is inextricably connected.” Sure enough, when the kaiser arrived, the queen relented—at least a little. He was on his best behaviour and took such pleasure in being in England. She was, she wrote16 in her journal, pleased at his enthusiastic welcome in London, but she found his visits wearing, not least because he always brought such an enormous entourage—100 this time—who were squeezed into the inns and hotels of Windsor. (Everyone found Wilhelm exhausting, even Eulenburg, who spent most of the time away from Berlin on diplomatic postings.)

  Rather, it was Dona who made a bad impression. Unable to hide her Anglophobia, or indeed her suspicion of all foreigners, she had what George’s cousin Missy called a “stereotyped graciousness17 which too much resembled condescension to be quite pleasant.” She behaved with what one German diplomat described as “stiffness, rudeness18 and arrogance.” Wilhelm may have chided her privately. He often spoke slightingly in public about what he called her provinciality, and said that you could always tell “she was not brought up19 at Windsor but rather in Primkenau.” She would take care afterwards to be courteous on foreign trips, though occasionally her hostility would seep out.

  From Windsor Wilhelm went on to the Isle of Wight. The kaiser made a great thing of loving Osborne, his grandmother’s home there. “I shall count20 [the hours] until the moment when I can again sight dear Osborne rising out of the blue waters of the Solent,” he told his grandmother in January 1893. His childhood memories of it, and the two large portraits of himself which hung in the house, gave him a reassuring sense of inclusion in the English family, a feeling he sometimes had to struggle to keep hold of. But his very enthusiasm for it was a reminder of how unlike the rest of the family he was. Osborne might once have been fun for children, but by the 1890s no one but the queen liked it. It had become a mausoleum to the dead, from Albert to the queen’s latest dog, and Victoria presided over it with an increasingly selfish hand. “Even as a child21 I was struck by the ugliness,” George’s eldest son would later recall. An odd combination of Italianate palazzo and English stately home on the outside, lined inside with Stuart tartan and filled with antler-horn furniture, it was cold, oppressive and deathly silent because the queen insisted on absolute quiet. She would also spend days in her rooms, the royal servants hanging around whispering in corridors, not allowed to go out until she did. When she did leave the building, the entire household rushed out too, but would flee in all directions because “it was a great crime to meet her in the grounds.” When this happened, one private secretary recalled, “we hid behind bushes.”22 These rules, of course, did not apply to the kaiser.

  To Wilhelm, Osborne was especially alluring in July because of Cowes Week, the most glamorous international social and sporting event of the year, when the super-rich and English high society—not alway
s the same thing—gathered on their yachts and raced each other. It was an event which confirmed England’s place as glamour and lifestyle capital of the world. So fashionable was it that the Russians liked to call Yalta, the resort on the Black Sea, the “Cowes of the Crimea.” After Wilhelm’s first visit in 1889, to the horror of austere Prussian traditionalists such as Waldersee, he had spent 4.5 million marks on buying and refitting his racing yacht, Meteor. In 1895 he even created his own version of Cowes, Kiel regatta, complete with its Imperial Yacht Club. Cowes brought together all the things that Wilhelm admired about England: not the cultural and democratic traditions his mother had pressed on him, but the luxury, the sense of a country on top and at ease with itself, its upper echelons confident and cosmopolitan. He was fascinated by the English upper classes, and he especially liked, one of his naval entourage observed, “unrestrained conversation23 with distinguished English society which he finds he values most and searches for in Germany in vain, because the great majority here bend before the Kaiser like a grainfield before the approaching storm; he finds at Cowes an unselfish exchange of opinion with independent, strongly formed characters and personalities.” At home, “unrestrained conversation” wasn’t much to the kaiser’s taste; he didn’t expect contradiction, and Prussian aristocracy was accustomed to solemn deference. But for a few days the insouciance of British society was rather thrilling, though this wasn’t quite how the kaiser put it himself. “The old and strong24 monarchical principle showed itself in all its vigour in the bearing of the people whenever one met them,” he told the queen afterwards. “It showed the … wish to make me feel quite at home among them, as I am a good deal of an Englishman myself.”