Victoria, Empress, consort of Frederick III, German Emperor, 1840-1901
When M. de Gontaut was later joined by his daughter, the Crown Princess
did all she could to make the daily life of this young French lady as
agreeable as was possible in the circumstances, and in this she had the
warm sympathy and assistance of the Empress Augusta, who, as we know,
had many old and affectionate links with the Legitimist world to which
the Ambassador belonged.
The Crown Princess's youngest child, who afterwards married Prince
Frederick Charles of Hesse, was born on April 22, 1872, and was
christened Margaret Beatrice Feodora--Margaret after the Queen of Italy,
whom the child's parents both regarded with warm affection.
Queen Margherita came to Berlin for the ceremony, and a great fête was
given at the New Palace. It was more like an English garden party than
anything previously known at the Prussian Court, but the Crown Princess
had a way of making her own precedents. She caused invitations to be
sent, not only to the nobility and the hosts of officials who had a
prescriptive right to be present at such a function, but also to persons
who were merely distinguished for their literary, artistic, or
scientific achievements.
The months which followed ushered in a peaceful period of happiness and
rest for the Princess. Her magnificent work during the war had won her
warm friends and admirers in every class, but of more moment to her than
her own personal popularity was that enjoyed by the Crown Prince, whose
relations with the military party now became much pleasanter in
consequence of his achievements in the field and the enthusiastic
devotion felt for him throughout the army.
Unfortunately for the Crown Prince and Princess, Bismarck's position had
been even more radically transformed by the war, and the Minister's
domination over his already aging sovereign grew more and more obvious.
It was an open secret that the Emperor and his heir differed on many
important questions, and the gulf between them was sedulously widened by
Bismarck's jealous prejudice against the Crown Prince. Incidents that
would have been in ordinary circumstances too slight to mention now
revealed, even to strangers, the friction which was symptomatic of
deeper disagreement.
The Crown Prince, as we have seen, set much store by the new Imperial
honours which the war had brought to his House, and he was always very
punctilious in speaking of his father as "Emperor" and of his mother as
"Empress." The Emperor, however, habitually still spoke of himself as
"King" and of the Empress as "Queen." The story goes that on one
occasion the Emperor, addressing some lady in the presence of his son,
observed that it was extraordinarily mild for the time of year, and that
"the Queen" had brought him some spring flowers which she had picked out
of doors that morning. The Crown Prince answered, "Yes, so the Empress
told me." "I did not know you had already seen the Queen to-day,"
remarked his father.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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