Infanta of Spain Eulalia

“ To know the Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses is to realise that they neither understand the aspirations of the democracy nor sympathise with them, for, reflecting the glory of Autocracy they are more firmly convinced than any other Royal persons in Europe that a gulf divides them from the rest of mankind. And this conviction is so deep that they appear to believe that the most ordinary actions are ennobled by the mere fact that they are performed by persons in whose veins flows the Imperial blood. ”

“ This was the testimony to the charm of Norway which Queen Maud gave me, when I saw her in her little home near Christiania in the autumn of 1913. She spoke with enthusiasm of her adopted country, and I was not in the least surprised, for Norway is undoubtedly the happiest and most progressive country in Europe. Indeed, if anybody wants to know what life will be like in the good time that is coming, when Capitalism will be dead and Democracy triumphant on both sides of the Atlantic, let him go to Norway and study its institutions and the life of its people. ”

“ But as soon as we arrived at the Spanish port of Santander I forgot everything in the excitement of a reception that amounted to a carnival. With a staff of officers and dignitaries in uniform, and a troop of cavalry as escort, we were driven in an open carriage, drawn by four horses, through streets of which I could not see the fronts of the houses—they were so covered with the reds and yellows of flags and bunting that were dazzling in the vivid sunlight of Spain. ”

“ In the present Tsar, Nicholas II., one finds a type of sovereign not only different from either King Edward or the Kaiser, but, in my experience, unique. Sovereigns may have moments of an affectionate emotion; they rarely have consistent tenderness. In their most intimate relations of family life they are apt to resume suddenly the frigid tones of royalty; and I have seen a king, talking even with his mother, get himself unexpectedly into his royal manner and speak as stiffly as if he were giving his mind to some lower breed of human being. ”

“ What is one to expect of a man married in aversion to some foreign princess whom he is forced to take into his life for reasons of State that do not make her either beautiful to look at, or intelligent to talk to, or congenial to live with? If people will not allow a king to enjoy even the ordinary temptations to be virtuous, why should they exclaim if he seeks, outside of marriage, the happinesses of personal intercourse that are denied him in a wife? ”

“ The best exercise I could get in the garden was to jump the flower-beds—to the amazement of everybody—or to skip up and down in one place mechanically. It was as much worse than the Escurial as the Escurial had been worse than the Palais de Castile; and when it came home to me that this, now, was to be my life for ever, I felt that I should go mad.
Every afternoon my mother gave audiences to the ladies of Sevilla; but what good was that? Even with us children they did nothing but curtsy, and kiss the hands, and look at us, awed, as if we were not human. ”

“ But for many years, in my own youth, and while my sons were growing up into manhood, I fulfilled my part as a Princess of Spain, after my marriage visiting practically all the Courts of Europe. I have written here of these visits and of my impressions of the rulers of Europe, and, while I hope there is much in this book of kindliness and sympathy, yet I have considered truth to be the first essential in these recollections.
I am democratic in my sympathies, and consider the day has gone by when Royalty should live behind closed blinds. The world, as I see it, is peopled by one big family. ”

“ The lives of these men, who are kings in fact as well as in name, are as full and interesting as the life of any one who has work to do and power to do it. They have something to compensate them for the restrictions of grandeur and the cramping stiffnesses of pomp. Their dignity has cause. Their isolation is inevitable. But, for every one of these, there are hundreds of little princes and princesses, grand dukes and archdukes, and such minor personages of royal blood, who are less free in their lives than kings are and have nothing to occupy their mental idleness. ”

“ Education, and education alone, can establish the victory of democracy.
From my home in the capital of a great people, in whose motto is enshrined a profound belief in the brotherhood of mankind and the essential equality of prince and peasant, I look out over Europe and see the decay of old institutions and the movements which are slowly but certainly reducing those monarchs who still retain power to the position of decorative figureheads. ”

“ England is a country of accepted classes, of which each class makes no infringement on the rights of the class above it and fears none from the class below. There are even upper and lower servants in a household. And each class receives servility from the class below it to reimburse it for the servility that it pays to the class above. Royalty is just a final upper class, neither envied by an aristocracy which cannot aspire to it, nor feared by the lower classes over which it has no authority. It is a social ornament of government, a symbol of national majesty. ”

“ They converse, therefore, about royalty only—the latest marriage, the most recent engagement, the death of this prince, the illness of that, a birth in Spain, an archduke’s affair with a mistress in Austria—family happenings considered only in their family aspect, as{188} idle as gossip, largely innocent, wholly uninteresting.
I can understand the respect paid to power; and royalty with power is far from ridiculous, even when it is unintelligent; but royalty without power is as great a bore as an aristocracy without the estate to support its pride. We are no longer in the feudal ages. ”

“ One good thing the war will leave in its train is a recurrence of simplicity. It cannot but be that the awful costliness of it all will reduce the means left for wastefulness in living. I wish the larger nations—and especially England and America—would study the life of the Scandinavian towns and see how much preferable is their simpler life, how much happier folk are when there is not this greed for gold, which takes up all one’s time and makes men forget the joy and the meaning of life while they are earning and cheating and hoarding. ”

“ You will always hear, for example, of the devoted self-sacrifice of the British rule in India, which carries the peaceful blessings of civilisation to natives incapable of self-government; but if India were being held at a continual loss to the British tax-payer—if he had to pay out of his own purse, without return, to protect the natives from their own incapacity—I wonder whether the British Empire in India would last a year. It is this faculty of almost honest self-deception which makes the Englishman so insoluble a puzzle to the foreigner. ”

“ They were as happy as two schoolgirls, revelling in the simple life of a home where they can live like two ordinary women, untrammelled by Court etiquette and without even a single lady-in-waiting to attend them. ”

“ Many a person, chatting tête-à-tête with a sovereign alone, has been charmed by the simple naturalness of his manner, and meeting him an hour later, before others, has wondered if it could be the same man. Not so the Tsar. He has more human tenderness than I ever{158} saw in any other man. He enters a crowded audience-room with the same charming kindliness and unconsciousness of self that he has in the privacy of family life. His eyes have always the one clear gaze of a clean soul. ”

“ Education and common sense have broken down the barriers of pride of purse and pride of rank, which separate man and man in other countries, and the King himself is simply the first among equals.
When the Norwegian people determined that the industrial and commercial life of the country should no longer be hampered by Sweden, and declared their independence, they placed a king at the head of the State. They were clever enough to see that the country would have more prestige in the eyes of Europe as a monarchy than as a republic, and they were wise enough to give the king no power. ”

“ I do not think there will be any great hardships and poverty when the war is over. On the contrary I anticipate a great trade revival, and in this respect the understanding between the present Allies will greatly increase the business done by them. Germany will no doubt be crippled, her military role will end, and her business men—among the best in the world—will find many of the old works closed. It will take Germany many years to rebuild her fortunes, for she will have made her one gigantic throw for world power, and lost. ”

“ Let us hope that England’s ingrained respect for royalty will induce the aristocracy to copy the simplicity and dignity of King George’s and Queen Mary’s life, and that this influence will aid in completely reviving the old-time ideals of courtesy and good-breeding.
As I have already said, this revival has already begun. The war, which has had the effect of rousing the rich from their over-indulgence in luxury and sports, will no doubt do much toward leavening the attitude of the classes toward each other. ”

“ In Bologna, for instance, where I have lived so much, the cultured classes, as well as the peasants, talked dialect, and travelling about Italy one seemed constantly under the necessity of learning new words and phrases.
There are so many beautiful Italian cities in which agreeable society may be enjoyed that had one to choose one in which to live permanently it would be difficult to come to a decision. Venice is one of the most adorable, and the time I spent with the Duke and Duchess of Genoa at the King’s palace there was a dream of delight. ”

“ America’s worship of the almighty dollar influences her attitude to-day.
I wonder shall we ever find a substitute for money which will reduce its value. The value of money is the curse of life; it leads to wars, it creates half the intrigues in Court and political life, it provokes senseless luxury. But I am talking of a Utopia, and we live in an age of greed and personal aggrandisement, however sure to those who look beneath the surface are the signs of coming reform. ”

“ The ultimate destiny of the world, when this terrible war is over and done with, will rest upon the shoulders of those thinkers and economists, and upon the success of their efforts will depend the peace and happiness of our children’s children.
I know that here I am laying down the ethics of Socialism, but not the Socialism that depends upon labour upheavals in which the worker merely seeks to get all he can from the employer, but that larger Socialism whose aim is the good of the community{251} as opposed to the fortune of the individual in the pursuit of the general well-being. ”

“ When the revolution of ’68 first disturbed my life—and the parrot’s—I was too young to know it. The intelligence was still unformed, the body infantile. But both the body and the mind had been born of a race so old and in traditions so established that it would seem no revolution could affect them. For many hundreds of years a few families of human beings had been inheriting the thrones of Europe, generation after generation, as families inherit property, from parents to children, by the consent of society and under the protection of law. ”

“ I could name a score of such persons, quite unknown, who would never believe that their existence is not a matter of eager public interest to the whole world. They apply{186} themselves to the observances of royal etiquette devotedly. They patronise and condescend to the lesser orders of mankind with a touching sense of their own supremacy. They defend themselves jealously in their degrees of royal blood and precedence, and see themselves as conspicuously exalted as if they had high seats in some hierarchy of heaven just below the Eternal Throne. ”

“ France has learned this lesson well enough, she will never go back from her present methods of government—methods which have developed the natural genius and intelligence of her people and brought such prosperity that she has become one of the wealthiest countries in the world. The aristocracy of France has not sufficient power to overthrow the people, especially now when the people have been fighting with true patriotism, not for the ideal{245} of a kingship, but for the ideal of a country—confraternity.
This spirit of democracy, I think, will extend all over Europe. ”

“ The European travels of such a young lady could not have much interest, ordinarily. But, for ten years and more, I went from Court to Court, rather than from country to country, in that huge family of Royalty whose members have been intermarrying for so many generations that all the occupants of the thrones of Europe have become cousins, and a princess can visit from palace to palace as if from house to house among relatives in a countryside. ”

“ What they thought of the problems of their rule I do not know; and I do not know enough of their people to understand what those problems really are. But surely no power could be more beneficently exercised than this man’s must be; and if his spirit could only animate the instruments of his authority and the innumerable officials who are necessary to administer it, the mad asperities of recrimination in Russia would be as impossible to the administration and its opponents as they are to the Tsar himself. ”

“ In Paris, where we went first, Royalty has no problems. Being for ever dispossessed of its claims in France, it is accepted there without awe and without enmity. It flees to Paris from the dulness of{108} its official life in every monarchy of Europe; and at times it seems that more royalties are there than in all the other capitals of the Continent together. Paris has become a holiday rendezvous for them; and it needs them as little as it does its tourists. They can meet and dine and gossip, unobserved even by the Press. ”