Their Majesties As I Knew Them - free ebook by Xavier Paoli

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Their Majesties As I Knew Them

Xavier Paoli

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THEIR MAJESTIES AS I KNEW THEM

THEIR MAJESTIES AS I KNEW THEM

PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF THE KINGS AND QUEENS OF EUROPE BY XAVIER PAOLI TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY A. TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS ILLUSTRATED New York STURGIS &amp; WALTON COMPANY 1911 All rights reserved Copyright 1911 By STURGIS &amp; WALTON COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1911 M. XAVIER PAOLI Copyright 1911 By STURGIS &amp; WALTON COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1911 M. XAVIER PAOLI CONTENTS...

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INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

M. XAVIER PAOLI THE "CHAMBERLAIN" OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC AND THE FRIEND OF SOVEREIGNS It was in 1903, and the King of England was making his first official journey in France since succeeding Queen Victoria on the throne of Great Britain. In the court of the British Embassy in Paris, where the sovereign had taken up his residence, a group of journalists, pencil and notebook in hand, was crowding importunate, full of questions, around a vivacious little gentleman, very precisely dressed in black,

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I confess that, when I stepped into the train, I experienced a keen sense of curiosity at the thought that I was soon to find myself in the presence of the lady who was already surrounded by an atmosphere of legend and who was known as "the wandering empress." I had been told numerous more or less veracious stories of her restless and romantic life; I had heard that she talked little, that she smiled but rarely and that she always seemed to be pursuing a distant dream. My first impression, howev

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In the course of the three visits which the Empress Elizabeth paid to France between 1895 and 1898, I had every opportunity of studying, in the intimacy of its daily life, that little wandering court swayed by the melancholy and fascinating figure of its sovereign. She led an active and solitary existence. Rising, winter and summer, at five o'clock, she began by taking a warm bath in distilled water, followed by electric massage, after which, even though it were still dark, she would go out into

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The Emperor joined the Empress on three occasions during her visits to Cap Martin. The event naturally created a diversion in the monotony of our sojourn. Though travelling incognito as Count Hohenembs, he was accompanied by a fairly numerous suite, whose presence brought a great animation into our little colony. I had, of course, to redouble my measures of protection and to send to Paris for an additional force of detective-inspectors. Francis Joseph generally spent a fortnight with his consort

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Seven months had elapsed since the day when I left the Empress at San Remo. I was in Paris and read in the papers that she had just arrived at Caux, a picturesque little place situated above Montreux, overlooking the Lake of Geneva. I hastened to write, on chance, to Mr. Barker, her Greek reader, in order to receive news of her. When I came home, on the evening of the 9th of September, I was handed Mr. Barker's reply, in which was conveyed news of the Empress's plans, and a gracious invitation f

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"He has a nature all impulse," said one. "He is full of character," said people who had met him. "He is like his father: he would charm the bird from the tree," an old Spanish diplomatist remarked to me. "At any rate, there is nothing commonplace about him," thought I, still perplexed by the unconventional, amusing, jocular way in which he had interrupted my nocturnal contemplations. No, he was certainly not commonplace! The next morning, I saw him at early dawn at the windows of the saloon-carr

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I saw little of King Alfonso during his first stay in Paris. The protection of sovereigns who are the official guests of the government did not come within the scope of my duties. I therefore left him at the station and was not to resume my place in his suite until the moment of his departure. The anarchist revolutionary gentry appeared to be unaware of this detail, for I daily received a fair number of anonymous letters, most of which contained more or less vague threats against the person of o

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The Villa Mouriscot, where the princesses were staying, was a picturesque Basque chalet, elegantly and comfortably furnished. Standing on a height, at two miles from Biarritz, whence the eye commanded the magnificent circle of hills, and buried in the midst of luxuriant and fragrant gardens, intersected by shady and silent walks, it formed an appropriately poetic setting for the romance of the royal betrothal. The King came every day. Wrapped in a huge cloak, with a motoring-cap and goggles, he

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I asked myself if I too would be obliged to assist at sacrifices of heifers and to console unpaid tradesmen, all to be finally pointed out by His Majesty as a "substitute" under the knife of the guillotine. However, I was needlessly alarmed: in Persia, thank goodness, the Shahs succeed, but do not resemble one another. I became fully aware of this when I was admitted into the intimacy of our new guest. Muzaffr-ed-Din had nothing in common with his father. He was an overgrown child, whose massive

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At the time of his first stay in Paris, he had the privilege of inaugurating the famous Sovereigns' Palace, which the government had fitted up in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne for the entertainment of its royal visitors. The house was a comparatively small one; on the other hand, it was sumptuously decorated. The national furniture-repository had sent some of the finest pieces to be found in its historic store-rooms. In fact, I believe that the Shah slept in the bed of Napoleon I and washed his

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He was given, in fact, to easy and strange fits of alarm. He always carried a loaded pistol in his trowsers-pocket, though he never used it. On one of his journeys in France, he even took it into his head to make a high court-official walk before him when he left the theatre, carrying a revolver pointed at the peaceable sightseers who had gathered to see him come out. As soon as I saw this, I ran up to the threatening body-guard: "Put that revolver away," I said. "It's not the custom here." But

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The need which he felt of having people constantly around him and of reproducing the atmosphere of his distant country wherever he fixed his temporary residence was reflected in the picturesque and singularly animated aspect which the hotel or palace at which he elected to stay assumed soon after his installation. It was promptly transformed into a vast, exotic caravanserai, presenting the appearance of a French fair combined with that of an eastern bazaar. The house was taken possession of by i

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All these efforts of the imagination, all these prodigies of ingenuity, all these amorous suggestions were wasted. As I have said, the Shah took no notice whatever of the six hundred and odd begging letters of different kinds addressed to him during his visits to France. Pleasure-loving and capricious, careful of his own peace of mind, he dreaded and avoided emotions. Nevertheless, he was not insensible to pity nor indifferent to the charms of the fair sex. At certain times, he was capable of su

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The Shah and I grew accustomed to each other, little by little, and became the best of friends. He refused to go anywhere without me; I took part in the drives, in the games at billiards, in the concerts, in all the journeys. We went to Vichy, to Vittel, to Contrexéville. It was here, at Contrexéville, where he had come for the cure, that I saw him for the last time. His eccentricities, his whims and his diamonds, had produced the usual effect on the peaceful population of the town. A few days a

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"A republican official at the Empress's table!" he cried. "You're the only man, my dear Paoli, who would dare to do such a thing. And you're the only one," he added, slily, "in whom we would stand it!" For all that, when I entered his room on this particular morning, I was struck with his thoughtful air; and my surprise increased still further when I saw him, after shaking hands with me, himself close the door and give a glance to make sure that we were quite alone. "You must not be astonished a

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Our vigilance was naturally concentrated with the greatest attention upon Compiègne. We sent swarms of police to beat the forest and search every copse and thicket; and the château itself was inspected from garret to basement by our most trusted detectives. These precautions, however, seemed insufficient to our colleagues of the Russian police. A fortnight before the arrival of the sovereigns, one of them, taking us aside, said: "The cellars must be watched." "But it seems to us," we replied, "t

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My first impression of the young sovereigns was very different from that which I expected. To judge by the fantastic measures taken in anticipation of their arrival and by the atmosphere of suspicion and mystery which people had been pleased to create around them, we were tempted to picture them as grave, solemn, haughty, mystical and distrustful; and our thoughts turned, in spite of ourselves to the court of Ivan the Terrible rather than to that of Peter the Great. Then, suddenly, the impressio

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If, on his second stay, he did not have the occasion of coming into contact with the people, he none the less enjoyed the satisfaction of being admirably received. The episodes of the first day of this memorable visit, from the moment when, on the deck of the Standart , lying off Dunkerque, the sovereigns, as is customary whenever they leave their yacht, received the salute of the sailors and the blessing of the old priest in his violet cassock: these episodes have been too faithfully chronicled

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Although from the time of leaving Dunkerque, I had taken up my duties, which, as the reader knows, consisted more particularly in ensuring the personal safety of the Empress, I had as yet only caught a glimpse of that gracious lady. A few hours after our arrival at the château, chance made me come across her and she deigned to speak to me. I doubt whether she observed my state of flurry; and yet, that evening, without knowing it, she was the cause of a strange hallucination of my mind. I had lef

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We had to be continually on the watch, to have safe men at every door, in every passage, on every floor; we had to superintend the least details. I remember, for instance, standing by for nearly two hours while the Empress's dresses were being unpacked, so great was our fear lest a disguised bomb might be slipped into one of the sovereign's numerous trunks, while the women were arranging the gowns in the special presses and cupboards intended for them. Lastly, day and night, we had to go on cons

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While life was being arranged in the great palace and everyone settling down as if he were to stay there for a month instead of three days; while the head of the kitchens, acting under the inspiration of the head of the ceremonial department, was cudgelling his brains to bring his menus into harmony with politics by introducing subtle alliances of French and Russian dishes; while the musicians were tuning their violins for the "gala" concert of the evening and Mme. Bartet, that divine actress, p

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"Have you the least idea whom you have been serving?" "A very pretty woman, I know that!" "Idiot! It was the Queen!" The Queen! It was my turn to feel bewildered. The Queen, alone, unprotected, in that arcade full of people! I was on the point of following her, from professional habit, forgetting that I was at Milan not as an official, but as a private tourist. A still more important reason stopped my display of zeal: it was too late; the charming vision was lost in the crowd....

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The next evening, I was dining at a friend's house, where the guests belonged, for the most part, to the official and political world. When I related my adventure and expressed my astonishment at having met the sovereign making her own purchases in town, accompanied by a stern lady-in-waiting: "Did that surprise you?" I was asked. "It does not surprise us at all. One of our haughty princesses of the House of Savoy said, sarcastically, that we had gone back to the times when kings used to mate wi

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I little thought, on the afternoon when I caught so unexpected a glimpse of Queen Helena in a Milan glove-shop, that, two years later, I was to have the honour of attending both Her Majesty and the King during their journey to France. It was their first visit to Paris in state; and our government attached considerable importance to this event, which accentuated the scope of what Prince von Bülow, at that time chancellor of the German Empire, called, none too good-humouredly, Italy's "little walt

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And the King? The King, while appreciating, as an expert, the archæological beauties which we had to show him and the imperishable evidences of our history, did not share the Queen's enthusiasm for our artistic treasures. When coming to Paris, he had looked forward to two chief pleasures: to see our soldiers and to visit the Musée Monétaire, or collection of coins at our national mint. As is well-known, Victor Emanuel is considered—and rightly so—an exceedingly capable numismatist. He is very pr

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The unpretending affability of the royal couple was bound to win the affections of the French people. The daily more enthusiastic cheers that greeted them in their drives through Paris proved that they had conquered all hearts. "It is astonishing," said an Italian official to me, "but they are even more popular here than at home!" "That must be because they show themselves more," I replied. At the risk of disappointing the reader, I am bound to confess that no tragic or even unpleasant incident

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King George's "fun," at any rate, is never cruel; and, if his chaff sometimes becomes a little caustic, at least it is always, if I may say so, to the point. For instance, at the commencement of his reign, when he found himself grappling with the first internal difficulties, one of the leaders of the parliamentary opposition, which was very anxious for the fall of the ministry so that it might itself take office, came to him and said, with false and deceitful melancholy: "Ah, Sir, if you only ha

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The pilot's trade is a hard one when you have to steer through continual rocks, to keep a constant eye upon a turbulent crew and to look out for the "squalls" which are perpetually beating down from the always stormy horizon in the East. It is easily understood that King George should feel a longing, when events permit, to go to other climes in search of a short diversion from his absorbing responsibilities. "You see," said King Leopold of the Belgians to me one day, "our real rest lies in forge

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King George, who, like most reigning sovereigns, is an indefatigable walker, used to start out every day in the late afternoon and come back just before dinner-time. He nearly always took a member of his suite with him; one of my inspectors would follow him. All the peasants round Aix knew the King by sight and raised their caps as he passed. He is very young in mind—in this respect, he has remained the midshipman of his boyhood—and he sometimes amused himself by playing a trick on the companion

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I have spoken of my duties with regard to this monarch as an agreeable sinecure. But I was exaggerating. Once, when I was with him at Aix, I had a terrible alarm. I was standing beside him, in the evening, in the petits-chevaux room at the Casino, when one of my inspectors slipped a note into my hand. It was to inform me that an individual of Roumanian nationality, a rabid Grecophobe, had arrived at Aix, with, it was feared, the intention of killing the King. There was no further clue. I was in

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George I has preserved none but agreeable recollections of his different visits to Aix. In evidence of this, I will only mention the regret which he expressed to me, in one of his last letters, that the Greek crisis prevented him from making his usual trip to France in 1909: "Here where duty keeps me—nobody knows for how long—I often think of my friends at Aix, of my friends in France, whom I should so much like to see again; of that beautiful country, of our walks and talks. But life is made up

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As for Queen Emma, she was as simple and as easy of access as her daughter, although more reserved. She fulfilled her double task as regent and mother, as counsellor and educator with great dignity, bringing to it the virile authority, the spirit of decision and the equability of character which we so often find in women summoned by a too-early widowhood to assume the responsibilities of the head of a family. And nothing more edifying was ever seen than the close union that prevailed between tho

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Queen Wilhelmina was very expansive in her manner and yet very thoughtful. Brought up in the strictest principles by a watchful and inflexible mother, she had learnt from childhood to shirk neither work nor fatigue, to brave the inclemencies of the weather, to distinguish herself alike in bodily and in mental exercises, in short, to prepare herself in the most serious fashion for her duties as Queen and to realise all the hopes that were centred on her young head. I often had occasion, during my

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When the Queen had explored all the woods and ravines close at hand, she naturally wished to extend the radius of her excursions. She was a fearless walker and was not to be thwarted by the steepest paths, even when these were filled with snow in which one's feet sank up to the ankles. I urgently begged the young sovereign never to venture far afield without first informing me of her intentions. As a matter of fact, I knew how easy it was to lose one's self in the maze of mountains, where one lo

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When the Queen had visited all the places in the immediate neighbourhood of the Corbières and tasted sufficiently of the pleasure of looking upon herself as a new Little Red Riding-hood in her wild solitudes, or a new Sleeping Beauty (whose Prince Charming was not to come until many years later), she expressed the wish to go on the longer excursions which the country-side afforded. We therefore set out, one fine morning, for the Abbey of Hautecombe, situated on the banks of the poetic Lac du Bou

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The Queens' stay at the Corbières was drawing to a close. We had exhausted all the walks and excursions; the cold was becoming daily more intense; the icy wind whistled louder than ever under the ill-fitting doors. At the royal chalet, the little Queen was growing tired of sketching young herds with their flocks or old peasant-women combing wool. One morning, General Du Monceau said to me: "Their Majesties have decided to go to Italy They will start for Milan the day after to-morrow." Two days l

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On the other hand, he had needed no assistance in order to work out his complicated and gigantic financial combinations. He possessed, if I may say so, the bump of figures. For hours at a time, he would indulge in intricate calculations and his accounts never showed a hesitation or an erasure. In the same way, when abroad, he treated affairs of state with a like lucidity. If he thought it useful to consult a specialist in certain matters, he would send for him to come to where he was, question h

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My first meeting with Leopold II dates back to 1896. The King had prone to the Riviera, accompanied by his charming daughter, Princess Clémentine, now Princess Napoleon, who, from that time onward, filled in relation to her father the part of the Antigone of a tempestuous old age. I shall never forget my surprise when the King, who had made the long railway-journey from Brussels to Nice without a stop, said to his chamberlain, Baron Snoy, as they left the station: KING LEOPOLD II. "Send away the

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No one, I said, at the beginning of this chapter, was more intimately acquainted than myself with the private life of the late King Leopold. This was one of the consequences—I am far from adding, one of the advantages—of my professional duties about the persons of the sovereigns whom I have guarded. And I would certainly have hesitated before broaching the subject of the royal adventures, if this subject had remained secret. But public animosity and the King's indifference to scandal have made i

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"Go and kiss that gentleman over there," pointing to Colonel Carington, the Queen's equerry. "That is by far the best speech that you could make!" The ladies evidently approved of my suggestion, for they forthwith, one and all, flung themselves upon the colonel's neck; and he, though flurried and a little annoyed, had to submit with the best grace possible to this volley of kisses under the eyes of the princess, who laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks. When I apologised to him afterwards

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I saw him next at the Queen of Spain's wedding; and again in 1908. The prince and princess had just spent a week in Paris for the first time in their lives, and were returning to England delighted with their stay. The special train had hardly left the Gare du Nord, when the Hon. Derek Keppel, who was with the prince, came to me in my compartment: "M. Paoli," he said, "I am commanded by Their Royal Highnesses to ask you to give them the pleasure of your company to luncheon." I at once went to the

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I intended, in this chapter, to speak of those members of the royal family with whom my long and frequent service about the person of Queen Victoria gave me the occasion to come into contact; and I must not omit to mention a princess now no more, a woman of lofty intelligence and great heart, whom life did not spare the most cruel sorrows after granting her the proudest destinies. I refer to the Empress Frederick of Germany, eldest daughter of Queen Victoria and mother of William II. I made her

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I had only a more or less fleeting vision of this amiable sovereign, whose fate, though not so tragic as that of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, was but little happier. On the other hand, I had opportunities of coming into much more frequent and constant contact with two of her sisters, Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein and Princess Henry of Battenberg. Closely though these two princesses resemble each other in the admirable filial affection which they showed their mother, they are enti

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But, as I have said above, of all Queen Victoria's daughters, the one whom I knew best was the Princess Henry of Battenberg. In point of fact, she hardly ever left her august mother's side from the day when her married bliss received so cruel a blow in the tragic death of her husband and when the distress of mind found a refuge and peace in the affection of that same mother, whose heart was always filled with the most delicate compassion for every sorrow. A close link had been formed between tho

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When Princess Henry of Battenberg did not accompany her mother on her drives—which happened very rarely—she liked going to the Empress Eugénie, who treated her as a daughter and who, as everybody knows, was the godmother of Queen Victoria Eugénie of Spain. The princess would sometimes spend the whole afternoon at the villa of Napoleon III's widow; one year indeed, she and Princess Ena stayed there all through the winter. Now, on this occasion, I happened to find myself placed in a very delicate

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I must not close the story of the periods which I spent with the royal family at Nice without recalling that, on some of those occasions, I also met the Marchioness of Lorne, now Duchess of Argyll, and the Duke of Connaught; but, to tell the truth, I only caught glimpses of them, because of the shortness of their visits. I can also only mention quite casually the name of Queen Alexandra, for the charming lady has never stayed in France for any length of time. With the exception of two visits of

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From the knees to the waist, his dress suggested the East. Starting from the frontier formed by his belt, the West resumed its rights and set the fashion of the day before yesterday! His feet were clad in shoes resembling a bishop's, with broad, flat buckles, whence rose two spindle-shanks confined in black silk stockings and ending in a queer pair of breeches of a thin, silky, copper-coloured material, something midway between a cyclist's knickerbockers and a woman's petticoat and known as the

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Keen as was the interest taken by the public in Sisowath, it paled before the curiosity aroused by his dancing-girls. They formed an integral part of that extraordinary royal suite, in which figured three of his ministers, four of his sons, his daughter, two sons of King Norodom, his predecessor, and eleven favourites accompanied by a swarm of chamberlains, ladies of the bed-chamber and pages: women old and young, at whose breasts hung hideous little stunted, yellow, shrieking imps, from whom th

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When the whole party were landed, they had to be put up; and this was no easy matter. The Marseilles Prefecture was hardly large enough to house the King's fabulous and cumbrous retinue. We distributed its members over some of the neighbouring houses; but they spent their days at the Prefecture, which was then and there transformed into the camp of an Asiatic caravan. The ante-rooms and passages were blocked with pieces of luggage each quainter than the other. Heaped up promiscuously were jewel-

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Nevertheless, in spite of the ever fresh surprises which Paris had in store for him and of their undoubted attraction for his mind, the King soon began to feel a certain lassitude: "Paris," he said to me, "is a wonderful, but tiring city. The houses are too high and there are too many carriages. How is it that you still allow horse-carriages? If I were the master here, I would abolish them and allow nothing but motors." When he had visited the public buildings and done the sights and been to Fon

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A week later, he took ship at Marseilles, with his court, to return to Cambodia. When I said good-bye to him on the deck of the steamer, he appeared heart-broken at having to leave our country. Heart-broken, too, seemed the little dancing-girls squatting at the foot of the mast, with their mechanical rabbits and their unbreakable dolls—the last keepsake to remind them of their stay in Paris—which they squeezed fondly in their arms. When, at length, the hour of parting had struck, good King Sisow

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