Chapter XX “Auntie Majesty” and her Frocks
Bertha on Her Dignity—On Thin Ice—Barbara Wants to Know—The Empress’s Toilette
“And now for a good talk,” said Barbara, with a look upon the tirewoman who had accompanied Bertha to Court. “Tell me all about Auntie Majesty’s ‘Martha.’”
“Oh, she’s far more important than this one,” Bertha replied, patting the “Frau’s” cheek; “a Baroness like Mamma and in the Almanach de Gotha.”
“Better looking too than our Martha, is she not?” mocked Barbara.
“I won’t go as far as that. She is too tall and angular and spinster-like, and has a nose like Herr Krause—always red.”
“Does she drink?” inquired Barbara.
“No,” said Martha, thrusting out her formidable bosom; “she laces too tight, poor thing!”
It was after ten p.m., and Barbara ought to have been in one of two white-and-pink beds gracing the Young Misses’ Chamber in Villa Huegel, but Frau Krupp was away in Cologne and Martha the most indulgent of governesses. Hence it had not been necessary for Bertha to exert her authority to gain an hour out of bed for sister.
Bertha, who was sitting on a low “pouf,” was convulsed with laughter at Martha’s pantomime. Shrieking, she knocked her forehead against her knees, Barbara joining.
“And Auntie Majesty’s Martha—the Baroness, I mean—does she put out the linen and mend silk stockings and serve tea on the waitress’s day out?” continued Barbara her inquiries.
“Why not ask whether she makes the help’s beds?” demanded Martha; and then, in her drastic manner: “You are a baby, Fraulein Barbara.”
But the Krupp heiress treated the question seriously. “No,” she replied, assuming an air of superiority. “The Baroness tells the Empress what is fit to wear.”
“Unfit, Fraulein means to say,” whispered Martha.
“And besides——” continued Bertha.
“She tyrannises over the lower servants, such as Lenchen and me.” Barbara laughed heartily at Martha’s sallies, but Bertha “had an attack of dignity,” as Barbara put it, and said to Martha: “Come now, who was in Auntie Majesty’s confidence, you or I?”
“Fraulein certainly had the run of Her Majesty’s rooms, and I do hope they were nicer and cleaner than Fraulein’s,” bristled up Martha.
“Don’t quarrel,” pleaded Barbara. “Soon it will be eleven, and then both of you will shout ’bed’ until you are hoarse. Do go on, Bertha, and don’t you dare interrupt her again, Martha.”
“Well,” said Bertha, “I promised——” She settled down in the big velvet fauteuil nearest the fire and assumed an oldish mien.
“I was sometimes present when the Baroness and Auntie Majesty discussed new frocks and hats,” she continued, “and I think if Mamma was in Madame von H.’s place, Her Majesty would be—what shall I say?—more tastefully dressed.
“Once she persuaded Auntie Majesty to accept a hat that made her look seventy to a day: Gold lace and heliotrope velvet. I will buy Granny one like it next time I go to Düsseldorf. At first Auntie did not seem to care for it at all, but the Baroness made such a fuss. ‘Majesty looks enchanting,’ she kept saying.”
Here Martha dropped the courtliest of curtsies, “flapping her arms like wings”—Barbara’s description.
“‘Charming,’ ‘ever youthful,’ continued Bertha, imitating the Baroness.
“The right sort of talk too,” said Martha. “Tell a woman of our age—mine and Auntie Majesty’s—that we look like sweet sixteen, with a teapot for a bonnet, and we will wear it even at the opera.”
“Well, did Auntie get Granny’s hat?” asked Barbara.
“She did, and wore it when we went to the children’s matinée at the theatre in the Neues Palais; and I heard her sister, Princess Frederick Leopold, tell her: ‘Thank your stars that Will is not coming. He would certainly advise you to send your new chapeau to——’” Bertha stopped short.
“To?” asked Barbara, flipping a slipper in the air and catching it on her naked foot.
“I can’t tell,” said Bertha; “it was not intended for me anyhow.”
Barbara looked at Martha. “You say it.”
“It commences with an ‘H.’”
“Hohenlohe—Grandma Hohenlohe,” explained Bertha quickly.
Barbara was thinking hard. “No, she did not say Hohenlohe; and, besides, she is dead.”
“Getting warm,” murmured Martha.
“Now you stop.” Bertha looked very serious. “The Princess Leopold referred to their grandmother, of course. What else should she have in mind?”
The tirewoman bent low over Barbara’s ear. “Majesty’s Jaeger told me that the War Lord is in the habit of consigning old lady relatives of his to a hot place, whether dead or alive.”
Barbara clapped her hands. “I know,” she laughed; “you need not try and keep things from this child, Bertha. I was not born yesterday.”
“I shall tell Mamma, and you will get it too, Martha.” The Krupp heiress was on her dignity once more.
“Why not put me across your knee and spank me?” said Barbara derisively. Then, coaxingly: “Do go on, Bertha; it is all so interesting; and if Martha does not behave (stamping her foot) she will leave the room this minute. Did you hear what I said, Martha?”
“Indeed, Your Majesty, and the other Majesty will now proceed,” mocked the tirewoman, who was unimpressed, having known the girls “all their born days.”
“Well,” began Bertha anew, “there were a few days of Court mourning while I was in Berlin, and I had to wear all white, no jewellery, no flowers. All the gentlemen had mourning-bands around their left arm, and Uncle Majesty wore the uniform of Colonel of Artillery—black and velvet.”
“Auntie was in black too—silk, of course, and heavy enough to stand by itself; but at her throat I saw a large diamond brooch.”
“‘That will get Mother into trouble if the old man peeps it,’ observed the Crown Prince, who took me in to dinner, and who knows all the English and French slang.”
“How perfectly delightful he must be!” cried Barbara.
Bertha continued: “‘Why?’ I asked.”
“‘Mourning and brilliants—absurd,’ whispered Wilhelm Wiseacre. But Uncle Majesty either did not see, or knew less than his talented son, and Auntie escaped a scolding that time.”
“Scolding a Queen. You are joking,” cried Barbara.
Before the Krupp heiress could speak, Martha delivered herself of a few “Mein Gotts.”
“Oh,” she said, “royal ladies are just like other girls’ mammas.”
“Like Aunt Pauline and Rosa?”
“Well, yes. They have a husband, children and an allowance.”
“An allowance? I thought they were wallowing in gold pieces like you, sister,” said Barbara, loojving up admiringly at the older girl.
“I suppose Auntie Majesty has about a million per year to dress on,” said Bertha loftily.
“A million,” repeated Frau Martha contemptuously. “Fraulein ought to have heard some of the stories the maids told me about Auntie Majesty’s lingerie. One of them used to be dresser to a French diva, whatever that is, and on the Q.T.——”
Bertha was anxious to change the subject, and remarked, with a hard look upon Martha: “And the troubles they have with servants! One afternoon on Bal-Paré night Auntie’s coiffeur did not show up—sickness, or something of the kind—and the Baroness did her hair. ‘How very frail,’ I thought, particularly as Auntie was going to wear the grand tiara with the Regent diamond. However, the head-dress, being so very heavy, is put on only before she enters the royal box.
“Her Majesty was fully dressed when Uncle’s Jaeger handed in a dispatch from Queen Victoria, asking about Prince Joachim. She immediately sat down to write an answer, and as she leaned over the paper—for she is rather short-sighted—the whole coiffure came down in a heap. I never saw her cross before, but I tell you——” Bertha checked herself.
“Now about the jewellery,” cried Barbara. “She has wagon-loads of them, has she not?”
“Of her own, no more than Mamma, I guess, for those you read so much about on festive occasions belong to the State, and the Baroness is responsible for their safety. Once, I was told, she left a valise containing several Crown jewels and some of Auntie’s own in the Imperial saloon carriage when they were going to Stuttgart. Through the stupidity of a guard the valise got misplaced, and was discovered only a month later in an out-of-the-way railway station. That time Uncle Majesty himself lectured the Baroness, ordering her at the same time to use her own baronial fingers to sew the diamond buttons on Her Majesty’s dresses. Furthermore, to make sure that the fastenings of ear-rings, brooches, bracelets and chains, etc., were intact.”
Barbara wanted to know whether the Berlin Crown jewels were as fine as Queen Victoria’s in the Tower of London.
“Not quite,” said Bertha thoughtfully.
The child nodded. “I know, for when I asked Miss Sprague whether the Regent was as beautiful as the Koh-i-noor, she said: ‘You might as well liken your shabby German South-West Africa to the Indian Empire, Miss Barbara.’”
“Don’t let the War Lord hear that!” Frau Martha raised a warning finger.
“Now about the dresses! She wears a new one every day, doesn’t she?”
“At least she never wears the same twice unaltered.”
“What jolly shopping!” cried Barbara. “Does she go round herself? I would.”
“That’s the ladies’—the Baroness and the Mistress of the Robes—business, of course. She sees the fashion through their eyes and, when Auntie is ill-dressed, the blame really attaches to her women. One morning Auntie called me in and said: ‘Bertha, what do you think of my dinner toilet for to-night?’
“The gown on the mannequin was of light red silk with white flounces and blue train, set off by rosebuds.”
“Kakadoo!” laughed Barbara.
“That’s how it struck me,” said Bertha. “But there stood the Baroness pleased as Punch about the new ‘creation,’ and certainly expected me to say something nice. I was in despair, but Auntie Majesty came to my rescue. ‘It’s quite impossible,’ she said, ‘isn’t it? Tell Schwertfeger and Moeller——’
“She did not finish, but took up the Alnumach de Gotha lying on the dressing-table. ‘I thought so—Wilhelmina’s colours. If Wilhelm had seen me in this, he would have said: “You are rushing things, Dona. Wait till we annex Holland.”’ Then she turned to the Baroness: ‘Have it unripped at once. The silks shall be used any way except in this absurd combination. I will wear white this evening.’”
“To bed at once; enough for to-night,” ordered Frau Martha, turning back the clothes on Barbara’s bed.