English-Born German Princess

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 544, 22 December 1928, Page 24

English-Born German Princess

BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS HENRY OF PLESS, FORMERLY MISS CORNWALLIS-WEST, WRITES HER MEMOIRS . . . ENGLISH WOMAN WHO LIVED THROUGH WAR IN GERMANY

HE Princess of Pless in her youth was famous for her great beauty, which she still retains notwithstanding the ad- . vance of years. Born in England, a Cornwallis-West, she married when a mere girl the heir to a principality in Prussia, whose family were of enormous wealth. She knew everyone of distinction in England and in Germany. But what gives her letters and her recentlypublished diary such a peculiar charm is their sincerity, combined with that inner beauty of thought which marks also the letters of the famous Lady Bessborough. She pronounces her verdict, from personal knowledge, on the characters of both King Edward and the Emperor William 11. of Germany, and her verdict will probably be endorsed bj T posterity. She married, as she says, when a mere child, and warned her future husband that she did not love him. “He said that it did not matter; love came after marriage.” She saw not a little of the Kaiser and what she says of him shows thht he w T as always a chivalrous friend to her. When his mother, the Empress Frederick, died she wrote to him a, letter of sympathy, to which he replied: She had a great liking to you. and when I told her that I know no woman whom I admired and loved more than you she said I was perfectly right, that she thought you the most sweet, lovely, and lovable being she had ever seen; that your arms, neck and hands were perfection, and happy the man whom you possessed and who was beloved by you, and that she hoped T would always prove a friend to you and not let you be maliced or anything said against you as long as I could put a stop to it.

The book proves that the Emperor faithfully carried out his mother's dying injunction. And the Princess loyally did her best to help him and avert the storm which year after year she saw approaching. At times she spoke very bluntly to him. Thus the end of 1905, when the Morocco crisis was causing danger, she discussed it at Pless with him.

He did not resent what I said; only once or twice he got very excited, and during our conversation about England be had tears in his eyes. . . . To the Emperor it is a bitter disappointment to be misjudged and to be disliked —and he wants always, to be first. . . . The King (Edward) simply dislikes the Emperor. . . . There are great mistakes on both sides.

The German Empress was unfortunately not able to help the Kaiser with wise counsel. She was little more than a piece of furniture.

What a silly -woman she is! Clothes and children are really her chief conversation, and the only thing she thoroughly understands. . . . For a woman in that position I never met anyone so devoid of individual thought, or agility of brain and understanding. She is just like a good, quiet soft cow—that has calves and eats grass slowly and then lies clown and ruminates. ... I looked right into her eyes to see if I could see anything behind them, even pleasure or sadness, but they might have been of glass. King Edward’s Seizure

The Princess was in Berlin at King Edward’s last visit in 1909. For the superstitious there was a whole series of bad omens:

The procession was bad; the carriages did not keep equal distances, the horses of one being almost in the legs of the footmen standing behind the preceding one, so that the poor men kept on turning round to see whether they would be bitten. Then, when nearing the palace, the horses in the carriage of the Empress and the Queen refused/ to go on, and both ladies had to get out and get into another carriage. In Salm’s squadron guarding the carriages two of the horses got frightened and the men tumbled off. The Princess was talking- to King Edward in the Palace when he had an alarming seizure: Suddenly he coughed and fell back against the back of the sofa and his cigar dropped out of his fingers, his eyes stared, he became pale, and he could not breathe, I thought: “My God, he is dying; oh! why not in his own country. ’ I tried to undo the collar of his unform (which was too tight); then the Queen rushed up and we both tried; at last he came to—and undid it himself. It was the first sad sign of the King’s approaching death. Weeping Into His Cigar It was not William 11., she insists, who made the war. In one of the many crises which arose between England and Germany, she says: I never saw a man more unhappy and affected than the Emperor was when talking to me after dinner. He said, “Oh, I am always misunderstood; there is no one living to tell the truth to me,” and a tear fell on his cigar! I was .at once touched and antagonised. The act of weeping into his cigar, so typically German, somehow put me off. She says elsewhere: In his secret heart he was always sincerely devoted to the cause of peace. He was the Emperor and King, practically an autocrat, yet he allowed himself to be overborne, intimidated, or perhaps perverted by the wicked apostles of war. . . . The German Militarists lost the war. That the Emperor was too weak to withstand them was his misfortune rather than his fault. I doubt if, by that time, Napoleon the Great could have withstood them It is the people who make their kings; not kings who make their people. Whether for its personal inte?#3st or its political value, the book is among the most important that have appeared since the war.