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                         THE EMPRESS FREDERICK

                             [Illustration]




                                  The
                           Empress Frederick

                                A MEMOIR

                          _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_

                             [Illustration]

                                NEW YORK
                         Dodd, Mead and Company
                                  1914

                            COPYRIGHT, 1913,
                       BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY




PREFACE


Memoirs of Royal personages form not the least interesting part of the
whole vast field of biography, in spite of the fact that such memoirs
differ from the lives of most persons in a private station because of
the reticence and discretion which are necessary, especially in regard
to affairs of State and political characters. It is often not until a
whole generation has passed that it is possible to publish a full
biography of a member of a Royal House, and in the meantime the exalted
rank of the subject operates both to enhance and to diminish the
interest of the memoir.

This is also true in a modified degree of statesmen, of whom full and
frank biographies are seldom possible until their political associates
and rivals have alike disappeared from the scene. This necessary delay
is a test of the subject's greatness, for it has sometimes happened that
by the time a full memoir can be published the public interest in the
individual has waned.

By heredity, by training, by all the circumstances of their lives, Royal
personages form a caste apart; and though their lot may seem to some
persons enviable, it is often not realised how great are the sacrifices
of happiness and contentment which they are called upon to make as the
inevitable consequence of their exalted position.

The Empress Frederick presents an extraordinary example of what this
exalted position may bring in the way of both happiness and suffering.
Her life has the added interest that, quite apart from her rank, she
possessed an intensely vivid and human personality. History furnishes
examples of many Royal personages who have been, so to speak, crushed
and stunted in their intellectual and spiritual growth by the restraints
of their position.

Not so the subject of this memoir. The Empress was a woman of remarkable
moral and intellectual qualities--indeed, it is not difficult to see
that, had she been born in a private station, she would have attained
certainly distinction, and very possibly eminence, in some branch of
art, letters, or science. Her rank, far from crushing and stunting her
powers, had the effect of diffusing her intellectual interests over many
fields, and perhaps laid her open to the charge of dilettanteism. But
such a charge cannot really be maintained in view of the solid
constructive work which she achieved, both in the field of philanthropy
and in that of the application of art to industry. The exacting mental
discipline which she underwent at the hands of her father, though it was
in some respects ill-advised as her life turned out, at any rate
supplied her with the habit of mental concentration which enabled her to
carry out those practical and lasting enterprises with which her name
in Germany should ever be associated. Her early training disciplined her
eager, natural enthusiasm for all that was good and serviceable to
humanity, and directed it especially to the welfare of soldiers and of
women and children. She was "a doer of the Word and not a hearer only."
All through her life one is perhaps most profoundly impressed by her
inexhaustible energy; her sense of the tremendous importance and
interest of life, of the wonders of knowledge, of the delights of art
and literature, and of all that there is to do and to feel and to think
in the short years that are given us on earth.

One of the greatest dangers to which Royal personages are exposed by the
circumstances of their position is that of falling into an attitude of
gentle cynicism. Naturally they are often brought into contact with the
seamy side of human nature, while at the same time they are not perhaps
so well acquainted with its better side, as are persons of less exalted
rank. That the cleverer among them should take up an attitude of
humorous toleration of the whole human comedy is consequently very
natural.

It is no small testimony to the Empress Frederick's moral greatness
that, though she had experiences in plenty of the bad side of human
nature, she was never tempted to relapse into such an attitude. No one
was ever less of a cynic. She was full of intense passionate
enthusiasms and of a profound sympathy for the unfortunate, and the
disinherited of the earth. In her warm heart there was no room for
hatred or for contempt of others, and she was equally incapable of
shrugging her shoulders at the foibles and follies of poor humanity.

This eagerness to be up and doing was, however, combined, as has been
often seen in the history of mankind, with a touching faith in the power
of logic and reason. It was not exactly that the Empress held too high
an opinion of human nature, but she undoubtedly showed too little
appreciation of human stupidity and, we must add, of human malice. She
had been brought up with kindly, honourable, well-bred, and, on the
whole, very intelligent people, and when she came into rough collision
with less agreeable qualities of human nature, she suffered intensely.
But she was not soured as a less noble nature might have been; on the
contrary, she continued to the end of her life always to believe the
best of people, always to assume that they are actuated by good motives,
as well as by reason and common-sense. She seems to have missed the key
to the oddities and the vagaries, as well as to the baser qualities of
human nature, and therein lies, perhaps, the secret of the tragedy of
her life.

That tragedy, as we know