PRUSSIA’S ENGLISH WOMAN“EMPRESS FREDERICK”

I disappear with him. My task was with him, for him, for his dear people. It is buried in the grave where he will be buried today! My voice will be silent

forever! I feared not to lift it up for the good cause for him!

A WORK IN PROGRESSBY

DAVID ARTHUR WALTER

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Inspired by Betty Jane 1

The question of the extent of a spouse’s influence on persons holding high office is often posed by biographers and historians. The wife or husband of a high official may have a direct influence on the exercise of political power. Furthermore, public perception of the spouse’s character may alter political outcomes.

Several wives of U.S. presidents have been rightly or wrongly reviled on the one hand, and praised on the other, for their influence on their husbands and the nation. Michelle Obama, heretofore much admired on the whole, has recently been impugned as a “racist” and “the man of the house.” Already many voters are worried about the effect potential candidate Hillary Clinton’s “baggage,” former President Bill Clinton, might have on the presidency and public opinion if she is elected. Others worry about Columba Bush, the Mexican-born wife of Hillary’s potential opponent, Jeb Bush.

I know very little about Michelle, except that she is greatly admired, and I know nothing at all about Columba, so I was somewhat taken aback to hear them maligned, and, even worse, to be castigated myself for my ignorance about them. I shall definitely pay more attention to the spouses of the frontrunners in the future.

That is not to say that I have been altogether uninterested in the role first ladies and queens have played in domestic and world affairs. Rachel Jackson, wife to President Andrew Jackson, fascinated me. She is little known today although featured in a book and a movie.

Marie Antoinette, “that Austrian woman,” is my favorite queen in that regard—I believe the bright and courageous woman was wrongly impugned and beheaded in the end, and that she was not, as Jefferson said, the femme fatale that caused the French Revolution.

Portugal’s Queen Amelia of Orleans, “that French woman,” is another queen who captured my eye. Her main fault, as far as the Portuguese were concerned, was being French, and she was oft criticized for not taking a black lover, as was the custom.

I have recently taken an interest in Prussia’s Queen Victoria Louise, “that English woman.” This little sketch taken from my unorganized notes hardly does the subject justice, and repeats what has been said before. After all, repetition does no harm when it refreshes the memory and furnishes or reinforces the concepts we live by. I shall update the essay from time to time in an attempt to answer the question of what influence she had on world events. Perhaps then I may make a few novel observations, as unlikely as that seems at present.

In any case, I shall have learned something of value to pass along to anyone for what it is worth, which is why I write. Already I have learned that Benedetto Croce’s understatement in History,

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Its Theory and Practice is worth repeating for the benefit of those who believe history is irrelevant to present needs:

““It is evident that only an interest in the life of the present can move one to investigate past fact. Therefore this past fact does not answer to a past interest, but to a present interest, in so far as it is unified with an interest of the present life.”

For example, “When the development of the culture of my historical moment presents to me (it would be superfluous and perhaps also inexact to add to myself as an individual) the problem of Greek civilization or of Platonic philosophy or of a particular mode of Attic manners, that problem is related to my being in the same way as the history of a bit of business in which I am engaged, or of a love affair in which I am indulging, or of a danger that threatens me. I examine it with the same anxiety and am troubled with the same sense of unhappiness until I have succeeded in solving it.”2

Victoria Adelaide Mary Louise, Royal Princess of England, German Princess, Queen of Prussia, Empress Frederick of the German Empire, affectionately called ‘Pussy,’ was the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria and Royal Consort Albert of Saxe-Coburg.

Queen Victoria holding Pussy and Prince of Wales

Little is known of the Princess Royal’s childhood. A flattering Memoir3 by an anonymous author includes firsthand accounts from persons such as Lady Lyttelton, who was in charge of the little girl’s care.

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Vicky was her German father's daughter, or so it is said. Namely, the daughter of Queen Victoria’s Consort: Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. At age nine she was already reciting German verses at length, speaking German with her parents as if German were her native tongue, although her command of German and French would not stop her from making English her household language in Germany.

She acquired her affection for France and learned French orally from her beloved caretaker Madame Charlier. Queen Victoria wrote that, "Our Pussette learns a verse of Lamartine by heart, which ends with ' Le tableau se deroule a mes pieds.' To show how well she understood this difficult line, I must tell you the following bon mot. When she was riding on her pony, and looking at the cows and sheep, she turned to Madame Charlier, and said: 'Voila le tableau qui se deroule a mes pieds!' Is not this extraordinary for a child of three years?"

We learn such charming details as Pussy was fed asses’ milk, arrowroot, and chicken broth, so carefully measured out for fear of fattening the child that she must have been starving, and that she was otherwise spoiled by the doting Queen Mother.

She was reportedly “over-sensitive and affectionate, and rather irritable in temper.” And we hear that she was precocious, clever, and naughty, or “unmanageable,” and, when unmanageable, was confined to her room for long hours of solitude. And what a ham she was: On her second birthday, at Walmer Castle, she is described as being "most funny all day," joining in the cheers and asking to be lifted up to look at "the people," to whom she bowed very actively whether they could see her or not.

She was advanced in music and painting—she would become a fine watercolor artist, and was posthumously honored in 1901, the year of her death, by the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin.

So Pussy, destined to be the Empress of Prussia for ninety-nine days, was like cute little girls the world over, and every little girl fancied herself to be a princess. One of her role models, of course, was Florence Nightingale, who was admired by countless girls, so she was dedicated to cleanliness, and one of her favorite charities would be hospitals.

Her particular temperament stands out, but it was by no means peculiar, especially for the so-called weaker sex and hysterical men who cannot mask their feelings and call themselves reasonable. “Clever” is the adjective attached to her time and time again, followed by “impulsive.” None other than Prince Bismarck would describe her as “very clever and decided.” She inherited both her temperament and status, and her status magnified her temperament. The Memoirs sum up her personality:

“During the whole of her life, the Princess Royal had a peculiarity which only belongs to the generous-hearted and impulsive. She was apt to be violently attracted, sometimes for very little

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reason, to those she met, and then she would be proportionately cast down if these new friends and acquaintances did not turn out on fuller knowledge all that she had expected them to be. Those who knew her well are agreed in saying that she was not a good judge of character. She was apt to see in human beings what she expected to see, not what was there.”

We are not surprised to hear from contemporaries that she tended to be domineering, according to her contemporaries. For a member of the weaker sex to have strong opinions and to express them forcefully might even seem unladylike to the dominant sex, even in a country where females may sit on the throne. But did the Princess Royal of England become the man of the House of Hohenzollern?

“The theory that the Fritz was wholly influenced by his wife, who took the lead in all, cannot be maintained. He was nine years older than the Princess, who was little more than a child when they married, and his character and outlook were formed long before. His uncle, Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, testifies, on the contrary, to the influence which the Prince exerted over his wife,” claim the Memoirs.

We have this observation from Otto bon Bismarck, when asked if she had much influence over her husband: "I think not; and as to her intelligence, she is a clever woman; clever in a womanly way. She is not able to disguise her feelings, or at least not always. I have cost her many tears, and she could not conceal how angry she was with me after the annexations" (of Schleswig and Hanover). "She could hardly bear the sight of me, but that feeling has now somewhat subsided. She once asked me to bring her a glass of water, and, as I handed it to her, she said to a lady-in-waiting who sat near, and whose name I forget; 'He has cost me as many tears as there is water in this glass,' But that is all over now."

A Prince Bismarck thus described his early relations with the Empress Frederick, after the death of Frederick’s father: "I was always on the best of terms with the Emperor Frederick and his Consort, the Empress Victoria. Any differences of opinion between us were discussed with their Majesties in the most friendly way. The Empress Victoria is, moreover, very clever and decided. When I appeared with some business for her Imperial Consort, she frequently entered the sick room before me to prepare him and gain him over for my project."

Yet he contradicts himself elsewhere, still taking care to flatter the ego VIcky oft complained of in her letters to the Queen of England: “Her influence on her husband was at all times great, and it increased with years to culminate at the time when he was Emperor. She also, however, shared with him the conviction that in the interests of the dynasty it was necessary that I should be maintained in office at the change of reign.”

Bismarck was a crafty, suspicious man, one unlikely to give the Empress too much credit after suspecting her of English treachery against German interests; before all, he was an arch-

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conservative, and she was a liberal threat to absolutism. In fact, he had connived against the very influence he later said she did not have. Of course people do change their minds when it behooves them to do so.

Edward Legge, on the staff of the Morning Post, was personally familiar with events in Prussia. He was one of a new breed of English journalists, so-called special correspondents who roamed the world, providing eye-witness accounts of newsworthy events. For instance, he covered the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 from the Prussian perspective, and travelled with King Edward to India. He sympathized with Vicky, and raked considerable muck over Willy in The Private and Public Life of Kaiser Wilhelm II (1915).

“From the outset the Empress Frederick had reason to complain of the outrageous treatment to which she was subjected by the Berlin Court and many of the leading citizens. Inspired by Bismarck, they spoke of her, not as the Crown Princess and future Empress, but as ‘the Englishwoman.’ Similarly, to the French the Empress Eugenie was ‘the Spaniard’ and to the Spaniards the mother of the present King was ‘the Austrian.’”

Gustave Freytag, the well known man of letters whom Fritz and Vicky confided in for awhile, initially professed the most ardent admiration for the ability of the Crown Princess, her rich natural gifts, and her keen soaring intellect: "The Crown Prince's love for her was the highest and holiest passion of his life, and filled his whole existence; she was the lady of his youth, the confidante of all his thoughts, his trusted counselor whenever she was so inclined. Arrangements of the garden, decorations of the house, education of the children, judgments of men and things, were in every respect regulated by him in accordance with her thoughts and wishes. It is perfectly intelligible that so complete an ascendancy of the wife over the husband, who was destined to be the future ruler of Prussia, threatened to occasion difficulties and conflicts, which, perhaps, would be greater for the woman than the man—greater for the wife who led and inspired the husband whose guidance she ought to have accepted."

Freytag had been a patriot in the Franco-Prussian War, and a member of the North German Reichstag. Fritz, a hero in the War, allowed him to examine his private papers including his war diaries. His reports on the love letters between Fritz and Vicky exercised the public imagination. Alas that he would prove himself to be a bad judge of character, and that his own character was duplicitous, which made of him a bad confidant and rather mediocre novelist.

“Freytag apparently shared the Crown Prince's Liberalism, but he was also steeped in Prussian particularism, and it was this that brought him to his almost blind admiration of Bismarck, and rendered him incapable of appreciating the political conceptions of the Emperor Frederick,” relate the Memoirs. And he would practically accuse Emperor and Empress Frederick of treason.

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“After 1870 the Crown Prince hardly ever saw Freytag, and never with any real intimacy; yet on this slender foundation of knowledge the novelist revived, under the specious cloak of affection, some of the worst charges of the Reptile Press, and of the insulting commentary which Bismarck published on the late Emperor's diary. The principal charge for our purposes here is that the Crown Prince was subjected to foreign influence, and was entirely dominated by his wife. In effect Freytag suggests that through the Crown Princess, Princess Alice, and other members of the English Royal family, important secrets of German military movements reached the French commanders.”

Freytag’s report was a reiteration of Bismarck’s own report on the Emperor’s war diaries, but the calumny was especially hurtful since Vicky’s sister Alice was deceased. He betrayal of his erstwhile friends included such personal insults as, “Emperor Frederick had a petty, Old-Franconian churchiness; he was a romantic character, and, under the sway of a devotee, might have become a fanatic. This flabbiness often exhausted the irreligious Victoria's patience, and exposed him to mistreatment.”

In the German review, Nord und Sad4 , one Professor G. A. Leinhaas, an imperial librarian, repudiated these attacks on the Empress, with whom he was on intimate terms, having even been entrusted with the drawing of her will. His extensive account of her character is worth quoting at length:

“The Empress Frederick during her lifetime—like so many great princesses—had to suffer from many false judgments and wicked whispers, all utterly baseless. Now and then she expressed a wish that I might write an article to refute these injurious and untrue allegations; but the apprehension of provoking reprisals and a sensation in the Press always made her recall the desire. There is some satisfaction in that, when time enough has gone by, the Empress Frederick will be estimated more justly than she now is.”

“She had under her sway forty-two charitable institutes,” Leinhaas continues, “most of which she founded and regularly subsidized. And, in the realm of hospital work in the broadest sense, the Empress Frederick was more experienced than most women.”

“The Empress Frederick was also the model of a good mother, and splendid manager. It should not be forgotten that she supervised the education of her children in a noteworthy way, and with enlightenment, it might be said, good bourgeois sense. And how she, as the mistress, understood cooking; how everything glinted cleanliness and order in the remotest comers of her castle. Her plain, simple dress proved her freedom from personal ostentation. From early morn to late at night she was indefatigably busy; she was astonishingly fresh and of iron energy, never allotting herself one moment's rest.”

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“In every field of human knowledge she was at home-theology, philosophy, history, literature, archaeology, art, ethnology, economy, and sanitation. Seldom had a princess such worldwide knowledge as she. She had even read carefully through heavy economic literature. She was her own architect and gardener. Her creation, Friedrichshof, shows she was at home in the broad domain of art pure and applied. Kronberg, the old castle she restored, and the civic church there also prove her pious insight into the older style of building. Her talent for painting and sculpture might also be mentioned.”

“Her face might sometimes, when she had reason for irritation, take on sharp, sour lines; but, in her heart, she was always kindly and gentle. She spoke out her mind quite bluntly if she differed, but listened very patiently when divergent views were expressed. Often I freely gave vent to my own opposite opinions, yet there was never the least tacit strife between us during the long years of my work at Friedrichshof.”

“She condoned the frailties and errors of men when she could, and always managed to turn to view their good sides. She would never allow anything derogatory to be said of anyone in her presence.”

The anonymous biographer in the Memoirs reiterates several faults attributed to Royal Princess Victoria, Empress of Prussia, of which the most oft repeated one was tactlessness: “It is curious to speculate how different the course of history might have been if the Princess had added to her other qualities that tact, prudence, and power of judging human character, which were surely alone wanting to make her one of the most remarkable women who have ever held her exalted rank.”

Men may rule the world while women rule them. Still, the full extent of Vicky’s influence over Fritz remains a mystery. One wonders what effect the influence of a liberal queen on a liberal king might have had outside of the private imagination of Bismarck and his henchmen. Well, no doubt she supported and reinforced her husband’s position. If his death had not cut her time as empress to 99 days, she may have had a profound effect on the course of history since the majority of Germans craved more liberty. She might even have stopped two world wars. After all, behind every successful man there is a woman firmly standing firmly, slightly behind him, on his right, if he is a liberal, on his left, if a conservative.

#

The year 1851 was memorable in the Princess Royal's life, for it was then, when eleven-years old, that she first met her future husband in England, where Prince Frederick William of Prussia, who was twenty at the time, was immediately attracted to his attractive future wife. The marriage was arranged by the Crown with Prince Frederick of Prussia. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had formed a favorable opinion of Fritz during his visit.

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Vicky was her parents’ offering to secure future peace between German and England. The Revolutions of 1848 including those in the Confederation of German States were still fresh in mind. Liberals in Prussia looked to the rights of Englishmen limiting the sovereign power of their government as an apt model for the formal organization of a state, although they were not so enthusiastic about England’s strong parliamentarism, preferring to have their liberties protected by a monarch. Indeed, the unity of the German states was the most pressing concern with German liberals, a limited monarchy being a foregone conclusion.

The full extent of Vicky’s political education as a teenager is unknown although it must have been considerable since her marriage to the Prussian prince was arranged for the liberation of Prussia from the conservative constitution imposed or “gifted” from the top down by several generations of heads of the House of Hohenzollern. Her husband-to-be was going against the reactionary grain, in accord with the neoteric times inspired by the French Revolution’s Principles of ’89, i.e. Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.

State constitutions evolve from family constitutions. Germans and English are cousins in part, but their constitutional prejudices differed according to circumstances including social geography. France proposed to export its revolutionary principles to the world, but Germans and Brits alike were wary of the horrors ensuing from the violent overthrow of traditional political institutions.

Germans with imperial ambitions would have a federal fatherland under the strongest state with its king as emperor with some absolutist powers. Civil rights were important yet were subservient to the power needed for unity hence stability. England had already had its empire and absolutist monarchs. The lords won their liberties; commoners followed suit for their fair share, but withal they preferred monarchs and ministers to dictators, so radical libertarians were driven underground, raising their heads again with the French inspired revolutions of 1830 and 1840.

We are informed by the Memoirs that Royal Princess Victoria Louise was steeped in constitutional principles by her dad, who devoted himself to the “observation of every social and political movement, which he conceived to be the function of the Head of a State, and in an especial degree of the Constitutional Monarch….”

“In view…of what was to befall the Princess Royal in the land for which she even then cherished so fond an affection, and of which she had already formed so high an ideal, there is something intensely pathetic in the blindness of her parents to the real conditions of her future life. This blindness is shown with amazing clear in the sentence, certainly inspired and very likely written by Queen Victoria herself, which concludes the chapter, in Sir Theodore Martin's Life of the Prince Consort, dealing with the betrothal of the Princess Royal: ‘No consideration, public or

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private, would have induced the Queen or himself [i.e. Prince Albert] to imperil the happiness of their child by a marriage in which she could not have found scope to practice the constitutional principles in which she had been reared.’ The idea that the Prussia of that day, or indeed of any day, would have amiably afforded a foreign princess scope to practice constitutional principles of any sort seems extraordinary, and yet, as we shall see, there was some little justification for it at the time, though it was quickly swept away by the course of events.”

No doubt the Princess Royal was raised to believe that England’s constitutional monarchy was the best of all constitutions, despite the one resulting from the American Revolution, which was really more of a changing of the guard overseas than an overthrow of the entire system. In a letter to her mother dated Dec. 17, 1877, she effused on England’s greatness: “My experience of politics and things in general on the continent, and a careful observation of them, has led me to the conviction that England is far in advance of all other countries in the scale of civilisation and progress, the only one that understands Liberty and possesses Liberty, the only one that understands true progress, that can civilise and colonise far distant lands, that can develop commerce and consequently prosperity, the only really happy, the only really free, and, above all, the only really humane country, that will give so readily, so generously, and so wisely to alleviate suffering, be it ever so far off from sight! Surely then for the good of us all, for the good of the world, and not only of Europe, England should assert herself, make herself be listened to!”

She must have learned at an early age that the English had enough rights to go around, let the radical republicans, i.e. democratic socialists, be damned. Still we should know more about the constitutional context at the time to better understand her position.

German political writers of the day drew a difference between the “constitutionalism” favored by Germans and “parliamentarism” or plural representation. Constitutionalism implied not separate branches but a division of functions between the plural legislature and a singular executive who had final, decisive power. The head ruled the body according to that natural or organic view of constitutionalism, founded on the constitution of the human family and tribe often at war hence needful of a supreme arbiter.

No less than Hegel, appalled by the French Terror, believed monarchy to be the perfect constitution of a state. Not that there should be no division of functions of the state, “a most important feature, which, when taken in its true sense, is rightly regarded as the guarantee of public freedom.... But as apprehended by the abstract understanding it is false when it leads to the view that these several functions are absolutely independent, and it is one-sided when it considers the relation of these functions to one another as negative and mutually limiting.”

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“We usually speak of the three functions of state, the legislative, executive, and judicial. The legislative corresponds to universality, and the executive to particularity; but the judicial is not the third element of the conception. The individuality uniting the other two lies beyond these spheres. The political state is divided into three substantive branches: (a) The power to fix and establish the universal. This is legislation. (b) The power, which brings particular spheres and individual cases under the universal. This is the function of government. (c) The function of the prince, as the subjectivity with which rests the final decision. In this function the other two are brought into an individual unity. It is at once the culmination and beginning of the whole. This is constitutional monarchy. Note.-The perfecting of the state into a constitutional monarchy is the work of the modern world, in which the substantive idea has attained the infinite form. This is the descent of the spirit of the world into itself, the free perfection by virtue of which the idea sets loose from itself its own elements, and nothing but its own elements, and makes them totalities; at the same time it holds them within the unity of the conception, in which is found their real rationality. The story of this true erection of the ethical life is the subject matter of universal world-history.” 5

The judiciary or court of the king was originally seen as an executive power, and then conceived as part of the legislature as a court of lords in parliament, before the notion of its absolute independence evolved. But what may the legislature and judiciary do without the undivided or executive force? So Hegel was and should be taken seriously even though he justified his logical arguments with gobbledygook about a nebulous Spirit. Here the exalted spirit somehow descends into its exaltation, as if transcendent even of its own exaltation. He believed the State itself is divine, as the highest conception of the unity of mankind. Ironically, he warned of this mystical tendency in Germany before he unwittingly relied upon the same strategy:

“Concerning the constitution, as concerning reason itself, there has in modern times been an endless babble, which has in Germany been more insipid than anywhere else. With us there are those who have persuaded themselves that it is best even at the very threshold of government to understand before all other things what a constitution is. And they think that they have furnished invincible proof that religion and piety should be the basis of all their shallowness. It is small wonder if this prating has made for reasonable mortals the words reason, illumination, right, constitution, liberty, mere empty sounds, and men should have become ashamed to talk about a political constitution.”

Luther, when referred to his contradictions, called them God’s mysteries.

We recall that American “Constitutionalists,” in contrast to English Parliamentarians, thought the civil rights of individuals were essential to the proper definition of “constitution,” and wanted those rights forever entrenched in a written document. That is, without a bill of rights, there was no such thing as a constitution. Yet, absent a constitution dividing government into

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“branches” so that power is not in the same hands, just as a single bookkeeper should not be allowed to both handle and account for the cash, a bill of rights would not be worth the paper it was written on for those rights would soon be embezzled. After all, constitutions are wrought from fear of tyranny, to limit the power of government by guaranteeing privileged citizens certain rights against it. Even Americans who agreed that theories of “natural rights” were nonsense, or no more than the “right” of animals to survive they best they could, believed that all citizens should have equal privileges under law; they were already used to privileges, enjoyed under English law, privileges said to be their “birthright,” although not stated in a single document.

Of course the English parliament is supreme, and a law invoking liberties is just another law hence could be abolished. So the American drafters were forced to attach a bill of rights to have their constitution approved, whereas the French republicans preferred to declare the rights of man right up front. It would be said that the French, armed with their declaration of rights, led the continental countries to liberal revolutions and reforms, and thus advanced civilization, that is, if the broadening of liberty to everyone constitutes progress. The French declaration was actually based on rights set forth in the constitutions of several American states, especially Virginia’s.

German liberals liked the French rights, but were afraid of mob violence. After all, democracy can spell tyranny as well as any tyrant, so perhaps the conflicts between the mob and the monarch and his lords might be harmoniously resolved with a properly constructed political instrument—religion worships absolute power; politics distributes it. They looked to the constitutional monarchy of England, with its monarch virtually reduced to a figurehead, and perceived its parliamentarism as a great danger, for it has no “branches,” and a majority can ride roughshod over all. German liberals wanted a strong man, an independent emperor, not a liberal queen, someone who could guarantee their rights, to property and position, for instance, and keep the evils of parliamentarism, including socialism and fascism, at bay. So, an examination of the evolution of constitutions reveals an affinity between the American and German temperament in that regard, and beckons Americans to beware of the danger of having an elected king with a court in the Senate backed by the mob in the House—kings and ancient “tribunes of the people” historically curried favor with the urban crowds in their struggle with rural lords.

Bills of rights and constitutions may look good on paper. Many of the constitutions of the German states prior to 1848 had certain rights set forth in them, so it was said that a federal constitution needed no declaration of rights, but a lot of good rights do if they are not observed by the superior force. A government is no better than its officials no matter how it is constituted. As Louis Blanc famously said, “It has always been my opinion that the Republican

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form of Government is not the sole object to be aimed at for there is no form of government which may not be used as a weapon against the interests of the community. How often did the name of REPUBLIC serve only to mask oppression and to gild tyranny!” 6 We find a current example in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which has become republican in name only under president Chavez, and his successor Maduro, virtual dictators despite the republic constitution they helped establish.

Nothing and only nothing is perfect. No basic or general law can in itself anticipate its every interpretation or possible application. Every constitutional form has its flaws, defects most often unknown until some untoward event occurs. Everything has a reason or explanation for why it is, but the reasons for social changes are too many and too complex to predict every change and prevent every evil consequence. Loopholes are bound to be taken advantage of by wily politicians. Different countries with similar constitutions go different ways. Much has been said of the emergency powers provided by the carefully devised Weimar Constitution. The provision of dictatorial powers in emergencies is an ancient practice for it is efficient for people to look to one authority when threatened. President Bush was no Adolph Hitler. That is not to say that the mistakes of the past should not be taken into account when revising or devising new constitutions.

Would Vicky ponder over weighty constitutional questions in Prussia? Yes. That much is made clear by her letters to Queen Victoria. Of course, constitutional catchword was Liberty. Since she was steeped in English liberties in the process of being extended so far as to eventually render the English monarch a mere figurehead of unity albeit an influential one when popular, her Anglo-ideology, as it were, did not sit well with Germans for whom a royal eunuch would not suffice to thwart the mob and its fractious fractions.

Royalty and nobility are naturally interested in government because their power depends on its organization. Although we do not have many details of the political education of Royal Princess Victoria, we know that her father had high hopes for her influence over Frederick when he decided to plant her in his beloved Prussia, wherefore he must have carefully indoctrinated her in liberal constitutional principles. In her letters we discover that she was politically astute and well informed on constitutional questions.

Sir Henry Frederick Ponsonby, Private Secretary to Queen Victoria, edited Vicky’s letters to the Queen. In his discussion of one such letter dated June 8, 1863, in regards to her husband Frederick’s estrangement from his aging father, King Frederick William, he explains that, “Bismarck, now well in the saddle, soon made it clear that he would not permit the Constitution of 1850 to stand in his way, and he persuaded William I to govern without parliament, and to agree to such an interpretation of the Prussian Constitution as would enable him to muzzle the press. To these autocratic acts both the Crown Prince and Princess were opposed.”

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“Fritz,” wrote Vicky to her mother, “had written twice to the King, once, warning him of the consequences that would ensue if the constitution was falsely interpreted in order to take away the liberty of the press. The King did it all the same.... A great friend of ours, a worthy and excellent man, as clever as liberal minded, told Fritz he would make him a speech at the Rathaus, and begged Fritz to answer him. I did all I could to induce Fritz to do so, knowing how necessary it was that he should once express his sentiments openly and disclaim having any part in the last measures of the Government…. The liberal papers are forbidden. We do not even know what is going on.”

So Vicky, as most wives do, did her best to influence her husband, in this case to defy his father, King Frederick William of Prussia, President of the North German Confederation. It would not be long before Bismarck would manage to entangle Germany in the Six Weeks War against Austria, sealing Prussia’s hegemony over Germany. Fritz took command of some rather “unpleasant” Polish troops. Vicky longed for his safe return, and, if that were not enough, she suffered the death of her youngest boy, Prince Sigismund, during his absence. Every mother can sympathize with the exemplary mother’s grief: “Now to see his little empty bed his clothes, his toys lying about, to miss him every hour and long oh so bitterly, so fondly and deeply to fold him once more to my heart it is such cruel suffering. My child, my child, is all I can say! I shall never see it more. I know he is spared sin and suffering. I know that his life was bright and happy as it was short. I feel that I left nothing undone which could have given him joy or comfort. I do not repine or refuse to take the comfort which God had mercifully granted, but I grieve even unto death.”

Old William Frederick, as we know, would be proclaimed the first German Emperor, at Versailles, on January 18, 1871, when Paris fell to Prussia during the Franco-Prussian War, a nine-month war claiming 170,000 lives provoked by the exceedingly ambitious Prince Bismarck among a handful of men, without the consent of the people, over William’s refusal to abide by Napoleon’s demand that William, as head of the House of Hohenzollern, never consent to the placement of a German king on the Spanish throne since that would disturb the European balance of power, or do anything to injure the dignity of France.

Bismarck suspected more than one woman of having liberal tendencies capable of subverting the aggressive propensity even of virtuous and honorable kings. Not that he believed that war was the best solution to all issues, but there was no more efficient way than war to unite Germans under Prussia with him as head of government. While conniving with general to wage war on France over perceived indignities, he suspected that William’s queen and Fritz’s mother, the beautiful Augusta of Saxe-Weimar, was trying to upset his plans by taking the reins of government into his own hands, deciding to courteously withdraw his consent, as head of the House of Hohenzollern, to place a German on the throne of Spain.

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“Thanks to his inclination to conduct affairs of State personally and on his own responsibility, the king had thrust his way into a situation to which he was not equal. . . . My exalted master . . . had so strong an inclination, if not to decide important questions for himself, at any rate to have his fingers in the pie, that he was unable to make a proper use of the device of acting behind cover. . . . This mistake must be largely ascribed to the influences which the queen kept at work upon him from the neighboring town of Coblenz. He was seventy-three years of age, a lover of tranquility, and disinclined to risk the laurels of 1866 in a new campaign. When he was free from petticoat influence, a sense of honor was . . . always dominant in him. . . .”

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Germany experienced catastrophic a terrible recession in 1847. Crops failed, people were rioting for bread, and a great deal of blood was being shed. Fritz’s father, Prussia’s King Frederick William IV, conceded orally in Berlin to demonstrators' demands for parliamentary elections, a constitution, and freedom of the press, and said that Prussia would forthwith be merged into Germany." The short-lived constitution of 1849 was drafted by a parliament established at Frankfurt during the revolution. Section VI entrenched the Fundamental Rights of the German People: “These rights shall serve as a standard for the individual German states, and no constitution or legislation of a German state shall abolish or circumscribe them.”

Class differences and capital punishment were abolished. Germans would have the “right to live in any part of the Reich's territory, to acquire and dispose of property of all kinds, to pursue his livelihood, and to win the right of communal citizenship.” Freedom of speech, press, assembly, religion, conscience, and occupation would be forever guaranteed. Arrest without warrant, and search and seizure of papers and property without due process, would have been prohibited. An independent judiciary was provided for. Every community would have fundamental rights under its own constitution, elect its chairman and representatives, and its ministers would be responsible to the people.

Alas for The People: the revolution failed; the Frankfurt Parliament disbanded. The nationalist faction was no longer liberal; it was reactionary, arch-conservative. The King did make a few concessions to the liberals, hence the Prussian Constitution of 1850. Nonetheless, the monarch could nominate and dismiss Prussian and Federation officials. His consent to legislation was required. He commanded the armed forces during war, and had the power to appoint and dismiss officials in peacetime. The franchise was limited to propertied males in such a way that a militant, conservative faction normally supportive of the monarchy controlled the organs of government. By the way, no less than Kant and Hegel had argued that monarchism is the natural and ideal form of government, and a few scholars still agree.

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Now Prince Consort Albert in England had long dreamed of a Germany united under Prussia. He had even written a pamphlet on the subject, ‘The German Question Explained,’ so here was an opportunity to realize his dream of unification, a dream he discussed with Fritz, and which he must have shared with his darling daughter. And we know very well what side of the question the Queen of England came down on notwithstanding her so-called illiberal or “Victorian” attitudes. She was so busy bearing children that the man of the house virtually ran the kingdom.

The arrangement for the marriage of the English princess and the Prussian prince was kept secret from the Princess Royal for some time, but the affection of the engaged couple for one another during his visits was obvious. After all, she was practically German herself via her German father and Queen Victoria’s mother. Fritz asked Vicky’s parents for her hand in 1855. The two were wed in England in 1858, when Vicky was eighteen, Fritz twenty-seven. They sailed for the continent after a brief honeymoon. The future Emperor Frederick III was already a great admirer of the English constitution and his royal English wife.

Intelligent and liberally educated, the new crown princess of Prussia considered herself to be a "freeborn English woman." As far as the Prussians were concerned, she was “the English woman,” Die Englanderin, so-called by Count Bismarck, in a similar way that Marie Antoinette had been "the Austrian woman," in France.

Prince Albert and Queen Victoria of England

The English and Prussians were supposedly of similar racial stock, but they differed greatly in political temperament: 'English' meant 'liberal,' a term implying parliamentary power and figure-headed monarchy, things no Prussian noble worth his horse and sword would stand for.

Vicky loved her new country for awhile. During the Prussian-Austrian war, when her husband's battlefield successes were transforming him into a national hero, she wrote home to Queen Victoria: "I feel that I am NOW every bit as proud of being Prussian as I am of being an

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Englishwoman, and that is saying a very great deal, as you know what a John Bull I am and how enthusiastic about my home. I must say the Prussians are a superior race, as regards intelligence and humanity, education and kindheartedness...."

She loved and patronized the arts, sciences, and girls’ education: "Amongst the liberals," she wrote in her 13 August 1888 letter to Queen Victoria, "I have many good and true friends, also among men of science, letters and art. But these people are not noisy or powerful." She would speak of her dearly departed Fritz: "All that is foreign, especially all that is English, is hated, because it is thought to have a Liberal tendency! They did not understand Fritz, he was too good, too noble, too enlightened."

She obviously loved Fritz and her son Willy, destined to be the emperor (William II) who would lead German into the Great War. Perhaps she did not love her congenitally damaged son well enough, or, if we are to believe in liberal psychoanalysis, not in the right way. Instead of smothering him with liberal love to overcompensate for his birth trauma, she subjected him to a tortuous regime to willfully overcome it.

Poor Willy had been mauled during his feet-first (breech) birth, leaving his left arm paralyzed and shriveled after the doctor yanked on it. One shoulder would eventually sink lower than the other as he developed, causing his head to tilt to one side. He was fitted with a brace, which must have been a tortuous experience, until a doctor finally cut some tendons so he could hold his head up straight.

Vicky’s letter to Queen Victoria describing Willy’s condition and brace

To add insult to injury, the babe was lain swathed in rags, unattended on the floor, for two hours after his birth, nearly suffocating while doctors struggled to save his mother’s life. Today he would be classified as “disabled”; then he was called “crippled,” a disgraceful condition not fitting to imperial majesty; never mind the history of men who overcompensated for their physical and mental defects to rule their people if not the world. He was partially deaf in the left ear as the result of damage to the balancing mechanism of his inner ear; that would make it difficult for him to ride a horse in the future, much to his embarrassment, and to hunt.

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Furthermore, Germans blamed the damage to him on England; that is, on his English mother and her English doctor. He himself would later complain to Vicky that English doctors had not only maimed him, but had also killed his father by not excising a cancerous tumor from his throat in time to save him.

Willy was forced to wear an atrocious bracing contraption, and made to study and train for twelve hours a day, six days a week. He studied Latin, Greek, World History, and Mathematics. He did not like math at all. He excelled at horseback riding, swimming, shooting, tennis, and he eventually took quite a liking to the military arts, losing his affection for the Army only when he discovered it did not like the Navy.

His useless arm throughout was the family curse. Sad to say, his English mother once called him a "cripple" in front of company. Let us not paint Vicky too black, however, as her calumniators have done. According to Freud's analysis of much of this and more besides, Willy was bound to take revenge on his strong-arm mother, rejecting her and his 'weak' liberal father in favor of William I, his tough Prussian grandfather. That is to say, he "skipped a generation." And let us not forget what Freud’s estranged psychoanalytic son, Alfred Adler, had to say about the tendency to overcompensate for physical weaknesses with a striving for superiority: Kaiser Wilhelm had a saddle installed in his office, which he mounted and imagined conquering the world. His pastime when in exile after the war: chopping down enough trees to build a navy.

William II shooting with one arm (L) cutting trees in exile with one arm (R)

It must also be said that Willy both loved and hated his English mother, as normal offspring are wont to do. And like many children with problems at home, he loved his grandparents even the more. He certainly loved his grandfather, William I, and he was fond of his grandfather's Iron Chancellor, Bismarck, until he saw fit to dismiss him. He loved most his grandmother, Queen Victoria of England, who died in his arms—he tried to lift her into her coffin despite his withered arm.

Vicky complained early on that the conservative Prussian ruling party had stolen her Willy to make him his grandfather's boy, yet she hoped the liberals and progressives would eventually win him over. No doubt he was glad to get out from under her liberal thumb at home. Like

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mother like daughter? Her own mother was overbearing, micromanaging her daughters when out of the nest, relying on a network of informers and spies to keep her informed. She wrote to Vicky every day. Having had nine kids herself, childbirth disgusted her: She responded to the news of Vicky’s pregnancy with, “"The horrid news... has upset us dreadfully," and she called Vicky a cow when she discovered she was breastfeeding baby Willy. 7

We shall not blame the Prussian Old Guard for their prejudice turned to justified bias given Victoria Louise's intrigues to accomplish the mission given to her by Alfred before his death, the father who had believed in constitutional government and who, or so Vicky said, "advocated every true, right and sound principle and therefore was great and wise and happy." She was a traitor to Prussian militancy; she wanted culture to rule.

Albert had also declared, "Prussia claims to stand at the head of Germany, but she does not behave like a German." In fact, it was Albert's express wish that the Princess Royal of England anglicize the Prussian state, a state her mother, Queen Victoria, had called a "police state."

The Crown Princess of Prussia would have her golden opportunity to liberalize Prussia after the 1862 showdown between 333 liberals and 15 conservatives in the Prussian Diet. The Diet had refused to fund the military. Frederick’s father, William I, was preparing to abdicate; the document was already drawn up, and he showed it to his horrified son. Fritz, in turn, turned to his English wife for advice. Vicky urged him to take the crown, prophesying that, if he failed to do so, he would regret it, and their children would have pay for the mistake. She said that, if she were a man, she would do the deed herself, however….

Frederick's effort to secure the throne and liberalize the government, which would have placed the Prussian army under civilian control, was too weak to succeed. Bismarck was called in from Paris by William I. Bismarck, as we know from his famous speech, relied on blood and iron, not on majorities for the resolution of political conflicts: “The great questions of the time will be decided, not by speeches and resolutions of majorities—that was the mistake of 1848 and 1849—but by blood and iron.” It would take him an incredible ten years to transform the tiny Prussian state into the most powerful force on the Continent.

Frederick, to stay out of prison, was made to promise that he would never attack his father's government again. He became a heroic commander-in-chief of armies after Bismarck launched the wars of the 1860s.He asked himself, after winning an important battle, "Where will victories under Bismarck lead us? That is the crushing question." He would later note that "War is a frightful thing." And, after he received the Order of Pour le Merite, he secretly wrote, "We can only mourn."

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Frederick III, Victoria, William, Charlotte

Fritz was altruistic and humane although he had romantic ideas about his family dynasty. He was a prime mover in the restoration of the Imperial order along Roman lines; those lines, however, were rather English: The structure of the Second Reich, which degraded the German kings to a status rather like that of English nobles, was more or less Vicky’s idea. Realistic First Bismarck, the powerful First Minister devoted to consolidating the German states, liked the imperial suggestions: the title, 'Kaiser', the unifying concept of imperial succession, and so on.

However that may be, Frederick’s English wife had prophesied truly: to his dying day, Fritz regretted his early failure to secure the crown for himself and his moderately liberal ideas. He was already dying when crowned; even then his liberalism had a chilling effect on the conservatives. Willy would pay dearly for his father's weakness: he moved militantly to the right; millions of lives were lost along with the Prussian monarchy.

Emperor Frederick was doomed by disease to die when he took the throne: throat cancer cut his reign to ninety-nine days. "Fate," said Erick Eyck in his biography of Bismarck (Zurich, 1944), “denied Germany an Emperor for whom humanity was more than an empty word." G.O. Gooch, in the Forward to Richard Barkeley’s The Empress Frederick (New York 1956), stated that, “It has required two World Wars to teach the German people that the system of autocracy which satisfied the Iron Chancellor, his master and the Prussian Junkers provides no solution of the national and international problems of an industrialized and interdependent world. Vicky and

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Fritz belong to the category of pioneers who saw the Promised Land from afar but were denied the privilege of taking possession.”

Of course the differing diagnoses given by the German and English doctors had to be controversial; conservatives erroneously argued that Hohenzollern tradition should have barred the liberal prince from taking the throne with a fatal disease. The German doctors had diagnosed cancer, and wanted to cut out his larynx externally, which would have rendered him speechless. They called in Morell Mackenzie, Britain’s foremost throat doctor, who was expected to concur, but he did not agree with immediate extirpation of the larynx, preferring to perform a biopsy, first of all, to be certain it was cancer, and to gradually excise diseased tissue through the mouth in hopes of saving the patient with voice intact. The German doctors, saving face, claimed the treatment made the disease worse, killing the patient.

Newspaperman Edward Legge thought Bismarck and his henchmen were justifiably alarmed at the prospect of Fritz remaining as their emperor with Queen Victoria’s liberal daughter by his side. “All this time the semiofficial papers were writing coarsely and brutally against both the Emperor Frederick and the Empress. No effort was made to prevent the publication of their scurrilous articles, which seemed to afford the ‘Court party’ much gratification.”

Be that as it may, Dr. Mackenzie was blamed by the rumor mills for Frederick’s “premature” death. Rumor mongers claimed that Vicky had conspired with Queen Victoria in the first place to engage Dr. Mackenzie and to influence his opinion because she blamed German doctors for crippling her son Willy when she gave him birth. In any event, the gossip had Vicky determining the course of world history.

Whatever her role in the event, politically manipulated opinion, which was predominantly liberal yet still jealously German, had an effect on the outcome. If the early removal of the tumor would have saved Fritz’s life, and her intervention did influence the English doctor not to extirpate it in time to save him, and if Fritz was as liberal as he was supposed to be, and had survived to reign, then perhaps Vicky did unwittingly alter the course of history.

The King is dead, long live the King. Rebellious Willy, as if staging a coup against his parent's liberalism, had Hussars surround the family residence as he changed its name from Friedrichson back to its original name, NeuesPalais. He showed no grief for his deceased father, and he treated his liberal English mother callously. A relative said William was not deliberately unkind, but was simply "thoughtless." His mother, who fell from prominence when her son took over the Empire, often complained about insults at his hands then and thereafter.

As The English Woman lay dying of cancer, sometime after her husband's death by the same cause, she asked her son, now King of Prussia and German Emperor, to wrap her naked body in an English flag and send it to England for burial. Willy consulted with tough old Chancellor

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Bismarck, whom she had styled her bête noir. As far as Bismarck was concerned, she was a traitor on account of her English intrigues against Germany, at least according to the eminent historian Emil Ludwig’s accounts of events. Wherefore it is said that Vicky’s dying wish was dishonored, for reasons of state, and buried in 1901 in Potsdam, implying that Bismarck was the state. Another reason of state could be that she was buried as a German queen should be, in Germany.

The so-called intrigues were in large part based upon what Bismarck suspected she was saying to her husband and her mother. Some derogatory remarks were discovered in her private letters when published. The alleged hatred was purportedly mutual. After Bismarck was appointed First Minister, Vicky declared in a letter to her mother, "It is a totally erroneous idea that a man like Bismarck can be of use to our country—he has no principles." She wrote that Bismarck was a “wicked man,” that he horrified Fritz, then crown prince, who feared that the “volcanic” First Minister would try to wage war on England.

The Memoirs of Count Bernstoff: “Emperor Frederick’s death was certainly the most unhappy event in the later history of Germany. Under his rule the constructive genius of the nation would probably have found expression, which would equally have accomplished the Western orientation of our foreign policy, and directed our home policy along the lines of evolution towards a liberal democracy. Instead of which came the crass materialism of the age of William II, in which the pursuit of wealth extinguished all idealism, in politics and elsewhere.”

Bismarck and the Empress

“The Empress Frederick was—together with Frau Cosima Wagner—one of the most remarkable women I have been privileged to meet. In later years it was vouchsafed to me to break a lance for her reputation in history, when Emil Ludwig wrote his biography of the Emperor William II. I had seen a great deal of the eminent writer in Constantinople, when he was there as war correspondent for the Vossische Zeitung, and I was ambassador. He came to see us at our then

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country seat on the Starnberger See, with proofs of his book in a suitcase, and asked me to check them for actual historical errors. I then read the whole book, and we agree on certain alterations, but on two main questions Ludwig would not budge. As Jacob contended with the angel, so did I with him—first, that he should not publish the book, and when he would not yield on that point, that he would alter the whole passage about the Empress Frederick. I could not prevail on Ludwig, nor could Princess Hatzfeldt, whom he also consulted. But when Ponson by subsequently published the Empress’s letters to her mother, Ludwig wrote a postscript to his book, which he sent me. This was a truly honorable palinode (retraction).”

Human beings naturally regret the fact they will surely die, and they tend to worship the dead to keep them alive, reassuring themselves in the process that at least they may be remembered and appreciated more when dead than alive, for that is a sort of life after death, and one hopefully free from criticism. Of course an infamous person is likely to be despised when s/he has gone to hell.

People are inclined to admire and praise great public figures even the more when they are gone although they know little more of them than their reputation. Family, friends, members of the same stock and social strata may praise the deceased to the high heavens, giving us cause to wonder whom they love the more, themselves or the dearly departed. The female “race” certainly deserves more credit than it gets on this Earth from men who place Woman on a pedestal to keep her out of the way, at home or at charities, while they do the dirty work only men can do. If the She happens to be of royal blood, say, a princess in a country where she may not be a Queen unless married to a King, and has her prestige truncated by his untimely death and the ascension of a disrespectful son, we have even more cause to rue her fate and adore her for what she could have been, at least if the king, upon whom her good influences were brought to bear, would have remained alive.

That is not to say that Vicky, who is an easy subject for sympathetic writers and readers to fall in love with, does not deserve her memorials, but to say that the memorials do not prove that she and her husband could have saved the world from two ruinous world wars if he had remained alive. As to the extent of her influence on her sympathetic king, it was no doubt great, yet it is impossible to ascertain what effect it has had on our world.

“A friend” memorialized Empress Frederick with: “The Empress Frederick was a loving daughter, a faithful wife, a devoted mother. Her character was misunderstood in the land of her adoption, which was not ripe for the advent of such a pioneer of liberal thought; she went there fifty years too soon. Her great influence, her unbounded energy, were devoted to the cause of freedom and justice, to the emancipation of women, the protection of the weak, the development of all that is most noble in man's nature, to the cultivation of art, to the relief of the sick rind the support of those in trouble. She was fearless in speech, courageous in her

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convictions, confident in her strength. She, alas, had many enemies, jealous of her great influence, envious of her universal knowledge; but, on the other hand, she had devoted friends, who will always cherish the recollection of her great qualities, her loving nature, and her brilliant example of uprightness. A distinguished Royal physician is reported to have said that there were three races of mankind--a Royal race, a white race, and a black race. When the history of the Empress Frederick's life is written in years to come, not in the fierce light of popular prejudice still subsisting in Germany as illustrated by Bismarck, who, to a great extent, encouraged this feeling when he invariably alluded to her as "the Englishwoman, the Guelph"--she will be handed down to posterity as one of the most remarkable women of the Royal race, a daughter of a great Queen, the Mother of a powerful Emperor." 8

Lord Salisbury expressed his condolences in the House of Lords: "When the then Princess Royal left these shores, there was no person, either of contemporary experience or in history, before whom a brighter prospect extended itself in life, and all that could make it desirable spread itself before her. She had a devoted husband, himself one of the noblest characters of his generation, who probably centered in himself more admiration than any man in his rank or in any rank. She had every prospect of becoming the Consort of the Emperor—an absolute emperor—of the greatest of the Continental Powers. She had every hope that she would share fully in his illustrious position, and in no small degree in the powers that he wielded. This was before her for nearly thirty years, and in that time she had all the enjoyments which were derived from her own great abilities, her own splendid artistic talents, and from the powers which she exercised over the artistic, aesthetic, and intellectual life of Germany. She occupied an unexampled position. Then suddenly came the blow, first on her husband and then on herself. By that fell disease—which probably is the most formidable of all to which flesh is heir—her dream of happiness, of usefulness, and glory was suddenly cut short. The blow, in striking her husband, struck herself in even greater degree; and she felt--she could not but feel--how deeply she shared in all the disappointments, all the sufferings that attached themselves to his history. When he had been Emperor only a few weeks, he died, and then she spent her life in retirement. Her health failed, and she, too, fell under the same blow, passing through years of suffering, with the sympathy of all connected with her and all those who knew her. She was deeply valued in this country by those who knew her, and they were very many. She had an artistic and intellectual charm of no common order; she spread her power over all who came within her reach; and her gradual disappearance from the scene was watched with the deepest sorrow and sympathy by numbers in her own country and in this."

Lord Spenser’s tribute before King Edward and the Lords was likewise eloquent: “"Her Imperial Majesty had no ordinary character. Brought up with the greatest care and solicitude by her Royal and devoted parents, she early and ever afterwards showed the highest accomplishments, not only in art but in literature. She was herself an artist of no small merit,

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and her power of criticism and influence in art was even of a higher order. In this age, which had been so remarkable for the enormous number of persons who have joined in endeavors to alleviate the sufferings of the human race, whether in peace or in war, I venture to think that no one stands in a higher position than the Empress Frederick of Germany. During those wars, in which her illustrious husband played such a splendid part, she exerted herself to do all she could to alleviate the sufferings of the wounded, and she had ever in peace used her endeavors to promote the same objects among the suffering poor of her country. No one, I am sure, will be remembered in the future with more affection and devotion on this account than her Majesty. She was always sympathetic and energetic with regard to other matters. There was nothing which stirred her sympathies or energies more than the education and improvement of her own sex. She did much in this respect in her adopted country; but we cannot consider her life without remembering the beautiful simplicity and earnestness of it. She was devoted to duty, and although she suffered intensely during her life when her noble husband was afflicted with the terrible disease which took him off, and during the sad years in which the same malady afflicted her, she always showed a patient endurance which will remain an example for all mankind. I cannot but refer to her great charm in private as well as in public life. It so happened that very early in my life, before she was married, she honoured me with her acquaintance. It was only on rare occasions I had the privilege of continuing that acquaintance, but I have from time to time within the last few years seen her Majesty, and I shall always recall, as one of the most delightful recollections of my life, the charm and influence of her conversation."

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1 Betty Jane condemned this work in progress, which was inspired by her remarks about Michelle Obama and Columba Bush, and by her statement that the men are “crazy” for not considering the wives of candidates before voting for them. “Your work is ridiculous,” she said. “You should abandon it because everybody already knows about these people and the subjection of women in those days, There is nothing unique to be learned by it, and it has nothing to do with women who are getting beat up by their husbands today, women who would not be interested in your story even if it were made into a motion picture tragedy.”

2Croce, Benedetto, History, Its Theory and Practice, Transl. Douglas Ainslie, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company 1921

3 The Empress Frederick, A Memoir, Anonymous, London: James Nisbet & Co, Limited 1913

4 Professor G.A. Lenhaas, imperial librarian, quoted in Vol. LXXIII June 1913 edition p 1353 of Nineteenth Century, Spottiswood & Co, London

5 Hegel, George Wilhelm Friedrich, Philosophy of Right, transl. S.W. Dyde, London: George Bell & Sons 1896

6 Louis Blanc, 1848 Historical Revelations, London: Chapman and Hall 1858

7 BBC News Magazine, 31 December 2012, citing Bertie: A Life of Edward VII by Jane Ridley, London: Chatto & Windus, 2012

8 The Late Empress Frederick by A Personal Friend of Her Majesty, The North American Review, Vol. 173, No. 538 (Sep., 1901), pp. 377-386