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THE STORy OF My LIFE

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MYSELF AT FORTY-THREE

THE STORY OF MY LIFE

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

1934

Copyright, 1934, by CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

COPYRIGHT. 1933, ig34, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING CO.

Printed in the United States of A.merica

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1

“ Character is Destiny ”

“ Let your love for life be your highest hope, and let your highest hope be our highest thoughts of life

NIETZSCHE

FOREWORD

The story of my life! I have often been asked to write it, and I have always hesitated to do so for many reasons.

With the death of my dear husband, King Ferdinand, a certain chapter of my life closes, and I feel therefore that I can more easily look back upon the way, the long way, already pursued ; I can look at it from farther away, less personally, and that is perhaps what I have always been waiting for.

I have always wondered from what angle I should relate my own story, knowing that to a certain degree I must weigh my words, and yet I want to be as accurate, as truthful as possible; I do not want to be too dry, but I also do not want to be too passionate ; feelings must not run away with me.

In a way I want to look back upon it as though I were relating some- one else’s story; I would almost prefer to write it in the third person, but that would be like pretending, and I have never pretended. All my life I have been almost dangerously sincere and I cannot depart from that absolute sincerity.

I think to-day I have found the angle from which I want to write my story, the angle which represents me in relation to Roumania. Let it be Roumania and I, or I and Roumania — it comes to the same thing, and have patience with me if many thoughts, many inferences and conclusions are woven in among the facts I have to relate, for life has already been long enough and events plentiful enough to have taught me many a lesson, and to have made of me something of a philosopher in my own small way.

Roumania and I — but of course I shall have to return to the far, far past, because no life can be completely told without telling also of childhood and youth, which are such factors for the forming of char- acter, and my childhood was a happy childhood, upon which I love to look back.

CONTENTS

PART ONE

CHILDHOOD

CHAPTER PAGE

I.	Eastwell Park	3
2.	Osborne Cottage	26
3-	Clarence House, Scotland and Russia	49
4-	Russian Memories	82
5-	Malta	96
6.	More Malta Memories	127
	PART TWO
	YOUTH
7-	The Coburg Years	143
8.	Education at Coburg	158
9-	Devonport — Berlin — Betrothal	192
IO.	Preparations for Marriage and New Relations	212
ii.	Carmen Sylva	239
12.	The Wedding	258
	PART THREE
	EARLY WEDDED DAYS
13-	Welcome to Bucarest	273
14.	Society in the Capital	289

ix

X

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

15. Carol Is Born 313

16. Coronation of Nicolas II of Russia 327

17. Back to Roumania 344

18. Illness: Ferdinand and Carol 384

19. King Carol’s Advisers 407

20. My Friends 429

21. Years of Discovery 449

22. More Coronations: Edward VII; George V 458

PART FOUR

1906-1914

23-	To Germany and Russia	47 1
24.	Royalties Visit Roumania	483
25-	My Children	516
26.	Some Family Matters	53°
27.	Roumania at War	549
28.	Prince Carol	56 3
29.	1914: National and Domestic	566
3°-	Serajevo and After	584

Index

597

ILLUSTRATIONS

Myself at forty-three Frontispiece

PAGE

Eastwell, Kent, the house where I was born 4

Myself at the age of ten 4

My mother, as I remember her at Eastwell 5

My father — Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, later, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-

Gotha 5

Uncle Paul — my mother’s youngest brother 30

My sisters and I 31

Lilies in my garden on the Black Sea 36

Aunt Alix — The Princess of Wales 37

Grandmamma Queen — Queen Victoria 70

Grandpapa Emperor; The Emperor Alexander II 71

Grandmamma Empress — Empress Marie Federovna— with my brother

Alfred as a baby 71

Aunt Miechen — Marie Pavlovna, Grand Duchess Vladimir of Russia 84

Aunt Ella — the beautiful Grand Duchess Serge of Russia 84

Uncle Serge — Grand Duke Serge, Governor of Moscow 85

Zina — Duchess of Leuchtenberg — Princesse de Beauharnais 85

We three sisters on horseback 104

Papa in his old Russian costume 105

A picnic at one of the Malta Forts no

“Captain dear” — our great friend Maurice A. Bourke, R.N. m

Cousin George— The Duke of York — on “Real Jam” 128

Characteristic view of Malta 129

XI

XU

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAOE

Picture of Verdala — Looking down towards the Boschetto 129

San Antonio 134

The beloved little shelter at Verdala, which I found again after forty

years 134

Beginning to grow up: at the age of fifteen 135

My brother Alfred at the age of eighteen 135

My bridegroom — The Crown Prince Ferdinand of Roumania 212

The Castle of Sigmaringen 213

Fiirst Carl Anton of Hohenzollern Sigmaringen — my husband’s grand- father 213

My father-in-law, Fiirst Leopold of Hohenzollern, in the robes of the

Black Eagle 222

My mother-in-law, Furstin Antonia of Hohenzollern, born Infanta of

Portugal 222

King Carol of Roumania 223

The Burg Hohenzollern 226

As a bride, in the Roumanian dress sent me by the King of Roumania 227

Queen Carmen Sylva painting, and some of her ladies 246

“Ducky,” my sister Victoria, just after her marriage 247

Carmen Sylva as she was when I first saw her 248

Our first married picture 249

The first photograph taken of me in Roumania, 1893 264

My husband with our first child, Carol 265

Queen Victoria at Coburg with her daughter the Kaiserin Auguste- Victoria; and her three sons: Albert Edward, Alfred (my father) and Arthur, Duke of Connaught 324

The Emperor Nicolas II in 1896 325

Alix — The Empress Alexandra 325

ILLUSTRATIONS

xiii

PAGE

Uncle Serge and Aunt Ella in old Russian dress 334

“Ducky” and I with our pages 335

Carol and Elisabetha as quite small children 358

There were children in my house ... 358

Jumping a hurdle at Sinaia on my hunter “Wheatland” 359

As Colonel of the 4th Rosiori 359

Riding some favorite horses on the field of Cotroceni 404

Riding with “Ducky” in 1897 404

Cousin Chariy: The Princess of Saxe-Meiningen 405

“Mignon” amongst the peonies to which I always compared her (snap- shot taken by myself) 405

Ion Kalinderu 420

Off for my morning ride on “Airship” 421

Waldorf Astor on “Airship” 421

Pauline Astor dressed as a Roumanian gipsy (snapshot taken by myself) 440

My friend Maruka Cantacuzene 440

In 1907 at Cotroceni 441

My sister “Ducky” at Wolfsgarten with one of her favorite horses 450

“Ducky” and I in our younger days 451

Elisabetha in her twelfth year 456

My sister Beatrice, called “Baby” 457

The dress I wore for the minuet (with Carol) 484

Cousin Boris 485

In one of my Sinaia rooms 485

King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, a portrait he himself calls Ultima Phasis 500

The time of big hats 501

“Nicky” when two years old (photograph by Beresford) 518

XIV

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

“Mignon” (picture taxen by Princess Nadeje Stirbey) 518

Carol at ten years of age 519

Ileana, three years old 519

Carol directing the military band 520

Uncle with Carol (snapshot taken by myself) 520

“Nicky” on horseback (snapshot taken by myself) 521

“Mignon” on horseback (snapshot taken by myself) 521

My Mamma 526

Sister Sandra 526

Uncle with Nicky 527

Carmen Sylva on Ovid’s Island (snapshot taken by myself) 540

Grand Duke Kirill in 1899 540

My little Mircea 541

King Carol on the Danube in 1913, with General Averescu and Crown

Prince Ferdinand 550

In national dress: my two sons and I, in the Sinaia forest 551

Grand Duchess Kirill (“Ducky”) with her daughters, Marie and Kira 580

Uncle and Aunty in their old age 581

PART ONE CHILDHOOD

Chapter X

EASTWELL PARK

I was born in Eastwell, Kent, in 1875.

A big grey house in a huge beautiful English park: woods, great stretches of grass, wide undulating horizons, not grand or austere, but lovely, quiet, noble — an English home.

I was my parents’ second child. The first was a boy and he had been given the name of Alfred, after my father, who was Queen Victoria’s second son and an officer in the British Navy.

My mother was delighted to have a little girl ; she said she liked girls better than boys, and she called me Marie, which was her name and also her mother’s. She loved and venerated her mother with all the strength of her soul.

In 1873, Marie Alexandrovna, only daughter of the Emperor Alex- ander II of Russia, had married Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, and had come from far Russia to live in England.

Most people would imagine that it was a great piece of luck and happiness to come from Russia to England. But my mother dearly loved her native country, and she never really felt completely happy in England, though she had many dear friends there. We, her children, on the contrary, born in England, loved England deeply and clung with all our hearts to that love all through our lives, and it was a sadness to discover, later on, that never in her heart of hearts had our mother looked upon England as home, not as the home of homes that one passionately loves.

This is one of the sadnesses of mothers who are “exported,” or should I rather say “imported” ; when their own children become in their turn ardent patriots, they can never quite realize how their mothers also cling to the countries of their birth. To their minds their mother belongs to them and to the country her children were born in, and they cannot imagine any other love in their parent’s heart. Certain things always remain difficult to understand and generations should be merci- ful towards each other, parents to their children, but also children to

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

their parents, for who can fathom the depths, the longings, the struggles and disappointments of the human heart? And mothers must not imagine that they can implant their ideals, their loves and their passions, in the souls of those to whom they have given birth.

Times, circumstances, environment, influences, all go to make chil- dren different from their parents ; besides, a mother often forgets, when her child astonishes or disappoints her, that she did not make it all by herself. There are always two streams of blood that run in one child, two long series of ancestors (illustrious or not, that has nothing to do with it), who go fundamentally to the making of the child each mother instinctively believes is hers, for did she not carry it for nine months and then through her own agony give it life?

My parents had three more daughters, Victoria Melita, born in Malta in 1876, Alexandra Victoria, born at Coburg two years later, and last of all Beatrice, born, like me, at Eastwell in 1883, who was the “Ben- jamin” of the family and well knew how to affirm that enviable position.

Our childhood was a happy, carefree one, the childhood of rich, healthy children protected from the buffets and hard realities of life.

Our mother played a greater part in our lives than our father did ; he, being a sailor, was often away from home ; he was even a little bit of a stranger to us, a rather wonderful stranger, exceedingly good-looking, sunburnt, blue-eyed, and I seem to remember that he had almost black hair, though later on in his portraits I remarked that his hair was less dark than it seemed to my childish eyes.

Were we in awe of him? A little perhaps; he was very wonderful, anyhow, and the days when he paid attention to us were red-letter days, but it was Mamma who was the great reality of our lives.

It was Mamma who settled things, Mamma to whom we turned, Mamma who came to kiss us good night, who took us out for walks or drives. It was Mamma who scolded or praised, who told us what we were or were not to do.

Mamma loved us passionately. Her whole life was given up to her children, we were the supreme and central interest of her existence, but she had her own ideas about education, and she never admitted any mixing of generations ; she was never comrade nor companion, but always very definitely the parent ; the one who represented authority as

EASTWELL, KENT, THF HOUSE W HERE I W AS BORN

MYSELF AT THE AGE OF TEN

MY FATHER — ALFRED, DUKE OF EDINBURGH, LATER MY MOTHER

DUKE OF SAXE-COBURG-GOTHA AS I REMEMBER HER AT EASTWELL

EASTWELL PARK

5

well as love, the ruling sovereign of her household, the one who held the sceptre and let you feel that the power over good and evil was hers.

Papa was a sailor ; he was also a sportsman, a very good shot and, like all English gentlemen, he loved the shooting season, and in autumn many people were invited to come to Eastwell Park, gentlemen and ladies with high-sounding names and of many nationalities.

On these occasions before going to bed we children were dressed in our finest clothes and sent down to the big library to say good evening to our parents’ friends. I still remember the feeling of having my hair well brushed ; I had a great mass of what my sisters called “yellow” but what I loved to think of as “golden” hair, of which old nurse Pit- cathly, a splendid old Scotch woman, was tremendously proud. It would stand out in all its combed beauty, for indeed Nana groomed and cleaned and polished us up like pampered horses, and I can still feel in my shoulders the little twist I would give to be able to catch a glimpse of my own shining mane. But old Nana loved sister Ducky — as Victoria Melita was called in the family — best, and Ducky had brown corkscrew curls which Nana rolled over her finger with the aid of a comb. Ducky was my dearest chum, we were inseparable, though very different both in looks and character.

Ducky was dark and though a year younger was always taller than I, and was mostly taken for the elder, which annoyed us both. She was more serious than I and inclined to be resentful when reproved ; she also loved jealously and was what our elders called a “difficult child.”

I was more smiling, my hair was golden, I took things more easily than Ducky, and made friends more quickly, but Nana liked Ducky best because she imagined that the rather passionate child was often misunderstood, and perhaps she was.

Ducky and I were scrupulously fair towards each other : we always played the game and never wanted to have separate successes ; we could not conceive of a life where we should not be side by side.

Later on our mother told us that she had never cared for these big shooting-parties : she said the gentlemen came home sleepy and had no conversation after a long day with their guns ! Besides, she never cared for the damp English climate in winter.

Mamma was not fond of sport ; she was highly cultured and liked to

6

THE STORY OF MY LIFE

talk to clever, interesting people, and I remember my rather pained astonishment when one day she told us that she much preferred diplo- mats and politicians to soldiers, sailors or sportsmen ; this as a child and even later as a girl and quite young woman seemed incomprehensible to me, for I and my sisters had a truly feminine love of uniform and of the strong, tanned, out-door man, even if he yawned in the evening after a long day’s sport !

But these parties which bored our mother were full of interest and excitement to us. We immediately classed the guests as children always do, according to their likes or dislikes. Of course their looks played a great part, but also the way they treated us, for some grown-ups know better than others how to make themselves loved by children.

I was, even at the age of five, a real daughter of Eve in my love for beautiful dress; in fact, beauty in every form found in me an ardent, yea almost a pagan adorer.

It was at one of these Eastwell shooting-parties that I first remember seeing the lovely Princess of Wales. She came down one day at tea- time in a marvellous red velvet robe with long flowing train. She dazzled me utterly, I was speechless with adoration and my enchant- ment can be imagined when this velvet-clad apparition, who called her- self Aunt Alix, volunteered to come up to the nursery to see us in our bath !

There she sat in her glorious crimson gown, and fascinated, I gazed at her over my sponge, spellbound, fearing that the enchanting vision might suddenly fade away.

I was always strangely moved by beauty. Any form of beauty, be it a lovely woman, flower, house or horse, be it a glorious landscape or picture; each time beauty came to me I felt as though it was a God- given pleasure, a gift He had especially allowed me to possess, with my eyes at least if not with my hands. And my joy was made keener by the faculty I had of enjoying beauty as a whole as well as in detail. The splendour of a wide-spreading view of sea or mountain did not hinder me from perceiving and loving the most humble flower in the ditch.

This faculty of enjoying beauty as a whole and in detail has followed me all through life. Line, colour, form and the sounds and scents be-

EASTWELL PARK

7

longing to each picture, have made life extraordinarily rich, and with every one of those unforgettable impressions comes always that feeling of gratitude for each new beauty revealed to my soul.

To-day I still feel grateful to beloved Queen Alexandra for the vision of beauty she was to me that evening in her ruby-red velvet gown, as I also remember, later in life, how another beautiful woman of our family moved me to such a degree of enchantment that I felt like falling down before her and worshipping her as the pagans of old worshipped their goddesses.

This other beautiful woman had a tragic and terrible fate. She was the Grand Duchess Elisabeth of Russia, my cousin, sister of the late Tsarina. She had married one of my mother’s younger brothers, the Grand Duke Serge. He was blown up by Nihilists, long, long before the revolution, whilst Governor of Moscow. She then entered holy orders, building a convent in which she lived, but her holy life brought her no mercy from the Bolsheviks ; she was abominably slaughtered in Siberia, but curiously enough her body was found and later on transported to Jerusalem, where it now lies in the Holy Land.

She was quite newly married when her beauty burst upon me as a marvellous revelation. Her loveliness was of what used to be called the “angelic” kind. Her eyes, her lips, her smile, her hands, the way she looked at you, the way she talked, the way she moved, all was exquisite beyond words, it almost brought tears to your eyes. Looking at her one felt like exclaiming with Heine :

Du bist wie eine Blume So hold und schon und rein:

I cli schau dich an, und Wehmut Schleicht mir ins Hers hinein.

Mir ist, als ob ich die Hande Aufs Haupt dir legen sollt’ ,

Betend, dass Gott dich erhalte So rein und schon und hold . . .

But I seem to have wandered far from my subject; forgive me this digression, but let me warn you that there will be many another as we

go along.

Our life at Eastwell is as a once vivid dream become just a little dim.

8

THE STORY OF MY LIFE

It was mostly the winter months we spent there. I believe it was often cold and damp, but to me the remembrance is entirely lovely.

Certain pictures and feelings have remained specially imprinted upon my mind. I shall carry them with me to the end of my life, hoarded away with all the memories I love.

Certain scents belong specially to Eastwell. However old I may grow, the smell of dry or damp autumn leaves will ever bring the old English home before my eyes, the park with each tree standing well apart from its neighbour so that it could develop in unhindered beauty, every single one of giant growth, and we children shuffling through the dead leaves, sniffing in the pungent smell we delighted in, while wisps of mist, like smoke, played about the branches overhead. That scent of autumn leaves, no matter where I may be, still evokes the vision of Eastwell Park and its woodland paths that our childish feet once trod. And in the kitchen garden there was that perfume of violet leaves mingling with the mouldly smell of potatoes and old sacks hoarded up in the tool-house near by, and a little farther on the rather bitter scent of the high laurel hedges we would slip through, which seemed to us a darkly mysterious passage to dream places to which we must finally come.

And the huge cedar tree on the lawn in front of the house, with its lowest boughs sweeping the ground under which we would crawl. This tree was a wonderful cathedral-like mansion in which we children each possessed a room. Some brambles, having found their way beneath the old tree’s shade, had climbed up its drooping branches, and swung down from them in long festoons. These hanging creepers gave a jungle-like appearance to our secret abode, and I imagined they were bell-ropes used by the fairies in the moonlight, during those enchanted hours when Nana would never let us creep out of our beds to explore the white world.

This curious sensation of mystery in all things is very characteristic of childhood. Children see things in other proportions, differently from their elders ; in all things there are strange shapes, there are colours, secrets, scope for discovery, that big people are quite unaware of. There are pictures within pictures, depths within depths, in all things there are possibilities just out of reach.

I had an imaginative turn of mind. I was the one who could tell

EASTWELL PARK 9

wonderful stories to my brother and sisters, romance lived in my soul and in all things I saw more than the naked eye could perceive.

This peculiarity has followed me through life, and now, at the age of fifty-two I still see visions and beauty in the most unexpected things and places.

At Eastwell there was a terrible unexplained mystery near the big lake. Our governess or nurse did not often take us that way as it was a long distance for short legs, but occasionally we would coax them to take that road which had, all unknown to those in authority, a gruesome attraction.

Hidden away in the bushes at the farther end of the lake was a well — at least, we imagined it to be a well — and from that well came an extraordinary sound. A deep, hollow, ghostly sound, as though des- perate hands were thumping, thumping, eternally thumping against dungeon doors.

“Someone is down there !” we would whisper to each other, “a ghost, a prisoner, or a terrible ogre, or some fearful creature that has been walled up?” but we never dared ask who was shut up there in that well. I do not think we even wanted to know, the glorious terror of the thing was better left unexplained. Boom, boom, boom ! and our hearts would beat excruciatingly ; we would hold each other’s hands and try not to hurry past or look afraid. Boom, boom! — what could it be?

To-day I know as little as I knew then what made that well, tank or reservoir, beat in the uncanny way, but in imagination I like to feel again those delicious shivers of fear we felt when we stole with hushed tread past the haunted place.

There was another corner which filled us with a feeling of dark mystery, but this was in the house itself.

I do not know if Eastwell House was as huge as it seemed to us children, but it had many unexplored parts and rooms into which we had never penetrated. Leading out of the marble-flagged hall was a broad, shallow front staircase of very dark wood, but there was also a back staircase. “No place for little girls,” declared our governess, forthwith making of the back-stairs a place of burning interest, a land of discov- ery and dark possibilities we longed to explore.

It was a very terrifying place, that back staircase; it gave you the

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

shivers as did the well near the lake, because it went deep, deep down, it seemed to descend into the very bowels of the earth. Looking over the railings, or rather, at that age, peeping through them, giddiness over- came you and you had to turn away. But as soon as you had looked away, something stronger than fear impelled you to look back again, to take another peep, because, half-way down was a mysterious corner which the servants called the “Glory Hole,’’ and this of all places was a place “not for little girls.” As far as I remember, the “Glory Hole” had a curtain before it instead of a door, which flapped backwards and forwards and there was always a light burning on the other side, so the “Glory Hole” must have been a very dark place. Like the well, even to-day I really have no clear idea what rites were perpetrated down in the “Glory Hole.” Was it a pantry of sorts? I cannot say, but to our childish imagination it was a private little “Hell” peculiar to the back- stairs, and we even imagined that it had a particular smell. Probably it had, but it was too far down, I think, to reach up to our inquisitive noses !

If we were discovered by the authorities peeping down over the back- stair banisters towards the “Glory Hole” we were quickly driven back to regions more in keeping with “nice little girls” as we were reprov- ingly told.

Oh, there is so much that I remember, though it was all so long ago. The Highland cattle for instance, those wide-horned, large-eyed crea- tures sauntering placidly over the path that led through the park to church. Lovely creatures they were, all curly, sometimes sand-coloured, sometimes chestnut, sometimes black, and their coats were so long that the hair hung in fringes over their foreheads. This gave a rugged and at the same time an almost childish look to their faces and somehow it was those fuzzy fringes that reassured you ; it made their expressions so kindly that you almost forgot the startling dimensions of their horns. They would stand as still as statues contemplating with raised heads and gentle eyes our goody-goody little procession, prayer-books in hand, winding its way to the House of God.

And the deer, whole herds of them grazing on the grass, or suddenly scared, scampering away into the woods. There wras nothing more won- derful than to pick up during our rambles bits of their fallen horns,

EASTWELL PARK

ii

bleached by exposure to sun and wind ; these were carried home and considered great treasures.

And one day we discovered a hollow tree with a big, big hole in it. It really must have been a very big tree because we three elder sisters as well as our brother could all four of us sit inside this hole. Of course we had to crawl into it on hands and knees, but inside there was room enough for the lot of us, and this hollow tree, for a long time, was the very centre of our games. Endless marvellous possibilities had arisen in our lives because of this wonderful refuge. We were Robinson Crusoe, we were Robin Hood and his followers, we were Red Indians or pirates and goodness knows what else.

In the middle of our round and rather dark retreat there was a lump of wood which hung down, disturbing our perfect comfort and we de- cided that to get rid of it we must either use an axe or a saw. Such implements were not to be had for the asking, so we had to plead with our father to procure us the tool needed, and I well remember his an- swering that we could take a saw if we liked, but that he absolutely forbade an axe. “An axe would take off a finger at one blow,” he de- clared, “whilst you would soon enough stop sawing if you began sawing your finger !” How well I remember his saying this ; some sentences re- main with you all through life.

Papa was a “rare” person, by which I mean that he did not occupy himself actively with his children ; he left that to Mamma, but occasion- ally he would, so to say, discover us and then he would invent some game or amusement that he seemed to enjoy as much as we did. He in- vented a thrilling game for the winter evenings ; the lamps were all put out and Papa would hide in a dark corner pretending to be an ogre. We never knew in which room he was. With fearful trembling we would crawl through the ink-black chambers and suddenly, when all danger seemed over, he would spring out from somewhere and catch us whilst we screamed as though he were really going to eat us up. It was a gruesome game and gave us the real thrill that danger gives to ad- venturers.

One day, rare occurrence, there was a tremendous fall of snow and Papa took us out for some tobogganing down a hill near the dairy. That was wonderful. I think it was the first snow I ever saw, and what

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

child can resist the fascination of snow? But in England snow never lasts — it came and went like a scarcely realized dream.

But I also remember some skating on the big lake, and although we were but wee wobbly beginners, I can still feel the rapturous ecstasy of launching forth upon the shiny surface. The keen winter air made your eyes water and painted your cheeks and nose fiery red, but it was be- yond words glorious. How I remember, too, the crumply round black velvet caps, trimmed with dark Russian sable which we wore for this memorable occasion ; these becoming little caps still further enhanced the pleasure of skating as did also the sip of the hot cinnamon-flavoured red wine which was given us as the sun sank in the West.

Likewise of delightful memory was the apple- and the pear-house, and I can still almost taste the aromatic flavour of the huge golden pear the gardener selected for me off one of the shelves where the fruit stood in tempting lines of green, red and yellow. Last but not least there was the excitement of Christmas !

The Christmas tree was set up in the big library, whilst the presents were laid out on white-covered tables all round the walls of the room. But what mysteries went on beforehand ! Papa, especially, became tre- mendously important at this season ; he liked occasionally to take things in hand, and became himself as eager as a child. But like all men he was excessively meticulous and could get very angry if the smallest de- tail he had planned was not religiously adhered to.

One of the fore-thrills of Christmas was the stirring of the servants’ plum pudding. This ceremony took place in the steward’s room, and also in the official part of the stables, because house and stables were two separate realms and one never dared overlap the other. The etiquette amongst the servants of a well-organized English household is all-im- portant. An enormous bowl was set upon the table and each child had to have a “go” at the stirring, which was a stiff job, but of immense consequence.

At last Christmas Eve was there, and the library doors, which had been kept closed for several days, were thrown open, and there stood the tree, a blaze of light, and all around upon the white-decked tables, one mass of gifts for everybody, no one ever being forgotten.

Oh, glorious moment of realization! And rather shyly, holding each

EASTWELL PARK

13

other’s hands, we children advanced towards all that light, till we stood in the very centre of it, were part of it ourselves.

For many, many a year the thrill of Christmas held good, the days of secret preparation beforehand, the mystery, the whispering, the hushed silence before the closed door and then the sudden fulfilment in a blaze of candlelight, accompanied by that delicious fragrance of singed fir- branches so inseparable from Christmas. Later the trouble and care of sorting, preparing, organizing became our share ; the thrill, the ecstasy of fulfilment had passed over to the younger generation, but all through my life in the far land of my adoption I tried to make the Christmases I arranged as much as possible like the Eastwell, and later the Malta Christmases. For those will ever be the Christmases that remain most unforgettable to me.

I feel I dare not pause too long there where my recollections are en- veloped in a haze of enchantment, due in a great part to distance and also to that wonder world in which children alone can dwell.

But something of that child-faculty of seeing pictures within pic- tures, depths within depths, mystery and romance in the every day, has been mine all along my road. It is the blessed faculty of beautifying things, of rendering more interesting events and people, of drawing out light rather than shade. It is the optimist’s attitude, a bit trying to the pessimist, or so I have been told, but although I belong to those who see reality with “peeled” eyes, I nevertheless perceive in all things the pos- sibility of beauty instead of the sordidness people to-day seem to de- light in. I see the good in people rather than the bad, the pity and pathos in wickedness and sin, rather than the crime ; far rather would I help with kind words than punish with a rod.

Weakness some may declare, but I would rather call it strength. Severity? Yes, when absolutely necessary, but seven times at least, if not seventy times seven, would I give my criminal the benefit of the doubt.

If this speciality of mine is going to be an irritation to you, then throw down my book straight off, because you will meet this spirit of optimistic tolerance all through its pages, till the very end, I hope !

Quite lately I met a delightful American who was already seventy years old ; he came to Roumania to see me because he felt from afar in

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

sympathy with me and my attitude towards life. I asked him what he was doing and he answered : “Travelling about from one country to an- other to know people, because all people are lovable if you really know them, be they English, American, Chinese, Hungarian, Hottentot or Zulu. I am going to spend what days are left to me in trying to make people at least like each other, if love is too big a word!”

And that old gentleman and I clasped hands. “I thank God,” said I, “for sending me someone who put my own thoughts into words !”

And now back again to my childhood, for you must still patiently follow me along more than one road, and I suppose I had better intro- duce you to some members of my family if this is really to be the story of my life.

The most important person, of course, dwarfing all others, was Grandmamma, Queen Victoria, “Grandmamma Queen” as we called her, in contrast to “Grandmamma Empress,” my mother’s mother, after whom I was called, whilst Ducky had been called Victoria after Grand- mamma Queen, the name of Melita being added as Ducky was born on the enchanted island of Malta; but more of Malta anon.

I believe that Grandmamma Queen had expected that I, as eldest daughter of the family, would be given her name, but Mamma felt that I must be called Marie, a name which, because it was her mother’s, was dearer to her than all others, and I must say I love my name ; Mary or Marie, there is something eternal about it, because is it not the name of the Mother of God?

I do not think that my mother always found it easy being Queen Victoria’s daughter-in-law, though they had a great respect for each other. Mamma had been brought up at the most autocratic of courts, the splendour of which had to be seen to be realized. She had been the Emperor’s only daughter and her position had therefore been excep- tional. Now she was the wife of Queen Victoria’s second son and all her sisters-in-law, even the unmarried ones, had precedence over her, having rights to the English throne. I believe my mother felt this rather sorely, but I was too much of a child then to know about any of those things which perplexed or upset grown-up people. My mother kept all worry and conflict from us, we lived in a real fool’s paradise. It was perhaps not a very good training for the future battles of life,

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15

but I thank her for it, all the same, with every fibre of my heart do I thank her, because with that life which she helped us to lead, she sowed a seed of idealism in my soul which nothing, nay, neither conflict, dis- appointment, disillusion or stern reality, was ever quite able to uproot.

My mother had been very severely brought up, and she herself had strict ideas upon education and behaviour, but there was at the same time a wideness of mind about her which made of her an exceptional woman, and above all her generosity was extraordinary. Of course she was wealthy, but she gave even beyond what it was reasonable to give, gave and gave, to big and small, to rich and poor; her very reason of existence was to be able to give.

She made us wonderfully happy, so of course we children imagined that she was perfectly happy herself. But later on I found out that she had never been really happy, or at peace with herself ; many things tor- mented her, she did not take life easily. The tremendously severe up- bringing she had received, the care expended upon her that her educa- tion and instruction should be in every way complete, the great and somewhat oppressive influence her own religion, which was the Ortho- dox, had upon her, all went to make her dissatisfied and critical with herself. Outwardly she may have appeared haughty, a stickler for form and proud of her rank, but inwardly she was humble, always tormenting herself, tortured with the idea that she had never lived up to the ideal set for her by her parents and those who had educated her.

But none of this did we notice as children ; later on, however, when life little by little opened my eyes to most things I began to fathom my mother’s real character and the moral conflicts that she had been through, and how she never really felt at peace with herself.

She clung to her Church with all her soul, and no matter in what house she lived, a little Orthodox chapel was erected in some corner of it, and she always kept in her service a Russian priest and two chanters who followed her wherever she went.

We children were brought up in the Anglican Church, and I believe it was a lifelong grief to my mother that we were Protestants. Some- times, though, she would take us into her little chapel, where, awed by the mystery of rites foreign to us, we stood gazing as in a trance at the precious icons, at the wondrous three-doored screen which shut off the altar, inhaling the heady fragrance of the incense and listening with

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

beating hearts to the grave, soul-stirring Russian chants. The Russian language is the language of languages for song, and Russia is the coun- try for stupendous bass voices.

The mystical atmosphere of these little sanctuaries impressed me deeply. I never felt an urge to change my own religion for that of my mother ; but standing beside her whilst she prayed and devoutly crossed herself in her own chapel, made me feel very near the Holy of Holies, and the ardent expression of belief lighting up my mother’s face during these services, moved me in a way difficult to describe.

The fact that she worshipped God in a way different from us, sur- rounded her in my imagination with a special nimbus ; it made her just a little unapproachable, strange, not quite belonging to the everyday world. Scrupulously respecting the faith we were christened in, she rather shunned speaking of religion with us, fearing perhaps to influ- ence us in any way. But there was also, I think, a feeling that we might not understand the beauty of her cult, that we might not approach with sufficient reverence that which was so fundamentally part of her inner being. So a certain shyness always existed between us when discussing or referring to religious matters.

Curiously enough, fate was later on to put the same problems before me, only the other way round.

I always remained a staunch Protestant, but all my six children were christened in my mother’s religion as it is the official religion of their country, and it was one of my mother’s most excruciating anxieties to see if her daughter would be equal to the difficult task, always fearing that I might not feel sufficient reverence for her Church, which she in- stinctively considered superior to mine.

I shall return later to religious questions as I have pondered much over them, coming to my own conclusions. I would, however, like to say here that my children and I never had that same diffidence about discussing religious questions as my mother and I had, for nowadays children and parents speak more easily to each other.

My mother had been brought up with the conception that generations must be kept strictly apart, and any more familiar attitude of child towards parent was in her eyes a want of respect.

Even now, one of my deepest regrets is that because I was her daugh-

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1 7

ter she never admitted, even when I was forty, that I should discuss things with her as though we were equals. She would not bridge the generations.

And yet I have the feeling that both of us would have found infinite comfort in discussing life’s problems together, in mutually confessing to each other what we had found hard or perplexing on our so different roads, both of us having married into foreign lands.

Because of that attitude of hers I seldom dared approach her for ad- vice, because I always to a certain degree had to keep on a mask whilst with her, because she never lifted hers.

Many a useless little comedy have we thus played to each other, she pretending not to know those things she knew as well as I did, and what was worse, knew that I knew that she knew ! And yet our masks were on all the time.

Had she the same desire as I had to tear them off? This has remained unanswered. Yet I dare to say that had she only been able to treat me as a woman, forgetting that I was her daughter, I might at times even have been a help, because my none too easy apprenticeship in a far-off country had taught me much ; but to the very end she would admit of no wisdom coming out of the mouth of the babe she had brought into the world.

Nowadays we talk freely with our children, we let them have ideas of their own, we will even occasionally allow them to give us a lead ; we do not abuse our rights as elders, we have more sympathy with their strug- gles, conflicts and desires. Are we preparing a stronger and better gen- eration? I wonder. Sometimes perhaps we swing too far round in the other direction, we recognize too many rights, too much freedom ; but that may also come from the fact that parents themselves do not grow old as quickly as in our times ; they feel themselves to be no more than middle-aged much longer than used to be the case.

About all these problems I have my ideas, and through having lived, seen and felt, I have come to many a conclusion, but I shall never in this one small book be able to relate, explain or argue out all that I have thought and learnt.

But suppose we now come back to Queen Victoria.

Many have already written about that great little woman, have de-

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

scribed her, dissected her character, her reign, her personal value. Far be it from me to want to paint any other picture of her than the one that fitted into my life, the picture of her as my childish eyes saw her and in later years the eyes of a woman, young and far away from her native land. In these days she was following my career with grandmotherly affection, but also with the anxious severity of one who wished that those of her House should do it every honour, no matter where they were placed.

Dear old Grandmamma, with her crinoline-like black silk dresses, her white widow’s cap, her shy little laugh and that little shrug of the shoul- ders which had become almost a trick, what a wonderful, unforgettable little lady she was.

The hush round Grandmamma’s door was awe-inspiring, it was like approaching the mystery of some sanctuary.

Silent, soft-carpeted corridors led to Grandmamma’s apartments which were somehow always approached from afar off, and those that led the way towards them, were they servant, lady or maid, talked in hushed voices and trod softly as though with felt soles.

One door after another opened noiselessly, it was like passing through the forecourts of a temple, before approaching the final mystery to which only the initiated had access.

Wonderful little old Grandmamma, who though such a small, unim- posing little woman to look at should have known so extraordinarily how to inspire reverential fear. Our nurses would drive us along before them like a troop of well-behaved little geese, they too having suddenly become soft-tongued and even their scoldings were as words breathed through a flannel so that all sharpness was taken out of their voices of reproof.

When finally the door was opened there sat Grandmamma not idol- like at all, not a bit frightening, smiling a kind little smile, almost as shy as us children, so that conversation was not very fluent on either side.

Inquiry as to our morals and general behaviour made up a great part of it, and I well remember Grandmamma’s shocked and yet amused little exclamations of horror when it was reported that one or the other of us had not been good.

I have a sort of feeling that Grandmamma as well as ourselves was secretly relieved when the audience was over.

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19

But there was a wonderful charm about Grandmamma’s rooms which always smelt deliciously of orange-flowers, even when there were no orange-flowers about the place.

First and foremost there were portraits of Grandpapa, portraits of every kind. Pictures and prints, statues, statuettes and photographs. There was Grandpapa in full general’s uniform. Grandpapa in his robes of the Order of the Garter, Grandpapa in kilt, in plain clothes, Grand- papa on horse-back, at his writing-table, Grandpapa wdth his dogs, with his children, in the garden, on the mountains. Grandpapa with impor- tant-looking papers in his hands, Grandpapa with his loving wife gazing enraptured up into his face. Grandpapa was certainly the first and fore- most spirit of these rooms.

Then they were so excitingly full of every imaginable treasure, from the glass ball in which many colours could be seen, to the wonderful pic- tures by Landseer of dogs, ponies and deer. And so many photographs, amongst others mysterious photographs of dead people, even of dead little children which, although they made us feel creepy, we always furtively looked at again and again. Then there were all sorts of de- licious queer little objects made of Scotch granite and cairngorm. And above all there was Grandmamma’s bullfinch, such an angry little fel- low, who became thin with rage, and screeched at you when you stuck your finger in between the bars of his cage; but when he liked someone, he puffed himself up till he looked like a round ball of fluff and then he piped softly and enehantingly a gay little tune he had been taught.

Once upon a time I had a little bullfinch like Grandmamma’s, but that was much later and is a sad little story, oh, so sad, and does not fit in here.

These explorations round about Grandmamma’s rooms could only take place if it was Mamma who went with us, because then Grandmam- ma talked with Mamma instead of with us, and their conversations were more lengthy and more substantial, giving us time for our voyages of discovery.

It is especially the Windsor rooms and corridors I remember; at Osborne and Balmoral Grandmamma generally used to be met out- side.

Like all overworked people Grandmamma loved to escape at certain hours of the day from the hushed “royalness” of her apartments, so

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

whenever weather permitted she would take her breakfast and tea out of doors.

It is principally at Frogmore and Osborne that I see Grandmamma at breakfast under a large ecru green-lined and green-fringed parasol which had been fixed into the ground.

Here, too, everybody approaching her trod softly, but it was on emerald-green lawns instead of carpets, and in the open air one was less afraid of the sound of one’s own voice. »

A delicious fragrance of coffee and of a certain brown biscuit which came in flat round tins from Germany was characteristic of Grandmam- ma’s breakfast. Our greedy little noses sniffed it in longingly, but it was not always that we were invited to have a taste.

Grey-kilted and green-kilted Highlanders or white-turbaned Indians mostly seemed to be attending to Grandmamma’s wants, though the tall monumental footmen also had their place in the picture, I remember, as had also the numerous dogs : collies, Skye, Scotch and rough-haired terriers, and above all the adorable cream-coloured pony with pink nose and ruby- red eyes, harnessed to Grandmamma’s pony carriage, the exact replica in miniature of the huge state horses that were harnessed to Grandmamma’s golden coach when she drove to Parliament or to West- minster Abbey on days when great events took place.

Oh, that cream-coloured pony, he has haunted many of my childish visions. In dreamland I possessed him, I even rode him through marvel- lous countries, over the classical seven hills and seven dells in the land of fairies. Swift as the wind was his gallop, no noise did his four hoofs make, whilst mane and tail were real rivers of light.

The moment breakfast was over cups, plates, coffee and tea-pots were cleared away to make room for innumerable leather dispatch boxes. Each box had a protruding slip of paper, indicating the contents I sup- pose.

These dispatch boxes seemed almost a part of Grandmamma her- self.

Osborne ! The very name is still a joy. It meant summer holidays, it meant the sea and the seashore, it meant wonderful shells to be found when the tide was low, shells of every colour and shape. It meant glori- ous bathing when the tide was high, and drives in the big “wagonette,”

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21

as we called our brake, through the sweet-smelling woods, past hedges full of honeysuckle.

And it meant dear old Grandmamma Queen in the background. Grandmamma Queen at breakfast under her ecru green-fringed para- sol, surrounded by dogs, Indians, Highlanders, and also an aunt or two in nervous attendance or occasionally a curtsying lady-in-waiting, in correct black, all smiles and with the mellowed voice usual to those who served or attended to the great little old lady.

It also meant the beautiful terraces in front of Osborne House where the big magnolias grew against the walls, those giant magnolias which had a lemon-like fragrance and into which you could bury your whole face, but which you never dared pick, because they were far too precious and exotic for childish plunder. Even when faded and their petals turned to a sort of leathery brown, they still kept their delicious scent and then their curious hard-pointed centres became very prominent; they really were mystery flowers, as also were the passion flowers with their cross in the centre and the many stamens laid flat in a perfect cir- cle like the wheels of a watch. There was also jasmine on those terraces and jasmine has always filled me with a sort of ecstasy.

That feeling of ecstasy over flowers has always been one of the en- chantments of life ; I feel it to-day as I did then. It is a sort of rapture, a sort of prayer-like gratitude for something which delights soul as well as body, eyes as well as heart.

I must speak of that curious sensation of ecstasy that certain things always gave me. Once, much later, talking them over with my sister Ducky, I found that she had almost always felt the same raptures I had for exactly the same things.

It was a sort of tightening of the heartstrings, something that brought tears to your eyes and at the same time made you want to shout with joy or fall on your knees and worship or sing hymns of praise and thanksgiving.

The causes responsible for these ecstasies were manifold and varied. Some had to do entirely with the eyes, some with scent, some with sound, some entirely with feeling. These were more mysterious and less easy to fathom.

When I begin to sum up my childish ecstasies, many will make you

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

smile, but they were so strong that even to-day I have only to shut my eyes and they still take hold of me with the same power as then.

There was for instance the indescribable thrill of reaching the Os- borne beach at low tide ; the stepping out of the wagonette before the coastguard’s little castle, with the ever-renewed possibility before us of finding wonderful shells.

The sand lay white, damp and smooth beneath our bare feet and half buried in this sand were these treasures only waiting for discovery. It was always Ducky and I who shared these raptures.

Our hearts beat, our eyes glowed ; each step might mean marvellous discovery. The fan shells were what we searched for especially, and one day I found a broad, pink fan shell, pale rose pink, with deeper markings; it was a stupendous find, much bigger than the fan shells generally picked up on the Osborne beach, more like shells found in the tropics. Ducky and I considered this find almost a miracle, it was a red-letter day, a date always to be remembered ; and others envied my luck.

But now you may smile when I mention another of my several ecsta- sies, thrills you might almost call them.

Mamma had two pairs of magnificent coal-black Orloff trotters, which Prince Orloff himself had given her as a present when she was in Russia.

Their coats were incredibly shiny, like polished marble, and when they moved, blue lights played about on their glossy flanks. Our coach- man was called Robert. He was a wizened little man with a thin set face that had a sort of frozen smile at one corner of his mouth. He drove with impeccable English correctness though he always leaned a wee bit towards the off-side ; that was a characteristic of his ; of course we chil- dren loved Robert.

The most beautiful of these Orloff trotters was called Viceroy, but in the stables he had the nickname of Skitty because he was skittish and difficult to handle. Skitty was the object of our deepest adoration. Everything was perfection in Skitty, the way he held his head, tossing the foam from his jingling bit, the way he lifted his knees, the marvel- lous line of his rounded flanks, but — and now comes my ecstasy — there was a wave in his mane as he curved his beautiful neck, a sort of ripple

EASTWELL PARK 23

that ran over it whilst he trotted and that I could just see if I bent right out over the side of the wagonette to watch it.

No position was too dangerous if I could only catch a glimpse of Skitty’s curved neck and that ripple in his mane as he trotted. It was a sort of rapture that cannot be described or explained, but only felt from the crown of your head to the tip of your toes. It was ecstasy in fact : that is the only word that describes it.

You can laugh to your heart’s content; I am well aware that it is ab- surd, but that curve of Skitty’s blue-black neck was and has remained in memory, one of my most exquisite ecstasies.

There was also the deep, soul-satisfying ecstasy of the wild rose, pink and frail, with a perfume so delicate that it might have been dis- tilled by the Fairy Queen herself. In fact the wild rose was a fairy flower and has always remained so. And also the primroses in the copses, those rounded pale yellow bunches, nestling amongst last year’s fallen rust-coloured leaves.

There are no primroses in Roumania, but a few years ago when my daughter married and went to Serbia, I found primroses in all the woods round about Belgrade.

My delight was so great that my children always invite me for the primrose season and those delicate pale bunches, rising from the rust- coloured ground, still ravish me to-day as they did in those far-off days of Eastwell, Windsor and Devonport, the three chief places where we used to pick primroses.

Blessed, blessed faculty that God has given me of being able to thrill with every drop of my blood, with heart, soul and senses, to feel, adore, rejoice and give thanks !

But now a humble confession ! Although this sounds horribly mate- rial, I have also known ecstasy of taste !

I was never a specially greedy child, but all the same certain tastes could induce the same rapture as scents, sounds or sights, and these tastes have also remained unforgettable.

There were, for instance, certain little sweets only to be had at the Russian Court. These were wee double round fondants made of fresh strawberries and served up in tiny paper baskets. Their colour was as

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

exquisite as their taste. The very moment when you lifted them off the dish on to your plate was one of enchantment, your mouth watered even before you tasted them. The “fore-pleasure,” as the Germans would express it, was almost as wonderful as the actual eating of the sweets. This was fairy food, and whenever I told a story to myself or to my sisters, my imaginary personages always ate these super-exquisite sweets.

Two more “tastes” have remained with me as a delicious memory. One was at Queen Victoria’s table.

Every Sunday Grandmamma had more or less the same menu served, which had roast beef as piece de resistance, and “Mehlbrei” as sweet dish.

This was almost a nursery dish and when it had to receive an elegant French name the cooks would call it bonillie de farine a la vanille. But Grandmamma, who was sentimental about all things pertaining to Ger- many, admitted German names on her menu, so plain “Mehlbrei” was allowed.

The deliciousness of this “Mehlbrei” was heightened by little dia- mond-shaped pieces of brown skin which floated on the top. The taste of these little squares of skin, which was simply the top part of the bouillie slightly burnt, belonged to those things that for some reason gave my palate exquisite satisfaction. I would shut my eyes and let the wee morsel lie for a moment on my tongue so as to taste it to the ut- most.

The tragedy was that there were very few of these floating little squares in each dish, and as I was very young I was of course served one of the last and it more than once happened that when my turn came, the little squares had all been already consumed by those luckier and more privileged than I. In fact, to be accurate, I think only once did I taste of this ambrosial food, but the memory has remained for ever, so it must have been specially exquisite.

And there is still one last “taste” I must mention.

This last was at Coburg where we had an old nursery footman named Wiener. Wiener was as excellent as he was undecorative. But he had a warm heart and he loved children, and like all people who have a soft spot in their hearts for the little ones, he liked to feed them on good food.

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Now Wiener had a cousin who kept the restaurant at the Kalenberg (the Kalenberg being one of the royal castles beyond the town). Like all self-respecting German castles the Kalenberg stood on a hill, and at its foot, in accordance with Teutonic tradition, there was a restaurant where the worthy burghers made merry on high days and holidays, and Wiener’s cousin ran this plebeian “Kaffee” as it was also called, and this cousin made a special sort of cake.

If you have never tasted the Kalenberg cake, it is no good trying to make you understand its perfection.

It was delicious beyond description and its rareness added to its value, for it was only occasionally that Wiener’s Kalenberg cousin would send the little princesses one of these dream cakes.

To look at the Kalenberg cake was in no way wonderful. It was a plain brown cake, just like the cakes you see in the pictures in all Ger- man children s books, in Struw-welpeter” for instance. The sort of cake that Fidgety Phil drags off the table with him when he collapses under the tablecloth, after a special fit of the fidgets and his mother, aghast, contemplates the disaster through her “lorgnon.”

The Kalenberg cake had no raisins in it, and it was into the bargain called, I believe, “Gesundheitskuchen,” which ought to have robbed it of all its charm, but its crust especially had just that something about it that made it more luscious than any other “living” cake.

I would eat my slice deliberately, with a slowness which was in- finitely greedier than any gobbling, and I would nibble it away gradually to the top where resided the smmnuni bonum of taste. This very last top bit of the Kalenberg cake belongs to the same category of “ecstasy” as did the strawberry fondants and the little squares of burnt skin on Grandmamma s Sunday “Mehlbrei.” But they had also something of the thrill, though more material, I confess, that the primroses, the wild roses and Skitty’s mane gave me, Skitty who was really called Viceroy according to the enamelled plaque over his box.

Those who have similar remembrances of their childhood will under- stand what I mean, those who have not must just forgive me my trivial digression and turn to another page.

124-2 A- c-o

Chapter II

OSBORNE COTTAGE

But I am not yet finished with Osborne, for there is real relish in bring- ing to light these dear buried memories which are such a happy back- ground to a life which was destined to be lived in a country so far from the land of my birth.

We inhabited Osborne Cottage, a delightful little house just beyond the royal park which Grandmamma Queen lent us occasionally for the summer months.

Mamma loved the Isle of Wight, whilst other members of the Royal Family declared that the climate of Osborne was too relaxing. I par- ticuarly remember the word “relaxing,” which I did not like because it had a sound of pills and medicine about it, a sound as of doses given by Nana of an evening when your inside was upset.

Evidently Mamma liked a relaxing climate, declaring that she did not care to be blown to pieces in what English people called “bracing” places, where you could not keep a hat upon your head.

Mamma was very funny about her hats. Altogether, indeed, she had strange ideas about clothes because, it must be confessed, Mamma was always just a little in opposition to the times. It seemed to give her a particular satisfaction to consider yesterday much better than to-day, and I have known her bitterly regret a fashion of yesterday, which she had loudly denounced with hoots of disapproval when it had been the fashion of to-day!

Mamma had, for instance, a strange idea that she could only stick a pin into her hat on the right side. She had never, she said, learned in her youth how to put in a pin with the left hand, she had never done it in Russia and she was not going to try and do it either in England, Ger- many or Malta. For such was my Mamma, and no one could more per- sistently stick to her convictions and principles even when they made her thoroughly uncomfortable.

26

OSBORNE COTTAGE

27

In later years these little idiosyncrasies narrowed her life down most unnecessarily till she became something of an original.

Anyhow, because Mamma had never learnt in Russia how to put two pins into her hat, she hated the wind with the healthy hate she put into all her hatreds through life. There was nothing half-hearted about Mam- ma : what she liked she liked, innovations were abhorrent to her, and she preferred places where she had not to “dress up,” as she called it.

She wore practical skirts, jackets and hats, though she always stuck to funny-shaped boots with little leather bows on their tips, boots that were ordered in St. Petersburg, and she had them specially made the same for each foot, declaring that it was nonsense to imagine that you needed a left and right shoe, it was much more rational to have them both alike.

It was only much later that I understood that Mamma was really somewhat of a character, to use a literary expression. As a child I imagined that everybody had those ideas, and those strong likes and dis- likes which often isolated her from her neighbours.

No one could tell a story better than Mamma. She was a wonder- ful conversationalist and could keep a whole table amused. She used to encourage us to talk and entertain people, always declaring that nothing was more hopeless than a princess who never opened her mouth. “Be- sides,” she added, “it is very rude and please remember that, my dear children.”

I have remembered it all through my life.

Another thing she was very severe about was that when invited out somewhere for a meal you must never refuse a dish set before you, even if you did not like it, because she declared that nothing was so in- sulting to a hostess as not eating the good things that she provided.

“But if they are not good, Mamma?”

“Then you must just behave as though they were good.”

“But if they make you feel sick!”

“Then be sick, my dear, but wait till you get home. It would be most offensive to be sick then and there !”

This was Mamma’s good advice. Something of a Spartan, she ex- pected her children to follow her lead.

Mamma hated anyone to be ill. She herself had marvellous health

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

that she handed on to me, for which I thank her every day of my life as the greatest of my blessings.

According to Mamma’s code one must never complain. A headache must never be confessed or given way to, a cold did not keep you at home, a fever did not send you to bed. Yet no one had such an eagle eye as Mamma. She spotted the smallest indisposition and was always at hand with pills or medicines.

She declared that English doses were much stronger than continental doses and she used to call them “des remedes de cheval.”

Mamma spoke perfect English, but preferred French, declaring that it was by far the most elegant language and that a beautiful letter could only be written in French. She did not, however, particularly care for the French as a people, preferring the English, Russians and Germans.

We children hated speaking French; we considered it an affected language, a language for grown-ups, not for children, and we wilfully threw away all the good opportunities of absorbing the language prop- erly.

This exasperated Mamma, who said we were little fools, which, no doubt, we were, only we did not like to be told so.

“Children,” Mamma would say, when giving some of her Spartan advice, “don’t let English people persuade you that certain foods are indigestible ; everything is digestible for a good stomach, but English people spoil their digestion from earliest childhood by imagining that they cannot eat this or that. I always ate everything; in Russia no one ever spoke about their digestions, it’s a most unpleasant subject and not drawing-room conversation.” All this proving that Mamma herself had an excellent Russian digestion.

Once with the greatest satisfaction Mamma declared: “Missy” (that was I) “is like me, she can eat stones and feel none the worse for it.”

Without doubt this Russian peculiarity, handed down to me from my Russian ancestors, has been a great asset all through my life.

Mamma had an old maid called Fanny Renwick. She was a great character. She was dark and had a moustache and liked to imagine that Spanish blood flowed in her veins. I doubt if her forbears had come from Spain but there might have been an Irishman amongst them.

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Fanny ruled us with a rod of iron. We loved and we hated her in turns. Her humours changed like the weather, but on sunny days she was most affable.

Fanny looked after Mamma’s wardrobe and laid in stores of all that Mamma might need. There was a Russian largeness about the size of these needs.

It was a wonderful day when we caught Fanny inspecting her stores ; there were cupboards and cupboards of them and these cupboards smelt delicious.

Here were endless rows of scents, boxes of “sachets,” cold cream, soap, rose-water, but nothing in the form of cosmetics, which Mamma abhorred as violently as the prophets of old denouncing the Jezebels of their time.

There were incredible provisions of pills, especially castor-oil pills that looked like transparent white grapes with the oil moving about in- side. These for some reason were always ordered in St. Petersburg, perhaps for fear of their being “des remedes de cheval” if ordered in England.

I think these castor-oil pills mostly dried up in their boxes, because Mamma’s Russian digestion hardly justified the ordering of such an enormous quantity. But as they were sent all the way from the Russian capital, perhaps it was more practical to have a great provision sent at one time. I think that Mamma had no idea of the miraculous stores that she had in her cupboards ; Fanny had a free hand in the order- ing.

The most enchanting of Fanny’s provisions were the “smoking pas- tilles.” These were of every sort. Some were tiny and of every colour of the rainbow, others were pink, half-moon shaped, packed in small flat boxes with an Oriental name on the top and for some reason the pic- ture of a small gazelle. There were also heart-shaped lavender-coloured pastilles that tasted of violets. I think I liked these best, and on fine- weather days, the moustachioed, Spanish-looking Fanny was very gen- erous with Her Imperial Plighness’s stores.

Big sachets like little mattresses, blue or pink, hung or lay between all Mamma’s dresses or linen. These were filled with iris powder and were always sent from Florence where they were made.

Fanny Renwick was a tyrant. All royal head-maids become tyrants,

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

however humble may have been their beginnings. It is also quite a tra- dition that they should quarrel with and even illtreat those under them, especially the second-in-command.

Later, Mamma had a second maid called Jolly, but that was after my days at home. Anyone less jolly than Jolly could not be imagined, but when Fanny was pensioned, Jolly became the tyrant over others, and martyrized them as she had been martyrized, but even this agreeable advancement did not make Jolly any the jollier.

Fanny’s Spanish ancestors were perhaps responsible for a certain sense of humour in her; there could be a wink in old Fanny’s eye some- times that made it possible with a little imagination to think of her in a black mantilla with a red flower behind her ear, smiling at a dago. Not so, Jolly ! Her grimness was that of the Quaker or the Huguenot and I think that no cavalier would ever have dared to smile at her.

Later, Jolly became the great chum of my children, but she kept sister Baby (Beatrice) strictly in order, thoroughly disapproving of the Duch- ess’s youngest daughter who was longest at home.

Osborne Cottage was a typical English cottage overshadowed by lime trees, and honeysuckle nodding in at its windows. These were two more scents that filled me with beatitude. Ever afterwards, no matter where I was, the perfume of lime trees in full bloom carried me back to Os- borne Cottage, just as the smell of damp autumn leaves ever conjures up again the Eastwell woods before me as with a magic wand.

It was always in the season of lime trees in flower and of honeysuckle that we came to the Isle of Wight.

The hall of Osborne Cottage was always full of white lilies with pink spots, which also had a perfume that regularly tingled all through me in shudders of delight. They stood in great pots near the staircase and the first thing we did on arriving was to bury our noses in them, staining our faces with their pollen till we looked like little Red Indians.

Our French governess, whom we called Mademoiselle, was an Alsa- tian. She had her holiday during the summer months. Mademoiselle had experienced the siege of Strasbourg in 1870, and harboured a healthy hatred against the Germans, which she implanted in us for many years.

She knew how to fire our imagination and told stories very well. We

UNCLE PAUL- MY MOTHER S YOUNGEST BROTHER

MY SISTERS AND I

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liked and disliked her in turns. She had a rather large nose and smiled in a way that made her lips spread all over her face. It was an ugly smile. Also her hair was poor and had an ugly colour. She would read to us by the hour, a great quality, because we were greedy for stories of every kind. She initiated us into the charms of “La Bibliotheque Rose” (of which “Les Memoires d’un Ane” was our favourite), of “Sans Famille,” “Robinson Suisse,” and later into the joys of “Les En- fants du Capitaine Grant.”

It was considered healthy for us and good for our growing backs to lie flat on the floor for about an hour a day. Mademoiselle used to read to us whilst we underwent this daily trial. She kept on knitting stock- ings whilst she read. I remember watching her from my position be- neath her, trying to reverse her face, making of her nose a chin, and a chin of her nose, but she remained hopelessly homely, as the Americans so politely call “ugly,” whichever way I imagined her face.

Stocking-knitting was for some reason considered a virtuous occu- pation for little girls. The turning of the heel, the decreasing and in- creasing it involved was comparable only to the geography of Switzer- land and the Alps, with the lakes on both sides of these troublesome mountains. I cannot explain why, but there was always some connexion in my mind between the two. Later on Queen Victoria had a picture made of me by Millais, knitting a green stocking, which still hangs somewhere in Windsor Castle.

Mademoiselle possessed certain treasures we loved to look at; one was a little crystal locket with a sort of flat bird on it, in small blackish diamonds with a wee pearl hanging from its beak, the other was a little amethyst seal with a plaintive-looking pansy engraved upon it. A great treat was to be allowed to seal our letters with this pansy-crest.

There was also a certain sort of biscuit Mademoiselle used to send for from Strasbourg, which was the quintessence of all that was excel- lent.

Mademoiselle certainly had a certain fascination for us, but she was not absolutely loyal to our mother, and for this we judged her with our childish instinct of fair play. She was too often inclined to belittle or criticize “la Duchesse” to her own children.

It was of course a great delight to be governessless during the Os- borne holidays. Mamma and the nursery maids looked after us and

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

took us out with the occasional help of M. de Morsier, Alfred’s French tutor.

He was supposed to polish up our French during the holidays, and the unfortunate man, who was round, blue-eyed and smiling, had an awful time of it trying to give us “des dictees” in the garden, whilst we were always escaping from him to climb trees, from the branches of which we would look down on him, playing him no end of tricks. But M. Edouard de Morsier never denounced us ; he was a good sport, and I have the feeling that he was secretly in sympathy with our pranks. I do not suppose he enjoyed the dictees any more than we did.

About this time I remember the visit of Winston Churchill as a little boy. He was red-haired, freckled and impudent, with a fine disdain for authority. He and I had a sneaking liking for each other. At first we did not dare to show it openly, but by degrees our red-haired guest threw away all pretence and brazenly admitted his preference for me, declaring before witnesses that when he wAs grown up he would marry me !

I do not think that Mamma considered that he improved our man- ners, but personally I have kept a very pleasant memory of that short visit young Winston paid us, and can still smile to-day when remem- bering the sly look of his eyes, with a snub nose set very pugnaciously between them and his impudent expression when reproved.

I very much liked to be as capable as the boys, as quick, as nimble, as untiring, but I was very much a little girl as regards my feelings towards them and theirs towards me.

I remember once at Clarence House, my brother had some boys to come and play with him. This did not happen very often, but on this memorable occasion I can still see a boy I inordinately admired. He was dressed as a Gordon Highlander, was dark and remarkably good- looking and he was called Stephen — Stephen Hastings, I believe, but of that I am not sure. The boys were being very wild together, rushing about the corridors and our nurses considered the games too rough for little girls. With great longing we sisters were watching them from our nursery door. I had eyes only for Stephen.

Amongst others, a splendid game was invented ; sliding down the back-stairs on a tea-tray.

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This was too wonderful ! Overcoming all shyness, and ignoring strict prohibition, I sidled up to the handsome Stephen and begged him to let me ride down with him on a tray. Stephen was a real cavalier and was only too pleased to be the brave driver of a fair-haired little girl who was more nervous than she dared show. I have no clear remembrance how our joint undertaking succeeded: it is only Stephen’s face that I remember and his dark green, black and yellow kilt.

Of course Stephen might easily have refused to take a girl down on his tray with him, but he did not, for which I am grateful to him to this day.

Think of what a cruel snub it would have been had he said “No.”

I never saw Stephen again and I have no idea whose son he was and how he came to be invited that day. But he is one of my pleasant mem- ories for all that.

Close to Osborne Park there was another park. The front gates of the two large properties stood, as far as I remember, almost opposite each other, or side by side, but I may be mistaken in this as it is so long since I was there.

Norris Castle was the name of this other place and one year the Empress Frederick, my father’s eldest sister, and mother of the Kaiser, had leased it for the summer. Norris Castle was closer to the sea than Osborne House; it was a large place built in grey stone in the same style as Windsor, it seemed to me. But my remembrance of it is vague except that I thought it extraordinarily beautiful and that there were peacocks strutting about in all their glory on the terraces. It was the first time I heard peacocks calling and ever since the call of the peacock has reminded me of Norris Castle.

I remember the Empress Frederick all in black with several daughters around her. Her eyes were extraordinarily blue, her voice enticing and her smile perfectly delightful. There was great harmony between her smile and her eyes, both were astonishingly bright and alive. She was exceedingly sweet with us children and asked us many questions. She spoke English with a strong foreign accent, but her voice was very much like my father’s, a soft voice with rather slurred Vs,” which both of them rolled in the same way. What I cannot at all remember is if this was before or after the Emperor Frederick’s death, if she was al-

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

ready a widow or not. But I think it was in the Jubilee year because I do just remember the Emperor Frederick, then still Crown Prince, on the Osborne beach, and that he was already voiceless.

He was a tall, good-looking man, with a very full chestnut beard. He could not talk to us, but I remember how he pretended to bombard us with sand and dry seaweed. He was jolly and yet one somehow felt he was condescending, which made us feel shy.

I can remember another time seeing the Crown Prince Frederick and Aunt Vicky at the Neue Palais, Potsdam. It is only a faint recollection ; one or two pictures only remain and these quite blurred, nor can I re- member in what year we were there, or why ; it must have been on the way to somewhere else, just in passing. But I see Aunt Vicky’s wonder- ful smile. Curiously enough, although it lit up her whole face and her eyes like a light, there was also something of a bite about her smile.

Aunt Elisabeth of Roumania (Carmen Sylva) had also this sort of smile. It was extraordinarily luminous ; hers also was a wonderful smile, but if I may so express it, it was more luminous than warm. There was something voulu about both their smiles, they were, so to say, “turned on,” like electric light. And when they showed great amuse- ment or appreciation, you never felt absolutely convinced that they were really amused ; there was a little bit of stage setting about it ; their smile was too much at their disposal — it had, in fact, become a manner- ism.

I may be making a mistake in the Empress Frederick’s case. I knew her so very little, but that is how, in my half-effaced memory, her smile “felt.”

It may here be added that Queen Elisabeth of Roumania and the Empress Frederick, in spite of the similarity of their smiles, had no sympathy for each other. They were both learned women, with a tendency towards the “blue stocking,” rather eager to demonstrate their superiority over commoner mortals. They were both of them ambitious and tatkrdftig, which is the exact expression I need in describing them, meaning that they were forcible, incisive, penetrating, and that they could always leave well alone.

A more material memory of that passing glimpse, at the Neue Palais, of Aunt Vicky’s smile, is a curious soup that was served to us at lunch ; it was white and sweet and had raisins in it. We were told that it was

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a North German soup. We were not sure that we liked it; for some reason it was called “Biersuppe.” And then there was the Kotputzer Baumkuchen, also a North German product; a high round cake in the form of a tree trunk, with little projections sticking out all over it, which we called “noses.” It was covered with a thick, hard, white sugar. The inside was dark brown and supremely delicious. Here once more I have the vision of Aunt Vicky’s radiant smile whilst cutting great slices of this cake for each of us. Somehow Aunt Vicky was too nice to you. Her smile had something in it of sunshine when the weather is not really warm. The Roumanians have an excellent expres- sion for that sort of sun, they call it soare cu dinti, meaning “sunshine with teeth.”

But let me insist upon the fact that I have no reason for thus judging Aunt Vicky’s smile ; it was simply a child’s impression that stuck. But as I once mentioned, I had always all my days a curious instinct for feeling depths beneath depths, reason within reason, a sort of seventh sense in fact.

Certain afternoons during the summers at Osborne were spent at the so-called “Swiss Cottage.” This was a place of supreme enchantment, quite one of my dearest recollections.

A little house of dark wood, built in the rustic Swiss chalet style, a low-drooping roof with stones on the top and a balcony round the upper story. This had been the playhouse of Queen Victoria’s nine children.

There was a large space all round it where our father, uncles and aunts had each had their little strip of garden, which they were supposed to have planted themselves ; long rectangular patches in which both flowers and vegetables grew. These little gardens were still faithfully kept as they were in the time when they had been the playground of an older generation, now long past the “golden age,” and probably better kept now than in those days.

To us children these garden plots were the ideal of all childish am- bitions, and I remember asking the custodian over and over again which had been Papa’s garden, and that bed, of course, although exactly like all the others, was the object of our special interest.

It was here in the gardens of the Swiss Cottage that I discovered for the first time the tall Madonna lily ( Lilium Candid uni) . It was a reve- lation to me. Never in memory had I seen flowers more perfectly beau-

THE STORY OF MY LIFE

36

tiful; noble, stately, with that something almost sacred about them, probably because of their association with holy pictures. And then their scent ! Penetratingly sweet beyond words, a heady smell that almost made you a little dizzy or faint. There is a whole world in the perfume of the Madonna lily, something biblical, legendary and almost too good to be true. Besides, they are so tall, so graceful and so shiny that their petals seem to exude light.

Ever since I discovered the marvel of those white lilies in the Swiss Cottage garden I have tried to plant them wherever I made a garden. Sometimes I succeeded, and sometimes I failed. Quite lately I have succeeded far beyond my dearest expectations, and that is at Balcic, on a terrace overlooking the Black Sea. Here to my infinite joy they sprang up gloriously, white miracles of light. But although a whole lifetime lies between that lily walk in far Dobrogea and those first lilies I ever saw, in Papa’s little garden plot, the scent of the Madonna lily always carries me back to the Swiss Cottage in the Isle of Wight.

How astonishing is the strength of memory ! I mention it again, be- cause it is so haunting, that strange force that scents possess, conjuring up as with a magic wand long- forgotten pictures. Pictures of places, of faces, of words spoken, of thoughts thought . . . Visions, beauty, de- light.

The charm of memory — but also its sadness and nostalgia for all that is past, irrevocably past, never to come again, and yet alive in one’s heart, unforgettable, a treasure one lives with all the days of one’s life.

There was also a tiny fortress built in the Swiss Cottage grounds. A wee red-brick fortress with trenches all round representing moats.

Great games were played in this fortress. Brother Alfred was the principal leader. Alfred played a great part during these Osborne holi- days, and was the leader and instigator of most of our games. During the “learning” months of the year we saw less of him.

In the lower part of the Swiss Cottage was a museum where each of the nine children had accumulated treasures of every kind, brought home from their different voyages, round the world or otherwise. This museum was an endless source of interest, and here Ducky and I dis- covered the most beautiful fan shells imaginable. They made our mouths water and we dreamed of what the ecstasy would be were we

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to find such shells on the Osborne beach. Alas, they were all behind glass doors, not to be touched, a very wise precaution, for our childish fingers would certainly otherwise have handled these hoarded treasures with too much eagerness.

But when the custodian was in a good humour, like Fanny Renwick on her “fine-weather days,” he would unlock one or other of the glass doors and lay the most admired treasures for a moment in our hands. Thus I once held the most beautiful of all the fan shells on my chubby palm ; it was a mysterious dark red but marked like tortoise-shell and of all marvels, it was double and had little spikes all over it. It was pure bliss to be allowed to touch it for a few moments.

Here I also saw for the first time those lovely blue Brazilian butter- flies, with wings like azure-tinted mother-of-pearl. They always seemed the very quintessence of blue, so to say, the supremest and most perfect expression of that colour which is the sky’s and the sea’s at their best.

All through my life it was my dream to have live blue butterflies of that sort flying about my rooms. Tame azure butterflies like blue lights! I imagined that I would keep them alive by having bowls of white roses on my tables, on my floor, on my window-sill, giant white roses covered with dew. In the wonderful stories I told myself, and which sometimes even to-day I can imagine with all the ardour of yore, there are nearly always these blue butterflies flying about my rooms, drinking in life off snow-white roses standing in the sun.

One of the great rarities of the Swiss Cottage museum was a flexible stone. Rectangular and sand-coloured, like a large piece of shortbread, it swayed slightly up and down when held at one end. Of course we were never allowed to hold this precious mineral in our own hands ; I suppose any too rough handling would have made it break off. But no visit to the museum was ever quite complete unless this miraculous stone was lifted from its place of repose.

I wonder if the flexible stone is still in the Swiss Cottage and if the Madonna lilies, once the joy of nine brothers and sisters of whom only three are still alive, are still blooming in the small garden plots ?

Mamma, because she did not like “dressing up,” did not much care about Cowes week. But we considered it supremely exciting and we loved being invited on the Victoria and Albert, the royal yacht which

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

Uncle Bertie and Aunt Alix, as far as I can remember, used to inhabit during this week. (Or was it the dear old Alexandra?)

Nothing was ever quite so wonderful as an English ship. Man-of- war or yacht, both were equally entrancing and no sailor the wide world over can come up to the British blue-jacket. All sailors are delightful, but the British blue- jacket has that something more which makes of him an English sailor. The British blue-jacket belongs to some of the most vivid memories of my childhood and he will appear again in one form or another in many of these chapters.

Cowes was a delightful little seaport town, with narrow streets, wooden-faced houses and what I seem to remember as ravishing shops.

It must be remembered that these reminiscences are of at least forty years ago. I have no idea if Cowes is still to-day what it was then, or if “modern improvements” have changed its face.

One of the chief attractions of going over to Cowes, was that you had to cross on a ferry. At high tide there was always a little water between the bank and the ferry-boat. The horses, especially beautiful Viceroy, called Skitty, made a lot of fuss about crossing this little strip of water, and I can still hear that peculiar splash when the horses were finally persuaded to cross it ; and a sort of scrunch that the smooth shingle made under the wheels, then the sound of hollow boards under the horses’ hoofs. The carriage gave a lunge that made us fall over one another with shrieks of delight. Then came the sound of the tautened chain when the ferry began to move, also the nervous stamping of horses’ hoofs, and Skitty’s restive impatience, a jingling of bits, and Robert’s reassuring voice : “Woa-woa ! old lady, steady there, old girl.” And here let it be said that Skitty was not a girl at all, but very much a Viceroy, what the old head of the Royal Mews used to call “an entire ’orse.”

Getting off the ferry was the repetition of getting on. A stamping of hoofs, a lunge, a scrunch of pebbles, a splash, and there one was on the other side.

Aunt Alix on the Victoria and Albert was as exquisite as in her ruby- red tea-gown, during the Eastwell shooting-party, but on these occa- sions she was generally a vision in white.

She always held a Pekingese dog in her arms and my three cousins, Louise, Victoria and Maude, were always hovering somewhere in the

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background. They were all dressed in white and were impeccably neat with their so-called “sailor hats,” which were considered the right thing to wear on board a yacht.

I do not remember how Mamma dressed us for these occasions, but it certainly was not in white.

Mamma had a curious aversion to dressing her daughters in white, and perhaps just because of this, a white dress was my dearest ambi- tion. I dreamed of myself in a white dress, imagining that it would suit me better than any other colour. I was a somewhat vain little kid and dress meant a lot to me. But as our mother had queer notions of dress for herself so had she also for us. White for some reason was taboo. This so heightened the value of that hue of innocence that I have even envied the little Coburg schoolgirls, when on Schulfest days they marched over the Platz to the sound of a brass band, rigged out in stiff white muslin, with white cotton stockings and white cotton gloves. In- deed my Sehnsucht for a white dress must have been great if it caused me to envy my neighbour in such guise !

But to return to Cowes week.

Uncle Bertie on his beautiful yacht was a ge'nia' figure of rippling good-humour. As impeccably dressed for the ' occasion. as beautiful Aunt Alix, he was royally condescending with hi's small hieces, would chuck us under the chin, pull our ears in a friendly manner, det off a few jokes at our expense and then laugh in his own special way which, alas, I cannot imitate on paper, but his laugh was -a sort ’Of crackle, a burst of good-humour which crumpled his face uo into a hundred little lines. « > ; > ■ - ,

We were never quite sure if we liked Uncle • Bertie ; he was too patronizing, he lorded it too much over everyone, and we were not yet old enough to come under the influence of his charm.

The three cousins were very kind, but they too treated us as the young things we were then, which made us feel cruelly the inferiority of our five to ten years less.

They used to call me “dear little Missy,” and once Cousin Louise (later Duchess of Fife) gave me some sort of little china animal which I adored. It was a kindness I never forgot.

It was a thrilling moment when the cousins took us down to see their

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

cabins, which were full of every conceivable treasure, for in those days there was a craze for collecting every sort of bibelot. The Wales Family, as we called them, to distinguish them from the Connaught and the Albany and Battenberg cousins, had a special talent for accumulating “treasures.”

We would gasp before the magnitude of these collections ; animals in bronze, china, stone, whole rows of wee vases, tiny photograph frames, lovely water-colours of gardens and sweet-faced ladies, of fields full of daffodils, of Windsor Castle in a mist, etc. Portraits of favourite horses, favourite dogs, favourite friends, and everywhere, smiling above everybody and everything else, Aunt Alix’s beautiful face, even in photograph dominant, triumphant, like sunshine.

The Wales cousins had a special way of adding “dear little” or “poor little” to everybody they talked about. They always, if I can so express it, spoke in a minor key, en sourdine. It gave a special quality to all talks with them, and gave me a strange sensation, as though life would have been very wonderful and everything very beautiful, if it had not been so sad.

Why the Wales cousins should have been sad I cannot explain. Aunt Alix never gave you this sensation. To the very end there was about Aunt Alix something 'invincible, something exquisite and flowerlike. She gave you the same joy as a beautful rose or a rare orchid or an absolutely faultless carnation. She was a garden flower that had been grown by a superlative gardener who knew every trick of his art.

I especially remember her hands, long, beautifully shaped hands that remained as' young as her .face, and she always wore a bracelet in the shape of a golden snake .which was wound several times round her left arm, I think. The snake had a coloured stone in its head. So much did this bracelet seem a part of Aunt Alix that one had the feeling that it had grown on her arm.

The deafness she suffered from seemed but to add to Aunt Alix’s charm, as did her slight limp.

Her way of coming into a room was incomparable, her smile of wel- come lit everything up. All eyes turned towards her, and her sweetness was as great as her beauty. She was faithful and loving, and she cared for the young as well as for the old. Everyone felt happy in her pres- ence. She radiated!

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Beautiful, beautiful Queen Alexandra, may your memory be for ever blessed for the exquisite joy your face and your personality was to the world ; it has become poorer since you have gone !

I suppose I shall soon have to leave Osborne to go on to other places, but let me mention one more thing, a wonderful prize cart-horse stallion we once saw at Grandmamma’s farm.

He was phenomenal as to size, his neck was something tremendous, his hoofs like four rocks. His eyes were kindly and his forelock hung over his face giving him an adorable expression. He was a gorgeous creature, and I loved him with a passionate feeling of adoration. I re- member going up to him and kissing his satiny shoulder which I could barely reach.

I can even now remember his name, Hitching Emperor, a name I considered quite unworthy of his beauty, especially as those who showed him off were apt to drop the first letter, which made of his name a poor one indeed. But Hitching Emperor, like the cream-coloured pony which was harnessed to Grandmamma s little carriage, haunted my dreams for many a day, and I invented no end of marvellous adventures in which this elephantine enchanter played a prominent part.

There was another great attraction at the Osborne Farm and that was the Spanish bull. He was a magnificent specimen, stone-grey with gigantic horns. He held his head like a monarch and looked at you with supreme disdain not unmixed with wrath. This regal creature could only be contemplated from a distance, which added to the thrill he gave us.

Here is another remembrance of Osborne : there was a long avenue of conifers leading up to the house, some of them, if I remember rightly, silver blue. I cannot remember what sort they were, I do not think I was ever told their name ; probably in those days I never asked. But what has remained for ever unforgettable were the small bright red cones which grew on their top branches. They stood in rows like sol- diers on parade. I never saw anything so entrancingly beautiful, and the contrast of the red with the silver blue was lovely. Never since have I seen them quite like this ; I would go and look at them whenever I could ; they were indescribably fascinating.

But how shall T ever be able to speak of all the wonderful things that

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

made childhood so extraordinary, made of it every day a new adven- ture? All things were discoveries, joys, delights, but sometimes also there was pain and bitter disappointment.

Saying good-bye to places or people was ever an agony to me. I am by nature faithful, I attach myself profoundly, my roots go deep and the pulling up of them is a cruel process. I like to move about but not to leave. I even mind leaving places I am not really fond of ; somehow it hurts. I think that it is the pain of relinquishing, I do not like pass- ing on, and yet we are for ever dong so. All good-byes have the anguish of death in them.

However great my hope and optimistic my outlook upon life may be, a sort of instinct in me knows and always has known that there is no going back, no living over anything twice. Time rolls on, carries you forward, what is past is past, it becomes but memory, dear, precious, often beautified by distance, but yet a memory; the shadow or the light of a thing that was and is no more. There is no holding fast, neither to days, seasons, years, nor to childhood, youth, nor riper years.

Time is a great enemy when it means sweeping forward when we would pause, but becomes the great friend and healer when it means the overcoming of sorrow and grief.

And I have known more than one uprooting, leaving, passing on. They were all cruel.

When I was about twelve years old my father was made Commander- in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, with Malta as head-quarters. This brought a sudden change into our lives.

Eastwell was given up, beautiful Eastwell with its great grey house, its magnificent park, with its herds of deer and picturesque Highland cattle, its lake, its woods, its garden with the old cedar tree which was our fairy mansion. Eastwell, the house where I was born, with its many rooms, explored and unexplored, our nurseries, our schoolroom, and Mamma’s cosy boudoir where she read to us of an evening and allowed us to finger the treasures on her tables ; the breakfast-room, the draw- ing-room, and the dear library where the Christmas tree always stood and out of which a passage-like conservatory led into the garden. This passage ran down a flight of steps to a larger conservatory below, which was filled with tree-ferns ; anyhow, it was the tree-ferns that impressed

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themselves upon my mind, as did the bright red passion flowers, a kind I have never since seen anywhere, which climbed all over the roof of the glass passage leading down into it. The flowers were like crimson stars hanging from their creepers by thin stalks, as though purposely sus- pended just beyond your reach.

Having mentioned the Eastwell breakfast-room reminds me of two people who crossed our lives only to disappear.

One was Uncle Leopold, Duke of Albany; the other was Carlos, Crown Prince of Portugal, who later, as king, was assassinated with his son whilst driving through the streets of Lisbon during some fes- tivity. The Queen and their second son were in the same carriage.

Brave Queen Amelie saved young Manuel by rising from her seat and striking the assassin in the face with her bouquet before he could make a third victim.

We used to come down to the family shooting-breakfast. Mamma, being an early riser, always presided at these meals. She was in fact always at the table first ; her punctuality amounted to a mania, for she was always about ten minutes before time. Try as you might you could never be there before Mamma and were continually being scolded for being late.

So severe was she in her training about punctuality that all my life I retained an anxious and almost guilty feeling about time. The loss of five minutes seems almost a crime to me, and even to-day my conscience never leaves me in peace if I am a minute late.

Uncle Leopold was Queen Victoria’s youngest son. He was born delicate and suffered from haemophilia. Lie did not live much beyond thirty, I think. But he married and had two children, the second, a son, being born after his death.

Uncle Leopold was my mother’s favourite amongst her brothers- and sisters-in-law. Being unable, because of his malady, to become a sports- man, he had become a scholar and was a lover of art. I think that it was his intelligence that endeared him to my mother.

I have but a very faint memory of him, have in fact only retained this passing vision of him in the Eastwell breakfast-room.

Although almost continually a sufferer, he was gay and amusing and fond of joking.

On that morning which I so vividly remember he came down to

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breakfast holding a handkerchief before his mouth, saying that he had just lost a front tooth.

There was consternation and anxiety amongst the grown-ups seated round the table, because Uncle Leopold’s special malady nad to do with haemorrhage, and it was all important that he should in no wise be wounded, fall or hurt himself. Knocks and bruises were also dan- gerous.

My mother, his hostess, was especially very much upset. She asked him to take his handkerchief from his mouth and let her see where he had lost a tooth.

Uncle Leopold removed his handkerchief, which had large red stains all over it, and there, sure enough, was a big black hole in his mouth, where one of his front teeth was gone. Everybody clustered round his seat, asking questions, suggesting remedies, when all of a sudden he burst out laughing. It was all a naughty farce. The hole in his mouth was black sticking-plaster, the stains on his handkerchief red paint!

Much relieved, everybody returned to their places, but Mamma, full of half-feigned, half-real indignation, gave him a bit of her mind about causing a loving family such emotion, and Mamma never gave a bit of her mind by halves.

There is nothing special to relate about Crown Prince Carlos of Portugal, except that for some reason we took a great fancy to him. He had the fairest hair we had ever seen, almost white and very curly. His face was a healthy red and his eyes extremely blue and already he was getting stout. He joked with us children, and although we were very shy when told that he was a cousin and that we could kiss him, we declared he had nice soft cheeks “like pin-cushions.” Why pin-cushions was our expression for soft I do not know, but to concede that his cheeks were like pin-cushions was a sign of approval, and when he told us he had something interesting to show us we flocked delightedly round his chair.

Bending low, almost under the table, he drew from his pocket several cartridges. That was all, but we laughed and were delighted, simply because we liked him, and all his jokes, even the least intelligent, were considered by us excellent.

Curious how certain memories stick whilst others get quite wiped away as though they had never been, but the Eastwell breakfast-room

OSBORNECOTTAGE 45

always reminds me of the faces of those two very different guests.

There is one tragic memory attached to Eastwell, and that was Nana Pitcathly’s death.

I believe she died of cancer, but it is so long ago that I cannot quite remember, or perhaps I never knew. She was terribly ill but remained at her post to the very end.

Sister Beatrice was then quite a small baby and I remember Nana walking about with her in her arms during the night when the child was restless and cried, up and down, up and down, humming little songs and groaning in between, cruel, deep groans which she imagined we did not hear because she thought we were sleeping. But I shall never forget that tragic march up and down, up and down in a room where a single night- light burned, with the crying child in her faithful arms. Slave to her duty, she did not wish to give up one day before her strength gave way and she was absolutely obliged to do so.

That must have been in the spring, because sister Baby was born on Easter Sunday. In the autumn of that same year, on the 15th of No- vember (I remember the date), Nana died in our house. She was the first dead person we ever saw. We were taken up to her death-chamber for a small service read at her bedside.

I remember her face, at peace, calm, but terribly severe and fearfully awesome, a stranger, and yet, in a way, still our dear old Nana.

I have no idea what sort of age she was then ; to us she seemed old, but I think that she was hardly middle-aged.

We wept and wept so that we had to be taken from the room, and were inconsolable for a long time. The loss of Nana was truly a terrible loss. Mamma never took a real nurse for us after that, only nursery- maids ; I was then nine years old, I think.

Sister Ducky always declared that if Baby Bee was such a naughty child, it was because she had never had a real nurse. This is very prob- ably true. But perhaps Baby Bee was not as naughty as we remember her.

She was an out-of-the-way clever child, and Mamma, who adored this youngest daughter, never used with her the severity she had shown us elder children.

I cannot remember in what season we took leave of Eastwell. For

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

some reason I am a bit vague about the connexion between Eastwell and Malta or if anything came in between, and Mamma is no longer here to tell me the details I have forgotten; nor is there anyone else still alive who could tell me except my sisters, and they, being younger, are prob- ably even vaguer than I about it. I must have been going on for twelve years old, I think.

But what I do remember was how Mademoiselle, our governess, persuaded us to give away most of our toys and treasures, instead of taking them all the way to Malta with us ; this no doubt was wise advice, but it meant great sacrifice and much heart-break.

There were two treasures especially to which I clung beyond all else ; one was the model of a cream-coloured horse which stood on a little board sprinkled with something that looked like steel-dust. This cream- coloured marvel, although, I believe, only made of papier mache, was the ne plus ultra of perfection in our eyes ; beautifully modelled, it was as wonderful as the famous Skitty himself, only isabelle instead of black. It had a pink nose and one delicate fore-leg was raised as though pawing the air ; its mane and tail were long and sweeping. It was a faultless creature, might truly have been the Fairy Queen’s horse. To part with this paragon really needed both courage and abnegation and there were great consultations as to who was worthy enough to become possessor of such a treasure. Finally for some reason the son of our carpenter Jones was chosen. I cannot remember any other reason except that we liked Jones the father. He was a pale, anaemic man with a dark beard, hollow cheeks and sad eyes, but he was one of the forces that counted in the house. Jones, like all carpenters, was the children’s friend. I do not remember anything at all about Jones junior.

My second treasure was of a different kind ; a tiny bonbonniere of some metal simulating gold, a round perforated little box set with false turquoises. I suppose it was a real little horror, but I valued it as though it had been from the tresor of St. Mark’s in Venice.

I had pulled it one day out of a bran-tub at a big London children’s party given by some lady or other who lived near Battersea Park.

I remember that party in connexion with a sentence pronounced by the hostess. When we left she said : “Be sure if you ever drive past this way to look in and see us, promise you will !”

Of course we very shyly promised we would, and ever afterwards

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when we passed her house (I cannot remember her name, probably I never knew it), I always felt guilty, because we did not stop and keep our promise, imagining that the lady would be dreadfully offended. I considered the promise we had made a binding one : I was also sure that the lady had seriously meant her invitation. I even tried to avoid that street so as not to pass her threshold in case she should see our infidelity.

I cannot begin writing about my Malta recollections without first speaking of Clarence House in London, which was the Duke of Edin- burgh’s town residence, and which was not given up at the same time as Eastwell Park, but only much later, when my father died.

It is also necessary to mention one thing which explains the curious duality of our lives which, after Malta, were spent between England and Germany.

The Prince Consort, Queen Victoria’s husband, was the younger brother of Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg.

Of Duke Ernest I shall speak more later on, for he was an interesting personality and belongs already so completely to history that I shall feel justified in telling many a queer little tale about him; but here it need only be mentioned that he had no children. It was therefore de- cided between the English and the German branches of the family that the second son of Queen Victoria and of the Prince Consort should become heir to the Duke of Coburg.

This was of course settled, so to say, over the head of my father by his parents ; he was not consulted as to whether this arrangement was pleasant to him, it was simply decreed by both families that this should be. Therefore it was also decided that our only brother Alfred should be educated in Germany as he would later become a reigning prince in that country. This explains why we were so often separated from Al- fred, who did not follow us about in all our peregrinations between London, Malta, Osborne, Russia and Coburg, which were, as can well be imagined, detrimental to steady and systematic education.

Alfred’s head-quarters were Coburg, where my father had built a house, which was called Edinburgh Palace, and where my brother quietly pursued his studies under the care of a German tutor, of whom more will be said anon.

This arrangement separated us a great deal from our brother, who

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was certainly given the opportunity of learning more systematically than his sisters, but who missed all that joy of travelling which fell to our share. It may here be added that our education was somewhat hap- hazard because of these many deplacements, as it always meant begin- ning all over again with other teachers and other methods, even in other languages and never for long at a time. My education was, in fact, more than sketchy, and I have a feeling that none of the masters or mistresses I had was very efficient and none of them fired my love of study. Anyhow, when I married at seventeen the weight of knowledge given me on my way was not heavy !

But travelling taught us much that no lessons on a school-bench could ever have taught.

Chapter III

CLARENCE HOUSE, SCOTLAND AND RUSSIA

As children we thoroughly disliked London and each time it was a grief when the season came for leaving Eastwell and the joys of the country for Clarence House, for smuts and smoke and gloomy walks in the Green Park, which we abhorred.

Clarence House forms one block with St. James’s Palace and shares with it a broad strip of garden overlooking the Mall.

One of the miseries of London was the mess one always got into because of the smuts. Any fall on London soil meant great black stains on clothes, knees or stockings. There was also about it a special greasi- ness I cannot forget.

We dearly loved, for instance, being taken to play about in Buck- ingham Palace gardens, instead of walking in the dreaded Green Park, but the mess we made of ourselves was so great that smocks were always taken with us and put on before our games began, and taken off when we recrossed the road on the way home.

Buckingham Palace gardens were huge and had delightful mysterious corners in them, besides quite a large lake.

One of our favourite haunts was the part where a big aviary stood on a sort of little hill overgrown with incredibly smutty bushes, which hid it from sight. This hill was the dirtiest, blackest part of the whole garden, the many birds living there adding greatly to its messiness.

But there was a charm that never palled about this grimy spot. We called the aviary hill the Alps, and blissfully imagined that we were mountaineering, which consisted of climbing its black greasy sides or sliding down them till we became filthy beyond description. Besides this it was the covert of birds of every kind, peacocks, silver and gold pheasants and every sort of duck and goose which used to swim about in the lake. Wonderful feathers were found upon our “Alps,” enchant- ing treasures of indescribable colours, but none outshining the peacock’s

49

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

feathers, which always remained the most fairy-like and astounding, with their marvellous eye and divine colouring.

I have only a shadowy recollection of the games we played, but they were wonderful and exciting and had a whole story woven into them and each season they were taken up anew. We were imaginative children and each had a part which we played as conscientiously as possible. I must confess that I never accepted a minor part, I was always one of the principal if not the principal figure, and certainly if there was a queen in the plot I always played that role.

We loved dressing up and my idea of a queen was having a very long train dragging behind me over the floor. But here on the “Alps” other parts were played, trains being out of place. We were robbers and explorers, pirates and path-finders and what not else! But I re- member my indignation which had specially to do with “trains” when I was told that the peacock, who strutted about so victoriously through our smutty domain, was the male, not the female. According to my im- agination the peacock was the queen of the bird world and the beauti- ful tail he carried behind him was Her Majesty’s court train ; what use could a man, even a bird-king, have for such a magnificent train?

When, later, Rostand wrote his celebrated “Chantecler,” I was much amused to see that, imbued with the same feeling about the logic of dress, he made his fesane wear her lord and master’s plumes.

Clarence House garden was much smaller and far less interesting than Buckingham Palace garden. It was tidy and had no mysterious corners except quite at the far end where a certain old Prince of Leiningen and his daughter Feo had a studio for sculpture. This part of the garden belonged to St. James’s Palace and not to Clarence House, but there was no division between the two except a few scraggy trees masking the wooden harraque of the studio.

This was a world for discoveries where you could pick up marvellous chips of marble that looked like hoar-frost covered snow, and where you could flatten and blacken your nose against large panes of glass, peeping in upon the mysterious work going on behind the windows.

Here we discovered extraordinary figures, some in clay, some in red terra-cotta, some in marble with little black spots all over them, and some swathed in dirty sheets or towels which made of them haunting apparitions. There was also a special smell of wet earth and plaster,

CLARENCE HOUSE, SCOTLAND, RUSSIA 51

not pleasant but irresistible, because we felt that it meant something, exactly what we did not know, but there was something of “creation” about it, something to do with the eternal “potter potting with his thumb.”

Although we only realized this vaguely, subconsciously we felt that this “something” had to do with the clay which from all ages has been used for “creation,” for modelling shapes which had secret life in them. Perhaps Pygmalion might have explained, but he, alas, was not of our times, and the old Prince of Leiningen, master of these premises, although some sort of uncle several times removed, was not a welcom- ing personality and did not encourage us to poke about in his field.

Clarence House was not without charm, though it was hopelessly smutty and everything you touched made your fingers black. It had an odour all its own, a mixture of fog, oakwood, cigarette smoke and a certain Russian scent Mamma used for burning in the rooms. There was also a particular perfume peculiar to Mamma’s own apartment, a most satisfactory fragrance of Russian leather and cedar wood which had something to do with the furniture she had brought with her all the way from St. Petersburg.

The greatest attraction was a shadowy corner in Mamma’s bedroom where she had hung all her holy images.

With the utmost reverence, not unmixed with curiosity, whenever we dared we would creep towards this corner of mystery and contem- plate the many wonderful icons.

Three of the most venerated were crowned by diamond rays that were fixed above the heads of the saints like small suns. Each sun had a wonderful gem at its centre, a large sapphire, ruby or emerald. The glamour of these holy pictures cannot be described ; all Russia’s gor- geousness seemed to shine from these incredibly brilliant diamond rays, fixed above the saints’ heads. The corner the shrine stood in, being dark, made it all the more thrilling.

And here a little lamp always burned beside the pictures of my mother’s parents on their death-beds, burned like a steady eye watching over mysteries small children might feel but not fathom.

Besides the icons there were also two pictures in Mamma’s bedroom that enthralled us ; one was of a lovely woman, also evidently a saint,

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carrying a little catacomb lamp in her hand, the light of which was thrown up on her face from below making it look unearthly and trans- parent. The other, also hanging in a very shadowy nook, represented a corner of the San Giovanni degli Eremiti Cloister of Palermo. It was just a few columns with a pumpkin plant growing over one of them and a big pumpkin resting on part of the balustrade. The sunlight on the picture was wonderfully done, bringing out the difference between light and shade in an astonishing way. This picture had a special fasci- nation for all of us children ; there was something deeply mysterious and satisfactory about it. I think that it is my sister Ducky who to-day possesses this picture.

I have never forgotten certain pictures seen in childhood, they have remained for ever impressed upon my mind.

One I would like to speak about to-day as I can still see it as vividly as I did then when I was quite a small girl.

If I remember rightly it was in an annual picture exhibition at Berlin. Why we were at Berlin, a town we hardly ever went to, I cannot ex- plain, and all the details have remained perfectly hazy. I cannot even recollect with whom I was, or who took me there, and I only remember two pictures.

One picture was of a small child in poor clothing, stroking with in- finite compassion a dead deer hung up against a wall. On the child’s face was an expression of loving pity and somehow I felt, when looking at that picture, exactly what the child was feeling.

But the other, the unforgettable picture, was a large-sized Italian water-colour with the title “Mia Povera Maria” — you see I even re- member the title.

It represented a sort of bare chapel all in rough stone, perhaps the fore-part of a church, in which a flower-covered bier had been stood. A dead girl lay upon the bier. Her face was waxen, her hair black, and one could just see her folded hands amongst the flowers.

A young man in peasant dress lay, face hidden against the coffin, in an attitude of overwhelming distress. In the background crouched an old, witch-like woman warming her hands over a brazier, watching the man’s grief with eyes too tired to express sorrow.

The picture took hold of me utterly. I could not be moved from be-

CLARENCE HOUSE, SCOTLAND, RUSSIA 53

fore it. There was a world of grief in it which stirred me to my very depths ; besides, it was certainly the painting of a great artist. It is a picture that has haunted me ever since. Many years later I found some- where a photograph of this picture, but never, alas ! did I see the original again.

There was never anything morbid in my nature, but all pictures of grief or of dead people moved me strangely, especially the pictures of silent grief, and I would always buy these pictures if I could.

I remember taking tickets for a lottery in that exhibition with the ardent hope of winning “Mia Povera Maria” although it was proba- bly not in the lottery at all. But for years I dreamed of what would have been the joy of possessing that wonderful water-colour.

But now back again to Clarence House.

Over the principal staircase hung the large head of an elephant my father had shot, in India I think ; his trunk almost touched one as one passed, and in the hall stood a bear on his hind legs, a huge, savage- looking beast holding a small tray between his front paws on which visitors left their cards for the gentlemen-in-waiting. All the cor- ridors were full of trophies of different shoots in distant countries, and there was also a figure in Japanese armour, with a grinning mask. We did not like this ugly fellow with the empty eye-sockets. But what we dearly loved were the two official drawing-rooms which were not often used. One was called the Chinese drawing-room and was full of curios Papa had brought from China, beautiful old weapons and bronzes, ivories and embroideries, and also, as far as I can remember, a few precious jades.

Papa was a great collector of antiques and also quite a connoisseur. When he died, his collections unfortunately did not come to us, but for some reason were taken over by Uncle Bertie, then still Prince of Wales.

The second big salon was full of treasures Mamma had brought from Russia, all sorts of objects carved from the many semi-precious stones from the Urals : dishes and vases, bowls and cups, Easter eggs and whole writing- and toilet-table sets, in particular a valuable collection in the much-prized Orletz, an extremely hard stone, dark pink with streaks of grey.

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

We loved fingering these treasures, but it must be added that we were generally severally enjoined not to touch. I cannot, however, affirm that we always respected these orders, the temptation was too great.

Memories of London are of several periods. The Buckingham Pal- ace garden times were when we were very small, and these glorious gambols were severely interrupted by days when stiff walks in the Green Park (which was quite near Clarence House) were de rigueur.

We loathed these walks with an absent-minded governess who was as bored as we were. Besides, what irony to call it the Green Park when we were severely kept off the grass which was railed off by a black iron paling a foot high. There was no virtue in the Green Park except the virtue of walking in it. No interesting people ever walked on its hard little paths, nothing ever happened, nothing was ever seen in that dead- ly dull place, only once, by a piece of unexpected good luck, I picked up a wee little bronze idol, about an inch high. That was a tremendous find, and is the only agreeable memory I have of the dreary Green Park. This absurd little idol is still in my possession. I wonder who could have dropped it there?

Outside, beyond the dreaded confines of this dreary park, almost op- posite the entry to Buckingham Palace stood the balloon man. He was an everlasting hope. On days when Mademoiselle was in a good humour she would discover pennies in her pocket and then we would march tri- umphantly home with airballs of different hues, a small procession of happy little people crowned with globes of colour. But these were rare days, generally Mademoiselle’s pockets were as empty of pennies as her heart was of mercy for our boredom.

What extraordinary joy these balloons gave. I loved the pink ones best. There was a delightfully nasty smell about airballs, irresistibly nasty, so that we were for ever rubbing our noses against them. And how curiously warm they were to the touch ! And when you drew your fingers across their taut surface they gave out a peculiar sound, half squeak, half groan.

Of course we always dreamed that our balloons would be long-lived, but they were inevitably as ephemeral as butterflies. There were three mishaps peculiar to balloons ; they would burst or die away gradually, becoming thin, limp and wrinkly, or they would escape out of your

CLARENCE HOUSE, SCOTLAND, RUSSIA 55

grasp and fly up to the ceiling where they would float, mocking you from their height, the symbol of happiness just beyond reach.

But blessed be the memory of these balloons ! They only cost a penny, but there was a whole fortune of joy within their frail globes. Pink, blue, green, orange, red, violet, they were bubbles of enchantment, representing the summum of our desires, beckoning to us from just beyond the gates of the Green Park, the unloved.

Belonging to this period was also a curious fear we suffered from, for children have strange fears.

The Clarence House stairs were very steep, rather like the back- stairs at Eastwell. Papa and Mamma gave occasional dinners ; many people came to these rather rare feasts which were an occasion of ex- citement to the nursery authorities.

We used to be packed off to bed, and then Nana would steal away to the head of the stairs and peer down upon the procession of guests go- ing in or coming out of the dining-room, or climbing the stairs towards the drawing-room after the meal was over.

The beauty of the ladies’ dresses and the magnificence of their jewels were a special source of interest, and were commented upon for days afterwards.

But we children, left in our white cots to go to sleep like good little girls, suffered tortures from some sort of cruel hallucination that Nana was going to fall over the banisters whilst looking down upon the guests.

This idea tortured us. It became indeed a veritable nightmare, till occasionally we would, like Wee Willie Winkie, steal out in our night- gowns to assure ourselves that the terrible disaster had not taken place.

When we caught a glimpse of her alive and well, looking down, deeply interested in what she saw beneath, we would scuttle back to our beds again like frightened white mice.

Nana was kind but severe. Her face was of the heroic type, with clear-cut rather hard features of a somewhat imperial cast. Like all self-respecting nurses of the old type, she ruled with a rod of iron and kept us in almost military subjection.

Nana had invented an instrument of torture called “the strap,” which was nothing but a strip of leather the end of which was cut into many fingers. This strap was used for whipping, or was supposed to be used

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

that way, but I cannot remember its ever having been really used, but it always hung on one or other of our beds as a warning to the unruly.

There were two “straps,” a brown and a black one, and for some rea- son we decreed that the black strap was much the worse of the two; it was the chief bogy.

Nana was also of the days when medicines were not made pleasant to take. They had to be accepted in all their unalloyed nastiness and three of these have remained nightmare memories. There was, first and foremost, castor oil, which used to be taken out of a warmed silver tablespoon, for none of Mamma’s castor-oil pills ever found their way to the nursery. Then there was Gregory powder, which was a gritty, orange-coloured rhubarb mixture and used to be stirred with horrible deliberation in a small wine-glass ; it was a loathsome concoction and the imbibing thereof was a tragedy that never went off without scenes of revolt.

The third of those remedies was called “Grey powder,” which was bad enough but all the same the least of the three evils and would be given in a spoon sweetened by red currant jelly, which has made that particular jelly impossible to me for all time.

Ah, but I was forgetting another gruesome mixture which was called Syrup of Squills, which was inflicted upon you when for some reason it was considered necessary that you should be sick. Syrup of Squills never failed to produce this probably salutary but certainly unpleasant effect.

Nana, presiding over the medicine chest, had the grimness of the Fates deciding over human destinies.

How clearly I still see her, and also the black and brown “straps” hanging as sinister warnings against any insubordination at the foot of our beds.

Outside our night nursery, in the corridor, stood an old grandfather clock which played a chime each time it struck; that, with Big Ben booming out into the night, are two sounds peculiar to nursery days, to its joys and fears, its hopes, tears and revolts.

And dear old Nana Pitcathly was the grim goddess of the nursery, as Mademoiselle was tyrant of the schoolroom, whom we loved less than Nana, though, looking back, I believe that Nana was much the severer of the two.

CLARENCE HOUSE, SCOTLAND, RUSSIA 57

My memories of the Clarence House schoolroom are of several sorts. It was a long-shaped rather narrow room with a flat open fireplace at one end, and faced Stafford House, then inhabited by the Duke of Sutherland.

I do not remember much about our lessons, but I remember having experienced a real London fog in this particular room, a fog so thick that one could not even see the fire burning at the farther end of the not very large room.

Mademoiselle wore spectacles, she turned her feet out when she walked, she was highly religious and was too good friends with the lady-in-waiting, a certain Lady Emma Osborne; a super-refined, un- married gentlewoman, prudish, protesting, and, I am afraid, in league with Mademoiselle to disapprove of the Duchess’s foreign ways and ideas.

I remember two things about Lady Emma, her most exquisite hands, very pale and white, with tapering fingers, and a special dress she wore of violet velvet trimmed with swansdown of the same colour ; we much admired this dress. Her greatest virtue was that she smelt deliciously of some excellent scent that was particularly agreeable to my fastidious nose ; it had something to do with verbena, I think.

But Lady Emma, being a spinster, disapproved of children in gen- eral and of us in particular and was for ever coming out into the cor- ridor to scold us for making such a noise. Unfortunately her room was on the same landing as the nurseries and schoolroom and she spoiled many of our games, especially as she and Mademoiselle were such strong allies.

One sad little schoolroom incident must be related as it has to do with education and has also a moral in it.

We each of us kept a so-called scrap-book in which we stuck our Christmas and Valentine cards (for in those days one still sent and re- ceived Valentine cards, nice shiny ones with pansies or forget-me-nots on them and with edges of paper perforated to look like lace), and a pot of paste was kept with which to stick in these cards.

There was something special about this paste. First of all it looked so appetizing that you felt inclined to eat it, but it was its delicious per- fume that endeared it to me. There was an exquisite odour of bitter almonds about it that for some reason was infinitely satisfying to my

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nose. The fat pot with this treasured paste stood in a small cup- board.

There was a certain hour in the evening when we had to prepare our lessons for next day. Occasionally we were put into separate rooms so that we should not be tempted to talk instead of working.

One evening I was alone in the schoolroom puzzling over some dull problem, and ever and again my thoughts wandered towards the cupboard with the pot of paste. Ever greater became the attraction, it was like a magnet drawing me towards the cupboard. If only I could take one sniff at it, I was sure my brain would clear ; besides it would be libera- tion from an obsession which left me no peace.

Children have curiously delicate consciences. After all, it was not such an awful misdeed to get up and take a sniff at a pot of glue, but somehow I felt that it belonged to those things that were “not done.” But alas! after having manfully resisted for some time, I rose from my seat; the magnet was drawing me with a force I could no longer deny, so I crept like a thief towards the fatal cupboard, opened the door with trembling fingers and plunging the fat brush into the still fatter pot, I filled it with thick white paste, and, shutting my eyes so as to lose none of the ecstasy, I took a long, soul-satisfying breath of the perfume I so adored.

Steps in the corridor. . . . Mademoiselle ! As one committing a crime or theft I hastily laid down the fatal brush and dashed back to my seat, putting on, as the door opened, as innocent a face as possible.

But I suppose I was a bad actress, sincerity, not ruse, was my special- ity. Mademoiselle felt, guessed, smelt that something was wrong. She looked at me, she stared at me ; I felt that I was blushing but I tried to go on with my work as unconcernedly as possible, my nose close to my book, as though nothing had happened. But in vain.

“Princesse, qu’avez vous fait?”

“Rien, Mademoiselle.”

But Mademoiselle was not so easily put off. Her bespectacled eyes searched the room, up and down, the floor, the ceiling, the furniture, the walls . . . and suddenly with a pounce she was beside the cupboard, its door was ajar.

She pulled it open, and there, on the clean white paper of the shelf, lay the revealing brush, fat, heavy, sticky with paste. Not in its pot as

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it should have been, but, of all dreadful things, on the nice clean white paper. Ugh, what a mess !

Drama followed. I did not try to deny my misdeed. I had left my seat. I had sniffed at the precious paste, it was I who had laid the brush down in a hurry, yes, on the paper instead of in the pot. If only I had had the presence of mind to put it back into the pot there would have been no proof against me, but the world is full of ifs.

The long and the short of it was that the crime, for some reason that even to-day I cannot fathom, was considered great, and as punishment I had to stand before Mademoiselle with outstretched palm and was given three cuts with an ebony, brass-edged ruler, which was both pain- ful and humiliating. It was in fact the only time in all my life that a rod was ever used in my education.

According to my ideas, the “punishment did not fit the crime” and the remembrance of this chastisement still rankles.

Probably Mademoiselle was in a bad temper that day. Moral : gov- ernesses must avoid being bad-tempered, but little girls must not ca-re overmuch for sweet scents, there is the seed of perdition in this weak- ness, nor must they at the wrong moment lose their heads and deposit sticky paste brushes upon clean white paper, instead of back into the pot.

Anyhow it is a sad story and I hate the very memory of that black ruler with the four shiny edges.

But there are also pleasanter remembrances of the Clarence House schoolroom. It was there that I had my first taste of toffee, and it was there that “Les Malheurs de Sophie” and many another enchanting book was read to us.

It was also from this room that we used to hear the Life Guards or the “Blues” pass on their way to change guard.

They passed with a jingle of metal which could be heard even when the window was shut. But what a torture it was to remain glued to your chair instead of jumping up to look down upon their extraordinary perfection !

From afar one heard the tramp of horses’ hoofs approaching. They were coming. Nearer, nearer, now one could hear the champing of bits, the sound of metal against metal, the clinking of chains, and by their very sound one visualized how bright and shiny they were. Nearer,

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nearer! Now they were just under our windows, the narrow street reverberated with their tread. Then fainter and fainter would the glori- ous tramp become, they were moving away . . . away . . . they had come, passed and gone.

To the later London period belonged the rides in Hyde Park, a won- derful advancement.

At Eastwell we had possessed one pony for all three of us, a fat, ir- resistible animal called Tommy. The three of us shared Tommy, taking him in turns.

Our rides on Tommy had been most unscientific, crudely instructed by a groom or coachman, but they had from the first taught us the “feel” of a horse, taught us to be fearless and above all given us the idea that we could ride, and this is half the battle.

In London an absurd old riding-master, called Mr. Lumley, had been excavated from somewhere and he it was who polished up our knowl- edge, first round and round Clarence House garden and finally, to our delight, we were allowed out into the field of our dearest ambitions, Rotten Row. It was old Lumley who provided the horses for these rides.

I cannot exactly remember what age we were then, anyhow we were small mites and our joy and excitement was huge.

Never shall I forget the sensation of gleeful enchantment it was starting off on these rides, accompanied by the care-worn Mr. Lumley in top-hat, with something of the air of an anxious hen about him. A fearfully correct old hen, though, correct with the correctness that can be attained solely by riding- or dancing-masters.

First came the opening of Clarence House gateway, presided over by the dear old porter, Mallet, I think, was his name, and past our private policeman who was a great friend of ours (or was the policeman’s name Mallet?). This was followed by the sound of our horses’ hoofs on the wooden pavement of the street, luckily for us beginners a very quiet by-way; there was the turn into the riders’ road leading down to the Mall, past the Green Park, and all along its hated paling opposite Buck- ingham Palace garden wall, through the archway at the end. Then came the most ticklish part of the whole business, the part which made old Lumley the most anxious, the safe steering across Hyde Park Corn-

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er into the Park itself, and finally the reaching of the precious Row with all its expanse of sand, opening out before you a real paradise of hope, an endless promise of gallops not unmixed with just a thrill of appre- hension to make them more exciting.

Ducky and I had decided, so that there should never be any discus- sions or quarrels, that once and for all she, being the taller, would ride the bigger horse, I the smaller, never matter what their looks might be. In this way she sometimes had the better horse and sometimes I. As far as I can remember, Sandra, as we called our third sister Alexandra, used in those early days to ride Tommy, the safe, reliable, irresistible Tommy who also followed us later to Malta.

Those rides in Hyde Park were bliss. Old Lumley was sometimes cross and always absent-minded, but he could not damp our spirits. His legs were thin, his face looked mummified and his meagre grey hair was brushed forwards under his top-hat to hide his sunken temples. Old Lumley was in fact rather a pathetic figure.

I think he must have given lessons right into his ripest old age, for many years later, when quite emancipated from riding-lessons, I met him again in the Row and greeted him with a shout of recognition. He looked at me with a blank stare as though we had never shared the joys and the cares of the Row together. I suppose I was more changed than he was. In his days I was a wee girlie, now I do not know exactly what I was — Niclvt Fisch und niclit Fleisch, as the Germans would have said. But I was sadly mortified to be cut dead by my old riding-master. His face was more care-worn than ever, he had perhaps become just a little drier and thinner but otherwise he had not changed at all.

Into this period enters also a certain amount of theatre-going. This joy fell but seldom to our share but when it did it was a tremendously exciting event.

The very smell of a London theatre and of the beautiful bouquets we would find in our box when we arrived, what joy! There was a kind of dark velvety red rose very wide open, with rounded petals, specially characteristic of these bouquets. In Paris these roses are now some- times given to me, but they immediately carry me back to the London theatres and to that glorious sensation of excited expectation before the curtain went up.

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One of the plays I best remember is Macbeth, with Irving and Ellen Terry, a wonderful representation ; but the apparition of Banquo’s ghost was so appallingly well done that for nights afterwards we could not sleep without a light in our room.

Ellen Terry, with her long red plaits, was a lovely incarnation of Macbeth’s fierce queen, especially in the scene when, all in white, she came down the stairs walking in her sleep and trying to wash the blood off her hands.

But my mother could not stand Henry Irving and my father disliked him still more and tried to make us see his affectations, especially his stage limp and his snarl in the scenes when he simulated anger or rage. In spite of these criticisms, we children had a sneaking liking for Irv- ing, even at his worst.

I shall never forget what living interest the gallery in England took in any drama ; the villain was always hissed or whistled at, whilst the hero was applauded not for his acting but for his actions.

We also saw Irving in a very sentimental piece about Charles I ; all to the advantage of Charles I, of course, and we, naturally being stout Royalists, loathed Cromwell with all our souls.

But our hero of heroes on the stage was “Lord Harry,” played by Wilson Barrett, who was, according to our ideas, the very incarnation of all that was most perfect, man and hero blending into one. Wilson Barrett was Lord Harry.

This piece was also of the sentimental kind. Lord Harry was a brave, virtuous, beautiful, self-sacrificing Cavalier, splendid enough to satisfy our dearest dreams of perfection. He ravished us so completely that for years we cherished the memory of this play, and whenever asked what we would like to see, it was always Lord Harry, till finally Mamma, al- though she too was an admirer of Wilson Barrett, sent us to see Char- ley’s Aunt instead.

This gross farce made us laugh till our sides ached, but all the time we regretted Lord Harry. No allurement could drag us away from our ideal, and this no doubt was provoking to our elders who knew that there were plenty of other fascinating plays to be seen besides Lord Harry.

We infinitely preferred drama to comedy and although we laughed with all our hearts when taken to the latter, we considered it a waste

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of those rare and precious theatre treats, if we were taken to a funny play instead of to something heroic, in costume.

Shakespeare was appreciated and accepted from the first, as was in later years Schiller at the Coburg Theatre, both, I fear, more for the story and fine display than for any beauty of language or verse.

Later the opera cut out even the drama.

Before I leave London I want to mention some of the servants, for servants always play a big part in children’s lives.

My mother had two, what in royal households are called “pages,” one of whom was old Hutchins, an old-fashioned servant with clean-shaven chin and long whiskers. A pompous old fellow was Hutchins, but en- tirely our slave. The other was called William Smith. He was of the “Haw-haw” kind, clean-shaven, smart, over-good-looking in a mas- sive, florid way, probably a lady-killer in the steward’s room, and I should say inclined to be vulgar in private life, which we children in- stinctively felt, especially after having found a drawing made by Wil- liam of a lady who showed more leg than was the fashion in those more ceremonial and polite days. This drawing gave us a shock and Wil- liam was, I remember, much upset at its having fallen into the royal children’s hands.

The butler, or steward as he was called in our house, was a gentle, soft-voiced man with the name of Gardener, but he has remained very shadowy in my mind ; I only see him hovering in the background, pale and refined, holding the string of his pince-nez between his fingers, a pince-nez he only put on when reading small print.

William the hearty and Hutchins the bewhiskered were much the greatest realities in our lives.

When we were a little older, it was we who did the looking down over the banisters when there were big dinner-parties and Nana who held on to our dresses from the back for fear we should come to grief.

Hutchins looms large in my recollections of these occasions. When the guests had gone into the dining-room we would creep down into the two favourite and seldom-used drawing-rooms, where all the Chinese and Russian treasures were accumulated, and there, with impatience, we would await old Hutchins who stole up between the courses to bring us exquisite tit-bits from the feast downstairs. Mamma had instituted

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on these occasions the Russian “Zakuska,” which was a great success. Delicious crumbs from the rich man’s table found their way through Hutchins to our greedy little mouths. Once, however, he made the mis- take of bringing us a little piece of toast with caviare. This was termed “disgusting stuff,” and I regret to say was disposed of in a manner we afterwards never dared confess. We threw it down from the top of the back-stairs upon a cupboard which stood on the lowest landing! I do not know how long that piece of toast and caviare lay mouldering un- discovered on that cupboard top. We could not see it from so far up, especially as the cupboard had a sunken top.

Wonderful games were played in those two drawing-rooms before the guests came up. Here was a moment when I could be a queen to my heart’s content. I would find some bright-coloured curtain or table- cover, which, fastened round my waist, would trail gorgeously behind me over the ground, and for some reason I liked to call myself the Queen of Spain : that name had about it something both historical and adventurous, which sounded well in my ears — it was grand and digni- fied, and had a smack of les chateaux en Espagne.

Ducky usually played the part of my husband, my son or my horse, or all three in turn, according to the necessities of the game.

Ducky always played the heroic, brave, self-sacrificing parts, and was almost always a male. There was something heroic about Ducky, even at that early age ; something a little sombre. She was the one who espoused causes, she was the “fore-fighter,” the one who discussed and resented, who allowed no nonsense, and had no patience with frauds. She immediately spotted any insincerity and let nothing pass. Tall for her age, she was strong and rebellious, but like the strong she was also a defender of the weak and oppressed, and sometimes she even espoused lost causes with a bravery that we less heroic ones admired without imitating.

I on the contrary was always inclined to let well alone.

As for sister Sandra, she was in those days a fat, harmless child, sweet-tempered and fair-haired, who followed her elders’ footsteps, eager mitsumachen, but humble before reproof.

We two elders treated her with a certain imperious off -handedness which had no unkindness in it, but which over-ruled her timid desires, offering her the parts she was to play in such wise that she could not

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but accept them. Later she chose her own parts, but not then. She was, however, also permitted to be a queen, and perhaps in self-defence, on those special evenings, married old Hutchins, which gave her a feeling of security and enabled her to hold her own against the Queen of Spain with her husband, her son and her horse !

It was a glorious game in which each played her part seriously, actu- ally becoming the personage she was impersonating, but Sandra had often to relinquish the support of her “husband,” who had to hurry down to serve the next course.

Well before the guests (ladies first) came up to the official drawing- rooms, we were hurried off to bed.

Music had no great part in our education. Mamma confessed to me later that her one desire had been to have a Wunderkind. Her ambition was that one or the other of us should have some startling talent, music, painting, singing, dancing, mathematics, anything, so long as it were tremendous. When none of us showed any disposition to become any- thing out of the ordinary she gave us up as lost causes and disappoint- ments ; it was no good, therefore, educating such little nonentities in any special way, so our ear was never formed and for a long time we had execrable taste in music.

But all the same I can remember the shiver of real joy that ran through me when Mamma sometimes sat down at the piano and played.

She had white, plump, short-fingered hands ; her touch was exquisite- ly soft and velvety. Her playing was like running water. I remember especially a Romance of Rubinstein and a posthumous Prelude of Chopin which used to melt my heart within me. So I must all the same have “felt” music even at that early age.

Ducky, and later baby Bee, were the musical ones of the family. I had talent only for drawing and painting, a talent which my other sis- ters shared, but there was a time when I was first in this art.

It was Mamma who initiated us into the joys of Grimm and Ander- sen, especially Andersen, whose fairy-tales are the fairy-tales of the world.

Mamma read beautifully, and could read by the hour, but she never allowed us to sit with idle hands, we had always to be working at some- thing or other, crochet, knitting or drawing.

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We loved above all the story of “The Little Mermaid,” we wept rivers of tears over that eternally pathetic tale, and no matter how often it was read (for children always want to hear stories over and over again), each time it moved us in the same way.

Andersen has remained my ideal for all time, and to-day, when I myself try my hand at fairy-stories, I always try to write them a la maniere d’ Andersen, who better than anyone else knew his art and can wring both smiles and tears from the stoniest heart.

Mamma always spoke English with us. She would never teach us Russian, declaring that she did not wish to hear her beloved mother- tongue mutilated by her own children. She adored us, gave up her life to us, but for all that she had little faith in us ; that was the strange, strange thing.

We were not Wnnderkinder, so, even in later years, when each de- veloped some humble talent of her own, although she encouraged us, it was always patronizingly and with a touch of contempt. She never took us seriously, we were of a younger generation, nor had we been edu- cated as perfectly as she had been; and above all we were Protestants, and therefore some parts of our souls were shut off from hers.

Beloved, big-hearted, generous Mamma, built on grand lines, but al- ways a seeker, restless in her own soul : one who, in looking for com- plete perfection, often almost unjustly overlooked what might have been true sources of joy, had she not always been hankering after an ideal implanted in her by those who brought her up.

Like all human beings, she was full of Sehnsucht, but she need not have been so lonely had she only trusted her children a little more.

One summer was spent in Scotland instead of at Osborne. This was the only time I ever went to Scotland and my memory of it is full of en- chantment.

Grandmamma Queen, the all-powerful, had lent us a wee house called Abergeldie Maines, where we spent the first part of the summer with our governess. Later, towards autumn, Mamma came and we moved to a rather bigger house or cottage called Birkhall. I have but a vague vision left of this house, but it cannot have been a very big one as we all three, Ducky, Sandra and I, slept in one huge bed. This was exciting if not particularly comfortable. Two slept with their heads towards the

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top of the bed, the other with her head against the foot, her feet separat- ing the other two sleepers. Why this arrangement had been found necessary I cannot explain, as I have no vision of the inside of the house except of that one bedroom.

But all the “outside” impressions have remained clear and luminous. We simply adored Scotland, with its low, undulating, heather-covered hills, its moors and burns, its mists and lochs. There was something in- finitely poetical and just a little mysterious about it which touched some special chord in me. Much, much later, having discovered the books of Fiona Macleod, I loved them with the same intensity as I loved Scotland the only time I was ever there. There was something en- veloped and hazy about it, something legendary, which powerfully moved the soul within me, something kindred to my spirit, if I may so express myself.

Curiously enough, extremes draw me. I feel the almost mystical charm of Scotland and at the same time I simply adore the South with its profuse luxuriant “gloriousness,” and its occasional aridity. My heart is, so to say, torn between the two ; different currents in my na- ture are attracted. Malta and Scotland are most fundamentally different lands, and yet both are almost painfully kindred to my soul. I feel them both, they almost torture me with the love they inspire in me.

No striking event marks that summer in Scotland, everything in my memory is hazy with a haziness akin to the Highland mists. Half- tones ; browns, buffs, purples, grey, every possible tint of these, and the hills in the distance blue, that special blue which distance alone can at- tain, the blue of dreams, the blue of hopes floating on the horizon of one’s consciousness.

And into these half-tones long rambling voyages of discovery over moor and hill, along quiet dales and beside the brown burns, brown with the brownness of certain hazel eyes that have in them a green light, and these little burns were full of red-spotted trout. Underfoot, stones, heather or moss ; great soft cushions, grey and elastic, forerunners of swampy places. How we loved these lichen-coloured mounds of moss ; we would endeavour to uproot them without breaking them in two, but when the difficult feat was achieved they were always too heavy to carry home. But there was something quite special about that grey moss ; there were wide and often boggy stretches of it which gave the

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soil an eerie look, as though it were coated with mildew in great lumps, and this mildew colour blended softly with the horizon; there was no line separating the two ; the whole world was hazy, indefinite, nebulous, it was as though you were advancing into a grey dream.

But above all there was the heather, that wonderful rolling carpet of purple, with an undergrowth of rust, which added that warmth of colour which so completely satisfied the beauty-loving eye. Over hill and dale, as far as gaze could reach, purple ; a grand spread of violet, a royal mantle extended over this northern world.

There were also foggy days that covered you with a million tears, weighing your eyelashes down with heavy moisture, spreading a haze of dew over whatever you wore. Then too were dream walks in a world that had no definite shape, no definite colour, just spheres of cold va- pour, with an occasional lifting of the veil, revealing shadowy flocks of sheep, phantom shapes moving over phantom worlds, with a spectre going before them slowly leading them into the land of wraiths.

Wrapped in their grey plaids, their collies at their heels, those gaunt Highland shepherds were indeed the spirits of the mist.

Grandmamma came to Balmoral in the autumn, if I rightly remem- ber. This was the home of her heart. She dearly loved her “Scotchies,” almost every inhabitant was a personal acquaintance and even the royal apartments were hung and upholstered with Balmoral tartan ; carpets, chairs, curtains, everything was striped with greys, reds and black. This form of decoration was more patriotic than artistic and had a way of flickering before your eyes and confusing your brain.

Here also, though the life led in the Highlands was more cosy and homelike, less official and severe, Grandmamma spread that atmosphere so peculiar to her, here too her presence was felt in all things, even when she was not actually seen.

Queen Victoria ! Even then she was becoming an almost legendary figure ; how much more so, therefore, to-day when looking back upon her ! She had lasted so long that one could hardly imagine the world continuing to turn without her.

In a way she was the arbiter of our different fates. For all members of her family her “yes” and her “no” counted tremendously. She was not averse from interfering in the most private questions. She was the

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central power directing things. Even Mamma, who, according to us, was omnipotent, had to count with Queen Victoria, had to listen to her, and if she had not exactly to obey, had anyhow to argue out all differ- ences of opinion. But as she was strong-willed and autocratic, I can imagine that these arguments were tough.

The grand little old lady in her white widow’s cap and her flounced black silk gown, who seldom raised her voice, except when accentuat- ing certain words, was a tremendous, sometimes almost a fearful force.

Right into their ripe years her sons and daughters were in great awe of “dearest Mamma” ; they avoided discussing her will, and her veto made them tremble. They spoke to her with bated breath, and even when not present she was never mentioned except with lowered voice.

Looking back upon Queen Victoria, especially from these days of negation, I cannot help marvelling at the prestige she possessed. There was something fetish-like about it. I sometimes wonder if she realized this tremendous effect she had upon others, if she was conscious of that atmosphere that emanated from her, if it was really due to her personal- ity or to the religious “hush” others created around her.

It is natural that children should be awed in the presence of one who was like the earth around which satellites circled, but that this should af- fect great and small alike is wonderful. Was it the times she belonged to, was it because she had lasted so long? Was it because she lived so shut away from the world, surrounding herself with that atmosphere of mournful abstinence from all joys of life? I do not pretend to be able to answer these questions, I was too young then, and later, when grown up, I saw too little of her. The fact remains that she was a tre- mendous presence, if not personality, and her places, whilst she breathed within their walls, had something of shrines about them, which were ap- proached with awe not unmixed with anxiety.

There was also a quite special thrill when from afar you saw Grand- mamma’s outrider come trotting down the road ahead of her carriage. Grandmamma never drove without an outrider.

Solemn-faced, in a livery as impeccably black and neat as the clothes of a bishop, mounted on a stolid dappled grey, groomed to the super- lative perfection only English stables can attain, this forerunner of the Royal Presence would appear round the bend of the road. Trot, trot,

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trot, trot, the very sound made your heart beat with expectation. That black-coated rider with a face that never smiled, never in fact expressed anything but almost magnificent reliability, was more uniquely royal and effective than any flare of trumpets or bright-coated military escort could have been. Trot, trot, trot, trot, and here was her Majesty’s car- riage drawn by greys as superbly sleek and well-bred as the one who had heralded their coming ; and seated within the open barouche, a wee little old lady with an exquisitely old-fashioned hat and antediluvian, sloping-shouldered mantle, black, with sometimes a touch of white. Nothing showy about her, no attempt at effect of any kind, the whole turn-out simple, unadorned, but what a thrill the passing of that simple carriage gave you.

Trot, trot, trot, trot, deep curtsies, the waving of hands and handker- chiefs, smiles on every face, a responding smile from the little old lady in the carriage — only just a glimpse — but how the memory remained with you. Trot, trot ... a diminishing sound. You stood staring after the carriage, the horses, the outrider, trot, trot . . . fainter, fainter . . . till it died quite away. . . .

Grandmamma Queen !

We did not see much of Grandmamma during that autumn, but I re- member one drive with her to a far-off loch amongst the hills, called Due or Dhu Loch.

Grandmamma’s drives were a very essential part of her well-regu- lated life. She drove out every single day, no matter what the weather and almost always in an open carriage. No rain, storm or cold stopped her, her drives were as inevitable as sunrise or sunset, no event good or bad, not even a catastrophe seemed to make any difference to Grand- mamma’s drives. And into the bargain they were exceedingly lengthy drives.

Round about Balmoral Queen Victoria had had small stone houses built at the different spots where she was most fond of driving, and tea was often taken at one or the other of these little houses. She then re- turned home, if possible by another route.

The only time in Scotland I remember having been honoured by an invitation to drive with Grandmamma was to this far-off Due Loch, and my excitement was great.

GRANDMAMMA QUEEN QUEEN VICTORIA

GRANDPAPA EMPEROR; THE EMPEROR GRANDMAMMA EMPRESS — EMPRESS MARIE FEDEROYNA

ALEXANDER II WITH MV BROTHER ALFRED AS A BABY

CLARENCE HOUSE, SCOTLAND, RUSSIA 71

I have but a vague memory of the road leading to the Due Loch, but the loch itself I can still see perfectly well. A small, dark, rather sinister- looking loch, lying deep amongst more or less barren hills, stony and grim. Legend would have it that the sun never shone on the Due Loch : that was why it was so sombre, so sad-looking, like a face that never smiled. I stood before its gloomy waters and stared at it with awe. It fascinated me, I felt that all sorts of stories could be woven around its secretive-looking gloom.

“Due” means mournful, and certainly some sinister tale was attached to this lake, but no one told it to me then and now I have no one to ask ; the grown-ups probably never realized how much I would have liked to know why the sun never shone into the Due Loch ! It is also probable that I never asked ; children are often curiously reticent in asking for explanations about things that interest them, particularly when they have only overheard a conversation, and its story had not been especially told to them. They are afraid of making fools of themselves, not quite sure if they had been supposed to listen or not.

All my English uncles and aunts were curiously absent-minded. They only occasionally seemed to wake up to the consciousness that you were there at all ; they also had a disconcerting way of seeming to draw you into a conversation, and when you responded, their minds had already wandered far away, and your timid answer found itself lost on the air, a poor forlorn and ashamed thing, suddenly despised and homeless.

There was no intentional unkindness in this, it was simply that at one moment you existed for them and at the next their thoughts had already taken such an entirely different channel that they simply felt and saw you no more.

But children want to be very much seen, felt and heard, and those who make you feel thinner than air humiliate you terribly.

Even our father had this absent-mindedness, characteristic of the family ; he sometimes simply looked through you.

Mamma had one great joy at Balmoral. There were quantities of mushrooms, or at least what Mamma called mushrooms, but which peo- ple in England contemptuously termed toadstools. All Russians are great connoisseurs of mushrooms and in their country exquisite dishes are made of them. There is an especial kind with thick, stony stems and

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brown-grey heads. In Germany these are called Steinpilze and are a great delicacy. The kind Mamma gathered in such quantities at Bal- moral were second cousins to these, poorer relations, but just as de- licious when well prepared with a cream sauce spiced with a certain herb. This species has a predilection for growing under birch trees.

Mamma would bring home basketfuls of these, but to her great mor- tification the royal cooks only admitted the well-known common white mushrooms which are pink inside ; all others were suspicious and noth- ing would induce them to serve up that “Russian stuff” on the Queen of England’s table.

It was on this occasion that I first heard the expression “toadstool,” which was certainly a most disdainful way of denominating Mamma’s precious gatherings. She had much fun with Grandmamma over this, and finally, I believe, the royal kitchen was prevailed upon to cook these uncertain looking vegetables and everybody, even the most insular in- habitant of the court, thoroughly enjoyed them.

In Russia, mushroom-picking is a veritable science, there are no end of good mushrooms (or call them toadstools if you prefer), and at an early age Mamma had made real experts of her children. We could, without the slightest hesitation, distinguish the good from the bad, the harmless from the poisonous.

Mushroom-hunting is good fun, but it was never my speciality. Ducky had inherited Mamma’s passion for this form of amusement, and my daughter Elisabeth in her turn has continued the tradition, she can spend hours hunting for mushrooms. Somehow I was awkward about finding mushrooms, which was a great humiliation to me. I would bring only three or four to Ducky’s dozens, and this I felt as a really painful inferiority, an inferiority that was well rubbed into me. I even remember a comic-tragic scene in connexion with one of these mushroom-hunts ; but this was at Coburg, not at Balmoral.

Mamma had a Russian diplomat friend called Count Lamsdorf (nephew of the famous Count Lamsdorf), an exceedingly well-man- nered, pale, fair, nice-looking young man. We little girls were not quite sure if we liked Count Lamsdorf; over-correct and rather effem- inate, he was a frequent guest in our house, but his correctness never melted into anything more than tepid joviality.

One day we had all gone mushroom-hunting in a wood well known as

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good ground for that special kind of sport. Elegant and polite to a de- gree even out in the woods, Count Lamsdorf had also been enlisted amongst the ranks of the mushroom-pickers.

Everybody had found quantities except me, who seemed to have no eyes in my head. It was quite like searching for Easter eggs and I positively seemed to have been smitten with blindness. At certain mo- ments the searchers came together from the different ends of the forest to compare their finds, but each time my basket was empty.

By degrees I was growing exasperated, but was for a time able to mask my discomfiture with a smile on the wrong side of my mouth. Little knowing how near the end of my patience I was, everybody began to tease me and I felt deeply humiliated.

Finally a signal was given that the search was at an end and every- body flocked together to examine each other’s harvest. Mine was poor — I had hardly anything to show and the teasing began anew. Count Lamsdorf, who had been lucky, added his few polite words of mockery to the louder raillery of the others. But this was just too much. His innocent words made the cup of my bitterness overflow and to the hor- ror of my mother and the discomfiture of my sisters, like the real little fool that I was, I burst into tears.

Dismay on all sides ! I even managed to bring out a few words laden with resentment which I hurled at the head of the much-abashed count who, for some reason, had become in my eyes the chief offender. I am afraid that I was even thoroughly rude, for I was no longer mistress of my emotions.

Mamma used all the tact she could trying to pooh-pooh the stupid fuss I was making. The much-puzzled guest, full of remorse, pro- nounced words of humblest repentance, but I stolidly maintained my absurd attitude of offence.

Finally, taking me kindly by the shoulders, Mamma pushed me towards the mortified gentleman :

“Va, ma chere, embrasse le Comte et que tout soit oublie.” Em- brasse le Comte ! Kiss him! Consternation. He was not a cousin nor an uncle ; he was only a disconcertingly ceremonious gentleman with pale cheeks and paler hair, and much too polite to be looked upon as a friend. Kiss him — I was dumbfounded.

“Child, go on, don’t make a fuss !”

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And there, with the whole forest as witness, with my sisters gaping at me open-mouthed but full of pity, I actually had to kiss that pale and over-correct gentleman, who, almost as shy as I, took off his hat — (Oh, I well remember that taking off of his hat!) — so as to meet worthily this scene of reconciliation.

But was it reconciliation ? Ah, there’s the rub. It was an unheard-of happening, but reconciliation?

I am afraid that from that day onwards, poor Count Lamsdorf was a thorn in my flesh, and each one of his visits was a torture to the fool- ish little girl who was never again able to forget that, one day, with all the trees of the wood looking on, she had had to kiss him, an over- polite gentleman who was neither uncle nor cousin. . . .

In childhood your parents’ friends play a great part. Some you ad- mit directly, they know how to gain your confidence, they become your friends too. Against others for some reason you nurse a certain preju- dice, probably most unfairly, but you simply cannot like them, they do not fit in.

Then there are those precious few who, even if they pay no particular attention to you, are passionately admired and adored from the first mo- ment, sometimes simply because you admire their looks, and sometimes just because there is that strange inexplicable affinity betv/een you and them, that magnetism which attracts beings to each other for no ap- parent reason — it just is.

All through life I was inordinately attracted to a beautiful face, and I remember certain guests who were received at Eastwell that shone with a star-like radiance that I never again forgot. They were real events.

Two women, very different in type, belong to this category. One was Lady (Georgina) Dudley, the other was Lady Randolph Churchill.

Lady Dudley, as also Lady (Helen) Vincent, has always remained my ideal of typical English beauty. There was a perfection about Lady Dudley’s loveliness which is unforgettable though I saw her but very seldom.

Lady Randolph was a more flashing beauty, and might almost be taken for an Italian or a Spaniard. Her eyes were large and dark, her

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mouth mobile with delicious, almost mischievous curves, her hair blue- black and glossy, she had something of a Creole about her. She was very animated and laughed a lot, showing beautiful white teeth, and always looked happy and amused.

For some reason she and my mother were very good friends : I was much too young to know what attracted them to each other, because they were certainly very different, but we used to see them often to- gether, and we entirely approved of Lady Randolph.

Mamma would play duets with her on the piano in the big Eastwell library. We were often in the room during the time, occupied with our own games, the two ladies absorbed in their music quite forgetting our presence. It still makes me smile to remember how one day Ducky and I were amusing ourselves with a pair of mechanical frogs which had been given to us, green tin monsters that when wound up, crouched, hesitating awhile, then made sudden, most disconcerting leaps at the mo- ment you least expected. These frogs were an endless source of amuse- ment.

I cannot recollect which of us hit upon the idea of setting these springing creatures under the chairs of the two music enthusiasts, but what fun it would be !

We well realized that, carried away on the wings of melody, they were entirely oblivious of our existence. From time to time, one or the other would exclaim at the difficulty of certain passages, there would be a second’s hesitation, a little apologetic laugh, and then they would be off again as though their lives depended upon their fingers.

Softly we two miscreants stole over the floor, as quiet as mice, no sound revealing our nearness, and set our jumping freaks under the chairs of our betters. No two Red Indians could have made a more wily approach.

The springing creatures crouched, hesitated and sprang, right upon the heels of the piano players ! It had been superbly calculated, the ef- fect was instantaneous and complete.

Shrieks, laughter ! And of course a scolding. But the scolding was drowned by the laughter and I remember Lady Randolph’s white teeth and Mamma’s apology for her children’s misbehaviour.

Another peculiarity of Lady Randolph’s was a special sort of comb that she wore at the back of her chignon, a light tortoise-shell comb

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decorated with little round knobs. This comb I admired tremendously ; it certainly added to that Spanish look she had and was just exactly the sort of comb she should have worn.

Certain details of dress used to strike me at an early age and they still remain sticking in my memory whilst more important facts have been entirely wiped out.

There was, for instance, a ruby-red bonnet, oh yes, a bonnet, because in those days that was both the smart and correct thing for married ladies to wear. There was a great difference in my childhood between what a young girl and a married lady wore. In our times, the Granny can easily be seen in the same dress, or almost, as her granddaughter, dancing at her first ball ! If I am exaggerating, forgive me, but I do not think that I am far wrong.

This ruby-red velvet bonnet that I remember was worn by a certain Frau von Konigseck (who shall be spoken of later) when one day she came to meet my parents at the Coburg station. It was a quite flat affair with a broad bow on the top and was fixed by a piece of red velvet rib- bon under her chin. Queen Alexandra was photographed in bonnets of this shape.

Frau von Konigseck was neither elegant nor pretty, but her bonnet was, according to my childish appreciation, lovely, and has remained un- forgettable to this day.

But there was especially a certain dress worn by an aunt during the time of Queen Victoria’s first Jubilee that I still have in mind. The aunt was Louisa of Coburg, wife of Uncle Philip of Coburg-Kohary, brother of King Ferdinand of Bulgaria. She was the eldest daughter of King Leopold II of Belgium and one of the Grandes Elegantes of her time. Her love for dress, in fact, was what the Puritans would have called sinful, and was certainly ruinous and did much to make of her a difficult wife.

Otherwise she was a good-natured if somewhat foolish lady who loved to be paid attention, even if it was only to be teased by others. In fact, she was very much disappointed when one forgot to tease her. She wanted to be teased about her clothes, her habits, her ideas, her flirta- tions. She loved to be considered somewhat eccentric, which she was in a way that was innocent enough, had it not been so expensive.

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We children called her Aunt Philipa, which, according to us, cleverly united her and her husband’s names, Philip and Louisa.

Aunt Philipa was, because of the exaggerated number of her clothes, a grand source of interest to us younger ones. It was like going to the theatre. Even when she only came for a few days, she would bring so many hats that no cupboards sufficed, so she generally pinned them all the way up the curtains, as far as her arms could reach.

There was a memorable occasion at Reinhardsbrunn when two of her hats were burnt on a stove and one was eaten up by the dogs ! Aunt Philipa was very fair and had the small eyes and long nose of her father, but all the same she was a decorative person in a showy sort of way and dress helped her greatly, though Mamma of course thoroughly disapproved of the eccentricity of her fashions.

She had a killing way of laughing, her nose playing a great part and her eyes nearly disappearing during the process ; it was besides a slow laugh which began gradually and went on for a long time increasing in volume, even after everybody else had finished their laugh. She seemed to relish, so to say, the physical pleasure of laughing.

My parents poked fun at her all the time and this used to make her expand with a sort of childish glee. Her absurdities were discussed and everybody made a point of inquiring with exaggerated interest how many dresses, hats, cloaks, tea-gowns, etc., she had brought with her. Clothes in fact were her very raison d’etre.

She would change her attire at every hour of the day, and there was always a little bag, or so-called reticule, to match each dress, and good- ness only knows with what these mysterious little bags were filled ; pow- der and paint, mirror, scents and sachets, smoking pastilles, nail polish, cigarettes, and so on. She was always fiddling about in her little reticule.

During the Jubilee she was our parents’ guest at Clarence House, and her toilettes were the excitement of the whole household from the scul- lery-maid to the lady-in-waiting. The memorable dress in question was an astonishing creation ; one mass of small beads shimmering between fire-red and sapphire blue. I had never before seen anything like this dress nor perhaps since! It was a “stunner” as the schoolboy would have said; it knocked you down and, as it was in the time of the bustle, it was not only astonishing as to colour, but complicated as to shape.

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She received ovations from all sides and, much gratified, started one of her slow long laughs that went on and on increasing in volume, whilst she screwed up her small eyes till they almost vanished.

Later on Aunt Philipa disappeared out of our lives and her end was less gay and brilliant than her beginning. Poor Aunt Philipa!

Before I begin describing our time at Malta, which is the happiest memory of my life, I would like you to follow me on a flying visit to Russia, that great, mysterious, stupendous Russia of the Tsars, now so tragically a thing of the past, but which was Mamma’s Russia.

You must forgive me if at first I show it to you as I perceived it through my childish vision, with all its phenomenal prestige and grandeur. A formidable erection of power and splendour, comparable to nothing else except, no doubt, the Far East which I have never seen.

Russia ! My astonished child’s eyes see gigantic palaces, wonderful parks, fountains, gardens. They see astounding family gatherings, mil- itary displays, religious ceremonies in churches all glittering with gold. They see jewels so fantastic that you can hardly imagine that they are real, quick trotting horses with flowing manes and tails, and their flanks so shining that you could mirror your face in them. They see whole regiments of Cossacks, wild-looking, but so picturesque that they could fit into the most fantastic tales. And some of these same Cossacks, standing in long red coats, high fur caps and armed to the teeth before the doors of their masters ; their breasts are barred with cartridges stuck into silver braid, their heelless black boots have many folds around the ankles and pervade the atmosphere with a pleasant fragrance of Rus- sian leather. My eyes also see long corridors, and, so to say, over-life- sized halls and drawing-rooms, opening out one into the other, and our feet patter timidly over wide expanses of floors, so vast and so polished that we have the impression of walking on ice.

And everywhere a quite special odour; a mixture of turpentine, Rus- sian leather, cigarette smoke and scent, uniquely characteristic of these Imperial palaces.

Imperial is indeed the word, fantastic, fairy-like, legendary, mille et une nuits; all superlatives are suitable and permissible in this Russia of the Tsars, this glamour-filled Russia that is no more.

And it is Mamma who is leading us little English girls by the hand,

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leading us into all this; Mamma who came out of it all, who belongs to it still, Mamma who makes the sign of the Cross in her own chapel of the many images, which is but a tiny reflection of the huge glory of Russia’s churches which once were hers.

Because all this was hers, before she came to sober England. That giant with the grey hair and closely cut whiskers, with the rather for- bidding face but kindly eyes and mouth, is her father, the Emperor, and those younger giants, so many of them that you get quite bewil- dered, are her brothers and cousins and the other older giants are her uncles. They all bend down to kiss you in turn, they have far to bend because they are tall like trees, and they all smell deliciously of Russian leather, cigarettes and the best sort of scent. I remember them always in uniform, and they are altogether wonderful and unbelievable, quite like people out of fairy-stories that you did not imagine really existed till you went to Russia, Mamma’s Russia, the home from which she came.

And everybody loved you and spoilt you and gave you good things to eat or hung lovely little crosses or lockets set with precious stones round your neck. The servants kissed your hands, and at every corner there was some old friend of Mamma’s who burst out on you and hugged you and made the sign of the Cross over your forehead. And when you finally reached your own rooms, there on the centre table stood two dishes, one with sweets, the other with biscuits. These bis- cuits and sweets were renewed each day. The sweets were varied and nowhere else in the wide world were they as good. Long-shaped fruit- drops wrapped in white paper with little fringed edges of blue, red or yellow, according to the sweet inside. Flat cream caramels too luscious for words, these also wrapped in thick white paper, double fondants of coffee, and also those little paper baskets of fresh strawberry sweets al- ready described as one of the “ecstasies.”

Then other sweets were brought in big boxes, round slabs of fruit paste, a speciality of Moscow, and dried fruit and berries preserved in white flour-like sugar, a speciality from Kiev.

And when you went out for walks in the park, there was a sailor or two who went with you, specially deputed to look after and amuse the royal and Imperial children during their walks. These sailors became your most cherished friends and companions. Each day when you

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

stepped over the terrace down into the garden there they stood all smiles with some little surprise ready for you ; a bunch of wild strawberries, a wonderful stick half peeled as though a white ribbon had been wound round it, a little wooden flute, a hoop and what not else. The youngest of us, not yet able to walk any distance, was solemnly pushed about in a perambulator in the shape of a silver swan. There were lakes and sand-heaps, wee Russian cottages, and a tiny farm with a real live cow, which belonged to Mamma as a child. (The farm, not the cow, which was certainly no longer the same.)

Those are my first visions of Russia. Emperor Alexander II’s Rus- sia, Grandpapa Emperor — Mamma’s father. But in my earliest child- hood he vanishes from the scene to give place to Alexander III, Uncle Sasha as we called him, Mamma’s eldest brother.

It was in London that Mamma heard of her father’s assassination. I remember quite well our being brought down to her room and the ter- rible shock it was to find Mamma in tears.

Mamma weeping, an overwhelming, unheard-of cataclysm. It was something which upset all our ideas about the natural order of things. Children wept, but grown-up people ! That was something fundamen- tally unnatural, something that shook the very basis of our beliefs.

Of course there was consternation in our ranks and a hurried de- parture was arranged, Mamma, as far as I remember, taking us with her.

But this is all such a long, long time ago, and I was so very small then that I may be mixing things up. But curiously enough I still have a dim recollection of standing at a window of the Winter Palace and see- ing an endless and gorgeous funeral procession pass by, but was it Grandpapa’s or Grandmamma’s funeral? I really do not know. All this is in a haze.

But I do still remember Grandpapa. There are three pictures which remain to me of him. One is of a family breakfast outside on a terrace at Tsarskoye Selo, Grandpapa at the head of the table, I think, and we, as tiny mites, running round from one guest to another with little sand- cakes on the palms of our hands and Grandpapa pretending to taste them.

A rather clearer picture is of Grandpapa coming into the big night-

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nursery (this was also at Tsarskoye), where we were down with measles. I was the last to catch the infection and Grandpapa was still able to kiss me.

I can still see through the mist that time is spreading over these remembrances, Grandpapa bending towards me, the tall, tall man to the wee little girl, and how absurdly proud I was that I could still be kissed. But when he came next day I too was amongst the invalids, and I no more than the others dared ask for a kiss.

The third picture is of Grandpapa in a small carriage driving a won- derful trotter, coal-black and as shiny as a shield. Mamma is seated beside him and I am standing between his knees. That is all, and even that is so blurred that it might have been only a dream.

Of Grandmamma Empress my recollections are still more vague. On a journey somewhere we were brought to her in the train. She was lying on a very low bed that was all draped in sky blue. I have the hazy vision of a pale emaciated woman with a thin, waxen face and long, white, beautiful hands. I remember we had been taken away from our tea which did not please us very much, and we stared “non-understand- ingly” at the very sad-looking woman in her blue-curtained bed.

I think that she was being transported somewhere to the South of France. She had already been an invalid for several years, and, as I have heard since, had more reasons than ill-health for being sad.

That is my only recollection of Grandmamma Empress, Mamma’s Mamma.

Chapter IV

RUSSIAN MEMORIES

Later pictures of Russia are clearer, and yet they are so hazy as to be enveloped in a glamour so great that in looking back it all appears dreamlike, almost unreal, and I have to make an effort to realize that I was actually there and lived it all, not merely imagined it.

Tsarskoye, Peterhof, Krasnoe, St. Petersburg, that was the setting, but the pictures I see are detached, merge one into the other, pass before my mind in little bits. Dates, circumstances, the whys and wherefores are all vague, entirely vague.

The family was a large one. My mother had five brothers living: Alexander, Vladimir, Alexis, Serge and Paul. Her eldest brother Nicolas had died at Nice as quite a young man, of consumption I have been told. Four brothers were already married in the days I am speak- ing of. In addition there were no end of other uncles, aunts and cousins, so many of them in fact that I never quite made out who they all were, especially as they were of several generations, two or three great-uncles and aunts being still alive. Some were of less importance, uncles, aunts and cousins several times removed, descendants of side lines, but for all big occasions, for feast-days, for parades and church ceremonies, the family would flock together, and there would be huge family meetings, a regular review of uncles, aunts and cousins near or far removed, as numerous as trees in a wood.

This was most interesting, but also very confusing, as we came al- most as strangers into this great family gathering and everybody ex- claimed about how much we had grown, etc. etc.

Nothing could have been a greater contrast than the English and Russian uncles and aunts. I must confess that in my childhood the Russian uncles were surrounded by a much greater glamour. Our ad- miration for them was not unmixed, however, with dread ; they were so formidably tall, big and splendid, and besides, they were inveterate teases.

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83

The English uncles were absent-minded, they looked through you; the Russian relations never looked through you, in fact, they were if anything too aware of your existence and teased you mercilessly; al- ways, on all occasions, public or otherwise, they teased you.

It would carry me too far to begin to describe them all, but some of their faces are still so vivid, so full of interest for me at least, that I must draw some of their portraits, make them live once more as I saw them.

There was Uncle Sasha, Emperor Alexander III, a giant of a man, broad, powerful, good-natured, kindly, less terrible than some of the uncles in spite of his crown and of his “over-life-size.” He had a chest- nut beard and kindly blue eyes, his way with us children was jovial and encouraging, and I remember him particularly in connexion with some special fun he had imagined would amuse both the young and grown- ups.

In the garden stood a mast on which his sons learned how to climb and handle ropes and sails, still an essential part of ships in those days. To guard against bad falls a net had been stretched beneath this mast.

Uncle Sasha loved a good laugh,, so he had come upon the absurdly de- lightful idea of taking his guests out after lunch to this net and making them run and jump about on it. I can remember no game that ever made us laugh as much as this one, and the fun reached its climax when giant Uncle Sasha, whose weight was formidable, climbed on to the net himself. This was the superlative moment of excitement that we chil- dren always waited for with a delight not unmixed with fear. Uncle Sasha would pursue us over this net, and when he had cornered you he would jump up and down and his weight made you bounce like a ball. Higher and higher you bounced as though you had no weight at all, and you had hardly come down to your feet than there you were, up in the air again, up and down, up and down, shrieking and laughing, terrified and enchanted ; a game for the gods.

That was Uncle Sasha as we saw him ; I leave it to history to make whatever other portrait it chooses.

Aunt Minnie, his wife, was Queen Alexandra’s sister. Without having her beauty, she had Aunt Alix’s charm. She was deliciously amiable and much loved, but she does not play a great part in my memories

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though she is the only one of that huge family circle still alive as I write these lines. She was a devoted mother and wife and truly the centre of her world, both at home and as Empress.

In those days there were five cousins, Nicky, Georgie, Xenia, Misha, and Olga, who was quite small. Nicky we always loved and admired, although, being older, he was rather beyond our reach in those days.

Already, at that early age, he had that gentle charm and that kind, caressing look in his eyes, which was his all through life till the day of his tragic death. Kindly and peace-loving, he did not seem cut out for a fate so horrible.

Georgie, like my mother’s eldest brother, died of consumption as quite a young man, somewhere in the Caucasus I believe. Xenia was a dear chum, being a year older than I was. The other two Misha and Olga, were younger than we.

But it was with the other cousins that we were more intimate, the children of Uncle Vladimir and Aunt Miechen.

Uncle Vladimir was my mother’s second brother. He was the dark- haired one of the family, exceedingly good-looking but a little less tall than his brothers. Aunt Miechen, his wife, was born Princess of Meck- lenburg ; although not a regular beauty, she was one of the most fasci- nating women that ever crossed my path.

There was, I believe, a certain rivalry between Aunt Miechen and Aunt Minnie, and less friendship and good understanding than was politely played up to during those big family gatherings I so vividly remember.

Here there were four cousins, three boys, Kirill, Boris and Andre, and one daughter, Ellen. They were the most beautiful children imagin- able and our friendship outlasted our youth. Much later in life sister Ducky married Kirill, but that will be spoken of in its right place.

Uncle Alexis, Mamma’s third brother, was the bachelor of the family. He was of the type of the Vikings, and would also have made a perfect Lohengrin, as Wagner would have dreamed of him. Fair beard, blue eyes, enormous, a superb specimen of humanity, he was besides a sailor, and had a true sailor’s love for all the good things of life and of beautiful women in particular.

There was an aunt several times removed who was his “adored” for

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85

many years