"THEIR MAJESTIES"

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 201, 26 August 1939, Page 2

"THEIR MAJESTIES"

VII (b) Rumania s Royal Checkerboard

K ,NG AROI .'s carper of wild iv escapades, far from alienating Ihe affections of his subjects, only endeared him all the more to most Rumanians. To understand this is to understand the kindom lie rules. Crossroads of ihe Balkans, whirlpool of hotblooded emotions, Rumania is a gipsy land of wine, women and sony. Rumanians do not object to having a philanderer for King. In fact, the country is proud of ail its lion-hearted liberties and brags about being "The Paris of the Balkans."

the peasant*. ilxvavrf more rn.it laird and religion* than the city lolk, crnild not yet very Mined lip nhoiit

I lin Kings liaison with Madame Lupeseu lililil they bpjjan tn <411-<|>«><• t Iter hand in |mi lit ii• >* t h<> ii t hey raised a rumpus. A woman in polities was enough of a shock in a lit ml that only (ill vi'n ih or so ago was still ilmn i n,i tml I i_v the ha icm -loving Turks, hut, a "Jewess" in politico was even more than I!nmania's professional a lit i -Spin it ie ral.ldc rouses had hope,l lor as a rallying point for their ha.rangues. It has taken Carol long years to convince them that lie does not intend to give Madame Lupescu tip, riots or no riots.

Oarol a a matory tfd ventures, shocking though they would have been in any western Kuropean nation of the twentieth century, have not elaborated much on the Royal precedrnt handed down bv hi» own pleasure-loving mother, the late Dowager Queen Marie, and his father, tho late King Ferdinand. The strange fact is that Carol's romance with Madame Lupescu followed with variaMom—and much better luck-a similar iomance his own father had when ho was tho young Crown Prince of Rumania.

Ferdinand, who had been proclaimed heir to the throne by his childless uncle, King Carol T, fell madly in lovo with an exotic poet, Helena Vacnresru, and was determined to marrv her. The King was furious n lid forbade the marriage, whereupon Ferdinand fled with the younjf woman to Venice, iiceont pit nied for tho sake of appearances by a chape rone.

The King, flew into a rage—-and pursued the couple to their romantic hidingplace. Ferdinand had exceptionally largo <mr* and it is related that his uncl'e seized him by one of these convenient

By--Seymour Berkson

appendages niwl brought him back t" i•-i I> I \ m Kimia nia. Had Ferdinand been ,i stronger character, the storv illicit lime had a different ending, but his sweetheart iuih sent into exile and lie married mi the rebound to the lor'lnula ble woman who was to rule Rumania as Queen Marie while he thought, lie was reigning as King Ferdinand.

.Marie, a daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh, whs Princess of Saxe- ( oburg-Gotha before her marriage with the Rumanian Crown Prince was "arranged.'' She was a grand-daughter ot Queen Victoria and was brought up in the strict atmosphere of the English Court, but once she came to Bucharest she kicked over the traces and became more Rumanian than the Rumanians. A great beauty, she used her sex appeal to the utmost of political advantage. After old King Carol I died and his nephew, Ferdinand, inherited the throne, it was a common quip that there was only one man at the Court of Rumania —and that man was Marie. Weak, vacillating, King Ferdinand virtually n.bdicated in favour of his domineering wife. She asserted her authority everywhere. Her romantic affairs with the gay nobles and dashing Army officers around her gave all Euroi>e something to gossip about.

Her favourite for many years was Prince Stirbey, who was her chief adviser. He is said to have given Marie tho ambitious marital plans upon which she intended to found a dynastic supremacy in Eastern Europe the like of which had not been witnessed since the old Byzantine Empire crumbled. For her five children, she laid out a programme which assigned each to a role in her great scheme. One was to be the heir to the Throne of Rumania, another was to marry into the family of Russia's Czar, the third was to marry into the Bulgarian Hoy a I Family, the fourth was to invade the German Kaiser's household, and the fifth was to be contented with the throne of Greece.

It is amazing how nearly Queen Marie achieved what she set out to do. She actually managed to get one of her daughters, Elizabeth, on the throne of Greece until the monarchy toppled and a divorce followed; another daughter, Marie Mignon, is still the Dowager Queen of Yugoslavia.

The murder at Sarajevo upset Marie's dream of becoming the Royal mother-in-law of Eastern Euroi>e. But she never really gave up hope. Only a few years ngo, she married her youngest and favourite daughter, lleana, to Archduke Anton of Hapsburg and almost immediately thereafter started to boom him for the vacant throne of Hungary.

Originally, Carol's role in the ambitious conniving of his mother was a hereditary rather than a matrimonial one. As the eldest of Queen Marie's children he was to inherit the Throne of Rumania, but Queen Marie was to continue to rule. A great epigrammatist, Professor Nicholas Jorga, was assigned to Carol as a tutor. Kven before he was 1">, Carol became far more interested in the pleasures of love than in the art of epigrams. His mother, amused at the boy's adolescent pursuits, let him follow wherever his instinct led.

-Vtcr a procession of casual affairs, Carol suddenly .discovered he had oxerlooked a choice prize that had been so close he had scarcely noticcd her at first. She was Jeanne "Zizi" Lambrino, dark-eyed daughter of a Rumanian general and one of Queen Marie's own

ladies-in-waiting. Carol was 21 and ehe was 20. He was dazzled by her supple beauty and wondered how he could have missed her. She was not easy to wet. She was, in fact tantalisino]y elusive. Just when Carol thought he was milking some progress the World War broke out.

-Although Rumania had an alliance with Germany and King Ferdinand's antecedents were the German Hohenzollerns themselves, Queen Marie rode roughshod over such trivialities as alliances ati<l family ties. She swung her husband—and Rumania— to the cause of the Allies just as stridently as when the war ended she marched into the Peace Conference and emerged with a rich slice of Hungary. (arol had to go to the front for appearances sake, but his heart was not in the war. He was in love. His military record was far from glorious and the general to whose command lie was assigned complained that during an important advance Carol and a group of cronies were discovered drinking themselves into a stupor. 1 he Crown Prince linally contrived in 1918 to escape liis military boredom bv donning the disguise of a Russian officer and crossing with "Zizi" Lambrino into Russian territory where they were married in a church at Odessa. King Ferdinand, in a letter probably dictated by Queen Marie, branded Carol a traitor to his country for marrying "under the bayonets of our enemies." Russia in 191< had deserted the Allied cause and made a separate peace. Carol finally ran out of money and returned to Rumania with his bride, who was soon to give birth to a baby. He wthrown into prison "to repent." "Zizi" was kept under surveillance. As in the case of his own father, a match was hastily arranged for Carol with Princess Helen of Greece, daughter of the then King Constantine. For some time after their enforced reparation, Carol continued to write "Zizi" passionate love letters, but this kind of correspondence school romance soon bored the Crown Prince. He finally wrote "Zizi" one of those letters to end all letters: "... And now can't we just be friends?"

Carol's marriage to "Zizi" was "annulled" and the baby boy, Mircea, to whom she gave birth on jahuary 8, 1920, was deprived of his father's name and all connection with the Royal Fa in i 1 v.

Shortly before his marriage to Prim-ess Helen, Carol became interested in the famous gipsy beauty of Rumania, -Mademoiselle Marco-Vjci.

Kven "Zizi" reappeared on the scene and began to see Carol again. This enraged Queen Marie so she had "Zizi" banished, although the Royal Family sent her enough money every month to support herself and Carol's child.

Carol and Princess Helen were married in May, 1921, when he was 28. It was

re She had fallen in love with one of her husband's superiors, a colonel, with whom "2 she ran away. Lieutenant Tampeano h divorced her and she resumed her le maiden name of Lupescu which began to be associated with one gay adventure <r after another until she became mistress ° of Crown Prince Carol. Magda's father was a Jewish merchant ' whose original name was Wolf, and whose original occupation was that of junk pedlar. When he opened a drug ; store and chemist's shop in Jassy, Rumania, he got himself baptised in the Rumanian Orthodox Church, because before the war Jews were not allowed , to operate pharmacies in Rumania. Mr. Wolf had his name translated into v Rumanian as Lupescu. His Jewish antecedents were further obscured by it his marriage to a ballet dancer of the y Catholic faith. Mamma Lupescu was a le sprightly soul who once, long after her 1- daughter became Carol's favourite, ren vived her terpsiehorean art in a frivoi- lous moment during a party at the 8. palace where she did a few steps for the

no love match, and the Crown Princ« had a period during which he grew bore<? with women in general and began t< take an interest in politics. Rumania had come, out of the World War wit! almost twice as much territory as sh< had before. Carol thought it was about time he was concerned with somethins besides women. He hadn't reckoned with his mother Queen Marie. She had managed to weai King Ferdinand's political pants for s< long that she intended to countenanc< no interference from her eon. Carol's hatred for her favourite adviser, Princ( Stirbey, was so intense he once upbraidec his mother in the Prince's presence foi her "friendship" with him which lie saic was making the Rumanian Royal Famil} the laughing-stock of Europe. It was at that psychological moment that Carol's attention was suddenlj diverted from politics to Madam* Magda Lupescu. Madame Lupescu al ready a woman of the world, had beer married to Lieut. Tampeona of the Ru manian army when she was a girl of 18

amusement of daughters Royal b.au. As for Papa Lupescu, among bis other ambitious projects he later achieved the profitable control of the hat-check concessions in all of Bucharest s nightclubs. Magda was born 40 years ago. As a voung girl, she was a voluptuous siren, "riclilv endowed with reddish hair, a viva* cious temperament and a lust for life. Magda's own version of how she met Carol is a reconstruction of the love idylls of the ages, with a sprinkling of Greek mythology added for' good measure. According to this account, Carol was I~> and Lupescu ten when they met a children's party at the Royal palace in Bucharest and Carol said to her after the manner of the traditional Prince Charming: "What beautiful hair you have!" Less romantic versions however have it that Carol did not meet .Madame Lujkwcu until some time after his marriage to Princess Helen. Some say that Prince Stirbey—perhaps with the collusion of Queen Marie —really arranged to expose Carol to the wiles of the titian-haired adventuress to distract him from meddling in affairs of State. r Whether or not his first encounter with Magda was the result of a conspiracy, the effect was all that might have been desired. Carol was fascinated by her from the first moment they danced together at an officers' ball and he made no secret of his new love. He paraded her publicly everywhere. Princess Helen, his wife, who had meanwhile given birth to the present Crown Prince of Rumania. Michael, was humiliated, but kept a discreet silence in the mistaken belief that the infatuation would pass as quickly as Carol's previous ones.

Carol's political enemies in Prince Stirbey's camp made capital out of his new romance. There were slyly-worded innuendoes in the newspapers about his attachment to the daughter of a former Jewish junk-pedlar. Finally, in November, 192;>, King Ferdinand woke up to what was going on and ordered Madame Lupescu out of the country. At first, she refused to go; bnt when she was reminded that the price for murder was cheap in Rumania, she fled to Paris.

Love was not to be cheated for long, however.

The Dowager Queen Alexandra of England, widow of Edward VII., died just about the time Magda was settling down as an exile in Paris. Carol was sent to represent the Royal Family at the funeral. On his way back from London, Carol stopped off in Paris, where he and Magda had such an enthusiastic reunion that the Crown Prince decided he would take his time, about returning to Rumania. He took his sweetheart to Venice, to the very hotel where his father had taken Madame Vacarescu during his own princely escapade.

King Ferdinand had no reminiscent sympathies; he ordered Carol to return at once—"without that woman."

Carol, in a rage, replied by writing a letter renouncing all rights to the Throne. He wrote to King Ferdinand a stiffly formal " letter in which he said defiantly:

"I not only renounce the Throne, but I renounce all the rights that I have."

Previously, he liad threatened to do this, but he did not really believe his threat would be accepted. That was bad political judgment, for hi? offer to renounce his rights was accepted as a welcome gift by the Court clique then running Kumania. Laws were quickly passed providing hat his little son Michael, would be the heir to the Ihrone in his stead.

Carol's letter a£ renunciation arrived in his fathert .bands on Xew Year's Day, 1926, ani Sting Ferdinand, already trembling with the illness which wag soon to cause his death, remarked pathetically to His Prime Minister, Jonel Bratianu:—

"So this is my New Year's j. esent from my son."

Carol proceeded to make the moat of his new-found freedom. He adopted the democratic name of Mr. Carol Caraiman and with his mistress he made the ronnds of the gay spots of the Continent, eventually settling down in a cosy love nest on the outskirts of Paris, a place that is still pointed out to tourists.

They became familiar figures in Parisian night life. Champagne flowed freely. They surrounded themselves with the gayesc friends and led the carefree life of Bohemians. Ostensibly, they turned their backs completely on the boiling cauldron of political intrigues in Rumania, but only ostensibly. Secretly, Carol had ambitions to even a few tcoru in Bucharest.

He entered into negotiations with tin leader of the Peasants' parity, Julia Maniu, who hated the Court clique with which Queen Marie had surrounded herself and was determined to overthrow it as soon as his party became powerful enough.

Concluded Next Week.