COURT LIFE

Evening Star, Issue 19764, 14 January 1928, Page 10

COURT LIFE

THE DARKER SIDE From the moment the young Princess Victoria became Queen of England down to the present time the Court of England has been free from the profligacy that marked the Courts of three of the “Four Georges'’ and the fourth William (says an ‘ Age' writer). In Victoria Alexandra and Mary tlm British nation has been blessed with Court leaders whose very names have stood for moral - tone, a quiet--dignity, and stately propriety. H the revelations contained in the Gvcville Diary whicn caused such a sensation when published recently in England, me authentic, then tiro great change in Court life brought about by the grit and determination of the young Queen Victoria is an astonishing tribute to the high principles and moral character of the young Princess who had just been placed upon the throne. In cleansing the Augean stable her first task was to question her mother’s mode of living. Among the Royal scandals the Diary uncovers is one concerning Queen Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of _Kc.it, who was believed to be on too friendly terms with Sir John Conroy, her private secretary. Jt is stated that it was from the Duke of Wellington himself that Grevillo learned of the truth about the Duchess and her favorite. Grevillo writes. “1 said 1 concluded ho (Conroy) was her lover, and he (the Duke) said he snpjiosed so.” To the Princess Victoria the behaviour of her mother, it is added, was “ a humiliation.” Of Queen Victoria's father, the Duke of Kent, son of George 111., Grcvillo said bluntly to Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, “ Everybody knows her lather was the greatest rascal that over went unhung.” WILLIAM IV.’S OUTBURST.

Tho Duchess of Kent had no doubt offended her daughter by her domineering manner, and Greville expresses the belief that Victoria’s secret sympathies were with her undo, William IV., when, at a dinner party of 100 guests at Windsor, ho delivered “an awful philippic” against the Duchess in reply to the, toast of his health. The Duchess was silling at the table when tho King exclaimed: ‘1 trust in God that my life may be spared for nine months longer, after which period, in tho event of my death, no regency would take place. 1 should then have the satisfaction of leaving the Royal authority to tho personal exercise of that young lady (tho Princess), tho heir-presumptive of tho Crown, and not in tho hands of a person now near mo, who is surrounded by evil advisers, and who is herself incompetent io act with propriety in the station in which she would he placed. I have no hesitation in saying I have been insulted—grossly and continually insulted—by that person.” Tho King spoke in a loud voice, and “the whole company,” says Greyille, “ was aghast.” Princess Victoria burst into tears. The party broke up, and “a terrible seem ensued.” * A trace was patched up, ■ but next day tho King said that “ by God ho had been insulted by her (the Duchess of Kent) beyond endurance, and lie would stand it no longer.” Tho “alienation” of Victoria from her mother became a “quarrel” after Victoria’s accession. 1 ‘ She hardly sees anything of the Duchess,” says Greville, and he adds that the Duchess “ never goes to her without previously asking leave, and when the Queen gets messages or notes from her mother she frequently makes verbal answers that she is engaged and cannot see her.” “How is it possible,” asked the Queen of Lord Melbourne, “that I can have any confidence in my mother when I know that whatever 1 say to her is repeated immediately afterwards to that man?” “That man” was, of course, Sir John Conroy. THE EX-KAISER'S DOMESTIC WORRIES,

What a great change the European War has brought into the Royal families of Europe. The mailed fist of the Kaiser m pre-war days was something to be dreaded, at least by his sumjeets. From his exiled home in Doom he is impotent to control his nearest relatives. In defiance of his commands his elderly sister, the Princess Victoria, has married a Russian, an ex-kitchen-man, who has youth on his side and a handsome face and figure. Tbc exKaiser’s daughter-in-law, the Princess Sophie, the second richest woman in Germany, having divorced tho cxKaiscr's second son, Prime Eitcl, has married a young and good-looking expoliceman. How different would have been tho lot of that policeman had the Kaiser still have been on the throne. Had fi© dared to cast his eyes at Royal Princesses his habitation would have been a German dungeon, and had tho Princess still retained her romantic desires an asylum would have been found for her in some remote castle. But nowadays such marriages are merely nine days’ wonders, and are not oven classed as morganatic. The ex-Kaiser now is experiencing the woes ol his one-time neighbor, Leopold ol Belgium, who was famed for ins three handsome though wayward daughters. These throe daughters were concerned in most of the Court scandals and tragedies that played no small part in tho eventual overthrow of so many monarchies at the termination of the Groat War. Of Leopold’s three daughters the eldest, Princess Louise, became the wife of Prince Philip of Coburg, tlie eldest brother of the dethroned King Ferdinand of Bulgaria (the “sly fox” of tho Balkans), whoso action in abandoning his natural allies and throwing in Bulgaria’s lot on the side of tho Central Powers prolonged the war by several years. The career of Louise was disfigured by divorce, incarceration in a mad house, an elopement and disinheritance of her share of her lather’s fortune, Tlie second daughter, Princess Stephanie, married tlie Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria, whose manner ol death alongside the body of his young and beautiful mistress at Meyerling Lodge, on the outskirts of Vienna, lias never been definitely settled. The etiquette of the Hofburg gave Stephanie, as a widow, ru official rank, and she was obliged to Ji m in retirement. With the assent °f de Emperor Francis Joseph she married Count Lonyay, a Hungarian nobleman, rich, amiable, and handsome. Her father, King Leopold, was enraged at ha.- marrying “an inferior,” and promptly disinherited her like her sister Louise. These two Princesses had entered into wedded life at the early age or seventeen. The third daughter or Leopold, the Princess Clementine, waited fill she was thirty-eight, and then married Prince Victor Napoleon, the Bonapartist Pretender to the throne of France. She had waited till her father’s death before marrying, and therefore did not have the worrying experience of seeking his approval of her elderly, stout, bald-headed bridegroom, whose rolling gait and slouching walk suggested anything but royal bearing. Clementine's lif© was devoid of tragedy. When the war drove her with her husband and family from their Belgian home they found a" warm welcome awaiting them in England, where the ex-empress Eugenie provided for them at Chiselhnrst. THE CLEANSING OF BELGIAN COURT LIFE. But Belgium, like England, has had a thorough cleansing of court life. It lias come with the advent to the throne of the most heroic monarch of Europe that the Great War produced—Albert, the idol of his people the Allied troops of Flanders, whose domestic life, with the charitable Queen EHabetb, makes such a striking contrast with tlie shameless libertinism that held sway during the long life of Leopold IT. It was the queenly Elizabeth who inspired her husband, Albert, in his successful fight

to live down the reputation of his profligate predecessor and uncle, to reconstruct the finances and commerce of the nation, and to rule happily and peacefully, except during tho war period. And what a part this king played when his country was laid waste by the oppressor. It recalls memories of the Black Prince at Cressy and Poictiers, and of Henry V. at Harfleur. In command of the Belgian army, lie fought beside his Allies while his queen, the heroic self-sacri-fice she had always evinced, and which endeared her to the hearts of her people, left her children in the care of guardians and governesses and enrolled as a Red Cross nurse. LEOPOLD’S “BOOK OF ADVICE.”

Just as Queen Victoria rose superior I to her surroundings, and constituted a court into which the breath of scandal never penetrated, so Albert of Belgium changed the character of his country’s court. The aged whose only legitimate son was mysteriously killed, prepared a ‘ Hook of Advice ’ to the 1 then Crown Prince Albert, only sou of his younger brother, ostensibly lor AlI herb to follow on his succession to the throne. .It was a repulsive book, with the title ‘How to Become a Successful King, Libertine, and Financier,’ and it counselled immorality, even licentiousness; cruelty lo subjects, enmity Inwards the other members of the Royal family, including wile and children; heartlessness in all tilings, and advised against the cultivation of literary and artistic friends or the encouragement of education and art. That the barr baric precepts were not heeded by the ambitious young king has since been shown by his activities in the encouragement of the commercial, literary, and artistic prestige of his country, and tlie complete democracy of his manner and his dress and living. He is a devoted husband and an affectionate father, averse front, pomp and display, affable and free in manner, anxious tor a knowledge of lar-distant lands, as many Australian visitors to Belgium have found, profoundly interested in social and economic questions, and, as is Ills wife, an artist of no mean ability. Europe now has fewer Royalties than before the war, but still has her royal romances' and tragedies. For the nonce Rumania is the centre of disturbance.