PRINCESS' LIFE STORY.

Mataura Ensign, 2 November 1911, Page 8

PRINCESS' LIFE STORY.

WHY SHE FLED FROM COURT. CURIOUS REVELATIONS. "Those who possess a grain of understanding will realise how awful the life of young Princes and Princesses is to the unfortunate possessors of temperaments." In that sentence, written by herself, ure have the clue to the strange adventures of the unhappy lady wiho, if sihe k were not the "possessor of temperament," -would be at the present moment Queen of Saxony, a happy wife and mother, beloved by her people, respected and envied by the world at large (states a writer in the' 'Daily Mail,' reviewing "My Own Story," by Louisa of Tuscany, ex-Crown Princss of Saxony). The events which deprived her of that destiny everyone knows —how she left Dresden secretly, how she was supposed to have entangled herself with her children's tutor, how she wandered • about Europe half distraught, and how j she, a daughter,of the proud House of Hapsburg, married a Signor Toselii. ! from whom she afterwards parted. So much everyone knows. But the causes which led up to these pitiful happenings, those everyone does not know. In this book the Princess explains them —from her point of view. King Ferdinand's Proposal. Sihe was in revolt from her earliest days against the restrictions of Court etiquette and Toyal decorum. She writes of her girlhood: 1 wonder if the public has the faintest idea of what the "education de prince" really means. As the Christian's life is supposed to be a constant preparation for eternity, so the life of young princes and princesses is a constant preparation for their future position; we were handed over to tutors and governesses' to be moulded) into the most approved patterns of deportment. We were supposed never to question anything, but merely to become clever automata. She relates with perfect frankness how her parents sought a husband for her, and Telates a laughable intervieiv between her father and the Princess Clementine (mother of Prince Ferdinand, now the King of Bulgaria). The Princess used an ear-trumpet and was christened "Aunt Coffee Mill." They commenced what I can only describe as a shrieking duet. Papa shouted his hopes andi plans about me into the ear-trumpet, and Aunt Clementine shrieked aloud her matrimonial designs for Ferdinand, and in this amusing way I heard their best laid schemes.

How Prince Ferdinand proposed to her is related as follows: I always think that in him the theatrical world has lost a fine comic opera king. WTien he wooed! me Ferdinand was most elaborately at-1 tired in a light grey suit with an ultra-chio Panama hat. He constantly waved his well manicured hand and displayed the costly rings which glittered on his fingers. He attitudinised like a narcissus and kept on posing until he thought doubtless I was sufficiently impressed by his fine figure, his rings, and, last but not least, his smart yellow boots. Prince Ferdinand proposed in a castle garden. The Princess told him that she could never love him. "C'est la premiere fois qu'une femme me dit oela," he exclaimd. "Be wise, Louisa; think of all that it lies in my power to give you." The Princess replied that he only wanted to marry her for her rank and said he must have promised his ministers to become betrotheu to her. And I turned and left him looking the picture of despair. Even now I can see Ferdinand faced with explanations to his Ministers, standing I in that sunny garden among the! roses wringing his large white hands' i and exclaiming, "Oh, mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!" ! Affection for the King. Never does she speak of her husband, the King of Saxony with anything but affection and gratitude. All she says against him is that he was weak. It is upon her father-in-law, the late King; upon her husband's uncles and aunts; upon certain officials at the Court of Dresden that she pours the fullness of her anger and contempt. For she is angry and ill-natured. She realises what she has lost. The truth of the case is obvious to anyone who has studied persons who do possess temperament and persons wiho,do not. The same struggle which went on between the Princess and her husband's relations is going on to-day in thousands of homes. A young woman full of modern ideas, eager to be original, snatching at new sensations, naurally jars upon old-fashioned people who resent any kind of novelty or change. If young women of this type have sense and self-control enough they bear with the old people. They establish some sort of working compromise. But the Princess was unfortunately, at the mercy of her temperament; that is to say, her actions were governed not by her reason but by her nerves. No doubt it was very annoying to be told constantly that it "would not be becoming" to do things she wanted to do. No doubt her husband's relations v were often irritating,, but irritations . and! \ annoyances can be reduced to almost nothing if one brings a little wisdom and a little humor to bear upon them. Instead of that the Princess took little pains to conciliate her relatives and worried herself into a fever x>yer their behaviour to her.

A False Step. At last she became so eccentric, so hysterical that they threatened to put her under control. This it was which made her determine to leave home. Outraged by the suggestion that she was to be confined in a madhouse, she fled from Dresden. She went to Zurich, and! there consulted with her brother, Leopold Salvator. He proved a Job's comforter, telling her that she would sooner or later be forced to return to the Dresden Palace. She sought in her mind for some means, of Tendering that impossible. The idea came that to compromise herself would effect this. For uh&t reason only she telegraphed to the tutor, M. Giron. He then came to Zurich, leaving again soon afterwards when it was certain! that the Saxon Court had been properly scandalised. All this took place five months before the birth of the Princess Monica Pia. No one who reads her book is likely to condemn utterly this unfortunate Princess. If any should be so inclined,) let them recollect that she is the niece of "Johann Orth," the sailor-Arch-j duke (whom she, by the way, believes' i to' be still alive); of another Archduke 'who (T lives like a peasant" and "worships the sun"; and yet another, whose chief amusements consisted in riding about in omnibuses and trams." Recollect that she is a cousin of the ill-starred' Crown Prince Rudolph and granddaughter of a Prince who kept six hundred clocks and watches ticking in his room! ! To be happy aud successful royalty | requires a well-balanced brain, steady j nerves, a capacity for accepting things as they are. The ex-Crown Princess had none of these advantages. Even as a child she startled her teacher of history by Muring out, "I think Maria Theresa was quite right to choose a husband for love and not to be forced into marrying any one." As a girl she refused! to take seriously the wooing of Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria. As a woman she was superstitious, self-con-I scious, whimsical, always thinking of herself. A Hapsburg Failing. When she paid an incognito visit to the gallery of a theatre she "smiled to herself as she thought how the .audience would have stared had they known who she was." When she travelled unnoticed after her downfall she thought of "the ceremony which usually attends the arrival of royalty," and. pitied herself because there was "no reel carpet, no reception." She suffered, in short, from the defect which has brought about the Hapsburgs' misfortunes —to wit, thinking too much about themselves and too little about their duties. That state of mind always spells disaster no less with royalties than with ordinary folks.