The Woman Who Sways the Kaiser

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LX, Issue 16738, 28 August 1916, Page 2

The Woman Who Sways the Kaiser

This American woman's influence over the Kaiser and his wife alarmed his Ministers. •

"When Esther Lea first opened her eyes on the world in New York more than seventy ago he would have been a very bold prophet who had predicted that the infant so modestly cradled would one day be a Princess 'n her own right; that she would have an Empress for grand-ndece, and that, far more than any other woman of her time, she would mould the history of the world in her clever hands.

Such a prophet wouia, indeed, have been laughed to scorn; for Esthers father was then serving customers behind the counter of his modest grocer's shop in Front Street, New York; and had noly just been able to move frs family from its upper rooms to a more comfortable home in College Place.

Esther had thus neither birth nor Wiealth to start her on any career <>i: ambition; she seemed, indeed, as far removed from the glittering circle of Royal Courts as from the planet Mars. But the child had the still more valuable dower of beauty and a clever bfain, which has carried many a child, even more obscurely born, to the dizziest heights of power.

Before Esther had turned her back on her schoolbooks her beauty and her charm had drawn many a lover to her feet; but the grocer's daughter would have nothing to say to any of the prosperous young business men who would so gladly have made her wife. She had already set her heart on a very different sphere, and would say jokingly to her mother. "1 shall be a great lady some day."-

A PRINCE AS HUSBAND. She had just reached the verge cf youtig womanhood when her father, having accumulated a small fortune, died; and his widow carried off Her three beautiful girls and her son to Stuttgart to complete their education —thus unconsciously playing into the hands of Fate.

In the Wurtemberg capital the arrival of the three "American beauties" caused no little sensation; and it was not long before the eldest of them found a husband in Baron yon Waectiter, a handsome and courtly diplomats ist, who, withm a few months of liis wedding day was sent as Ambassador to Paris, to which city, Mrs. Lea and the rest of her small family quickly foll&wed her son-in-law.'

Thus Esther's opportunity had come at last. She was now in the first radiant bloom of ( her beauty—" a tall figure of mingled stateliness and grace; a little head, with a coronal of glorious brown hair; eyes blue as violets and dancing with the joy of life, illuminating an oval face with the daintiest features, dimpled cheeks, and a rosebud of a mouth."

Such is the enthusiastic picture drawn of her at tbis time; and ona cannot wonder that even in Paris, that city of fair women, the American girl should be hailed as a new revelation of feminiine loveliness.

Nor was it long before her retinue nf lovers included the Prince of Schleswi-*-Holstein, who, although a widower who had seen more than sixty years, was a strikingly handsome man, and still so susceptible to the charm of beauty that he lost,his heart at first sight of Esther's loveliness and gave her no peace until he had made her his morganatic wife.

The grocer's daughter, although she was but the "left-handed" wife of a Prince, had thus early found entrance to the closely guarded innner circle or Courts; and as Countess yon Noer (a title conferred on her by her husband"i was welcomed by the highest society of the Continent. But the Prince was not long destined to enjoy his new-found happiness^ Indeed, within a year h.© left his wife a widow and his entire fortune.

For a time the Countess made hat* home in Vienna, where she became so popular with Franz Josef and his Court that he created her Princess yon Noer in her own right.

It was she who inflamed the hatred of England which has culminated in the war.

AN AMAZING ROMANCE OF A GROCER'S DAUGHTER.

gilded should long remain unclaimed, and almost before she had discarded her weeds we find her standing agarm at the altar —this time with the young and handsome Count yon Waldersee, a soldier of considerable gifts and charm who stood high in the favour of the Emperor William and Bismarck.

ARRANGED THE KAISER'S MARRIAGE. The grocer's daughter had now the ball of Fortune at her feet. She had become a power —In a position, through the old Emperor's admiration of, and affection for her, to influence Prussia s policy at home and abroad. In order to make her position unassailably strong she now set to work to arrange a marriage between the young Prince William (the Kaiser of to-day), and the Princess Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, grand-niece of her first husband, a girl to whom she has! been more than a mother. And so cleverly did she " pull the strings" that oixedaj in 1881 she saw her devoted " child" (as she called her) blossom inta a future Empress at the altar.

She had already succeeded so well in winning the devotion of Prince Wiljiam that he invariably addressed her us "Tante" (aunt). Now that he was, .n fact, her nephew, wedded to a wife who was passionately attached to her, the future Emperor, became still more devoted to her.

"It is really absurd," wrote a lady of the Court, at this time, "to sew what a fuss Prince William makes of the American Countess. He is her shadow; often spends several hours daily in her company; and I really believe consults her as to what he shall wear, eat and drink !"

But it was when William came to his throne m 1888 that the Countess's power reached its full scope. Her Influence over the young couple was so great that it alarmed William's Ministers, and drove his mother, the Empress, to despair. "I can do nothing," she wrote. "William is the veriest puppet in the hands of this clever and designing American woman. He takes no step without consulting her first; and he follows her advice rather than that of his wisest Ministers. What is worse, from my point of view, she estranges my son more and more from me and makes him oppose my slightest wishes."

RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WAR. To his subjects his slavish devotion to the Countess was for years an unfailing caHise of amusement; and at one time, "I must ask Aunt Esther," was a catch-phrase throughout Germany. jlt is said by those who profess to know that ever since his accession to the throne the Kaicrr's policy has been inspired and directed moro by the grocer's daughter than by all his Ministers combined. It was she who counselled the daring and historic step of "dropping the Pilot"—dismissing Bismarck and taking the reins of Government into his own hands. With the "man of iron" out of the way she could rule the j£mperor as1 he willed—^he had been her only rival and obstacle. It is she who has invariably encour.aged his autocratic rule; has fed his vanity until it has turned his brain; and has inflamed the hatred of Eng- j land which has culminated in the most devastating wor of all time.

Apart from her political mischiermakmg, however, the Countess is a lovable woman, with a large heart and a boundless charity- and she has never lost her affection for the land which gave her obscure birth.

She still retains traces of the beauty which once dazzled Europe; and although her hair is white as driven snow her figure is as erect and queenly, and her complexion almost as clear and brilliant as when, at first sight of her loveliness, t^he princely widower lost both head and heart half a century and more a£o.