MONARCHS IN DEBT

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 6, 10 February 1909, Page 33

MONARCHS IN DEBT

MANY OF THE MODERN RULERS OF EUROPE HAVE FELT THE PINCH OF POVERTY. HOW SOME HAVE MANAGED TO GET OUT OF DEBT AND OTHERS TO BECOME HOPELESSLY INVOLVED.

By

WYCOLLAR HALL

OYALTY suggests wealth., and j J kings and emperors are usually ■A supposed to be rolling in riches, j \ since the very fact that they V make their homes in magnificent palaces implies affluence. just as a workingmans cottage indicates straitened circumstances. Yet many of the monarchs of the Ohl World in modern times have known the pinch of poverty. The debts of nations are often supplemented by infinitely more pressing liabilities of a personal character, in connection with which princes and kings are compelled to submit to all sorts of humiliations. Among the least bitter of these is the recourse to the pawnshop, and long is the list of the anointed of the Lord who have at one time or another been forced to seek the costly assistance of that avuncular relative who has adopted for his heraldic device the old Lombard bankingemblem of the three gilded balls. Thus, the last king of Naples on several occasions PAWNED ALL HIS SILVER PLATE IN LONDON. King Milan, while still on the throne of Servia, repeatedly deposited the various jewelled insignia of his sovereignty at the Monte de Piete in Vienna, in order to obtain the money necessary for the settlement of his ‘’debts of honour”— that is to say. his losses at cards in the Austrian capital, and on two occasions they were, for political reasons, quietly redeemed by Emperor Francis Joseph. Probably no sovereign has suffered more acutely from the lacK of funds than King Edward VII., and it may therefore he of interest to know that, for the

first time since his marriage, more than two score years ago, he is now entirely free from debt of every kind. It is this that accounts for the phenomenal and altogether unexpected improvement in his spirits ami in his general health. I have said that the King is now out of debt. I mean this only in a financial sense. For he owes a deep debt of gratitude to Lord Farquhar, Lord Esher, and Sir Ernest Cassel for his liberation from ;;ll monetary embarrassments. The story < f his rescue by this trio of devoted friends and able business men is an interesting one. and worth relating. Edward VII. began his married life

in 1863 under many disadvantages. In the first place he had been brought up with such extreme strictness that when he first attained his freedom he was naturally disposed to extravagance of conduct, speech, and expenditure—in a word, he had to sow his wild oats; and when a prince of the blood, and particularly the heir to a great throne, engages in agricultural pursuits of this kind there are always plenty of men and women eager to propitiate the rising sun by abetting his follies. Then, too, the prince

was, thanks to a piece of disgraceful jobbery on the part of those concerned, saddled with the estate of Sandringham, the purchase of which had absorbed most of the accumulations of the revenues of his duchy of Cornwall, which he would otherwise have had at his disposal on attaining his majority—an estate that was not only productive of no income whatsoever, but which lias involved the expenditure of vast sums for maintenance, and in order to render it habitable and comfortable. Moreover, the recent death of the Prince Consort, and the withdrawal of the widowed Queen from public and social life, led to the Prince and Princess of Wales being saddled at the time of their marriage with all those representative duties of royalty which ordinarily fall to the share of the sovereign. Upon them fell THE BURDEN OF ENTERTAINING MEMBERS OF FOREIGN REIGNING HOUSES, f Tj who visited England, and of dispensing hospitality to the aristocracy, the dignitaries of state, and those people of light and leading who from motives of policy must be kept in touch with the dynasty. Finally, they were required, by reason of the queen’s retirement, to surround themselves with a far larger court of lords and ladies and gentlemen in waiting than would have been necessary under other circumstances. In fact, the obligations of which they relieved the queen involved the expenditure of an income almost as large as the.

three million dollars which she received from the civil list for the. purpose, whereas their revenues at the time were less than four hundred thoasand dollars a year; that is to say, inferior to those of many of the great nobles, such as the Dukes of Devonshire. Bedford. Westminster, Sutherland. Bueeleueh. and Northumberland, the Earls of Derby, Dudley, ete. The result of this condition of affairs was that THE PRINCE OF WALES SOON GOT HEAVILY’ IN DEBT, and the time came when even the Rothschilds, whose position in English society he had firmly establised, intimated to him that it was impossible for them to make any further advances. It is reported that on one or two occasions the queen, prompted by her ministers, and confronted by them with the alternative of their appealing to Parliament for a grant in behalf of the prince, reluctantly came to his rescue, and relieved him of some of his most pressing liabilities. But. inasmuch as no means was devised for the liquidation of all his debts, and for the prevention of their recurrence, it was not long before his troubles became once more acute. It was then that the so-called "Benefactors” appeared upon the scene. "‘Benefactors” are persons of great wealth, who, from motives of patriotism and social ambition, esteem it a privilege to be permitted to place their wellstocked purses at the disposal of royalty. Such a one was Sir James Mackenzie. He had made the greater part of his money in India, originally as a hatter, and after as an indigo-planter, and was a kind-hearted, withal somewhat vulgar, man. whose main occupation during the latter part of his existence was to find means cf

HELPING ALONG HIS FUTURE KING IN A FINANCIAL WAY'. Among other things, he was in the habit of leasing each year one of the most costly and magnificent country scats in the neighbourhood of Windsor, solely for the purpose of being able to place it at the disposal of his illustrious friend for Ascot week, Queen Victoria having saddled so many restrictions upon the use of Windsor Castle during the races by her eldest son, that he was unable to make use of that magnificent and historic palace. When Sir James, who purchased one of the finest estates in the neighbourhood of Balmoral, died very suddenly, his executors called upon the prince to repay at (nice loans to the extent of considerably over 11250,1X10; and. as they were compelled by their legal obligations to take steps to secure the recovery of the money, they would probably have been obliged in self-defence to institute legal proceedings against the heir apparent, had not Baron Hirseh come to his assistance. If court gossip in England and on the Continent is to be believed, it was not the first time that the great Jewish philanthropist had shown himself \ FRIEND IN NEED TO THE FUTURE KING of England. The latter, in 1888. had found himself involved in such terrible financial embarrassments that he appealed to his favourite brother-in-law. Emperor Frederick, who had just sueeded to the Throne, Frederick, who

had always been very fond of the Prince, despite the dissimilarity of their tastes, and who, during his long wait for the t rown, had been subjected to very much the same pecuniary disadvantages as Queen \ ietoria s first-born, redilya acceded to nis request, and is understood to have loaned him a large sum of money for his must pressing needs. This kindly act met with so much disapproval on the part of the leading dignitaries at the Imperial court at Berlin, that Prince Stolberg actually insisted upon resigning then and there his post as Minister ami Grand Master of the Royal House, rather than participate in any’such transaction as the loaning of nionev belonging to the Hohenzollern family to a foreign prince. tin Emperor Frederick’s death, not long afterward, and the accession of Emperor William, steps were taken to recover the money, -and the unpleasantness in connection therewith was the cause of much of the bitterness which marked the relations of the Kaiser and his unde during the early rears of the former’s reign. It is said - that King Edward was enabled to liquidate his debt to the treasury of the Hohenzollei n family by means of the timely help of Baron Hirseh. but that he has never wholly forgotten or forgiven the treatment to which he was subjected in the matter by his nephew and the authorities at Berlin. Baron Hirseh. it may bo remembered, died very suddenly, without coming to any arrangement about the liabilities of the Prince toward his estate; and it was then that CECIL RHODES AND HIS FRIENDS arc reported to have appeared upon the scene as benefactors, and rendered possible the publication of a solemn yet significant assurance that England's future King was not. in any way indebted to the estate of Baron Hirseh. To what extent the Prince by fortunite investments, suggested by' the South African colossus, and his business associates including the Duke of Fife. who is the King’s son-in-law, and the Duke of Abereorn. who was the *( hief of liis Household, it is impossible to say. But the fact remains that when I'.dward \ 11. succeeded to the Throne he found himself still burdened with such a heavy load of debt that everyone was prepared for an application to Parliament by the x rown for the settlement of the liabilities which he had incurred as heir apparent. While a demand of this kind might have given rise to some discussion, there is no doubt that it would have been granted bv an overwhelming majority, and would have met with the approval of the people at large, since a very general impression existed to the effect That the King had not been altogether fairly treated in a financial sense, while Prince of Wales. Realising, however, that such •in appeal would weaken his position both at homo and -abroad, and would

always In- cast in his teeth by the foes ol the dynasty, he took counsel of his most trusted advisers and placed him self unreservedly in their hands. Those advisers consisted of tin- great AngloGerman financier. Sir Ernest Cassel, of Nile Dam fame, Lord I Farquhar, for many years the managing director of one ol the leading banks in London, and Lord Esher, who is generally understood

to lx* interested in the firm of Cassel. The King undertook to turn over to them the management of his household, and the administration of the civil li>t, whereupon they assumed all his liabilities; and by means of economies in various directions, by insurance policies. by the sale of useless things and duplicates, by clever investments, and by the establishment of a sinking fund, they have so skilfully managed matters that King Edward has since last summer, and for the first time since his marriage been entirely out of debt, and his civil list free from mortgage. It was

the action by Sir Ernest, Lord Farquhar, and Lord Esher in taking upon themselves all the personal obligations of the King at the time of the accession, which enabled the Government to announce in Parliament that he tvould be satisfied with the same civil list as his predecessor on the throne, that he would make no application to the nation for an additional grant of money, and that he had no debts with which it was necessary for the treasury to concern itself, an announcement which, while it was received with the utmost satisfaction, at the same time created some surprise, as it was generally understood that the king had not benefited to any extent under the will of the late Queen, the major part of whose fortune had gone to her younger children. It may be well to declare here, in the most explicit fashion, that there is not a vestige of truth in the malicious stories, widely circulated, and which have even found their way into print, according to which an arrangement has existed with some of the greatest art dealers in London. whereby art treasures of cue kind and another were plate.l on view from time to time in Windsor Castle. Buckingham Palace, and other of the King’s residences, in order to admit of their sale to American millionaires at prices far above their real value, in the belief that they formed pari ami parcel of the royal collections. No one in the entourage of the King would have lent himself to any such trick, so dear to the sharper grade of auctioneers on both sides of the Atlantic; and if there had been any attempt to re-

sort to such practices it would scarcely have escaped the attention of EDWARD VII., WHO HAS DEVELOPED INTO AN EXCEEDINGLY SHREWD AND WIDE AWAKE MAN OF BUSINESS. in his mature age. Thu reports probably had their origin in the fact that on the death of the late queen a careful investigation of the contents of her 'numerous palaces disclosed a vast quantity of things for which the king could find no possible use. ami which he was in consequence advised to sell. The huge cellars at Windsor and at Buckingham Palace, for instance, were crowded with ports, sherries, ami other wines which hid gone out of fashion, which did not commend themselves to Edward Vll.’s taste, and which had been accumulating there throughout the (M> years of his mothers reign, and even in the time of her two uncles, George TV. and William 1\ . These were sold at a high price, in order to make way for his favourite vintages. ‘ Then. too. there was much furniture of an artistic character, for which there was no longer any room, and which had to be sold oft’; while the art collections (that is to say. the paintings, the statuary, the collections of rare porcelain and ivories, the buhl cabinets, ami bric-a-brac of every description) had to be subjected to a very extensive weeding process, (*verything being sold for which the king and the queen did not care, or of which there were a superfluous number of examples. The king himself had been collecting during the 40 years of his social rule as heir apparent, and it was necessary to secure a place for his own treasures. That is why so much of the contents of the royal palaces, as they were in the days of Queen Victoria, camo into the market during the four or five years following her demise as to cause malicious people to start the wholly false rumour to the effect that either the king, or else some of the most trusted and influential members of his household, had gone into business with several of the great art and wine dealers, additional colour being lent to these tales by ‘the fact that Guy Laking. the member of the king’s household who is in charge of all the royal armour and of most of the art collections, is admittedly a partner in a celebrated firm of auctioneers in London, and that the king’s cellar-master. Thomas A. Kingscote. is a member of a great wine firm. By means of these sales a far larger sum of monev was realised bv Lord Firqu'har. Lord Esher, and Sir Ernest Cassel than the public would ever dream, and another big amount was obtained bv a RADIC AL REORGANISATION OF THE ENTIRE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD. and bv the reformation of the almost incredible abuses and extravagances that Lad graduallv developed at court dnrin" the nearlv 40 years of widowhood of Queen Victoria, and which were of a nature to cause her thriftv and levelheaded husband —a clever business man it ever there was one—to turn in his grave. It is no exaggeration to assert that Lord Farquhar and Lord Esher, bv doing awav with waste, perquisites, pil rering. and with useless vet costlv sinecures. were able to cut down the expenditures of the roval household nearlv one-half, without in the slightest de-

gree impairing the brilliancy or the splendour of King Edward's court, which, indeed, is vastly superior in that respect to that of his august mother. No monarch in modem times has suffered more from financial embarrassments than THE LATE KING OF PORTUGAL, who was subjected to every conceivable indignity in connection with his liabilities. the advances made to him by the Exchequer resulting in his being denounced in the Cortes, and also in the press at Lisbon, as a '‘robber of the national treasury,” as a "thief of public money.” and as “far more worthy of death than King Louis XVI. of France.”

Indeed, these advances played so important a role in the legislative deadlock, aind in the constitutional crisis of the last year in Portugal, which culminated in the murder of the king last February, that a few weeks before his death he as well as the queen yielded to the entreaties of their most trusted advisers, and resolved upon extensive sacrifices in order to liquidate the liabilitv. Thus, although Carlos was devoted to the sea and passionately fond of yachting, he surrendered his beautiful steam yacht, the Amelie, to the nation for conversion into a cruiser: and he likewise abandoned to the State a quantity of real estate forming part of his private pro-

This was not the first sacrifice of the kind which King Carlos had been called upon to make. For, some years ago, it was found necessary to SELL THE WHOLE OF THE CROWN JEWELS OF PORTUGAL, some of which are now in America. The money thus obtained was converted into Portuguese Government bonds, the interest of which was assigned to the liquidation of the then-existing debts of the reigning house. It is only fair to the late king to point out that his financial circumstances were not wholly due to extravagance. but to the organisation of his civil list. This was extremely small compared to those of other sovereigns, and. moreover, was saddled with all sorts of charges in the way of the maintenance of national museums and the subvention of national theatres, from which, however. it is henceforth to be relieved. True. Queen Amelie has some money of her own. probably about 75.000 dollars a year, inherited from her father, the lite Count of Paris. But while this would be a comfortable income for a woman in private life, it does not go very far with the Queen, being swallowed up almost entirely by her dress, seeing that her rank does not permit her to appear more than once in the same toilette. KING LEOPOLD IS NOW ROLLING IN WEALTH: but there have been times, especially during the early stages of his Congo enterprise. when he was terribly embarrassed. financially speaking, and ready to turn to almost any quarter for assists a nee. For many years the late Sir William McKinnon was Leopold’s particular benefactor, and the king showed his appreciation by receiving him with almost royal honours whenever he came to Brussels. by constantly running over to England. and even to Scotland, for the purpose of seeking his advice and pecuniary advances, and by using his influence with the English Government to secure for McKinnon th? title of baronet. After the death of Sir William, his place as benefactor to Leopold was taken by “Colonel” North, popularly known as the Nitrate King. Colonel North was a self-made man who did not include among his very sterling qualities either high breeding or refinement. Indeed, even his best

friends were compelled to admit that he was dreadfully vulgar and extremely loud both in manner and appearance. Yet the king overlooked all these defects, associated in the most intimate manner with the colonel, ami frequently entertained him at Ostend and at Brussels; and on one occasion he actually went to the length of placing his favourite palace in the Ardennes at the disposal of North, in order to enable North to entertain there, at his expense. a party of friends from London, to shoot over the royal preserves. Emperor William’s benefactor before he came to the throne is generally understood to have been his friend, Count Douglas. The Kaiser, prior to his accession, was kept on an exceedingly small allowance, partly because his parents, the then Crown Prince and Crown Princess, could not afford to do anything for him. owing to their own limited resources, and partly because the old Emperor, who determined the amount of tin* allowance to be paid to each of the princes of his house from tin* Hohenzollern fam-

ily fortune and from the civil list, was of an extremely economical turn of mind. The regiments to which Prince William was attached were among the most expensive corps in the service, his fellowofficers being all men of great wealth, and the consequence was that he found it very difficult to make both ends meet. It is generally understood that Count Douglas. who was one of his closest friends, and who derives the major portion of his great wealth from practically inexhaustible mines that he possesses in the Hartz Mountains, frequently came to his assistance and advanced him money, which was. of course, repaid after his accession. But bis financial difficulties were a matter of common talk, and led to a certain amount of popular belief being accorded to the mendacious stories subsequently told by ex-Capt. Sidney O’Danne when tried ami convicted of fraud at Berlin. O’Danne, who during the boyhood of William, had been one of his military instructors. insisted that after bis royal pupil had attained manhood he had

been on two occasions dispatched by him on a secret mission to St. Petersburg, for the purpose of obtaining loans from the late Czar. Of course, there was not a shadow of proof in the assertion, which nevertheless found credence among

certain people, who were disposed to believe that the extraordinary animosity which undoubtedly prevailed between the late Alexander 111. and the present Kaiser was of a pecuniary origin. THE LATE KING VICTOR EM MANTEL WAS FOREVER IN FINANCIAL DI FFICULTIES, and at bis death left his affairs in a terribly embarrassed condition. Indeed, his son. King Humbert, had just finished the liquidation of his father’s enormous liabilities at the time of his assassination at Monza. Khedive Ismail was among the old king’s largest creditors, and no one is ever likely to know, even approxi-

mately, the amount of money which the extravagant Egyptian ruler advanced with an unstinted hand to 11 Re Galant ’Como. The Khedive lent it, not only from motives of generosity, but also policy, deeming it judicious for a potentate

in his semi-independent position to have one of tin* most influential monarchs in Europe so heavily in debt. Humbert did not show himself ungrateful for Ismail’s kindness to his father, for when the Khedive* was deposed in 1879, and wandered all over Europe, finding the doors of royal and imperial courts closed in his face, that of Italy was the only on? where he was welcomed with every manifestation of regard. and received with altogether royal honours. It was in consequence of this that In* made his home at Rome and at Naples, in palaces placed at his disposal by tin* king, until in 1888 In* unfurlinnately permitted him self to be inveigled into visiting Constantinople. where he was kept by the

Sultan in a Hurt of gilded captivity until his death, in 1895. Nicholas, ruler of the Black Mountains, father-in-law of the present King of Italy, of King Peter of Servia. and of a couple of Russian grand dukes, has never Ih-i-ii out of debt for the last thirty years or more, his liabilities arising partly from his anxiety to maintain a royal court on a scale similar to that of other European sovereigns without having tin' means to do so. and partly from his mania for gambling. King Victor Emmanuel, the

late Ozar. Nicholls If., and Francis Joseph of Austria, have all enjoyed in turn the privilege of paying his most pressing liabilities, not onee but several times, until he has exhausted their patience ■and their generosity, and among the many extraordinary devices to which he has had recourse in order to raise the financial wind, has been that of sending large money-orders to various points in Austria and Hungary, where they were cashed through his agents by the Austrian and Magyar post offices, which were subsequently unable to recover the

funds from the Montenegrin postal department. It was not until the prince had obtained a very large sum of money in this fashion that the Austrian postal authorities discovered the triek, which his absolute control of every branch of the government at Cettinje had enabled him to play at their expense, and thereupon a suspension of all intercourse by mail with Montenegro was decreed from Vienna, which lasted until the prince made a personal appeal to the emperor, who paid the amount due to the Austrian

and Hungarian post offices out of his own pocket. KING ALFONSO NIL, at the time of his restoration to the throne of Spain, was deeply in the debt of the late Duke of Santona, who had started life as a hatter in Madrid, and subsequently made an immense fortune in Cuba. Indeed, his financial assistance contributed in no small measure to King Alphonso’s recovery of the throne of his mother. Many of the titles of nobility granted

within the last hundred years have been bestowed in recognition and perhaps as part repayment of personal loans to the anointed of the Lord. There are few of them who have not at one time or another been in debt, or who are in a position to show the same spirit of independence that was manifested by the late Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe at the Congress of German sovereigns at Frankfort, in 1863. At one of the great entertainments given by the Senate of the then Free City of Frankfort, all the rulers present were assembled in a reserved saloon, engaged in animated conversation. Suddenly they all. with one exception. rose to their feet, and advanced to meet a small and insignificant-looking man who had just entered the room. The prince who had remained seated was Adolph of Schaumburg-Lippe. “Who is the fellow about whom you are making all this fuss’” he growled to the sovereign Elector of Hesse. “Why, don’t you know him?” replied the latter. “It is Baron Rothschild. Let me make you acquainted with him. Surelv vou do not want to be the only

one here who does not extend a gracious welcome to him?” “And why not?” retorted Prince Adolph. "What do I care about the fellow? Ido not owe him anything.” Prince Adolph was the only one of all the kings, grand dukes, and sovereign electors and princes present, who could afford thus to show his independence, every one of the others having been at one time or another indebted to the house of Rothschild.