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THE NINETY-NINE-DAY EMPRESS

By the time Fritz’s gruesome illness was playing itself out, the fates of Queen Victoria and Vicky had largely been sealed. Queen Victoria was settling into old age, content at the way her reign had unfolded—proud that her empire was respected, feared, and admired. Vicky, by contrast, far from enjoying the same adulation as her mother, had to swallow the bitter pill of unpopularity and vicious accusations. Perhaps if the crown princess had been more tactful and less forthright in her views, some of the criticisms might not have stuck, let alone been voiced. But Vicky, who had many good qualities, was much too plainspoken to charm her way into the hearts of certain people. Lady Ponsonby, who had known both, best summed up the characters of mother and daughter, saying of Vicky: “All her life she remained one of the most unde-ceitful women I have ever known. I cannot say that she had the same charm as the Queen: in her great seriousness there was too much of the professor about her; all the same she was an exceptionally clever woman and wonderfully loyal to her friends.”¹

Queen Victoria possessed the same loyal streak. She also inspired fear and reverence in many. One contemporary observer, Princess Catherine Radziwill, wrote of the queen: “The eyes are frank and sincere, and they look at you with an expression of intense truth; but they are imperious, and reveal a character that does not brook contracdiction.” But, added Radziwill, “perhaps because no other sovereign has understood so well how to appeal” to her subjects’ “inmost feelings and to associate [the people] with all her joys and sorrows,” Queen Victoria successfully offset this forbidding side by also displaying a highly sympathetic side. “In my eyes,” added Radziwill, “Queen Victoria appears in the light of an exceedingly fascinating woman, in spite of her years. There is in her face, even more than in that of her daughter … [Vicky], an extreme charm. It is seen too, in her voice; her whole person, in fact, expresses great sympathy.”²

Victoria, who had a natural gift for eliciting empathy, could also be mystifying. More than the forthright Vicky, the queen fascinated kings and commoners alike—a gift derived partly from the fact that Victoria was a bundle of contradictions. For here was a woman who “deplored the idea of women’s rights, yet she appeared to be the most powerful woman on earth. In truth, Victoria was proud yet humble; possessed of common sense yet subject to unreasoned emotional outbursts; demurely feminine yet profoundly imperious; naïve yet shrewdly intelligent; independent yet extremely needy; confident yet insecure—in short, an oddly assembled combination of conflicting elements that coalesced to make her formidable yet charming, aloof yet familiar.”³

Though criticisms were also voiced about Queen Victoria, such as her reclusiveness after the Prince Consort’s death and her dependency on John Brown, the complaints never tarnished the queen to the same extent as those thrown at Vicky. Ironically, one of the longest running objections about Vicky concerned her impact on her beloved husband, a criticism that also had the damaging effect of “cutting off Fritz from his patrimony. [For] in a society as patriarchal as Wilhelmine Germany, the Crown Prince seemed to be manipulated by a domineering wife who took orders straight from her omnipotent mother, the woman the Germans called the Widow of Windsor.”⁴ This criticism was a widely circulated one and, according to a British diplomat at the time, one that was easily believed. Of Fritz, this contemporary had commented “that his wife had the stronger will of the two,” a fact that “seemed evident even to the superficial observer.”⁵ Little wonder then that Vicky’s refusal to bow to Prussian conformity when it came to her role as wife led to one of the most persistent criticisms she had to endure.

By the late 1870s, the crown princess had ample opportunity to observe the patriarchal attitude that so permeated her adopted homeland. Vicky explained to her husband that, in Germany, “the position of the German woman in general, her upbringing & her relationship to men!” was the “main reason” for the rejection of liberal principles. It was not unusual to find that, in Germany, a woman was “not the companion, friend & helper of her husband in all his business and in everything he does, is not his adviser, his secretary, does not share his level of education, does not share men’s interests & in the home is neither fully mistress of her house, nor educator of her children!” Inevitably, the crown princess went on to compare this state of affairs with the English model. “If a woman here lays claim to the position she has legitimately held in England for centuries (& that is one of the main causes of the strength of the English people & why the civilization there is more developed than here), she is regarded as dangerous, bossy, absurd, crotchety, & war is declared on her!”⁶

After nearly three decades in Prussia, Vicky had been unable to endear herself to many of her future subjects. Though she spoke faultless German and tried in her way to become Prussian, the court and many of the people had still failed to embrace her as their own. In this, Vicky came much nearer to Marie Antoinette’s experiences in France than to Catherine of Aragon’s in England. By the time she was well into her forties, Vicky came to see herself more closely allied to England than ever before, a situation caused by a number of factors. First, the crown princess found that “her belief in Germany as a center of culture and rationality had been trampled—first by the unltraconservative Prussian court, then by Bismarck, and finally by the German people themselves, who seemed all too easily led to believe the worst of die Engländerin.”⁷ This was unfortunate, as Vicky’s views about Prussians were not completely negative; she also had positive things to say about her countrymen, telling Queen Victoria in the 1860s of their “sterling good qualities.”⁸ But in the princess’s mind, these qualities seemed to be increasingly overshadowed by faults, including—most painfully—their inability to believe that she always had Prussia’s best interests at heart. And thus, “knowing herself to be untrusted and unloved in her adopted country and temperamentally unfit to pay lip service to principles she loathed, Vicky began to turn back to England. This change in attitude can be traced in her letters to her mother; in the early 1880s, the word ‘we,’ which formerly referred to the Germans, now meant the English.”⁹

Nowhere does this attachment to England, and her mother, appear more evident than in the words Vicky had written to Queen Victoria some years before. After a visit to England, Vicky penned the following from Berlin: “Attached as I am to this country [Prussia] and anxious to serve it with might and main, the other [England] will ever remain the land of my heart and I shall ever feel the same pride of being home there, a child and subject of yours.”¹⁰

Vicky’s attachment to England would increase even more with the health crisis suffered by her husband. For what was in store for Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter would amount to nothing short of the “completion of Vicky’s ruination in Germany.”¹¹

Fritz’s deteriorating condition took its toll on his devoted wife. In December 1887, her friend Lady Ponsonby, who was at San Remo with the couple, recorded the following impressions: “Yesterday was the first day she broke down before me. She is generally in apparent excellent spirits, though preoccupied at times: but yesterday it was too much to find [Fritz] reading a recapitulation of the doctor’s former opinion, with a paragraph pointing out the difference between this and the present bulletins and leaving their readers to make their own inference. The poor Crown Prince turned to [Vicky] and said, ‘Why will they take every ray of hope away? What good is done them by this?’ and pointed to the paragraph. She was quite cheerful to him and then came into the next room where I was and cried. She is so wonderful generally that it fills one with pity.”¹²

In November 1887, when the crown prince was finally told of the fatal nature of his infirmity, even his eldest son, Wilhelm, who was at loggerheads with his parents more often than not, wrote a moving letter to his grandmother Queen Victoria:

The final descision [sic] of the Doctors has been taken this morning & the fearful hour has at last after all arrived! They told Papa everything & he received the news like a Hohenzollern & a soldier, upright, looking the doctors straight in the face. He knows that he is irretrievably lost and doomed! And yet he did not move an inch or a muscle, they were immensely moved by this splendid display of character. His great & noble heart did not flinch & he is serene, composed & calm, like a brave captain, who knows that in leading his forlorne [sic] hope he will fall with his brave men, he holds up his head & even tries to cheer us up when we all of us broke down after the doctors had left. It is quite horrible this confounded word “hopeless”! Poor Mama is doing wonders, she is perpetually on the verge of completely breaking down, & yet she keeps on that gigantic struggle against her feelings only not to distress Papa, & not to let the household see her grief … . Our doctor is in tears. Besides Grandmama is seriously ill & not fit to hear any bad news & the Emperor very deeply affected by the bad news, so that one is nearly off one’s head with anxiety.¹³

The diagnosis of Fritz’s fatal illness left no one in doubt that his reign would be very brief. This spurred Bismarck to look at the rising power on the horizon—none other than Prince Wilhelm, Vicky and Fritz’s twenty-eight-year-old son—and begin bypassing the dying crown prince. For with the aged emperor in Berlin also seriously ill and weak, there was little doubt that the scepter of power was now devolving onto the next generations. Within a week after Prince Wilhelm wrote his moving letter to Queen Victoria, Bismarck saw to it that he was made deputy kaiser. This meant that, should the sickly Wilhelm I become unable to sign official documents, Willy had the right to do so on his behalf. This action had the effect of bypassing the dying crown prince, who at San Remo murmured rightly to Vicky: “So they already look upon me as dead.”¹⁴

The year 1888 brought opportunities for Queen Victoria to indulge in her preoccupation with mourning, for two significant deaths took place in Germany. On March 9, Vicky’s ninety-one-year-old father-in-law, Kaiser Wilhelm I, died, making Fritz, Emperor Frederick III and Vicky his empress. The couple was still in San Remo when news of their accession arrived. As the first act of his reign, Fritz invested Vicky with the insignia of the Black Eagle, Prussia’s premier order of chivalry. In characteristic selflessness and humility, the new kaiser, unable to speak, scribbled a note to his doctors thanking them for “having let me live long enough to recompense the valiant courage of my wife.”¹⁵

The new emperor and empress hurried back to a Berlin engulfed in freezing cold and snow. But it was evident that the emperor would not be able to reign for long. Frederick III was a pitiable sight. “Hardly able to breathe, now without the power to speak, his general’s uniform collar hiding the excruciatingly painful steel cannula sticking out of his windpipe, the only joy the ravaged man had left in his heart was the satisfaction that his doctors had gotten him through long enough for his wife of thirty years to live out the rest of her life with the style and titles of Majesty, and Empress, and Queen. He knew full well that without Vicky’s encouragement, he would never have made it this far. Thus began a reign that history has all but forgotten,” one that would amount to a “phantom reign.”¹⁶ Vicky knew that their time on the throne was limited. She wrote to Queen Victoria about having “to leave all the work undone which we have so long and so carefully been preparing.”¹⁷

Her words were all the more poignant when compared with Fritz’s own message to Bismarck: “May I be destined thus to lead Germany and Prussia in a course of peaceful development to new honours … . Not caring for the splendour of great deeds, not striving for glory, I shall be satisfied if it be one day said of my rule that it was beneficial to my people, useful to my Country and a blessing to the Empire.”¹⁸ But this was not to be. And because of this “cruel irony of fate,” Vicky,

after having hoped so much, after having shared so many high ambitions, so many disinterested and humanitarian plans with the husband she loved, … [now] found herself in the presence of an inexorable reality which took away from her with one hand all that it had given to her with the other.

Instead of sharing the throne with the companion of her life, she saw herself watching at his death-bed. No tragedy could have been more cruel. Yet the Empress bore herself magnificently, and showed to the world the strength of her admirable character. In those tragic hours when the faltering but nevertheless firm hand of Frederick III took up the reins of the German Empire, she was sublime in her abnegation, in her utter forgetfulness of her own sufferings. She succeeded in hiding from the world the anguish under which she was breaking down, and found the courage to speak in hopeful tones to the poor invalid who knew but too well that no help was left to either of them.¹⁹

The day after Fritz and Vicky’s accession an emotional Queen Victoria wrote to her daughter:

My heart is very, very full. May every blessing be yours and may you now be able to see the right thing done for beloved Fritz as it should be, and every possible help and care that is needed afforded … . I know how kind and good and forgiving you are, but I beg you both to be firm and put your foot down and especially to make those of your children, who were always speaking of the Emperor and Empress to remember who they are now. Many there are who will have to learn this and I fancy that you will be firm. My own dear Empress Victoria—it does seem an impossible dream—may God bless her. You know how little I care for rank or titles, but I cannot deny that after all that has been done and said, I am thankful and proud that dear Fritz and you should have come to the throne.²⁰

A contemporary of Vicky’s noted of Frederick III: “He can be an Emperor only in name and how long will he be that? I hear that he and his son are reconciled, but not so Prince William and his mother. The sad spectacle of these family dissensions are given to the whole world for everybody knows about them and talks of them.”²¹ Several years before, Vicky had written to Queen Victoria about this seemingly unbridgeable gulf between her and Wilhelm. It was the summer of 1880, and by then “the disappointment of the Crown Princess in her son was complete.” “Willy is chauvinistic and ultra Prussian to a degree,” related Vicky, “and with a violence which is often very painful to me.” In order to deal with this, she added, “I avoid all discussions, always turn off the subject or remain silent!”²² By the time Vicky and Fritz ascended the throne, mother and son were still in battle mode.

Because of his weakness, Fritz had no choice but to keep Bismarck at the helm of the government. The chancellor himself looked back on this era as a time when “I was an absolute dictator.”²³ He had, after all, been a commanding and powerful leader during the previous reign, who in “his tendency towards insubordination” had “never behaved as if he had a boss.”²⁴ Wilhelm I himself once admitted candidly: “It is hard being Emperor under Bismarck,” adding, “He is more important than I.”²⁵ Now with a gravely ill Frederick III at the helm, there was no reason for Bismarck to temper his ways.

Vicky knew that it would be dangerous to antagonize this powerful enemy. The chancellor understood the extent of his power over the empress, “for what little influence she possessed with [her son] Wilhelm would vanish the moment her consort died, although the chancellor’s would continue.”²⁶ That was the future, but for the present, she had to contend with something equally insidious, for “the end result of Bismarck’s campaign to isolate … [Fritz] and his wife, destroy their reputations, and render them politically powerless was alienation.”²⁷ During Fritz’s reign, Vicky and the emperor continued to be alienated by Bismarck and his ruling clique. Her son Wilhelm would likely become kaiser in no time. For the opportunistic, there was thus no reason to rally around Fritz and Vicky.

Queen Victoria was horrified by the situation in Berlin. She was especially indignant about those who circled Vicky and Fritz like vultures, ready to jump on Wilhelm’s side as soon as Frederick III died. The queen expressed her concerns to Lord Salisbury about “the terrible cercle vicieux which surrounds the unfortunate Emperor and Empress and which makes Bismarck’s conduct really disloyal, wicked and really unwise in the extreme!”²⁸

Fritz and Vicky’s ordeal was nothing short of martyrdom. In early 1888, breathing became nearly impossible for Fritz, thus necessitating the insertion of the steel cannula. Though absolutely necessary, the cannula caused further extreme discomfort. Then there was the friction among the doctors. Mackenzie and the German doctors bickered over Fritz’s illness, and even here Vicky was not spared unfair criticism, with Germans wondering why she insisted on having a British physician instead of leaving the diagnosis and treatment to German ones.

Vicky’s tribulations redoubled as her relationship with her oldest son degenerated into one long-pitched battle punctuated by the occasional truce. From Willy came the complaint that his mother hated him “more than anything else on earth.”²⁹ Vicky, in turn, said that “what she wrote about him was ‘by no means exaggerated,’ … but ‘only a third of what happens … and I do not wish to torment you with a list.’”³⁰ Though many knew of the antagonism between mother and son, few were privy to the extent of the vitriol that Wilhelm spewed at his long-suffering mother. Vicky may have been occasionally overbearing toward Willy, but she did not deserve his overly narcissistic complaints and cruel behavior. She was especially appalled at his overt impatience and lack of feeling for his dying father. “William fancies himself completely the Emperor and an absolute and autocratic one!” wrote the disgusted empress to her mother, an observation backed by the Austro-Hungarian ambassador to Germany.³¹

Bertie had seen the depressing spectacle that was playing out with his sister and brother-in-law. According to Vicky’s friend Lady Paget, “The Prince of Wales on his return from Berlin told the Queen that Bismarck and the other ministers treated the Emperor Frederic[k] as quite sans conséquence; he reigns but he does not govern. He is so unhappy he cannot sleep. Knowing the personages of the tragedy so well, one reads between the lines and one cannot help feeling terribly anxious as to what may happen if this uncertain state of things lasts. Poor man, this is the heaviest cross of all for him to bear.”³² Lady Paget added that “the Queen’s feeling is that it is a bore always knuckling-under to Bismarck, but she is told that as everybody always is knuckling-under they must go on doing so … . It does seem too dreadful that the poor man [Frederick III] is really a martyr and politically his position seems to be getting more and more difficult.”³³

Vicky and Fritz rightly feared for the future. Concerned that Willy might destroy documents they could use to show that, contrary to his assertions, they were not enemies of Germany, they had their personal papers spirited out of the country in several stages. The papers arrived in England for safe storage.

In April 1888, Queen Victoria traveled to Berlin. It was a poignant visit for both mother and child, politically and above all personally. For Victoria was bidding her cherished son-in-law farewell and would be leaving her oldest daughter alone in what amounted to a den of wolves. During this visit, Victoria met with Otto von Bismarck. The Iron Chancellor was evidently impressed with the queen, for when he left their meeting, he mopped his brow and declared: “That was a woman! one can do business with her!”³⁴

Vicky was overjoyed to see her mother. “What a happiness it was, in all that misery, to catch a glimpse of the Queen!” she wrote to Lady Ponsonby. “Her visit went off so well that I think she was pleased—in spite of the gloom and sadness which pervades everything, to see what pleasure her visit gave. I cannot speak of my own sufferings and trials, they are too great to mention lightly … . You know all the circumstances that make my fate so hard. I have not the heart to speak of the future.”³⁵ Victoria’s own impression of her visit vividly describes her daughter’s depth of emotion: “Vicky took me back to my room and talked some time very sadly about the future, breaking down completely. Her despair at what she seems to look on as the certain end is terrible.”³⁶

The queen’s visit to Berlin ended on a sad note for Victoria and Vicky. “Vicky struggled hard not to gave way, but finally broke down,” recounted the queen, “and it was terrible to see her standing there in tears, while the train moved slowly off, and to think of all she was suffering and might have to go through. My poor poor child, what would I not do to help her in her hard lot!”³⁷

Soon after leaving Germany, Queen Victoria wrote to Vicky, “Most beloved and darling child, How dreadful our separation was I cannot say or how my whole heart and soul go out in love and sympathy towards you and our most dearly beloved suffering Fritz … . My heart was wrung with grief and pity and yet not devoid of the hope which God mercifully implants into our souls and hearts to enable us to go on.”³⁸ Vicky wrote with gratitude to the queen, telling her, “Your motherly kindness and affection has done me good and has refreshed my aching heart!”³⁹

Throughout Fritz’s dreadful illness, Vicky nursed him diligently. As her husband was unable to communicate properly, she learned to read his lips. “Tell me,” he would pronounce in silence each morning, after having stretched out his arms to his wife. “I always had to tell him,” recalled Vicky, “every tiny little thing I had done, seen and heard the day before, what I had thought, hoped and imagined.”⁴⁰

As the fifty-six-year-old emperor’s life drew to a close, Bismarck paid him a last visit. The chancellor and Vicky faced each other on opposite ends of the sickbed. The dying emperor took his wife’s and his enemy’s hands and clasped them together in a silent but moving plea for unity. Fritz tried to help Vicky and Germany by imploring the chancellor to promise his help. But Bismarck did not commit to anything. He kissed his emperor’s hand and stated simply: “Your Majesty may rest assured that I shall never forget that Her Majesty is my Queen.”⁴¹ Vicky broke down.

Count Hugo von Radolinski, who had been Fritz’s court chamberlain as well as Bismarck’s spy, described what had taken place as “one of the most touching scenes” he had ever witnessed.⁴² Vicky, who had been no less moved, nevertheless did not let the exchange compromise her powers of observation. She recounted that Bismarck “did not appear to be affected, his face expressed neither sorrow nor sympathy!”⁴³

Another dramatic scene involved Fritz and Vicky’s daughter Princess Sophie. On June 14, she turned eighteen, and to celebrate the milestone, the young woman went to her dying father’s bedside, where Fritz, who put on a brave face, gave her a bouquet of flowers. “What a birthday for the poor child!” recorded Vicky, “what a recollection for the whole of her life! The last day on earth of her beloved father!”⁴⁴

Emperor Frederick III’s agonies and ninety-nine-day reign ended on the morning of June 15. Vicky stayed with her beloved husband until his last breath. The widow then took the withered laurel wreath she had given Fritz after the Franco-Prussian War and placed it on his chest. She placed his sword on his arm and collapsed in stunned sorrow.

It was the end of a solid, passionate, loving marriage. Fritz had once confided his deep, abiding love for Vicky, saying, “She has been the guardian angel of my existence and she has helped me to bear all its sorrows and dark hours. She is perfection itself as a woman.”⁴⁵

To Fritz’s mother, Vicky conveyed a touching message: “Thy beloved only son is no more. I am proud to have been the wife of that hero. One of his last thoughts was of thee. Support this terrible blow with resignation and courage.”⁴⁶ Queen Victoria’s letter to Empress Augusta was full of sympathy but added: “The tragedy for my poor child is too ghastly—much worse even than mine in 1861.”⁴⁷

Victoria, who had awaited the dreadful news at Balmoral, was still taken aback when she learned of Fritz’s death. “A terrible day!” bemoaned the queen. “I cannot, cannot realize the dreadful truth—the awful misfortune! It is too, too dreadful! My poor dear Vicky, God help her!”⁴⁸

To her mother—who understood all too well what she was going through—Vicky wrote, “How cruel it does seem—that he should be thus … cheated of life … . Oh, it is all so terrible, so dreadful. On one of the wreaths was the inscription … [God’s will does not allow of why] so it is—and so we must bear our Cross.”⁴⁹ Vicky looked to Queen Victoria for inspiration to go on, telling her mother: “You bore it, and I must bear it! It would not be right, not grateful to mourn against God’s decree.”⁵⁰

“Darling, darling, unhappy Child,” wrote Victoria, “I clasp you in my arms and to a heart that bleeds, for this is a double, dreadful grief, a misfortune untold and to the world at large. You are far more sorely tried than me … . May God help and support you as He did me.”⁵¹ To her grandson Willy, who was now the emperor—Kaiser Wilhelm II—Victoria wrote: “I am broken-hearted. Help and do all you can for your poor dear Mother and try to follow in your best, noblest, and kindest of father’s footsteps.”⁵²

Wilhelm ignored her. In keeping with his bombastic style, Wilhelm II’s accession began with bluster as he announced: “We are bound to each other—I and the army—we are born for each other, and we shall hold together indissolubly whether it be God’s will to send us calm or storm.”⁵³ But behind those words of bravado were the actions of a coward, and a cruel one at that. A mere half hour after his father died, Wilhelm II ordered a regiment of hussars to seal off the Neues Palais. They ran roughshod over the palace, overturning furniture, including Fritz’s desk, which was disrespectfully taken apart in search of papers. When a uniformed Wilhelm II arrived, he gave his shocked mother no explanation. More high-ranking officers came to ransack the palace and rifle through Fritz’s desk again while Vicky huddled with her three youngest daughters, the dead emperor’s body still lying nearby.

In a moving letter written not long before his death, Vicky captured the tragedy that had befallen her and her husband:

When one falls from so high as I have fallen, one’s friends are particularly dear to one. Sometimes it seems to me as if all this agony is nothing but a dream from which I must awake; and then anguish seizes me again, and I realize my misfortune in all its depth. And when one thinks that I belong to the number of those who are called the happy ones of this earth! If only all the people who envy me—or, rather, who have envied me—could only guess how often the great ones of this world have to suffer for the high position which is theirs, they would not be in such a hurry to judge or to condemn them. We have even to endure the pain of not being able to talk about our sufferings, and at all costs we must fall and die like kings .⁵⁴

The contrast between Vicky’s and Victoria’s fates was at no time more glaring than in 1888. Queen Victoria was enjoying widespread popularity, unrivaled and unequaled as a monarch, while her daughter fell to the depths of despair, racked by the demoralizing knowledge that her husband’s reign was so brief it had made no positive impact on Germany. Vicky’s “assigned role as the missionary of progress,”⁵⁵ one she had eagerly embraced as a teenage bride and had such hopes of achieving with Fritz, was now in tatters. With her husband’s death went any hope that Vicky could help move Prussia toward the English model. For the widowed Empress Frederick, as Vicky now wished to be called, her life’s hopes and ambitions, nurtured by her parents, came to naught. She continued to be derisively thought of as die Engländerin—the Englishwoman in the land that never accepted her. It was a painful blow to the Empress Frederick and to Queen Victoria. But if both women thought their torments had ended with Fritz’s death, they were sadly mistaken.