Ashes To Ashes

**Small-town Minnesota teenager Basil “The Brute” Thorson—a shy,

reluctant wrestling star and “special” tracked into special education
classes—vows to make his family whole again in the wake of multiple
tragedies, during a year in which his commun

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The Empress J^rederick Writes to Sophie
 Other Books by Arthur Gould Lee CROWN AGAINST SICKLE
THE STORY OF KING MICHAEL OF ROUMANIA {Hutchinson)
SPECIAL DUTIES IN THE BALKANS AND NEAR EAST {Sampson Low)
THE ROYAL HOUSE OF GREECE {Ward Lock)
 THE EMPRESS FREDERICK From the portrait by Franz von
Lenbach
 Vicvona. ErT-iOre&s Ci»')^or7" rfe^'€*/ar' The Empress
J^rederick Writes To Sophie Her Daughteff Crown Princess and later
Queen of the Hellenes LETTERS 1889 — I9OI edited by ARTHUR
GOULD LEE With an Introduction by HER MAJESTY QUEEN HELEN
QUEEN MOTHER OF ROUMANIA FABER AND FABER LIMITED 24
Russell Square London
 First published in mcmlv by Faber and Faber Limited 24
Russell Square London W.C.i Printed in Great Britain by Latimer
Trend
 Introduction by Her Majesty Queen Helen page 1 1 Editor's
Note 15 Familiar Names used in the Letters 19 Table of Descendants
22 1. llie Thirty-one years before the Letters 25 2. The Letters —
1889-90 52 3. The Letters — 1891 76 4. The Letters — 1892 104 5.
The Letters — 1893 133 6. The Letters — 1894 159 7. The Letters —
1895 186 8. The Letters — 1896 212 9. The Letters — 1897 239 10.
The Letters — 1898 267 11. The Letters — 1899 295 12. The Letters
— 1900-1901 322 15. Aftermath 348 Bibliography 353 Index 355
 PLATES The Empress Frederick. After a sketch by Franz von
Lenbach in 1886. (Reproduction lent by H.R.H. the Duchess ofAosta)
frontispiece The Empress in 1884. After the portrait by Heinrich von
Angeh. {Reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the Wallace
Collection) facing page 44 The Empress, 1889 {Picture Post Library)
45 The Emperor Frederick III, 1887 45 The Empress with Princess
Victoria on her right, and Princess Margaret on her left. Standing,
Princess Sophie and Prince Constantine. 1889. (Windsor Castle
Library) 96 Family group taken at Darmstadt, April 1894. {Picture
Post Library) 97 Friedrichshof: The Main Entrance 112 The Hall 112
{Photographs lent bj H.M. Queen Helen) The Empress with Queen
Victoria. {Windsor Castle Library) 113 IN THE TEXT Facsimile of one
of the Empress's letters to Princess Sophie page 303
 tf^ uefc/7^2^ (yCe^ iye>C/^e«J^e€^' My mother, Queen
Sophie of the Hellenes, greatly treasured all the letters written to her
by her mother, the Empress Frederick, over the years between her
marriage in 1889 and the Empress's death in 1901. When my
mother left Greece on her second exile in 1921, she took the letters
with her and carefully preserved them, not only because they were a
precious link with one she loved, but because she had in mind that
they should one day be published. She considered that existing
books about the Empress did not do her justice. They played so
much on her frustrated role in public affairs and on her unhappy
relations with Prince Bismark, and with her son. Prince William, that
her underlying womanly qualities were lost sight of. My mother felt
that the letters written to her, if published, would reveal the Empress
differently, not only as a woman who was enlightened and tolerant,
but as a fond and devoted mother. But because they contained much
that was too intimately personal for print, my mother decided to try
herself to edit them for publication. While in exile from 1924
onwards, she set to work on the formidable task of arranging the
correspondence and deleting unsuitable passages. But there were
over 2,000 letters, totalling a II
 INTRODUCTION million words, and she had made but little
progress when, in 193 1, she passed away. Because I knew how
much my mother wished to have the Empress's letters published, I
made up my mind, when she died, to see that her wish was fulfilled.
But for some years, circumstances held me from action. Then came
the second world war. The letters were kept at my house at San
Domenico, near Florence. When the fighting broke into Italy and
spread towards the north, I was in Roumania, and my sister, Irene,
Duchess of Aosta, who also lived near Florence, fearing for the
safety of the letters, took them to her own house. But soon
afterwards she was arrested by the S.S. and taken to confinement in
Germany. During the fighting north of Florence in 1944, her house
was bombarded and looted. When she returned there after the war,
it was with little hope that the letters had survived. But she learned
that her servants had found some of them strewn about the grounds
and had salved them. In a cellar were the rest, in their heavy metal
box, which the looters had forced open, but with probably no time to
destroy the contents. When I went back to Florence after the
enforced abdication of my son, Michael, King of Roumania, I asked
Air Vice-Marshal Arthur Gould Lee, who had already written my son's
story in Crown Against Sickle, to undertake the task of editing the
letters for publication. It is with gratitude that I extend my warmest
thanks to him for his patient perseverance in this lengthy work. The
Empress Frederick has always been a wonderful tradition and
inspiration in our family. Although she died when I was only five
years old, I have clear recollections of her, deriving from our family
visits to her beautiful home, Friedrichshof, near Cronberg. I can still
remember driving with her in her carriage, and also that she used to
hear me say my prayers of an evening. I remember too, quite
clearly, like a photograph in my brain, seeing her lying ill during our
last visit. I can still see the large bed and the lovely darkened room,
and I even remember the look she gave me, which I only long
afterwards realized was full of pain. I still feel myself looking out of a
window and seeing soldiers and horses in the space in front of the
house, around the fountain, and being told they had come to take
my grandmother away. That must have been the day of the funeral.
But then memory fades away. Children are very sensitive to
atmosphere, and though we were kept away from everything, we all
realized and felt the desolation 12
 INTRODUCTION that permeated and clung to this beautiful
place my grandmother had created with so much love, dedicating
everything in it to the memory of her beloved husband. This book
will, I am sure, reveal to its readers some of those qualities in the
Empress that prove her to have been a great and good woman, as
she is to her descendants, who still venerate her example, and was
to those of her day who really knew her. ^^^--^'^ j^St 13
 That the German Empress Frederick, eldest daughter of
Queen Victoria, was one of the great tragic figures of the nineteenth
century is doubly true. The wrecking of her life was a tragedy not
only for her, but for millions of others of lower degree, for had Fate
permitted her husband, with her at his side, to reign for even a
decade, twentieth-century history might have run to peaceful
evolution instead of world-shaking wars. Because of her unpopularity
in Germany, which was nourished by those who regarded her
democratic aims as a threat to Prussian and later Imperial German
ambitions, a distorted view of her character prevailed until, in 1928,
her Letters to Queen Victoria were published by Sir Frederick
Ponsonby. This correspondence, while confirming some of her
temperamental shortcomings, vindicated her as a woman of high
ideals and principles. But these letters ranged over more than forty
years, and were selected with one object, which was to show that
she had been unfairly judged over her conflict with Bismark and her
son. The emphasis necessarily placed on her political involvements,
and on her many tribulations and her indignant reactions to harsh
treatment, inevitably resulted in the overshadowing of her qualities
as a kind, warm-hearted woman. She emerged as a figure deserving
of pity rather than sympathy. The Letters to Princess Sophie present
her in a different light. They are not the confidences of a troubled
daughter to a revered parent, but the counsels of a fond mother
drawing on her dearly15
 editor's note bought experience to guide her newly married
child living in a distant land. Covering only eleven years, and written
almost daily, except when she and Sophie were together, they
portray her in detail against the day-to-day happenings of her family
and social life. Because these letters are not carefully compiled self-
appraisals for posterity, but the spontaneous expression of her
inmost thoughts and feelings, they reveal her personality more truly
and more intimately than any objective description could achieve.
Indeed, for that reason, as we read them, we may sometimes feel
that we are trespassing into the secret places of her heart. But we
need not be ashamed, for it is these unsuspecting words which
prove her to have been, in spite of some feminine foibles and
prejudices, a woman from whom it is not possible to withhold our
respect and affection. Her long stream of letters not only takes us
into her own and her daughter's private lives, but also into the lives
of other regal figures, some of world-important stature. She presents
them as ordinary human beings, with inelegant familiar names and
plebeian weaknesses, and though she does not often strike a note of
deliberate humour, she sometimes does so unconsciously. We may
be sure she would have looked indulgently upon our smiles. It is not
only in the subjects of her letters that she exposes every facet of her
complex nature. She shows herself in her handwriting, with its
characteristic firmness and vigour,^ and in her unhesitating style.
The expression of her thoughts runs always fluently, and yet
accurately, for in all the letters to Princess Sophie there are
incredibly few erasures and corrections. She uses simple unaffected
language, in which shapely passages alternate with slang, and
sometimes, oddly, with phrases that seem to belong to our
Americanized diction of to-day. For she and her daughters
corresponded always in English, the habitual tongue in the family.
Usually she even anglicized the names of places and people, and her
practice has been followed in the Editor's commentary. The letters
and extracts presented in this volume amount to only a tenth of the
whole. Rigorous selection has thus been necessary, and this has
ruled out any attempt to touch on contemporary affairs, except
those in which the Empress was in some way con^ Her letter of i6th
May 1899, of which the first page is given in facsimile on page 303,
is the one that contains the paragraph quoted on page 302, written
when she had just learned that she was suffering from cancer. 16
 editor's note cerned. The Editor's object has been simply to
unveil her personality, and the range of her interests, against the
developing story of her family's fortunes during her twilight years. As
far as possible he has let the Empress herself speak, and has kept
his commentary to the minimum consistent with clear
understanding. In the earlier years of the letters he has had to
include a due proportion of explanation in order to introduce the
background and the people mentioned, but in general he has tried to
avoid pointing out the obvious, and has left the reader to draw his
own conclusions. In amplifying the Letters, he was able, when
necessary, to refer to most of Princess Sophie's letters to her mother.
And in clearing up a number of obscurities, he was fortunate in
having the gracious assistance, until her death in 1954, of the
Empress's daughter, Princess Margaret, Landgravine of Hesse, who is
'Mossy' in the Letters. The Editor has examined every letter that the
Empress wrote to her daughter, and in many of them, as can be
understood, occur passages that cannot for various reasons be
published. If he may end on a personal note, it is to express his
sensibility at being privileged to read these intimate writings, to look
into a woman's unguarded revelation of her soul, and to find there
only goodness, love and courage. B 17