The Hohenzollerns in America: Chapter 5

Chapter 5

CHAPTER V

It is a long time--nearly three months--since I have
added anything to my memoirs. The truth is I find it very
hard to write memoirs here. For one thing nobody else
seems to do it. Mrs. O'Halloran tells me that she never
thinks of writing memoirs at all. At the Potsdam palace
it was different. We all wrote memoirs. Eugenia of Pless
did, and Cecilia did, and I did, and all of us. We all
had our memoir books with little silver padlocks and
keys. We were brought up to do it because it helped us
to realise how important everything was that we did
and how important all the people about us were. It was
wonderful to realise that in the old life one met every
day great world figures like Prince Rasselwitz-Windischkopf,
the Grand Falconer of Reuss, and the Grand Duke of
Schlitzin-Mein, and Field Marshall Topoff, General-in-Chief
of the army of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. There are no such
figures as these in America.

But another reason for not writing has been that things
have been going so badly with us. Uncle William still
has no work and he seems to be getting older and more
broken and stranger in his talk every day. He is very
shabby now in spite of all I can do with my needle, but
he becomes more grandiloquent and consequential all the
time. Some of the mean looking young men at this boarding
house have christened him "The Emperor"--which seems a
strange thing for them to have picked upon, and they draw
him out in his talk, and when they meet him they make
mock salutes to him which Uncle returns with very great
dignity. Quite a lot of the people on the nearby streets
have taken it up and when they see Uncle come along they
make him military salutes. Uncle gets quite pleased and
flushed as he goes along the street and answers the
salutes with a sort of military bow.

He is quite happy when he is out of doors explaining to
me with his stick the plans he has for rebuilding New
York and turning the Hudson River to make it run the
other way. But when he comes in he falls into the most
dreadful depression and sometimes at night I hear him
walking up and down in his room far into the night. Two
or three times he has had the same dreadful kind of
seizures that he had on board the ship when we came over,
and this is always when there is a great wind blowing
from the ocean and a storm raging out at sea.

Of course as Uncle has not any work or any position, we
are getting poorer and poorer. Cousin Willie has been
sent to the fortress at Sing-Sing and Cousin Ferdinand
of Bulgaria refuses to know us any more, though, from
what we hear, he is getting on wonderfully well in the
clothing business and is very soon to open a big new
store of which he is to be the general manager. Cousin
Karl is now the Third Assistant Head-Waiter at the King
George Hotel, and in the sphere in which he moves it is
impossible for him to acknowledge any relationship with
us. I don't know what we should do but that Uncle Henry
manages to give us enough of his wages to pay for our
board and lodging. Uncle Henry has passed his Naval
Examination and is now appointed to a quite high command.
It is called a Barge Master. They refused to accept his
certificate of a German Admiral, so he had to study very
hard, but at last he got his qualification and is now in
charge of long voyages on the canals.

I am very glad that Uncle Henry's command turned out to
be on canals instead of on the high seas, as it makes it
so much more German. Of course Uncle Henry had splendid
experience in the Kiel Canal all through the four years
of the war, and it is bound to come in. So he goes away
now on quite long voyages, often of two or three weeks
at a time, and for all this time he is in chief charge
of his barge and has to work out all the navigation.
Sometimes Uncle Henry takes bricks and sometimes sand.
He says it is a great responsibility to feel oneself
answerable for the safety of a whole barge-full of bricks
or sand. It is quite different from what he did in the
German navy, because there it was only a question of the
sailors and for most of the time, as I have heard Uncle
William and Uncle Henry say, we had plenty of them, but
here with bricks and sand it is different. Uncle Henry
says that if his barge was wrecked he would lose his job.
This makes it a very different thing from being a royal
admiral.

But Uncle William all through the last three months has
failed first at one thing and then at another. After all
his plans for selling pictures had come to nothing he
decided, very reluctantly that he would go into business.
He only reached this decision after a great deal of
anxious thought because, of course, business is a
degradation. It involves taking money for doing things
and this, Uncle William says, no prince can consent to
do. But at last, after deep thought, Uncle said, "The
die is cast," and sat down and wrote a letter offering
to take over the presidency of the United States Steel
Corporation. We spent two or three anxious days waiting
for the answer. Uncle was very firm and kept repeating,
"I have set my hand to it, and I will do it," but I was
certain that he was sorry about it and it was a great
relief when the answer came at last--it took days and
days, evidently, for them to decide about it--in which
the corporation said that they would "worry along" as
they were. Uncle explained to me what "worrying along"
meant and he said that he admired their spirit. But that
ended all talk of his going into business and I am sure
that we were both glad.

After that Uncle William decided that it was necessary
for me to marry in a way to restore our fortunes and he
decided to offer me to a State Governor. He asked me if
I had any choice of States, and I said no. Of course I
should not have wished to marry a state governor, but I
knew my duty towards Uncle William and I said nothing.
So Uncle got a map of the United States and he decided
to marry me to the Governor of Texas. He told me that I
could have two weeks to arrange my supply of household
linen and my trousseau to take to Texas, and he wrote at
once to the Governor. He showed me what he wrote and it
was a very formal letter. I think that Uncle's mind gets
more and more confused as to where he is and what he is
and he wrote in quite the old strain and I noticed that
he signed himself, "Your brother, William." Perhaps it
was on that account that we had no answer to the letter.
Uncle seemed to forget all about it very soon and I was
glad that it was so, and that I had escaped going to the
court of Texas.

All this time Mr. Peters has been very kind. He comes
to the house with his ice every day and sometimes when
Uncle Henry is here he comes in with him and smokes in
the evenings. One day he brought a beautiful bunch of
chrysanthemums for Uncle William, and another day a lovely
nosegay of violets for Uncle Henry. And one Sunday he
took us out for a beautiful drive with one of his ice-horses
in a carriage called a buggy, with three seats. Uncle
William sat with Mr. Peters in the front seat, and Uncle
Henry and Cousin Ferdinand (it was the last time he came
to see us) sat behind them and there was a little seat
at the back in which I sat. It was a lovely drive and
Uncle William pointed out to Mr. Peters all the things
of interest, and Cousin Ferdinand smoked big cigars and
told Uncle Henry all about the clothing trade, and I
listened to them all and enjoyed it very much indeed.
But I was afraid afterwards that it was a very bold and
unconventional thing to do, and perhaps Mr. Peters felt
that he had asked too much because he did not invite me
to drive again.

But he is always very kind and thoughtful.

One Sunday afternoon he came to see us, thinking by
mistake that Uncle William and Uncle Henry were there,
but they weren't, and his manner seemed so strange and
constrained that I was certain that there was something
that he was trying to say and it made me dreadfully
nervous and confused. And at last quite suddenly he said
that there was something that he wanted to ask me if I
wouldn't think it a liberty. My breath stopped and I
couldn't speak, and then he went on to ask if he might
lend us twenty-five dollars. He got very red in the face
when he said it and he began counting out the money on
the sofa, and somehow I hadn't expected that it was money
and began to cry. But I told Mr. Peters that of course
we couldn't think of taking any money, and I begged him
to pick it up again and then I began to try to tell him
about how hard it was to get along and to ask him to get
work for Uncle William, but I started to cry again. Mr.
Peters came over to my chair and took hold of the arm of
it and told me not to cry. Somehow his touch on the arm
of the chair thrilled all through me and though I knew
that it was wrong I let him keep it there and even let
him stroke the upholstery and I don't know just what
would have happened but at that very minute Uncle William
came in. He was most courteous to Mr. Peters and expressed
his apologies for having been out and said that it must
have been extremely depressing for Mr. Peters to find
that he was not at home, and he thanked him for putting
himself to the inconvenience of waiting. And a little
while after that Mr. Peters left.

The Next Day

Mr. Peters came back this morning and said that he had
got work for Uncle William. So I was delighted. He said
that Uncle will make a first class "street man," and that
he has arranged for a line of goods for him and that he
has a "territory" that Uncle can occupy. He showed me a
flat cardboard box filled with lead pencils and shoe-strings
and little badges and buttons with inscriptions on them,
and he says these are what is called a "line," and that
Uncle can take out this line and do splendidly. I don't
quite understand yet who makes the appointment to be a
street man or what influence it takes or what it means
to have a territory, but Mr. Peters explained that there
is a man who is retiring from being a street man and that
Uncle can take his place and can have both sides of the
Bowery, which sounds very pretty indeed.

At first I didn't understand--because Mr. Peters hesitated
a good deal in telling me about it--that if Uncle gets
this appointment, it will mean that he will sell things
in the street. But as soon as I understood this I felt
that Uncle William would scorn to do anything like this,
as the degradation would be the same as being President
of the Steel Corporation. So I was much surprised to find
that when Uncle came in he didn't look at it that way at
all. He looked at the box of badges and buttons and
things, and he said at once, "Ha! Orders of Distinction!
An excellent idea." He picked up a silly little white
button with the motto "Welcome to New York," and he said
"Admirable! That shall be the first class." And there
was a little lead spoon with "Souvenir of the Bowery"
that he made the second class. He started arranging and
rearranging all the things in the box, just as he used
to arrange the orders and decorations at the Palace. Only
those were REAL things such as the Order of the Red
Feather, and The Insignia of the Black Duck, and these
were only poor tin baubles. But I could see that Uncle
no longer knows the difference, and as his fingers fumbled
among these silly things he was quite trembling and eager
to begin, like a child waiting for to-morrow.

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