Books: The Hohenzollerns in America
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Stephen Leacock >> The Hohenzollerns in America
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Wednesday
This morning we had a great disappointment. It had been
pretty well arranged on board the ship that Uncle would
take over the presidency of Harvard University. Uncle
Henry and Cousin Ferdinand and Cousin Willie had all
consented to it, and we looked upon it as done. Now it
seems there is a mistake. First of all Harvard University
is not in New York, as we had always thought in Germany
that it was. I remember that when Uncle Henry came home
from his great tour in America, in which he studied
American institutions so profoundly, and made his report
he said that Harvard University was in New York. Uncle
had this information filed away in our Secret Service
Department.
But it seems that it is somewhere else. The University
here is called Columbia, so Uncle decided that he would
be president of that. In the old days all the great men
of learning used to assure Uncle that if fate had not
made him an emperor he would have been better fitted than
any living man to be the head of a great university.
Uncle admitted this himself, though he resented being
compared only to the living ones.
So it was a great disappointment to-day when they refused
to give him the presidency. I went with him to the college,
but I cannot quite understand what happened or why they
won't give it to him. We walked all the way up and I
carried a handbag filled with Uncle's degrees and diplomas
from Oxford and all over the world. All the way up Uncle
talked about the majesty and the freedom of learning and
what he would do to the college when he was made president,
and how all the professors should sit up and obey him.
At times he got so excited that he would stop on the
street and wave his hands and gesticulate so that people
turned and looked at him. At Potsdam we never realized
that Uncle was excited all the time, and, in any case,
with his uniform on and his sabre clattering as he walked,
it all seemed different. But here in the street, in his
faded frock coat and knitted tie, and with his face
flushed and his eyes rambling, people seemed to mistake
it and thought that his mind was not quite right.
So I think he made a wrong impression when we went into
the offices of the college. Uncle was still quite excited
from his talking. "Let the trustees be brought," he said
in a peremptory way to the two young men in black frock
coats, secretaries of some sort, I suppose, who received
us. Then he turned to me. "Princess," he said, "my
diplomas!" He began pulling them out of the bag and
throwing them on the table in a wild sort of way. The
other people waiting in the room were all staring at him.
Then the young men took Uncle by the arm and led him into
an inner room and I went out into the corridor and waited.
Presently one of the young men came out and told me not
to wait, as Uncle had been sent home in a cab. He was
very civil and showed me where to go to get the elevated
railroad. But while I was waiting I had overheard some
of the people talking about Uncle. One said, "That's that
same old German that was on board our ship last week in
the steerage--has megalomania or something of the sort,
they say, and thinks he's the former Emperor: I saw the
Kaiser once at a review in Berlin,--not much resemblance,
is there?"
CHAPTER III
For weeks and weeks I have written nothing in my diary
because it has been so discouraging. After Uncle William's
offer to take over the presidency of Columbia University
had been refused, he debated with Uncle Henry and with
Cousin Ferdinand of Bulgaria (who is not living in our
boarding house now but who comes over quite often in the
evenings) whether he would accept the presidency of
Harvard. Cousin Ferdinand looked up the salary in a book
and told him not to take it. Cousin Ferdinand has little
books with all the salaries of people in America and he
says that these books are fine and much better than the
Almanach de Gotha which we used to use in Europe to hunt
people up. He says that if he ever goes back to be King
of Bulgaria again he is going to introduce books like
these. Cousin Ferdinand is getting very full of American
ideas and he says that what you want to know about a man
is not his line of descent but his line of credit. And
he says that the whole King business in Europe has been
mismanaged. He says that there should have been millions
in it. I forgot to say in my diary sooner that Cousin
Ferdinand's two friends, Mr. Mosenhammer and Mr. Sheehan,
took him into their clothing business at once as a sort
of partner. The reason was that they found that he could
wear clothes; the effect on the customers when they see
Cousin Ferdinand walking up and down in front of the
store is wonderful. Of course all kings can wear clothes
and in the old days in the Potsdam palace we thought
nothing of it. But Cousin Ferdinand says that the kings
should have known enough to stop trying to be soldiers
and to put themselves at the head of the export clothing
trade. He wishes, he says, that he had some of his
Bulgarian generals here now in their blue coats trimmed
with black fur; he says that with a little alteration,
which he showed us how to do, he could have sent them
out "on the road," wherever that is, and have made the
biggest boom in gentlemen's winter fur trimmings that
the trade ever saw.
Cousin Ferdinand, when he comes over in the evenings now,
is always beautifully dressed and I can notice that Mrs.
O'Halloran, the landlady, is much impressed with him. I
am glad of this because we have not yet been able to pay
her any money and I was afraid she might say something
about it. But what is stranger is that now that Cousin
Ferdinand has good clothes, Uncle William and Uncle Henry
seem much impressed too. Uncle Henry looks so plain and
common in his sailor's jersey, and Uncle William in his
old frock coat looks faded and shabby and his face always
vacant and wondering. So now when Cousin Ferdinand comes
in they stand up and get a chair for him and listen to
his advice on everything.
So, as I said, Cousin Ferdinand looked up the salary of
the President of Harvard in a book and he was strongly
against Uncle William's taking the position. But Uncle
William says this kind of position is the nearest thing
in this country to what he had in Germany. He thinks that
he could do for Harvard what he did for Germany. He has
written out on a big sheet of paper all the things that
he calls the Chief Needs of America, because he is always
busy like this and never still. I forget the whole list,
especially as he changes it every day according to the
way that people treat Uncle William on the street, but
the things that he always puts first are Culture, Religion,
and Light. These he says he can supply, and he thought
that the presidency of Harvard would be the best place
to do it from. In the end he accepted the position against
Cousin Ferdinand's advice, or at least I mean he said
that he would be willing to take it and he told Uncle
Henry to pack up all his degrees and diplomas and to send
them to Harvard and say that he was coming.
So it was dreadfully disappointing when all the diplomas
came back again by the next post. There was a letter with
them but I didn't see it, as Uncle William tore it into
fragments and stamped on it. He said he was done with
American universities for ever: I have never seen him so
furious: he named over on his fingers all the American
professors that he had fed at Berlin, one meal each and
sometimes even two,--Uncle has a wonderful memory for
things like that,--and yet this was their gratitude. He
walked up and down his room and talked so wildly and
incoherently that if I had not known and been told so
often by our greatest authorities in Germany how beautifully
balanced Uncle William's brain is, I should have feared
that he was wandering.
But presently he quieted down and said with deep earnestness
that the American universities must now go to ruin in
their own way. He was done with them. He said he would
go into a cloister and spend his life in quiet adoration,
provided that he could find anything to adore, which, he
said, in his station was very doubtful. But half an hour
later he was quite cheerful again,--it is wonderful how
quickly Uncle William's brain recovers itself,--and said
that a cloister was too quiet and that he would take a
position as Governor of a State; there are a great many
of these in this country and Uncle spent days and days
writing letters to them and when the answers came in--
though some never answered at all--Uncle William got into
the same state of fury as about the Presidency of Harvard.
So, naturally, each day seemed more disappointing than
the last, especially with the trouble that we have been
having with Cousin Willie, of which I have not spoken
yet, and I was getting quite disheartened until last
evening, when everything seemed to change.
We all knew, of course, that Uncle William is the greatest
artist in the world, but no one liked to suggest that he
should sell his pictures for money, a thing that no prince
was ever capable of doing. Yet I could not but feel glad
when Uncle decided yesterday that he would stoop to make
his living by art. It cost him a great struggle to make
this decision, but he talked it over very fully last
night with Uncle Henry, after Uncle Henry came home from
work, and the resolution is taken.
Of course, Uncle always had a wonderful genius for
painting. I remember how much his pictures used to be
admired at the court at Berlin. I have seen some of the
best painters stand absolutely entranced,--they said so
themselves,--in front of Uncle's canvasses. I remember
one of the greatest of our artists saying one day to
Uncle in the Potsdam Gallery, "Now, which of these two
pictures is yours and which is Michel Angelo's: I never
can tell you two apart." Uncle gave him the order of the
Red Swan. Another painter once said that if Uncle's genius
had been developed he would have been the greatest painter
of modern times. Uncle William, I remember, was dreadfully
angry. He said it WAS developed.
So it seemed only natural that Uncle should turn to Art
to make our living. But he hesitated because there is
some doubt whether a person of noble birth can sell
anything for money. But Uncle says Tintoretto the great
Italian artist had two quarterings of nobility, and
Velasquez had two and a half.
Luckily we have with us among our things Uncle's easel
and his paints that he used in Berlin. He had always to
have special things because he doesn't use little brushes
and tubes of colour as ordinary artists do, but had a
big brush and his paint in a tin can, so that he can work
more quickly. Fortunately we have with us three of Uncle's
pictures rolled up in the bottom of our boxes. He is
going to sell these first and after that he says that he
will paint one or two every day. One of the three canvasses
that we have is an allegorical picture called "Progress"
in which Progress is seen coming out of a cloud in the
background with Uncle William standing in the foreground.
Another is called "Modern Science" and in this Science
is seen crouched in the dark in the background and Uncle
William standing in the light in the foreground. The
other is called "Midnight in the Black Forest." Uncle
William did it in five minutes with a pot of black paint.
They say it is impressionistic.
So all the evening Uncle William and Uncle Henry talked
about the new plan. It is wonderful how Uncle William
enters into a thing. He got me to fetch him his old blue
blouse, which was with the painting things, and he put
it on over his clothes and walked up and down the room
with a long paint-brush in his hand. "We painters, my
dear Henry," he said, "must not be proud. America needs
Art. Very good. She shall have it."
I could see, of course, that Uncle William did not like
the idea of selling pictures for money. But he is going
to make that side of it less objectionable by painting
a picture, a very large picture, for nothing and giving
it to the big Metropolitan Art Gallery which is here.
Uncle has already partly thought it out. It is to be
called the "Spirit of America" and in it the Spirit of
America will be seen doubled up in the background: Uncle
has not yet fully thought out the foreground, but he says
he has an idea.
In any case he is going to refuse to take anything more
than a modest price for his pictures. Beyond that, he
says, not one pfennig.
So this morning Uncle rolled up his three canvasses under
his arm and has gone away to sell them.
I am very glad, as we have but little money, indeed hardly
any except Uncle Henry's wages. And I have been so worried,
too, and surprised since we came here about Cousin Willie.
He hardly is with the rest of us at all. He is out all
night and sleeps in the day time, and often I am sure
that he has been drinking. One morning when he came back
to the house at about breakfast time he showed me quite
a handful of money, but wouldn't say where he got it. He
said there was lots more where it came from. I asked him
to give me some to pay Mrs. O'Halloran, but he only
laughed in his leering way and said that he needed it
all. At another time when I went up to Cousin Willie's
room one day when he was out, I saw quite a lot of silver
things hidden in a corner of the cupboard. They looked
like goblets and silver dinner things, and there was a
revolver and a sheath-knife hidden with them. I began to
think that he must have stolen all these things, though
it seemed impossible for a prince. I have spoken to Uncle
William several times about Cousin Willie, but he gets
impatient and does not seem to care. Uncle never desires
very much to talk of people other than himself. I think
it fatigues his mind. In any case, he says that he has
done for Willie already all that he could. He says he
had him confined to a fortress three times and that four
times he refused to have him in his sight for a month,
and that twice he banished him to a country estate for
six weeks. His duty, he says, is done. I said that I was
afraid that Cousin Willie had been stealing and told him
about the silver things hidden in the cupboard. But Uncle
got very serious and read me a very severe lecture. No
prince, he said, ever stole. His son, he explained, might
very well be collecting souvenirs as memorials of his
residence in America: all the Hohenzollerns collected
souvenirs: some of our most beautiful art things at
Potsdam and Sans Souci were souvenirs collected by our
ancestors in France fifty years ago. Uncle said that if
the Great War had turned out as it should and if his
soldiers had not betrayed him by getting killed, we should
have had more souvenirs than ever. After that he dismissed
the subject from his mind. Uncle William can dismiss
things from his mind more quickly than anybody I ever
knew.
The Same Day. Later
I was so surprised this afternoon, when I happened to go
down to the door, to see Mr. Peters, the ice gentleman
that was on the ship, with his ice cart delivering ice
into the basement. I knew that he delivered ice in this
part of the city because he said so, and I think he had
mentioned this street, and two or three times I thought
I had seen him from the window. But it did seem surprising
to happen to go down to the door (I forget what I went
for) at the moment that he was there. He looked very fine
in his big rough suit of overalls. It is not quite like
a military uniform, but I think it looks better. Mr.
Peters knew me at once. "Good afternoon, Miss Hohen," he
said (that is the name, as I think I said, that we have
here), "how are all the folks?"
So we talked for quite a little time, and I told him
about Uncle trying to get work and how hard it was and
how at last he had got work, or at least had gone out to
get it, as a painter. Mr. Peters said that that was fine.
He said that painters do well here: he has a lot of
friends who are painters and they get all the way from
sixty to seventy-five cents an hour. It seems so odd to
think of them being paid by the hour. I don't think the
court artists at home were paid like that. It will be
very nice if Uncle William can mingle with Mr. Peters's
artist friends. Mr. Peters asked if he might take me out
some Sunday, and I said that I would ask Uncle William
and Uncle Henry and Cousin Ferdinand and Cousin Willie
and if they all consented to come I would go. I hope it
was not a forward thing to do.
I forgot when I was talking of work to say that Uncle
Henry got work the very second day that we were here. He
works down at the docks where the ships are. I think he
supervises the incoming and outgoing of the American
navy. It is called being a stevedore, and no doubt his
being an Admiral helped him to get it. He hopes to get
a certificate presently to be a Barge Master, which will
put him in charge of the canals. But there is a very
difficult examination to go through and Uncle Henry is
working for it at night out of a book. He has to take up
Vulgar Fractions which, of course, none of our High Seas
Command were asked to learn. But Uncle Henry is stooping
to them.
So now, I think, everything will go well.
CHAPTER IV
Uncle's art has failed. It was only yesterday that I was
writing in my memoirs of how cheerful and glad I felt to
think that Uncle William was going to be able to make
his living by art, and now everything is changed again.
All the time that Uncle was out on his visit to the
picture dealers, I was making plans and thinking what we
would do with the money when it came in, so it is very
disappointing to have it all come to nothing. I don't
know just what happened because Uncle William never gives
any details of things. His mind moves too rapidly for
that. But he came home with his pictures still under his
arm in a perfect fury and raged up and down his room,
using very dreadful language.
But after a little while when he grew calmer he explained
to me that the Americans are merely swineheads and that
art, especially art such as his, is wasted on them. Uncle
says that he has no wish to speak harshly of the Americans,
but they are pig-dogs. He bears them no ill-will, he
says, for what they have done and his heart is free of
any spirit of vengeance, but he wishes he had his heel
on their necks for about half a minute. He said this with
such a strange dreadful snarl that for the moment his
face seemed quite changed. But presently when he recovered
himself he got quite cheerful again, and said that it
was perhaps unseemly in him, as the guest of the American
people, to say anything against them. It is strange how
Uncle always refers to himself as the guest of the American
people. Living in this poor place, in these cheap
surroundings, it seems so odd. Often at our meals in the
noisy dining-room down in the basement, in the speeches
that he makes to the boarders, he talks of himself as
the guest of America and he says, "What does America ask
in return? Nothing." I can see that Mrs. O'Halloran, the
landlady, doesn't like this, because we have not paid
her anything for quite a long time, and she has spoken
to me about it in the corridor several times.
But when Uncle William makes speeches in the dining-room
I think the whole room becomes transformed for him into
the banquet room of a palace, and the cheap bracket lamps
against the wall turn into a blaze of light and the
boarders are all courtiers, and he becomes more and more
grandiloquent. He waves his hand towards Uncle Henry and
refers to him as "my brother the Admiral," and to me as
"the Princess at my side." Some of the people, the meaner
ones, begin to laugh and to whisper, and others look
uncomfortable and sorry. And it is always on these
occasions that Uncle William refers to himself as America's
guest, and refers to the Americans as the hospitable
nation who have taken him to their heart. I think that
when Uncle says this he really believes it; Uncle can
believe practically anything if he says it himself.
So, as I say, when he came home yesterday, after failing
to sell his pictures, he was at first furious and then
he fell into his other mood and he said that, as the
guest of a great people, he had found out at last the
return he could make to them. He said that he would
organise a School of Art, and as soon as he had got the
idea he was carried away with it at once and seized a
pencil and paper and began making plans for the school
and drawing up a list of the instructors needed. He asked
first who could be Principal, or President, of the School,
and decided that he would have to be that himself as he
knew of no one but himself who had the peculiar power of
organisation needed for it. All the technical instructors,
he said, must be absolutely the best, each one a master
in his own line. So he wrote down at the top of his list,
Instructor in Oils, and reflected a little, with his head
in his hand, as to who could do that. Presently he sighed
and said that as far as he knew there was no one; he'd
have to do that himself. Then he wrote down Instructor
in Water Colour, and as soon as he had written it he said
right off that he would have to take that over too; there
was no one else that he could trust it to. Then he said,
"Now, let me see, Perspective, Freehand, and Crayon Work.
I need three men: three men of the first class. Can I
get them? I doubt it. Let me think what can be done."
He walked up and down the room a little with his hands
behind his back and his head sunk in thought while he
murmured, "Three men? Three men? But Ha! why THREE? Why
not, if sufficiently gifted, ONE man?"
But just when he was saying this there was a knock at
the door and Mrs. O'Halloran came in. I knew at once what
she had come for, because she had been threatening to do
it, and so I felt dreadfully nervous when she began to
say that our bill at the house had gone unpaid too long
and that we must pay her at once what we owed her. It
took some time before Uncle William understood what she
was talking about, but when he did he became dreadfully
frigid and polite. He said, "Let me understand clearly,
madame, just what it is that you wish to say: do I
apprehend that you are saying that my account here for
our maintenance is now due and payable?" Mrs. O'Halloran
said yes, she was. And Uncle said, "Let me endeavour to
grasp your meaning exactly: am I correct in thinking that
you mean I owe you money?" Mrs. O'Halloran said that was
what she meant. Uncle said, "Let me try to apprehend just
as accurately as possible what it is that you are trying
to tell me: is my surmise correct that you are implying
that it is time that I settled up my bill?"
Mrs. O'Halloran said, "Yes," but I could see that by this
time she was getting quite flustered because there was
something so dreadfully chilling in Uncle's manner: his
tone in a way was courtesy itself, but there was something
in it calculated to make Mrs. O'Halloran feel that she
had committed a dreadful breach in what she had done.
Uncle William told me afterwards that to mention money
to a prince is not a permissible thing, and that no true
Hohenzollern has ever allowed the word "bill" to be said
in his presence, and that for this reason he had tried,
out of courtesy, to give the woman every chance to withdraw
her words and had only administered a reprimand to her
when she failed to do so. Certainly it was a dreadful
rebuke that he gave her. He told her that he must insist
on this topic being dismissed and never raised again:
that he could allow no such discussion: the subject was
one, he said, that he must absolutely refuse to entertain:
he did not wish, he said, to speak with undue severity,
but he had better make it plain that if there were any
renewal of this discussion he should feel it impossible
to remain in the house.
While Uncle William was saying all this Mrs. O'Halloran
was getting more and more confused and angry, and when
Uncle finally opened the door for her with cold dignity,
she backed out of it and found herself outside the room
without seeming to know what she was doing. Presently I
could hear her down in the scullery below, rattling dishes
and saying that she was just as good as anybody.
But Uncle William seemed to be wonderfully calmed and
elevated after this scene, and said, "Princess, bring me
my flute." I brought it to him and he sat by the window
and leaned his head out over the back lane and played
our dear old German melodies, till somebody threw a boot
at him. The people about here are not musical. But meantime
Uncle William had forgotten all about the School of Art,
and he said no more about it.
Next Day
To-day a dreadful thing has happened. The police have
come into the house and have taken Cousin Willie away.
He is now in a place called The Tombs, and Mr. Peters
says that he will be sent to the great prison at Sing-Sing.
He is to be tried for robbery and for stabbing with intent
to kill.
It was very dreadful when they came to take him. I was
so glad that Uncle William was not here to see it all.
But it was in the morning and he had gone out to see a
steamship company about being president of it, and I was
tidying up our rooms, because Mrs. O'Halloran won't tidy
them up any more or let the coloured servant tidy them
up until we pay her more money. She said that to me, but
I think she is afraid to say it to Uncle William. So I
mean to do the work now while Uncle is out and not let
him know.
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