The Hohenzollerns in America

Chapter 2

CHAPTER II

City New York. 2nd Avenue

We came off the steamer late yesterday afternoon and came

across the city to a pension on Second Avenue where we

are now. Only here they don't call it a pension but a

boarding house. Cousin Ferdinand and Cousin Willie drove

across in the cart with our boxes, and Uncle William and

Uncle Henry and I came on a street car. It cost us fifteen

cents. A cent is four and one-sixth pfennigs. We tried

to reckon what it came to, but we couldn't; but Uncle

Henry thinks it could be done.

This house is a tall house in a mean street, crowded and

noisy with carts and street-sellers. I think it would be

better to have all the boarding houses stand far back

from the street with elm trees and fountains and lawns

where peacocks could walk up and down. I am sure it would

be MUCH better.

We have taken a room for Uncle William and Uncle Henry

on the third floor at the back and a small room in the

front for me of the kind called a hall bedroom, which I

don't ever remember seeing before. There were none at

Sans Souci and none, I think, at any of the palaces.

Cousin Willie has a room at the top of the house, and

Cousin Ferdinand in the basement.

The landlady of this house is very stout and reminds me

very much of the Grand Duchess of Sondersburg-Augustenburg:

her manner when she showed us the rooms was very like

that of the Grand Duchess; only perhaps a little firmer

and more authoritative. But it appears that they are

probably not related, as the landlady's name is Mrs.

O'Halloran, which is, I think, Scotch.

When we arrived it was already time for dinner so we went

downstairs to it at once. The dining-room was underground

in the basement. It was very crowded and stuffy, and

there was a great clatter of dishes and a heavy smell of

food. Most of the people were already seated, but there

was an empty place at the head of one of the tables and

Uncle William moved straight towards that. Uncle was

wearing, as I said, his frock coat and his celluloid

collar and he walked into the room with quite an air, in

something of the way that he used to come into the great

hall of the Neues Palais at Potsdam, only that in these

clothes it looked different. As Uncle entered the room

he waved his hand and said, "Let no one rise!" I remember

that when Uncle said this at the big naval dinner at Kiel

it made a great sensation as an example of his ready

tact. He realised that if they had once risen there would

have been great difficulty in their order of procedure

for sitting down again. He was afraid that the same

difficulty might have been felt here in the boarding

house. But I don't think it would, and I don't think that

they were going to stand up, anyway. They just went on

eating. I noticed one cheap-looking young man watching

Uncle with a sort of half smile as he moved towards his

seat. I heard him say to his neighbour, "Some scout, eh?"

The food was so plain and so greasy that I could hardly

eat it. But I have noticed that it is a strange thing

about Uncle that he doesn't seem to know what he eats at

all. He takes all this poor stuff that they put before

him to be the same delicacies that we had at the Neues

Palais and Sans Souci. "Is this a pheasant?" he asked

when the servant maid passed him his dish of meat. I

heard the mean young man whisper, "I guess not." Presently

some hash was brought in and Uncle said, "Ha! A Salmi!

Ha! excellent!" I could see that Mrs. O'Halloran, the

landlady, who sat at the other end of the table, was

greatly pleased.

I was surprised to find--because it is so hard to get

used to the change of things in our new life--that all

the people went on talking just the same after Uncle sat

down. At the palace at Potsdam nobody ever spoke at dinner

unless Uncle William first addressed him, and then he

was supposed to give a sort of bow and answer as briefly

as possible so as not to interrupt the flow of Uncle

William's conversation. Generally Uncle talked and all

the rest listened. His conversation was agreed by everybody

to be wonderful. Princes, admirals, bishops, artists,

scholars and everybody united in declaring that Uncle

William showed a range of knowledge and a brilliance of

language that was little short of marvellous. So naturally

it was a little disappointing at first to find that these

people just went on talking to one another and didn't

listen to Uncle William at all, or merely looked at him

in an inquisitive sort of way and whispered remarks to

one another. But presently, I don't just know how, Uncle

began to get the attention of the table and one after

the other the people stopped talking to listen to him.

I was very glad of this because Uncle was talking about

America and I was sure that it would interest them, as

what he said was very much the same as the wonderful

speech that he made to the American residents of Berlin

at the time when the first exchange professor was sent

over to the University. I remember that all the Americans

who heard it said that Uncle told them things about their

own country that they had never known, or even suspected,

before. So I was glad when I heard Uncle explaining to

these people the wonderful possibilities of their country.

He talked of the great plains of Connecticut and the huge

seaports of Pittsburg and Colorado Springs, and the

tobacco forests of Idaho till one could just see it all.

He said that the Mississippi, which is a great river here

as large as the Weser, should be dammed back and held

while a war of extermination was carried on against the

Indians on the other side of it with a view to

Christianizing them. The people listened, their faces

flushed with eating and with the close air. Here and

there some of them laughed or nudged one another and

said, "Get on to this, will you?" But I remember that

when Uncle William made this speech in Berlin the Turkish

ambassador said after it that he now knew so much about

America that he wanted to die, and that the Shah of Persia

wrote a letter to Uncle, all in his own writing, except

the longest words, and said that he had ordered Uncle's

speech on America to be printed and read aloud by all

the schoolmasters in Persia under penalty of decapitation.

Nearly all of them read it.

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?"