MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
and greedy for money ; they wore high collars of tulle, tautened with little sticks of whalebone, and their laughtbr was high and artificial as their tiaras. The enamel of their Faberge reticules was scratched and clawed by heavy emerald rings ; the huge bowls of pampas grass in their boudoirs shaded many photographs in silver frames ; the bangles upon their arms tinkled harshly as they dealt the cards or passed the tea-cups ; their sympathies were restricted and their emotions concealed ; they lacked impulse ; even their amusement expressed itself in a dry cackle at the solecisms of those who had not learnt their drill. As the reign of Edward VII drew to its heavy and luxurious end a slight change did, it is true, come over the leaders of Edwardian society. The countless side- tables, with their bonbonieres, their silver ornaments and their large flounced lamps, were replaced by simpler styles ; the photograph- frames were stored away in some unused linen-cupboard, and firm Chinese hard-stones ousted the filigree nonsense which had survived from the days of Victorian excess. But these hostesSes were hard, none the less, hard and cold and slightly clammy as the jade fish upon the mantelpiece. Such was Edwardian hospitality, with the scent of bath-salts hanging heavily in the bedroom corridors. Daisy Cornwallis West was not like this. She married Hans Heinrich XII, Prince of Pless, when she was still only.a school-girl ; she remained a
school-girl all her life. • * * * *
She came of a good-looking family, and in her childhood she was regarded as plain. Even when she was known as one of the loveliest women in Europe, there was always something wrong about her nose. It was mobile, impertinent, excited ; it prevented her from ever acquiring the static beauty of the classical type ; it made one wonder how anyone so lovely could be so totally unconscious of her looks. The tom-boy indiscretions into which it provoked her, the horrifying tactlessness of many of her questions and remarks were never resented: it was adorable to discover someone so reckless in a calculating world. She was not, in any way, a clever woman ; she was totally deprived ,of shrewdness ; yet by sheer warm-heartedness she won the devotion of a selfish man such as Edward VII, of an introverted man such as William II, of her heavy but benevolent father-in-law and of all the countless retinue by whom she was surrounded and adored. Even in the height of the First German War, when food was scarce, the station-master at Berchtesgaden would slip a greasy packet of sausage into her compartment with a pencilled note, "Griiss Gott! " At Pless and Fiirstenstein there would be enormous house-parties of forty guests ; the state maintained in her several palaces was such that when she left a room a bell would ring and a powdered footman would accompany her from door to door ; and yet the Ambassador: would find when he retired to rest that his hostess had provided him with an apple-pie bed, and there would be giggles and pillow-fights along the upper passages. But she had her serious side. She was appalled, when she first went to Germany, by housing conditions in the Silesian towns. She pestered the Chancellor about it, she pestered the Emperor, she enlisted the sympathy and attention of the Empress. And the grim tenants of the Pless estates acquired for this rollicking English girl an affection which withstood two wars.
* * * *.
The importation of these school-girl junketings into Pless or Fiirstenstein was not wholly a success. Her husband was almost twenty years older than she was, and he possessed a conventional mind. He was always urging her to be more "fiirsrlich," at which her young laughter would ring up among the painted heroes and cherubs of the ceiling. Her father-in-law, the reigning prince, had greater understanding. Even when she came down to dinner in a dress made from the stable sacks he was amused. The Empress Frederick (herself an embittered exile) took the home-sick girl under her special protection ; the Emperor William never ceased to sur- round her with the most devoted solicitude. Yet the romps tc which she had been accustomed in Denbighshire of at Newlands Manor lost something of their spontaneity and lightness when trans- ported to Silesia. The young German counts and barons and lieutenants who were asked to Fiirstenstein, while wishing to show how readily they could adopt English ways, were never able to discover where to draw the line. One night at Fiirstenstein there was to be a picnic in a ruined tower in the:forest. The servants had been sent there in the afternoon with glass and silver and china ; the dinner-table in the ruin was set out as in the great hall of the castle ; the powdered footman stood solemnly behind each guest. The usual romp began and then degenerated into a riot : the table was overturned and the glass and china shattered ; in one memory at -least remains the picnire of a vast silver candelabra lying upon the floor with its candles dripping wax into a great pool of champagne.
* * * *
In the fifty-four years during which Princess Pless lived in Germany she never mastered the German language. She never managed to comprehend the niceties of German etiquette or the strong dynastic traditions which inspired the Hochberg family. "I never could," she confessed in her memoirs, "understand pedigrees." The only German terms with which she was familiar were those used in hospitals and nursing establishments : she never paid atten- tion to the stilted etiquette of German courts. For her the " canape was just a sofa ; for the Germans at that date it represented a symbol of importance. When she was young she was apt on all occasions to interrupt. The Germans naturally assumed that her incompatibility in such matters was due to English arrogance: yet her unfaltering gaiety, the almost childlike confidence which she gave with open hands to everyone, pierced even their obtuseness. She became a "character" whom they regarded, sometimes with bewilderment, some- times with irritation, but more often with amused affection. When the First German War came upon her she never for one moment abjured her native country: she used her influence, which was great, to do everything she could for British prisoners of war. The Emperor (and it is to his credit) never failed to protect her ; he even invited her to come to Pless when he had established his headquarters. It was pointed out to him that anxiety would be caused if an Englishwoman, and one who never hesitated to prodaim her patriotism, were to act as hostess at G.H.Q. She was sent off to work on a hospital train upon the Serbian front, and finally relegated to Berchtesgaden. When peace came the great Pless estates (which extended over. an area as large as an English county) were distributed ; that enormous fortune shrunk to a mere income ; she lost her German nationality, she was never granted Polish nationality, and she became again the British subject which she had, in fact, always been.
* * * *
Her last years were tragic. Her youngest son was imprisoned by the Germans and died after his release. Her eldest son, now a Polish citizen, is living in exile. Her second son is serving as an officer in the Polish forces. She herself became afflicted with paralysis and loss of memory ; she retired finally to Fiirstenstein, and it is said that she never knew that Germany and England were again at war. In that great Silesian castle she died alone. Gone were the old pomp and magnificence, the 4,oco retainers, the state carriages, the private train, the ropes of pearls. Her pleasure in such things had always been the surprised pleasure of a school-girl with a new frock. In a snobbish world she remained the least snobbish person that I have ever known: in a hard world she glowed with gaiety and kindness. She had only one enemy in all the world, and that was loneliness ; it is sad that this grave enemy should have con- auered in the end.
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