Dearest Vicky, Darling Fritz (29 page)

Fritz was advised by the military attaché from Paris, Karl von Villaume, on a visit to Berlin, that the French did not want war and were shocked at Russia’s behaviour, though General Boulanger, the French war minister who was keen for immediate revenge on Germany, did not share their views. At a meeting in January 1887 Fritz spoke to Bismarck, who exaggerated Boulanger’s threat to peace. He drew attention to France’s renewed purchase of horses and building materials for the construction of barracks near the frontier fortresses, and spoke in vague terms of hopes for an ‘understanding’ with England and Italy. Fritz warned Queen Victoria that Boulanger was likely to be appointed as Minister President in France, and if so he was expected to ‘venture to attempt a desperate coup in order to gratify his ambition & vanity as a second Napoleon. Matters are fast coming to a critical point here!! & if this unfortunate inexcusable war breaks out, how much the interests of the Great Powers, & England’s in particular, will have to suffer.’
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Queen Victoria replied that England could never promise assistance without knowing the ultimate objective, and would certainly not be party to any attack on France ‘unless she quarrelled with or threatened us.’ She was particularly fearful of conflict breaking out at the Emperor’s age; it ‘would be madness’ and a war would probably kill him.
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Vicky was alarmed by what she heard from St Petersburg, and Tsar Alexander’s contemptuous comments about England, which he said ‘had already quite withdrawn from European politics and was too weak to take any part in them, and was not to be feared in any way.’
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When Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria visited Berlin a few weeks later he told Vicky and Fritz of his fears of the inevitability of war, and ‘spoke of the intense desirability of a close understanding between England, Germany, Austria and Italy.’ Russia, he told them, was undoubtedly the strongest power in Europe ‘and imposed her will on the rest’, so the only way of keeping the Franco-Russian alliance in check was an alliance between the other four nations.
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By the beginning of 1887, with the Emperor’s ninetieth birthday approaching, the
Reichstag
was increasingly preoccupied with whatever changes the next reign would bring. Whether Kaiser Friedrich would retain Bismarck was questionable. Though there were signs of a rapprochement, particularly where foreign policy and the possibility of an Anglo-German alliance were concerned, would Bismarck want to retain office under the Anglophile, liberal Kaiser, and would he be able to develop a good working relationship with the Empress? Who would lead the government should Bismarck, father and son, both resign; would an incoming government be fully supported by the political parties and people, or would there be opposition from court and the army? Among the right-wing deputies there was a feeling that the elderly Emperor was holding the fragile fabric of Germany together simply by being alive, and that it would be of benefit to the state and to continuity if Friedrich was excluded from the succession so that the throne would pass to his son Wilhelm instead. Moreover the view was widespread throughout Europe that war might break out soon, and a firm hand was needed.

On New Year’s day 1887, Vicky acknowledged a letter of good wishes from a distant friend, writing prophetically that she had reached an age when she no longer thought herself secure from the blows of fate.
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She could not have foreseen the heaviest one of all.

During the previous autumn she, Fritz and the three younger girls had spent a few weeks in Italy, staying at the village of Portofino near Genoa. One evening they went for a drive with King Umberto and Queen Margharita, and the coachman lost his way. There was a chill in the air, and Fritz had not brought his greatcoat; when they arrived back late he was shivering, and that winter he suffered from persistent colds and catarrh. Ominously, at a court ball in Berlin on 31 January hosted by General Bronsart von Schellendorff, Prussian minister for war, Kaiser Wilhelm stood around in the ballroom until 11 p.m., chatting with several of the guests and looking astonishingly spry for his eighty-nine years. Admittedly he had been showing his age for some time. It was often difficult to understand what he was saying; he had become very deaf, and shuffled his feet to such an extent when he walked that his attendants watched anxiously for any creases in the palace carpets which might trip him up. He suffered from intermittent kidney and bladder trouble, for which strong doses of morphine were prescribed. Nevertheless he seemed to have aged remarkably well.

By contrast his eldest son, also present, looked increasingly pale and in low spirits. On this occasion, a few of those around him noticed with some concern, he was so hoarse that he could hardly speak a word.

*
Vicky knew it would bode ill for the future of the German Empire if her grandsons in direct succession to the throne should suffer from the bleeding disease. In view of the marriage of Alice’s daughter Alix to the future Tsar Nicholas II of Russia in 1894 and the consequences of their only son Alexis’s haemophilia, her caution was thoroughly vindicated.

*
Their apprehensions were justified. Carlos became King of Portugal in 1889 and was assassinated with his elder son and heir in 1908. His younger son, Manuel, ascended the throne but was deposed and the country became a republic two years later.

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A badly brought-up and disloyal boy.

EIGHT

‘The fear of what might happen’

B
y the end of February 1887 Fritz’s voice was still little more than a hoarse whisper, and Dr Wegner decided to seek specialist advice. A few days later Professor Karl Gerhardt, lecturer in medicine at Berlin University, examined him and found a small swelling on the lower portion of the left vocal cord, a matter which he said could soon be cured with a little painful but simple treatment. After a fortnight of daily attempts to remove the swelling with a wire snare and then a circular knife failed, he resorted to cauterising it with red-hot platinum wire, but every time the swelling was removed it reappeared the next day.

Kaiser Wilhelm’s ninetieth birthday fell on 22 March. Celebrations were kept to a minimum to spare him fatigue, but a large gathering of royalties, among them the Prince of Wales and Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, joined him at a special dinner at Berlin. When Fritz made a speech congratulating him, it was evident that the effort taxed what little voice he still had. After his address he announced Henry’s engagement. Their second son, Vicky noted, was ‘always nice when he has been with us for some time, but not when he has been set up by others, and his head stuffed full of rubbish at Berlin.’
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Significantly Henry had braved opposition at Berlin and gone to Osborne in July 1885 with his cousin Irene of Hesse for the wedding of their aunt Beatrice, and twenty months later, the cousins were betrothed. Though Vicky may have had reservations about the threat of haemophilia in such a union as she had in the case of Willy and Ella,
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she and Fritz hoped that wedlock might have the effect on Henry that had been lost on Willy, especially as Alice’s daughters possessed a strength of character lacking in Dona.

Meanwhile Gerhardt suspected that the swelling on the Crown Prince’s throat was not a simple tumour, but a cancerous growth. In April he sent him for a cure at Ems where a change of air with regular inhalations and douches for nose and throat ought to prove beneficial. Accompanied by Vicky, the three younger girls, and Dr Wegner he left Berlin for a few weeks, and on return in May he felt so much better, apart from continual hoarseness, that he thought he was cured. Only on medical diagnosis did Gerhardt discover that the swelling was still there, and larger than before. For a second opinion he consulted his university colleague Professor Ernst Bergmann, who recommended an immediate external operation on the growth, which he believed was malignant. To accomplish this successfully he would need to split the larynx in order to remove the swelling properly. He made light of the seriousness of such treatment, saying it was no more dangerous than an ordinary tracheotomy, or excision in the windpipe. By now Fritz feared that something was seriously wrong with him, and Vicky was desperately worried, ‘more dead than alive with horror and distress’.
²
That her beloved husband should fall ill on the threshold of his accession, for which they had waited and been prepared for so many years, seemed too bitter an irony to be true. Bravely she feigned an optimism at odds with what she felt deep inside, in order to try and lift his spirits.

When Bismarck first heard that the Crown Prince was unwell he remarked cynically that the heir was simply out of sorts because of his father’s longevity, and impatient for him to die. When it became obvious that he was about to undergo a serious operation the Chancellor intervened to insist that it could not be undertaken without the patient’s consent and, as he was next in line to the throne, the Kaiser’s permission would also be required. He summoned three more doctors: Dr Max Schrader, Fritz’s own Surgeon-in-Ordinary; Professor Adalbert Tobold, an experienced, semi-retired Berlin laryngologist; and the Kaiser’s physician Dr Gustav von Lauer. On 18 May all five, and Dr Wegner, held a consultation and agreed that he had cancer; four were in favour of operating immediately. Gerhardt and Schrader objected as they thought it would probably prove fatal, and that even if the Crown Prince survived he would certainly lose his voice altogether. They reported to Bismarck, who agreed that no operation should take place without the consultation of another specialist.

When the Chancellor came to tell Vicky personally, she found him unusually pleasant. She did not appreciate at first that they were united in their apprehension of Willy. Should he get the idea that he might become Emperor before his time, the consequences would be equally unpalatable for parents and statesman alike. The word cancer was already being mentioned in Berlin, and some of Bismarck’s disciples were saying among themselves that the Prussian constitution forbade the reign or accession of a sovereign who was mortally ill. An indignant Bismarck had to tell him this was nonsense; the Crown Prince was not allowed to withdraw from the succession, even if he wished to himself. Willy no longer worshipped the Chancellor so fervently and the old man suspected that, once the young Prince ascended the throne, his dismissal from office would be only a matter of time. It was imperative that Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm should follow his father as Kaiser. For all their differences, Vicky realized that Bismarck was more of an ally than she and Fritz had supposed. She admitted he was a ‘great man,
but
his
system
is a
pernicious one
’.
³
Though his reasons were dictated by reasons of state rather than personal sympathy, she was touched by his anxiety. It was nothing to do with kind-heartedness that made him feel for them, she wrote to Queen Victoria; ‘it is his reason, & his Patriotism that make him dread as an irreparable catastrophe to Germany anything happening to my beloved Fritz.’
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For ‘the other specialist’, the doctors suggested several names from outside Germany, and after Bismarck had stipulated for obvious reasons that he should not be French or Austrian, the London-based Scotsman Morell Mackenzie seemed the best choice. His qualifications were sound, and he was the author of a textbook on nose and throat diseases which had been translated into several different languages and was used in German medical schools. Gerhardt already knew him, and he spoke fluent German.

But there were more sinister reasons for his selection. The German doctors were puzzled by their heir’s illness, and while they assured her that the operation they proposed was almost harmless, being undertaken without hesitation in the case of children and old people, they were privately far from confident. Their decision to consult a foreign specialist was a deliberate example of handing on the torch. Should the disease prove fatal – and they had no reason to suppose otherwise, particularly in view of the Crown Prince’s rather weak constitution – it would suit them if a foreigner was left to shoulder the blame. What a triumph it would be for the anti-English faction court if a British doctor could be charged with killing their heir to the throne, and it would be easy for them to assert that their English Crown Princess was responsible for summoning him in the first place! Moreover Mackenzie was well-known for his skill, but had enemies at home. Vicky telegraphed to her mother on 19 May for her mother to send him at once, at the other doctors’ request. The Queen did but, aware of her daughter’s instincts of loyalty, added a caveat from her physician Sir William Jenner, that the Scot was clever but ‘greedy and grasping about money and tries to make a profit out of his attendance’.
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On the afternoon of 20 May Mackenzie arrived in Berlin, and after consulting the other doctors he examined Fritz’s throat, which he noted gave the patient no pain when breathing or swallowing. An operation, he said, would almost certainly prove fatal, and a thorough analysis should be made first to establish whether the growth was cancerous or not. He removed a small portion of the swelling and passed it to Professor Rudolf Virchow at the Berlin Institute of Pathology for examination, but Virchow could not make a conclusive diagnosis from such a small amount, so Mackenzie removed a larger sample two days later.

According to Gerhardt, in doing so Mackenzie injured the healthy right vocal cord and made it bleed. The new portion still did not prove that the growth was malignant, but Gerhardt was suspicious. Not having Mackenzie’s experience or skill, he was in no position to know better, but he probably mistook the appearance of the right vocal cord and an excited imagination did the rest.
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Mackenzie later felt that his own success on the first occasion ‘had mortified him, and he was glad to find fault’.
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At any rate, it was the first of several bitter clashes which overshadowed the rest of the patient’s life. The German doctors maintained that they had to operate at once, while Mackenzie insisted that if they did the Crown Prince would die.