Chapter SEVEN

Evenings with “Carmen Sylva,” Queen of Roumania--Her Private
Life--“What is Conan Doyle Like?”--Her Interest in British
Novelists--She Bans Sex Problems and Does Not Like
Kipling--The Present Queen and Her Kindnesses to me--Life
in the Gayest Little Capital in the World--The Countess of
Cotroceni on Skis--A Laughter-loving Queen--Wicked Old King
Leopold of Belgium--My Chats with King Albert.

Let us pass from Bulgaria to Roumania, the romantic country of that romantic Queen, the charming, silver-tongued poetess, who loved to conceal her identity under the name of “Carmen Sylva.”

On my first visit to her gay little capital I met the big, burly, fair-haired American, a wanderer and something of an adventurer, Mr. William Caspar, to whom the British nation owes very much, as I shall relate elsewhere in this volume. If there be one foreigner to whom the British were indebted in the days immediately before the war, it was to him, and his name should be recorded in our modern histories.

But this chapter deals with the private lives of monarchs I have met, therefore I will return to the friendship that the Roumanian royal family has extended toward me. Because I am a writer--I have never called myself a “literary man,” remember--Her Majesty continually invited me to the Palace, and I spent many a delightful evening with her in her small, luxurious blue-and-gold drawing-room.

She never “got on” with her husband, King Charles. He was an erect, stately, forbidding-looking man, with close-set eyes, and a full grey beard; an irascible grumbler who never had a good word to say about anybody, and who quarrelled so constantly with his Ministers that Monsieur Take Jonescu--who was so well known in London during the war--often refused a command to audience.

The Royal _ménage_ of Roumania was the reverse of happy, inasmuch as the King lived on the left-hand side of the Palace and the Queen on the right, and the pair were often not on speaking terms.

My visits to Her Majesty were always marked by the same etiquette. I would receive a note from her private secretary asking me to come to music at nine o’clock, and on arrival I was bowed into a small ante-chamber, where one or the other of her ladies-in-waiting, usually Madame Zoe Bengesco, or perhaps Madame Maurojeni, who was _grande-maîtresse_ of the Court, would receive me. Then I was ushered into the Queen’s pretty salon, or salons--for there were two of equal proportions, the one running at right-angles to the other. These apartments were furnished with splendid old brocade-covered furniture; tables with interesting knick-knacks and photographs of prominent European authors; a grand piano; and the fine organ on which Her Majesty more than once played for my benefit. Rich heavy curtains, fine modern paintings, a polished floor, all combined, assisted by the softly-shaded electric lights, to produce a harmony of quiet taste and the acme of luxury.

I well recollect the first time that Madame Bengesco ushered me into that room. I was standing talking to the Lady of the Court when, on turning, I found myself face to face with a tall, striking white-haired lady _en décolletée_, with a sweet smile of welcome on her well-preserved countenance. She wore a very handsome gown of pale dove grey, but no jewellery save a single gold bangle and a magnificent emerald ring, which I afterwards learnt had been given her by the Tzar Alexander who was murdered. This ring she always regarded as her mascot.

“I am delighted to welcome you, Monsieur Le Queux,” she said, as I bowed. “Your books are not unknown to me. We read many English novels in Bucharest, you know!”

“And we in England read your Majesty’s books also,” I ventured in reply.

“Come,” she said. “Let us sit over in that corner,” indicating a cosy-corner seat near the big blazing fire. And as we crossed the room Madame Bengesco bowed and withdrew.

Our conversation turned upon English and French literature, and at once I recognized how widely she had read recent English novels. She was eager to know about a number of our popular writers. What was Conan Doyle like? Had I met him? Was he anything like a detective? She wanted to meet Clement Shorter because of his interest in the Brontës. Did I know Lord Northcliffe, and was he a really great man? She asked me about my friends--Max Pemberton, Sir William Robertson Nicoll, H. G. Wells, Sidney Low, Rider Haggard, and St. John Adcock.

I was kept busy answering questions for a full hour.

Her Majesty had a violent dislike for politicians, it seemed, but was intensely interested in our popular authors.

“I love Austin Dobson’s poems, and ‘The Sundial’ most of all. I have tried to model some of my own verses after the lines he has taken, with, alas! but poor success, I fear,” she added. “Next to poetry, I love a real love-and-crime romance. I get all my books from Hatchard’s, in Piccadilly, and I must say they send me everything that is interesting. I detest books that deal with sex-problems. They are better left unwritten. And, really, your women authors are the worst offenders.”

“I am of your Majesty’s opinion,” I said.

“I am very glad of that. As far as I have read your own books, I have never come across a line that a schoolgirl could not read,” she went on. “Many writers are too frank, and, if they are, I give orders that their future books are not to be sent to me. I will show you my English books,” and she rose and took me into a large library, where one wall was lined from floor to ceiling by all the most recent works of popular authors.

“See this!” she said, pointing to Coulson Kernahan’s _God and the Ant_. “I have read it five times. Is it not splendid? And these.” And she pointed to two volumes by my old friend Robertson Nicoll.

As I glanced along the shelves I noticed volumes by many men I knew. Max Pemberton, famed for wearing “fancy vests,” as Lord Northcliffe used to call them; travel books by my old friend Douglas Sladen; Seton Merriman, Ouida, H. G. Wells, Wilkie Collins, and Walter Besant. Modern English poets were well represented, though, curiously enough, I saw no volume of Kipling’s. Two long shelves were also devoted to the works of American writers of fiction.

The opposite wall was lined with shelves filled with German and Italian fiction, while at the end was a complete set of Maurice Le Blanc’s works, and hundreds of volumes of French novels and poets, all in uniform bindings, bearing the royal cipher in gilt on the back.

We returned to the salon, where she made me describe others of my literary friends in London and tell some stories of them. I told her of the house-dinners of the Savage Club, of the dinners of the Vagabond Club, now alas! defunct, and of the various Society hostesses who delighted to assemble literary people, not forgetting Douglas Sladen’s famous receptions at his flat in Kensington, where one met everyone worth knowing, and munched a sandwich and spent a couple of hours in one’s own atmosphere of books and art.

“How I should love to go with you to Mr. Sladen’s,” the Queen said. “Perhaps I may, eh, if I come to London?”

I promised that the next time she came to London I would take her one evening.

“But they must not know who I am!” she laughed. “I will be your friend Madame Somebody, eh?”

That well-remembered evening was one of the many I afterwards spent with the delightfully well-informed woman, who was a patroness of literature as well as a reigning Queen.

She was marvellously intelligent, and perfectly regal in her aspect and her manner.

And, further, in Roumania, and throughout Europe, the name of “Carmen Sylva,” that sweet-faced, womanly woman who, though Queen, was so charming and unassuming, was synonymous of all that was good and charitable. For Roumania she did what no other woman had attempted, in that all the charity throughout the whole kingdom had been initiated by her, and partly supported by her efforts. She lived her life for the poor and needy, and worked hard for years on their behalf.

On another evening, her secretary, Mademoiselle Helen Vacaresco, introduced me to the Queen’s presence, and she became deeply interested in Lord Leverhulme’s model village at Port Sunlight. Would I get her particulars of it? I promised, and Lord Leverhulme duly sent photographs and plans for a village, which she intended to construct near Bucharest, but unfortunately her efforts were frustrated by the outbreak of war. Again, she founded a school for the blind on the same plan as that of Sir Arthur Pearson, and it is still doing excellent work. She named it “The Home of Light.”

* * * * *

On three occasions I met the Crown Prince Ferdinand and his wife--the present King and Queen--in Carmen Sylva’s salon, and had chats with them, once just before King Charles’ death.

The present King, a Prince of the House of Hohenzollern, is rather a dull person, who is fond of motoring and who takes but little interest in his country’s well-being. The Queen on the other hand, is, as she has ever been, a pretty, smartly-dressed woman who believes in having a real good time. She spends much time out of Roumania, in Paris, London, Brussels, or anywhere where there is “something going on.” She loves to dance to a jazz band, and is an inveterate cigarette-smoker. She seldom, if ever, reads anything more elevating that a French novel, and loves to be photographed while bathing, for the delectation of readers of the newspapers. This is unfortunate, for the disregard of the conventionalities is typical of the Roumanian woman, and is apt to create a wrong impression.

Once a white-bearded old French diplomat declared to me, in the Travellers’ Club, in Paris:

“In all Bucharest, my dear fellow, I don’t believe there is a single honest woman. I was Minister there for twelve years, and I think I ought to know!”

I am inclined to believe he was nearly right, as far as a certain section of Roumanian society is concerned, for my observations have led me to the conclusion that the night-life of Bucharest is far gayer than that of Paris or Budapest.

And, indeed, a certain British Minister of my acquaintance, who was sent to represent us at Bucharest, closed the Legation, and, rather than allow his wife and daughter to live in the place, kept them in his country house in Surrey, and lived at the garish and expensive Hôtel Boulevard.

Any of my readers who have visited Bucharest know the Hôtel Boulevard, and they also know the Villa Regala, once a royal villa, but now turned into a gay night-restaurant, where, at a wink or a word to the hall-porter of the Boulevard, one will be provided with a gay assembly of the gentler sex, ready to have supper, and to be your most amusing friends, though you have never met before, and after your supper turn night into day, and drive home hilariously in the morning sunshine.

Gaiety and utter irresponsibility are in the atmosphere of Bucharest, where, I confess, I myself have had many amusing adventures.

It is, _par excellence_, a fine city, a city of wild enjoyment and wilder gambling, a city that justly bears the reputation of being one of the most expensive in the world. And yet you certainly get your money’s worth, as I have many times told my friends of the golden youth of Paris. For the poor, Bucharest is the cheapest city; for the rich, the dearest. Prices at the Hôtel Boulevard are far higher than at the Ritz or Claridge’s in London, yet everything is perfect. One can obtain no better cutlet of sterlet in all Russia than at Capsa’s Restaurant, and the caviare that one eats on toast, with a liqueur glass of vodka, at eleven o’clock, is as good as one can get at the Arcadia Garden in Astrakhan. I have eaten sterlet in Moscow, and caviare in the Arcadia, with its summer theatre and beautiful gardens, so perhaps I may presume to criticize.

Yes, Bucharest is a riotous place. Ask any diplomat who puts his foot across the threshold of the St. James’ Club, and he will close one eye knowingly.

I do not know what the divorce laws may be in Roumania, but they are rather lax, I think.

One little incident, at which I laughed heartily at the time, was a practical joke played by my American friend, William Caspar.

In the course of his adventures in Bucharest society, in which I often accompanied him, he met a very well-known lady, who, because of his generosity, apparently believed him to be extremely wealthy. She laughingly hinted to him that she wanted a new Paris gown, to outshine one of her rivals at a very smart function. Caspar heard all she said, and, being an exceedingly shrewd business man, he resolved to teach her a lesson.

“Yes, madame, I will buy you a dress,” he drawled, while all three of us were dining one night at Capsa’s, that gay restaurant in the Calea Victoriei, where the wonderful gipsy band plays so magnificently, and where meals cost far more than one could ever spend at any London restaurant. “If you will do me the honour of accepting it, I will send you a new gown.”

“But you don’t know the measurements!” declared the lady.

“Will you give me the name of your dressmaker, and I will see her?” Caspar said, his big cigar still between his lips.

The lady gave him the address of her dressmaker, and three days later she received, in a large cardboard costume box, with much tissue paper--a doll’s dress!

I was once invited by the present Queen Marie to the Château of Peleshor, a painfully new summer residence that King Charles had built for his nephew, now King. I had driven from the station at Sinaia, an overcrowded resort of _chic_ Roumanians who wear the very latest of “creations” of the Rue de la Paix, and with me was the Prime Minister, George Cantacuzen, a grey-headed man with mutton-chop whiskers, whom I knew in Bucharest, and whom I found in the train.

We all took tea together in the summer villa, where the great airy room was open to a magnificent vista of high mountains and glorious woods.

The soft mountain breeze through the green and gold room was very refreshing.

I recollect that little Princess Ileana came in to greet us, a charming child with her fair hair falling over her shoulders, and because she bounced about the room and upset a cup of tea her mother severely reproved her, and sent her away with her German governess.

The conversation was mainly about an important military review at which the Crown Princess would be compelled to appear on horseback at the head of “the 4th Regiment de Rochiori.”

“I detest riding!” she declared to me. “And I can’t think who the fool was who invented the fashion of women being military officers. I believe it was the Kaiser.”

The tone of voice in which she mentioned the German Emperor revealed that she had no great regard for him. Indeed, it is an open secret that she usually referred to him as “His Pompousness of Potsdam,” a name which she bestowed on him long before the war.

Her Majesty is a brilliant conversationalist, and, though so much abroad, is highly popular, not only at her own Court, but at Rome, Madrid, and St. James’. When at Deauville last year, she is credited with remarking to the King of Spain, while discussing a little tit-bit of scandal: “A man who loves a woman never tells her the whole truth of what he thinks of her. The deeper his affection, the more silent he becomes.” She is also credited with inventing, when in the schoolroom long ago, the saying, “A little woman is a dangerous thing.”

Queen Marie is an up-to-date consort, bright, intelligent, and fascinating. Her husband is dull, apathetic, yet something of a dandy. She is continually on the move, making fresh friends in democratic circles, and thoroughly enjoying herself. Often she travels _incognita_ to Paris, where she is a well-known customer at the most expensive modistes in the Rue de la Paix, or she will spend a week at Monte Carlo, and perhaps the next at St. Moritz, or at Mürren, while the newspapers will say that she is in Vienna, visiting an aunt. As a rule, the name she uses is Countess Cotroceni, which is really one of her titles, and she always has with her one faithful lady-in-waiting, who is quite as bright and merry as herself.

In summer the pair can frequently be seen bathing at Deauville, of which place they are both very fond, or taking tea in the courtyard of the Hotel Normandy, or eating shrimps and drinking sherry at the Potinière. Their big, cream-coloured car is a familiar object along the national highways of France, for Her Majesty, since peace has reigned in Roumania, has been seldom at home. She has always called me, ever since our first meeting, “Mr. Le Quex.” Lord Northcliffe nicknamed me “Quex,” and used to delight in finding me with my friend Twells Brex, and then introduce us as “Quex and Brex,” and say, “They will now do their chameleon turn when Marlowe (the editor of the _Daily Mail_) chances to turn his back.”

Poor Twells Brex! He told me of that persistent little spider that spun its web over his bed as he lay dying.

“How very small things interest one when your days are numbered,” he said to me, putting out his hand. “My little spider has been sent to comfort and interest me. And, after all, we are only spiders in the great universe with the ‘Einstein Theory,’ and our old friend Conan Doyle communicating with spirits, eh?”

And he laughed merrily. Next day, alas! he was dead.

But I am digressing from the chapter--concerning only high personages I have known.

Old King Leopold of Belgium--or “King Cléo-pold,” as King Edward called him--I met on two occasions. He was a wicked old man. I was presented to His Majesty in Brussels by my friend Mr. H. M. Stanley, the explorer, after his return from the Aruwimi, and had a long and interesting chat with him. The subject of our conversation was travel, and he evinced considerable interest when I told him of my projected journey with Harry de Windt, to explore the Kola Peninsula in Northern Russia--which is still practically one of the few unknown regions of the world to this day.

The second occasion I saw him was when I was passing in a motor-boat beneath the wall of his beautiful garden at Villefranche, while returning to Nice from the motor-boat races across the Bay of Monaco. As we went along we were pelted with tangerine oranges by three pretty, laughing girls in summer frocks, while, between them, dressed in flannels, was the white-bearded old King, enjoying their fun. They were apparently having a little carnival to themselves. The King of the Belgians was always a very popular figure on the Côte d’Azur, even though he was a very close-fisted old gentleman. He owned half the Congo State, yet he would never pay for anything if he could possibly help it.

King Edward never liked him. I know that to his intimate friend, Baron Hirsch, he used always to refer to him as “that old Belgian scoundrel.” Whenever King Edward could avoid King Leopold he would, and on one occasion, when Prince of Wales, he resigned from an exclusive Paris club because King Leopold had been elected a member.

He did not agree with King Leopold’s administration of his Congo possessions--the slave-raiding, ivory-hunting, and all the terrible atrocities that were suddenly revealed and could not be refuted. The late Lord Roberts once remarked to me, when we were discussing him: “Yes, King Leopold is an old vampire, who lives on the blood of the blacks.”

Nevertheless, he was a gay old fellow who, in London, was often to be seen with a couple of friends of his own kidney, idling in the lounge of the Empire, or the Alhambra, for he had a peculiar _penchant_ for ladies of the stage.

The exposures of the atrocities committed with his own knowledge in the Congo State by the ivory-raiders, and the torture and extermination of whole tribes of natives, greatly annoyed him. He paid at least two famous French writers heavily for their manuscripts, destroying them rather than allowing the damning evidence to be published.

A Belgian journalist named Lefranc, who had been an army officer in the Congo, wrote an awful exposure of the maladministration; how King Leopold had given certain orders to deal harshly with the natives if they refused to deliver up their ivory. He had photographed a number of official documents, and had actually published the book. But His Majesty bought up all the issued copies, and paid eight thousand pounds for the manuscript and the type!

Only two copies saw the light of day, and one of those was shown to me by Lefranc himself. It contained horrible disclosures of the slave traffic carried on by His Majesty’s officers.

In the last couple of years of old “Cléopold’s” life, he fell in love in his dotage with a lady named Vaughan, of whom he became very fond. He at once abandoned his amorous adventures “and settled down.” On his death the Baroness Vaughan laid claim to a very large portion of his property, and a long law-suit resulted.

There is an amusing story of him. He always carried with him a bad French franc. He had it in his pocket for over twenty years, and would never move without it. His valet had to change it into the pocket of every suit he wore, whether uniform or civilian, and he usually changed four or five times a day, for he was a dandy of the old school.

Princess Luisa of Saxony once asked him the reason of his belief in the mascot and the history of the coin.

He drew it out. It was worn very bright and smooth, and was apparently made of pewter.

“This was given to me late one night in Paris under peculiar circumstances,” His Majesty said to her. “I was ill-dressed, and my clothes were torn, for I had been robbed of all my money--every sou.”

She smiled, and suggested that he had been spending a merry evening.

“Yes, Luisa,” he laughed, “I had; but it is now nearly twenty years ago. How well I recollect it! I stood beneath a lamp at the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Place de l’Opéra, penniless. Though a king, I wanted a franc very badly at that moment to get a glass of cognac, for I felt faint. So I actually begged of a passer-by. Yes, I begged! Funny for a king to ask for relief. Well, I was in Paris _incognito_, and I had my reason. The well-dressed man I approached looked me up and down, and, recognizing my dilapidated condition, gave me a franc. I then crossed to the Café de l’Opéra, and paid for my glass of brandy with the coin, whereupon it was at once found to be bad. Fortunately I saw a man in the café, a banker in Brussels, who recognized me, and at once came to my assistance after a whispered word from me. When I examined the coin I found a date scratched on it. No doubt it was my benefactor’s mascot, and he had given it to me in mistake. I have often thought since whether the owner of that mascot ever dreamed to whom he had inadvertently given his bad franc.”

Under King Leopold’s nephew, the present King Albert, Belgium has arisen phœnix-like from the ruins caused by the War to a great and increasing prosperity. Both King Albert and his Queen Elizabeth are not only highly popular in their own country, but are welcomed wherever they go. They both have a liking for air-travel, and I was present recently one afternoon in the wireless hut at the Croydon aerodrome when a machine descended, and, quite unexpected by the staff, there stepped out the royal pair. Unconventionally the King lit a cigarette and chatted with the pilot, while the Queen, who looked as though she had not had a very comfortable journey, for the weather was gusty, sat alone in the waiting-room while a car was hastily obtained from the garage to convey them to the Ritz Hotel.

They were _incognito_, and, having crossed to do some shopping, they returned to Brussels the next day.

Next time you see walking in Bond Street a very tall, handsome, military-looking man, very spruce and erect, accompanied by a well-dressed woman, look again and see if they are not King Albert and his wife. They come to London at odd times, and even their coming is unknown at the Belgian Legation.

Albert, who has generously granted me two audiences, is a progressive monarch, and under his rule gallant little Belgium is daily prospering. In the course of one conversation I had with him he made a witty remark, saying:

“The honour of women consists in the good opinion that is held concerning them.”