25

From the Regal to the Ridiculous

Those little Balkan Courts were terribly pathetic. They always gave me the impression of a rather threadbare musical comedy on tour. There was so much pomp, such a glitter of uniforms, and so little money. I shall never forget my first sight of a Royal car. Tino was in it, plumed and feathered, and were it not for the large crown painted on the back, one would have said that the car was a dilapidated Ford. So dilapidated that the tyres were bound up with tape and seemed to be of different shapes. I watched the car trundle out of sight, and just as it turned the corner there was a loud bang. The first tyre had burst, and Tino had to get out and watch his chauffeur struggling in the dust.

If Queen Sophie had sold her pearls, which were amazingly beautiful, the whole Royal Family would have had plenty for the rest of their lives. But I suppose she could not do that, since they were Crown jewels. As things were, the severest economy had to be used to make both ends meet.

One day I went to tea with her and after tea we walked, as usual, in the garden. It was looking exquisite that evening, the bougainvillæa, a mass of purple, dripping from the walls, and all the lemon trees heavy with golden fruit. By and by we came to a little pond of marble, which was empty.

‘How lovely this must be when it is filled with water,’ I said.

‘Yes. But I don’t know when we shall be able to fill it.’

‘Is the drought as bad as all that?’

She shook her head. ‘No. I wasn’t referring to the drought. The pond has to be cleaned before it can be filled. And that means another gardener. And gardeners cost 15 drachmæ a day.’

Now fifteen drachmæ, at that period, was about half a crown. Can you imagine a Queen not being able to have a pond cleaned out because she had not the necessary half a crown?

And yet, during the war, people used to talk ridiculous nonsense about the Greek Royal Family revelling in gold owing to the marriage of the American millionairess, Mrs. Leeds, with Prince Christopher, the King’s youngest brother. Sheer nonsense. She was not allowed to do so. I believe that she was very generous and sweet in giving presents in the ordinary run of affairs, but as for financing Tino’s family (let alone financing Greece, as they said she did)—that was quite out of the question.

Princess Irene—one of the most attractive girls I have ever seen—once said to me, ‘Isn’t the price of clothes appalling?’

Mindful of tailor’s bills, I fervently agreed with her.

‘I want to get some new evening frocks,’ she added, ‘but I can’t get any under twenty pounds.’

If only things had been different, what a paradise the Queen would have made of Athens, and of the Palace in particular. ‘Before the war,’ she said, ‘we had all the plans ready. We were going to have a beautiful new hotel in Constitution Square, we were going to make the roads good again, we were going to plant thousands of trees all over the mountains. And I had dozens of English furniture catalogues which I used to read and read, thinking of all the lovely things we should have in the Palace. All that is finished—absolutely finished. We must get along as we can. I can’t even afford to have the English magazines now....’

And then, ‘Isn’t it perfectly appalling the way we always talk about money nowadays? I never used to. My mamma would have thought it terrible. But now it’s, “I can’t afford this, and I can’t afford that.” And it’s such a dreary topic of conversation. Let’s talk about something else.’

We both laughed, and talked instead of England.

******

Endless comedies arose out of the fact that the Royal Family were not recognized by the Allies, because the members of the British Legation had to be officially unaware of their very existence. Francis Lindley, our Minister at Athens, said to me that it was damnably awkward for him, because sometimes he would meet Tino in the street, or driving in a motor-car, and they both had to look the other way.

A regular game of hide-and-seek sometimes ensued. I remember once going with Bridget Lindley and some others from the Legation to play tennis in the gardens of the British School of Archæology. We had a divine game of tennis, and when it was over strolled round the garden looking for flowers. We had just turned a corner when, there, a few yards in front of us was the Queen of Greece, with a lady-in-waiting. With a hoot of dismay the young ladies from the Legation turned on their heels and fled. (It sounds rude, but it was the only thing they could have done.) I was left alone to greet the Queen.

‘Who were those girls who rushed away like that?’ said the Queen.

‘Oh—they were just some people who have been playing tennis.’

‘Yes. But who were they?’

I had to tell her that they were the Lindleys.

She made a little gurgling noise of laughter. ‘I see. Isn’t it ridiculous?’ And then ... ‘We might be such good friends. It’s a pity....’

Occasionally, however, some man from the Legation, in an access of boldness, would visit the Palace, and a very good time he was given. But these things had to be worked out with great secrecy, because naturally, if the Minister knew, he would be forced to take severe measures against the offenders. There was one young man (I can’t, of course, give his name) whom we smuggled into the Palace one afternoon, and the arrangements for getting him there and back were worthy of an opéra bouffe conspiracy. We had to go in a closed motor and be hustled up a back staircase into the boudoir of a lady-in-waiting. It was then arranged that the Queen and some of the Princesses should cross the garden, come up another staircase, and enter a few minutes later. We used to make absurd jokes about it, saying that the Queen might suddenly shoot down the chimney, or that the Englishman should disguise himself as a piano-tuner, and enter in that manner.

It was at one of these tea-parties that the Queen, becoming serious for a moment, gave us just a hint of some of the tortures she must have suffered in exile. ‘When we were exiled from Greece,’ she said, ‘the only place which was open to us was Switzerland. We went there, and stayed at an hotel. I wanted to be just like the other guests—I wanted, as they said I was no longer a Queen, not to be a Queen, just to be an ordinary human being. Staying in the hotel were several of my old English friends, whom in days gone by I had known quite intimately. They used to be of my party in the opera; I have danced at their houses, dined with them. One and all, they cut me dead. I shouldn’t have minded that—for, after all, there are ways of cutting people, aren’t there? But they did it in the unkindest way possible, publicly—not only to myself but to my husband—leaving any room that I entered, and staring me straight in the face as they went out. Now—it isn’t like English people to do that, is it? And yet they did. It was not till I picked up some of the English papers, and learnt what they were saying about us over there, that I realized the reason for it.’

******

None of the restrictions which so hampered any members of the Legation when they wanted to go to the Palace applied to me, because I had no official position, and nobody seemed to know what I was doing in Athens. But Athens is a very small place, and very soon some remarkable legends began to spread about me. Some people said I was in the pay of the Bolsheviks, others in the pay of Germany, others that I was a young English millionaire forced to fly my country because of some scandal connected with a Greek lady, and that I was in Athens to settle it up. Being very young, I rather enjoyed these legends and had Compton MacKenzie not apparently forestalled me, should probably have purchased a wardrobe in keeping with the part I was supposed to be playing, consisting of a red tie, a pair of check knickerbockers, and a heavy gold watch-chain. However, I contented myself with a black evening cloak, lined with pale grey satin, that called forth rude and Bacchic remarks from the ladies of light virtue who lurked under the lemon trees of an evening.

I only realized, however, the true thrill of being a political intriguer one night towards the end of my stay in Athens when I was walking home, along the deserted sea-front, after a night’s gambling at a little roulette place near the harbour. It sounds very dissipated, and I suppose, in some ways, it was. Here is the story:

The Greeks are born gamblers. They would gamble away their final drachma on the slightest provocation, and frequently do so. Every other day in the streets of Athens one sees boys going round with long slender sticks, on which are pinned fluttering tickets of blue and white—and very pretty they look, rustling in the wind. These are lottery tickets, and have a tremendous sale. I had often purchased them, without any result, and finding some sort of gambling essential to existence, decided to throw in my lot with the roulette players of the Piræus.

I wish you could have seen that Greek gambling house. It lay in a rather deserted position facing the sea, along a road that had never been finished. On a moonlight night you could see from its windows the white sails of the ships that search for sponges and tunny fish among the waters of the Archipelago, but on other nights you would see nothing at all except a solitary lamp-post outside the door.

Inside, one discovered a sordid room, containing one long table, round which were congregated a remarkable assemblage of persons. There were Russian ladies of apparent wealth, Italians, swarthy and silent, excitable Greek merchants, now and then a German, some odd-looking Americans, and Venizelists and Royalists all jumbled together, drinking quantities of bad whisky and smoking black cigarettes.

The value of a classical education, in such surroundings, was immediately apparent. For one thing, the numbers were almost exactly the same as one learnt at school, and sometimes even the pronunciation also. For example, ochto was eight and deka was ten. That was a great help. In addition, ‘mavro,’ for black, sounded like an old friend, and it was easy to recognize ‘coichinou’ the word cochineal (with which, if I remember rightly, the Greek ladies used to dye their robes in days gone by).

Play seemed to me to be very high that night, although, as my later and more abandoned years have taught me, it was not. Still, a man with heavy pouched eyelids and a made-up bow had a habit of putting fifty pounds on a single number, and sometimes winning it, which made my hundred drachma pieces look very foolish. However, I successfully lost twenty pounds, and feeling exceedingly irritable left the room.

It was then about two o’clock in the morning. I hadn’t any money to pay for a taxi, and in any case there were no taxis about. And so I started on the walk home—about seven miles.

Now, the streets of Athens at night, especially of this part of Athens, are not as the streets of Piccadilly. For one thing, they are execrably lit. For another they contain large holes in the middle of the road, in which it would be quite possible to bury a dead horse. For another they contain—dogs, lean, snarling, yellow-fanged dogs that rush out from the darkness, growling and yelping, and taking an unhealthy interest in one’s heels.

Several such came out during my journey home. I put on a wooden expression, lifted my feet very high, took quick short steps, and muttered at intervals ‘pretty doggy, pretty doggy.’ It seemed the only thing to do. And by and by the pretty doggies departed, though the sound of their strident voices still echoed in the distance.

I was now on a long, straight road, bounded on either side by pepper trees and shrubberies of orange and lemon. Suddenly out of the shadows appeared a figure ... the figure of a youngish man in a badly fitting black coat. It sounds dramatic and it was dramatic. Worse even than the dogs.

This person accosted me. Where was I going? (He spoke in French, and was, I believe, a Frenchman.)

I was going home, thank him very much.

So was he.

Indeed.

It was pleasant, was it not, to have company on such a lonely road?

Delightful. (Pretty doggy, pretty doggy.)

Especially on so warm a night.

Yes.

Ah! but I had not experienced the summer. That was epouvantable.

I looked at him quickly. How did he know that I had not ‘experienced’ the summer?

‘I know you quite well,’ he said. And he calmly gave my name, age, address, and occupation.

This was all very odd. I walked a little more quickly. Athens was still some five miles away. I could see the Acropolis gleaming like a distant rock of refuge. A nasty young man, I thought.

Then he began to talk. He talked like a gramophone running at three times its normal speed. A high unnatural voice. A superfluity of gesture. And all about King Constantine. How he had betrayed the Allies. How he had kept a private submarine. How he was a knave, a poltroon, a pig, a female dog. How he had a hoard of German gold. And how....

Here, at a bend in the road, he suddenly stopped, gripped my arm, looked me straight in the eyes and said:

‘And you—you who call yourself an Englishman—are helping him!’

I regarded him as calmly as the circumstances warranted. And in English I said:

‘You appear to be a little mad!’

‘Mad?’ He laughed hysterically, and then—(it sounds ridiculous, but it is perfectly true)—he drew from his pocket a revolver, and though not exactly levelling it at me, put it quite as close as was agreeable, and said:

‘This will tell you to speak of madness.’

Which was highly disturbing. The sudden cessation of the gabble of chatter, the wild look on his face, the revolver. Something had to be done. I did it. I smiled, drew in my breath, and executed a powerful high kick. It hit him, by a miracle, on the wrist; the thing went off, spluttering up the gravel; he dropped it with a howl; I kicked it again on to the grass, and then I ran.

All very unheroic. But, on the whole, safe. I ran and I ran down that lonely road, and by the time I had finished running the first streaks of dawn were in the sky, and I was feeling acute pains in my side, my legs, my knees, my brain, everywhere. But at least one had the satisfaction of having outwitted (or outdistanced) a very nasty young man.

Nothing like that ever happened again. I received anonymous letters, all threatening things highly unpleasant. But whether they were from the young man in question I never discovered. And they never materialized.

******

My last night in Athens was spent at the Palace. The Queen had asked me to stay on a little longer in order to trot round with her nephew, Prince Philip of Hesse. I was very glad that I did so, for not only was he a most agreeable young man but by staying those few extra days I also met the Queen of Roumania, who had come hurriedly down to Athens in order to be with her daughter (the Crown Princess of Greece) who was seriously ill.

I shall never forget my first sight of the Queen of Roumania. We were all sitting down in the main salon—Tino, Queen Sophie, Princess Irene, the Crown Prince and Princess of Roumania, some other members of the Court, and myself. The door was slightly open, and through it one could see a long corridor, dimly lighted. I looked down the corridor and I saw coming towards us a figure in trailing robes of white, walking slowly, with head erect, like some divine Lady Macbeth. As she approached, and paused in the doorway, I thought that I had never seen a woman more lovely. The long white sleeves of silk, the girdle of silver at her waist, the hint of diamonds in her hair, the ropes of pearls round her neck. And the face—wide eyes, a forehead that was one hundred per cent. intelligence, a beautiful drooping mouth ... it is rather useless to attempt to describe her. A photograph will do her less injustice than my pen.

Luckily, I was very soon able to have a long talk with her.

Here, clipped of its ‘ma’ams’ and ‘majesties’ is what we talked about:

MYSELF: Is it a fearful bore to be a Queen?

THE QUEEN: It depends what sort of a Queen you are.

MYSELF: But even a Queen like yourself? Don’t you long sometimes to be able to get away from it all, to be terribly simple, to have all sorts of adventures which you can’t have now?

THE QUEEN (nodding, a little sadly): There are moods, of course. But I like being a Queen because I glory in the fact that perhaps I am of some use.

Here she paused, and said, with a smile: ‘You know, I understand a great deal more about life than you might believe. If I had been Marie Antoinette, I should never have asked why the people could not eat cake. And you must not think that because I am a Queen, my knowledge of life and “adventure,” as you call it, is only gained from novels. Do you know one of my chief regrets? It is that I am not in a position to publish a novel which would deal with life from every aspect.

‘I said “publish,” not write. I could begin to write it to-morrow, if I wanted, but when it came out, everybody would say, “How can she know about things like this? How can a woman who sits half her life in her palace” (the last thing I ever do) “know about the ways, the intrigues, the marriages, the love-affairs, the sordid squabbles for money, that are part of our daily lives?” And saying that, they would reject my book in advance. But I do know,’ (thumping her hand on the table), ‘I do know....

‘Then,’ I asked her, ‘do you manage to write at all? I mean, do you find any way of getting rid of what one might call creative emotion?’

‘Oh, yes. I write fairy stories. Nobody can accuse me, in those, of knowing more than I ought to do.’ She laughed. ‘Perhaps that does not quite express my meaning, but you understand, don’t you? Fairy love, fairy honour, fairy intrigue, fairy magic—in those I express all the emotions which otherwise I should be forced to keep to myself. And Roumania is full of fairies! Really it is. Full to the brim. When I first came out there, from England, I hardly understood how deeply my people were versed in folk-lore, how passionately real the little elves and spirits were to every peasant on the hills. But I understand now, and I, too, have caught something of that spirit.

‘Do you know,’ she added suddenly, ‘that I have written a fairy film? I wish you could see it. It’s rather fascinating. It has a method of production which I think is rather new. Some parts of it have been undeveloped, so that you get the impression of a moving negative. That is to say, all the figures have white hair, white eyes, white clothes, dark hands and faces, and all sorts of queer and very attractive shadows. If you can imagine those figures made very small (which is quite possible) and then imagine them dancing in a sort of half-silhouette over the crest of a hill ... can you?’

She had spoken with such animation, such intense interest, that her face was quite transfigured.

A very remarkable woman, I thought, as she drifted away to talk to somebody else. And largely because, of all the Queens in Europe, she is the only one who really dramatizes her position. She is, in the best sense of the word, a poseuse, by which I mean that she knows exactly how to present herself to the public imagination. Realizing, as she does, that in these days the Throne has to borrow a great deal of thunder of the stage if it is to keep its position, and that showmanship is half the craft of sovereignty, she acts accordingly. All her gestures are studied ... sometimes daring, sometimes startlingly ‘unconventional,’ as her recent journalistic confessions have amply shown.

But they remain the gestures of a Queen.