Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1902-05-10
WHEN ROYALTY [; READS
II
Favorite Studies Of Those
Born to the Purple.
MODERN STUDENT
UP-To-DATE LITERATURE FOR
THE YOUNGEST.
But the Older Crown Heads Like
Others to Do the Reading for
Them - Their Ways.
Written for The Evening Star.

Copyright. 1902. by Stephen Austin.)
In the good old days kings and queens
were not expected to know anything about
literature; 1t was one Of the prerogatives
| or royalty to be ignorant. The past century
| mas changed all that. A king has to be a
walking encyclopedia; a queen wins ad-
mlration from her people when it is known
that she loves books and has a cultivated
taste. Young princes have to wade through
| languages, science and political economy;
small pr1ncesses are expected to have
loving acquaintance with poets and the
better sort of novelists. The change has
come about within our own times in nearly
every case the younger sovereigns and roy
alties generally are highly cultured, devo-
tees of learning and literature, while the
older crowned heads are as empty Of book
knowledge as so many plough boys.
Take the English royal family for an ex-
ample The late Queen Victoria was un-
doubtedly a woman Of great brain power
and character, she probably knew as much
about the ruling of her immense posses
sions as any of her ministers, and some
times ran very close to violating the I'M
written English constitution by putting
direct personal restraint upon the reSpon-
sible heads Of state departments. Yet her
literary taste was utterly beneath contempt.
She read good deal of Tennyson, no doubt,
but 1t was mainly because of a certain SEN
timental1ty in which her poet laureate met
her own womanly feeling: what was really
fine and great in Lord Tennyson's work al
most certainly left her unmoved. Her
diaries-rewritten mostly for publication by
titled secretary-show that she had no
sound literary judgment And her later
reading was either in books of devotion and
sermons, or in novels of the least intel
lectual order. Her indirectly expressed APP
prevail of a book several times sent up
sales. as in the case of Rhoda Broughton or
Rita but 1t almost always meant that
the book was devoid of all real value The
old queen read simply to while away the
heavy hours She belonged, able woman
though she was, to the age of uncultivated
royal persons
Her son, the present king, belongs prac-
ucally to the same. period; he is not in
the first bloom of his youth, and he, too,
is no great reader, certainly not a thinker
or a critic. Much less able than his mother,
he practically is an uneducated man, ex-
cept in the sense that, he is man of the
world and knows life very thoroughly in
all it's phases 1t is nowhere recorded that
he ever expressed an opinion of a book;
probably he has read very few Certainly
him to be completely out of touch with the
world Of thought. He represents fairly
well the jovial medieval monarch who
paid learned men to know things for
him while he himself went his way in
contented indifference to all the intellectual
life of his day.
Wales and the Kaiser.
The contrast of the old order with the
new becomes evident in the case of his son,
the Prince Of Wales The prince is not
a conspicuously learned man. not perhaps
brilliantly gifted man, but he is far
ahead of the king in his interest in letters
and in thought. To hear him speak in pub
lie, If only at some absurd unvelling cere-
mony or the laying Of a foundation stone,
is to recognize at once a man fairly abreast
of the intellectual achievement of his day,
man of personal convictions acquired by
reading and matured by meditation. He is
a we'll educated, cultivated man, represent
ing the new generation of royalty.
On about the same intellectual plane
stands the much talked-of kaiser He it is
true, is not great reader of books He has
been called the yellow journalist of royal
ty" on account Of his love for ultramodern-
ism, his passion for splurge and display.
Naturally he is a great reader of newspa-
pers and magazines; he prefers to get in
formation rapidly and in the vivid popular
form in which the ready writer for the
press serves it up. He lets other people do
the work of research for him; he gets his
learning at secondhand, but he lets moth
ing escape; he is in the closest touch with
modern science, art, literature, politics and
personality. l have heard a member of the
German embassy at Paris say the kaiser's
ready memory, diligently furnished by years
Of newspapers and magazine reading in four
languages, enables him to pour out streams
of talk for hours without ever being de-
tected in error Of fact though touching on
nearly every phase OF human activity in
the past hundred years.
The attache thought. by the way, that
Wilhelm had little or no practical ac-
quaintance with the history of the world
in former ageS-except in so far as his fe-
fish. the house of the Hohenzollerns, was
concerned. The kaiser Is man of his own
day, intensely interested in the present and
the possibilities OF the future, but cold to-
ward the past. His press bureau, by the
way, is possibly the best equipped in the
world; a numerous staff of imperial read
ers'' wades through German, French, En-
glish and American and oriental papers
every day to clip for him editorial matter
and articles on literature and science which
may interest him. AS a sort of side dish,
he devours also fact-articles dealing with
sport, especially, ! have heard. with pugil-
ISM The kaiser does some boxing himself
in the privacy of Potsdam; it is very prob
able that Prince Henry of Prussia returning
from the United States trip brought a good
deal of ring gossip with which to regale
the leisure of his imperial brother.
Italy's King and Queen.
The same contrast that I have pointed
out between the older and younger genera
lions Of royalty in the case of English
reigning is exhibited also in the Italian
court. 1t is well known that old King
those who liked them" and contented him
self with being a mighty hunter on the
Alps. Queen Marguerite was equally in
different to literature She cared for moth
ing but works Of piety, and simple little
stories such as children read. Their son,
the present king, is OF another way of
thinking. He is a student, almost a schol-
ar. meditative. deeply read man, while the
new Queen Helena, daughter of the queer
old Prince of Montenegro, is as learned a
woman lives today. "a
In Roman society, where deep culture is
looked upon as something almost uncanny,
she is pronounced 2 pedant The Roman
ladies that wait on her complain Of having
to read to her royal mistress heavy scien-
tific treatises and ponderous historical dis
QUESTIONS, varied by plunges into profound
tonnes dealing with mysticism and philoso-
ply; they sigh for the easy prattle and So
c;ety gossip which was all that Queen Mar
guerite's simple taste required from her
companions. In Italy there is, of course,
another crowned head to be thought Of
the venerable pontiff, Leo. He lives daily
in the midst Of the stateliest library in the
world; the peerless Vatican collections Of
priceless, ancient volumes have been for
h iS do}lu nd he