The Court of Sweden is, however, characterised by Scandinavian simplicity, although this is naturally not so strongly marked as at the ideal Court of King Haakon and Queen Maud. The Queen of Sweden’s health is too bad to allow her to appear in public. Hence the principal figure at Court, apart from the King, is the Crown Princess, before her marriage Princess Margaret of Connaught, and she has contrived to give it just a touch of the elegance of the Court of St. James’s. I lunched with her when I was in Stockholm, and she told me how much she loves her Swedish life. Her marriage is a very happy one. King Gustav has inherited from his father a great charm of manner and a fine figure, which devotion to tennis helps him to keep. He is fond of all sorts of sport and is an excellent shot.
I used to see a good deal of the late King Oscar. His French ancestry and his personal charm made him very popular in France, a country he loved, and during his numerous visits to Paris I had the opportunity of getting to know him well, and I became very fond of him. I was in Sweden in 1897, travelling incognito, and I remember sitting down to rest one day within sight of Sophie Rue, King Oscar’s Norman villa, and, as I looked at the peaceful home of my old friend, I hoped that his last years would not be embittered by the dissolution of the union between Sweden and Norway. But the blow came to the “poet king,” whose spirit seemed to live above the dull realities of life, and it came when he was old and broken down with the illness which at last caused his death. Kings must yield to the imperious will of democracy, and I look forward to the time when Sweden will have the advantages enjoyed by her sister kingdom.
I visited Denmark as well as Norway and Sweden that autumn, and there also I remarked the growth of democratic ideas. It is a peaceful country, and the souls of the people seem as clear as their blue eyes. The Danes are a kind, industrious and simple race, and, if they strike one as being less hardy and vigorous than the other Scandinavian races, they certainly have the same courteous manners as the Swedes and the Norwegians.
The first time that I visited Denmark King Christian, the father of Queen Alexandra and the Empress Marie, was reigning, and the castle, in which his large family used to assemble for those reunions which he loved, was looked on by the Danes with a sort of reverence. But I remember that once, when I was travelling incognito, I drove past the castle in a cab, and the friendly driver, anxious to oblige a tourist, told me that a great family gathering was taking place there. He reeled off the names of the world-famous personages who had gathered round the King, and he did so with as much indifference as a London cabman displayed when he pointed out Mme. Tussaud’s to me the first time I was in London, and casually explained that wax figures were kept there. The attitude of the Danish cabman towards the Royal Family, which seemed to me curious years ago, appears to be that of most Danes at the present time. They have ceased to take any particular interest in the doings of their Sovereign and his relations. Nothing strikes me more, as I go about Europe, than the fact that, if I may be allowed the expression, the market value of princes and princesses has enormously decreased.