“The power behind the German throne”
Frederick the Great, who died satisfied that he had trumped Madame de Pompadour during the war and probably hastened her death, would have turned over in his grave if he could have seen his Prussia being ruled by an American courtesan barely a century later. Mary, Countess von Waldersee, was the Bible-thumping daughter of a wealthy New York grocer who married Colonel Alfred von Waldersee, the quartermaster general of the German army. In Berlin, silver-haired Mary created a salon and entertained the right people lavishly, including Prince William, the heir to the throne.
The older, wiser woman had a great calming effect on the nervous young prince, who took great pains to follow her advice. Soon secret diplomatic dispatches sent from Berlin to the corners of Europe contained suspicions as to the nature of the relationship, even though pious Mary was two years older than the prince’s mother. Ministers and ambassadors suddenly became quite respectful to her. When the French called her a Pompadour, it was the greatest compliment. When the Germans called her a Pompadour, it was the deadliest insult.
In 1888 Prince Willy became Kaiser Wilhelm II and soon referred all political matters to Mary before he announced his opinion. American newspapers went wild. The New York Tribune proclaimed, “Former New York Woman Dominates New Emperor.”19 The New York Transcript announced, “American Princess Sways the Haughty Kaiser—Romantic Story of Merchant’s Daughter Who Is Power Behind the German Throne.”20 A Boston paper declared, “Every step undertaken by the Kaiser is the outcome of her influence and intrigue.”21
The New York Tribune stated, “The Countess von Waldersee is so much Commander-in-Chief that she can toss out general officers filling the highest posts.”22 The New York Times reported, “Fortunate indeed is the incoming Ambassador who succeeds in winning the prestige of her personal interest. To him opens as by magic the door to the charmed inner circle, which otherwise is only to be approached after countless struggles with the all-pervading redtapeism of German official life.”23
Mary angled for the speedy demise of the all-powerful Chancellor Bismarck. She told the kaiser that he could never truly rule with the popular Bismarck in the way. While this was true, Mary’s main objective in removing the Iron Chancellor was to clear the path for her husband to succeed him. Using all her persuasion on the kaiser, Mary worked long and hard to topple the giant.
In March 1890, Bismarck fell. Mary and Alfred waited confidently for the fruit of their seventeen years of joint effort—Alfred’s appointment as chancellor. But instead of immediately replacing Bismarck with Count von Waldersee, the kaiser chose another man for the job. Egged on by his new set of debauched friends, Willy decided that with Bismarck gone, Mary was the one standing in the way of his exercising complete power. He bristled as he read the newspapers referring to Mary as the power behind the throne.
Instead of promoting Count von Waldersee, the kaiser publicly demoted him from the highest post in the army to commander of a corps in a suburb of Hamburg, making his disgrace the talk of Berlin. Mary and Alfred lived out their lives in dignified exile. Without Mary’s calming influence, Willy gradually degenerated into a paranoid megalomaniac, setting the wheels in motion for World War I.
“She does not meddle and shall not meddle”
The one royal mistress who never had even a taste of power during a twenty-year tenure was Henrietta Howard, the mistress of George II of Great Britain. Though Henrietta had no political interests, she would have liked to procure positions for her friends and family, the time-honored perk of a royal mistress. “Upon my word,” she bemoaned to an old friend, “I have not had one place to dispose of, or you should not be without one.”24
Henrietta’s friend Lord Hervey wrote that she was keenly aware “that some degree of contempt would attend the not having what in her situation the world would expect her to have, though she had never pretended to be possessed of it, and that a mistress who could not get power was not a much more agreeable or respectable character than a minister who could not keep it.”25
After gentle Henrietta’s retirement, George II’s next mistress, Lady Deloraine, unsettled the queen and court. The new favorite was a mincing, scheming little jade who boasted every time the king made love to her. One day Lord Walpole remarked how much he regretted that Lady Deloraine was the king’s choice. But Lord Hervey replied, “If she got the ear of anyone in power, it might be of very bad consequence, but since ’tis only the King, I think it of no great signification.”26
After the queen’s death, George assuaged his grief by sending now and then for Lady Deloraine, even though she had taken to drinking strong Spanish wine and offended the king with the stink of it. Afraid of Lady Deloraine’s political meddling, the prime minister decided it would be best to bring over from Hanover the king’s German mistress, Madame Walmoden, who seemed politically innocuous. In the meantime, he shrugged off the king’s sporadic encounters with that little minx Deloraine. “People must wear old gloves until they can get new,” he sighed.27
To the king’s delight, Madame Walmoden came over. To her delight, she was created the duchess of Yarmouth. To the ministers’ delight, she did not interfere with politics. Gradually, however, Lady Yarmouth became a conduit of political influence between the king and his ministers, and a wholly beneficial one. She informed the ministers of the right time to approach the king with important matters and how to broach them. She prevented the more irritating politicians from upsetting George.
The French, studying the influence of the English king’s mistress, found she suffered in comparison to their own Madame de Pompadour. A French nobleman in London wrote to Paris sneeringly, “Whereas Madame de Pompadour shares the absolute power of Louis XV, Lady Yarmouth shares the absolute impotence of George II.”28
Unlike Louis XV, who encouraged his mistress to make political appointments, George was outraged when he learned that then secretary of state William Pitt had requested an interview with Lady Yarmouth to discuss his candidates for various positions. “Mr. Pitt shall not go to that channel anymore,” the king thundered. “She does not meddle and shall not meddle.”29
But if the king remained stubbornly oblivious of his mistress’s political influence, his courtiers did not. As the wit Lord Chesterfield noted, Lady Yarmouth must be seen as the keystone of His Majesty’s opinion, “for even the wisest man, like the chameleon, takes…the hue of what he is often upon.”30
8. Red Whores of Babylon—Public Opinion and the Mistress