Death of Victoria

Monday--"Baron Subkoff was here for dinner. He appears to be a most interesting young man--slender, dark and good-looking. He is very intelligent, and I shall continue to invite him."

Wednesday--"Baron Subkoff came today and we played tennis. I hope he will continue to call on me. He strikes me as the ideal companion for a lady, and I have an impression that he is also fond of me."

Saturday--"I wish there were more folks about the place--I would not then feel myself quite so lonesome. I am becoming more attached to him each day."

Later--"Today he asked my hand and offered me his. Of course, I was happy, and naturally accepted. But what will my relatives say to this marriage? But I shall break down all barriers. Titles, money-- I shall give up all, to conserve my happiness. My fiance loves me and I love him. I feel that a new life is spread out before me."

Thus, boundlessly in love at the age of 61, wrote a rich woman in her diary two years ago. Death came to her in shame and poverty last week. She died of pneumonia without receiving a word or line of sympathy from her first cousin George V, King and Emperor. Her brother, Wilhelm II, telephoned to ask if she would like to see him at the last. "Nein, nein," whispered Victoria of Hohenzollern, "I don't want to see anybody but my nurses."

Almost as Death came a limousine swirled up to the hospital door. Out stepped the dying woman's younger sister, Margaret of Hohenzollern, wife of the Landgrave of Hesse, who accompanied her. They hurried up the stairs--too late.

Most U. S. news organs and some U. S. news-services put a wrong slant on the story. To the exclusion of other truths it was reported that no Hohenzollern was present at the Death, that a Prussian adjutant of the ex-Kaiser had barked: "The attendance of His Majesty at the funeral is wholly out of the question."

In point of fact Wilhelm II kept in telephonic touch with the hospital up to the last moment, sent a wreath to the funeral, appeared more than most of his entourage to have forgiven Princess Victoria, once his "Little Vickie"* and favorite sister, for the shame and ridicule she brought upon the House of Hohenzollern by marrying Subkoff--a gigolo.

Famed but false is the story that infatuated Victoria dubbed Subkoff "Baron" herself with a sword belonging to her ex-Imperial brother. Her diary is the best proof that Subkoff was presented to her as a Russian nobleman exiled but honorable. Actually his father was a cobbler. He himself has admitted practicing the lowest profession--pimping--at Marseilles, where he guided low-minded tourists to the foulest stews in France. But when presented to Victoria, eleven years after the death of her husband Prince Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe, Alexander Subkoff seemed personable, a gentleman, an "interesting" young man of 27.

Everyone knows how in less than a year Gigolo Subkoff ran through Princess Victoria's $3,000,000 fortune, squandered it on wenches, motors and champagne while she adoringly forgave. Little known in the U. S. are Subkoff's memoirs: Ma Vie et Mes Amours, printed recently at Paris. He writes with surprising decency--for a gigolo--of Princess Victoria, explains as delicately as possible how a youth of 27 can fall in love with a widow of 61:

"On our way home [from his first meeting with the princess] I said to my cousin, 'I never realized that the Kaiser had a sister still so young.'

"'What?' cried he. 'How old do you think she is?'

"'In her forties,' said I without hesitation.

"'Why, she is over sixty!'

"'Great God!' I exclaimed in stupefaction, 'I should never have thought that. How times have changed! Women of that age used to wear grandmothers' bonnets. Today it seems they play tennis like young girls.'"

Expelled from Germany last year as an "undesirable," sued for divorce last fortnight by Princess Victoria, whose attorneys named a barmaid, Subkoff was arrested last week and jailed as he slipped into Germany, ostensibly to attend the funeral at the Friedrichshof, near Cronberg, seat of the Landgrave of Hesse. There, in the Taunus Mountains, amid rustling, pungent pines, Victoria of Hohenzollern was buried in the presence of her weeping sister Margaret and their Royal Highnesses the abdicated Grand Duke of Hesse and Duke of Brunswick.

*Granddaughter, of course, of "Big Vickie," first British Empress.