THE NETHERLANDS: Queen Emma Celebrates

With habitual gravity and majesty theQueen Mother of the Netherlands returned, last week, to her Summer Palace at Soestdyk, after completing a series of State visits to each of the eleven provinces of Holland. From the Zuider Zee to Zealand loyal Dutchmen had barked gruff cheers. And now good Queen Mother Emma was home in time for a placid celebration of her 70th birthday. Century-old trees, towering above the low, squat Summer Palace, seemed to rustle discreet congratulations to a Queen now almost as venerable and quite as upstanding as they. How much the royal trees have looked upon, and how much she. . . . Princess Emma. Sixty-two was the age of dissolute King Willem III of the Netherlands, justly famed as “The Dutch Don Juan,” when in 1879 he married Princess Emma of Waldeck-Pyrmont, who was then 21.

Dutch courtiers know a story of how the little Princess made herself Queen of the Netherlands by a single bold stroke. Senile King Willem had been paying court to her elder sister, Princess Helen, who tactfully refused him on account of his age and reputation. At this crucial moment young blooming Princess Emma is said to have entered the room, exclaiming reproachfully, “Oh Helen, / should never refuse to be a queen!” To counteract the sensation produced by this generally believed tale, Princess Emma’s mother herself arranged to convey a subsequently made proposal of marriage from King Willem to Princess Emma, and gave out that the “surprised” Princess cast down her eyes, exclaiming, “Oh Mother! Do you want me to accept him? Do you order me to do so?” “No, no, dear child. Make your own choice. Only the King is lonely and unhappy.” “Unhappy,” cried Little Minx Emma, according to her mother, “Then I will goto him and to them—my future subjects! I will do my duty, with God’s help.” Queen Emma. When Old King Willem proceeded to beget the present Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, her mother, Queen Emma, had much ado to control a little Princess even more energetic, exuberant and wilful than she had been herself. For example, the Present Queen of the Netherlands behaved most obstreperously when, at the age of nine, she was compelled to change trains at a small railway station. Rushing up to the station master she stamped her foot, cried: “I am afraid, Meinheer, that you are negligent. … I am the Princess of the Netherlands, sole heiress to the Throne. … I am not accustomed to change trains.” Oddly enough such displays of temper proved extremely popular among stolid Hollanders, who rejoiced that their Crown Princess seemed to possess all the characteristic dash and spirit of the Royal House of Orange. Wise Queen Emma curbed her daughter so adroitly that the present Queen Wilhelmina was once heard to exclaim with girlish penitence. “Oh, I’ve been naughty again! Mother says so with her eyes.” Queen Mother Emma. The death of King Willem (1890) and the ascension of Queen Wilhelmina reduced Widow Emma to the obscurity of Queen Motherhood. Withdrawing to her own palace, she placidly watched while the high spirits of Queen Wilhelmina were tamed by responsibility until today Her Majesty is addicted to coining and obeying such dull maxims as: “By respecting traditions we honor the Dead, who have created them through toil and labor.” Quite tame is the present Crown Princess Juliana of the Netherlands, plump product of a mother who has definitely settled down. Birthday Flush. On the 70th birthday of Queen Emma, last week, the chief demonstration took the form of a cavalry charge by 150 horsemen up the leafy avenue of the Summer Palace. The cavalrymen were of 21 nations and are in Holland as equestrian performers in the famed Olympic Games (see p. 24). Netherlands recalled that Her Majesty Queen Wilhelmina exhibits a pious, Protestant aversion for the Olympic Games, which she regards as a deplorable pagan survival from the pre-Christian days of Ancient Greece.