The Queen's Recovery

Here are some bittersweet reminiscences of Queen Elisabeth's recovery from depression after King Albert's death, from Catherine Barjansky, a Russian artist and a friend of the Belgian Royal Family.

For three years Queen Elizabeth, always so quick and active, had lived in a state of mental and physical paralysis. She could not fulfill her duties; in time she could not walk. 

One day, in a desperate effort to arouse her, I asked, "Why don't you take up your sculpture again?" Music, I knew, was out of the question; it only lacerates unhappy nerves. But sculpture is a silent art, and the wet clay is like a compress on sick nerves.

"I will try it for fifteen minutes, just to please you," she said.

"Why don't you do your brother?" I suggested.

She agreed, and her brother came. To our surprise and delight she worked for hours that day, and began again the next. That was the beginning of her recovery; slowly she went from one activity to another.

She also modeled a bust of her gardener, Monsieur Parat. It was an excellent piece of work and was exhibited several times. She had it cast in bronze and planned to please Parat by putting it in the greenhouse  that he loved as though it were his child. She promised him that it would be put there with great ceremony and a day was set in June, 1940. In May, however, Belgium was invaded, and the Queen mother left the palace of Laeken to work in a hospital at Ostend. Later, when she returned from the hospital and King Leopold came back as a prisoner of the Germans, they learned that Monsieur Parat had died. 

After the tragedy of Queen Astrid's death, Queen Elizabeth once more took up the duties of her position, lavishing her affection on her grandchildren. 

I was there when she was modeling the little Prince, Albert - a sculpture for which she later received a prize at the autumn salon in Paris. 

"You know," he told me, "when I grow up, I am going to be very rich." 

The use children make of words has always fascinated me, and I asked him, "What do you mean- you are going to be rich?" 

"Oh," he said, "I am going to love lots of people." (Portraits with Backgrounds, 1947, by Catherine Barjansky, pp. 156-157)

Happier Times

Marche-les-Dames is forever associated with the tragic death of Albert I and all the ominous consequences for the Belgian monarchy. Nonetheless, it is also the place where the roi alpiniste spent some of the happiest hours of his life. In her memoirs, the Russian sculptress Catherine Barjansky, a friend of the Belgian royal family, describes such a joyful outing:

I was working in the bungalow one day with the Queen when I received a telephone call from my husband, who was spending a week at Namur as the guest of the Baron Carton de Wiart, whose wife was one of the Queen's ladies in waiting. She was a violinist and extremely musical.

"You ought to come here," my husband told me. "It is divine. Why don't you ask the Queen to come with you?"

I laughed, and the Queen asked, "What is the joke?"

"Alexandre wants your majesty and me to come to Namur."

She smiled and with her light quick steps crossed the room and disappeared into the park. A few minutes later she returned, radiant, and declared, "Tomorrow morning I shall take Madame Barjansky and my violin and go to spend a day in Namur."

When I reached the palace at Laeken the next morning, there was another surprise. The King had decided to accompany us, and he was waiting in front of the palace with his blue Ford. It seems the Queen had telephoned to the baroness:

"I am going to bring Madame Barjansky and my chauffeur, and I would like to have my chauffeur join us for lunch."

"Of course, your majesty," the surprised baroness had replied.

"And I want your husband to show my chauffeur the cliffs on the Meuse River." The baroness laughed as she realised who the chauffeur was.

The King wore civilian clothes and one of the large hats made for him in Egypt. He drove extremely fast, faster than I have ever ridden before or since. As we crossed the bridge at the entrance to Namur, a detachment of soldiers was going over. They glanced at the car without recognizing the King. The Queen laughed. "Your army ignores you, my dear," she said mischievously.

The Baron Carton de Wiart owned a beautiful old castle on the bank of the Meuse, and we were very gay at luncheon. The only solemn face was that of the butler who served us.

After lunch, the King, the baron, his daughter, and a cousin of hers took a boat across the Meuse to climb the sheer chalk cliffs that bear the curious name of Marche les Dames. The Queen, the baroness, my husband, and a viola player went indoors to play quartets. It was a beautiful autumn day, and I sat down on the bank of the river with a pair of binoculars, watching the climbers on the other bank of the river. Even with these strong glasses, they were only small black silhouettes that appeared and disappeared. And I was afraid, so afraid that it amazed me to think the Queen could be playing serenely, without anxiety. Whenever any of the climbers disappeared from view my heart stopped beating.

It was all imagination, I thought. Of course there was no danger. There could not possibly be any danger. But there was danger, for six months later the King lost his life in those tragic mountains.

That afternoon we were all waiting as the mountain climbers rowed back across the river. For fun we waved a Belgian flag and sang the Brabanconne, the Belgian anthem. The baron and the girls were exhausted, tired, dirty, their clothes torn. The King was as fresh as though he were just starting. He did not even need to change his collar. Indeed, he seemed more rested than when he had started out, for mountain climbing was his favorite form of relaxation.

"Imagine!" the baron said, "He climbs a mountain the way I would walk down the street. He handled the ropes; he pulled us up; he is really amazing."

The giant King, pleased and smiling timidly, decided it was much too beautiful a day to go back to Brussels.

"We'll remain here at the castle for dinner," he decided.

At once the whole place began to stir with uneasy movement, because the King and Queen had been expected only for lunch.

It was midnight when we reached Brussels, again traveling at the same dizzy pace, and they drove me back home before going back to Laeken.

~Portraits with Backgrounds, 1947, pp. 147-149

Photograph of the Meuse in Namur, courtesy of Jean-Pol Grandmont

The Palette

Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians was devastated by the loss of her husband, King Albert I, in 1934. Yet, following the equally tragic death of her daughter-in-law, Queen Astrid, in 1935, she forced herself to rally, in order to support her grieving son, King Leopold III, and assist his motherless children.

Meanwhile, political tensions in Europe were mounting, as World War II swiftly approached. Belgium, devastated in World War I, would soon be hurled, yet again, into a disastrous conflict. For the second time, in less than 30 years, a German invasion would overwhelm the country. 

The itinerant, Russian-born sculptress, Catherine Barjansky, was a close friend of the Belgian royal family during the 1920's and 1930's. In her memoirs, Portraits with Backgrounds, she touchingly recalls Albert, Elisabeth, Leopold, Astrid, and their children. In Chapter 21, entitled "The Palette," she captures the atmosphere of the period immediately preceding Hitler's invasion of Belgium in May, 1940.

The war had already begun in France, but it was then in that strange quiescent stage which made people refer to it as the "sitting war." There was uneasiness in Belgium, but no sense of immediate danger. Nobody believed Hitler would repeat the tactics of Kaiser Wilhelm and send his troops marching through Belgium.

There was no place left in Europe where an artist could create undisturbed. Alexandre (her husband) and I discussed it over and over. I wanted to leave, but he preferred to remain. His friends were there and his public and his life. But for me, life is not static, it constantly renews itself; there is always a fresh canvass on which to create a new picture...

At length we came to the conclusion that he would stay in Europe... and I would go away...

I began to arrange for my passport, visas, and steamer tickets. The evening before my departure I walked for the last time with the Queen (Elisabeth) and we stood beside the lake (in the park at Laeken Castle) with its hundreds of black and white swans. During the war, all the swans disappeared. I do not know whether they were eaten by the Germans or whether they died of starvation.

That night there was a moon which made the whole park unreal, as though it concealed untold mysteries. And indeed, I never came to the end of its surprises in all those years. 

For instance, there was a little pavilion where long ago King Leopold II had lived. For many years the doors had been locked on its empty rooms. Then on one of her walks in the park, the Queen came across the pavilion and decided to make her home there. After the death of King Albert, she found it too painful to go on living in the palace rooms where she had been so exceedingly happy with her husband. 

The pavilion was a one-story building in the middle of the woods, wide and low, with a terrace from which there was a magical view of the lake and its swans. The big living rooms were furnished in simple, modern style, with deep armchairs drawn up to the fireplace. Everything was done in light green and pearl- grey. Beyond this were the Queen's personal rooms. There were two entrances, one from the park and one from the green-house, through which, in case of rain, she could make her way to the palace where her son, King Leopold, was living with his three children.

And once the Queen showed me a fairy-tale house in the depths of the woods. It was a house which she had planned for her grandchildren; a charming, imaginative world of play and make-believe that could have been created only by a poetic woman. It was a small cottage whose roof was made of turquoise-blue tiles. The living room was done in Swiss style and had a big Dutch oven. Each child had his own room, all of them decorated in an amusing way with the walls painted by a young Belgian artist. In every room there were birds in cages, and flowers and plants at the windows. Near by there was a small enclosed paddock for horseback riding.

Prince Baudouin, the oldest son- and the only one of the three who did not dislike the public appearances which they were all required to make from time to time- had a room whose walls were decorated with sketches representing all the sports: a man on horseback, someone skiing down a hill, people playing tennis. In little Prince Albert's room, there were reproductions of all his toys in a frieze around the walls: all sorts of animals and trains and games and playthings. Princess Josephine had a gay and cozy little room in which she could study, and a big kitchen where she learned to cook. 

I remember a funny scene. The Queen was seated near the window of the pavilion, drawing, when little Princess Josephine raced into the room, clutching in one hand her coat and in the other a toy electric iron which had been given her as a present. 

"It's a real iron!" she cried. "I can iron my coat!" 

She plugged in the iron which soon heated. The little girl was so excited that she hurled herself at the Queen who fell on the floor, her drawing flew out of the window, and all three of us laughed madly. 

During those last days before the catastrophe, I often met King Leopold in the park, dressed in blue dungarees, his collar open. He was sunburned, and with his golden hair and blue eyes he was a handsome man. He glowed with health, for he frequently played golf and he went swimming in the pool which he had constructed in an abandoned chapel in the park that had been built in the reign of Leopold II. As the old King had a mania for glass roofs, the chapel had been build with one, and sunlight flooded the pool...

Not long before I left Belgium, I met the King at the little pavilion. That day Hitler had made one of his hysterical speeches at a big gathering in Berlin, and all Belgium had listened in fear and disgust. King Leopold was white with rage.

"Those Germans!" he exclaimed hotly. "There's only one way to get rid of them- gas them!" 

Later, I remembered that when he returned to the palace at Laeken as a German prisoner, and the newspapers proclaimed that Leopold was a traitor who had been dealing with the enemy.

I find Queen Elisabeth's efforts to keep her own spirits high and cheer her grandchildren so touching, given the family's tragic background, and the atmosphere of impending disaster. Elisabeth's husband and daughter-in-law had, quite recently, died in ghastly accidents; a terrible war was fast approaching. The Queen must have been suffering severely, yet she could be so charming and cheerful, and plan so many lovely things for her family. What courage and generosity! 

Leopold's comment about the Germans is a bit harsh; we must remember he was speaking in anger, at a dark and desperate moment. But at least it proves he was no friend of the Nazis! 

A Queen in a Park

In Chapter 14 of her memoirs, Portraits with Backgrounds, entitled "A Queen in a Park," Catherine Barjansky recalls Queen Elisabeth of Belgium. Mme. Barjansky had met the Queen during the 1920's at an exhibition of the artist's sculptures in Brussels. She was soon invited to do the Queen's portrait, and a friendship arose between Elisabeth and herself. Mme. Barjansky portrays the Belgian queen as a deeply poetic and intellectual woman of great charm, simplicity, warmth, kindness. The artist writes:

After a half-dozen sittings my wax sculpture of the Queen of Belgium was finished, but in the meantime a sort of friendship had grown up between us. She was easy to talk to because she was understanding, direct, and sincere, and entirely lacking in pose. She began asking me to stay after my work for the day was finished, and then to lunch as well.

That too was completely informal. Luncheon was served in her drawing-room; a table already set was rolled in on wheels by two footmen, another table was brought in on which silver-covered dishes stood on electric heaters, and coffee was served in a blue thermos bottle. The footmen left, and we were alone, waiting on each other. Once I remember the Queen smiled her mischievous smile as she offered me a new dish. "Do try some," she urged me. "It is our national dish. I have never liked it, but as I never dared tell the cook, I am always having it."

I liked her not because she was a queen, but because she had the soul of an artist and of an elf, a strange, half-human, half-divine being from legendary forests. She loved the great park at Laeken; her real life was centered on it. She and the King had a warm friendship with the old gardener, Monsieur Parat... I often saw him walking with the King in the park, where he had a little house in which he lived with his family...

In the river that crossed the park there were hundreds of swans, white ones and black. Often the gardener came to tell the Queen that a new swan had been born or to show her nests where there were swan's eggs. 

Once at luncheon the Queen started to tell me something about the greenhouse. "What!" she exclaimed. "You have never seen it? Quick, let's finish lunch and go there." I followed her light quick steps as we hurried to the greenhouse. It was celebrated in Brussels, with its exotic flowers, orchids, and a pergola miles long over whose arch hung fuchsia. It was fantastically beautiful. It was that day she discovered I loved flowers, and never again did I leave the palace without my arms filled with them, placed in the carriage for me at the Queen's orders.

We began to take long walks in the park, talking, talking, for her interests were universal. One day she said she would like to paint in the park with me.

"Madame, I should be delighted," I replied, and I began to tell her some of my ideas about painting.

"Wait a minute," she exclaimed, and she ran out of the room and came back with some water-colors. "Now show me what you mean."

As we were bending over her work the door opened, and an unusually tall man with a beautiful head, even features, blue eyes, and blond hair appeared. 

"Am I disturbing you?" 

"Oh no," she said. "Come in."

That was Albert, the King of Belgium. He spoke slowly, in a low voice, with a pronounced Germanic accent. He squinted near-sightedly through a pince-nez. With almost as much simplicity as his wife, he talked to me for a moment about my husband, whom he knew, and about my son. Then he urged the Queen to go to some audience. Compared with her husband she was tiny... 

The Queen of Belgium did not live in accordance with the usual ideas of court life. She rose early and after a light breakfast began to practice violin, either alone or with her teacher. If it were necessary, she went to the palace in Brussels for an audience or to receive a delegation, and she visited a number of charities and exhibitions. Every day she took a lesson in Flemish, which is not an easy language, as she was obliged to reply in that tongue when she opened bazaars in the Flemish part of Belgium. In the afternoons she often made music with other musicians or had someone play for her. In the evenings, if their presence was not required for an opening of some sort, the King and Queen remained alone at Laeken, taking long walks in the park or sitting before the fireplace while she read aloud to him. They were a devoted couple. 

Once, when I knew her better, I asked: "Where did you meet the King for the first time?"

"Oh, that was in Paris in the house of my aunt, the Queen of Naples."

"And was it at once the coup de foudre?"

Her eyes sparkled. "I thought he was wonderful," she said simply.

They were a love match and they were happy. Together they visited all the corners of the earth, to see people, to learn about things. Like her, the King was insatiably curious and unwilling to be hedged around with court etiquette. They were wonderful companions and devoted parents to their three children, the handsome Prince Leopold, the strange and gloomy Prince Charles, and Princess Marie-José, who was extremely tall, with a thick bunch of curly blond hair and blue eyes...

More and more often I visited the Queen during that three-month visit to Brussels, and always after that, whenever I returned to Belgium, I spent most of my time with her in the park...

On a very gray day the Queen sent for me. She was waiting impatiently when I arrived and said: "Don't take off your coat. Come out into the park. I must show you something." 

We hurried downstairs and into the park, walking until we reached a part which I did not know at all.

"Now," she said in excitement. "Close your eyes and give me your hand. Don't open your eyes until I tell you." We walked for a few moments, and then she said triumphantly, "Now!"

We stood in a little field completely blue with forget-me-nots, with a few trees laden with yellow blossoms. The sky was a deep heavy gray, and the whole composition gave the effect of an impressionistic picture.

The Queen was radiant. "Isn't it beautiful?" she exclaimed...

Court circles are rarely noted for their brilliance, but the Queen preferred to surround herself not with the usual court groups but with creative people - musicians, artists, writers, scientists. She wanted to know them, to grasp their ideas, and, as a result, she had a number of close friendships among such people. 

And sometimes, during those long hours, I asked her about the First World War in which she proved herself to be a splendid nurse.

"Looking back now," she said, "I don't know how I was able to do it. When I first visited the hospitals and saw the wounded, I would cry. Finally the doctor told me I could not behave like that. Unless I pulled myself together, I would do more harm than good. It is amazing what you can endure, how much suffering and sorrow and blood and wounds and dead bodies one can see.

Once I remember visiting a battlefield after a battle. The sun had just gone down. The earth was black and damp, and there was a little pool of water red with blood. Lying beside it was a handsome boy, so blond, his helmet beside him. The doctors and I buried him, and I sent his medal to his mother. Oh, it was terrible. I could not do it again!" 

But the next day a telephone call came from the palace, asking me not to come. There had been a great disaster at the mines, and the Queen had gone, smiling and compassionate, to console the distraught wives of the miners. Once more she was making the effort that she had said was impossible.

Soon, Mme. Barjansky was teaching the Queen the art of sculpting.

The Queen loved sculpture, and she had the satisfaction, rare for royalty, of knowing that she had accomplished it all herself. I never touched her clay. After her first lesson she was still so excited that I stayed on, and for two hours we walked in the park while she bombarded me with questions about sculpture. I remember, because it was a typical gesture of this elfin queen, that on the way back she caught a firefly and held it to her watch to tell the time...

Portrait of a King

In Chapter 15 of Portraits with Backgrounds, entitled "Portrait of a King," Russian sculptress Catherine Barjansky movingly recalls Albert I of Belgium. The author and her husband, famed musician Alexandre Barjansky, happened to be in Egypt at the time of the King's tragic death in a climbing accident in 1934. Alexandre Barjansky had been giving a series of concerts in Egypt, and his wife was doing some work for the Egyptian department of the Belgian Museum. Mme. Barjansky writes: 

...(W)e were staying at the same hotel as Jean Capart, director of the Belgian Museum. One morning when my husband and I were breakfasting with Monsieur and Madame Capart, the director was called to the telephone. He went out into the lobby where we heard him utter a loud exclamation. We ran out to him. 

"How terrible!" he exclaimed. "Our King is dead."

We went at once to the embassy, crowded with Belgians in tears. There was no one who did not have great esteem and admiration for this man, so good and noble, so just and intelligent. For me, it was the first genuine grief of my life. I had known him well, had talked with him for many hours. He was a rare human being, completely unselfish, a scholar and a philosopher, simple and shy and good. 

And I remembered how he had told me once: "If I were free to do what I like, I would go to the mountains and remain there. I would rather do that than anything in the world." 

Ceremonies, receptions, official affairs were torture to him. His greatest happiness had been the evenings that he spent alone with the woman whom he referred to not as "the Queen" but as "my wife." They loved to spend their evenings together, dining in the park, sitting on a bench at a rustic garden table, eating cold food from a tray, or in front of the fireplace while she read aloud to him. 

King Albert had the highest admiration for the cleverness, culture, and intelligence of his Queen, but he was very humble about himself...

He bitterly despised both Hitler and Mussolini. On one occasion he told me: "I am constantly amazed by the King of Italy. If such a thing were to happen here in Belgium I would pack my baggage and get out, but I would not permit another man to rule the country in my place." He made this statement quite openly, though his daughter at that time was married to the son of the King of Italy.

Another time, speaking of dictators, he said to me: "I think I have prepared my son to be a king far better than any man could be prepared to be a dictator"... 

It is a curious thing that in Egypt, the land of death, I took part in the mass for the King.

"What am I to do?" the Belgian minister said. "I must have music for the church ceremony."

"I will provide that," my husband offered.

"In the church there is to be an empty coffin. It should bear a royal crown, and how is that to be done?"

"I will do that," I said. "Give me a drawing of the Belgian crown"...

...I made the royal crown of wire... I gilded it, and put inside a piece of red velvet and modeled two scepters of plaster. The crown was then placed on the coffin and two velvet cushions at its foot, while my husband, behind the altar, played and conducted a little orchestra in Bach and Gluck and played the Brabançonne (the Belgian national anthem) with muted strings, while his moving and wonderful sonority was so filled with his grief that those who were praying in the church were touched to tears. It is a strange thing that we two foreigners should both have contributed, far away in Egypt, to the ceremony for the King we esteemed and loved so much. 

Portraits with Backgrounds

In 1947, Russian sculptress Catherine Barjansky, wife of celebrated cellist Alexandre Barjansky, published her memoirs, Portraits with Backgrounds. Through her work, as an itinerant artist, specializing in wax modeling, she became acquainted with many of the great European figures of her day ; under her pen, their personalities come to life - portraits in words to match her portraits in wax. She writes with warmth of heart and depth of soul. 

The author and her husband were friends of King Albert I and Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, and Mrs. Barjansky devotes several chapters of her memoirs to the Belgian royal family. Her portrayal of Albert and Elisabeth is charming, intimate, and touching; she obviously felt great admiration and affection for them. Albert Einstein, another friend of the Belgian royal family (and, in fact, of the Barjanskys) once described Albert and Elisabeth as two individuals characterized by a rare "purity and kindness." Mrs. Barjansky's description of the Belgian royal family creates the same impression of nobility and generosity. 

I will be posting on Catherine Barjansky's portrayals of King Albert I and Queen Elisabeth.