William Walter Phelps'
Political Scrapbook

CHAPTER XXVII
Vienna — The Royal Family Represented by Archduke Albrecht — Mr. Phelps, the American Minister, and Mr. Schuyler, the United States Consul-General — A Yale Jubilee — The King Reviews Austrian Troops — Proposed Guarantee of Hawaiian Independence — The King Enjoys Himself on the Prater — Reporters — Paris — No Reception by the French Government — Unravelling the Mystery — Our Bad Manners — Question of Declaring War Against France — Reconciliation — An Incident of the Commune — Minister St. Hilaire Calls — Requests for Decorations — Count de Lesseps — The Ballet Girls at the Opera.

WE left for Vienna without hope of seeing the royal family, as it had left the city for the summer season. One of the Emperor's aides, and a captain of the navy who had visited Hawaii, received us, together with the King's Consul-General residing in Vienna. At the Imperial Hotel many officials called, among them the Archduke Albrecht, the only member of the royal family in the city. Mr. William Walter Phelps, the American Minister at the Austrian court, and Mr. Eugene Schuyler, the American charge d'affaires at Bucharest, my old college friends, also called, and were presented to the King. After their presentation was made with due ceremony, they retired to my apartments and we had a Yale jubilee. It was a singular incident that three friends, intimate in college days and afterward, should suddenly meet in the capital of the Austrian Empire: one as the Minister of the United States, another already distinguished as a diplomat and scholar, and the third as the Minister of the Polynesian ruler of about the smallest kingdom of tlie world.

We discarded for the time, however, all earthly distinctions, and when, later, the King asked what song we were singing in my apartments, I replied, "It's a Way We Have at Old Yale." For the purpose of recalling our old associations we converted the large centre table of the apartment into the old fence in front of ancient South College, and were once more boys of Old Eli. I, the oldest of the three, have outlived them, for these splendid men died at the noon of their lives, before they had even cast shadows.

That evening the King dined with Mr. Phelps and then occupied the Emperor's box at the Royal Opera. The next day he reviewed the Imperial troops stationed in the city; it was said that he quickly and intelligently distinguished the difference in the drill tactics of the Austrian and German armies. There were rumours published in the press that the King intended to sell his islands to some European Power; but these were mere jests. To one of the newspaper correspondents, however, he said, while denying these rumours, that the European Powers should unite in a joint guarantee of the independence of his kingdom. He was still under the influence of the Italian adventurer, although, aside from it, he had a vague feeling that he was confronted with the " manifest destiny " of the United States. Any active movement at this time toward obtaining such a guarantee would have involved us in trouble, as the United States would have firmly declared to the European Powers that the King's islands were within " the sphere of American influence,"and such a guarantee would have been resented as an unwarrantable interference. Mr. Phelps and Mr. Schuyler, on my suggestion, quietly but earnestly, in a conversation with the King, urged him not to make any effort to secure such a guarantee, and he abandoned the scheme.

pages 255-257