In the library, too, there was much to recall the Emperor Frederick. Every word that her husband had ever written, however trivial, the Empress carefully preserved. All his marginal notes were treated with fixative, and one of her chief cares when sending any books to institutions was to make sure that there was nothing written in her husband's own hand in them.
[Illustration: THE LATE EMPRESS FREDERICK]
The Empress was fond of collecting curiosities,--bits of old oak, old sculpture, and silver--and she amused herself from time to time in bargaining for these things in cottages and dealers' shops. Nor was she superior to the familiar pride of the collector in displaying her treasures afterwards and explaining what bargains she had secured. The Empress, especially as a young woman, did not care very much for reading, though she was fond of being read aloud to, as are most Royal personages. She was, however, passionately interested in books, and it is recorded that in her tenth year she spent all her pocket-money on them. As she grew older, she read more, but she read in order to instruct herself rather than for pleasure. As a matter of course she always read all those books published in her native country which made any stir, whether they were memoirs, books of exploration, essays, or novels.
At half-past ten every morning (Sundays excepted) the Empress went into her library to work. She was an extremely rapid reader, and if her intellectual interests--science, theology, philosophy, history, literature, archæology, art, economics, hygiene--may have seemed too discursive there is abundant evidence to acquit her of dilettanteism. She possessed in all these different branches a solid foundation of knowledge, which enabled her to understand and appreciate the discussions of experts. Like her brother, King Edward, she possessed in a high degree the truly Royal gift of assimilating knowledge from conversation, and she had been so well "grounded," so to speak, that whenever she talked with a specialist in any subject she knew just what questions to ask.
When reading a book, the Empress almost always made notes in the margin. This is interesting as showing how restlessly alive, and in a sense over-stimulated, her brain must always have been. It is perhaps a fortunate thing during her long illness, for even then she never felt any wish to be idle, or to sit alone and think of herself.