The King and I

The King and I

 

By Brother Stavros

I missed having a grandfather when I was growing up. Both my grandmothers were wonderful characters. Both grandfathers died before I was on the scene. My mother’s mother was the grand-niece of Mary Surratt, whose son John was J. Wilkes Booth’s prime conspirator. After Lincoln’s assassination, he eluded capture by the U.S. Government because he skedaddled to Rome and joined one of the pope’s less colorful guards. Aunt Mary had the infamous fate of being hanged by the U.S. War Department as our own Bloody Mary, the first woman to have that distinction.

But I digress. When my grandmother took up nursing at St. Mary’s Hospital in Baltimore, she fell in love with an officer in the Belgian Army, who was then an intern at the same institution. He returned from the Great War, as did countless thousands, a changed man. He never returned to his family of two boys and two girls in the District of Columbia. Rather, he sought the comfort of his Belgæ (more specifically Walloon) relations in Rhode Island and prospered in private practice.

So I was intrigued to know the full the story and why the clan was so tight-lipped about him. “Abandoned, never sent a penny for child support,” my aunt Bernie let slip once near the end of her life. And over the years came newspaper articles from some of my cousins about his hometown send-off and his return to Narraganset Bay. From the photos therein I was struck by how much my uncle Henry resembled him: a tall man with chiseled features, in a captain’s uniform much like my uncle’s fireman’s uniform. The caption for the photo in France showed my grandfather in surgical garb and mentioned some advanced surgical techniques he perfected while working under combat situations in a hospital behind the French lines. Grandmother boasted about his fame for paring down a fat lady from a circus.

Aside from these tidbits, she rarely spoke of her husband, but she did tell me that in the family home in Rhode Island, the matriarch ruled the roost, never spoke English, and referred to her daughter-in-law as l’Américaine. So somewhere in my romanced mind brewed this attraction to the Belgian mystery: a case for Poirot.



It was rather exclusive genealogy in a tiny country, and when I had the chance to use the Mormon genealogy library in Salt Lake City, the Benelux were still only in microfilm. But it was neat to pore over the handsome chancery script. I figured I’d begin with baptismal records. I did not have unlimited time, though the staff were very solicitous, and since my desk was marked with a “1st time user” sign, someone was at my side every 30 minutes. I found several Henry A. Lange entries. Getting warm, but regrettably it was also getting too late to dig deeper.

I took a break to get some water and noticed how modern and efficient the library seemed. Some of the hallways and reception areas were adorned by larger-than-life portraits of Christ and the multitudes. These were rendered in an almost cloying sweetness. The angel Moroni topped the spire high above the temple. The temple on 16th St at the top of Meridian Hill resembles it.

As recounted previously, Tim Nau and I, while at Gonzaga College High School, had an accidental and absolutely benign encounter with the very much alive Jimmy Hoffa. Much later, probably around 1960, I was reading the Evening Star and wondering if there had been any sightings or other news of Hoffa’s disappearance. There on the front page was a small article about a state visit by King Leopold of Belgium.

Since I was interested in the Belgian branch of the family tree, I thought it would be neat to park myself outside Blair House, the official guesthouse for the White House, located right across from the executive mansion on the southwestern corner of Lafayette Square. My plan was to leave Gonzaga and take the short trolley ride (this was not long before the streetcars ceased to operate in D.C. and Maryland). I stuck a little Belgian tricolor in my book bag.




It was raining that day. There was little pedestrian traffic. To shelter from the rain, I stood under one of the enormous trees that fringe the park. Then, sure enough, I heard the motorcycle escort coming up the avenue from downtown. A long black limo with flags on the front fenders pulled up to the curb right where I was standing. This was half a century before terrorism jitters, I am of short stature and not of a particularly menacing demeanor, and waving the flag I was a somewhat pathetic welcoming contingent, not a terrorist threat.

Many doors opened and closed, umbrellas snapped open, and several men in uniforms were now a “social distance” from me. They quickly headed to the awning of Blair House. I saw the entourage pause a few seconds, and one fellow turned and came back towards me.

“Would you like to meet His Majesty?" he said with a grin.

“Bien sûr,” I replied. (Our French teacher at Gonzaga would have been proud I remembered some appropriate if not elegant words.)

Up the stairs I went, rather thrilled. King Beaudoin was slim, with dark hair, in a uniform with a purple sash. We shook hands. An aide asked me my name. I gave it, followed by a declaration of my Belgian roots in Vervier (the invasion point used by the Germans in both wars, my grandmother had informed me), located in Belgium’s largest province, Liège. This evoked smiles of approval. I cannot recall whether the king said anything after this brief introduction. Another aide introduced me to the Prime Minister, whose Flemish name was not retained by my little grey cells.

The king was very athletic looking. This was just a year after his marriage to Fabiola, his Spanish consort, who was nowhere in evidence.

I should have told the king of my fondness for Belgian chocolates—I might have left with a tasty souvenir. It was also long before the selfie era, but someone did pass me a manila envelope containing a signed photo of His Majesty at his desk. What I did not know then was that the king was about to grant independence to the Belgian Congo, the second largest country in Africa, and the richest in natural resources. Perhaps the politics of this move had brought the monarch to Washington.

Beaudoin’s uncle, Leopold II, in the 1880s “acquired” the Congo as his personal possession and established a particularly harsh and exploitative colonial rule. Gold, diamonds, and rubber, then as now, motivated unfathomable political and social instability. The Soviets, the United States, and China all had lustful eyes on the potential strategic advantages and the promise of enormous wealth. Wikipedia has a doleful list of death and misery suffered by the Congolese earlier under Leopold’s rule and the reaction to it by such writers as Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness), Mark Twain (King Leopold’s Soliloquy), and Arthur Conan Doyle (The Crime of the Congo).



In the period sparked by the signature of this rather shy man, King Beaudoin, an estimated 5.5 million died in the succession of wars and coups of the post-independence turmoil, which was exacerbated by secret agents of the United States and Belgium and by rivals within the Congolese security army.



In 2001, a royal commission called by King Albert, the younger brother and successor to Beaudoin, investigated the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, who made the West nervous by his orientation to Communism. The CIA and MI6 both had an interest in the plan (the CIA via poison toothpaste), but it was executed by Belgian mercenaries and opposition parties. Following the firing squad, the bodies were dismembered and dissolved in acid. (Think of the Saudi Prince and the Istanbul legation’s basement.)

This king inherited none of his forebear’s gruesome bent. While his queen was unable to bear a living heir, the Belgian people loved and admired him. I saw a YouTube of his state funeral and found it very moving.

My audience was quickly over. My only other memory of the encounter is that on reaching home I proudly called my mother at work. After my account, she reminded me that a pile of dishes awaited me in the kitchen sink. “What,” I replied sardonically, “the hand that enjoyed the royal handshake, you expect me to soil in the dishpan?” “Yes, indeed-ee, but if you want a plaster cast of it, we’ll manage that later.”