Bismarck’s Detectives
Another set of private and published German documents sheds more light on Woodcock's intimacy with the King. This tale can be told from several different, sometimes opposed viewpoints, as we'll see.

In 1887, a year before the scandal broke in the German and American press, Prime Minister Hermann Mittnacht, of Württemberg, complained privately about Woodcock to the Prussian ambassador: the King of Württemberg was completely in the hands of his American friend, with whom he spent hours daily, paying no attention to politics. Though Woodcock had no official position, the American was leader of the court, and Woodcock was the most powerful man in Württemberg.[1]

The monarch's generosity to his favorite was boundless, said Mittnacht. The King had, for example, offered to buy Woodcock a home costing 200,000 marks, which the administrator of the royal fortune had refused to approve. The King had therefore asked Prime Minister Mittnacht to try to obtain the money for him, which Mittnacht had refused, to protect the King's fortune. Hearing of Mittnacht's refusal to follow royal orders, none other than the first chancellor of the modern German Empire, Otto von Bismarck, approved Mittnacht's action, "given the King's curious frame of mind."[2]

These German documents indicate that Woodcock's intimacy with King Karl was disturbing the courtier class of Württemberg, nobles who saw themselves robbed of their traditional, profitable intimacy with the monarch, and cheated of lucrative court positions. The naming of Woodcock to be Royal Councilor and his elevation to "Baron von Woodcock-Savage" in October 1888, brought the resentment of Württemberg's courtiers to a boil.[3]

Prime Minister Mittnacht consulted his supporter, Bismarck, about the increasingly volatile situation, and in the summer and fall of 1888 Bismarck ordered background checks on Woodcock's and Hendry's lives in North America. On June 25 and October 3, 1888, Count Arco, the German Ambassador in Washington, D.C., sent Bismarck the results of these private investigations.[4]

The reports, undertaken in the interest of Württemberg’s courtiers, presented Woodcock and Hendry in the worst light, as nothing but calculating, conniving, self-interested con-artists. Though the reports got a few names and details wrong, these private papers were also less euphemistic about sex than the public newspaper stories.

Bismarck's detectives described Charles Woodcock as of "medium height, slim, weakly, with black hair and a beard." He "speaks wonderful German and French," is an "educated man with good manners," and "appears modest." Donald Hendry, his "friend and care-taker, stands in the background with an air of deference." He is "larger" and "strong-boned," and the two Americans lived and traveled together.

Though Woodcock "claims to have studied in Heidelberg and is supposed to have earlier maintained that he received his Ph.D. there," his name "is unknown to the administration of Heidelberg University."[5] Woodcock's "servants call him Doctor," but that title "is not used on his cards."

Woodcock had accused Jackson, "his predecessor in the favor of the King," of "having brought about certain inquiries in New York," to which Woodcock had taken "great offense," though the King "did not send Jackson away." Rumors of the detectives' American snooping had evidently reached Woodcock and Hendry in Germany, and they apparently blamed the inquiries on Jackson.[6]

Woodcock had told King Karl of his "relation to a well-to-do English family," the detective continued. But Woodcock's father, Jonas G., had been in the meat business, and not even as an owner, but "as a clerk or salesman in the business of his brother," that is, as "his junior assistant." This "refutes ... Woodcock's claim that he comes from a well-to-do family."

Several New York city directories for the 1850s list Woodcock senior as a "butcher."[7] This seems the appropriate place to add that, striving, always, to transcend his bourgeois origins, Woodcock never used his given middle name, Burger.[8]

Bismarck's investigators report that "Dr. George H. Heyworth" (Hepworth, actually) is "supposed to have taken an interest in Woodcock's studies for a long time and to have given him the means to afford his studies .., as he seems to have a special inclination to young men" -- an illicit inclination was definitely suggested.

Hepworth, 1877. From Susan Hayes Ward. George H. Hepworth: Preacher, Journalist, Friend of the People. NY:E. P. Dutton, 1903. op. p. 174.

"Woodcock was supposed to have been handsome," Bismarck's investigators reported, "and due to his pleasant nature, was widely popular during his time in Saint John," where he had had "close friendships with a large number of young people."

In Saint John, Reverend Woodcock also had "a reputation for unreliability and repeatedly embarrassed his parish by missing mass without an excuse." His yearly salary of $2,000 "did not satisfy his needs," and "he borrowed wherever he could" and amassed numbers of debts. "To one person he owed $1,000, to another $5,000, and to others small amounts." Later, after one of Woodcock's parishioners and creditors had heard of his financial success in Württemberg, he had demanded and received repayment. Bismarck's investigators admitted that, by October 1888, Woodcock had paid off his Saint John debts. (These debts suggest, in part, why Woodcock had sought and appreciated King Karl's largesse.)

Woodcock had told his Saint John parishioners that he was leaving them to continue his theological studies in Heidelberg, but his father had told Bismarck's investigators that his son's object was travel--his "actual intention was to visit the holy lands before accepting a permanent position as a preacher." The discrepancy between Woodcock's stories led Bismarck's investigators to conclude that the American "was never very exact about the truth with his relatives."

As the scandal continued in Germany, Prime Minister Mittnacht sought Bismarck's support on November 26, 1888. Bismarck reported to Wilhelm II, King of Prussia and Emperor of Germany, that Mittnacht had complained of "a sickness in the King of Württemberg based on something sexual and unnatural, which was also present earlier in this house."[9] Mittnacht referred to King Karl's grandfather, Friedrich I, King of Württemberg (1797-1816), known to have had a sexual interest in men.[10]

Mittnacht's reference to King Karl inheriting a familial sexual "sickness" suggests that the Prime Minister may have been influenced by the first edition of psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, published in 1886, in Stuttgart. That influential book explained that an inborn "contrary sexual instinct" was passed on within families.[11] But Mittnacht's comments may also have simply reflected hereditarian ideas of the time, not, specifically, the new medical views of "pathological" sexuality.

Hepworth, 1892. From Susan Hayes Ward. George H. Hepworth: Preacher, Journalist, Friend of the People. NY:E. P. Dutton, 1903. Frontispiece.

Woodcock's Later Life
The brief, self-authored biography of Charles Woodcock, published in a history of the Bangor Theological Seminary, says that, after returning from Germany to the United States in 1890, he retained his baronial title as his last name, becoming "Charles Woodcock Savage."[12]

Woodcock's Bangor biography does not say that Savage continued to live in New York City with Donald Hendry, and to summer together nearby. That is clear, however, from city directories and the biography of the Reverend George Hepworth, which reveals that, in the summer of 1891, Hepworth and his wife visited Long Beach, New Jersey, staying at the cottage of Charles Woodcock Savage and Donald Hendry.[13]

Woodcock's brief biography, written for his former Bangor Seminary, reported that he resided in New York City from 1890 to 1897, in Princeton, New Jersey, from 1897 to 1902, and in Allenhurst, New Jersey, from 1902 to 1923.[14]

That biography did not say that, on June 14, 1894, with Donald Hendry as best man, Charles B. Woodcock Savage, forty-four, married Henrietta Knebel Staples, forty-one, a widow wealthy enough to own a house on Central Park West and 84th Street, and to send two of her four sons to Princeton Preparatory School, later to Princeton University.[15]

On June 19, 1897, in New York State Supreme Court, the four sons of Henrietta Knebel Staples Savage (Joseph, Harry, Herbert, and Leslie Curtis) officially changed their last name to Savage. The youngest son, Leslie Curtis, also changed his first name to Charles, honoring his step-father.[16]

In Princeton, around 1900, Mr. and Mrs. Woodcock Savage bought and substantially reconstructed one of the town's finest nineteenth-century houses.[17]

Hendry's Later Life
After returning to America, Donald Hendry attended medical school from 1890 to 1892, where his supervisor was Charles Woodcock's doctor brother, Galen M.[18] Dropping out of medical school in 1892, Hendry joined the staff of the public library in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and at some point deleted three years from his age. In 1907, at the actual age of fifty-three, he enrolled at the Pratt Institute School of Library Science, from which he graduated in 1908. In 1910 he was employed on the staff of the Pratt Institute Free Library, in Brooklyn, New York, and for twenty-four years headed its Applied Science Reference Department, retiring in 1934, at the age of eighty.[19]

Twenty-eight years before retiring, in 1906, Hendry probably collaborated with Woodcock in creating a fictional version of their experience in Germany.