Matriarch

by Anne Edwards

  Along with all her new responsibilities and Lady Geraldine Somerset’s vitriolic comments (“It is clear there is not even a pretense at lovemaking. May is radiant at her position ... but placid and cold as always”), Princess May, who had never had youthful crushes like other girls, was embarrassed by her own timidity. In early June, she wrote her fiancé: “I am sorry that I am still so shy with you, I tried not to be the other day, but alas failed. I was angry with myself! It is so stupid to be so stiff together and really there is nothing I would not tell you, except that I love you more than anybody in the world, and this I cannot tell you myself so I write it to relieve my feelings.”

  To which he replied: “Thank God we both understand each other, and I think it really unnecessary for me to tell you how deep my love for you my darling is and I feel it growing stronger and stronger every time I see you; although I may appear shy and cold. But this worry [Princess Mary Adelaide’s constant presence] and busy time [the acceleration of their social life] is most annoying and when we do meet it is only [to] talk business.”

  The couple complemented each other physically as well as emotionally. Prince George, who was about the same height as Princess May, gained stature from her imperious carriage, and her unyielding smile was softened by his easier smile that exposed his flashing white teeth. Though somewhat prissy and possessing a slight lisp, Prince George was still attractive; he had even features, startling blue eyes, and an intelligent, sensitive look about him.

  Three weeks before the wedding, a popular newspaper, the Star, printed the salacious gossip that claimed Prince George had been wed to the daughter of an English admiral and had fathered three children with her while he had been stationed in Malta. His more abrasive qualities—a coarse laugh, loud voice, and bluff manner—were unrestrained when he brought this story to his fiancée’s attention. He is reported to have told her at the time, “I say, May, we can’t get married after all! I hear I have got a wife and three children!”

  The rumour was otherwise ignored, and the prenuptial festivities culminated just a few days before the wedding in a huge garden party given by the Tecks at White Lodge. Afterwards an exhausted Princess Mary Adelaide took to her bed but revived sufficiently the next day, July 4, to accompany Princess May to Buckingham Palace, where they were to stay until the wedding two days later.

  On a “thunderous, drowsy afternoon,” Princess May and her parents left White Lodge for Buckingham Palace. “Inside,” reported the Daily Telegraph, “the Lodge presented a complete contrast to its usual aspect. In the entrance hall the flowers were in gay profusion, but all along the walls were chests and trunks, filled or being filled with wedding presents while in the picturesque corridor ... dismantled tables and two or three huge packing cases gave proof that the remarkable array of wedding gifts ... was at an end.” The bulk of the wedding gifts had been moved the day before to the Imperial Institute,* where they would be open to the inspection of visitors. The presents had filled twenty vans and did not include the horses, ponies, carriages, sleighs, and boats, also gifts, to be exhibited in the Institute stables.

  Shortly before 4:00 P.M., a squadron of the Middlesex Yeomanry, seated on their massive bay chargers and dressed in bright blue uniforms and busbies with brilliant green and crimson plumes, lined up smartly in front of the lodge. A large crowd of well-wishers had gathered at the gates. They cheered loudly as Princess May, dressed in mauve, a soft brown cape over her shoulders, a small flowered bonnet of deep blue forget-me-nots and purple auricula tied beneath her chin with purple velvet, circumvented the heap of luggage still stacked in the doorway and with her parents stepped briskly into one of the two waiting carriages. Alexander Nelson Hood and Mary Thesiger, Lady-in-Waiting to Princess Mary Adelaide, entered the second carriage.

  The Household Cavalry now surrounded the vehicles, and as the spectators shouted and waved handkerchiefs, the cortege moved forward amid whirling dust. No rain had fallen for over a fortnight and most of June had been unbearably hot. The procession made its way through a circuitous decorated route lined with crowds and at twenty minutes past five turned the corner from Constitution Hill. “There was a quick movement among the crowds, a craning of necks, lifting up of children, raising of hats and a waving of kerchiefs.” A great cheer went up as Princess May, bowing graciously inside her carriage, entered through the south central gates of Buckingham Palace, at the same time as the skies opened up to pour rain in a sudden cloudburst.

  In the forty-eight hours at Buckingham Palace before the wedding, Princess May and the Tecks joyously anticipated the fulfillment of all their dreams. They were given a magnificent suite, usually reserved for foreign sovereigns. The first evening, amid a torrential downpour, they were driven to an elegant dinner honouring the bride at nearby Marlborough House (two hundred guests), followed by a command performance at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. “Fairyland,” reported the Daily Telegraph, “is no longer a myth, but a reality.” Roses were festooned over every box from tier to tier. The proscenium of the stage was traced with roses, the architectural columns covered entirely with them. Into the arm of every other stall was tucked a small bouquet of pink, white, and crimson roses bound with crimson and white satin ribbons, so that each lady present had a bouquet of flowers in her hand, as well as a white-and-gold-satin libretto to consult and a white-satin programme lettered in gold and illustrated with portraits of the principal members of the Royal Family.

  Princess May’s portrait was not in the programme, but as she entered—elegantly dressed in ice-blue brocade, the bodice studded with several of her newly acquired, glittering diamond wedding pins, a double strand of perfectly matched pearls around her neck, and wearing a diamond-and-pearl tiara and matching earrings—she was given a rousing cheer by the three thousand people present and was escorted by the Duke of York to the centre of the Royal box, the Prince and Princess of Wales taking side seats. The opera was Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette (sung by Mme. Nellie Melba and M. Jean de Reszke); in order to make it “more appropriate” the tragic denouement had been deleted, so that for perhaps the only time in theatre history the lovers survived the tomb scene.

  The next morning the rain continued, and in the state apartments of Buckingham Palace from eleven-thirty until one o’clock, at half-hour intervals, Princess May and the Duke of York received deputations of ladies (representing various townships) who had not already presented their wedding gifts. “In every case offerings of jewels were made and the Princess received them with evident pleasure,” the Times reported. “Shortly after the last donor departed, Princess May met with the Queen who had just arrived from Windsor and, it is understood, received from the Royal hands a personal present of great value.”

  The Royal gift was a spectacular diamond fleur-de-lys-and-collet fringe (smaller diamonds forming the fringe) necklace. Princess May was only now coming to realise the tremendous wealth she was about to possess. Her personal wedding gifts were worth upwards of a million pounds and included fabulous jewels given to her by Tsar Alexander and the Empress Maria Fyodorovna, Queen Isabella of Spain, and all the many members of Queen Victoria’s family at home and abroad. Her new jewel collection would have filled almost every jewelry display case at Asprey’s, and these gem gifts were in addition to the jewel-studded objects presented to the bridal pair.

  By afternoon the rain had stopped, but the sky remained grey and threatening. Still, this did not obscure the beauty or liveliness of the grand garden party given at Marlborough House in honour of the bridal couple and attended by two thousand people. Each lady guest was given a cream-coloured Rose of York to carry, whereas Princess May wore a satin dress of that shade trimmed in crimson-silk Lancaster Roses, her straw hat bedecked with them as well; in her arms she carried a bouquet of real crimson roses. The Tsarevitch (who in one year was to become Nicholas II) was on his first trip to England and was lodged at Marlborough House, as were his grandparents (Princess Alexandra’s parents), King Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark. The
Tsarevitch Nicholas and the Duke of York, who were first cousins, shared an uncanny resemblance; during the afternoon Nicholas was taken for George and warmly congratulated, while George was asked whether he had come to London only to attend the wedding or whether he had other business to transact. In a letter to his mother, Nicholas wrote, “Uncle Bertie, of course, sent me at once to a tailor, a bootmaker and a hatter.” Since this was the same tailor employed by the Duke of York, they were even dressed in similar suits. The likeness did not stop there, for their Vandyke beards were similarly trimmed and their hair parted in the same way—in the middle. Photographs were taken of the two young men to point up this resemblance.

  No one appeared happier than the Queen at this gathering. A tent with a carpeted approach had been specially erected for her, and she sat under the tent curtain, her Court in a wide circle around her chair. She gave a festive dinner at Buckingham Palace that night, followed by a spectacular ball in honour of the wedding couple. Princess May had never looked as radiantly beautiful, nor had she known such popularity both from the Court and the people who stood singing and chanting outside the gates.

  Her engagement to Prince Eddy had been brief and had stopped tragically short of the prenuptial Court festivities. Her youthful grief had touched both the Court and the nation, and made her appear vulnerable, more human. The public was able to relate to her private suffering in a way it could not with any other members of the Royal Family. She was the daughter of Princess Mary Adelaide, “the people’s princess,” whom they loved, as well as a poor relation—a position that commanded much sympathy. Being chosen as a bride for Prince Eddy had transported her overnight from the plain, poor, unendowed princess into a celebrity. Then his sudden death only weeks before her marriage had brought her new supporters. Princess May was now a national heroine, and even the Queen was aware of it and used this newfound Royal popularity intelligently to the Crown’s best advantage.

  No wonder then that the Prince and Princess of Wales took side seats in the Royal Box at the opera so that all eyes were on Princess May and Prince George. The Prince of Wales’s scandals were gratefully overshadowed by Princess May’s romantic triumph. And Queen Victoria could well hold a smiling Court at the garden party at Marlborough House, assured that her Crown would eventually rest in capable hands. For the Queen, though she gave her devotion to even the most wayward of her offspring and their children, was always cognizant of their inadequacies. Her grandson George was no exception. An improvement over Prince Eddy, he was still not terribly clever or well educated. He was also weak and dominated by a willful mother who could have destroyed any sense of leadership he might naturally possess. From their close association at Balmoral before the young woman’s engagement to Prince Eddy, the Queen was confident that Princess May would change this.

  Princess May’s life-long conception of what her future was to be had so greatly altered that she no longer had any guidelines. But the inequities of the past—being a princess who survived on the bounty of others, the strongest child in a family where she was the only girl among three brothers, and the daughter who too often was forced to reverse roles with a flighty, irresponsible mother—had honed her into the kind of woman who was curiously impervious to change. None of the crowd’s adulation, the Court’s approbation, or her sudden acquisition of worldly treasures went to her head. Still, she was now, as the Lady’s Pictorial pointed out, “... the third greatest Royal Lady of Great Britain.”

  That was true, but in addition she was marrying a man whom she loved perhaps more than she thought she would. And not because he had swept her off her feet, but rather because he allowed her to dig her toes firmly into the ground.

  Footnotes

  *The Honourable Alexander Nelson Hood (1854–1927), private secretary to Queen Mary 1901–1910, treasurer to Queen Mary 1910–1919.

  *Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–95) was the son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough and the father of Sir Winston Churchill. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons, Chairman of the National Union of Conservative Associations, and (1885–86) Secretary of State for India. His wife was Jenny Jerome (1854–1921), an American who became a leader in English society.

  *In the Birthday Honours of May 24, 1892, Prince George became the Duke of York, Earl of Inverness, and Baron Killarney. “I am afraid I do not [like the title Duke of York] and wish you had remained as you are,” Queen Victoria wrote her grandson. “A prince no one else can be, whereas a Duke any nobleman can be and many are. I am not very fond of that of York which has not very agreeable associations.”

  *The Imperial Institute is now the Commonwealth Institute and is no longer in its original location in South Kensington behind Royal Albert Hall, but in a new building in Holland Park.

  SIX

  July 6, 1893, the morning of the wedding, vast crowds assembled before the gates of Buckingham Palace as early as eight o’clock. The wedding day had not been decreed a national holiday, but the people declared it one themselves. Anyone who could take leave from his work did so. People stood on rooftops, clinging to statues that overlooked the Palace balustrades. The forecourt of the Palace was a mosaic of brilliant scarlet uniforms, bright tartan kilts, the sharp green of the 15th Middlesex, and the deep blue of the Yeomanry.

  A grandstand had been erected in the courtyard of Buckingham Palace, which by 10:00 A.M. was filled with a full complement of Life Guards, Australian Horse Artillerymen, and Indian Horseguards armed with lance and saber and resplendent in their vivid attire. As each of the Royal Guests arrived to form the wedding procession, he or she was greeted with wild cheering. The Duchess of Edinburgh and her children were the earliest arrivals. Then Princess Louise and the Duke of Fife, the Prince and Princess of Wales, the King and Queen of Denmark, Prince Albert of Belgium, the Tsarevitch, and finally the bridegroom in his naval uniform. Yet, no matter how exciting the events outside the Palace, they could not compare to those occurring inside, as the Palace staff prepared for the afternoon’s wedding festivities and the bridegroom chatted nervously to his Royal guests.

  The bride was still sequestered in her suite. Earlier that morning, she had written Prince George a pencilled note:

  I should much like to give you a wedding ring if you will wear it for my sake—I therefore send you herewith one or two to tryon for size—Let me have the one you choose at once and I will give it to you in the Chapel. What a memorable day in our lives this will be. God grant it may bring us much happiness. I love you with all my heart. Yrs. for ever and ever—May.

  Prince George had brought the ring with him and had given it to a courier to dispatch immediately to his bride. As the door to her apartments opened, the bridegroom, standing at the end of the majestic, long, red-carpeted corridor, caught sight of Princess May. He swept her a low and courtly bow; she returned the handsome gesture with a deep curtsy and then quickly withdrew.

  Although the Chapel Royal is only a few hundred yards from Buckingham Palace, the procession was routed the long way round. The first thirteen open state landaus, gleaming with scarlet and gold, left Buckingham Palace at 11:30, following a route up Constitution Hill, along Piccadilly, and then on to the destination. The Prince of Wales’s landau led this procession. Seated beside him was his brother Arthur, Duke of Connaught. They were followed by Princess Louise and her family, and then by Toria and Maud. In the last carriage rode the King and Queen of Denmark, the Tsarevitch, and the Princess of Wales, “ethereal in white satin and shimmering with diamonds in the sunlight.” The Tsarevitch was mistaken by the crowds for the bridegroom, and great shouts and strident cheering greeted him all along the way. The crowds were so dense that there was no room to bring in a stretcher for anyone who might faint. Men and boys perched insecurely in the branches of trees. Small children were given precedent and sat in a line on the edge of the kerbstones.

  * * *

  At 11:45 the Queen’s procession left the palace with the Queen—wearing a diamond crown, the bright ribbon
of the Garter across her black bodice—and a radiant, triumphant Princess Mary Adelaide riding with her in the glass coach drawn by “four of the Creams.” Queen Victoria was to have made her entry into the chapel from St. James’s Street, which was a shorter route from the palace than the earlier-departing processions had taken, but she arrived at the chapel door first, instead of last (the correct official position for the Sovereign at all times). Only a gentleman usher was present to receive her. Instantly assessing the situation, Princess Mary Adelaide suggested she should proceed in her place and that the Queen remain in an anteroom that had been prepared for her use. Scarcely had Princess Mary Adelaide taken a few steps up the corridor when her lady-in-waiting, Miss Thesiger, felt a little pull at her dress and at the same time heard a voice saying, “I am going first.” Looking back, she saw the Queen on the arm of her grandson, the Grand Duke Ernest Louis of Hesse,* on her way to wait in the anteroom until she was to enter the chapel. A wedding guest recalled that “some minutes later the Lord Chamberlain and the great officers of the Household arrived in breathless haste; but Her Majesty was not at all perturbed by the incident, only saying that she was glad it had happened so, for it was very amusing to see everyone come in.”

  Members of the Royal Family and Royal guests now streamed into the interior of what the Queen called “this ugly chapel.” Whatever the chapel lacked in eccesiastical splendour was more than made up by the assemblage gathered there. “Scarlet was lent to the pageant,” reported the Daily Telegraph, “by the appearance of Her Majesty’s Royal Body Guard in their red and gold uniforms, their gauntlets, and white plumed casques, and bearing their gleaming parisaus adorned with tassels of crimson silk and gold buillion.” The jewels worn by the lady guests at the Royal Wedding were given a full column in the same newspaper, with those worn by Lady Rothschild described as arousing particular admiration and being valued at an estimated £250,000.