Grandmama of Europe: The Crowned Descendants of Queen Victoria

by Theo Aronson

  Foiled in this attempt to obliterate as much as possible of the late Emperor's aspirations and achievements, Wilhelm struck out in other directions. In defiance of his father's instructions, he permitted a post-mortem to be conducted on his body; this was simply to underline the fact, as publicly as possible, that the German doctors had all along been right in their diagnosis of cancer and the Empress and Mackenzie wrong. Next, ignoring his father's written wish that his daughter Moretta be allowed to marry Sandro of Battenberg, Wilhelm sent a letter to Sandro forbidding the match. His father's wish that his name be perpetuated in the name of his palace Wilhelm also disregarded: he gave orders that henceforth the newly named Friedrichskron would again be known as the Neues Palais.

  And, as a final insult to his father's memory, Kaiser Wilhelm II made a public announcement to the effect that he intended to follow in the footsteps of his late grandfather, Kaiser Wilhelm I.

  Kaiser Frederick III's reign, which the late Prince Albert had designedto be one of the most glorious in history, had lasted for less than a hundred days. It had been, in the words of his Empress, 'a mere passing shadow'.

  'We had a mission,' wrote the embittered Vicky to her mother, 'we felt and we knew it – we were Papa's and your children! We were faithful to what we believed and knew to be right. We loved Germany – we wished to see her strong and great, not only with the sword, but in all that was righteous, in culture, in progress and in liberty. We wished to see all the people happy and free, growing and developing in all that is good. We tried hard to learn and study and prepare for the time in which we should be called to work for the nation. We had treasured up much experience! Bitterly, hardly bought!!! – that is all now wasted. . . ."

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Eddy, Georgie and May

  1

  By the year 1891 Queen Victoria had decided that something would have to be done about the future of her heir presumptive, the apathetic Prince Eddy. Now twenty-six years of age, the Prince was leading an utterly worthless existence. His military career having proved, in the words of his father the Prince of Wales, to be 'simply a waste of time', the young man had been sent off on a tour of India. From this he had returned in a state of near collapse, having indulged, it was said, in all forms of dissipation. Nor were these dissipations confined to India. The feckless Prince lived entirely for pleasure and he took it wherever he could, not least of all in London. There was even some talk of a male brothel. If the Prince of Wales had not proved quite as dissolute as the Queen's wicked uncles, Prince Eddy was showing every sign of making good the deficiency.

  Bertie's solution to the problem of his eldest son (created, in 1890, Duke of Clarence and Avondale) was that he be sent off on a series of colonial tours. He had done India, so why not South Africa, Australia and New Zealand? The further he travelled and the longer he stayed away from the temptations of London life, the better.

  With this the Queen could not agree. In an attempt to salvage some scrap from the ruins of the late Prince Consort's plans for a set of cultured, cosmopolitan and informed heirs, she suggested that Eddy be sent to Europe instead. For one of Europe's future kings, he knew far too little about the Continent and almost nothing of its courts. He was too exclusively British. In the colonies he would learn nothing of art or history, nor would he acquire that polish so necessary in his position. Travel in Europe would rub off 'that angular insular view of things which is not good for a Prince', she declared.

  To this outpouring of matriarchal advice, the Prince of Wales had to reply very carefully. He could not tell the Queen his real reasons for wanting to pack Eddy off to the farthest-flung corners of the Empire. The tour was to be in the nature of a punishment for the young man's transgressions, as well as a means of keeping him, as Bertie's private secretary put it, 'out of harm's way'. The capitals of Europe, on the other hand, would be the worst possible places for someone of Prince Eddy's lax and licentious habits. Think of Vienna; think of Paris. The Prince of Wales had therefore to defend both his idea of a colonial tour and his son's Englishness. It would be an excellent thing for Eddy to take an interest in 'the great Empire over which you rule'; as for his Englishness, it was a good fault and would make the young man more popular at home.

  As it was, Bertie was in no position to throw stones in this matter of his son's behaviour. Throughout this period he himself was involved in not only one but two major scandals. The first was the Tranby Croft affair – an episode which started when one of Bertie's fellow guests at a house party was accused of cheating at baccarat and ended in a lawsuit in which the Prince was called as a witness. The second concerned Bertie's current mistress, Lady Frances Brooke, who had talked the Prince into demanding the return of a compromising letter which she had written to a previous lover. The previous lover, resenting this royal interference, insulted the Prince and the whole sordid affair was made public.

  In these circumstances, Bertie could hardly afford to be censorious about his son's failings. It was, he admitted in a letter to the Queen, 'difficult to explain' the reasons why Eddy should be kept away from the capitals of Europe.

  Bertie had underestimated his mother. The Queen knew the reasons well enough. Rumours of her grandson's way of life had reached even her seemingly inaccessible ears ('who is it tells the Queen these things?' wrote an anguished secretary) and she assured the Prince of Wales that there were just as many 'designing pretty women' in the colonies as anywhere else.

  Perhaps the most sensible suggestion to emerge from this exchange of letters between mother and son on the question of Eddy's future came from Bertie. 'A good sensible wife – with some considerable character is what he needs most – but where is she to be found?'

  Where indeed? Prince Eddy, it seems, was himself on the lookout for a bride. His excursions into the demi-monde had not blinded him to the attractions to be found in his own class. With his adolescent-like ability to fall in and out of love in the same week, he had already embarked on a series of love affairs. In 1889 he had fallen for his cousin, Princess Alix of Hesse, daughter of the late Princess Alice, Queen Victoria's third child. The Queen was delighted. Alicky was exactly the sort of serious-minded, sensible girl that was needed. In addition, she was a German princess (her father was the Grand Duke of Hesse) and, as the Queen so often said, the 'German connection' was the one which she wished her family to maintain. On this occasion, however, Alicky proved a shade too sensible. She turned Eddy down. She would marry him if she were forced to do so, she declared, but they would not be happy together. For this show of resolution on Alicky's part, the Queen was all admiration. It needed great strength of character, she said, to refuse 'the greatest position there is'.

  Alicky's Aunt Vicky, the newly widowed German Empress Frederick, was somewhat less resigned to the refusal. 'I regret it very much,' she wrote, 'and hope that she may not regret it later.' Alicky, in later years, was to have good reason for regret. She married, instead, Tsar Nicholas II, and ended her life in that blood-stained cellar at Ekaterinburg.

  With Alicky no longer in the running, the Queen came up with a suggestion of her own. What about Mossy? Mossy was yet another of Prince Eddy's cousins – Princess Margaret, the youngest child of the Empress Frederick. She might not be 'regularly pretty', but she had a good figure, an amiable disposition and, besides being German, was very fond of England. Would she do? She would not. This time it was the normally complaisant Eddy who refused to consider it. Although he had only just been turned down by Alicky, he was already in love with someone else.

  His latest choice was Princess Hélène of Orleans, the twenty-one-year-old daughter of the Comte de Paris, at present living in exile in England. Dark and distinguished-looking, Princess Hélène was, in almost every other way, a highly unsuitable candidate for the future Queen of England. On both religious and political grounds, the thing was impossible. The Princess-was a Roman Catholic and her father was a pretender to the French throne. On first hearing of Prince Eddy's infatuation, the Queen had writ
ten to explain the dangers of the attachment; he should avoid meeting Princess Hélène as much as possible, she cautioned.

  Ignoring this sound advice, Eddy continued seeing Hélène in secret. In his unwise courtship, he was being backed up by his adoring mother and three sisters. The Princess of Wales was especially touched by the idea of this clandestine affair. It was all so romantic, and how nice that Hélène was a French, as opposed to a German, princess. When Princess Hélène, who seems to have been besotted by this languid, seductively-mannered Prince, agreed to change her religion in order to marry him, the couple became engaged.

  How was the news to be broken to Grandmama Queen? Princess Alexandra, in her astute and feminine fashion, provided the answer. The young couple were to go at once to the Queen and let her into their secret. They were to ask for her blessing and advice. This they did, and the Queen, an incurable romantic, promised to do what she could to help.

  There was, in fact, very little that she could do. While Victoria's advisers delved into constitutional problems, Princess Hélène informed her father of her decision to renounce her religion. The Comte de Paris would not hear of it. Nor, when Princess Hélène made a personal appeal to the Pope, would he. And so, as Prince Eddy could not marry a Roman Catholic without renouncing his rights to the throne, the engagement had to be broken off. The bitter-sweet romance was over. 'I loved him so much,' Princess Hélène afterwards admitted to Queen Victoria, 'and perhaps I was rash but I couldn't help myself, I loved him so much. . . .' He was, she added with a singular choice of word, 'so good'.

  It would take years, imagined the sentimental Queen, for her grandson to recover from this disappointment. It took, in fact, no time at all. While everyone imagined that the Prince was still pining for his lost love, he was under the spell of yet another beauty – Lady Sybil St Clair Erskine. To her he was penning, in his laborious fashion, a series of naïve, if barely comprehensible, letters. He would not at one time have thought it possible, he assured her in one of his notes, to be in love with two people at the same time, but he had to admit that he now found himself in this exceptional position. He hoped that she, who so charmed and fascinated him, loved him a little in return? Would she, by the way, always be sure to destroy the crest and signature on his letters?

  Needless to say, the lady did nothing of the sort.

  It was no wonder that the Prince of Wales was so anxious to find his frivolous son a 'good, sensible wife, with some considerable character'.

  2

  While Prince Eddy was still writing his muddled letters to Lady Sybil, his elders and betters had made up their minds as to what was to be done with him. He would tour neither the Empire nor the Continent; instead, he would be married off to yet another of his relations, Princess May of Teck.

  Princess May was the only daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Teck. The Duke of Teck was the son, by a morganatic marriage of Duke Alexander of Wurtemburg, while the Duchess was Queen Victoria's first cousin; like the Queen, the Duchess of Teck (who had been Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge) was a granddaughter of King George III. The Tecks were thus members, albeit fringe members, of the British royal family. And whereas the Duke and Duchess might not have been above criticism – he was moody, irascible and obsessed by the morganatic 'taint' in his blood, while she was extravagant, irresponsible and enormously fat – Princess May was considered eminently suitable.

  She was a good age, having turned twenty-four in the spring of 1891 and, for her age, she was remarkably mature. Life with her cantankerous father and capricious mother had brought out all the stability of her own nature: she was calm, even-tempered and unemotional. Her manner was reserved, even shy, but when one penetrated this façade, she revealed considerable depth of character, surprising self-confidence and a fund of common sense. As Queen Victoria put it, May was 'very sensible and well-informed, a solid girl which we want. . . .' She was also – and this would be important as far as Prince Eddy was concerned – very good-looking. Her bearing, as befitted a future queen, was dignified.

  The choice having been made, Princess May, without her ebullient mother, was summoned to Balmoral for inspection by the Queen. Victoria was enchanted. 'I think and hope that Eddy will try and marry her,' she wrote to her daughter the Empress Frederick, 'for I think she is a superior girl – quiet and reserved till you knew her well . . . she is the reverse of oberflächlich [superficial]. She has no frivolous tastes, has been very carefully brought up and is well informed and always occupied.'

  That Princess May was something of a paragon there was no doubt, but what would Prince Eddy think of her? Would he be prepared to marry her? On this score, the household at Marlborough House had no fears. They understood the young man only too well. If Prince Eddy were 'properly managed and is told he must do it', then do it he would, was the candid opinion of the Prince of Wales's private secretary.

  And so it turned out. The fickle Eddy, having been instructed to marry May, obliged everyone by falling in love with her and proposing a month before he was due to do so. They became engaged, at a house party in Bedfordshire, on 3 December 1891. Everyone, including Princess May, was delighted. Not only was she fond of Prince Eddy but for a young woman with her strong sense of royal obligation, she was only too anxious to do something for the monarchy. And with her relatively humble background, the prospect of becoming the Queen of England was a heady one. It is hardly surprising that, on the evening of the engagement, she so forgot her habitual reserve that, in full view of her fellow female guests, she lifted her skirts a fraction and danced around the room.

  'We are much excited and delighted at the happy event of May Teck's engagement to dear Eddy,' wrote the Empress Frederick to one of her daughters. 'May he be very happy, he so fully deserves it. Aunt Mary [the Duchess of] Teck will be in the 7th heaven, for years and years it has been her ardent wish, and she has thought of nothing else. What a marriage, and what a position for her daughter!'

  This euphoric mood did not last long. Just over a month later, when Princess May and her parents were at Sandringham to celebrate Prince Eddy's twenty-eighth birthday, he fell ill. It was influenza. This quickly developed into pneumonia and for six days, in his tiny bedroom, the Prince lay dangerously ill. By the dawn of 14 January 1892, it was realized that he was dying. Soon after half past nine that morning, surrounded by the shocked and exhausted members of his family, he died.

  Prince Eddy was buried at Windsor on 20 January 1892. On his coffin lay Princess May's bridal wreath of orange-blossom.

  3

  If Queen Victoria had been worried about the succession when her heir presumptive, Prince Eddy, had been alive, she was even more worried about it now that he was dead. The crown would go to Eddy's only brother, Prince George. At the time of Prince Eddy's death, Prince George was twenty-six years of age, unmarried and in poor health. In November 1891 he had been dangerously ill with typhoid; at one stage it was thought that he must die. Were he again to fall ill while in his present state of weakness and depression (his brother's death had left him desolate) Prince George might never survive. The succession would then pass to his sister – the eldest of those 'whispering Wales girls' – Louise, who had recently married the Duke of Fife. They had only one child, a daughter. As immature, ill-educated and diffident as her sisters, and married, moreover, to a commoner, Princess Louise was not really of the stuff of which successful queens regnant are made.

  Queen Victoria's hopes, therefore, were pinned on the pale, unhappy figure of her grandson, Prince George. His present despondency apart, Georgie was certainly a more suitable candidate for the throne than his brother Eddy. Not only was he more intelligent but he was stable, diligent and conscientious. 'I think dear Georgie so nice, sensible and truly right-minded, and so anxious to improve himself,' said the Queen. A few months after Eddy's death, she created him Duke of York ('Fancy my Georgie boy . . . now being a grand old Duke of York,' wrote Princess Alexandra) and tried, unsuccessfully, to get him to change his name to Alber
t. Some belated efforts were made to equip him for his new role.

  It was with the matter of Prince George's marriage, however, that his grandmother's mind was most actively engaged. Georgie must marry and produce a family as soon as possible.

  This was not, of course, the first time that thoughts of a marriage for Prince George had crossed his grandmother's mind. A year before Prince Eddy's death, the Queen had written to Prince George, suggesting that he do something about finding himself a bride. He had not shown much enthusiasm for the idea. Unlike his brother Eddy, George was sexually unprecocious ('I must say it is good of you to have resisted all temptation so far,' wrote his possessive mother to him on one occasion) and he had answered his grandmother with a little homily on the dangers of marrying too early.

  If, however, the Prince had little experience of sex, he did have some of love. Indeed, it might have been his youthful infatuation for a girl by the name of Julie Stoner that helped the Prince resist temptation during his years in the Navy. The girl's mother had been a lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Wales and on Mrs Stoner's death in 1883, the generous-hearted Princess had taken the attractive young orphan under her wing. Julie Stoner had spent a great deal of time with the Wales children and in due course Prince George had fallen in love with her.

  It had been a difficult situation. Prince George, unlike his brother Eddy, was capable of feeling things deeply and the Princess of Wales did not want to hurt these feelings by simply forbidding her son to have anything to do with Julie. But that there could be no thought of his marrying her had to be made quite clear. For one thing the girl was a Roman Catholic, for another she was a commoner. Princess Alexandra handled the delicate affair with great tact. She allowed the romance to run its course, taking care to express both her affection for Julie and her regret at the impossibility of the match. 'I only wish you could marry and be happy,' she sighed, 'but alas, I fear that cannot be.'