Grandmama of Europe: The Crowned Descendants of Queen Victoria

by Theo Aronson

  Yet when Tino wished to discuss his ideas for army reform with his father, the King refused to give him a hearing. 'I would go on and on in some way or another until attention is paid to Tino and he is listened to,' the Empress advised Sophie. 'Has your Papa-in-law no confidential friend to whom you could both speak?'

  Vicky herself tried to soften the King's attitude towards his eldest son and to get him to involve his heir in the workings of the monarchy. 'I ventured to say [to the King] at the end,' she told Sophie, 'that I hoped Tino would find work worthy of him at Athens, and the means of actively serving his country, and gaining the popularity he so justly deserves.'

  She advised Tino, in the meantime, to gather around him the best men in the army and the best heads in the country. He should remain in constant touch with public life and to develop his own particular sphere of interest. 'I do so want him to become in himself a "pillar of the State" he will some day be called upon to rule over,' she said to her daughter. 'I want him to have success and satisfaction after he has suffered so much injustice and ingratitude. Help him, like a good and admiring and helpful faithful little wife, wherever you can.'

  This Princess Sophie always tried to do. Indeed, the one reassuring spot in Sophie's often difficult life was her love for her husband and her family. Husband and wife were devoted to each other and they delighted in their children. Their home life was harmonious and unpretentious; the children were raised strictly but lovingly. By 1901 – the year of the deaths of both Sophie's grandmother, Queen Victoria, and her mother, the Empress Frederick – the couple had four children: three boys and a girl. The girl would one day become a queen and each of the three boys, through the caprices of their country's politics, would in turn be King of the Hellenes.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  'Sweet Grandmama'

  1

  By marrying into the senior branch of the family into which her cousin Sophie had married – the Danish royal family – Princess Maud of Wales had joined one of the most unaffected royal houses in Europe. At the time of Maud's arrival in Copenhagen, her husband's grandfather, King Christian IX, was seventy-eight and had reigned for thirty-three years. His wife, Queen Louise, was a year older. Of the two, the Queen was the more forceful ('false, intriguing and not wise' was Queen Victoria's blunt opinion) but the marriage was a happy one. Husband and wife were both simple in their tastes, unquestioningly religious and devoted to their family. During his reign, King Christian IX, largely through the marriages of his attractive children, had risen to a position of considerable importance and influence in Europe. If he was not yet the Grandfather of Europe, he was certainly Europe's Father-in-law. His eldest son, Crown Prince Frederick (Princess Maud's father-in-law) would one day reign as King of Denmark; his daughter, Princess Alexandra, would be Queen of England; another son was King George I of the Hellenes; a second daughter was now the Dowager Empress Marie of Russia; a third daughter had married the son of the ex-King of Hanover; his youngest son was married to an Orleans princess and had once been offered, and had declined, the crown of Bulgaria.

  These brilliant connections had in no way gone to the head of this modest and gentlemanly King. Manners at the Danish court might have been somewhat stiff but life remained as simple and as unsophisticated as it had ever been.

  In the Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen there might occasionally be some state entertaining but in the country castles of Bernsdorff and Fredensborg everything was on the homeliest scale. The most illustrious royal guests were obliged to live en famille. Visiting queens had to share sitting-rooms; breakfast and luncheon were taken without servants, the food being set out on sideboards and guests helping themselves. Some unimportant princess was quite likely to find herself being attended to by the Tsar of Russia or the Prince of Wales.

  Dinner was served at the unfashionable hour of six in the evening. Before the meal, the old King would move solemnly from guest to guest, saying a few words to each. Dinner, at which the food was reported to be 'heavy, not to say indifferent', lasted for an hour and a half, after which the guests would file into the drawing-room where again the King would make his agonizingly slow circle. This would be followed by cards or artless parlour games. At nine o'clock there would be a further spread of country fare: tea, sandwiches, sour milk and øllebrød. It was all very provincial. The worldly Prince of Wales is reported to have once said that there was only one more boring place on earth than Fredensborg, and that was Bernsdorff.

  But the family loved it. Close-knit, clannish, unsophisticated, the children and grandchildren of King Christian IX adored these family gatherings. Princess Alexandra is said to have enjoyed being in her Danish home 'much more than anything else'. Under the eye of the patriarchal old King, the family seemed to live in an atmosphere of permanent adolescence: they pedalled their bicycles, they rode their horses, they played their jokes. They went picnicking and boating and walking. Of cultural or intellectual pursuits there was no trace. Anyone attempting to write a letter or read a book would be mercilessly teased. Even the Princess of Wales, by then almost stone deaf, complained of not being able to concentrate on her letters because of the obligatory racket raised by the others the minute she sat down.

  As the park of Fredensborg Castle was often open to the public, visitors were quite likely to find themselves face to face with members of the royal family. On one occasion a man who had lost his way in the woods came across the King of Greece, the Tsar of Russia and the Prince of Wales. Not realizing who they were, he asked them to show him the way out of the park. The illustrious trio accompanied him to the gates, talking all the while of the weather, crops and politics.

  'I've very much enjoyed my walk with you gentlemen and I hope we shall meet again,' said the stranger as he parted from them. 'May I ask your names?'

  'Certainly,' answered King George. 'I'm the King of Greece, this is the Prince of Wales, and this is the Emperor of Russia.'

  'And I,' said, the stranger with a sceptical smile, 'am Jesus Christ.'

  One of the chief characteristics of the members of the Danish royal family was their devotion towards one another. Queen Victoria, on referring to the disharmony so prevalent in most royal families, once claimed that 'one remarkable exception is the Danish Royal Family; they are wonderfully united – and never breathe one word against each other, and the daughters remain as unspoilt and as completely Children of the Home as when they were unmarried.'

  All in all, one would have imagined it to be a highly suitable milieu for the newly-married Princess Maud. So unworldly, so unaffected, so fond of outdoor amusements, she could hardly have wished for more congenial company. But she was not happy. She disliked Denmark and she longed for England. Although her Copenhagen home – a suite of twelve rooms in what was known as King George's Palace, beside the Amalienborg Palace – was furnished 'to reflect English taste', she was dissatisfied. She was forever bemoaning the fact that her husband's naval duties kept him at sea for long periods. Such complaints brought an uncharacteristically sharp rejoinder from her mother: Princess Maud must 'on no account forget that she married a Danish Prince and a naval man and he owes his first duty to his country and his profession', wrote Princess Alexandra.

  But before many months had passed, Princess Maud and her husband were back in England. In buttercup yellow satin she attended a state concert; in white serge and a boater, she boarded the Osborne at Cowes; at the Chamberlains' great party she was all but torn to pieces by an unruly mob on the pavement. When Prince Charles was obliged to return to Copenhagen at the end of the summer, his wife remained at Appleton. She seemed, indeed, to be spending almost as much time with her mother and sisters as she was with her husband.

  'The Princess of Wales and her daughters look very seedy,' wrote one of Queen Victoria's ladies on seeing them in the South of France the following Easter, 'and Princess Maud has dyed her hair canary colour which makes her look quite improper and more like a little milliner than ever.'

  Well might an observer wr
ite that 'it is indeed remarkable how little the marriages of the Royal Family have interfered with their old family life, for when the [Prince and Princess of Wales] are in residence, their children are near to them, proving unmistakably the deep affection which unites them. Such a close family life with their parents, after marriage has claimed princes and princesses, is unique in history.'

  And while Princess Maud remained the wife of a relatively unimportant Danish Prince, she could afford to indulge her passion for England and her family. She was not to know that before many years had passed, she would suddenly become a Queen.

  2

  In the summer of 1897, the Empress Frederick travelled to England for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. The Diamond Jubilee differed from the Golden Jubilee, ten years before, in that it was a manifestation of British imperial power rather than a gathering of Europe's royalties. No crowned heads were invited. The thought of all those kings and emperors crowding into Buckingham Palace was more than the seventy-eight-year-old Queen could bear. It also meant that her grandson, the exhausting Kaiser Wilhelm II, need not be invited. Never the less, there was no shortage of lesser royalties. Princes and princesses from every court in Europe came swarming into London: 'Buckingham Palace is like a beehive,' reported the Empress, 'the place is so crammed we do not see very much of each other.'

  Celebrations on Jubilee Day – 22 June 1897 – were restricted to the Queen's magnificent procession through the streets of the capital. At the steps of St Paul's Cathedral the procession halted and, with the lame old Queen remaining firmly in her carriage, a short thanksgiving service was conducted in the open air. 'No!' exclaimed the Queen's cousin, the English-born Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, on first hearing of this plan, 'that out of doors Service before St Paul's! Has one ever heard of such a thing! after 60 years Reign, to thank God in the Street!!!'

  But thank God in the street Queen Victoria did, and the unusual proceedings in no way detracted from the brilliance of the occasion. 'The celebrations were no less magnificent than ten years ago . . .' wrote the Empress to her daughter Sophie. 'The streets were most beautifully decorated, the crowds immense, the enthusiasm great, and the perfect order was marvellous, all so well arranged and organized. The scene in front of St Paul's was most impressive, and when the bells pealed out from the dark old Cathedral, and the cheers rang out again, and the sun shone on all the glitter of the escort and carriages and the countless spectators, it was as fine a sight as you could wish to see.'

  After an exhausting round of luncheons, dinners, soirées, garden parties and receptions, the Empress returned to Friedrichshof. As always, she hated leaving England; more particularly now, as her mother was growing so old and frail. But within a year, Vicky's own health, which had always been so good, began to trouble her.

  In the autumn of 1898, at the age of fifty-seven, the Empress was thrown by her horse and was obliged to spend a few days in bed. It appears that the doctor who was called in to examine her after the accident discovered that she had cancer. Whether or not he advised an operation is not certain; a specialist, examining her six months later, claimed that an operation at the time of the discovery might have been successful.

  But she would do nothing about it. She imagined that her body was strong enough to withstand the ravages of the disease for as much as ten years, by which time she would have lived her allotted span. She therefore swore the doctor to secrecy and gave out that she was suffering from lumbago.

  'To have all the world know it would be to make my life utterly wretched and deprive me of all peace and independence,' she wrote to Sophie. 'You know how indiscreet people at Berlin are. I am not much loved, so I should not like to have people most likely rejoicing over my misfortune and speculating on my coming decease before it is necessary.'

  Not until the following year did the Empress tell the Kaiser, her other children, the marshal of her household and one or two close friends. Her mother, Queen Victoria, was never informed.

  But the Empress Frederick's estimate of ten more years of life had been too optimistic. The disease spread rapidly and by the end of the year 1900 she was in almost continuous pain. 'The terrible nights of agony are worse than ever, no rest, no peace,' she confided to her daughter Sophie. 'The tears rush down my cheeks when I am not shouting with pain. The injections of morphia dull the pains a little for about quarter of an hour, sometimes not at all, then they rage again with renewed intensity, and make me wish I was safe in my grave, where these sufferings are not. So my nights are spent.'

  In addition to her own health, the Empress was worried about that of her mother. For the Queen, too, was sinking. 'How I wish I could see her soon,' wrote the Empress. 'I long to be with her, but am a stupid useless thing, like a log of wood.'

  Life, for Queen Victoria, had been particularly sad during the last few years. The Boer War, which broke out in October 1899 and in which the British initially suffered terrible reverses, filled her with anxiety. She was distressed by the almost general European sympathy for the Boer cause; so vociferous was French condemnation of Britain's action in South Africa that the Queen was obliged to cancel her customary journey to the South of France in the spring of 1900. The German Press was no less insulting. 'The Anglophobian fever, which seemed to have deprived the German press of its reason, gives me great pain,' admitted Vicky to her mother. Further away than ever seemed any realization of Vicky's dream of an Anglo-German alliance.

  Family deaths further saddened the old Queen. In February 1899, her grandson, 'young Alfred', only son of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh (and brother to Princess Marie of Romania) died at the age of twenty-five. The following year the Duke of Edinburgh himself died. 'Oh God! my poor darling Affie gone too . . .' cried the Queen. 'It is hard at eighty-one!' In October 1900 yet another of her grandsons, Prince Christian Victor of Schleswig-Holstein, son of her daughter Helena, died of enteric fever in South Africa. It had been, as the Queen put it, a 'horrible year'.

  Making it yet more horrible for the Queen was the thought of her daughter Vicky's illness. The Queen still believed that her daughter was suffering from lumbago. 'Darling Vicky's sixtieth birthday,' ran the entry in the Queen's Journal for 21 November 1900.'To think of her, who was so wonderfully active and strong, now so ill and suffering, is heartbreaking . . . We pray daily that she may suffer less.'

  But the Empress's sufferings were worse. By the beginning of the year 1901 it was realized that she did not have many more months to live. With the old Queen growing more feeble by the day, it was wondered which of the two would go first. By the middle of January it was clear that it would be the Queen. Her children were summoned to Osborne on 18 January; with them came her grandson, Kaiser Wilhelm II. At four o'clock on the afternoon of 22 January 1901 a bulletin was issued to say that 'The Queen is slowly sinking'.

  Queen Victoria lay in her great white bed, her pillows supported by a touchingly solicitous and uncharacteristically mute Kaiser Wilhelm. Around her stood her children and grandchildren. In an effort to rouse the dying Queen, they called out their names. There was no response to their appealing voices.

  Queen Victoria died just after half past six that evening.

  The news was broken to the Empress Frederick the following day by her daughter Mossy. Vicky was desolate. She wished, she said, that she too were dead.

  'Words cannot describe my agony of mind at this overwhelming sorrow,' she wrote to Sophie. 'Oh, my beloved Mama! Is she really gone? Gone from us all to whom she was such a comfort and support . . . It breaks my heart. My Sophie darling, you have lost a most dear and kind and sweet Grandmama, who was ever so full of love for you all, taking an interest in all that concerned you.

  'What a Queen she was, and what a woman!'

  PART TWO

  1901 – 1918

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Europe's Uncle

  1

  King Edward VII was in his sixtieth year when he ascended the British throne in January 1901. That Q
ueen Victoria's son looked every inch a king, there was no denying. Impressively corpulent, impeccably dressed, supremely self-assured, King Edward VII cut an unmistakably regal figure. On state occasions he wore his robes with immense authority; in private, with his hat stylishly tilted, a carnation in his buttonhole and a cigar between his fingers, his air was no less majestic. Not even in the most brilliant company did he ever look anything other than the most important person present.

  And not only did Edward VII look like a king, he behaved like one. Into those public duties which his mother had so long neglected, he threw himself with gusto. The ceremonial aspect of the monarchy was not only restored but expanded. Parliament was once more opened with great pageantry, spectacular state visits were exchanged, glittering courts, balls and banquets were held at Buckingham Palace, carriages bowled in colourful procession along the course at Ascot. No capital in Europe – not the barbaric splendour of St Petersburg or the showy militarism of Berlin – could match the assured magnificence of King Edward VII's court. With the decorative and perennially youthful Queen Alexandra by his side, King Edward restored to the British monarchy a lustre that it had not known since the days of the Stuarts.

  'Nothing,' wrote one of his Continental nieces, 'is more irreproachably perfect in every detail then the King of England's Court and household, a sort of staid luxury without ostentation, a placid, aristocratic ease and opulence which has nothing showy about it. Everything is run on silent wheels that have been perfectly greased; everything fits in, there are no spaces between, no false note. From the polite, handsome and superlatively groomed gentleman-in-waiting who receives you in the hall, to the magnificently solemn and yet welcoming footman who walks before you down the corridor, everything pleases the eye, satisfies one's fastidiousness. When I call up before my eye the royal English abodes I always have a vision of softly carpeted picture-hung corridors, with a silent-footed servant walking ahead of you, discreetly impersonal and yet belonging to the whole; I have the feeling of mounting shallow-stepped stairs leading towards rooms as perfectly "groomed" as were the horses of the royal carriage which brought you up to the front door, as perfectly groomed also as the tall sentry presenting arms before the gates . . . .'