Alice, The Enigma - A Biography of Queen Victoria's Daughter

by Christina Croft

  Frittie’s death had a profound effect upon Alice, and her natural grief was compounded by the thought that, had she not left him for that moment, the accident might have been avoided. Everywhere she saw reminders of him, particularly when she noticed flowers along the roadside, since he had been so fond of flowers; and, as soon as the first snowdrops appeared the following spring, she gathered them to place on his grave. The suddenness of his death reminded her again of the uncertainty of life and the necessity of doing all the good that she could while she still had time, but, while her charitable endeavours and commitment to her other children in no way diminished, in losing little Frittie, she lost much of her former drive and energy.

  Seeking comfort, she abandoned her spiritual seeking to return to the security of her childhood faith, resigning herself to ‘God’s will’ without question, and relying on the hope that one day she would see both Frittie and her father again. Her family was delighted by this ‘return to the fold’ but, with hindsight, her resignation appears to have sprung from deflation and the lack of energy to continue her quest for the truth, rather than from the realisation that her former efforts had been mistaken. Quite simply, she no longer had the will or the strength to go on searching. Ironically, at the same time, she, who had been so keen to shake her mother out of her excessive mourning, now mirrored the very attitude which she had once criticised.

  “You understand,” she told the Queen, “how long and deep my grief must be,” she wrote. “And does not one grow to love one’s grief, as having become part of the being one loved – as if through this one could still pay a tribute of love to them, to make up for the terrible loss, and missing of not being able to do anything for the beloved anymore?”[180]

  Repeatedly in her mind she relived the last day of Frittie’s life, torturing herself with thoughts of ‘what might have been’. His birthday and the anniversary of his death were commemorated each year, and, in an exact replication of her mother’s response to the death of the Duchess of Kent and Prince Albert, Alice now found every joyful occasion clouded by his absence. Even though she delighted in the birth of her youngest child, May, her christening at Jugenheim served only as a reminder that Frittie was no longer with them.

  In the same way, too, as her mother had declared that earthly life held no meaning for her in the aftermath of Prince Albert’s passing, eighteen months after Frittie’s death, Alice wrote mournfully that ‘much that was dearest, most precious…is in the grave; part of my heart is there, too.’

  In a state of deepening depression, she had little inclination to make new friends, commenting that they could never replace old ones who were ‘precious landmarks in the history of one’s life’[v]; and suddenly events and places which had brought her pleasure in the past, no longer seemed so attractive. Three years earlier the ‘heavenly’ sea air, the long beach and the donkey rides at Blankenberghe had been sheer delight but now, as finances prevented the family from holidaying elsewhere, she wrote mournfully that they would have to make do with ‘that dreadful Blankenberghe – without tree or bush, nothing but a beach and sand banks’. Music, which had long been her solace, became too painful, and it was weeks after Frittie’s death before she could bring herself to play the piano again. Even thoughts of Osborne, which had for so long been a haven for her and to which she would ever long to return, were shaded by the realisation that her childhood companions were no longer there, and even if the place remained the same, she could never relive the happy days of the past.

  Throughout her life, Alice had struggled to overcome her tendency to be over-emotional but now the effort was too great.

  “People with strong feelings and of a nervous temperament, for which one is no more responsible than the colour of one’s eyes, have things to fight against and to put up with, unknown to those of quiet equable dispositions, who are free from violent emotions and have consequently no feeling of nerves – still less of irritable nerves….One can overcome a great deal but alter oneself one cannot.”[181]

  Disappointed by her marriage, disillusioned by her spiritual seeking, and tired of struggling against her own nature, it was as though Frittie’s death had led to a dam burst of all the feelings she had struggled so hard to overcome. The unspoken anguish she felt at the death of her father; the loneliness of realising that she and Louis were incompatible; the stress of financial struggles; and the strain of living through two wars – all were taking their toll, and, just as Prince Albert’s repressed emotions had resulted in a myriad of apparently disconnected ailments, so, too, was Alice increasingly afflicted by various debilitating illnesses from which she would never fully recover.

  Chapter 20 – How Far From Well I Am

  Partial to puddings and pies, Queen Victoria’s girth increased with age to the point where the waist of her drawers measured more than fifty inches[w]. At least three of her children shared her propensity to obesity, so it is unsurprising that Alice, who was slim, was frequently described as ‘very thin’. This, combined with the Queen’s regular references to Alice’s health, has given the impression that there was a certain frailty about her, which has often been linked to her childhood episode of scarlet fever.

  It must be remembered, though, that it was common practice for members of the Royal Family to comment on one another’s appearance and, while for the Queen ‘health’ was often a euphemism for pregnancy, each minor ailment or the pallor of the skin was noted in letters and journals. Years later, Alice’s daughter, Alix, recorded her children’s temperatures and even the dates of her daughters’ periods in letters to her husband, the Tsar. Alice herself informed the Queen of every childhood illness her children suffered – Ella had a ‘violent cough’; Victoria had a cold; Ernie was pale; Irène had chicken pox – and she wrote often of the necessity of taking them to the seaside for its restorative effects.

  This apparent obsession with health, which seems to verge on hypochondria, could well be explained by the fact that this was an age in which letter-writing was the sole means of communication, and consequently letters contained all kinds of minute details of everyday life. Moreover, Queen Victoria – herself a prolific letter-writer and avid reader of novels – expected to be kept informed of every incidental detail of her children’s experience.

  Far from viewing herself as frail, Alice considered herself to be particularly robust, and, apart from the ‘typical family complaints’ of rheumatism and colds – which were common at a time when central heating was unheard of, and the damp English climate was compounded by the smog of industrial cities – she commented that being ill was a nuisance since she was so unused to it. She had no misgivings about visiting disease-infected hospitals or having close contact with smallpox and typhus victims, and, until Frittie’s death, she never felt so weak as to neglect her duties.

  Nonetheless, throughout her married life, Alice had suffered from a number of symptoms which might be considered psychosomatic. In February 1868, while worrying about her brother, Leopold, who had been suffering from a serious haemorrhage, she was afflicted with such agonising neuralgia that she could barely open her eyes for over week.

  “I have never felt so unwell, or suffered so much,” she told the Queen, before going on to describe the intensity of the pain that affected one side of her head, leaving her so weak that she could not stand without fearing she would faint.

  Trigeminal neuralgia, the symptoms of which, as Alice described, closely resemble those of migraine, is a recurrent condition caused by the compression or inflammation of the trigeminal nerve. While the cause of the inflammation remains open to debate, the fact that it is nerve-related is significant in Alice’s case, since the Queen and Vicky had both mentioned that Alice was ‘suffering from nerves’, suggesting a link between the physical condition and the stresses of the recent war, concern for her brother and her unresolved issues around the death of her father.

  In 1870, in the midst of the Franco-Prussian War, Alice had a recurrence of the condition, accompanied by an
inflammation of her eyes which continued intermittently for several months. This episode was undoubtedly stress-related, coming at a time when she was simultaneously worrying about Louis and her forthcoming confinement, and paying daily visits to the military hospitals, where she sat at the bedside of the dying.

  “Though I have seen so many lately die hard deaths, and heard the grief of many heartbroken widows and mothers,” she wrote, “it makes my heart bleed anew in each fresh case, and curse the wickedness of war again and again.”[182]

  It was almost to be expected that, surrounded by sights and sounds which were so distressing, Alice should suffer a physical reaction to her eyes and ears; and the tension of maintaining a dignified pose, restraining her tears in the midst of such sorrow, would certainly exacerbate the facial nerves which were already prone to inflammation.

  When Alice’s exhaustion and rheumatism became too much to endure, her faithful Dr Weber and members of the family usually recommended a cure at one of the popular spas, or a recuperative break in the countryside. Sometimes financial restraints and duties made this impossible but, when she could, Alice took the mineral waters at Wiesbaden and the salt waters at Blankenberghe, and escaped to breathe the ‘good sea air’ at every opportunity.

  With Frittie’s death, however, Alice seemed to lose the will to fight, and her health began a gradual decline which continued until her death. A simple cold left her feeling ‘so weak and done up’; hot weather was oppressive and unbearable; cold weather brought on her rheumatism; and she was constantly tired. Mirroring her father’s gradual decline, she thought and wrote often of death. When, in September 1876, her devoted Lady-in-Waiting, Emily Hardinge, died, her ‘tears would not cease’; and a few weeks later she told the Queen:

  “I can do next to nothing of late, and must rest such much…Darling Mama, I don’t think you know quite how far from well I am.”

  In the autumn of 1876, she made her annual visit to Balmoral, where, despite her exhaustion, she dragged herself to church to avoid shocking the locals by staying away. Revived by the Scottish air, she journeyed to London where she accompanied the housing reformer, Octavia Hill, through some of the worst slum districts, with a view to applying her ideas to the poorest parts of Hesse-Darmstadt.

  Inspired by the visit and refreshed by the holiday, Alice began to feel a little better. The colour had returned to her cheeks, and she was convinced that she would be fully recovered in time for the winter. On returning to Hesse in late autumn, she resumed her spiritual reading, finding comfort once more in the sermons of Frederick William Robertson, and the work of the scholar Max Müller, whose fifteen-year-old daughter had recently died of meningitis, and who expressed so clearly Alice’s own views:

  “How mankind defers from day to day the best it can do, and the most beautiful things it can enjoy, without thinking that every day may be the last one, and that lost time is lost eternity!”

  She was eager, too, to continue her philanthropic activities, visiting the slums of Mayence incognita, arranging to have Octavia Hill’s writings translated into German, and watching the progress of her charities. The ‘Alice Hospital’ was prospering; the ‘Alice Union for the Employment of Women’ had extended its remit into the education of girls; the orphanage and asylum were functioning; and Alice was seeking ways to provide safe houses and rescue homes for the rehabilitation of prostitutes.

  Although Frittie’s death still hung like a cloud around her, her health was improving, when suddenly, in the spring of 1877 an event occurred to reopen old wounds and hurl her back into the now-familiar depressive exhaustion.

  On 18th March, news reached Louis that his father, Prince Charles, was dangerously ill. He had developed a high fever and his skin had become red and inflamed. Erysipelas (‘St Anthony’s Fire’) was diagnosed – a bacterial infection which affects the skin and lymphatic system, and which, in the days before antibiotics, often proved fatal. Throughout the day, Louis and Alice watched as Prince Charles’ face became increasingly swollen, disfiguring his features.

  Louis’ mother and brothers did not leave his bedside as he drifted out of consciousness, and, though Louis and Alice briefly went home to snatch a few hours’ sleep, they returned at dawn the following morning and remained with him for twelve hours until his death at six-thirty that evening.

  The next day, when Prince Charles’ body had been dressed in his uniform, Alice arranged the flowers around his bed and did all she could to comfort Louis and his mother. Preparations were soon underway for an interment in the Rosenhőhe – the family mausoleum in which Frittie was buried – and Alice was plunged again into the painful recollections of her son.

  ‘My tears will not stop flowing,’ she wrote, but, as with the death of her own father, there was little time to wallow in grief. Louis and his mother needed her emotional support and, on a practical level, there were numerous arrangements to make. Prince Charles’ unexpected death meant that Louis was now the heir to the seventy-one-year-old Grand Duke, whose views often conflicted with his own, and whose health was already precarious. Tired and lethargic, Alice dreaded the prospect of being forced into the position of Grand Duchess, particularly at a time when her frequent visits to England had made her unpopular and she feared she would not be welcomed by the people.

  In the sweltering heat of summer, only three months after Prince Charles’ death, Alice and Louis were summoned to Seeheim, where the Grand Duke lay dying. For a few days he fluctuated between deterioration and improvement until the 13th June, when Alice and Louis were urgently recalled to Seeheim, but by the time they arrived, ‘Uncle’ was already dead.

  Now elevated to the position of Grand Duke, Louis set to work, trying to ensure the smooth running of the Grand Duchy but it soon became clear that his predecessor had left his affairs in disarray. With her husband preoccupied with matters of state, it was left to Alice to entertain the royalties who gathered in Darmstadt for the funeral. From Russia came the Tsar’s younger brother, Pavel; Alice’s brother-in-law, Fritz of Prussia, represented the Kaiser; and Queen Victoria dispatched Lenchen’s husband, Christian – all of whom reported how frail and thin the new Grand Duchess appeared.

  In the weeks following the funeral, an oppressive heat wave left Alice so exhausted and unwell that she feared she was dying. Even the optimistic Louis was so anxious about her that he urged her to leave Darmstadt for a recuperative holiday, and, despite her desire to support him in his new role, she agreed that her only hope of survival was to travel to the coast where she hoped the sea air would revive her.

  In mid-July she arrived in Houlgate in Normandy where she was joined by the children in a small and rather dirty house by the sea. Notwithstanding the poor accommodation and the rainy weather, Alice delighted in the beautiful scenery, and, as she had hoped, regular sea-bathing revived her sufficiently to return Darmstadt in time for Louis’ official inauguration on September 8th. The warmth of the crowds and the joyful atmosphere of the occasion exceeded her expectations and, by early autumn, she was ready to undertake her duties as Grand Duchess.

  For the first time since her wedding, money was no longer an issue, and she immediately set to work expanding her charities, including new projects for providing adequate housing for the poor. Now, though, alongside her philanthropic works and her continued care of her family, she was expected to receive official guests, hold regular receptions and assist Louis in the day-to-day running of the Grand Duchy. As ever, she threw herself wholeheartedly into her duties but, in little over a month, she was once again exhausted to the point of collapse.

  “I have been doing too much lately,” she told the Queen, “…and my nerves are beginning to feel the strain, for sleep and appetite are no longer good. Too much is demanded of one; and I have to do with so many things. It is more than my strength can stand in the long run…”[183]

  As the year drew to a close, she surrendered all hope of a complete recovery, and, like her father before her, she sensed that she had not long to liv
e. In December, she declined an invitation to Vicky’s eldest daughter’s wedding the following February, convinced that she would be too ill to attend; and, looking back at that time some months later, Vicky recalled sadly:

  “How anxious I have felt about her dear health I cannot tell you. It often tormented me to see her so frail, so white, and her nerves so unstrung, though it only added additional charm and grace to her dear person and seemed to envelop her with something sad and touching that always drew me to her all the more, and made me feel a wish to help her and take care of her, poor dear!”[184]

  The year 1878 began quietly for Alice. She maintained her interest in her charities, and her children’s upbringing remained of paramount importance for her, but at the age of only thirty-four, she no longer felt capable of participating in social events or shunned public appearances as often as possible. As she had predicted, she did not feel strong enough to travel to Berlin for her niece’s wedding but, in the spring, Louis decided to use his recently-acquired wealth to arrange a relaxing tour for the whole family.

  Following a pleasant visit to Vicky and Fritz’ home in Potsdam, the Hessians embarked on a Baltic cruise with Alice’s old friend, Louise of Prussia, and her husband, the Grand Duke of Baden, before travelling on to the south coast of England, where they stayed for a week in a house on the seafront in Eastbourne. In July, they arrived at Windsor Castle, where Queen Victoria was delighted by the ‘truly beautiful children’, the eldest two of whom were already taller than their mother, but, she noted with consternation: ‘dear Alice is looking dreadfully ill, so pale and thin.”[185]

  With the Queen’s encouragement, the Hessians returned by train to Eastbourne, where they stayed at the Duke of Devonshire’s Jacobean house, Compton Place. As the Queen had expected, the sea air soon had a therapeutic effect on Alice, who, between visits to Osborne and Windsor, was able to enjoy excursions with Louis to Brighton, Hastings and St Leonards-on-Sea. Within a few weeks, she felt well enough to lend her support to local fund-raising events. In early August, she presented the prizes at a gala to raise money for local schools; and shortly afterwards attended a bazaar to raise money for a local church. She took her children to visit Sunday Schools and Day Schools; and, while they played on the beach, she toured the poor fishermen’s cottages and listened to their stories of life on the sea. The holiday was proving so enjoyable and beneficial, that Alice and Louis decided to postpone their departure for a fortnight, remaining in the town until mid-September.