Queen Victoria's Matchmaking

by Deborah Cadbury

  Vicky continued to have concerns about Wilhelm’s development as he was followed in the nursery by a succession of younger siblings: Charlotte, Henry, Sigismund, Victoria, Waldemar, Sophie and Margaret. Unlike his British cousin Eddy, Wilhelm applied himself with tremendous self-discipline and after years of patient struggle, he mastered all the physical skills he would need as a future emperor, even becoming an accomplished horseman and an excellent shot despite his handicap. Nevertheless he continued to exhibit troubling character flaws. Vicky felt her son displayed an undue sense of self-importance and could be opinionated and arrogant. At times he could be ‘a most destructive little person’ who ‘flies into most violent passions’, she told her mother.32 Vicky was convinced he was spoiled by others and she applied the most exacting standards herself.

  Queen Victoria was sympathetic, but viewed from a distance at first could not be certain that her daughter’s high expectations were exacerbating the problem. Wilhelm took pains with his grandmother. His letters marking the birthdays and anniversaries were invariably well written in English and eloquent in his gratitude for presents received. Her oldest grandson was bright and willing to apply himself at high school, the Friedrichgymnasium in Kassel, and later at the University of Bonn. The queen tried to reassure her daughter and calm her concerns about her oldest son. ‘I think Willie does not mean to be unfeeling,’ she wrote in August 1879.33 A few months later, acknowledging that Wilhelm was ‘quite tiresome and provoking’ in his ‘esprit de contradiction’, she still felt that this was common in young people and ‘it very likely will get better if no notice is taken of that’.34

  Wilhelm became adept at slipping into his letters to his grandmother comments that she might want to hear, as though defending himself against criticism that he suspected must have been aired by his mother. In an apparent show of unity with his mother he wrote, ‘she and I, we both agree wholly in loving and adoring everything that is in England or English, especially the lovely service of the Church of England’.35 Such sentiments conflicted with letters from Vicky, who remained distressed at his opposition to her ‘English’ liberal ideas and his marked preference for the militarism of his grandfather, Wilhelm 1, and Bismarck. In 1880 Vicky returned to her theme. ‘Willy is chauvinistic and ultra-Prussian to a degree and with a violence that is often very painful to me.’ Aware that her mother thought that she could be provoking confrontation, Vicky added, ‘I avoid all discussions . . . and remain silent’, even when his ‘bigotry and narrow-mindedness’ gave grounds for concern.36 Two weeks later her mother replied, again gently chiding her daughter to be less critical. Acknowledging her daughter’s grief over her favourite son, eleven-year-old Prince Waldemar, who had died of diphtheria in March 1879, she added, ‘I only tremble when I hear too great lamentation over the deficiencies of those left.’37 Within a few years, however, even Queen Victoria conceded the special difficulties Vicky faced and – in private at least – put her view without hesitation: her German grandson ‘often needed a good smacking’.38

  Vicky hoped to ease her difficulties with her son by finding him a suitable wife. In 1878 the nineteen-year-old prince suddenly expressed strong feelings for the very princess she had recommended, Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, or ‘Dona’. For a brief period relations with his mother improved as Wilhelm felt grateful to his parents for their help in enlisting the emperor’s permission for him to ask for Dona’s hand. Vicky had an unexpected ally in Bismarck, who believed that an alliance between the imposing Hohenzollerns of Prussia and the aggrieved Schleswig-Holsteins, who had lost out in the German fight with Denmark, would strengthen German unity. But to Vicky’s surprise, given that she and her mother had liaised so closely over the matches of her siblings, Queen Victoria would not lend her support, shrewdly pointing out that she must keep out of such an important German matter and ‘behave quite passively’. It would be a mistake for the British queen to be seen meddling in the prospective match of the German heir.39 Queen Victoria waited until Kaiser Wilhelm I finally approved the alliance in January 1880 before meeting Dona and her sister, Calma, at Windsor, who struck her as ‘dear nice girls, tall, pretty figures, very fair with blue eyes’.40 Vicky had persuaded herself that Dona would be ‘an angel of peace & Love and comfort for us all’, and the queen agreed that gentle Dona ‘is well calculated to be an element of peace in ruffled waters’.41

  Their hopes were soon frustrated. After his wedding on 27 February 1881, Wilhelm had independence and his own household, almost entirely staffed by those who supported the emperor and Bismarck’s point of view. Dona worshipped her volatile husband and was exceedingly anxious to please. Gradually her docile nature moulded around his, and Vicky soon found her daughter-in-law as narrow-minded, reactionary and Prussian in her thinking as her son. In December 1886 Wilhelm proudly reported to Queen Victoria that on his grandfather’s orders he was now working at the Foreign Ministry, ‘to learn from and under the guidance of Prince Bismarck how to do politics and how to manage to steer the ship of the state between the shoals and intricate channels of treaties, foreign susceptibilities etc’.42 He cut his political teeth on two important missions to Russia in 1884 and 1886. But his initial success was undermined when he wrote secretly to the new Russian tsar, Alexander III, contemptuously badmouthing his parents and alleging they were under the control of Queen Victoria. Vicky found her son’s outbursts of aggression against her unbearable and soon realised that he was being coached by Bismarck against his liberal parents.

  By the mid-1880s one long-running feud within the German royal house developed into open warfare between mother and son. Vicky wanted her second daughter, Victoria, known as ‘Moretta’ in the family, to marry a handsome German prince who had been elevated to the Bulgarian throne, Prince Alexander of Battenberg. Queen Victoria lent her support to the plan, and spurred on by Vicky, Moretta and Alexander became secretly engaged in 1883, subject to approval from Kaiser Wilhelm I. But the prospective marriage sharply divided the German court and once again Prince Wilhelm aligned himself with Bismarck and his German grandparents against his British mother. At stake were two very different visions of Germany’s foreign policy and future role in Europe.

  Bismarck believed that any strengthening of German influence in eastern Europe on the Black Sea through a German-Bulgarian marriage would appear threatening to Alexander III. For the tsar, Bulgaria was tantamount to an outlying region of Russia and no other power should meddle with it. Bismarck argued that Vicky’s proposed alliance for Moretta would harm Germany’s relationship with Russia, perhaps nudge Russia into an unwelcome alliance with France or even provoke war. Seen through the eyes of her antagonistic son, Vicky’s passionate support for the match could be construed as a British ‘plot’ to weaken Germany. But nothing was further from her mind.

  For Vicky the match promised a far-reaching extension of her father’s vision for Germany and its place in Europe. Not only did she want to play a role in liberalising Germany when her husband came to power but also to spread these enlightened values to eastern Europe. She glimpsed the possibility of her three younger daughters, Moretta, Sophie and Margaret, marrying into the Crowns of Bulgaria, Greece and Romania. They in turn might plant the seed of liberalism in the Balkan region of south-east Europe and build ties between a liberal Germany and Britain, which would cooperate in pushing back the destabilising influence of barbarous Russia in eastern Europe. Moretta’s match to the Bulgarian prince was the first stage in a visionary expansion of the Albertine plan.43

  Prince Wilhelm railed at his mother, behaving like a man provoked beyond all reason. Quite apart from the implications of the match for Germany’s relations with Russia, he and others in his family believed there was another insuperable obstacle to the handsome Battenberg prince: his pedigree. Alexander of Battenberg’s line was ‘contaminated’ by the presence of non-royal blood; there was at least one count in the family tree, not to mention a valet too. This issue struck at the quintessential essence of royalty. For
Wilhelm, the Hohenzollerns stood apart, inviolable, blessed with some indefinable royal quality that came with being princes of the blood, which entitled them to their position as Prussia’s and Germany’s ruling house. With one of the outbursts of violent temper for which he would become known, he threatened to ‘club the Battenberger [Prince Alexander] to death’ if Vicky and Moretta persisted with the match.44 Such was the fury vented by Wilhelm and his family on this particular issue that Vicky, who reported everything faithfully to her mother, asked the queen to burn her letters. ‘That very foolish, undutiful and – I must add – unfeeling boy I have no patience with, and I wish he could get a good “skelping” [flogging] as the Scotch say and seriously a good setting down,’ Queen Victoria replied sympathetically to her daughter in February 1885.45 Vicky appears to have been so fearful about what she had disclosed that the queen wrote a couple of days later to reassure her daughter that her letters ‘are burned and I burn many a one which speaks of people which might be disagreeable hereafter’. A large number of Vicky’s letters in 1885 have not survived.46

  During the jubilee year of 1887, Wilhelm continued to cause his parents immense distress during each alarming phase of his father Crown Prince Frederick’s illness. His thirst for power was undisguised, with open criticism of his parents circulating in Berlin. Vicky felt hunted by the press. Her son’s contempt for her was barely disguised and she was also tainted by the failings of the English doctor, Mackenzie, whose overly optimistic advice earlier in the year appeared to have denied her husband, the German heir to the throne, a chance of long-term survival. Queen Victoria was much troubled by the way Vicky and Frederick ‘are both tormented . . . it makes my blood boil’.47 An order from the ailing old emperor enabling his grandson to sign documents on his behalf was handled with great insensitivity by Wilhelm, as though he had power already. The queen felt obliged to remind Prince Wilhelm of the need to consider the ‘dear Patient – no one can over rate the value of that precious life to dear Mama, and you all, – to Germany, Europe, if not the whole world’.48 Wilhelm assured his grandmother that he was doing all he could, an assurance that conflicted with Vicky’s own account. The warring tone of Wilhelm’s reply was hardly reassuring. ‘Politically the outlook is rather cloudy . . . Providence alone knows what is in store for us all; may it be Peace! If not, well then let Lord Nelson’s signal fly at the mast head of every nation which is willing to keep Europe from harm’.49

  The close ties that a British-German grandson was intended to symbolise appeared to have turned into the reverse. Wilhelm was unstable; blown this way and that by his latest enthusiasm, alternating between an overweening confidence and crushing defeat when that buoyant mood evaporated. All the imagined insults and pricks to the wounded vanity of the German prince gradually coalesced into intensely conflicting feelings towards Britain and his British relatives: admiration and resentment, goodwill and hatred. Vicky knew that schooled in a ‘poisonous atmosphere’ by Bismarck and his allies, her son confused demonstrating a ‘hatred against England . . . as patriotism’.50 It was a short step in his mind to merge his mother’s Englishness and her liberal values: liberalism was not quite German and would weaken his country. German might and glory had been born out of Prussian militarism. Even Bismarck himself, who had done so much to encourage Prince Wilhelm’s alienation from his parents, began to foresee trouble if Crown Prince Frederick was unable to become the next emperor. Wilhelm ‘is impetuous . . . cannot keep silent, is susceptible to flattery and could plunge Germany into war without foreseeing or wishing it’.51

  The final collapse of Vicky’s hopes for fulfilling the wider mission of her marriage was at hand. After months of decline, the ageing Kaiser Wilhelm I died on 9 March 1888 and Vicky’s husband became Frederick III, German emperor and king of Prussia. The great moment for which Vicky and Frederick had worked for thirty years was upon them. This was their hour, their chance to shape the future of the country, perhaps even to dismantle the apparatus of autocratic power and steer German governance towards a more liberal system under a constitutional monarch. The queen was overwhelmed. ‘My own dear Empress Victoria,’ she wrote to Vicky. ‘I am thankful and proud that dear Fritz and you should have come to the throne.’52 There was a blizzard of snow in Berlin as the failing new emperor, with an unmistakeable look of death about him and with great effort, struggled to seize his hour. He issued a manifesto: ‘my whole endeavour will be . . . to make Germany a protector of peace and to care for the wellbeing of the country’.53

  Their chance was painfully denied them. Bertie attended the funeral of Emperor Wilhelm I and was shocked at the change in his brother-in-law, Emperor Frederick. The apparently invincible prince of nine months earlier at the Golden Jubilee was wasted and had ‘a hunted, anxious expression, which was very distressing to see’, Bertie wrote to the queen.54 The speechless emperor could communicate only by means of a pad of paper and pencil.55 Vicky felt wrecked, as though she was on ‘a sinking ship’. Her father’s dream, her sacred flag, was now in shreds. Thirty years of discussions about how she and her husband would bring Britain and Germany closer together were now irrelevant.

  Even if Emperor Frederick had had the strength to implement the reforms, he was unable to do so. Bismarck’s supporters were watching for any attempt by the new emperor to rush through liberal English ideas. Such was the deep suspicion in Berlin at the prospect of any interference by the empress that the British prime minister, the Conservative statesman Lord Salisbury, sent a warning. On no account could Britain be seen to meddle in Germany’s affairs, he advised the British ambassador. Vicky would ‘incur most serious risk’ if she attempted to do so; she must appear ‘mildly Bismarckian’.56 Every aspect of Vicky’s life appeared to be coloured by the bitter conflict over her Britishness. Even her older children, Charlotte and Henry, joined Wilhelm in open support of her enemies. Already Wilhelm ‘fancies himself completely the emperor and an absolute and an autocratic one’, Vicky warned her mother.57 Queen Victoria was outraged at her grandson’s behaviour to his mother and father.

  When Lord Salisbury heard that Queen Victoria had ventured forth from her holiday in the Mediterranean with Beatrice to visit her family in Berlin he sensed trouble. Recognising that Queen Victoria’s approach to dealing with her grandson might stray some way from Foreign Office diplomacy, he felt the need, once again, to send a warning. ‘Most unhappily,’ he wrote, all her grandson’s ‘impulses’ would soon have political consequences ‘of enormous potency’. Germany and Britain ‘are so necessary to each other’ that anything said to him ‘must be carefully weighed’.58 The prime minister made his private views plain to his friend, the Duke of Rutland, who was to accompany Victoria in Germany. The queen was ‘very unmanageable about her conduct to her relations’, wrote the prime minister. ‘She will persist in considering William only as her grandson. But the matter has become political and very grave and she must listen to advice.’59 The queen was no longer at liberty to speak her mind and any family row could harm Anglo-German relations.

  However affronted Queen Victoria may have felt on receiving instructions from the prime minister about how to manage her grandson, she did not grace him with a reply. Nonetheless, as she approached the outskirts of Berlin on the morning of 24 April 1888, noting from the train window the increasingly flat landscape and glimpses of soldiers drilling, she was preparing to be her dignified best. She and Beatrice arrived at the small station of Charlottenburg and there to greet her on the platform was Wilhelm, with Vicky and all her other children. Vicky stepped briefly into her mother’s carriage for a moment’s privacy. ‘I clasped her in my arms and kissed her warmly,’ the queen wrote in her journal.60 Both women were determined not to give way before the other. Wilhelm was all smiles and courteous respect for his grandmother. He escorted her through the station to their waiting barouche and travelled with her to the Charlottenburg Palace. Vicky took her mother to a suite of rooms once occupied by Frederick the Great and could not restrain her tears o
nce they were private. In her mother’s eyes, she seemed ‘so good and brave’.61 The queen’s most painful encounter was with her son-in-law, Frederick. Both knew he had not long to live. The emperor, true to character, tried to make some gesture of gallantry, raising his skeletal frame in bed as best he could to give his mother-in-law a small bouquet. Victoria tried to find words of comfort but in her heart she ‘was wrung with grief and pity’.62

  The queen hoped to be of use and her chance came on 25 April when Bismarck came to see her. It was their first meeting for more than thirty years and the queen found Vicky’s great enemy did not live up to her expectations. ‘An immense man . . . in full uniform’ entered the room, but to the queen’s surprise he adopted a ‘gentleness of manner and very agreeable tone’. Germany’s Iron Chancellor and Britain’s imperious Queen-Empress soon found much on which to agree. Bismarck’s ‘great object was to prevent war upon which I observed that this was also our great desire’, the queen recorded. As they discussed Europe’s Great Powers both shared ‘a great distrust’ of Russia. Bismarck explained his fears that Russia and France would unite against Germany or that Russia might attack Austria, in which case Germany would be obliged by treaty to assist Austria. When it came to family matters, Bismarck and the queen found they were in agreement over Wilhelm’s inexperience. With tears in his eyes, Bismarck acknowledged Emperor Frederick’s ‘hard fate’ to have waited for so long ‘and not be able to do what he could for his Country’, and he promised the queen he would ‘stand by’ Vicky.63 Bismarck had expected Queen Victoria to support Vicky in her continued insistence that Moretta should marry Prince Alexander of Battenberg and so he was relieved to find that she had concluded the match was unworkable. ‘That was a woman!’ he said afterwards in admiration.