Queen Victoria's Matchmaking

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Queen Victoria's Matchmaking Page 16

by Deborah Cadbury


  Eddy was distraught when Hélène’s letter arrived at Sandringham with the news. ‘Your last has made me feel quite miserable,’ he wrote on 7 November. ‘But I will never give up hope as long as I have life in my wretched body . . .’ He could not help himself, he explained, he thought of her from morning till night. ‘You are beloved by me more than any woman in the world. It is quite impossible I could ever love another woman again.’ He seriously considered abdicating his throne. This was an unexpected deviation from her plan that Queen Victoria found ‘extremely annoying’.63 Bertie’s private secretary, Sir Francis Knollys, wrote to Sir Henry Ponsonby with reassurance. ‘I doubt from what you write to me whether the queen understands Prince Eddy’s character,’ he began. ‘She certainly does not if she believes he could marry Princess Hélène “at all costs”.’ Eddy had been making all sorts of wild claims, ‘but he would no more carry his threats into execution . . . than he would attempt to jump over the moon’.64 Bertie knew more about his son than his wife or his mother and evidently felt that the queen had allowed herself to be taken in. By December, Bertie had identified another suitable bride, the pretty Princess of Saxe Altenburg, who ‘would be snapped up if they did not look sharp’. He was ‘a little annoyed’ with his mother, Knollys revealed to Ponsonby, since ‘the queen is trying to persuade his son to wait for the other one’. This was ‘running after a shadow’, he felt, ‘but if the queen encourages Prince Eddy to hope that there is still a chance of the French princess I am afraid he will not think of anyone else’.65

  Eddy was not to be deflected by the Altenburg princess. He continued with long, devoted letters to Hélène, from Scotland in the autumn, Sandringham over Christmas, Osborne in the New Year, and his Cavalry Barracks in January 1891. In February he confided to his brother that he would ‘never give in’ and ‘shall feel the happiest man in England if it only comes right some day’.66 He had absolute faith in his future with Hélène. He was convinced of her love. Somehow they would make it happen; she could change her religion at the age of twenty-five. They swapped treasured mementos, photographs, lockets, hair, seals and other tokens of affection with Eddy signing in desperation, ‘your devoted lover for life’.

  But on 1 May 1891 Hélène finally wrote a letter that left no room for hope. ‘The political obstacles are insurmountable,’ she explained, and as for those raised by religion, ‘I cannot dishonour you and I will not cast them aside . . . I must ask you to release me from my word . . . I beg you, do not try to fight against my decision, it is irrevocable, we must not see one another again. Do your duty as an English prince without hesitation and forget me . . .’67 The words were so final, with no vestige of hope, that she thought it best for her mother to deliver the letter by hand.

  It took the French countess, Isabella, three weeks before she was able to see Princess Alexandra and her son. When they finally met on 29 May 1891 the scene was ‘terrible’, Isabella reported to her daughter. There was no easy way to break the news; she only found ‘the courage to bear such emotions’ because she loved her daughter deeply. Over the course of two and a half hours, first with Alexandra, then with Eddy, she tried to explain that it was finished. Eddy’s confidence was demolished. He found it hard to believe that Hélène, ‘of her own free will’, had decided ‘that it all should be over between us’. For him their future separation was unbearable; ‘it almost breaks my heart to think our lives will be spent apart,’ he wrote. His emotions, reported the countess, were ‘at first violent, then in despair’.68

  Eddy made one final appeal to his grandmother. He wanted the queen to use her influence to persuade Hélène to change her religion. She ‘absolutely refused this’ and although convinced that Eddy was heartbroken, Queen Victoria told him ‘he must have the courage to renounce the idea for ever’. This was his princely duty no matter what it cost him.69

  6

  Eddy and May

  ‘Any Lady in Society would never do.’

  Queen Victoria to Prince Eddy, 19 May 1890

  The years of thwarted ambition in pursuit of a bride for Eddy, and the unforeseen complexities that appeared to attend every effort, were soon to rebound on his younger brother, Prince George. In the spring of 1891 Queen Victoria turned with some urgency to the matrimonial prospects of the third in line to the throne. If twenty-five-year-old Prince George could be induced to marry this would, at least, provide continuity into the next generation, whatever impediments accompanied Eddy’s endeavours to achieve wedlock.

  But Prince George was growing into a young man of unusually narrow focus, who enjoyed singular pursuits in which romance did not play a leading part. When his older brother had been sent to Cambridge, George had continued his career in the Royal Navy, although he did not enjoy the ‘beastly exams’.1 Constant travel across the empire, anxious reminders from his parents to avoid any kind of ‘dissipation’, and his own father’s bad example held out before him: this combination was not conducive to encouraging a reserved young prince in romantic adventures. ‘Alas Society is very bad in these days,’ the queen warned George. He should ‘avoid the many evil temptations’ and keep ‘your dear grandpapa’s name before you’.2

  George’s letters suggest that he felt his position to be on the periphery, frequently missing the family gatherings that he read about in the newspapers. ‘I wish I could have been present at your wedding,’ he confided to Prince Louis of Battenberg from Bermuda. ‘I am all alone,’ he wrote a few months later. His mother, father and Eddy were in Ireland. ‘I wish I was there too.’3 Birthdays were hard. ‘I missed being at home very much that day,’ he wrote to his grandmother in June 1886 from Malta.4 Christmases too: ‘I shall miss being home at dear Sandringham very much,’ he wrote from Bermuda in December 1990, ‘but unfortunately in this world one cannot have everything one wants.’5 He still missed his mother, father, Eddy and sisters ‘dreadfully’, but ‘trust the time will go quickly so that I can come home again’.6

  Nonetheless he applied himself and saw much of the world as he progressed steadily through the ranks of the navy. As a young lieutenant, in 1886 he accompanied his Uncle Alfred sailing into the heart of the Ottoman Empire. ‘The finest sight of all is as you come up the Bosporus and first see Constantinople with the different palaces, mosques and minarets and the enormous number of ships going up and down,’ he told his grandmother. They stayed in a Kiosk (pavilion) in the gardens of the fabled Yildiz Palace and were received by the sultan himself, Abdul Hamid II. The sultan of the empire that was the ‘sick man of Europe’ was himself unwell, and could not receive them for three days, wrote George. Abdul Hamid, the very sultan responsible for the Bulgarian massacres at the start of the Russo-Turkish War, was courtesy itself to Queen Victoria’s grandson, presenting him with a fine Arab horse and a diamond cigarette case. When the sultan went to Friday prayers, George took note of the large numbers of Turkish troops who ‘marched uncommonly well, all drilled by German officers’.7 Two years later he joined Uncle Alfred on a royal visit to Spain for the opening of the Universal Exposition in Barcelona. It was a surprise to see the infant king, Alphonso VIII, a two-year-old boy, who was carried in by his nurse and placed on his throne. The Spanish king was ‘not very pretty’ but he ‘behaved quite wonderfully and never cried once’.8

  As a naval officer George had to keep abreast of the fast-changing technology, such as the rapid improvement in torpedoes. ‘Everything has become obsolete that I learned four years ago,’ he told Louis of Battenberg, ‘& so I have to begin it all over again, first unlearning what I learnt before.’9 George made steady progress through the ranks, appointed to his first independent command in 1889 on HM Torpedo Boat 79. By 1891 he was promoted to the post of commander, in charge of the gunboat HMS Thrush, stationed in Halifax, Canada.

  Prince George made the best of his travels but he did not enjoy the navy. He suffered badly from seasickness and his intrinsic shyness combined with his elevated position as royalty contributed to his being one step removed from the camarad
erie that other officers could enjoy. His tutor, the Reverend John Dalton, had described him as having a ‘nervously excitable temperament’, prone to ‘fret at difficulties’ and ‘make mountains out of molehills’. Over the years the endless discipline to which he had been exposed, first in the classroom and then the navy, had shaped his character. Any nervous impulsivity or even childhood exuberance was now channelled into polite formality. His letters refer to ‘cheery parties’, ‘capital games’, ‘jolly weeks in Scotland’, and of course the huge number of stags or partridges shot. A strong sense of duty coloured his personality; he could be self-contained, rigid in his preferences, perhaps even emotionally repressed.

  On leave, Prince George invariably returned to Sandringham where his most marked enthusiasms were for stamp collecting and shooting – neither pursuit enhanced by female company. Indeed, there appeared to be no princess currently available whose main interests quite matched those of George whose daily life was, in fact, agreeably free of the need to marry anyone. In his mid-twenties he remained devoted to his mother and she to ‘my own sweet darling old Georgie boy’.10 Her letters to him were written as though he was still a child, openly acknowledging that she hoped she would find him unchanged in every way: ‘I hope my sweet Georgie does not alter himself’.11 Even when Prince George was promoted to commander of his own gunboat, she signed off ‘with a great big kiss for your lovely little face’.12

  Princess Alexandra’s own childhood, brought up in the gregarious and fun-loving Danish court, seemingly in a permanent holiday mood, left her with memories of irreplaceable happiness. Her own marriage had been shaped by her husband’s endless betrayals and her increasingly isolating deafness encouraged escape into the happy private world she created for her children. She clung onto her sons’ childhood years, delaying their maturity into adults and taking comfort from keeping her children close. It has been suggested that her abnormally intimate affection for Prince George was ‘compensation’ for her frustration over Eddy’s behaviour. Intriguingly, Alexandra’s letters to Eddy have not survived and it is entirely possible that they were written in the same whimsical, even infantile manner.13 Both Eddy and George adored their mother and neither discouraged her over-protective stance. For years George responded in the same childish style and only much later in his adult life did he talk of the ‘selfish’ nature of her demands. Both boys appeared sensitive to the hurt she suffered from their father’s behaviour and both feared his bad temper. She served as their devoted protector, a buffer between them and their father and Queen Victoria, whose letters were full of unsolicited advice, usually of a frank nature.

  Princess Alexandra’s response to Queen Victoria’s new-found interest in Prince George’s love life was to make light of it. ‘Well & now about your Matrimonial prospects!!! Ha ha ha!’ she wrote teasingly to George in April 1891. ‘You are quite [double underlined] right to think Grandmama has gone mad on the subject – & it is too ridiculous.’14 But despite the efforts of ‘Motherdear’ to reduce the pressure, George began to recognise that his brother’s difficulties in finding a bride could rebound on him.

  Prince George replied to his grandmother’s unasked-for concern for his private life with a cautionary tale of his own. While he accepted her view that lovelorn Eddy ‘will anyhow have to wait some time’, he still felt that Eddy should be her priority, pointing out in February 1891, ‘I don’t call Eddy too young [for marriage], he is 27.’ George believed that ‘marrying too young is a bad thing’ and cited the gruesome fate of the heir to the Austrian throne, ‘poor Crown Prince Rudolf’, to back up his case.15

  Under pressure from his father, Emperor Franz Joseph, the twenty-two-year-old Austrian prince had chosen sixteen-year-old Princess Stephanie of Belgium. George believed that Rudolf, who was ‘a very wild young man’, had been further unbalanced by his unhappy marriage. This led to his shocking suicide pact in 1889 with his mistress, Baroness Mary Vetsera. Rudolf ‘killed this poor girl & brought the most terrible sorrow & shame on his poor wife and parents’.16 Rudolf’s parents were broken by the violent death of their only son; indeed his mother, the legendary beauty Empress Elizabeth, never quite recovered from the shock. Rudolf’s death also had wider implications in breaking the direct line of Hapsburg succession, which served to weaken the authority of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, whereby the Hapsburg Emperor Franz Joseph served as monarch to both countries. The Austrian succession in time passed from the liberal Rudolf to his reactionary cousin, Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

  With this tragic tale as a salutary reminder, George was anxious to dampen his grandmother’s enthusiasm for matchmaking. ‘The one thing I never could do is to marry a person who did not care for me,’ he pointed out in February 1891. ‘I should be miserable for the rest of my life.’17

  Meanwhile the supposedly broken-hearted Eddy confounded the expectations of those close to him by the enthusiasm with which he embraced the 1891 London season. Far from withdrawing from society in his anguish over Hélène’s painful decision, the prince graced all the glittering events of the day, balls, charity events and Ascot week. The reason for this unexpected light-heartedness was that the prince believed he had fallen in love again. This time it was with a woman who he knew would be absolutely forbidden to him, not just by his grandmother but by his parents as well: the daughter of the Earl of Rosslyn, Lady Sybil St Clair Erskine.

  Nineteen-year-old Lady Sybil was a debutante of exceptional beauty which, unusually for the time, she embellished still further with make-up. Her lively, flirtatious personality, combined with her stunning looks proved to be a heady distraction. Since Lady Sybil was a commoner, Eddy realised his grandmother would never approve any romance between them. The queen had reluctantly given her consent for Eddy’s younger sister, Louise, to marry into the aristocracy, but she would never grant permission for a non-royal match for a future heir to the throne. His new-found love would be equally unwelcome to his parents. Lady Sybil’s half-sister, Daisy Warwick, was having a passionate affair with Bertie, and Eddy’s long-suffering mother was hardly likely to welcome an alliance with the family of her husband’s mistress. Nonetheless, Eddy could not help himself. He was convinced that he was in love and recklessly began to write heartfelt letters to Lady Sybil.

  Although he had thought it ‘impossible’ until a short time ago, ‘to ---- more than one person at the same time’, Prince Eddy confided to Lady Sybil on 21 June 1891, he now realised that ‘exceptions will happen’. He promised to explain how this could be next time they met and urged her ‘to cut out the crest and signature’ of his letter, ‘which would prevent anyone understanding it’, if it fell into the wrong hands. The following week he pressed his case. ‘I wonder if you really love me a little?’ he asked, hoping so much ‘if you did just a little bit . . .’ Once again he urged Lady Sybil to show the letters to no one. ‘You can’t be too careful what you do in these days, when hardly anybody is to be trusted.’18

  The very day of his first love letter to Lady Sybil, duplicitous Eddy also sat down to write to Queen Victoria, thanking her for her ‘last kind and important letter’ and expressing a rather more serious view of love. The prince was keen to make his grandmother believe that he was still grieving for Princess Hélène. ‘I was indeed deeply touched by all you said in your letter,’ he wrote on 21 June 1891, ‘and feel certain that I have your sympathy in this truly heavy trial. It is hard to forget and will be impossible for a long while to come, for my love for the dear girl had become so deeply rooted.’19 The prince was at pains to remind his grandmother not just of his heartache, but also his virtues. That very month his father appeared in court as a witness in ‘the terrible business’, as Eddy put it, of the Tranby-Croft affair, a gambling scandal that shamed the monarchy. Eddy promised his grandmother he understood ‘the country’s feeling with regard to gambling and betting . . . but as I have never had the slightest inclination for that kind of thing I may easily promise you that no bad example will ever be set on my part’. Hi
s interest in cards extended only to whist, which he understood to be ‘such an instructive game’.20

  Meanwhile, the beguiling, teasing Lady Sybil thought nothing of carelessly leading on the hapless prince. Eddy appeared to be in love with love, swayed this way and that, without a central anchor, and unable to make any headway without falling under the vigilant gaze of some maiden aunt or private secretary. It seems likely that Bertie soon learned of his son’s new love interest and was furious. By early August, Eddy’s parents and grandmother were united in their concern for his future – although each alighted on a different solution.

  Bertie was convinced that his erring son should be despatched for another very long tour of the colonies as soon as possible and was in no doubt that this should be seen as a ‘punishment’.21 The queen, who had seen much of Eddy during the Kaiser’s recent visit in July, was still preoccupied by Eddy’s lack of knowledge of European countries. ‘To be “Insular” for a private individual is a disadvantage but for a Prince, it is in these days a real misfortune,’ she told Bertie on 4 August 1891.22 She was strongly opposed to dispatching Eddy to the colonies once again; he had already ‘been dosed with them’ (double underlined).23 Eddy was in urgent need of learning about Europe. ‘A Prince ought to be Cosmopolitan, ought to have seen with his own eyes, the difference in other countries to his own.’ Italy, Spain, Austria, Hungary, Russia, Turkey and Holland were a blank to him. ‘As I am getting old I feel more and more anxious about all this,’ the queen told Bertie.24 But Bertie would not agree to Europe, insisting his son must be ‘out of harm’s way’ on a Colonial Expedition, where there was no danger his son’s affairs might overlap with his own. Wherever his son went, Bertie wrote on 5 August to his mother, the real problem lay within Eddy himself and his own ‘apathy and disinclination to work . . . A good sensible Wife – with some considerable character is what he needs most – but where is she to be found?’25

 

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