The third of December 1891 was a wintry, overcast day; May described it as ‘dull’.53 There was nothing significant to mark her day, nothing to alert her to Prince Eddy’s intentions. The long hours spent on the vast estate were without any hint of romance. She passed her time walking with the ladies who accompanied the shooters. In the late afternoon prospects brightened. The Falbes were holding a county ball. Carriages began to arrive and the spacious rooms filled with guests in all their finery. May’s mother, ever hopeful of her daughter’s chances, had bought her a striking mauve dress ornamented with beads, at sufficient cost to provoke criticism from one friend, Lady Geraldine Somerset: ‘Monstrous,’ she said. ‘Over forty pounds for one gown!’54 As time passed, May’s hopes of some pleasant attention from Eddy began to diminish.
The ball was underway before the prince came to see her and invited her to follow him. He led her up the wide, curved stairway, the sound of the music receding as they reached the top floor. May could only suspect the long-awaited moment – implied but never formally confirmed – might be close. They walked down a corridor into a room he had evidently selected in advance. May described their conversation in unemotional terms in her diary. ‘To my great surprise Eddy proposed to me during the evening in Mme de Falbe’s boudoir. Of course I said yes – we are both very happy . . .’55
For May it was a moment to treasure, a confirmation of her success. There was nothing to indicate she felt a strong attraction to Eddy, but this was not expected or required. She held the royal family in the highest respect and saw her duty as paramount. She would become a future queen, her children heirs to an empire. For a twenty-four-year-old woman, who at the beginning of the year had felt her hopes of marriage were fast diminishing, it was a heady victory. The engagement was meant to be secret but both she and Eddy found it hard to conceal. Later that evening when May confided in her friends, she could not contain her delight and danced around the room. The world had suddenly become dizzyingly exciting for a princess whose emotions were rarely on display.
Eddy, too, appeared pleased. The strain of years of uncertainty fell from his shoulders as the matter was settled in a way that satisfied all concerned. He did not feel the need to spend a great deal of time with his fiancée. The next day he went shooting in the grounds, waiting until the evening to see Princess May. For both the prince and the princess, the ambiguity of their positions, the slight sense of inadequacy that they had somehow failed to meet expectations, were removed almost instantaneously. While there is no sense in the records of a strong mutual attraction or powerful meeting of minds, there was a shared relief that they could help each other. On 5 December, once formal engagement photographs were completed, the prince left to inform his grandmother at Windsor.
It was pouring with rain when he arrived, but the queen was still out in her carriage. On her return, ‘I suspected something at once,’ Queen Victoria later recorded when she was informed Eddy wished to see her. ‘He came in and said, “I am engaged to May Teck”. I was delighted. God bless them both. He seemed pleased and satisfied. I am so thankful as I had much wished this marriage thinking her so suitable.’56 She sat with her grandson for some time, confident that the monarchy was in good hands for the future. The following day she was still so excited that she confided to her diary ‘could think of little else but the great event’.57 She passed on her delight to Vicky in Germany. ‘Certainly she is a dear, good and clever girl, very carefully brought up, unselfish and unfrivolous in her tastes. She will be a great help to him. She is very fond of Germany too and is very cosmopolitan.’ The queen could foresee no difficulties. ‘I think it is far preferable than eine kleine deutsche Prinzessin [a little German princess] with no knowledge of anything beyond small German courts etc. It would never do for Eddy . . .’ Perhaps understanding Vicky’s feelings about all this praise for May above her own girls, Queen Victoria added, ‘I can understand that many things must make you very sore, but many are really unavoidable . . .’58
Not all reactions were quite so favourable. On 5 December, Lady Geraldine Somerset had occasion to write in her diary that she had received a note from the ‘darling Princess of Wales . . . And!! Announcing to me that dear Eddy and sweet May are engaged to be married!!!! So!! For it is so! And God of Heaven what [underlined five times] a weak wretched fool he must be! This day week “indignant at the idea of being talked into it and wld not hear of it” & within a week is made to propose! Yt is all those vile intriguantes at beastly Luton! . . . What a world this is!’59 The following day Lady Geraldine was still simmering. ‘At Marlboro House now of course they pretend P Eddy has always wished it!!!! . . . Not a week since both admitted he was indignant at the idea of being coerced into an arrangement he did not wish!!! Now however . . . it is a love match on both sides!!!! (neither of them caring more for the other than I do!!) & that the only opposition to it was by the Q! who wld not hear of it! But now is all for it . . . so like her . . . dear guileless Ps of Wales who was “so afraid May might refuse him”!!!! She cld indeed have spared herself anxiety on that score.’60
There was indeed a changed mood at Marlborough House. ‘This time!’ Princess Alexandra wrote with relief to Queen Victoria, ‘I do hope that dear Eddy has found the right Bride at last and that nothing will prevent him and dear May from spending a very happy future together.’61 At last Eddy’s prospects, and with them the future of the British throne, appeared secure. Telegrams began to arrive from across Europe. At Darmstadt, Louis of Hesse was ‘glad Eddy is engaged’, though he found himself reflecting on Alix. ‘We all wished once to see his desire fulfilled,’ he telegrammed the queen.62 Alix wrote somewhat awkwardly to let the queen know that she had not sent congratulations to May ‘as we never corresponded & it would have been rather difficult’, but added ‘I hope & trust that May will make him very happy.’63 Ella telegrammed her ‘delight’ at the news.64 Kaiser Wilhelm also sent congratulations, taking the opportunity to remind his grandmother of the threat to German peace in the growing cordiality between France and Russia.
Princess May herself found her quiet life transformed overnight. It was raining when she arrived from the country at London’s St Pancras Station on 7 December. Wearing a beautifully cut blue velvet suit with lace trim, she stepped down from her saloon carriage to find a large and enthusiastic crowd waiting to cheer her. The princess ‘appeared somewhat embarrassed at the demonstration but bowed her acknowledgement in a pleasing fashion’, according to reporters, while her parents were ‘much gratified’ by their daughter’s reception.65
Princess May’s warm welcome at the station was in striking contrast to her experiences eight years previously when her family had slipped unseen from the country in disgrace. Then the small gathering had been fighting back tears; now there was applause for the future bride. For the first time in her life, she was the star attraction. The family travelled in an open carriage, to the evident delight of the crowds who gathered along the route, through Bloomsbury and Piccadilly to Marlborough House. The onlookers were in no doubt that this rather shy princess was to be their future queen. It was only when the rain became heavy that the Tecks were obliged to close the carriage en route and the bride could no longer be seen.66
While Queen Victoria had grounds for optimism that everything was falling into place for her British grandson, there was plenty to trouble her regarding her other grandchildren, especially her favourite, Alix of Hesse. She had all but forbidden a Russian marriage for Alix, but Ella continued to fight her sister’s cause behind the scenes. Convinced that Alix was in love with Nicholas, she plotted to help the match along ‘when the deciding moment arrives’. Ella sent her older brother, Ernie, detailed instructions about how to manage the queen. Firstly, he should be ‘very careful’ about what he let out in any casual conversation with ‘Grandmama’. Secondly, if he was probed for information, he was to deny that there was anything between Alix and Nicholas. If asked for a view about Nicholas, Ernie was to say ‘what a perfect creature he is
& adored by all & [that Alix] deserves this loving being in every way’. She impressed on her brother that Nicholas himself ‘was feeling very lovesick’. Finally, she pointed out that their grandmother was grossly prejudiced about Russia, ‘through all the idiotic trash in the newspapers’. Youthful Ella considered that ‘Grandmama Queen’ has ‘impossible untrue views and founds all her arguments on facts which probably never existed . . . God grant that this marriage will come true.’67
Apart from the queen’s forceful opposition, Ella knew there was another crucial impediment to the match. If Alix wanted to marry Nicholas, as a future tsarina she would be obliged to join the Russian Orthodox Church. The Hesse children had been brought up as Lutherans, a branch of the Protestant faith named after the German priest, Martin Luther. Alix and her sisters had taken their vows of confirmation and to go back on these oaths would be a very serious matter, one that Ella knew could well cause suffering for their father, Louis of Hesse.
Although Ella had not been obliged to change her faith on marriage to a grand duke, in 1891 she decided to join the Russian Orthodox Church. It would be sinful, she told her father, to remain Protestant purely for the sake of appearances, when in her heart she shared her husband’s faith. This was a matter of conscience about which she had passionately strong feelings. At the family home in Darmstadt, Grand Duke Louis, Ernie and Alix were stunned. For Louis, his daughter’s rejection of her confirmation vows shook him so deeply it disturbed his own sense of inner peace, her actions all the more baffling since this was not required of her. It was Queen Victoria who was unexpectedly accepting of her granddaughter’s decision, earning Ella’s undying gratitude. ‘I shall never forget . . . the comforting joy yr dear lines gave me,’ Ella wrote to the queen from Moscow. It was ‘such a happiness’ to have the same religion as her husband.68
Dressed in white, beautiful Ella appeared radiant during her conversion ceremony in April 1891, as though greatly moved. The mysticism of the Russian Church, with its powerful holy symbols, gilded icons and colourful saints, inspired her and she always said that her conversion fulfilled her dearest wishes. But it was not long before rumours about her began to circulate, which Ella believed yet again came from the Kaiser. Ella had always maintained that she had been under no pressure from her husband. But the timing of her conversion did indeed coincide with Sergei’s promotion to become Governor General of Moscow, and some claimed that to enter the Kremlin he was required to have a wife of the same faith.69
It could not have been lost on either Ella or Queen Victoria that her wholehearted embrace of the Russian Orthodox Church might help pave the way for her sister to marry the heir to the Russian throne. Still fearing a Russian marriage for Alix, in the autumn of 1891 the queen alighted on another plan. She had searched through her trusty Almanac de Gotha, a 1,000-page tome published in Germany that listed all the vital statistics about every prince, grand duke and Landgraf that mattered: their title, rank, estate and so on. There among the many German princes was one who stood out above the rest: a second cousin to Kaiser Wilhelm known as Prince Maximilian of Baden.
The twenty-four-year-old German prince was not known for his good looks, his title and prospects carrying all the promise. His face was not quite handsome, the eyebrows and moustache heavy, his nose a prominent feature. But he had other attributes that made him excellent husband material in the eyes of Queen Victoria. His education in law and administration was first rate and he had a keen interest in liberal politics. As a descendant of the Grand Duchy of Baden in southern Germany, he had the security of a wealthy family behind him. Worried about whether to raise the matter with Alix directly or whether this might prove counter-productive, the queen turned to Victoria of Battenberg. ‘I wish dear Alicky shld some day marry Max of Baden, whom I formerly wished for Maud,’ the queen explained, her letter highlighting the endless gyrations of matchmaking. Her youngest Wales grandchild, Maud, who she had hoped would marry Max, she now thought was suitable for Ernie (although he was resisting the idea), freeing up Max for Alix. Fearing that Prince Maximilian of Baden was excellent husband material who was bound to be snapped up, the queen hoped that ‘dear Papa will lose no time in inviting him’.70 Louis of Hesse duly succumbed to the pressure and the hopeful Prince Maximilian descended on Darmstadt within a month, confident of his excellent prospects of securing the hand of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter.
Given the encouragement he had received from the queen it must have been a surprise to find his prospective bride did not prove at all obliging. Alix felt mortified at being put on the spot, and ‘threatened with the danger of marrying without love or even affection’. She thought she was being manoeuvred, a mere pawn in elaborate power games. Her feelings about the German stranger before her did not compare with the warm friendship she had appreciated with tsarevich Nicholas. Comments she made years later highlight the pressure she felt from her grandmother. ‘I vividly remember the torments I suffered when . . . [Max of Baden] arrived at Darmstadt and I was informed that he intended to marry me. I did not know him at all and I shall never forget what I suffered when I met him for the first time.’71 Nineteen-year-old Alix trusted her own feelings more than any advice she received from relatives. There was too much advice. She made a firm stand. It was left to Victoria of Battenberg to break the unwelcome news to the queen.
On the very day that Ella was received into the Russian Orthodox Church, 2,000 miles south in Athens another of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters changed her faith. Sophie, Crown Princess of Greece, joined the Greek Orthodox Church of her husband, Constantine. But Sophie’s conversion caused uproar in the House of Hohenzollern in which her brother Kaiser Wilhelm’s increasingly disturbed and tyrannical behaviour was on display before the wider family.
The trouble began when Sophie came to Berlin for the wedding of her younger sister, Moretta. Thwarted in her love for Alexander, Moretta had finally settled on a minor German prince, Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe, but the happy family celebration was marred as news of Sophie’s planned conversion spread. Vicky, like Queen Victoria, took a liberal view. She did not ‘think it wrong’ and hoped that Sophie would find happiness ‘sharing her husband’s faith’.72 But the Kaiser’s wife, Dona, opposed her. She summoned Sophie to a meeting and became overwrought, threatening her sister-in-law not only with Wilhelm’s fury, but the wrath of God. ‘You will end up in Hell,’ she screamed.73 When Dona went into premature labour a few hours later with her sixth son, the Kaiser blamed Sophie.
The rapid escalation of the argument bears all the troubling hallmarks of the German emperor’s maniacal and deluded way of thinking. First, in Wilhelm’s mind the issue was transformed into a personal attack on himself. It was inexplicable, he claimed, that Sophie ‘entirely refused to acknowledge me as the Head of her Family and the Church’. Having personalised the issue, it was then supercharged with emotion. ‘If my poor Baby dies it is solely Sophie’s fault and she has murdered it,’ he claimed.74 Despite the fact that the baby was patently healthy, he still found reason to blame his English mother yet again, falsely insisting that she was responsible for his sister’s conversion. Finally, he felt the need to defend himself against illusory attacks and banned Sophie from returning to Germany.
The wider family in Greece, Britain and Germany had a chance to witness the Kaiser’s troubling behaviour. For Vicky, he was a ‘conspicuous tyrant’, Alexandra saw him as ‘a great ass’, Bertie was appalled, Sophie’s sisters Moretta and Margaret were boiling ‘with indignation’ and despairing that ‘things will never go on peacefully in Berlin’, while Queen Victoria ‘grieved’.75 Sophie’s appeals against the ban proved futile, prompting her to telegraph openly to her mother: ‘Keeps to what he said in Berlin. Fixes it to three years. Mad.’ Sophie made no attempt in her communication to conceal the word ‘Mad’.76 Queen Victoria wanted to help the troubled German house but recognised, as she told Vicky, that she could not intervene directly between Wilhelm II and Sophie. But she did have some leverage over the Kai
ser and knew how to use it without saying a word.
The queen signalled her disapproval of the German emperor by greeting his long diatribe blaming his sister with an eloquent silence. Knowing he was keen to make a state visit to Britain she advised Vicky to invite Sophie to Germany in due course with her husband. Wilhelm ‘will not dare to arrest the Crown Prince of Greece!’, she reasoned, and he in turn ‘would be very ill-received here’ if he proceeded with banishing his sister.77 Sure enough, the Kaiser did not take action when Sophie and Constantine went to see Vicky in July 1891. In turn, his state visit to Windsor that month passed without incident, apart from the occasional strained moment between Wilhelm and his Uncle Bertie, who he had seen fit to criticise over the gambling scandal, the Tranby-Croft affair. Wilhelm was pleased with his reception in Britain and wrote to the queen afterwards, expressing his desire to pursue ‘the fulfilment of those great problems which were so ably begun by dear Grandpapa Albert’.78
But Wilhelm had neither the insight nor the diplomatic skill to fulfil his grandfather’s vision of peace. With power increasingly concentrated in his hands in what Vicky called his ‘personal government’, the German emperor had unwittingly edged Europe one step closer to war. When he failed to renew Bismarck’s Reinsurance Treaty with Russia, Wilhelm flattered himself that his relationship with Alexander III was an adequate guarantee, not realising that the tsar had no trust in an emperor ‘who throws his weight about . . . and fancies that others worship him’.79 With no secret treaty with Germany, the tsar moved swiftly to consolidate Russia’s relationship with republican France.
Queen Victoria's Matchmaking Page 18