Queen Victoria's Matchmaking

by Deborah Cadbury

  Wilhelm’s hope of Britain joining the Triple Alliance between Germany, Austro-Hungary and Italy was receding by 1893 and in turn, his fears for Germany increased. He tried to use his grandmother as a lever to achieve his ends, writing long, demonstrative epistles and requesting trips to Windsor or Osborne, which she found wearing. He seemed ever more autocratic to the point of instability. ‘Suprema lex, regis voluntas’ – ‘The will of the king is the highest law’ – he wrote on a visit to Munich, much to the concern of the Reichstag.21 Vicky recoiled from his absolutism, what she called his ‘Caesarism’, and his needlessly bellicose speeches proclaiming his desire to lead Germany to glory. It was as though his very identity had fused with heroic legends of old, stepping from some ancient Valhalla to defend his country against all slights and insults, whether actual, imaginary or provoked by himself. He could not desist from intervening directly in foreign affairs and his opinions often stoked anti-British feeling in the German press. Sometimes ingratiating, sometimes rude, he struggled with his own raw feelings of anger and resentment at the apparently seamless workings of British power. Vicky’s frustration was intense. Her son’s folly was undoing her life’s work. For the queen, who understood completely what might have been, it was hard not to share her daughter’s lament. She felt Vicky had ‘a sad fate, so young looking, so gifted, so fit for the position she should have held and her career cut so sadly short . . .’22

  Vicky’s visit came and went, her farewell to her mother on 20 March still stressful after all these years. She was ‘much upset and so was I’, the queen entered in her journal. Vicky kept saying her mother ‘was her great comfort and blessing’ and ‘it pained her to leave me!’ The queen found it equally hard, ‘for I am old now and partings are very sad’.23 During her visit Vicky had had no opportunity to see George, the elusive groom, who remained abroad in spite of the growing rumours. He did not set foot in England until late April, only to find his prolonged absences abroad since Eddy’s death had worked against him.

  Up and down the country press speculation was at fever pitch over the lack of action. Why had Prince George, ‘who is now 28 years of age, not got married or at least engaged to be married?’, demanded the Lincolnshire Echo. No one ‘knows precisely why the heir to the throne prefers a life of bachelorhood’.24 Since the death of his brother, ‘few men have been more talked about than the Duke of York’, pointed out the Sheffield Evening Telegraph. ‘At first it was rumoured that he would marry Princess May of Teck; then it was confidently predicted that he would do nothing of the kind. Prince George was supposed to have placed his affections in another quarter’, and people in authority admitted ‘the general accuracy of this impression’. Was the future heir to the throne hiding a secret or shirking his matrimonial duty?25

  The Star had an answer with the stunning claim that Prince George was already secretly married. The prince’s frequent trips abroad appeared to have a reason: he was visiting his first wife – the unnamed daughter of an English naval officer. It was alleged that George had married her in Malta in 1890 and they already had one child. The ‘unexpected and sudden’ departure of the prince on his most recent tour ‘was not unconnected’ with his ‘matrimonial adventure’, claimed The Star on 3 May. The alarming rumour ‘is being eagerly asserted and discussed and its confirmation or refutation anxiously sought’.26

  It was against this background of painful speculation that the prince was invited to dinner with the Tecks on 2 May at White Lodge. For a young man such as George, whose intrinsic shyness with women was overlain by the straitjacket of years of instruction over how to behave, the circumstances of his meeting with May and her family could hardly be more embarrassing. The long delay in his approach, combined with repeated press conjecture that his feelings lay elsewhere, created the impression that he did not care for her. Was he visiting out of duty or on orders from the queen?

  The evening was strained. May had had a busy day in town supporting a fund-raising matinee in aid of Poplar Hospital. A year had elapsed since Cannes in which they had seen little of each other and both George and May remained guarded with their feelings. As if repeated public pronouncements as to what those feelings might be were not bad enough, the presence of the abundantly effusive Mary Adelaide could only add to George’s discomfort. If he had hoped to talk privately, or even propose, his opportunities vanished as May’s mother remained in hovering attendance. Ever the optimist, May’s mother came to the conclusion that a proposal of marriage would soon be forthcoming. She and her husband tactfully left White Lodge the following day. May was alone, but the prince failed to call. Perhaps sensing the difficulties for George, his sister, Louise, who had done so much to facilitate the match between Eddy and Hélène, took matters in hand. On 3 May she invited Princess May to Sheen Lodge. When May arrived she was shown into the drawing room to find George had also been invited to tea.27

  Even in the sanctuary of his sister’s home, George still seemed helpless, uncertain how to seize the initiative. It was left to Princess Louise to give her brother a gentle nudge. After tea she encouraged him to take May into the garden. ‘Don’t you think you ought to take May into the garden to look at the frogs in the pond’?28

  This may not have sounded like a promising prelude to a romantic proposal, but this was George, a man whose greatest passion appeared to be reserved for his collection of stamps or the grouse moor, and who may well have understood that a background of croaking frogs did not detract from what he had to say. Somehow in the garden he found the words ‘& I accepted him’, May wrote later. There was no sense of passion or rapture in her diary. She too was notably unemotional, making no mention of her feelings, or those of her fiancé, merely adding that Louise was ‘delighted’ at their news.29 Possibly she felt relieved at the time that the scene was devoid of any emotional declarations or unrealistic expectations, but afterwards she may have reflected whether this was the normal prelude to a happy marriage.

  George took refuge in formalities, turning at once to the dutiful matter of sending a telegram to Queen Victoria asking for her consent. ‘I answered that I gladly did so,’ the queen wrote in her journal on 3 May. ‘I have so much wished for greatest satisfaction.’ When she returned from her visit to the mausoleum the next day she found George was waiting at Windsor. ‘He seemed quite pleased and contented,’ she thought.30 The agonising uncertainties of his position were now lifted. The queen explained to Vicky the business-like manner in which the romance ‘was settled’.31 Whatever the feelings of the bride and groom, May’s mother expressed enough happiness for them all. Mary Adelaide felt such unbridled joy, the news had to be telegraphed immediately to all her friends. Word spread rapidly around the family, and among the thickening pile of congratulations was a telegram from the ‘Snipe’, who was generous minded in her disappointment. George and May ‘deserve to be very happy’, she wrote. ‘Everybody here seems quite delighted.’32

  The press, too, was favourable. The Telegraph referred to ‘a most auspicious arrangement’, explaining to their readers that the royal couple had been drawn together through their loss, which had ‘ripened into an attachment and affection’ in which ‘all England will rejoice’. The St James Gazette welcomed the fact that Prince George was not marrying a foreign princess, which would be bound to ‘introduce fresh complications into our relations’, but a ‘daughter of England’. The Times was more measured, arguing the betrothal ‘accords with the fitness of things’ and seemed the ‘most appropriate and delicate medicament’ for a wound that was ‘never wholly effaceable’.33

  But not all the papers hit the right note. The story in The Star took off in the press and assumed a life of its own. In the royal household the fast-growing pile of press reports about Prince George’s secret marriage prompted one member of the royal household, perhaps Sir Henry Ponsonby, to register his frustration with a handwritten note: ‘the power of invention among the newspapers is extraordinary’.34 It was widely believed that Princess May would be his secon
d wife. Across town, letters of ‘distress and anxiety’ began to pour into Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward Benson. The very idea that the clean-living and upright prince was a bigamist fired people’s imagination. ‘As a rector of a Parish which contains the High Road of the World,’ wrote Septimus Pennington from St Clement Danes in the Strand, he understood Prince George was not only already married but with a second child due imminently. ‘The body of public men with whom I constantly come into contact openly denounce the Church for conniving at this matter,’ he stormed.35 If the heir to the throne was already married then any additional marriage would be ‘a gross piece of wickedness’, observed the clergyman’s son, Mr T. Bartlett of Westbury, Wiltshire, ‘which in the case of anyone below royalty would be styled bigamy. Is it right that the laws of God should in these enlightened times be overruled by the laws of Man?’36 ‘Was the other wife still alive?’ enquired Stanley Pelly, vicar of Alfreton in Derbyshire.37

  The archbishop was a little unsure how to proceed. With arrangements in full swing for a grand royal wedding there was no easy way of approaching Queen Victoria on the delicate topic of whether her British grandson, in the words of Rector Arthur Hayes of Holmbury St Mary, was about to commit ‘a fraud and a sin in the Eyes of Man and God’.

  Such alarming rumours did nothing to ease the way for George and May, for whom the transition from a business-like agreement to something more romantic was not easy. Their difficulty in behaving like lovers rather supported the idea of a first marriage and their short engagement proved surprisingly stressful. The outward show expected by the whole country of a great royal romance formed a marked contrast to their actual experience. Five weeks into the engagement even George recognised something crucial was missing. ‘I am sure you must think me cold and with very little feeling, as I never show it,’ he wrote to his fiancée on 12 June 1893.38 The next day he repeated his concern, drawing her in for criticism too. He regretted that ‘we are somewhat cold & distant to each other’. He put this down to their both being ‘so shy & that we have known each other so well for so many years that we hardly yet realise that we are engaged’. He promised to ‘try & be nicer and show more feeling and you must do the same’.39 He returned to his theme the next day, promising ‘I will endeavour next time to be nicer to you and not so shy.’40

  Their intense preoccupations with the engagement preparations helped to avoid placing too searching a spotlight on their feelings. George had his future household to discuss with the queen, appointments to be made, royal guests to accommodate, seating plans to approve for the many planned receptions, and wedding presents began to arrive in their hundreds: in fact, there was a surfeit of every conceivable extravagance – but for the luxury of privacy to get to know each other better. When they were together, at least one observer was dissatisfied with what she saw. ‘There is not even a pretense at love making,’ commented Lady Geraldine Somerset. Both the bride to be and her mother were ‘in plus belle humeur!’, with May ‘radiant at her position’ but ‘placid and cold, as always’. The prospective groom appeared ‘nonchalant and indifferent’.41 Whatever efforts George did make to try to live up to the expected ideal appear to have got the better of him. The queen urged him ‘to say everything affectionate to dear May’, but the strained situation proved too much.42 On 18 June, George found himself shouting at May and her mother.

  He wrote the next day ‘to say how ashamed I am of myself for behaving so stupidly yesterday & losing my temper . . . Of course I was not angry with you my darling, it was not yr fault . . . You must think me an awful ass, as I appear so cold & shy with you . . .’43 His outburst was directed at Mary Adelaide, he explained. Blazing a trail of good intentions, May’s overbearing mother succeeded in greatly adding to the tension. She was ‘so obstinate about those tiresome people and would not let me go,’ May replied. ‘Oh! I was so angry with her. I felt like a little devil & I have not forgiven her yet.’44 May found a way to reassure her fiancé. ‘I am very sorry that I am still so shy with you,’ she wrote. ‘I tried not to be so the other day, but alas failed, I was angry with myself! It is so stupid to be so stiff together & really there is nothing I would not tell you, except that I love you more than anybody in the world, & this I cannot tell you myself so I write it to relieve my feelings . . .’45

  Such a communication confirming – at least on paper – that there was indeed some sort of romance to their alliance was obviously helpful. Was his bride sincere, or was she writing out of duty? Prince George’s own reply by return on the same day expressed his great relief at her words. ‘I do indeed find it difficult to express in words the happiness I feel in your telling me that you love me. Thank God we both understand each other.’ He explained that although ‘I may appear shy and cold’, his love for her was ‘deep’ and he could ‘feel it growing stronger & stronger every time I see you’. He blamed their stressful circumstances as the cause of their problems, hoping she would not lose heart. ‘As now we are so worried and annoyed by the smallest thing that we only lose our tempers, which generally are very sweet, at least I know yours is & I hope you will find mine the same.’46

  The pressure proved too much for George. He began to suffer from what he thought was neuralgia, with sharp nerve pain spreading to his face. On 24 June he slipped away from London to the beloved sanctuary of Sandringham. ‘I must get rest and quiet,’ he explained to May. ‘It is absolutely necessary and up till now I have had no rest.’ He felt ‘in despair’ at not seeing her, ‘but if I am not with you in the body I am in the spirit’. He found it easier at a distance to express his feelings.47 ‘I love you with all my heart my own darling,’ he wrote. Still unable to find more to say about his love, he adopted the expression his mother had always used for him, adding ‘with a great big kiss for your sweet lovely face’.48

  Three days later he confirmed that it was not neuralgia but toothache and he was on the mend. May asked ‘when and where can we meet’, but George did not return until the week of their wedding, sending a card on 29 June to say he was coming back that afternoon. He had agreed to meet his cousin, Nicky, the next morning and then ‘any number of deputations’.49

  In June 1893 the tsarevich set out from St Petersburg to represent the Russian royal family at George and May’s wedding. It was Nicholas’s first visit to England since he was a child, his invitation to stay at Marlborough House being at the express wish of his cousin, George.50 The tsarevich hoped there would be an opportunity to see Alix. Hundreds of guests from across Europe were invited including Alix’s family. Four years had now elapsed since they had been together in St Petersburg and Nicholas’s ‘dearest dream’ to marry her had remained elusive.

  There had been one other opportunity to see her fleetingly six months earlier at the grand wedding in Berlin of Vicky’s youngest daughter, Margaret. Before leaving St Petersburg in January 1893, the tsarevich had at last succeeded in winning his parents’ permission for him to find out Alix’s feelings. But just at this longed-for moment, Alix seemed more remote than ever, purposefully making herself unavailable.

  Alix’s letter to her grandmother a few weeks before Margaret’s wedding shows just how much she had dreaded the great gathering of the clan in Berlin. Ernie had put her under some pressure to accept Margaret’s invitation and she felt she must, ‘as I have already been asked for other occasions the last years & did not go’, she confided to her grandmother. ‘I dread it terribly, as I have a great dislike of such large festivities & esp now, that I have lost my own sweet darling papa, but it must be and I pray god may give me the strength to do my duty.’ Anxiously, she had sought the protection of an older married relative and had found it in Aunt Vicky, who had agreed to Ernie’s request to take Alix under her wing. ‘If I had had to live in the Schloss with all the guests . . . [it would be] far more tiring – as one would perpetually have to be running up and down,’ Alix told her grandmother, carefully avoiding any reference to Nicholas.51

  In
freezing weather on his first morning in Berlin, Nicholas had been up early, leaving his visiting card with many of the princes and calling on his Aunt Vicky. Alix was nowhere to be seen. He had found himself buttonholed by Kaiser Wilhelm, who was determined to present the distracted tsarevich with the Order of the Black Eagle and obliged him to wear ‘a particularly uncomfortable red cloak’. Finally, he saw her in the procession to the church. Alix looked beautiful, but so distant, with barely an acknowledging glance. Scarcely able to curb his impatience, Nicholas endured the lengthy ceremony on 25 January 1893, after which each guest had had to bow before the newly married couple. ‘This pleasure lasted two hours,’ he wrote. Surrounded by the insufferable formality of the German court, constantly cornered by one important person after another, there was little chance to speak to her. Alix had told him she was suffering from earache. Somehow they were always seeing each other at a distance, frozen glances across a great gulf. For the tsarevich it could not be called ‘a pleasant meeting’. He felt dejected. ‘We generally used to be about half a mile off from each other,’ he wrote to her later. It was hardly the occasion for a passionate proposal.52