Queen Victoria's Granddaughters 1860-1918

by Croft, Christina

  To her younger cousins, Missy and Ducky of Edinburgh, Charlotte’s air of confidence and sophistication were so fascinating that they were delighted to receive an invitation to her home in Berlin. Their idol promised to entertain them lavishly and introduce them to all her fashionable friends, and the excitement leading up to the visit made the reality all the harder to bear. Charlotte was so engrossed in her own flirtations that she had ‘hardly a look or word’ for her young guests and treated them so disdainfully that, years later, Missy recalled that the visit was ‘one of the most painful memories of my young life.’[69] Charlotte had fallen from her pedestal and had become instead:

  “One of the most fickle and changeable women…with a single word she could shrivel up your ardent enthusiasm, make your dearest possession appear worthless or rob your closest friend of her charm.”[70]

  Queen Victoria had long defended her eldest granddaughter and throughout Charlotte’s unruly adolescence had urged Vicky to be a little less strict in the hope that praise might prove more successful than criticism. Yet even the Queen had to concede that Charlotte lifestyle was unseemly and wondered why her husband did not keep her in check. Queen Victoria knew too, that Charlotte was not to be trusted and she worried about her visits to England for fear of whom she might meet. When Charlotte claimed she had asked her grandmother to present a gift to her regiment of dragoons stationed in Berlin, the Queen understood Vicky’s need to clarify the matter, as they could never be sure whether or not she was lying.

  Moreover, as her mother was quick to point out, Charlotte had a habit of interfering in matters that were not her business, and never was her interference more acerbic than when it came to the marriage of her elder brother, Willy.

  In 1881, Willy secretly proposed to the plain but pious and well-meaning Princess Augusta Victoria (Dona) of Schleswig-Holstein – a first cousin of his cousins, Thora and Marie Louise. News of their secret engagement caused something of a furore in the Prussian Court. As the daughter of a mere countess, Dona lacked the ideal provenance of a future Empress and neither her dowdy appearance nor aloof manner endeared her to the rest of the family.

  Vicky, ever willing to welcome newcomers and set them at ease, assured Queen Victoria that she was ‘sweet,’ ‘amiable’ and would ‘win all hearts’ but the Queen was not convinced. While conceding that she had good teeth, she replied in her typically candid manner that she did not consider her pretty at all

  ‘Insipid and boring’ according to one of Queen Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting, Dona’s zealously evangelical opinions and obsession with etiquette often infuriated other relations. To Willy, however, still smarting from the sting of Cousin Ella’s refusal, her fawning adulation had a definite allure. Unlike his Hessian cousin and even his own sisters, Dona eagerly agreed with everything he said and so boosted his ego that he repeatedly beseeched his grandfather to permit him to marry so malleable a bride. Eventually the Kaiser gave his consent and the wedding took place in Potsdam in early 1881.

  From their earliest meetings Vicky went out of her way to welcome her new daughter-in-law to the somewhat forbidding Prussian court but it did not take long her kindness to backfire. Dona’s arrival did little to enhance court life and her self-righteous deference to her husband exacerbated rather than eased the tension between Willy and his mother.

  “Dona enjoys her position intensely and her whole face expresses the most intense satisfaction,” Vicky complained. “She is convinced that all William and she do and think and say is perfect, and this is certainly a state of beatitude. She meddles in everything the family does, every little trifle is reported to her, and she orders and directs in a way very galling for the others from so young a person.”[71]

  More distressing for Vicky was Dona’s refusal to allow her to play any part in the upbringing of her grandchildren and her apparent intention of alienating them from her. Repeatedly Vicky tried to understand Dona’s antipathy, making excuses for her behaviour and hoping that time might ease their relationship; but if the Crown Princess was prepared to make allowance for her ‘parvenu’ daughter-in-law, Charlotte was not.

  Irked that the lower-born Dona would now take precedence over her, Charlotte had no qualms about belittling her future Empress and treating her as little more than the butt of her cruellest jokes. Family gatherings became tense occasions when both women were present as no one could be sure what mischief Charlotte would make next.

  In February 1883, Vicky and Fritz celebrated their Silver Wedding anniversary – a month later than planned due to a recent family bereavement. Vicky, whose love for her husband had deepened with each year of marriage, had gone to great lengths to ensure that the festivities in Berlin would be worthy of the occasion. Invitations were extended across Europe and a wide variety of artists and actors were called to the palace to present an Elizabethan pageant. One of the highlights of the celebrations was a performance of a play staged by the Crown Princess’ children and members of her suite. It was a tradition that Vicky had brought with her from childhood when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert delighted in such family entertainment and, with a touch of nostalgia, she anticipated the performance with excitement.

  Unfortunately, Charlotte had other plans. Disregarding her mother’s feelings, she used the occasion to humiliate her sister-in-law by drawing attention to her poor acting skills, deliberately upstaging and publicly ridiculing her[72].

  Later, following Willy’s accession to the throne, Charlotte’s behaviour became even more outlandish. Initially she went out of her way to ingratiate herself with the new Kaiser, siding with him against their mother whom she blamed for not having given Willy his rightful position during Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee procession; but her façade of devotion did not last long. Her vindictive jokes about Dona continued unabated and she frequently appeared unannounced and uninvited at formal functions with the sole intention of causing trouble. On one occasion when the Kaiser was attending a prestigious hunt, he was horrified to see his sister, obviously the worse for drink, clumsily mount a horse in a cruel impersonation of the Kaiserin.

  There was even a suggestion that Charlotte was involved in a more serious scandal when Willy, Dona and various government ministers received a series of pornographic photographs and letters detailing accounts of their alleged misdemeanours. Willy ordered a full investigation of the matter and eventually a court official was imprisoned but, when the scurrilous letters continued, it was obvious that there had been a miscarriage of justice and the unfortunate official was released. The content of the letters made it clear that they had been written by someone with inside knowledge of the court and, though there was no evidence to implicate Charlotte, her brother felt sufficiently suspicious of her involvement to advise her to leave Germany for a while.[·]

  In 1896 she settled in Roumania, ingratiating herself with the German-born King Carol and his wife, the eccentric Queen Elizabeth, and deliberately spreading malicious gossip about her cousin Missy of Edinburgh.[¨]

  A little over a year after her wedding, Charlotte gave birth to a daughter, Feodora (Feo), and, declaring she would have no more children, promptly returned to her fashionable friends and foreign holidays, leaving the little girl in her mother’s care. For Vicky, whose fondness for children was so great that Queen Victoria had accused her of baby-worship, such indifference was incomprehensible and she could only gaze askance at Charlotte’s complete lack of maternal feeling.

  Sadly for Vicky, as Feo grew older it became increasingly apparent that she had inherited many of her mother’s less attractive characteristics. The similarity in their temperaments made the relationship between Charlotte and her daughter even stormier than that between Charlotte and Vicky.

  In 1898, eighteen-year-old Feo announced that she was engaged to be married to man fifteen years her senior. Charlotte, forgetting that she had treated her own parents in an identical manner, was outraged that she had not been consulted. Virtually disowning her daughter, she turned her malicious ton
gue upon the unfortunate girl with greater venom than ever. When Feo fell ill with a series of mystery symptoms, Charlotte even spread the rumour that she had contracted venereal disease from her husband. In response Feo refused to visit her for several years.

  The true cause of Feo’s illness was never fully recognised or disclosed during her lifetime but research by John C.G. Rohl, Martin Warren and David Hunt[73] shows that both she and Charlotte were suffering from the hereditary malady, porphyria[·]. The diagnosis would account for much of Charlotte’s bizarre behaviour and consistently poor health and perhaps excuse some of her more outrageous activities.

  Surprisingly, perhaps, in spite of Charlotte’s difficult temperament and often unaccountable behaviour, her marriage was not the disaster that some members of the family had anticipated. Her husband, Bernhard, shared her enjoyment of life among the fast set and together they zipped across Europe as leading lights in the fashionable world of high society. Whether or not there was any truth in her boasts of her numerous lovers, Bernhard cared for her during her increasingly frequent bouts of illness and, unlike many of her more stable cousins, there is no evidence to suggest that she ever had cause to regret her decision to marry so young.

  Chapter 10 – Great Marriages Do Not Make Great Happiness

  Hessians:

  Louis: Grand Duke of Hesse; widower of Princess Alice

  Daughters of Louise & Alice:

  Victoria

  Ella

  Battenbergs

  Alexander: Prince of Hesse

  Julia, Princess of Battenberg: morganatic wife of Alexander

  Sons of Alexander & Julie:

  Louis: husband of Victoria of Hesse

  Sandro (Alexander): Sovereign Prince of Bulgaria

  Liko: Henry

  Hohenzollerns (Prussians)

  Vicky: Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter; Crown Princess of Prussia

  Fritz: Vicky’s husband, Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia

  Children of Vicky & Fritz:

  Willy (Wilhelm, William)

  Charlotte

  Henry

  Moretta (Victoria Moretta)

  Not far from the New Palace in Darmstadt lived four handsome young cousins of Grand Duke Louis of Hesse-and-by-Rhine. Ambitious and charming, the young men’s striking good looks were enough to capture the hearts of several European princesses and their marital prospects would have been excellent but for the unfortunate circumstances of their parents’ marriage.

  Their father, Prince Alexander of Hesse, had once been a rising star in the Russian court where his sister, Marie, was married to the future Tsar Alexander II. The dashing young Hessian made such an impression in St. Petersburg that he seemed destined for a brilliant future until a scandal in 1851 brought his glittering career to a sudden and dramatic end. Alexander had committed the terrible faux pas of marrying a commoner: his sister’s lady-in-waiting, Julia Haucke.

  Stripped of his commission and expelled from Russia, Alexander and his morganatic[·] wife eventually returned to Hesse, where the Grand Duke conferred on Julia the title Countess of Battenberg. Though treated with disdain throughout most European courts, the couple settled happily into the Alexander Palace in Darmstadt and produced a daughter, Marie, and four sons: Louis, Alexander (Sandro), Henry (Liko) and Franz Josef (Franzjos), all of whom took their mother’s Battenberg title.

  In spite of their inauspicious origins, the ambitious young princes soon made their mark on the world. For some years Sandro had served in the Russian army until, following the Congress of Vienna, he was chosen, with the backing of his uncle, Tsar Alexander II, as the Sovereign Prince of Bulgaria. With the help of Princess Alice and Prince Alfred, Sandro’s elder brother, Louis, obtained a position in the British Navy where he quickly proved his worth as a sailor.

  “[He] has passed a first-rate examination.” Princess Alice wrote to her mother in 1874, “The parents are so happy, and the influence of the good conduct and steady work of the elder brother has on the younger [ones] is of great use as they wish to follow him and be as well spoken of and please their parents as he does.”[74]

  His naval career took him far afield. He served with the Duke of Edinburgh and became a close associate of the Prince of Wales by whose mistress, Lillie Langtry, he was rumoured to have fathered a child.

  Whether or not the rumours penetrated the walls of the New Palace in Darmstadt, Victoria of Hesse was delighted when Louis returned to the Grand Duchy in June 1883. Throughout her childhood, she and her sisters had been regular visitors to the Battenbergs’ romantic summer residence, Schloss Heiligenberg, where among the leafy avenues and hazel groves, she had been entranced by the debonair young prince. Now, fresh from a voyage to the Holy Land, the tales of his romantic adventures added to his charm and when he appeared equally enamoured of her, Victoria could hardly contain her excitement. That summer when the Queen issued her annual invitation to Balmoral, the princess was unusually reluctant to leave Germany, and her sister Ella was convinced that this was because she was about to become engaged.

  Victoria did not go to Scotland, Louis proposed and, as Ella had predicted, Victoria accepted him.

  When Ella and her father broke the news to Queen Victoria, the fond grandmother was initially alarmed. In spite of her personal fondness for Louis, Victoria’s first duty, she believed, was to her widowed father who needed help in running the Grand Duchy and caring for his younger children. Moreover, much as she detested the snobbery that made other monarchs disdainful of the Battenbergs, Louis was not a wealthy man; would he be able to support a wife and family?

  Level-headed Victoria reassured her on both counts: as a serving sailor her husband would often be away at sea leaving her plenty of time to attend to her duties in Darmstadt. As for money, she had inexpensive tastes and was convinced that Louis’ steady income would prove sufficient. Grandmama was satisfied and, though expressing her regret that she would be unable to attend the wedding in Darmstadt, she gave the couple her blessing and secured Louis a position on her own royal yacht, Victoria and Albert, so that in the early months of his marriage he would not be separated from his wife by long sea voyages.

  Content as she was, the Queen was not so naïve as to believe that everyone would be so accommodating.

  “Of course,” she wrote prophetically to Vicky, “those who like great matches will not like it, but great matches do not make great happiness.”[75]

  Vicky was only too aware that the Prussians certainly did not like it, for at the very moment that Louis was pursuing a princess in Darmstadt, his younger brother, Sandro, was similarly occupied in Berlin.

  The assassination of his uncle and patron, Tsar Alexander II, had severely jeopardised Sandro’s hold on the precarious Bulgarian throne. The new Tsar, Alexander III, looked down on his Battenberg cousin and, irritated by Sandro’s refusal to act as his puppet in Bulgaria, was secretly stirring the Bulgarians against their Sovereign Prince. Sandro realised that he would have to look elsewhere for European allies and, in the summer of 1883, his quest took him to Berlin.

  The appearance of the romantic prince caused a stir in the Kaiser’s court, not least in the heart of Vicky’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Moretta. At the sight of the suave and much talked about hero, the shy young princess, entranced by accounts of his escapades in the Balkans, fell head over heels in love. Whether or not Sandro was equally attracted to Moretta, he recognised the benefits of a dynastic alliance and, with the Crown Princess’ encouragement, hinted at marriage.

  Vicky, almost as enamoured as Moretta was by the dashing prince, was delighted and could hardly find superlatives enough to describe him to her mother. Queen Victoria, with a keen eye for a handsome young man, particularly one who was prepared to stand up to the ‘nasty’ Russians, could not have agreed more and was equally happy to encourage the match. Bertie, the Prince of Wales, too, encouraged the budding romance – but, sadly for Moretta, the response in Berlin was far less obliging.

  The Prussian court
was incensed. The aged Emperor, outraged by Battenberg’s impertinence, made it perfectly clear that he would never sanction a match between a Hohenzollern princess and the son of a commoner. Willy, choosing to forget that his own marriage had caused such commotion, was equally quick to pour scorn on the idea; and even Moretta’s father, the liberal-minded Crown Prince Fritz, refused to consider a Battenberg prince as a prospective son-in-law. For once, the Crown Prince saw eye-to-eye with Chancellor Bismarck, who claimed that such an alliance would damage Germany’s relations with Russia. Privately, Bismarck was seeking to enhance his own standing in Prussia by marrying his son, Herbert, to Moretta.

  In the midst of such antagonism, the news of Cousin Victoria’s engagement brought Moretta a glimmer of hope. If one German princess should marry a Battenberg, would she not set a precedent for another? It was a naïve hope. The Prussians gasped in horror at Victoria’s foolishness and declared that if she insisted on marrying Louis Battenberg, the Hohenzollerns would boycott the wedding.

  The absence of bombastic Willy and his suite would probably have suited the bride but Queen Victoria refused to stomach such an insult. Furious at the Prussians’ arrogance and determined to show her support for her granddaughter, she immediately rearranged her schedule to make the journey to Hesse. If the ‘grandmother of Europe’ saw fit to attend the wedding, who would dare to refuse an invitation?

  In April 1884, the ‘royal mob’, as Queen Victoria referred to her extended family, descended en masse upon the little Grand Duchy. Never before had the Hessians seen such a gathering of royalties in Darmstadt. From England came Princess Beatrice and the Prince and Princess of Wales with their three ‘royal shynesses,’ Louise, Toria and Maud. From Russia came the Grand Dukes Serge and Pavel, younger brothers of Tsar Alexander III; and from Prussia came the disgruntled Hohenzollerns, among them the lovelorn Moretta, and Charlotte with her three-year-old daughter, Feodora. The local people turned out in their hundreds to show their appreciation to the British Queen who, delighting in the warm reception she received, was still more gratified to discover that the room in which Princess Alice had died six years earlier remained untouched as a shrine to her memory.