Queen Victoria's Granddaughters 1860-1918

by Croft, Christina

  Perhaps for the first time since Princess Alice’s death, the New Palace echoed to the sounds of laughter and rejoicing.

  “The young Princesses were so much excited by the event that this first break in their family circle had no sadness in it, particularly as Princess Victoria promised to return to Darmstadt whenever her sailor husband was at sea.”[76]

  In fact, so great was Victoria’s excitement that, leaping about in joy, she sprained her ankle and for several days was too agitated to eat. When she finally feasted on lobster, the night before her wedding, she promptly made herself sick. Only the prompt assistance of Queen Victoria’s doctor, James Reid, ensured that she was sufficiently recovered in time for the ceremony.

  The wedding took place 30th April 1884 and, if the Prussians gritted their teeth through the service, the celebrations were passing without incident, when suddenly the bride’s father made an announcement which stunned the entire gathering. Excitedly he announced that his second daughter, Ella, had accepted the proposal of the Russian Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich – a severe blow to Cousin Willy and a tragedy for the Russophobe Queen. As if that were not enough to rile the Prussians, a far more shocking revelation soon began to emerge:

  “There is a scandal being whispered about here,” wrote the Queen’s doctor, Sir James Reid, “…that the Grand Duke is going to marry a Polish lady of rather doubtful reputation, who is divorced from her husband a Russian baron. The Queen does not yet know all the trouble, but she will be furious…”[77]

  The rumours were true. That very evening, Louis secretly married his long-time mistress, Alexandrine de Kolomine. It was three days before the news was confirmed and, if the Grand Duke had hoped for congratulations, he was quickly disillusioned. The Hohenzollerns were thrown into paroxysm of indignation and no sooner did the German Emperor hear what had happened than he ordered the entire Prussian party to return at once to Berlin.

  The scandal threatened to ruin not only Victoria’s wedding celebrations but the reputation of the entire Hessian family and again it was left to Queen Victoria to save the situation. Though as shocked as everyone else by her son-in-law’s aberration, she refused to abandon her granddaughters in their hour of need. Outwardly, she continued as though nothing had happened, while behind the scenes ordered the Prince of Wales to arrange an immediate annulment of the mésalliance. The Grand Duke yielded meekly and, as Victoria and Louis Battenberg set off for their honeymoon at romantic Heiligenberg, the hapless Mme. Kolomine left for Poland, paid off with a hefty sum from the Queen’s own coffers.

  After a brief honeymoon, Victoria and Louis set sail for England. They leased a house, Sennicotts – a pretty regency villa in Chichester, close enough to Portsmouth for Louis to continue his service aboard the Victoria and Albert, and close enough to Windsor to allow the Queen to keep a fond maternal eye on Victoria.

  The mother of nine children was only too aware of the almost unavoidable state in which young wives soon found themselves and was anxious to be on hand to help her motherless granddaughter when the occasion arose. Before the wedding she had delicately hinted to Victoria that she must always turn to her grandmother for advice concerning ‘her health’ and a month later she was exhorting the young bride to avoid riding if there were any possibility that she might be pregnant.

  Her advice was timely; within weeks of the wedding Victoria was expecting a child and the news prompted another barrage of letters from the Queen inquiring into every detail of her condition. By then, Victoria had returned to Darmstadt to help her father in the running of the Grand Duchy but the Queen, recalling Vicky’s terrible experiences of childbirth at the hands of German doctors, recommended only English doctors and midwives; better yet, Victoria should return to England for the birth so that her grandmother could be on hand to comfort and support her.

  Victoria answered the summons and arrived at Windsor Castle in the winter of 1884-5. The Queen, discarding the pressing affairs of state, remained at her side, stroking her hand throughout the long labour and nostalgically recalling that, twenty-two years earlier, she had sat in the same room with Princess Alice when Victoria herself was born. Out of deference to her mother, Victoria named her daughter Alice.

  In early spring, the Battenbergs returned to Darmstadt where the baby was christened, and where Victoria was soon was receiving further admonitions from her grandmother. Before the wedding, the Queen had given her a good deal of advice about marriage. A woman’s first duty, she said, was to her husband whom she must obey and look up to and in whom she must confide everything. Now, the Queen noted, Victoria seemed to be spending an inordinate amount of time attending to her father’s affairs, and the Queen felt obliged to warn her not to neglect her husband. Victoria accepted the reprimand with good grace and assured her grandmother that she and Louis were devoted to one another. Even so, as the Queen observed with concern, it was four years before a second child, Louise – ‘a rather miserable little object’ – was born at the Heiligenberg, and a further three years before the girls had a brother, George. In 1900, at the age of thirty-seven Victoria gave birth to her youngest child, Dickie, the future Lord Louis Mountbatten, at Broadlands in Hampshire.

  While raising her young family, Victoria lived a rather peripatetic existence, following her husband’s naval postings and migrating from Darmstadt and Portsmouth to Valetta in Malta, but the endless travelling did not prevent her from taking personal responsibility for her children’s education and upbringing just as her own mother had done. Accepting the Queen’s advice, she appointed respectable nannies and when she discovered that her eldest daughter, Alice, was deaf, she even succeeded in teaching her to lip read in several languages.

  Victoria’s love of learning continued throughout her life. Without neglecting the many charities which her mother had founded, she continued to travel extensively, earning the respect and love of her family.

  Victoria’s might not have been ‘a great match’ but it proved a long and happy marriage, and she would live to see the wedding of her grandson, Philip, and Queen Elizabeth II.

  Chapter 10 – A Jubilee Baby

  Battenbergs

  Victoria (of Hesse): wife of Prince Louis Battenberg

  Beatrice: youngest daughter of Queen Victoria

  Liko (Henry): Prince of Battenberg; Beatrice’s husband.

  Children of Beatrice & Liko:

  Drino (Alexander)

  Ena (Victoria Eugenie)

  Leopold

  Maurice

  A week after Victoria’s wedding, Queen Victoria returned to Windsor with Grand Duke Louis in tow. Though her son-in-law’s unhappiness and the prospect of Ella’s imminent departure for Russia preyed on her mind, she could rest satisfied by her part in averting the Hessian scandal and had no idea that an even greater thunderbolt was about to strike her.

  At the Darmstadt wedding, while she had been distracted by the Grand Duke’s folly, her youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, had been busily falling in love with the bridegroom’s younger brother.

  At the age of twenty-seven, ‘Baby’ Beatrice seemed destined for a life of spinsterhood. Since the plans to marry her to Louis of Hesse had come to nothing, the Queen had decided that her youngest daughter should remain single as her constant support and companion. By the age of twenty-two Beatrice had only ever spent ten days away from her mother and she appeared so content with her lot that no one, least of all the Queen, believed her capable of falling in love. Just in case she should have other ideas, handsome young men were discouraged from paying her any attention and guests were forbidden to mention marriage in her presence.

  The sudden disclosure that Beatrice wished to marry the dashing Prussian cavalry officer, Henry (Liko) Battenberg, took the Queen by complete surprise. She had no objection to the Battenbergs per se – she was still encouraging Moretta in her hopeless pursuit of Sandro – but what angered and shocked her was the fact that Beatrice had dared to fall in love at all! Offended that the daughter on whom she depended c
ould consider leaving her side, she dismissed the suggestion as ludicrous and adamantly refused to discuss the matter. The more Beatrice persisted, the more obstinate her mother became until she would not speak to her at all and for several months they communicated only by note.

  Beatrice was not without allies. Vicky, tactfully pointed out that her younger sister was no longer a child and if the Queen were to persist in her opposition, who could tell what scandals may follow? She might even follow Grand Duke Louis’ example and marry in secret! Grudgingly the Queen began to give way. Yes, she would consent to the marriage on condition that Liko resigned his Prussian commission and agreed to come and live with her in England.

  Liko hesitated. Unlike Lenchen’s husband, Prince Christian, he was young, energetic and active, and the prospect of exchanging the exciting life of the Prussian Cavalry for one of servitude to a demanding mother-in-law lacked appeal; but Liko’s brothers favoured the match and, when Louis and Victoria invited him to their Chichester home, they succeeded in winning him over. He agreed to resign his Prussian commission and remain under the Queen’s roof for the duration of his marriage. Faced with such compliance, the Queen raised no further objections.

  While Beatrice rejoiced, republican journalists bewailed the arrival in England of another ‘German pauper’ who would have to be kept at public expense. Adopting the Queen’s simile of ‘the rabbits in Windsor Park’, they complained of the expected surfeit of ‘Battenbunnies’ and made cruel suggestions as to how they might be disposed of. In Parliament, too, there was discord as republican members objected to Beatrice’s marriage settlement.

  The muttering in England was nothing compared to the furore in Berlin. That Victoria of Hesse had married a Battenberg was galling enough but that the Queen of England should allow her own daughter to do the same was positively unpalatable. In a typical about turn, Queen Victoria flew to Liko’s defence. Elevating him from Serene to Royal Highness, she berated Vicky’s husband, Fritz, for voicing his opinion that Liko was not ‘of pure blood,’ and was even more furious that Willy dared to criticise what she had sanctioned. After all, she was quick to point out, Willy’s wife, Dona, was a ‘parvenu’, whom the family had accepted in spite of her less than regal origins.

  At least Vicky’s younger son, Henry, proved more compliant. Since he was busily courting Irène of Hesse, it would not do to belittle her brother-in-law’s family. When he heard that Irène and her younger sister Alix had been chosen as bridesmaids, he was even prepared to brave Willy’s scorn to attend the wedding.

  As the wedding day drew nearer, Queen Victoria’s misgivings returned. The prospect of handing over her baby to a man was even more traumatic than the marriages of all her elder daughters. If a girl knew in advance what marriage entailed, she said, she would refuse to approach the altar. In Beatrice’s case she could only hope that there would be ‘no results’ – in fact there would be four: three sons and a daughter.

  The wedding took place at Whippingham Church not far from Osborne House, and, after the briefest of honeymoons, the couple returned to take up permanent residence with the Queen. They holidayed with her in the south of France or the Italian Riviera and followed her annual rotation between Osborne, Balmoral and Windsor where their first son, Alexander (Drino) – a very pretty child, in Queen Victoria’s opinion – was born in the autumn of 1886. Within months Beatrice was pregnant again and would soon give birth to Queen Victoria’s youngest granddaughter: the ‘jubilee baby’

  In June 1887, as Londoners prepared to witness the greatest pageant of foreign royalties the capital had ever seen, Queen Victoria saw her well-ordered court thrown into disarray. She understood that so many of her relatives wished to participate in the celebrations for her fifty years on the throne, but, at the age of sixty-eight, her distaste for entertaining the royal mob was stronger than ever. While hundreds of officials planned the route, the festivities and the service, the Queen was preoccupied with arranging the order of precedence.

  Still more troublesome was the problem of where to house her numerous guests, ensuring that those who did not get on were placed far enough apart. Willy was being bothersome. Seeming to relish the fact that his father was unwell, he suggested that the Crown Prince should stay in Prussia so that he could glory in the limelight of representing the Kaiser. His behaviour had become so objectionable that Queen Victoria was loath to invite him at all and only Vicky’s pleading on his behalf had led her to change her mind. Even so, he could not be relied upon to treat the Battenberg princes with respect and therefore, to avoid any unpleasantness, it would be necessary to keep him as far from Louis and Liko as possible.

  Then there was Charlotte. Not only was she actively encouraging Willy’s bombastic demands, but the Queen knew her well enough to realise what trouble her tales could cause and would have preferred her to stay in Prussia. There was no space for her at Buckingham Palace, the Queen explained to Vicky, and it would not be advisable to allow her to stay with the fast set at Marlborough House.

  Osborne was so overcrowded that Princesses Alix and Irène of Hesse were forced to share a bed; and, if that were not enough, there was the unwelcome prospect of entertaining the Russians. Delighted as Queen Victoria was to see ‘dear lovely Ella’, not least to grill her about her marriage[·], the prospect of meeting her Russian husband was far less enthralling. The Queen could only hope that Ella’s sister, Victoria, who had recently been struck down by typhoid, would be sufficiently recovered to attend and would do her utmost to keep the Grand Duke well away from her.

  Hitches and bickering apart, the celebrations began in the evening of 20th June 1887 when the Queen travelled to London to entertain the foreign guests at a banquet at Buckingham Palace.

  The next day, as a warm summer morning dawned, the royal cousins were taken to Westminster Abbey for a Service of Thanksgiving. Shortly before eleven-thirty, bugles sounded the National Anthem to announce the arrival of the sparkling procession of princesses who made their way to their seats to the left of a raised dais. Their titles were as ancient and illustrious as their surroundings: Princesses Victoria Moretta, Sophie and Margaret of Prussia; Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna; the Hereditary Princess Charlotte of Saxe-Meiningen; Princesses Helena Victoria and Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein; Princess Louise of Wales; Princesses Alix and Irène of Hesse; and Princesses Marie and Victoria Melita of Edinburgh.

  As the chatter of sisters and cousins echoed on the abbey walls, the Queen’s landau left Buckingham Palace preceded by a procession of princes. Enthusiastic crowds lined the streets to cheer the impressive pageant of royalties. The Queen’s grandsons and grandsons-in-law rode at the head of the procession, followed by the Kings of Denmark, Greece and Saxony, and the Princes of Prussia, Portugal, Austria and Sweden. From the farthest reaches of the Empire came the Maharajas of Morvi, Gondal, Holkar, Indore, and Queen Kopiolani of Hawaii.

  At the entrance to the abbey, the princes, arrayed with the emblems of their Orders, dismounted and made their way to the right of the dais on which the tiny Queen would sit during the service.

  When the prayers were completed, the princesses, some with tears in their eyes, stepped forwards to curtsey to their grandmother, who embraced and kissed each of them in turn. As the royalties emerged from the abbey, enthralled crowds cheered the magnificent procession, hailed their monarch and waved their flags, oblivious of Willy’s grumbling that his wife came lower in the order of precedence than the black Queen Kapiolani of Hawaii. For the first time since the death of Prince Albert, the British public turned out in their thousands to demonstrate their affection for the Queen. Later, a grand formal dinner was held, during which the Queen granted the Order of the Bath to several of her grandsons and awarded each of her granddaughters the Jubilee Medal and brooch. In the evening royalties gathered in the gardens of Buckingham Palace to watch a magnificent firework display.

  As was to be expected, the Poet Laureate produced a rather sycophantic poem for the occasion:

&n
bsp; “Fifty times the rose has flower’d and faded,

  Fifty times the golden harvest fallen,

  Since our Queen assumed the globe, the

  sceptre.

  She beloved for a kindliness

  Rare in fable or history,

  Queen, and Empress of India,

  Crown’d so long with a diadem

  Never worn by a worthier,

  Now with prosperous auguries

  Comes at last to the bounteous

  Crowning year of her Jubilee.”[78]

  The celebrations continued for several days, during which the Queen frequently appeared in public with her granddaughters. There were opportunities, too, for small family gatherings. The Queen bounced little Alice of Albany on her knee; she took tea at Frogmore with Alix and Irène of Hesse, whose engagement to Cousin Henry of Prussia had recently been announced. She drove through Windsor with five-year-old Daisy Connaught, visited Prince Albert’s tomb with Marie Louise, entertained Charlotte at a large family dinner and, beneath the trees at Windsor, plied Ella with questions about her Russian marriage.

  By the time the celebrations were over and the guests had returned home, Queen Victoria could rest contentedly knowing that, in spite of her years of seclusion, her popularity was greater than ever, and the family reunion had passed off without incident. By autumn, she believed she had earned a rest at her favourite retreat, Balmoral, and there, in October, Beatrice’s jubilee baby was born.