Queen Victoria's Granddaughters 1860-1918

by Croft, Christina

  Irène of Hesse - Henry’s wife

  Moretta: Princess of Schaumburg-Lippe

  Adolph: Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe; Moretta’s husband.

  Sophie : Crown Princess of Greece

  Tino: Crown Prince Constantine of Greece

  Mossy

  Greeks

  George: King of the Hellenes; brother of the Princess of Wales.

  Olga: Queen of the Hellenes.

  When Empress Frederick and her daughters returned to Germany in the spring of 1889, their immediate priority was finding a suitable home. The former Crown Prince’s Palace in Berlin, which Willy now offered, was too close to court to appeal to the Empress, who spent several months viewing more appropriate properties. One place in particular attracted her: an old country house set in the beautiful countryside of Krönberg in the Taunus Mountains, not far from Homburg and Frankfurt.

  Appealing as it was, the building was dilapidated and Vicky doubted she had sufficient funds for a complete renovation until a stroke of good fortune finally came her way. An old friend, the Duchess of Galliera, had recently died, leaving Vicky a large legacy which gave her the financial independence to rebuild the property.

  It was a slow and time-consuming project but Vicky, utilising her artistic talents to the full, delighted in the task which distracted her not only from her recent bereavement but also from the militaristic regime that her son appeared to be espousing in Berlin. Employing only the finest artists and craftsmen, she intended to make her new home a fitting tribute to Fritz’s memory, and the eventual outcome was Friedrichshof – a name chosen by her daughter, Moretta – the home that the Empress Frederick would occupy and love to the end of her life.

  “The house is very like an English country house,” wrote Frederick Ponsonby, “…Herr Ihne, the architect who built it, was half English, and fell in at once with the Empress Frederick’s idea of making it like an English country house. The bedrooms seemed quite English except for the stove. Otherwise the house was like a museum filled with a collection of works of art and curiosities.” [86]

  The absorbing venture, however, did not distract Vicky from her children’s futures and, throughout the summer of 1889, she was preoccupied with the imminent wedding of her daughter, Sophie.

  While Moretta languished in a desperate search for a husband, her younger sister had long seemed destined for a throne. At one time, she had been considered as a bride for the Russian Tsarevich Nicholas but, while visiting Marlborough House during Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee celebrations, she met and fell in love with the Princess of Wales’ nephew, the Duke of Sparta, Crown Prince Constantine (Tino) of Greece.

  Queen Victoria was among the first to see the possibilities of a match between her ‘very sweet’ granddaughter and the attractive young soldier. Though she realised he was not the cleverest of men, she was sufficiently impressed by his looks and charm to ask Vicky if there were any possibility of a match.

  Two months later, the engagement was announced and a date set for an autumn wedding, the following year. Vicky’s delight at the prospect of seeing her daughter as future Queen of the Hellenes was tempered by the thought of having to part with ‘dear little’ Sophie but at least she could take comfort in Queen Victoria’s assurance that, although Greece was far away, Sophie would surely be happy there.

  Practical matters, too, concerned the Empress Frederick as Sophie prepared to leave for Athens. As she reflected upon the inadequacies of the Greek medical services, she recalled her own traumatic first childbirth and was determined to spare her daughter the same ordeal. Knowing from bitter experience how strongly foreign courts resented outside intervention, she conceived a plan to include an English midwife disguised as a lady-in-waiting in Sophie’s entourage.

  At four o’clock in the afternoon October 25th 1889, Sophie, her mother, sisters and the midwife arrived to a rapturous welcome in Athens. The buildings between the Royal Palace and Cathedral were draped with flags and banners and the crowds turned out in force to greet their future Queen, who ‘bore herself so nicely, and was gentle, quiet and composed.’ Royalties arrived from all over Europe: Tino’s grandparents, the King and Queen of Denmark; the Russian Tsarevich Nicholas; the Prince and Princess of Wales; and eventually the new Kaiser and Kaiserin, accompanied, to everyone’s surprise, by their own chaplain.

  King George of the Hellenes (the Danish born brother of the Princess of Wales) had gone to great lengths to ensure that the wedding would pass smoothly and, as Sophie and Tino had agreed that the service would be conducted according to both the Orthodox and Lutheran rites, he had appointed his own personal chaplain to preside over the Protestant ceremony.

  The arrangement suited everyone except the bride’s brother, Willy. Hardly had he set foot ashore when he announced that he and his strictly evangelical wife were unhappy with the Greek King’s choice and insisted that their own dogmatic chaplain should lead the service instead.

  Regardless of Willy’s interference, and the tears of Sophie’s sisters, the wedding took place on the 27th October 1889 and passed without incident. The bride wore a white satin gown with a covering of cloth of silver, garlanded with orange blossom and myrtle. The train was also white satin, embroidered with silver thread. Unfortunately, someone had forgotten to include the bridal veil in her trousseau and she had to make do with a tulle substitute, fasten by diamond pins.

  The bride and groom moved into an Athenian villa, which was to be their official residence for the next twenty-four years. In the summer heat, they were able to escape to their favourite home: a small cottage in the mountainous Tatoi Woods – ‘a tiny place, smaller than Osborne Cottage (a good deal), but light and cheerful and comfortable arranged like a little French villa’[87] – where Sophie, almost as much an Anglophile as her mother, had the rooms decorated in ‘the English style.’ There, she and Tino followed the English routine of a good breakfast in the early morning, a light luncheon at midday and, after a siesta, afternoon tea. Far from the stiff formality of the Prussian Court, the Crown Prince and Crown Princess lived a relatively simple life, swimming in the sea, tending their gardens, planting trees and growing flowers.

  Vicky’s foresight in appointing the English midwife proved necessary sooner than anticipated. Eight months after the wedding, in the sweltering heat of July 1890, Sophie gave birth to a premature son, George.

  Vicky and her younger daughters, who had hoped to be present for the birth, arrived too late, and by the time they reached Athens in August, they were horrified to find Sophie in a very poor state of health. In spite of the presence of the English midwife, she had suffered terribly at the hands of three inexperienced doctors who, it was rumoured, had deliberately brought on the labour so that the child might be born before Sophie’s family arrived. On hearing of the events, a squeamish Queen Victoria warned Vicky to keep Sophie’s sisters from the ‘unedifying and alarming details’ in case it should frighten them.

  Three years later, a tragic event in her household threatened Sophie’s second pregnancy. Among her staff was a young nursery maid named Marie Weber, whom Vicky had recommended and sent to Greece from Germany. One afternoon, the unhappy Marie climbed to the top of the Parthenon and threw herself to the ground. She died later that evening. It was left to Sophie’s youngest sister, Mossy, to break the news to Marie’s parents.

  Sophie, though distressed, was unharmed and five months later gave birth to a second son, Alexander. For him and for her subsequent children – Helen, Paul, Irene and Katherine, born at irregular intervals, between 1896 and 1913 – she employed only English nannies.

  With Vicky’s encouragement Sophie dedicated herself wholeheartedly to her duties as Crown Princess. In true family fashion, she established schemes to improve the medical services and implemented forestation programmes to aid agriculture but, for all her good intentions, her efforts were not always well-received. While she despaired of the Greeks’ lack of enthusiasm for her projects, they found her stiff Prussian temperament over
bearing and she lacked the personal magnetism to win great popularity.

  More wounding for Sophie was the realisation that Tino was not quite the faithful and ‘very good husband’ that Queen Victoria had envisaged. Having been raised by parents who were totally devoted to one another, it came as a shock to discover that Tino thought nothing of entertaining mistresses and embarking upon several affairs.

  The disappointment of Tino’s infidelity and the lack of warmth shown her by the Greeks soon smothered much of Sophie’s early enthusiasm. Her pessimism and gloom increased with age, so much so that her cousin, Missy of Edinburgh, wrote succinctly: ‘she bored me.’ Perhaps Missy had little patience with her cousin’s complaints, for by then, in her own idiosyncratic fashion she had found a far more effective way of dealing with a husband’s infidelities.[¨]

  Returning to Germany after Sophie’s wedding, Vicky knew that Moretta would not settle contentedly into what her grandmother piously called a state of ‘blessed singleness.’ Moretta could envisage no other future than marriage, and the trauma of Sandro’s departure spurred her on a desperate quest for a husband. Cousins and courtiers were persuaded to assist in her search. For political reasons, Bismarck advocated the son of the Portuguese King but, since that would entail converting to Catholicism, Moretta declined. Queen Victoria examined the possibility of a match with a Swedish prince but, receiving reports of his unsuitability, concluded that he was too young.

  Her aunt, Marie of Edinburgh, was eager to help and recommended two of her Russian cousins: Grand Dukes Sandro Mikhailovich and Pyotr Nikolaevich. In spite of her aversion to all things Russian, Queen Victoria raised no objections, and Moretta was delighted by the prospect of meeting the dashing Sandro Mikhailovich – ‘the sailor boy’. Sadly, as with the earlier Sandro, her dreams met with disappointment. Her hopes of an encounter were repeatedly dashed and it soon became clear that the Grand Duke had already set his sights on the Tsar’s daughter, while Pyotr Nikolaevich was courting a Montenegrin princess.

  Various other princes were mentioned and forgotten and, as one after another they slipped from her grasp, an increasingly despondent Moretta became convinced that she was too fat and too ugly to attract a mate. In despair, to her mother’s great consternation, she launched herself on a drastic diet, exercising to extremes and virtually refusing to eat anything.

  With typical good sense, Queen Victoria decided to take her anorexic granddaughter in hand. In June 1889, she invited her to England where she kept a close eye on her, even allowing her to share her own sleeping carriage on the train to Balmoral from Windsor – a privilege which, until then, had been reserved for her daughter, Beatrice. She regulated Moretta’s diet and encouraged more moderate exercise but by then even a fond grandmother was coming to believe that it was unseemly and degrading to go on frantically pursuing false hopes. To Moretta’s chagrin, she advised that, after so many disappointments, it would be better to abandon the pursuit of a husband and resign herself to spinsterhood. To make matters worse for Moretta, the presence of Sandro’s brother and sister at Balmoral revived old wounds, and the announcement of the engagement of her younger cousin, Louise[·] added to her despair.

  At twenty-three years old, Moretta believed she was growing beyond marriageable age. Her elder sister, Charlotte, and three of her Hessian cousins had married before their twenty-second birthdays and even her own younger sister, Sophie, was already married.

  “I shall never, never marry – all my relations, sisters, friends do, except my stupid self,” she wailed to her mother. “I am too ugly and nobody will have me…”[88]

  She tried briefly to put all hopes from her head but, finding the state of singleness anything but blessed, her thoughts repeatedly returned to her unhappy plight. Everywhere she looked, she saw men with whom she dreamed she might be happy, and redoubled her relentless pursuit of love so frenetically that Willy rather cruelly observed that she would marry ‘anyone who was manly.’ His comment was not entirely unjust. Even Vicky was afraid that Moretta might throw herself at any available young man who showed an interest in her, while Queen Victoria warned against allowing her to mix too freely with ‘unsuitable’ people, and both were relieved when a minor German Prince, Adolph of Schaumburg-Lippe, arrived in Homburg and seemed quite taken with the lonely princess.

  The somewhat scruffy soldier prince was neither well-educated nor well-travelled but he had good health and a respectable reputation and when, within days of their first meeting, he proposed Moretta accepted him.

  The following June, Adolph was whisked off to Windsor for inspection by his future grandmother-in-law. In spite of the satisfactory if somewhat uncouth impression he made upon the English court, Moretta herself was hardly enthusiastic about her prospective groom. It was not a love-match; it was widely rumoured that Moretta did not even like her husband and was marrying solely ‘for the sake of marriage’ but at least she would be free of the stigma of spinsterhood and could look forward to raising a family of her own.

  On the evening of 19th November 1890, wearing the veil that her mother had worn to her own wedding thirty-three years earlier, Moretta made her vows in a civil ceremony in the old Schloss in Berlin before moving on to the chapel for the religious service. An observer noted:

  “The Bride looked lovely and if, as people said, she was marrying a man whom she disliked, she did not allow people to know it by her face.”[89]

  Though attended by numerous foreign royalties including the Crown Princes of Greece and Roumania, it was a relatively simple affair by royal standards as many of the traditional festivities were curtailed by Empress Dona’s pregnancy. Even so, according to one guest, Moretta’s cousin, Marie Louise, the celebrations lasted long enough to become monotonous:

  “There was of course, a wedding feast and afterwards the traditional torchlight procession, when the bridegroom, preceded by pages, holding in their hands candelabra…had to lead each princess right round the room bowing to the Emperor and Empress. The best man then led the bride around the room in the same manner, and all the princes and princesses did likewise. You can imagine how long this took and how very bored we became.”[90]

  As Marie Louise found distraction elsewhere[·], a weeping Moretta prepared to say goodbye to her family. The prospect of leaving her mother cast a shadow over the celebrations, and her leave-taking was not made any easier when Willy entered into a dispute with his sister, Sophie, which would take five years to resolve.[¨]

  Late in the evening, amid many tears the couple left for their honeymoon in Egypt.

  If Moretta was not in love with her husband, she at least had the joy of discovering that by the end of her extended holiday she was pregnant. After long years of failed romances it seemed that at last the future was bright and, in early February, three months after her wedding, she cheerfully set out from Cairo to take the good tidings to her sister, Sophie, in Athens.

  A holiday of several weeks had been planned and Sophie eagerly awaited her sister’s arrival with a view to showing her all the splendours of Greece. Moretta had been in the city for only an hour and a half when she suddenly announced that she and Adolph must leave at once for Homburg. The following day Vicky received a ‘frantic’ telegram from Sophie, telling her that Moretta was urgently rushing home.

  The cause of the sudden departure soon became apparent. Moretta had suffered a miscarriage and, while the sympathetic Queen advised her to ‘have some rest’ before ‘beginning again,’ it emerged that Moretta would never be able to have children. It must have seemed at that moment that her desperate longing for a husband and family had been jinxed from the start and further disappointments were soon to follow.

  Adolph’s native principality, Lippe, on the borders of Hanover and Westphalia had been ruled for twenty years by the childless Prince Waldemar. The prince’s brother and rightful successor was so hopelessly insane that he was incapable of ruling and so, in a secret decree, Waldemar had appointed Adolph to act as regent after his death.

/>   Following Prince Waldemar’s death in 1895, Adolph prepared to take up his new role and he and Moretta arrived in the picturesque capital, Detmold, where they received a warm greeting from the crowds who gathered to welcome them to the city. The quaint little town with its medieval buildings was surrounded by beautiful forests, and both Adolph and Moretta envisaged a happy future there – but again their hopes were dashed. Other branches of the extended Lippe family were dissatisfied with Waldemar’s secret arrangement and contested his decree. A prolonged court hearing ensued which took almost two years to resolve until, in the summer 1897, the court found in favour of the contesters, forcing Adolph and Moretta to leave the town.

  It was yet another blow for Moretta but it drew her and Adolph closer together, so much so that by the following year Queen Victoria’s lady-in-waiting, Marie Mallet, thought them ‘a devoted couple and she has changed much and for the better in her personal appearance, being now a graceful good-looking woman.’[91]

  The same year, they settled into a villa in Bonn, which they had rebuilt in the style of an English country house on the banks of the Rhine.

  Settled into her new home, Moretta’s life sank into a stagnant routine. Daily she wrote to her mother, bemoaning her childlessness, but, although she had not discovered the ‘grand passion’ of her dreams, she had at least found a faithful husband, leaving Vicky free to turn her attention to her one remaining daughter.

  Chapter 14 – My Benjamin

  Vicky: German Empress Frederick

  Mossy (Margaret): Vicky’s youngest daughter

  Eddy: Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence & Avondale, eldest son of the Prince of Wales.

  Eddy’s sisters:

  Louise

  Toria

  Maud

  Alix of Hesse: Youngest surviving daughter of Princess of Alice

  Ella: Grand Duchess Serge of Russia; Alix’s elder sister