Throughout her three-year banishment, Queen Elizabeth refused to abandon her protégée and actively encouraged her nephew, Ferdinand, to fall under her spell. Although Hélène was not the most stunning of women, the lonely prince fell unashamedly in love. Marriage to a mere poetess was out of the question for the heir to the throne, yet even at the time of his engagement, it was rumoured that Ferdinand’s infatuation remained undiminished.
With her usual inquisitiveness, Queen Victoria decided to discover the truth for herself and invited Nando and Missy to Windsor for an inspection. Satisfied by the appearance and manners of the tongue-tied prince, she commented that Missy seemed very happy, and gave the couple her blessing.
Despite the Queen’s wish that her granddaughter should marry in St. George’s Chapel Windsor, it was decided that the wedding would take place in Nando’s native Sigmaringen. In early January 1893, an excited if nervous Missy arrived in the town with her million franc dowry. In the presence of the usual gathering of royalties, including the Duke of Connaught, representing the Queen, the wedding ceremonies took place according to both the Protestant and Roman Catholic rites and the couple departed for their honeymoon in a country house just outside the town.
The wrench of leaving her family to begin a new life with a virtual stranger was heart-rending for the young bride, and her diffident groom did little to ease the tension. The wedding night proved disastrous and matters did not improve in the coming weeks.
When the brief honeymoon was over, the couple moved on to Bucharest where Missy quickly realised that her husband lived so much in awe of his uncle, King Carol, that he dared not contradict him in anything. When the King forbade the young couple from entertaining or attending social functions to avoid creating unpleasant rivalry among the Roumanian aristocracy, Ferdinand meekly yielded to his order. Missy’s familiar ladies-in-waiting were dispatched home and the adolescent Crown Princess found herself isolated in a foreign country with a husband she barely knew.
Life in the gloomy and gaudy Byzantine palaces was intolerably tedious for such a high-spirited girl, and when, much to her surprise, she became pregnant within a fortnight of her wedding, her loneliness was more acute than ever. Contrary to her wishes that the baby should be born at her country estate, Sinaia, King Carol insisted that she remained in Bucharest and resolved to make all the arrangements even to the appointment of midwives and doctors.
Homesick and friendless, Missy could hardly wait for her mother’s arrival but the appearance of the Duchess merely exacerbated the tension. Not only did the Duchess overrule all King Carol’s plans, insisting that the baby should be born at Sinaia, but was equally determined to resist Queen Victoria’s attempts to provide an English midwife. Whatever Missy made of her mother’s disputes, she was at least grateful that the Duchess insisted that she should be given chloroform during labour.
Within months of the birth of a son, Carol, in October 1893, Missy was pregnant again and consequently denied the possibility of any social life whatsoever. What was more, as she suffocated in the stifling atmosphere of the court, her husband, she soon discovered, was happily enjoying affairs with various other women.
The return of the eccentric Queen Elizabeth did little to ease Missy’s plight. With more than a hint of jealousy for the Crown Princess’s youth and charm, the Queen went out of her way to crush Missy’s spirit. Though childless herself, she constantly interfered in the upbringing of Missy’s children, even appointing the nursery staff and giving them instructions to report to her any misdemeanour on the princess’ part. Matters came to a head when Queen Elizabeth insisted on keeping a governess of whom Missy did not approve. At her wits’ end, Missy went home to her mother in Coburg and refused to return until the woman was dismissed.
Such behaviour earned the Crown Princess the reputation of being neurotic and arrogant but with her ‘instinctive sense of self-preservation’ she refused to be crushed. By the time she returned to Bucharest, she was determined to take charge of her life and make use of her many talents. She had never doubted her own fascination and, if Ferdinand did not give her the attention she craved, numerous admirers were constantly on hand to flatter and reassure her.
Fuelled largely by the malevolent tongue of Cousin Charlotte, who had recently arrived in Roumania, rumours began to spread that Missy had embarked on an affair with a Russian cousin, Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich. When the news reached her mother, the horrified Duchess demanded an explanation. Affronted by the accusations, Missy vehemently denied any wrongdoing but even she knew that her passionate personality could not long endure a disappointing marriage to a prematurely aging husband.
The romance with Boris might have been innocent but, unlike Sophie in Greece, Missy was not prepared to accept the prevalent view that there were different moral codes for men and women. She had done her duty by providing the country with an heir and now, aware of her husband’s infidelities, she sought lovers of her own including a lieutenant in the Roumanian army and, allegedly, Waldorf Astor. Tales of her penchant for handsome young men circulated through the courts of Europe, leading Cousin Willy to refer to her later as a ‘meddlesome little flirt’ and ‘English harlot.’
Though the rumours were exaggerated, Missy made little effort to conceal her affairs, and so complacent was her husband that he happily employed her long-term lover, the dashing Prince Barbo Stirbey, in his household. For her part, Missy often praised the beauty of Ferdinand’s mistresses. Their mutual acquiescence suited all parties and allowed the Crown Prince and Crown Princess to become friends.
Whatever her opinion of her husband, Missy loved their six children: Carol, Elizabeth, Nicolas, Marie, Ileana and Mircea (the youngest of whom was probably fathered by Prince Stirbey). Thriving on adulation herself, she lavished praise upon them, refusing to reprimand them and spoiling them so terribly that the result would eventually be disastrous not only for Missy personally but also for the country.
Her relationship with her eldest son bore striking similarities to that of Aunt Vicky and Cousin Willy. At an early age, Carol was taken from Missy’s care to be placed under the supervision of tutors appointed by the King. The most prominent and influential of his teachers was a repressed homosexual who fell in love with his pupil and filled him with such an inflated sense of his own importance that his arrogance rivalled that of the Kaiser. Like Willy, too, Carol simultaneously worshipped and resented his mother, one moment gazing adoringly at her, the next going out of his way to wound her.
Missy’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth was, like Cousin Charlotte, a difficult and moody child who grew into a cold, unaffectionate woman, intent on stirring up trouble for her family. As was the case with Aunt Vicky, Missy’s chief consolation came from her younger children all of whom remained devoted to their mother.
It was characteristic of Missy that, out of a seemingly desperate situation, she had risen and would continue to rise in the estimation of her husband’s future subjects. Outwardly she and Ferdinand played the role of a happily married couple and, as Crown Princess, her personal charm endeared her to the Roumanian people in a manner that could never be rivalled by her more puritanical cousin, Sophie, Crown Princess of neighbouring Greece. With her natural flair and verve, Missy compensated for a loveless marriage in the arms a fervent lover – setting an example, which would soon be followed by her younger sister, Ducky.
Chapter 19 – Who Can Guess What His Tastes May Be?
Hessians
Louis: Grand Duke of Hesse, widower of Princess Alice
Ernie: Son of Louis and Alice
Alix: Ernie’s youngest sister
Edinburghs
Ducky: Victoria Melita, second daughter of Affie & Marie, Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh and Coburg
Sandra & Baby Bee - Ducky’s younger sisters.
One spring morning in 1892, Grand Duke Louis of Hesse-and-By-Rhine sat down to lunch with his son, Ernie, and youngest daughter, Alix. During the meal he suffered a stroke and was carried, paraly
sed, to his bed.
While Queen Victoria gasped in horror, his daughters hurried from Prussia, Russia and Malta to be at his side but by the time they reached the New Palace, ‘the best and kindest of fathers’ was barely conscious. He died in the early hours of the morning, 15th March 1892.
Crushed and bewildered as she was, Queen Victoria’s heart again went out to her orphaned grandchildren and particularly to the Grand Duke’s successor, twenty-three-year-old Ernie.
Until then, Ernie had been living a carefree existence, indulging his passion for art, and enjoying the company of his unmarried sister, Alix. Now, suddenly saddled with the weight of responsibility for the Grand Duchy, all that would have to change; and, fond as she was of her grandson, the Queen had little faith in his ability to cope at such an early age. She sent him message after message full of sound advice and, above all, recommending that he should find a wife as soon as possible, not only to help him carry out his duties but also to secure the Hessian dynasty.
There might have been another motive in the Queen’s persistent pestering. Perhaps she wondered why Ernie seemed disinclined to marry and appeared so content with his artistic friends that he would have been happy to continue his bachelorhood indefinitely. Perhaps, too, she had picked up the hint in Vicky’s letter: ‘who can guess what [his] tastes may be?’
Whether the observant Queen suspected Ernie’s bisexual tendencies and hoped to avoid a scandal, or simply believed that he would be happier with a wife, she would not let the matter drop. She had even selected him a bride from among her own granddaughters: Cousin Maud of Wales. As it quickly became apparent that Ernie had little in common with Maud, Queen Victoria simply switched her attention to another cousin: eighteen-year-old Victoria Melita (Ducky) of Edinburgh.
Whenever the couple met in one of her English palaces, the Queen delighted in seeing them laughing together and became increasingly convinced that they were ideally suited. Both were fun-loving and artistic and, since Ducky was living in neighbouring Coburg, she was familiar with the mores of German Grand Duchies and would, in her grandmother’s opinion, make an excellent successor to Princess Alice as Grand Duchess of Hesse.
Throughout the summer of 1892, Queen Victoria cajoled and beleaguered Ernie to propose but neither he nor his sisters were quite so enthusiastic. To his sisters Ducky appeared too frivolous and flippant to take the duties of a Grand Duchess seriously, while Ernie, who had never quite recovered from the death of his haemophiliac brother, Frittie, feared for the health of his children and had doubts about the wisdom of marriage between first cousins. In response, the Queen had her personal physician compile a medical report which assured him that, since both parties were perfectly fit, inter-marriage would ‘strengthen’ the stock.
As Ernie continued to prevaricate, the Queen became more impatient. If he did not propose soon, she warned, Ducky might slip away; the Duchess of Edinburgh was renowned for marrying off her daughters at an early age and while Ernie dithered there were plenty of other young princes who would be only too happy to step in before him.
In fact Ducky herself, to her grandmother’s chagrin, had already fallen in love with another cousin on her mother’s side: Grand Duke Kyril of Russia. For the Queen, who still ‘grieved as much as ever’ over Ella’s Russian match, it must have come as a relief to hear that the Orthodox Church forbade marriage between first cousins and consequently nothing could come of Ducky’s hopes.
Queen Victoria bombarded Darmstadt with letters but, frustrated by Ernie’s tardiness in replying, decided to take more direct action. She simultaneously invited both cousins to visit her at Osborne and there at last in the winter of 1893, Ernie proposed, Ducky accepted and a date was set for a spring wedding.
The following April, the splendid gathering of royalties converging on Coburg gave rise to a premature optimism that the marriage would be a success. The streets were crowded with so many guests that passers-by were delighted to see carriages stopping on the road as princes, empresses, duchesses and grand dukes descended to greet one another. The Kaiser and his mother, Empress Frederick, the Prince of Wales, the Tsarevich Nicholas, the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Roumania, Grand Duke and Grand Duchess Serge of Russia, the Duke of Connaught and his daughters, Daisy and Patsy, and numerous other relatives from Russia, England and Germany enjoyed a family reunion and settled as comfortably as they could into the overcrowded palaces. The highlight of the gathering was the arrival of Queen Victoria, who, having put so much effort into bringing about the wedding, made a special effort to be present.
Not everyone, however, was delighted to see the Queen. Amid all the rejoicing, the bride’s father, Affie, was seething with rage. In his mother’s entourage he had spotted the Munshi, Abdul Karim, her pretentious Indian secretary and the latest in her line of favourites. Not since the days of John Brown had any of Queen Victoria’s retainers irked the royal family as much as the arrogant Munshi. His constant presence and endless complaints had been unpalatable enough in England but Affie refused to stomach such behaviour in Coburg. Standing on his authority both as Duke of Coburg and as the bride’s father, Affie adamantly refused to allow him to join the royal guests in the chapel. For once, despite her tears and displays of distress, the Queen was forced to give way and the Munshi, bristling with indignation, was banished to a stand with lesser members of the household.
The wedding service took place on 19th April in the Lutheran chapel of Schloss Ehrenburg, where the young Tsarevich Nicholas observed that Ernie and Ducky made ‘a lovely couple.’ In the joyful celebrations that followed there was every reason to believe that Ernie might yet prove the ideal husband for his cousin. They both took pleasure in parties, dancing and entertaining, and Ernie’s sensitive nature complimented that of his far more passionate wife. They shared, too, a fervent interest in art for, while Ernie was a connoisseur and collector, Ducky was a very talented designer and artist.
In the company of their numerous cousins, the future seemed rosy but once the merry band had departed and the couple were alone Ducky quickly discovered that her marriage was doomed to failure. Their wedding night was as disastrous as her sister, Missy’s, had been and left her ‘completely shattered and disillusioned.’ If she hoped that matters would improve in time, the proud granddaughter of the Tsar soon realised she had overestimated Ernie. His penchant for young men was unabated and, unlike Cousin Marie Louise, Ducky could not resign herself to life with a homosexual husband.
For his part, Ernie had believed that his wife would gladly adopt the numerous charities his mother had founded but Ducky showed no interest in the affairs of Hesse and thought her husband and his little Grand Duchy so dull that she seized any chance to escape.
A year after the wedding their first and only child was born, causing a good deal of wrangling between the Queen Victoria and Ducky’s mother about the choice of an English or German obstetrician. By then, however, the marriage was already rapidly deteriorating. As Ducky complained that her husband was fonder of footmen than he was of her, they were soon living separate lives, held together by two frail bonds: their daughter Elizabeth, whose obvious preference for her father grated on Ducky’s nerves, and the knowledge that Queen Victoria would never consent to a divorce.
In April 1896, Ernie and Ducky returned to Coburg for the marriage of the Ducky’s younger sister, Alexandra (Sandra), to Ernst of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. The Queen complained that nineteen-year-old Sandra was too young to be married, particularly to a man fifteen years her senior, and with typical family histrionics the bride and her younger sister, Baby Bee, wept throughout the service, but the marriage would prove the happiest and most stable of all the Edinburgh princesses’. The couple settled into a Schloss near Hesse where, between 1897 and 1911, Sandra gave birth to five children: Gottfried, Marie Melita, Alexandra, Irma and Alfred, the youngest of whom died within his first year.
Two months after Sandra’s wedding, Ducky found another excuse to escape from Hesse to the glamour of Moscow f
or the coronation of her cousin, Tsar Nicholas II. The delights of Russia were all the more alluring for Ducky when she came face to face once more with her first love: the dashing, if taciturn, Grand Duke Kyril Vladimirovich. From then on, there was no hope of saving her marriage; her thoughts were only of Kyril.
Trapped and frustrated, Ducky sought escape from Hesse at every opportunity, visiting her relatives across Europe, in the full knowledge that in her absence Ernie was entertaining his male lovers. In 1899 she stayed at Balmoral with Queen Victoria and Cousin Thora of Schleswig-Holstein, where her dissatisfaction was obvious to everyone.
Ducky attempted to make light of her unhappiness but beneath the ‘amusing’ façade, she was in despair and wept to her grandmother that the only solution was divorce. The Queen had no need of her explanations; she had already made own discreet and thorough enquiries into the goings-on in Hesse and genuinely pitied Ducky’s plight but still she remained adamant on the subject of divorce.
Faced with no alternative, Ducky made one final attempt to accommodate her grandmother’s wishes and salvage her marriage. Perhaps, she hoped, another child might draw her and Ernie closer together but, after suffering a miscarriage in the spring of 1900, she gave up all hope of a future with Ernie. Leaving Darmstadt, for her mother’s villa in the South of France, she sought comfort in the arms of her lover, Kyril.
Intensely disappointed by the outcome of her schemes, Queen Victoria firmly declared she would never again indulge in matchmaking. Not only had the marriage brought nothing but unhappiness for both parties, it had also led indirectly to the marriage she had been most anxious to avoid: that of her favourite granddaughter, Princess Alix of Hesse.
Queen Victoria's Granddaughters 1860-1918 Page 17