“I am sorry to say poor Dona is not a help but an obstacle,” Vicky sighed to her mother. “…They never ask or consult me on any one subject, great or small; but only invite me to their family dinner, just as they would an aunt or a cousin.”[126]
While one daughter-in-law exacerbated the antagonism between Vicky and her son, the second, Irène of Hesse, proved far more accommodating. Since Irène’s marriage to Henry in May 1888, the mutual and long-standing affection between aunt and niece had deepened, not least because Irène had done so much to improve relations between Vicky and Henry. Life with the Kaiser’s volatile brother was not always easy for the Hessian princess:
“[He] was a tall and handsome man, but inclined to be – let us say – temperamental. At times he was overbearing and very satirical, and at others friendly and charming. His wife was a small woman, simple in manner and of a kindly, unselfish nature.”[127]
Notwithstanding her docility, Irène succeeded in calming his fiery temper, and by the time of the Diamond Jubilee, Queen Victoria’s lady-in-waiting, Marie Mallet thought him ‘simple friendly and courteous…the nicest male royalty going.’
The couple had settled in the Königliches Schloss in Kiel from where Henry continued his naval duties and indulged his passion for motor cars and engines, and to where, in March 1889, Vicky and Moretta had hurried to assist Irène through the birth of her first child.
Suffering none of Queen Victoria’s revulsion about the unecstatic state of pregnancy, Vicky set to work preparing the nursery and layette for the baby. Though the welcome she received was cordial and her efforts were greatly appreciated, she could not help but feel disappointed to find so few books in the house[·]. It seemed incongruous that the well-educated daughter of Princess Alice showed so little interest in world events and was unable to discuss matters of political importance; but if Vicky wanted reassuring that this truly was Alice’s daughter, she needed only to recall how easily her sister had shocked the Queen by breast-feeding her baby. Now it was Vicky’s turn to be appalled when Irène made no attempt to hide her pregnancy behind shawls and rugs, but appeared quite openly in public right up to the time of the birth.
Shocked or not, Vicky remained at Irène’s side through the ‘quick, easy’ birth of a son, Waldemar, on 20th March 1889. The baby’s healthy appearance belied a terrible truth. It soon became clear that Waldemar was a haemophiliac, which perhaps accounts for the seven-year gap before Irène gave birth to a second child, Sigismund. Four years later the family was completed with the birth of a third son, Henry.
“I wonder that you are pleased at Irène’s having a third boy.” Queen Victoria wrote to Vicky, “There are far too many princes in Prussia.”[128]
There was an unfortunate irony in the remark, for even as Irène was hoping for a daughter, her younger sister, Alix, Tsarina of Russia, was still desperately praying for a son.
Boys or girls, Vicky delighted in her grandchildren and looked forward with pleasure to Sophie’s frequent visits to Friedrichshof with her large family or the arrival of Mossy and Fischy with their twins.
Alongside her aesthetic and domestic interests, Vicky continued to enjoy the beautiful scenery of Krönberg, walking and riding daily as she had done since childhood, until an accident forced her to curtail her outings and marked the beginning of her decline.
In September 1898, while out riding with Mossy, Vicky’s horse, startled by a steam threshing machine, shied violently, hurling Vicky to the ground. Though bruised and badly shaken, she was able to walk home and wrote to her mother the next day that, apart from a headache, she had quite recovered.
In reality, Vicky was far more ill than anyone realised. Throughout her life, she had been troubled by various rheumatic ailments but following the accident she suffered severe back pain, which intensified with the passing of time. After consulting several doctors who presented conflicting medical opinions, she was eventually diagnosed with breast cancer, which had spread to her spine. Determined to continue living life to the full, she kept the news from her family, referring to her pain simply as lumbago and confiding the truth only to her youngest sister, Beatrice, and their mother.
For several months, she was able to make her regular excursions to Italy and France until, by the end of 1899, the pain left her confined to bed for long periods and she had no alternative but to reveal the truth to her daughters. Charlotte was the last to be told and, although she promised to keep the news to herself, she immediately announced her mother’s illness to the world.
Mossy, Moretta, and Irène were on hand to offer what comfort they could, and Sophie hurried from Greece to be at her mother’s side. Vicky endured her sufferings with fortitude and a touching concern for others, apologising to her nurses for upsetting them by her screams. Yet, hard as she tried to maintain a positive outlook, the pain, relieved only by minimal amounts of morphine, was excruciating and, at its height, she refused to see anyone for fear of causing them distress. So loud were her cries of agony that even the soldiers guarding her palace requested permission to move out of earshot.
“I have been suffering” she told her mother in October 1900, “to such an extent, but though in no ways alarming, so I trust you will not worry yourself one moment about me. I shall be prevented for some days from leaving my bed, and the attacks of spasms that seize me in the back, limbs and bones are so frequent that it is difficult to find a pause long enough to write in…”[129]
This was her final letter to the Queen.
For Queen Victoria, her eldest daughter’s illness was but one in a series of heartaches that marred the end of her reign. In the closing years of the century, she mourned not only for Liko, Young Affie and the Duke of Edinburgh and Coburg, but also, as the mother of her country, she grieved for the young officers dying by the dozen in the South African War. Her concern for the soldiers was genuine and she repeatedly sent telegrams assuring them of her gratitude whether in victory or defeat. Though the Queen never doubted the justice of the British cause, the conflict bore an ominous portent of the division that a future war would wreak in the family.
Vicky and her three younger daughters supported the British and shared the Queen’s concern for her troops. From Sophie in Athens, from Vicky in the Friedrichshof, and from Mossy in Hesse-Kassel parcels arrived for the Queen’s soldiers while the princesses studied English newspapers for reports of the cruelty of the Boers.
Much of the rest of Europe, however, viewed the situation very differently. In Russia, Alix and Ella read stories of the British atrocities including the claim that their grandmother’s troops were using Boer women and children as shields. The Russians were firmly behind the Boers and even the Tsar, who claimed to discuss the matter every day at dinner, agreed that the British were the aggressors, leaving Alix torn between loyalty to her grandmother and her husband.
From Prussia, the Kaiser pompously offered his grandmother advice on how best to proceed but at the same time praised the Boers’ successes. The strength of anti-British feeling made life especially difficult for those English princesses, Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein and Alice of Albany, who were living in Germany. Alice’s brother, as a German officer cadet had no option but to support the Kaiser’s view, while for Marie Louise, who had one brother, Albert, in the German army and another, Christle, serving with the English forces, the situation was still more difficult.
Christle, a Captain in the King’s Own Rifle Corps, had heroically endured and survived numerous hardships in the campaign until, like his Uncle Liko before him, he contracted malaria and enteric fever. His sisters, anxiously awaiting news at Balmoral, heard that he was being well treated in the military hospital in Pretoria but, within days, pneumonia had set in and he died on 29th October 1900. At his own request his body was buried alongside his fellow officers in Pretoria.
It was left to the heart-broken Thora to take the news of the death of yet another grandson to the Queen.
The series of family bereavements, Marie Louise’s
divorce, anxieties about Vicky’s illness and the stress of the war brought about a rapid deterioration in Queen Victoria’s health. Her sight was failing and, scarcely able to walk any distance, she spent much of her time in the company of her granddaughter, Thora, who patiently sat at her side, listening even as her mind began to fail and she rambled occasionally incoherently of events of the past.
On the 18th December 1900, Queen Victoria left Windsor for the last time, setting sail for the Isle of Wight to spend Christmas at her beloved Osborne House. It was a cold, bleak winter and the frail Queen was visibly fading. She complained of feeling weary and tired, and the festivities of the season were marred by the sudden death of her friend and lady-of-the-bedchamber, Lady Jane Churchill, who was found dead in her bed on Christmas morning.
Though few people realised it, Queen Victoria herself was steadily declining. She ate little and slept little and, by mid-January, appeared to be becoming more forgetful and apathetic until eventually she was confined to bed. As the seriousness of her condition began to be realised, telegrams flew across the continent warning of her decline. Princesses hurried to the island to take their turn in approaching Grandmama’s bed to whisper a last good-bye.
Racing, too, across the Solent, much to his aunts’ distress, was the Queen’s eldest grandson, Kaiser Wilhelm II. He had always had the greatest respect and affection for his grandmother, and genuinely wished to see her for one last time.
Throughout the 22nd January the Queen lapsed in and out of consciousness, asking that her little dog, Turi, should be brought to her bed. Shortly before noon she seemed so close to death that the royalties were summoned to her bedside. As her chaplain, Doctor Davison, began his prayers the Queen was able to recognise the members of her family: Victoria Battenberg, who was staying on the Royal Yacht Osborne; the Dowager Duchess of Coburg and her little grandchild, Ducky’s daughter, Elizabeth of Hesse; Daisy and Patsy Connaught who arrived with their parents and joined the Prince of Wales and the Queen’s younger daughters, Lenchen, Louise and Beatrice in their vigil. For a few hours she rallied and the family withdrew but by mid-afternoon she had suffered a relapse. At half-past six in the evening of 22nd January 1901, Queen Victoria, died in the Kaiser’s arms.
Ten days later, a long procession of royal mourners followed the coffin towards the yacht Alberta, which was to take the Queen’s body back to England. On 4th February, through flurries of snow, the cortege set out from the Albert Memorial Chapel in Windsor to Queen Victoria’s final resting place beside beloved Albert in the mausoleum at Frogmore. For Marie Louise, standing beside the coffin brought a deep sense of ‘peace and awe’, but, in typical Wales’ fashion, her cousin, Maud, confessed that she found the funeral procession to ‘rather trying & exhausting.’
“I cannot believe that she is really gone, that we shall never see her anymore. It seems impossible,” wept the young Tsarina Alix, whose fourth pregnancy had prevented her from making the journey to England. “How I envy you,” she wrote to her sister, Victoria, “being able to see beloved Grandmama being taken to her last rest.”[130] A memorial service was held for the Queen in St. Petersburg where, for the first time since her arrival in Russia, the Tsarina wept in public.
While Ducky avoided the funeral, remaining in France with her Russian lover, her elder sister, Missy, was deeply distressed at being prevented from accompanying her husband to the ceremonies. She sensed the implications of the loss of ‘dearest Grandmama’ and in a letter to her mother described her longing to return to England:
“To see it all again if only for a day or two…to have a last peep at the old house…without dear old Granny the last link is cut off!...I tell you it is inconceivable sorrow for me.”[131]
For Alice of Albany, who had returned from Germany for the funeral it was an equally devastating experience:
“I had come to regard her as permanent and indestructible – like England and Windsor Castle.”[132]
But it was the future Queen Mary who, perhaps, most accurately expressed the country’s sense of bewilderment:
“The thought of England without the Queen is dreadful even to think of. God help us all.”[133]
Grief-stricken at the death of her grandmother, Mossy of Prussia faced the most difficult task of all: breaking the news to her mother. Vicky heartbroken and racked with pain, wept that she wished she were dead, too.
For six more months, she struggled on, her agony increasing by the day. In February 1901, she received a final visit from her brother, the new King Edward VII. In spite of the friction between Willy and Uncle Bertie, the encounter passed off amicably, thanks largely to the tact of Sophie and Mossy who ensured that the conversation did not veer into disagreement. Bertie was horrified by his sister’s rapid deterioration; as she sat ‘propped up with cushions; she looked as if she had just been taken off the rack after undergoing torture.’[134] Before they left, the King’s physician Sir Francis Laking persuaded her doctors to administer larger doses of morphine to combat her pain.
Through the last few months of her life, Vicky’s received regular visits from her family. Mossy and Moretta barely left her side and, to the end she continued to take an interest in current events and her daughters’ futures. When Sophie arrived from Greece, Vicky urged her to continue to care for the poor of her country. To the last, too, Vicky remained first and foremost an English princess. To her friend Bishop Boyd-Carpenter, she confided that she hoped he would preside at her funeral and read the English Burial Service over her.
In the early evening of August 5th 1901, Vicky, surrounded by her children, died reciting the Lord’s Prayer. The funeral service she had requested was carried out at the English Church Homburg, to be followed some days later by a Lutheran funeral at Krönberg, after which she was interred with Fritz at Potsdam. In her will she left her favourite home at Friedrichshof to her youngest daughter, Mossy.
The death of Queen Victoria severed the ties uniting the royal cousins. Without Grandmama as their mainstay, there would be no common bond to keep the family together. With the dawning of the new century, the old world had passed away and the ominous clouds across the Solent portended a future far bleaker for the family than anyone could have predicted.
Chapter 25 – Poor Girl She is Utterly Miserable Now
Bertie: King Edward VII
Alexandra: Bertie’s wife
Toria: Unmarried daughter of Bertie & Alexandra
Maud: Princess Carl of Denmark; youngest daughter of Bertie & Alexandra
Daisy: Elder daughter of Arthur, Duke of Connaught
Alice of Albany: Daughter of Prince Leopold
Ducky: Victoria Melita; daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh & Coburg; wife of Ernie of Hesse; Grand Duchess of Hesse
Ernie: Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse
Alix: Tsarina of Russia; sister of Ernie of Hesse
Nicholas (Nicky): Tsar Nicholas II of Russia
The summer 1902 saw London bustling with preparations for the coronation of King Edward VII. So many years had passed since Queen Victoria’s accession that even the most aged courtiers had no recollection of the protocol of such ceremonies but for Bertie that posed few problems. Unlike his mother, the new King revelled in the limelight and there could be no better way to mark the beginning of a new reign than by the most impressive show of all: a coronation reflecting all the grandeur and pomp of the British Empire. The organisation of the whole event was entrusted to Lord Esher with instructions that this was to be a spectacle to outshine all spectacles.
By mid-June the preparations were complete; Westminster Abbey was prepared and the many visiting royalties who had arrived in London were settling into various palaces. Then suddenly, twelve days before the ceremony, disaster loomed: the King fell seriously ill and, though he determinedly protested that he could not disappoint his guests, his doctors diagnosed appendicitis which required immediate surgery. There was no alternative but to postpone the coronation. Even then, no one could be sure that the King would survi
ve surgery, as one doctor later confessed to Toria, he was sure ‘that His Majesty would die during the operation.’
Overweight, addicted to fine wines, gargantuan meals, fat cigars and pretty women, it seemed that the heir who had waited for so long to come to the throne would in the end be denied his inheritance.
For an anxious forty minutes, Queen Alexandra and her daughters, Toria and Maud, waited an adjoining room while Mr Treves performed the surgery. Yet somehow, against the odds, Bertie pulled through. Word of his recovery was greeted with rejoicing throughout the country and made the celebration of his coronation, two months later than planned, even more spectacular.
Behind the scenes came the usual family wrangling about the order of precedence. This time it was not the Kaiser but his younger brother, Henry, who was most disgruntled at being placed towards the back during the ceremonies. His temper was soothed when his sister-in-law, Victoria Battenberg, now settled with her family in London, agreed to bring her children to spend Christmas with him and Irène at Kiel, providing him with the ideal opportunity to show off his new steam car and boat.
Paradoxically, Henry’s sister, Charlotte, who was so used to making mischief, had no complaints about the coronation. Recently recovered from one of her recurring bouts of illness, she thoroughly enjoyed the celebrations and wrote cheerful letters from Sandringham describing how much she loved England.
The accession of the new King, coinciding with the dawn of a new century, seemed to revitalise the country. The Boer War finally reached its conclusion and a precarious peace reigned in Europe. Queen Victoria’s old world had vanished overnight and her successor’s court seemed suddenly young, modern and alive.
No two monarchs could have differed more starkly than the perpetually mourning widow of Windsor and the portly bon viveur, King Edward VII. From the moment he ascended the throne a great wind of change blew through the English palaces. On the King’s instructions, out went the late Queen’s numerous mementos of her stalwart John Brown; modern styles replaced the old Victorian décor; and the hushed and smoke-free rooms of Buckingham Palace echoed to the sound of cigar-puffing Sybarites. In Windsor, too, the King implemented alterations, often to the distress of the courtiers who had become so accustomed to Queen Victoria’s methods that they were reluctant to welcome change.
Queen Victoria's Granddaughters 1860-1918 Page 21