Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires

by Justin C. Vovk

  An important milestone in Princess May’s life took place two months after she returned to England. On August 1, 1885, her confirmation was held in the Chapel Royal of Saint James’s Palace. With this acknowledgment that her youth was over, May was invited to take on more official responsibilities as a member of the royal family. In 1886 alone, she was present at the opening of Parliament, attended the ceremony for the laying of the foundation stone when construction began on the Tower Bridge, and accompanied Queen Victoria to the opening of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition. The grandest occasion that May participated in was one of the country’s most highly anticipated affairs of 1887: Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, marking the fiftieth anniversary of her reign. All of London came alive for the first great celebration of monarchy since Prince Albert’s death in 1861. Jubilee fever was epidemic. Coins were minted, medals were created, and jubilee brooches and tie pins were sold. In some cases, convicts were even released from prison, while others had their sentences remitted. Foreign royals flooded into the English capital to celebrate Victoria’s momentous reign. Along with her grandfather George III, only two other English monarchs—Henry III and Edward III—had ever ruled that long. On June 20, Princess May joined nearly forty other members of the royal family as they rode in state to Saint Paul’s Cathedral for a service of thanksgiving. The response from the general public was literally overwhelming. Lady Geraldine Somerset, a lady-in-waiting to May’s grandmother the Duchess of Cambridge, wrote,

  [Of the] masses and millions of people thronging the streets like an anthill, and every window within sight and every roof of every house, men hanging on the chimneys! There was never anything seen like it … And their enthusiasm! The Duke [of Cambridge] … told us he had never seen anything like the enthusiasm anywhere!! It was one continuous roar of cheering from the moment [the Queen] came out of the door of her Palace till the instant she got back to it: Deafening.117

  Along with Queen Victoria’s numerous relations was a guest list of nearly fifty other reigning monarchs, dignitaries, and royals. At dinner that evening—a “large family dinner,” as the queen called it—she sat between King Christian IX of Denmark and his son King George I of Greece. Across from her sat her infamous first cousin King Leopold II of the Belgians.118

  Twenty-year-old Princess May was in awe of this great royal pageant. Most of the British population had never witnessed a Golden Jubilee before. The last English monarch to reign for anything beyond a decade was King George III, who had died in 1820. There were few people still alive who remembered his reign. Those that did would have been infants when George III ruled under his own name. They most likely recalled the governance of the king’s enormously unpopular son, who became prince-regent—and later King George IV—when George III was left incapacitated by his mental and physical illnesses in 1811. For the jubilee festivities, London came alive in a “bright and beautiful” atmosphere that “was particular clear” and had “a glow and colour about everything.”119 Writing to her friend Emily Alcock, Princess May described the excitement of the jubilee. “I really cannot describe all the fêtes,” she wrote. “The excitement here in London was something not to be imagined, & I believe it was this that kept us up thro’ that fatiguing time when we were on the go from morning till night—sans relâche.”120

  Two guests who cast a dark shadow over the festivities were Willy and Dona. The queen originally planned to not invite them. Officially, Germany was to be represented by Vicky and Fritz, but the real reason behind Victoria’s decision was Willy and Dona’s conduct toward the queen’s daughter Beatrice and her husband, Henry of Battenberg, on their honeymoon. “You know how ill he [Willy] behaved, how rude, to me, to Liko [Henry],” the queen wrote to Vicky. “Bertie wants me to invite William & Dona, but … I fear he may show his dislike and be disagreeable.”121 In the end, Bertie and Vicky convinced their mother to invite the couple, saying that Willy really “ought to be present” since he was the “eldest Grand Child.”122 In appealing to her mother, Vicky explained that not inviting them could do more harm than good.

  [They] need only stay for a very few days. He [Willy] has behaved very badly to you – and to us – but I fear it would only do harm in every way to appear to take more notice of his behaviour than it is worth! It is well not to give him a handle for saying he is ill treated! … He fancies himself of immense importance & service to the State – to his country, thinks he is indispensable to Bismarck and the Emperor! As he has little heart or Zartgefühl [tact] – and as his conscience & intelligence have been completely wharped [sic] by the … people in whose hands he is, he is not aware of the mischief he does … His staying away would only be used by the [ultraconservative] Party against you & Fritz & me!”123

  Willy and Dona arrived in June, bringing with them their eldest son, Little Willy. The grandeur of the event made a lasting impression on the young prince. His first meeting with his great-grandmother the queen remained especially vivid in his memory for many years. “It was at a great garden fête in St. James’s Park that I first saw the Queen,” he wrote in his memoirs. “She was very friendly to me, kissed me and kept on fondling me with her aged and slightly trembling hands.”124 Little Willy may have been received by his English relatives with open arms, but his parents were less welcome. One German lady-in-waiting recalled how “Pr. W[illiam] and the Princess [Dona] were received with exquisite coolness” and “bare courtesy.” When it was announced that, during the royal procession, Dona would take precedence after the visiting queen of Hawaii, she nearly exploded. “She was always placed behind the black Queen of Hawaii!!” one witness observed with some satisfaction. “Both [Willy and Dona] returned not in the best of tempers.”125 Dona would never forgive Britain, or the royal family, for this slight.

  In the wake of the jubilee festivities, Princess May’s family found a new lease on life. Their participation in the official ceremonies showed that their financial indiscretions had been somewhat forgiven. With a new outlook, they made their permanent home exclusively at White Lodge. Although the Tecks were now more conscious of the money they spent, Mary Adelaide never completely gave up her spendthrift habits. Even after settling in at White Lodge, May spent little time there. Her time in Florence left her with an indelible curiosity about the world around her. For the rest of her life, she would take a profound interest in exotic places and the people who lived there. Eager to mix with people of all classes, she was always keen to ask questions and to get to know others. When she was not learning more about London’s history, she was busy with charity work or lobbying for social reforms alongside her mother. “She never forgot anyone,” wrote one of the Duchess of Teck’s biographers, “high, low, rich or poor—while the slightest act of kindness is remembered.” The people who lived around Richmond Park thought very highly of Princess May. A daughter of one of the locals recalled, “The Royal carriage never went by our gate without Her Royal Highness looking to see if my father was in the garden or at the window, and a gracious cordial greeting was invariably given.”126

  Now a young woman, May’s parents became concerned about her eligibility in Europe’s highly contested royal matrimonial stakes. The fact that she was a great-granddaughter of King George III, or that she was born and raised at the English court, seemed overshadowed by the fact that she had morganatic blood in her veins. Although not a great beauty like the Princess of Wales, May’s handsome features won her some admirers. Undaunted by her daughter’s shortcomings, the Duchess of Teck launched her into society. May’s diary from this time is a testament to how active she was. It is filled with passages that echo one another: “Mama opened an industrial exhibition;.… Mama opened an exhibition at King Ward ragged schools, Spitalfields;.… Went to L[ad]y Wolverton’s where Mama read & I sang to some poor men from Westminster;.… drove to Camberwell where Mama opened the Institute & Gymnasium which Ly Wolverton gave to the Parish. The Dean & Mr Chapman made charming speeches & Mama’s speech was so touching that we nearly wept.”127 In
accompanying her mother on all these outings, May became her de facto private secretary.

  As May settled into a round of official engagements, tragedy struck her family in April 1889 with the sudden death of her maternal grandmother, the Duchess of Cambridge. Mary Adelaide described the “great sorrow” of her mother’s “irreparable loss” to a friend: “We have thus far been wonderfully supported by the feeling that our beloved mother has at length been released from all her weary pain and suffering, and is now, as we dare hope, enjoying the rest, peace, and joy she so longed for!”128 Queen Victoria, who had been close with her aunt, mourned the loss deeply alongside her cousin. “The last one gone,” the queen commented, “who had the right to call me Victoria!”129

  The official mourning period for the duchess did not last long because London was soon atwitter with the news that the queen was looking for a wife for her grandson Prince Albert Victor (“Eddy”) of Wales, who was second in line to the throne. Searching for a bride for the British heir typically involved something of a royal beauty pageant. Since the Royal Marriages Act passed by George III prevented a British heir from marrying a Catholic, a suitable bride had to be, and traditionally was, found in the German or Scandinavian courts. German princesses had been supplying English queen consorts for hundreds of years, but in this case, Queen Victoria was willing to look closer to home. Princess May—as a relative of the royal family, a Protestant princess with a German title, and a woman whose upstanding character and moral integrity were well established—was at the top of the list of candidates to be Eddy’s bride. Queen Victoria took notice of May’s fine qualities. She told her daughter Vicky, “May is a particularly nice girl, so quiet & yet cheerful & so vy carefully brought up & so sensible.”130 Along with other eligible princesses from Prussia, Mecklenburg, and Anhalt, May was in line for one of the most vaunted positions in the world: queen of England.

  After a few years in Germany, Dona’s fairy-tale romance was beginning to lose its luster. Like most newlyweds, she and Willy began to discover each other’s idiosyncrasies—she was somewhat alarmed to learn that her husband kept a loaded pistol in his desk drawer at all times. She also found that he could be remarkably high strung. He was a hypochondriac who exasperated his retinue with one imagined ailment after another. For his part, Prince Wilhelm began to chafe with married life and looked for reasons to be away from his wife. Not long after the wedding, he started realizing Dona lacked the sophistication he craved in order to keep his attention. Willy opined that his wife’s simple tastes reflected her modest provincial upbringing, away from the fast-paced life of more fashionable, mainstream royal courts. He said publicly that you could always tell that Dona “was not brought up at Windsor but rather in Primkenau.”131 By Hohenzollern standards, Willy was considered a faithful husband, even though he kept a handful of mistresses in Vienna and Strasbourg that he visited when he was away on military exercises. These women nearly caused a scandal for the royal family when they threatened to publicize the details of their relationships with the prince after “he was notably ungenerous over recompensing them for services rendered.”132 Only after Otto von Bismarck paid these women off did they back down. There were also rumors that Caroline Seiffert, one of Willy’s mistresses, became pregnant in 1882 and gave birth to a daughter, but this has never been proven conclusively.

  Making matters worse for Dona was her family’s recurring presence. It irritated Willy that his bipolar mother-in-law, Ada, made frequent visits to Potsdam, where she created one problem after another. Recent studies into neurology have led some to speculate that the eccentric Dowager Duchess of Schleswig-Holstein could also have instead suffered from encephalitis, the symptoms of which—hallucinations, headaches, and violent or antisocial tendencies—were consistent with her behavior. Whether bipolar or encephalitic, Ada Holstein was the archetypal nightmarish mother-in-law. She took to bathing herself publicly at the Marble Palace. She detailed for the palace staff her “remarkable system of washing” herself, which involved dividing her body into twenty-four “‘hemispheres,’ and required a complete set of bowl, ewer, soap dish and towel for each one.” At formal functions, Ada’s manic behavior caused more than one public relations catastrophe. On two different occasions, she “made unspeakable assaults upon her male neighbours at table.” When Dona and her ladies-in-waiting made efforts to calm the duchess, she responded by losing her temper, breaking glasses, and swearing “most obscenely.” In the end, Willy—probably with Dona’s full consent—declared that his mother-in-law could only visit three times a year. When she did, she could stay no longer than “one, two or three weeks, or as long as the household could stand it.” Willy found it easier to get along with Dona’s sisters, Calma, Louise Sophie, or Feodora. Although her brother Duke Ernest Günther of Schleswig-Holstein was pleasant enough, “he was also the sort of man who could not take a hint when it was time to terminate his visit. He was a clinger.”133

  When Dona’s difficult relatives were not around, the daily routine that she and Willy settled into was perfect as far as the prince was concerned. His wife was forced to make the best of it. On a typical day, she would see her husband at breakfast. He would then dash off to his beloved military post, commanding the First Regiment of the Foot Guards, to which he was promoted by the emperor shortly before his wedding. The prince’s duties with the foot guards usually revolved around maneuvers, parades, or other similar activities. On rare occasions, he returned to the Marble Palace for lunch. On those afternoons, he took Dona for a ride into the countryside around Potsdam, but even these excursions were in the company of Willy’s aide-de-camp. Dona was forced to accept early on that hers would always be a crowded marriage. Since childhood, Wilhelm had a deep need for the company of men to receive their approbation, praise, and encouragement. The form that this took in his life was his paradomaniac obsession with the military. From the age of twenty, he wore almost nothing but military uniforms. For centuries, the Prussian court had been fiercely militaristic, with princes and kings spending their entire lives devoted to the army. Prussia’s very identity was its inextricable link between the monarchy and the military. Willy, in turn, idolized his warrior grandfather, Emperor Wilhelm I, and he strove to be exactly like him. Usually he saw his soldiers more frequently than his wife.

  The happiness Willy and Dona did enjoy was overshadowed by the political and personal dramas that played themselves out in the Prussian royal family. Willy’s bitter struggle with his parents, especially his mother, was like a poisonous cloud engulfing Potsdam. Before long, Dona found herself involved in the clash between her husband and his mother. The relationship between the two women began amicably enough. Vicky took it upon herself to mentor and guide Dona through life at the Prussian court, but what she failed to realize was that, through “shyness and fright,” Dona did not possess the psychological capacity to respond to her mother-in-law’s efforts.134 Vicky became “impatient with Dona’s slow mind and with occasional stupidities.” Since the crown princess did not hide her feelings, “Dona saw this and resented it.”135 This only reinforced the negative gossip Dona heard about Vicky and soon began criticizing her mother-in-law the same way Willy did. She was especially indignant at the way the crown princess was constantly interfering in every aspect of their lives. Nothing seemed to be off-limits. Dona wrote that she was “in complete despair” over her mother-in-law’s meddling. It especially bothered her, she told Willy, that Vicky openly declared “everything which you … have arranged with such trouble and such careful consideration and finally perhaps to your satisfaction to be ugly.”136

  In what was shaping into a battle involving two strong-willed women, the crown princess let it be known that she disapproved of Dona’s ultraconservative nature. The problem between these two women was a clash of ideologies, one that played itself out in the prejudices and intricacies of the Prussian court. It was also a microcosm of the political divisions of Europe in the 1880s. Dona, conservative and increasingly distrustful of other et
hnic groups, represented Prussia and Germany; while Vicky, with her liberal, parliamentary ideas, was the embodiment of all things English. When Queen Victoria asked her daughter why she had supported Willy’s marrying Dona if the princess was so difficult, Vicky replied, “Dona seemed to me the most likely to make an excellent wife & mother. We had great affection & esteem for her father. I then hoped and thought she might be grateful & affectionate to me … in that my hopes have been completely disappointed.”137

  As time went on, Dona and Willy’s relationship with Vicky remained uneasy. In September 1886, Willy was struck with an excruciating inner ear infection after returning from a visit to Russia. His physician, Dr. Trautmann, informed Dona that the illness was “relatively insignificant,” but a few days later the infection spread.138 For a while, Willy’s life appeared in peril. An emergency surgery to save his life was barely successful; it took nearly two more weeks for him to show any sign of improvement. Terrified for her husband’s life, Dona perched herself at his bedside, holding his hand as she waited and prayed. “Dona is most devoted to him and never leaves him for one minute,” Vicky admitted to her mother. By the end of October, Willy had rallied. Dona stayed close to her husband throughout his convalescence. With his recovery, a degree of intimacy returned to their marriage. The drama of Willy’s illness also exacerbated the quarrel with his mother, who tried to take over as his nurse. “A little civility, kindness and empressement go a long way … but I never get them from him,” Vicky complained to her mother, “it is very painful to a soft-hearted Mama to feel so plainly that her own child does not care whether he sees her or no, whether she is well or ill, or away, etc.”139