by Gillian Gill
294 As their first cousin Marie Julia P. Gelardi, Born to Rule: Five Reigning Consorts, Granddaughters of Queen Victoria, New York: St Martin’s Press, 2005, p. 14.
294 By the early twentieth century For my information on hemophilia in the Saxe-Coburg family, I have relied on the book by Potts and Potts and also on the following two articles in the medical literature: An Historical Review by Richard F. Stevens, “The History of Haemophilia in The Royal Families of Europe,” British Journal of Haematology, 1999, 105, 25–32; and “Historical and political implications of Haemophilia in the Spanish royal family,” by C. Ojeda-Thies and E. C. Rodriguez-Merchan, Haemophilia(2003), 9, 153–156.
Chapter 23: FRENCH INTERLUDE
295 He was a supreme political opportunist “[Napoleon III] was described as having the ‘appearance of an opium eater’” (Woodham-Smith, p. 346).
295 In smooth charm he was not unlike Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) was born into the brilliant and cosmopolitan D’Israeli family. He became an Anglican at the age of thirteen, a conversion that allowed him to go into English politics while pursuing a highly successful career as a novelist. He was prime minister from 1874 to 1880 and became close friends with the Queen. Victoria had many prejudices, but she was not a racist.
295 As a lengthy memorandum Martin, vol. 3, pp. 98–109.
297 Three years later, he suspended This was the coup d’état of the 18th Brumaire in 1851, which sent a number of important republicans into exile in Britain, including Victor Hugo, France’s greatest poet. From his place of exile on the Island of Jersey, Hugo launched an excoriating set of political satires called “Les Châtiments” [Chastisements], which presents Napoleon III as the vile merchandiser of his uncle’s great legend.
297 In 1853, having failed Napoleon III made determined efforts to win the hand of Queen Victoria’s niece Adelaide of Hohenlohe Langenburg (third daughter of the Queen’s half sister Princess Feodora), among others. Adelaide was a young sixteen, and both her mother and aunt felt the hot-house atmosphere of the French court would be too much for her happiness and her morals.
297 In 1840 he had paid forty pounds Martin, vol. 3, p. 211.
297 “How strange to think,” Victoria confided Martin, vol. 3, p. 205.
297 “I felt that I was possibly Ibid. p. 211.
298 The two women would be friends After her husband was deposed in 1870, the Empress Eugenie (1826–1920) spent the rest of her life in England. A Spaniard by birth, she is said to have promoted the marriage of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenburg (Ena) to King Alfonso XIII of Spain. Ena was the empress’s goddaughter and namesake.
298 “Altogether I am delighted Martin, vol. 3, p. 209.
299 “In spite of the great heat Tisdall, p. 34.
299 If Prince Albert, in his capacity As Queen Victoria once remarked in a letter to her daughter Vicky, she never chose so much as a bonnet without consulting her husband. Victoria had little interest in fashion and was quite aware that, as a small, plump woman with a plain face, she was hard to dress. As an unmarried woman, the Queen got good fashion advice from other women, notably her mother, her aunt Louise in Belgium, and court ladies such as the Duchess of Sutherland, her first mistress of the robes. For her wedding, the simple dresses Victoria chose for herself and her bridesmaids got excellent press. But once she was married, Victoria cared only for Albert’s approval, and apparently he made time to supervise her choice of dresses and hats. The results were spectacularly bad. Even the English wondered why their Queen looked so much less chic in her day outfits than the average middle-class woman dressed for town.
300 Victoria was determined to return Queen Victoria devoted pages of her journal to the visit of Napoleon III and his wife to Windsor in April 1855, and to her visit to Paris with the prince and their two eldest children five months later. The Queen allowed sections of her journals to be published—I believe her first move into print—and critics have found it interesting to compare this, as it were, self-edited version to the bowdlerized one produced by Princess Beatrice two generations later. We also have immediate, first-person accounts of the state visit to France in the letters written from France to her family in England by Mary Bulteel Ponsonby, who attended the Queen as a maid of honor, and to her family in Germany from Frieda Arnold, who attended the Queen as a dresser. All three ladies were overwhelmed by the superb preparations the French had made for the visit.
300 On her last night in Paris Woodham-Smith, p. 361.
300 To her diary she confided Longford, p. 316, quoting Queen Victoria’s journal.
302 When she politely said Woodham-Smith, p. 361.
302 Like his mother, the Prince of Wales In her letters to her daughter Vicky, Queen Victoria comments over and again on how miserable and bored she is by court life at Windsor and Buckingham Palace.
302 Here was diplomatic tact and womanly sympathy On the relations between the French imperial couple and the Princess Royal (Vicky), see Pakula, chapter 4, pp. 54–59.
Chapter 24: THE PRUSSIAN ALLIANCE
304 The idea that Victoria, Princess Royal At three, already fluent in German and English, “Pussette,” as Vicky was then known to her family, impressed her French governess one day when out on her pony ride. Looking at the landscape, Vicky quoted a line from a poem she had just memorized by the poet Alphonse de Lamartine: “le tableau se déroule à mes pieds” (the scene unfolds at my feet) (Pakula, p. 37, quoting Queen Victoria’s letter to King Leopold).
304 His personal mission as a diplomat The business and professional classes in Prussia were essentially excluded from political power, which was wielded by a small, entrenched landed aristocracy represented by the court party, often called the camarilla. The camarilla, in turn, was supported by the large, well-financed, and superbly trained army, which, unlike the British army that was scattered all over the globe, saw its mission to lie in Europe. The social classes were kept rigorously separate, and it was rare for a Prussian merchant or intellectual to have connections at court or a relationship with a member of the royal family When Victoria’s daughters Vicky and especially Alice tried to move across class lines in Prussia and Hesse, they met with savage criticism. The Prussian merchants and intellectuals were eager to follow the example of Britain and take control of the nation’s politics and administration, but they failed. In the first half of the nineteenth century, occasional uprisings would force some movement toward democratic reforms and the formation of elected assemblies. But as soon as the rioters returned to their homes and things quieted down, the army would assert its grip, the king and his government would renege on all their promises of reform, the assemblies were dismissed, and the camarilla came down hard on political dissidents, the press, and the courts. In the second half of the century, the army’s success in military campaigns against Austria, France, and Denmark—and Prussia’s reunification of the nation—kept protest in check.
304 Prince Albert wrote, begging As many people in Great Britain remarked with indignation, the Prince of Wales had many baptismal sponsors, all but two of them German.
305 He also welcomed the Prussian minister Thus, in the memoirs she prepared of her dead husband, Baroness Bunsen describes the masque of the four seasons that the royal children performed to celebrate the wedding anniversary of their parents in 1854 (Bunsen’s Life, vol. II, p. 328, quoted in Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, vol. III, pp. 16–17).
305 There King Frederick William IV E. F. Benson, Queen Victoria, p. 145.
305 In a telling little scene See Woodham-Smith, p. 250. In Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, a whole chapter of volume II is devoted to the 1845 visit to Germany, based largely on the Queen’s diary, and detailing every step of the way. There is, however, no hint of a disagreement with the Prussians.
306 Frederick William himself, the eldest Roger Fulford, introduction to Dearest Child, p. 17.
307 “Your Majesty, I must begin Jagow, p. 108. When thanking the king of Prus
sia for a gift to the Prince of Wales, Prince Albert is even more gushing: “When I think that this princely gift springs not only from the hands, but also from the brain of Your Majesty … and when I think also of all the treasure of the messages contained in your recent letters to us, I am obliged to say to myself: No man has ever in a single present had showered upon him by another so incalculable a wealth of gifts” (Jagow, p. 114).
308 Learning of the speech, Prince Albert Jagow, p. 113.
309 “That every good German desires Martin, Life of the Prince Consort, vol. III, p. 24.
310 She failed to win his love As a young man, Prince William fell passionately in love with a Polish aristocrat, Eliza Radziwill, but his parents refused to countenance their marriage. William married Augusta of Saxe-Weimar, a woman seventeen years his junior. The two proved to be incompatible. After two difficult births, which produced the requisite healthy male heir, Augusta refused to have marital relations with her husband (Pakula, p. 104). From then on, the two were locked in constant combat until, under the guidance of Bismarck, William became emperor of Prussia. Then he and his wife united in opposition to their heir and his English wife.
311 As Queen Victoria wrote Pakula, p. 51.
311 It was unfortunate, in the prince’s Members of the Prussian royal family prided themselves on being tall. King Frederick William IV collected a personal guard of men over six feet in height. One of the many reasons for Kaiser Wilhelm II’s massive insecurity was that he was a small man in comparison with his father and grandfather. Soon after her daughter Vicky went to Berlin as a bride, Queen Victoria received a copy of a private letter describing Vicky’s reception by the court of Berlin. “Only one thing I can’t understand she [the Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin] says ‘She [Vicky] is very small’ which considering that you are a great deal taller than me, and I am not a dwarf, is rather hard” (Hibbert, Queen Victoria in Her Letters and Journals, p. 102).
312 It was true that Mary Bulteel (later Ponsonby), as a maid of honor to the Queen who spoke excellent German, had good opportunities to observe her friend the Princess Royal’s German suitor and was not impressed. She summed up Fritz as “a good-humoured … lieutenant with large hands and feet, but not in the least clever” (Pakula, p. 71). Apparently Fritz was quite unable to master the simple rules of the parlor game vingt-et-un.
313 His uncles wanted nothing better When the Prince of Wales was permitted to pay a visit to his sister in Berlin in 1859, Vicky and Fritz had to exert all their influence to keep Bertie from being led astray by Fritz’s debauched uncles and cousins.
313 He had found her perfection As Crown Prince Fritz once wrote of his wife: “You cannot form an idea what a sweet little thing [Vicky] was at the time [of their first meeting in 1851]; such childlike simplicity combined with a woman’s intellect … and dignity … She seemed almost too perfect, so perfect, indeed, that I often caught myself wondering whether she was really a human being” (Pakula, p. 50).
313 “It is not politics Pakula, p. 68.
313 “[Fritz] is a dear, excellent Hibbert, Queen Victoria In Her Letters and Journals, p. 98.
313 As Albert expressed it Jagow, p. 236.
314 The Queen recorded the scene Part of the Queen’s journal entry for September 29, 1855. Hibbert, Queen Victoria In Her Letters and Journals, p. 98.
314 The Times newspaper wrote a series Pakula, p. 77.
315 He hurried the match in 1855 Feeling the need to defend his dead brother against the charge that he had sacrificed his daughter to further his geopolitical designs, Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha wrote in his Memoirs: “My brother loved his eldest daughter much too tenderly, to be influenced entirely [my italics] by political considerations in respect of her marriage. For many years … his heart’s desire had been to see his favourite child … in a great position. He took a paternal delight in imagining his promising, talented, and precocious daughter on a powerful throne, but, above all, I knew how much he also desired to render her inwardly happy … the son of the Prince of Prussia, above all other scions of reigning houses, afforded the greatest hopes for the future” (Pakula, p. 83, collating the texts of two separate published works by Duke Ernest). This is Saxe-Coburg casuistry.
315 The attraction between Vicky and Fritz That Prince Albert sought to convince himself that Vicky was marrying Fritz because she loved him, not because her family wished for a dynastic alliance with Prussia, is shown clearly in the letter he wrote on March 27, 1856, attempting to explain to Prince William of Prussia why England was in an uproar over the engagement: “British feeling rises against the conception of a young person being promised away long before the proper time into strange hands for political or family reasons. This not taking place in our case could only be demonstrated to the public by letting them know more of the story of the young people’s love affair. And this is not advisable, if only because the very causes which made it originally desirable to us that a proposal should not be made before her Confirmation must now cause us to desire not to have to explain to the public that the proposal really took place before the Confirmation” (Jagow, p. 259). More casuistry!
315 The Queen received a disturbing Pakula, p. 71.
315 Once Vicky was confirmed at sixteen Queen Victoria wrote to Lord Palmerston on March 24, 1856: “According to established rule in Prussia, no such private family agreement can take place, without being officially announced as a ‘betrothal’ to the Royal Family, & published in the Gazette there” (Woodham-Smith, p. 373.)
316 Cut to the quick, Queen Victoria Woodham-Smith, p. 373. 316
316 “From her youth onwards Pakula, p. 72.
316 Deeply invested in Prince Albert’s dream Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 77.
317 How, Victoria wondered Prince Albert wrote to his brother that Queen Victoria “cannot imagine that the child can arouse such feelings” in her fiancé (Bolitho, The Prince Consort and His Brother, p. 160). Things went better for the young couple when the Queen detailed Bertie to keep an eye on them for her. Bertie moved into the next room and played with the younger children, giving Vicky and Fritz some private time.
317 “We dined with Vicky, who generally Pakula, p. 76.
318 The Princess Royal had always had As a little girl, the Princess Royal was not infrequently whipped or subjected to such harsh punishments as being locked up or having her hands bound behind her. Her temper tantrums improved when she was five and placed under the authority of an intelligent and gifted governess. In 1858 Queen Victoria told Vicky, “Your saying you thought a young girl was not in an enviable position comes I think a little from that proud, high spirit which you will remember we did all we could to check and which it would have been so wrong in us to have tolerated. I am sure you feel now my dear child how right and wise we were. But you were trying” (Dearest Child p. 78).
318 The Queen, in turn, complained bitterly Queen Victoria wrote to her daughter Vicky: “A more insubordinate and unequal-tempered child and girl I think I never saw! I must say so, honestly, now, dear. The tone you used to me, you know, shocked all who heard you … You and Bertie (in very different ways) were indeed great difficulties” (Dearest Child, p. 124).
318 As Queen Victoria remembered Ibid, p. 96.
319 He refused to confer Elisabeth, queen of Prussia, was born a princess of Bavaria. Her life in Prussia was difficult, as she had no children, and she was at daggers drawn with her sister-in-law and presumed successor, Augusta of Saxe-Weimar. She was at first deeply suspicious of and hostile toward her nephew Fritz’s English wife. However, after the death of her husband, Frederick William IV, Elisabeth was surprised and touched by the genuine affection and understanding that Vicky showed her. When Elisabeth died, she left her extensive collection of jewelry to Vicky, then crown princess, not to Queen Augusta. Sadly, this only caused a rift between Vicky and her mother-in-law.
319 However, she must find the money For example, Vicky was obliged to use her English parliamentary income to buy all her clo
thes for her father-in-law’s coronation.
319 “I resent bitterly Pakula, quoting Queen Victoria’s diary, p. 71.
319 Prince Albert wrote back reprovingly Pakula, p. 77.
319 The wedding, to be held The wedding and honeymoon of Victoria, Princess Royal of England, and Prince Frederick William of Prussia is attested by an astonishing array of documents. As soon as the young couple had driven off to Windsor, Queen Victoria sat down to write a lengthy account of the day in her diary. Prince Albert started a letter to Stock-mar in the morning and concluded it in the evening. On arriving with her bridegroom at Windsor Castle, the bride took off her bonnet and sat down at once to pen a note of love and thanks to her parents. At breakfast the next day, she received an answer from her mother. And so it went on.
320 After seventeen years as a wife Queen Victoria wrote to Vicky: “I think people really marry far too much … [Marriage] is such a lottery after all, and for a poor woman a very doubtful happiness” (Dearest Child, p. 99).
320 “Vicky is very reasonable” Bolitho, Albert, Prince Consort, p. 160.
321 “My heart was very full Martin, Life of the Prince Consort, vol. IV, p. 169.
Chapter 25: FATHER AND SON
322 “It is a strange omission Hibbert, Queen Victoria in Her Letters and Journals, p. 152. For more on the issue of title and precedence for Prince Albert in 1839–1840, see chapter 12.