by Jane Ridley
‖ Ernest no longer opposed the marriage. A few months before, Bertie had renounced the succession to his uncle, who was childless, in favor of his brother Alfred. At least Alix would never sit upon the throne of Coburg.
CHAPTER 6
“Totally Totally Unfit … for Ever Becoming King”1
1863–65
After the honeymoon, Bertie and Alix traveled to Sandringham, the new house Bertie had bought in Norfolk. The countryside was bleak and wild, and people in country carts lined the road from the station to greet them.2 The east wind blowing from the Wash made spring unendurable. “As there was all England wherein to choose, I do wish they had had a finer house in a more picturesque and cheerful situation,” lamented a lady-in-waiting.3
At Sandringham, however, Bertie and Alix could be alone together—or at least, as alone as much as people can be when attended always by ladies-in-waiting and equerries as well as troops of servants. The flat countryside reminded Alix of Denmark, and she felt at home, she told her sister, because the house was “comfortable and cosy and not too large.”4 The couple spent all day together, walking in the garden and discussing improvements, and went to bed before eleven. “He seems very kind to her,” reported lady-in-waiting Mrs. Bruce, “and so proud of her appearance, which is certainly most fascinating.”5
The eighteen-year-old princess was young for her age and refreshingly simple. “I am very fond of soldiers,” she once said; “I always think I was intended for a nursery maid.”6 The Danish court where she grew up was neither as rich nor as formal as the English monarchy. The Yellow Palace, where Alix’s family lived, was a modest town house; the front door opened straight on to the street. Blue-uniformed soldiers changed the guard outside each morning, and Alix played four-handed piano in the cream and gold drawing room with its French rococo furniture. Until she married, she shared a bedroom with her sister Dagmar, known as Minnie, three years her junior, to whom she wrote rambling, homesick letters from England. She clung to cozy, cluttered domesticity, summed up in the Danish word hygge. Most of all, she clung to Bertie.
No letters survive between Bertie and Alix. But their marriage was closely observed, especially by Victoria. She set up a network of spies and intelligence gatherers, of private secretaries and ladies-in-waiting and doctors, who reported to her almost daily on her son and daughter-in-law. From her inner sanctums at Windsor and Osborne, she spun webs of spiderlike intricacy; the more reclusive she became, the more she needed to know and control.
The widow Queen held tight to her family. Her letters to her married daughters, Vicky and Alice, are intimate and frank, but also judgmental and contradictory, sometimes startlingly so. To them she poured out her anxieties about Bertie and his marriage. Her letters to Alice are especially outspoken; Victoria had become very close to Alice as a result of Albert’s death, and she told her: “I can say every thing to you, as I can to no one else.”7
At first, Victoria found Bertie improved by marriage. He was, she told Alice, “so amiable and ready to do anything.”8 The reports from Sandringham were “very satisfactory,” and the Queen confessed herself “astonished” by the change in Bertie.9 But the Queen’s hopes that marriage had redeemed her son were soon dashed. Within weeks she was complaining that Bertie had “let himself down” to his old bad manners.10 Victoria considered that Alix’s education had been neglected and she did nothing but write letters all day.11 As for Bertie, he did not do one useful thing. He never read a book. He was hopelessly frivolous and unreflecting. She shuddered to think of “the poor country with such a terribly unfit, totally unreflecting successor! Oh! that is awful! He does nothing!”12 Bertie (she told Alice) “shows more and more how totally totally unfit he is for ever becoming King.”13
In London, the Prince and Princess of Wales were installed at Marlborough House, which the government modernized at a cost of £60,000. The original house, designed by Christopher Wren for Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, was enlarged by the government architect Sir James Pennethorne. Louis Laguerre’s spectacular saloon, decorated with scenes from Marlborough’s victories, was preserved, and so were his painted staircases. To allow the prince to accommodate the whole of London society at a single ball, the house was remodeled with a lavish enfilade of Frenchified gilded state drawing rooms and dining rooms. The interior was furnished and fitted up by the fashionable London firm of Holland.14 Bertie took an interest, and he was allowed to decide such details as the lighting (candles in the princess’s reception room, gas in the passage between the reception room and visitors’ rooms). But the readying and running of the house was the responsibility of Sir William Knollys and his son Francis, and they resented attempts by the prince to interfere with such details as writing paper or servants’ livery, the more so as he constantly found fault.15
No sooner had Bertie and Alix unpacked than the London Season began. Night after night the prince and princess hosted great dinner parties, attended banquets, appeared at the opera, and received deputations congratulating them on their marriage. Alix represented the Queen at a drawing room at St. James’s Palace. Victoria usually held three afternoon drawing rooms each season, at which women were presented (men were presented at levees). Mourning for Albert had canceled court functions in 1862, and so in 1863, two thousand guests attended, all agog to see the new princess, the girls wearing bare-shouldered dresses with long trains and ostrich feathers.16 From two till six p.m., Alix curtseyed continuously as six hundred unknown ladies were presented to her. She seemed pathetic and exhausted—“a white gown and a white face, two curls and a tiara,” sniffed the diarist Louisa Bowater.17 Even worse was her ordeal three days later, at a state reception at St. James’s Palace, when she was obliged to walk in front of the royal party, “totally alone” behind the Lord Chamberlain, through three crowded halls. “In every room I had to make a deep curtsey and then walk on greeting to right and left! It was terrible!”18
At twenty-one, Bertie had been plunged into exacting responsibilities. He had no experience of London society, and his only qualification for this role was his rank. From Osborne and Balmoral, Victoria watched Bertie and Alix’s every move, controlling their lives in an “extraordinary” way.19 Where they dined out, whom they invited to Marlborough House—every name was approved by her. When Alix rode in the park, she received a sharp telling-off. Each day a detailed report was sent from Marlborough House to the Queen.20 Victoria complained that Bertie took no care of Alix, but for Alix’s exhaustion Victoria had only herself to blame. By making Bertie act as “social sovereign” in order to shield her own seclusion, she imposed a punishing schedule on her daughter-in-law.
Victoria anxiously scrutinized Alix for signs of pregnancy. Here, too, she despaired. With a twenty-two-inch waist and a thirty-two-inch chest, Alix hardly seemed built for childbearing.21 “Are you aware,” Victoria asked Vicky, “that Alix has the smallest head ever seen? I dread that—with [Bertie’s] small empty brain—very much for future children.”22 Bertie insisted on going out most nights and staying up until four a.m. Alix, said the Queen, “will become a skeleton, and hopes [of pregnancy] there cannot be!!”23
The physician-in-ordinary to the Prince of Wales was named Dr. Sieveking. He kept a private diary of his attendance on the prince and princess: two locked black leather volumes that, by a minor miracle, have survived in a little-known archive.*
Sieveking, who was born in England to German parents and had trained in Bonn, was briefed by Victoria. Speaking German, she informed him of “the want of resistance to morbid influences” in Albert’s family, and instructed him to look carefully after “those children,” the prince and princess. “I thought her behaviour most gracious, her voice as clear as a bell and her smile more winning than that of any woman,” wrote the doctor after his first audience with the Queen.24 Unwittingly, he had been enlisted as one of her informers, charged to spy on Marlborough House.
Sieveking visited Marlborough House every Friday, alternating with Dr. Jenner, who visited on
Tuesdays. He rarely saw Alix, but usually spoke to Bertie, who was always sensible and affable. Bertie enjoyed robust health, though he occasionally complained of a hangover. General Knollys told the doctor that the prince had “strong animal passions and is fond of good living … keeps late hours to his great disadvantage … is very good at heart, well meaning and well pleased with truthfulness among those about him—rather hot-tempered but forgiving.” Sieveking also noticed that Bertie was very curious about medical subjects, cross-questioning him on topics such as hermaphroditism. Alix, thought Sieveking, had no influence over her husband, though she was “very fond” of him.25 She was always more communicative when he was away.
Bertie knew every detail of his wife’s menstrual cycle, and he freely discussed her intimate gynecological details with the doctor. When, three months after the marriage, her period (“catamenia” was the doctor’s word) was two days late, Sieveking promptly forbade her from riding a horse and banned late nights and walking.26 In spite of these precautions, her period appeared a few days later. Alix confided her woes to the Queen, who reported to Alice that “all came on on Sunday, to [Alix’s] great disappointment.”27
Victoria (being Victoria) began to worry that Alix would never have children.28 Alix complained of sickness, but this was dismissed as insignificant. Sieveking prescribed quinine to strengthen her. Not until a month later, in August, did he see Alix alone for the first time. He spoke German to her, in an attempt to put her at her ease, but he didn’t examine her. She gave him a list of the dates of her periods, from which it appeared that she had last menstruated on 30 April, and then only for one day on 7 June. Sieveking recorded: “I expressed the opinion that the 7th June did not count and that she must reckon pregnancy, if enceinte, from the middle of May, accordingly she may be nearly three months gone.”29
Sieveking still had doubts about the pregnancy, as the princess’s figure remained unchanged. Not until a month later did Bertie report to Sieveking that her dresses were becoming too tight, “whereat I expressed my joy, as it was the first confirmatory symptom of pregnancy which had occurred.” A few days later he saw the Queen, who still refused to believe that the princess was pregnant.30
Even after the pregnancy had become visible, Alix put on hardly any weight and felt and looked unusually well. Victoria feared the worst. “They say it is not a sign of strength,” she wrote ominously.31
The real danger to Alix’s well-being came from Denmark. In November 1863, the old King of Denmark died and Alix’s father succeeded as King Christian IX. He was at once confronted with a crisis over the vexed issue of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. The Danish parliament had already voted to incorporate Schleswig, which was half Danish and half German (Holstein was German), into Denmark, but King Christian knew that if he signed this new constitution, he risked conflict with Germany. “Germany” meant the German Confederation, a loose grouping of thirty-nine states, but the rise of Prussia gave it a new military significance.
Vicky and her husband, Fritz, were staying at Windsor when the news came through that King Christian had signed. After a disagreeable breakfast with Fritz, who, as Crown Prince of Prussia, was “very violent” in his support for the claims of Germany, Victoria was in despair—“miserable, wretched, almost frantic without my Angel to stand by me, and put the others down, and in their right place! No respect is paid to my opinion now, and this helplessness almost drives me wild.”32 So divided were her family over this question that Victoria’s uncle Leopold urged her to forbid them from discussing it in her presence.33
Between the conflicting claims of Denmark and Germany, Victoria’s mind was soon made up. King Christian, she insisted, had brought his troubles on himself by his foolish attempt to incorporate Schleswig into Denmark, and he must face the consequences.34 She supported the claims of the prince of Augustenburg, who was her nephew, known in the family as Fritz Holstein and married to the daughter of her half sister, Feodora.†
Victoria claimed that in opposing Denmark, she was merely doing what Albert would have done. Why oh why, she wailed, could her beloved not be here “to write those admirable memoranda which are gospel now.”35 Albert had indeed criticized the Treaty of London, which imposed a Danish ruler on the predominantly German population of Holstein. His logic went as follows: “Schleswig is entitled to insist on union with Holstein; Holstein belongs to Germany, and the Augustenburgs are the heirs.”36 But Victoria also found it convenient to claim Albert’s support to vindicate her own prejudices. Naturally, she sided with “dear Germany,” aligning herself with Vicky and Fritz. She despised Alix’s family and thought King Christian a fool. And, by now, she had come to believe that Bertie’s marriage was a mistake. Alix was “dear and amiable,” but (she told Alice), “I do regret deeply the connection and feel those … who so strongly opposed it were right.”37
The Schleswig-Holstein crisis roused Victoria to make her first political intervention since Albert’s death. It was badly misjudged. Her support for Germany placed her in opposition to Palmerston, her prime minister, and foreign secretary Earl Russell, who urged mediation in the interests of Denmark. Palmerston argued that King Christian had not yet violated international law, but this cut no ice with the Queen, who saw the Schleswig-Holstein issue as a family quarrel where justice was on the side of the Augustenburgs. That the monarch was not supposed to pursue a foreign policy of her own but support her government’s policy worried her not at all. When Russell attempted to deter the Germans by warning that Britain might be obliged to intervene on the side of Denmark, the Queen overruled him and protested to the Cabinet.38
The Schleswig-Holstein question was notoriously complicated—Palmerston famously quipped that only three people understood it: Prince Albert, who was dead, a German professor, who had gone mad, and he himself, who had forgotten all about it. Victoria certainly did not understand it, and she acted not as a constitutional monarch ought but (in the words of one diplomatic historian) as “a violent partisan inspired by emotion rather than reason.”39 She failed to realize that “Dear Germany” was changing. Albert’s dream of a liberal, “good” Germany united by Prussia and ruled by Vicky and Fritz was melting away. In Prussia, Otto von Bismarck secretly prepared for war against Denmark, the first step in his program of uniting Germany by iron and blood, creating an autocratic royal state. By refusing support for King Christian, and blocking her ministers’ efforts to mediate, Victoria was unwittingly playing into Bismarck’s hands, as Denmark’s diplomatic isolation allowed him to go to war and score an overwhelming military victory.
Bertie and Alix stayed at Osborne with the Queen for Christmas 1863. When the news came through that German troops were occupying Holstein, Alix dissolved into tears. Surprising everyone with her assertiveness, she insisted that the duchies belonged to her papa. Victoria was pitiless. From her desk she penned long, stern letters to her ministers: “Should war ensue between the German Powers and Denmark, in consequence of the violation by the latter of her promises respecting Schleswig … the Queen [could not] consider that any obligation rested upon England to come to the assistance of Denmark.”40
Bertie and Alix retreated to Frogmore near Windsor for New Year’s, thankful to escape Victoria’s anti-Dane politics as well as her ban on smoking. “You need not be afraid that the new Royal Edict ag[ain]st the sinful practice of smoking will be carried out in my house,” Bertie told his cousin, King Leopold’s son Philip, “the more you smoke when you come, the better I shall be pleased.”41
On 8 January, Alix complained of slight pains, but in the afternoon she insisted on being pushed in a sleigh on the ice at Virginia Water to watch Bertie playing a game of ice hockey. The cold was so intense that the photographer summoned from Windsor was forced to abandon his attempt to record the game, as the solution on the photographic plates froze solid.42 Alix left early, and around six p.m. her pains came on more rapidly. Bertie telegrammed Dr. Sieveking in London: “Please come by earliest train and stay here tonight.” At
8:50 Alix gave birth to a son who was probably two months premature, though no one was quite sure of the dates. Bertie was present in the room throughout the labor. Alix and Bertie were both distressed, fearing that the baby would die. Only the local Windsor doctor, Brown, attended the delivery. When Sieveking eventually arrived, he was met on the stairs by Bertie, who declared, “I am a father!”43 The baby was healthy and ruddy, but tiny, weighing only 3¾ pounds.44
Nothing was ready. No nurse, no baby clothes, no wet nurse. At least Alix escaped the daunting presence of ministers and grand accoucheurs who might otherwise have been assembled to attend the birth of an heir to the throne. Lord Granville, a Cabinet minister, happened to be staying and acted as witness. “It was very touching to see the Prince of Wales’s emotion,” he wrote.45 Lady Macclesfield, a “precise little stick” who was herself a mother of thirteen, was in attendance at Frogmore.‡46 She made the bed with clean linen, cleared away the bloodied sheets, and wrapped the baby in cotton wool.47 Because the child was premature, Alix was unable to breast-feed even if she had wished to do so, and a wet nurse was hurriedly procured from Windsor.§
After it was all over, looking into the bedroom, Lady Macclesfield saw Alix and Bertie weeping together on the bed.48 Bertie’s devotion and tenderness toward his wife was touching to behold.
The Queen at Osborne was “dumbfounded” to receive a telegram at eleven p.m. from Bertie announcing the birth.49 She spent a sleepless night worrying what had caused this premature confinement and hastened to Windsor next day. She found Bertie “pale and worn, and so quiet and kind and happy.”50 Alix pleased her, too, the more so as she confessed that she “dislikes the whole business extremely and is utterly disgusted with it all.”51 To Victoria it all seemed like a dream, and “one wh[ich] I like to dwell on,” though, of course, “it … c[oul]d not bring back my Angel, and I am ever, ever lonely.”52