The Heir Apparent

by Jane Ridley

  On 2 June 1865, after going to Epsom races to watch the Oaks, Bertie gave a dinner party at Marlborough House, and Alix, who was eight months pregnant with her second child, “not feeling well did not come down.” The obstetrician Dr. Farre was summoned, and at midnight Alix’s labor pains came on. “At 1:18 she was safely confined of a boy—8 months child, but very quick labour—only Farre, Mrs. Clarke and I were present,” noted Bertie.110 This baby weighed at least two pounds more at birth than the two-months-premature Eddy. Alix had planned to breast-feed, and confided in Dr. Sieveking, telling him to keep it secret “because the Queen would not hear of it.” Sieveking forbade it on medical grounds: The princess could only undertake to nurse her baby for six weeks and the child would be hand-fed thereafter.111 So the new baby was committed to a wet nurse for nine months.

  This was the future King George V, but when Victoria learned that Bertie intended to call the new prince George Frederick Ernest, she wrote: “I fear I cannot admire the names you propose for the baby.” She had hoped, she said, for some fine old name, but “George only came over with the Hanoverian family.”112

  When Bertie had objected to his own double name, and asked to be known as Edward when he became king, his mother indignantly refused. As Albert Edward, Victoria explained, he was to begin a new line of kings named in memory of Albert. “I quite understand your wishes about my bearing my two names,” wrote Bertie diplomatically, “although no English Sovereign has ever done so yet.”113 But he flatly refused to obey Victoria’s wishes over the new baby, writing his mother a letter that Phipps thought “objectionable”: “We are sorry to hear that you don’t like the names that we propose to give our little boy but they are names that we like.”114

  Bertie and Alix stayed at Osborne in July, bringing with them twenty-nine servants, which Victoria thought excessive, as there was nowhere for them all to sleep.115 “Personally we are on the most agreeable footing,” Victoria told Alice, “but things are on the brink of a precipice.” Bertie, she thought, was becoming less and less domestic, diverging from Alix and spending less and less time with her; yet Alix was so “indolent” that she seemed not to care. “As they go on their lives must be short,” warned the Queen.116

  * * *

  * Expert advice in the 1930s strongly urged that the journals be destroyed on account of their intimate subject matter. Fortunately this was ignored, and the journals were deposited in the library of the Royal College of Physicians, where they have languished ever since. I stumbled upon them in a chance trawl through a card index.

  † Under the 1852 London treaty, the prince of Augustenburg had waived his claim to the duchies, which had been assigned to the personal rule of Christian of Denmark when he became king, but only on condition that he did not rule the duchies as part of Denmark.

  ‡ “The Queen wishes the new court to be as dull and stupid as her own” was the comment of Lord Stanley of Alderley (aka Ben Backbite) on hearing of Lady Macclesfield’s appointment as Alix’s lady-in-waiting. (Fulford, Dearest Mama, p. 289.)

  § The temporary wet nurse, whom the Queen thought too old, was replaced by a woman named Mrs. Roe, who nursed the baby for nine months. Her husband was employed as a keeper at Sandringham, but was caught poaching and then left of his own accord. He became a constable in the Metropolitan Police, but was dismissed for drunkenness. Eventually he immigrated to America. (RA VIC/Add C07/1/0650, Francis Knollys’s Memo on Wet-nurses Engaged by Prince of Wales 1864–68, 20 October 1868.)

  ‖ Queen Louise had more time for Bertie than Victoria did. She told Clarendon that she had studied his character, and “there was more latent ability than he was given credit for or than anyone had tried to develop, but that what she dreaded for him was want of occupation.” It was a shrewd assessment. (Kennedy, My Dear Duchess, p. 216.)

  a Bertie paid £225,000 to Charles Spencer Cowper for the Sandringham estate, which wags described as six thousand acres of sand. The place had been found by Albert, and Bertie was supposedly persuaded to buy it by a Cambridge friend, Henry Villebois, whose father owned the local hounds. (Charles Sebag-Montefiore Archive, Philip Magnus Papers, Lord Bradford to Magnus, 1 December 1958.)

  b £10,000 of the parliamentary grant was apportioned as a dress allowance for Alexandra. Bertie also derived an average rental of £6,000 from Sandringham.

  c In spite of Victoria’s doubts, he became president of the Society of Arts in 1863, a post formerly filled by Albert.

  CHAPTER 7

  Alix’s Knee

  1865–67

  The rift caused by the Schleswig-Holstein war was deepened by a quarrel over the marriage of the Queen’s third daughter, Princess Helena (known as Lenchen). Victoria depended heavily on the support of her unmarried daughters. The first daughter who acted as her unofficial private secretary was Alice. She was succeeded by Helena, and the Queen so despaired at the prospect of losing this daughter to marriage that she determined to find her a husband who would be prepared to live at the English court. This was a tough job description, coupled with the fact that Helena was the plainest of the princesses.1

  Eventually, Victoria lighted on Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein. Penniless (by princely standards), thirty-four, prematurely bald, and a chain-smoker, he was “really a very good fellow though not handsome.”2 But Victoria could hardly have chosen a bridegroom who was more objectionable to Bertie. Christian was the younger brother of Victoria’s nephew by marriage the Duke of Augustenburg, the liberal claimant to Schleswig and Holstein who had challenged King Christian of Denmark over the duchies and then been ousted when Bismarck invaded and grabbed them for Prussia and Austria. To Alix the engagement seemed a deliberate snub, especially as Victoria refused to discuss it with her. Alix could hardly bear to meet Christian.3 Bertie, meanwhile, out of loyalty to Alix threatened to boycott Lenchen’s wedding. His ally was Alice. According to Sir Charles Phipps, Alice was “the great agent in exciting dissension in the family.”4 Jealous of Lenchen’s access to her mother, she worried that if Christian succeeded in gaining Victoria’s confidence, she herself would be excluded forever. Outwardly she supported the match, imploring Bertie, as “the Brother who has ever been the friend of my heart and deep love of my soul,” to sacrifice his feelings and act kindly toward Victoria and Lenchen.5 But behind Victoria’s back, she stirred up trouble, warning Christian not to let himself be put upon and made to live in England.6

  Alice’s meddling seems relatively harmless, but when Victoria learned about it she was furious. Like the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (which was published the same year), she was prone to bewildering changes of mood.* “Off with her head!” she roared; and Alice, who had been her favorite the year before, was disgraced. “When your parent and Sovereign settles a thing for her good which interferes with none of your rights and comforts, opposition for mere selfish and personal objects—indeed out of jealousy—is monstrous,” stormed the Queen. “I cannot tell you what I have suffered.”7 Bertie swallowed his objections to the marriage, and in the topsy-turvy world of Victoria’s family he now became the favorite. Blowing hot and cold as only she could do, Victoria declared that “Bertie has a loving affectionate heart and could never bear to be in long disagreement with his family. Towards me he is very dear and nice.”8

  The following summer, Bismarck engineered war against Austria and, with Vicky’s husband, Fritz, at their head, the Prussian troops smashed Austria and Austria’s German allies at the battle of Königgrätz (3 July 1866). Bismarck was merciless. Alix’s grandfather, the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, who fought with Austria, was deprived of his sovereignty, and his country was incorporated into Prussia. Victoria’s first cousin George V, the blind King of Hanover, also an ally of Austria, was dethroned, his territory absorbed into Prussia, and his family fortune—the so-called Welfenfond—confiscated by Bismarck. Bismarck annexed Schleswig and Holstein, in defiance of Denmark’s claim to the duchies.†

  Alice suffered, too. Her husband, Lo
uis of Hesse-Darmstadt, supported Austria and was punished with the loss of part of his lands. During the war, Darmstadt was overrun by Prussian troops. Alice, who was seven months pregnant, was marooned there and became quite ill, thin and sleepless. Queen Victoria, still angry, commented tartly that “Poor Alice” was “so sharp and bitter” that “no one wishes to have her in their home.”9 In an embarrassing mix-up, the Queen placed a letter to Vicky in which she complained about Alice in an envelope addressed to Alice; though “vexed” and “distressed” by the mistake, she claimed it was good for Alice to learn what her mother thought about her.10

  During the Austro-Prussian war, Bertie asked once more for access to government dispatches. His request was refused, as it had been at the time of the Schleswig-Holstein war.11 But this time Bertie and Victoria were in agreement over foreign policy. Had he read the dispatches, Bertie would have seen how indefatigable his mother had been in striving to prevent what she called a German civil war. She even addressed a personal appeal to her “Beloved Brother” the King of Prussia, imploring him to throw over Bismarck and sue for peace, with predictably discouraging results, as the King was no longer in control of Prussian foreign policy.

  Prussia’s victories strained Bertie’s relations with Vicky to a breaking point. Vicky was proud of her husband, Fritz, who had commanded the Prussian troops and led his country to victory. “I cannot and will not forget that I am a Prussian,” she wrote. The German states that opposed Prussia had “broken their own necks”; they had overestimated Austria’s strength, knowing full well what the consequences of Austria’s defeat would be, and they deserved their fate.12

  But Vicky was conflicted. She had no sympathy with Prussian authoritarianism. She loathed Bismarck and despised her blinkered, reactionary Hohenzollern in-laws. During the war, her two-year-old son, Sigismund, died of meningitis, plunging her into deepest grief, and she was far from triumphalist about Prussia’s victories. To her credit, she did all she could to stop the German wars from tearing her family apart. Struggling to keep politics out of family life, she insisted that “one must separate one’s feelings for one’s relations quite from one’s judgement of political necessities.”13 When Bertie visited her at Potsdam that autumn, she wrote: “About Politics we will not discuss will we? They are not my doing—if they were, much w[oul]d be different.… I dislike Bismarck and disapprove his principles, but I cannot stand having my country abused.” Vicky sympathized with Bertie’s predicament: “I understand quite well what Alix’s feeling must be about the fate of her relations. I feel for her and them.”14 Bertie’s visit was a success. Vicky told the Queen that he was “kind and dear”—his face wore “an expression of quiet and content which is so pleasing to look at.”15

  Bertie’s rapprochement with Vicky earned him more approval from Victoria. So pleased was she with her eldest son that she confided in him her anxiety about Affie, her current bête noire, whom she proposed to banish from the wicked flatterers of London society by sending him in command of a ship to Australia. “I know how much I can rely on you,” the Queen told Bertie, “and how steady and well-principled you are—I feel there is no one to whom I cd appeal more properly than to you.”16

  Bertie and Alix rarely posed together, but there is one photograph that shows them standing side by side dressed for riding. Alix, slender and sleek in her tailored habit, looks doe-eyed at her prince. Bertie, slouching in his breeches and boots, avoids her gaze, staring moodily out of the photograph as if he wishes she weren’t there. Victoria worried that they were drifting apart, and blamed Alix for neglecting Bertie’s comfort: “She is never ready for breakfast, not being out of her room till 11 often, and poor Bertie breakfasts alone and then she alone.”17 Bertie’s easy good humor meant that relations between the couple were always cordial, but he was perhaps already tiring of his sweet-natured wife; he resented her absorption in nursery life and felt suffocated by her clinging affection.

  In the autumn of 1866, Alix’s sister Dagmar (Minnie) became engaged to the Russian czarevitch, the future Alexander III. She had previously been engaged to his older brother, a sickly young man with a “worn aged face and pale and lustreless blue eyes,” but when he died of meningitis she dutifully transferred her affections to the new heir, his vast, bearlike brother.18 Minnie’s marriage was a dynastic coup for Denmark. The daughters of the Danish Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg family were like princesses in a fairy tale. Brought up privately and with great simplicity, Alix and Minnie had married two of the most eligible princes in Europe.19

  Alix was pregnant once more, which meant that she was unable to travel to the wedding in St. Petersburg, and Bertie asked permission to go alone. To his surprise, Victoria gave her consent, though grudgingly (“I did not say ‘I approved,’ but only that ‘I would not object’ ”); though she was unable to resist a dig, pointing out how unfortunate it was that he remained so little at home and was always “running about.”20

  In Bertie’s absence, Victoria ordered her daughter-in-law to stay with her at Windsor. She took Alix driving alone with her in the afternoons, and the two women became intimate, something that Alix declared she had always wanted, though (Vicky told Victoria) “she says she is not amusing she knows, and she fears she bores you.”21 Victoria agreed that she had long wished to be friends with Alix, reporting to Bertie that “she looks thin and at times pale,” but “I have talked much with her and have the highest opinion of her.”22

  Alix missed Bertie dreadfully. When he delayed his return, leaving her to celebrate her birthday alone, she consoled herself with the thought that “my angel Bertie” was well and loved by everybody in St. Petersburg.23

  Bertie was splendidly entertained in St. Petersburg. The government was so pleased with his reception that Disraeli voted £1,000 of public money to pay for the trip. Bertie caused a sensation by dancing in his kilt at a ball, and he joined a hunt where seven wolves were killed. The Russian court was notoriously lax. The czar, Alexander II, lived openly with his mistress, while his wife lay upstairs in the Winter Palace, slowly dying from tuberculosis. Scandalous rumors of Bertie’s flirtations with the pretty women of St. Petersburg reached the ears of his sister Alice.24 This was his first significant separation from Alix, and he enjoyed himself all too obviously in the company of other women.

  In England, politics that winter was deadlocked over parliamentary reform. In February 1867, the Queen reluctantly opened Parliament—a gesture of support for her Conservative ministers that she regretted, as she was hissed and booed by the pro-reform crowds. For Bertie, this was a challenge too good to resist. On 11 February, when a reform demonstration marched through London, he insisted on watching, defying the advice of General Knollys, who feared a scene. Bertie drove in his brougham through the crowds, and was recognized when he reached the United Service Club in Waterloo Place, where he “was most enthusiastically cheered,” being (said Knollys) “at present very popular.” Here he watched the demonstration from an upstairs window, and Knollys was struck by the irony of “this immense popular assemblage … supposed to entertain democratic principles—certainly anything but monarchical—defiling before the Heir Apparent of the Crown.”25

  The next day (Tuesday 12 February), Alix visited the theater and, driving home with the windows open, felt a slight pain in her shoulder. By Thursday the pains had spread, moving around her limbs, especially acute in her elbows and knee, and when Dr. Sieveking was called at nine thirty p.m. on Friday (the fifteenth), he found the princess, who was eight months pregnant, greatly distressed with severe pain in her right knee.26 Bertie departed for a steeplechase and dinner at Windsor, judging that her malady was not “of sufficient consequence to put off going.” In the evening she became worse, and Knollys sent two telegrams to Bertie, “without requiring him to come up.”27 The next morning he sent a third wire, begging him to return immediately.28

  The Times announced that the princess had “acute rheumatism.” Medical bulletins, signed by the royal doctor
s, Sieveking, Jenner, and Farre, were posted daily outside Marlborough House, detailing the “pain and febrile action” from which she was suffering.29

  Alix’s illness precipitated yet another premature confinement. Bertie, who told his mother he was “nervous & worried by dear Alix’s illness,” was called to her room at six a.m. on 20 February, having been up all night in anticipation of a crisis.30 The doctors feared that the rheumatism would produce an “obstruction,” but Alix gave birth to a baby girl after only thirty minutes of labor. Dr. Farre, the obstetrician, who arrived just in time for the delivery at six thirty, refused to allow chloroform, though the suffering princess “wished it very much.”31 The four-weeks-premature baby was very small.

  In his diary, Knollys commented that the princess

  got through this part of her sorrows well and Dr. Farre does not apprehend any additional mischief from the complications attending another complaint. The other physicians however particularly Dr. Sieveking looked more serious and Lady Macclesfield who is now in waiting … evidently considers it a matter pregnant with evil consequences.32

  What Knollys meant by “another complaint” is not clear. His wording seems curiously ambivalent, and language such as “pregnant with evil” is almost apocalyptic. Dr. Jenner told the Queen: “The heart still not right, the pain in the knee very obstinate and acute. At any moment the condition might become dangerous!”33

  When Victoria visited for the first time, on 27 February 1867, she found Alix “lying very low, with her poor knee covered over and supported quite high up, so that her leg was greatly above her head!” Alix was worn, thin, and emotional—tears came to her eyes when she saw the Queen. Afterward, Jenner spoke to Victoria “very seriously” about her daughter-in-law’s state.34