Another interesting circumstance is that the queen noted in her diary for autumn 1866 that Louise did not require servants to help her dress, which seems extraordinary considering how impossible fashionable Victorian clothes were to get into and out of without help. The queen wrote that Louise was ‘very handy and can do almost everything for herself’. In a household full of servants and ladies-in-waiting there was no shortage of people to help the princess dress. Louise spent the last couple of months of that year either walking or driving in a carriage with Leopold and the Reverend Duckworth, or attending church – and although the latter sounds as though it was a public event, the royals had their own private entrance and sat in an enclosed area away from prying eyes. The pregnancy would almost certainly not have gone to full term if Louise had been wearing an abdomen belt and maternity corset. If that were the case, it is likely that she would have given birth to a premature baby (as Alix did) and would not have needed to hide the advanced stages of pregnancy for very long.
In December 1866, Leopold wrote a heartrending letter to Louise: ‘Loosey, I don’t know what would happen to me if you ever went away, all would be over for me then.’ Why was he so nervous? Until now, the queen had insisted that Louise stay with her, as companion, until Beatrice was old enough to take her place. What had made Leopold so scared that he was going to lose his sister? There were certainly no suggestions of marriage for Louise at this time.
By February 1867, Louise was very much in the public eye again. On 5 February, she attended the opening of Parliament wearing a dress of white satin. The day was not a success for the queen, who was shocked to hear booing from republicans and parliamentary reformists in the crowds. The following month, Louise was present to receive guests at her mother’s first court of the season, and the newspapers described her outfit: ‘a train of rich white silk, trimmed with tulle and white ribbons, and a petticoat of white tulle with white ribbons. Headdress, feathers and veil; ornaments, diamonds and pearls, with the Victoria and Albert Order and the Order of St Isabel.’ In a marked contrast to the previous few months, Louise attended the theatre and concerts, she went riding regularly and made a number of visits to Bertie and Alix, who were expecting another baby.
Bertie and Alix’s first daughter was born on 20 February 1867 and named Louise Victoria Alexandra Dagmar. The queen was absolutely furious that the baby’s first name was not Victoria and told all who would listen that it was yet another example of the fact that Bertie and Alix had no idea how things were ‘done’. It was a minor victory for Bertie, but he braved the queen’s wrath in order to name his daughter after her maternal, not paternal, grandmother. Yet although the baby was ostensibly named after Alix’s mother, it delighted Princess Louise to know that she had a niece who shared her name and Bertie wrote to tell her she was the baby’s namesake. Perhaps Bertie and Alix did so not only to please the Danish queen, but also because they knew that Bertie’s sister had been unable to keep her own baby. Giving her a niece named after her may have been intended to alleviate such a painful situation. Princess Louise would become very close to Princess Louise of Wales and, in years to come, the two women often attended social engagements together and could be found sketching or chatting at family gatherings.
Life for the new family was not idyllic. Alix’s health was poor and she and Bertie were on increasingly bad terms. Alix was painfully and embarrassingly aware of her husband’s infidelities and she was finding herself frustratingly disabled, often having to resort to a wheelchair. At around the time she gave birth to baby Louise, Alix succumbed to what was diagnosed as rheumatic fever. For ever afterwards she would be incapacitated, never regaining her former fitness. She had never enjoyed robust health and, following an operation on her neck as a child, was uncomfortable about the scar it had left. She would wear high necklines or chokers of pearls to hide the scar; both of which became extremely fashionable. (Alix was such a fashion icon that, once she began to walk with a stick, the sales of walking sticks soared and society women began to affect a limp, to emulate the Princess of Wales. It became known as ‘the Alexandra limp’.) In the spring, shortly after the birth of Princess Louise of Wales, Bertie went away to Paris. He wanted Louise to stay with Alix and help with the baby – and to give her a respite from their mother – but the queen refused. Bertie wrote: ‘I cannot tell you how sorry I am that you were not allowed to come and stay here with Alix while I am at Paris, but I was afraid that there would be difficulties in the way … Both Alix and I are very anxious that you should be Godmother to our little girl, especially as she is to bear your name.’ The queen did not want to let her daughter out of her sight.
The queen’s major concern about the dismissal of Walter Stirling was that he would be indiscreet. The reason she gave to Elphinstone was that she feared Stirling would tell people of his grievance with the Highland servants and create damaging gossip about the way the queen ordered her household. Was she concerned that he might tell people about John Brown’s position in the household? Or was there a far more serious need to rely on his discretion? The queen confided to Lady Biddulph, ‘I dread his indiscretion & thought to wound.’ To Elphinstone the queen sent a cautionary letter reminding him he had assured her of Stirling’s discretion, with the undertone being that Elphinstone had better ensure Stirling’s silence. Even within the royal household, however, the situation was being whispered about. When the queen’s cousin visited from Belgium, two years later, he heard gossip about a man named Stirling. Whether he realised just how contentious he was being or not, the Count of Flanders made the mistake of asking the queen at dinner – surrounded by many other guests – what had happened with Stirling. The queen is recorded to have blushed.
Despite the queen’s very obvious animosity towards Stirling, after he was dismissed, he continued to receive a salary from the royal purse.3 Although he had worked with Prince Leopold for just a few months, he was given the official title of Royal Groom and continued to receive a generous annuity for many years to come. In return, the queen was rewarded with his silence.
CHAPTER 7
The Locock family secret
The highest church court in the land is to decide whether a body can be exhumed from an overgrown Kent churchyard vault as part of a campaign to prove that it is the illegitimate grandson of Queen Victoria.
Ruth Gledhill in The Times, 22 March 2004
It was while looking into the rumours concerning Princess Louise’s illegitimate baby that I came into contact with the Locock family. I read newspaper accounts of two court cases, in which a man named Nicholas Locock had attempted to gain permission for a MDNA (Mitachondria DNA) test to prove he was descended from Princess Louise. After twice going through the high courts, the Locock family’s plea was refused.
The story of the Locock family and Princess Louise begins at the end of 1867, when a baby boy was adopted by the son of Queen Victoria’s accoucher (in today’s language he would be called a gynaecologist). The accoucher, Sir Charles Locock, had five sons; the one who adopted the baby was Frederick Locock. In the spring of 1867 Frederick moved into an apartment near St James’s Palace. Nick Locock believes it may have been a ‘grace and favour’ apartment. Two months later, the family suffered a bereavement, when Sir Charles’s wife, Amelia, died, yet in August 1867, just six weeks after the death of his mother, Frederick married his fiancée Mary Blackshaw. They married in a register office, not a church, in unseemly haste after such a bereavement (the mourning period for the death of a parent was expected to be one year). Four months later, the couple adopted their son; he would be their only child. The baby, who was named Henry Frederick Leicester Locock, appears to have had no birth certificate – none has ever been found. The names of his biological parents are not included on any document (or, at least no documents that are in the public domain). In late December, Charles Locock wrote a letter to a friend in which he remarked that, unusually, he would not be able to have any of his sons with him for the end of the year and that he plann
ed on taking a long holiday overseas. The letter suggests that he was shielding a secret and that he was unhappy about it.
Royal sources have been quick to refute the suggestion that Princess Louise was Henry Locock’s mother, because she could not have given birth on the date written in the Locock family’s Birthday Book, 30 December 1867. It seems likely that this was the date of the adoption rather than the baby’s birth. At the end of December 1867, Queen Victoria’s legal advisors were summoned to visit her. The newspapers reported that at this time 150 Scots Fusiliers were guarding the royal family, allegedly against the threat of Fenian attack. The Locock family believe that baby Henry was born at the end of 1866, or perhaps very early in 1867. It is probable that he was looked after by servants, with ‘access to his mother’. Henry Locock would later tell his own children that he was Princess Louise’s son and that his biological mother had ‘access’ to him in his boyhood years. Despite a seemingly happy marriage, Mary and Frederick had no other children; Mary’s health was poor and perhaps she already knew she would have trouble conceiving. The couple made no secret of the fact that the baby was not their biological child and Frederick wrote in several legal documents about his ‘adopted son’.
Mary and Frederick adopted their son at the end of December 1867. On 20 1867 the Isle of Wight Observer noted that Lady Stirling (the mother of Walter Stirling) had arrived on the island. She had come to stay eith Sir Charles Locock. July On 1 December 1867 Alix sent a sympathetic letter to Louise from Sandringham, in which she wrote: ‘My poor little pet I am afraid you have not been enjoying yourself so very well lately.’ If, as Henry would later attest, he remained with his mother Princess Louise at the start of his life, Alix’s letter would have been sent as Louise was preparing to give him up. A year later, Alix would write to her again, worrying that Louise had been looking ‘quite worn and sad’ when they had seen each other. At Christmas in 1869, approaching the second anniversary of Henry Locock’s adoption, Alix wrote another supportive and suggestive letter to her sister-in-law: ‘I hope my poor pet has not been worried and bothered lately about that tiresome old affair of yours! and that your sisters have given you a little rest now.’
Henry Locock’s grandson, Nick Locock, was a six-year-old boy by the date of King George V’s jubilee celebrations. Princess Louise was regularly in the news at this time, partly because she was a loved relation of the new king, but also because she was still so newsworthy, thanks to her great age and the story of her life as an artist. Nick recalls his father telling him during the coronation that they were descended from Princess Louise. The family’s history, as it was told to Nick, was that his grandfather was the princess’s son and that, although the baby had then been adopted by the Locock family, he had been given ‘access’ to Princess Louise all through his childhood. Nick’s grandfather, Henry (who was always known in the Locock family by his middle name of Leicester), had died when his own children were still young, but Nick’s father recalled his stories of childhood parties with all the royal children. One story that always made his children laugh was Henry’s reminiscence of playing croquet on the lawn at Osborne House, when one of his royal cousins cheated. This infuriated the little boy so much that he hit his cousin with a croquet mallet: the cheater in question was the future Kaiser Wilhelm.
As he was growing up, Nick discovered that he was not the only Locock child to have been told what he describes as the ‘family legend’. ‘Subsequently,’ he told me when we met, ‘I realised that not only my brother and sister, but each of my eleven cousins had been told the same story by their parents. It was apparent that [Henry] had told each of his six children before his death in 1907, that his mother was Princess Louise.’ Henry died young and was survived by his adopted father; Frederick did not deny Henry’s claims that his adopted son’s biological mother was Princess Louise.
The Locock family have in their possession a number of artefacts from the royal family. One of these is a bronze sculpture of a baby given to Dr Locock by the queen which may well have been created by Princess Louise. A photograph of Henry Locock as a baby has always been kept in a special frame hand-decorated with a border of flowers, in a style that looks very similar to Princess Louise’s. The Locock family were keen to fight the court case, but not for material gain; as Nick explained, an illegitimate baby of the time would not have been entitled to any money, land or titles. What they wanted was to clear up a generations-old mystery and to be given, as Nick Locock said, ‘the truth’.
Sir Charles Locock had been in attendance at the birth of all of Queen Victoria’s children. He was one of her most trusted advisors and had proved over the years that he was fully capable of keeping secrets. He would have been the most natural person for the queen to turn to if her daughter became pregnant. As a senior member of the royal household, his presence with the family would have caused no comment, especially as Leopold’s health was so often a cause for concern. If Sir Charles had delivered Princess Louise’s baby, absolute discretion would have been assured. Following the death of his wife in July 1867, Sir Charles Locock retired, but he remained one of the queen’s closest confidants. He owned a house near Osborne House and was a regular visitor when the family was in residence on the island.
It was in July 1866 (when she would have been pregnant with Henry, if my hypothesis is correct), that Louise wrote the letter to Louisa Bowater in which she confessed to being ‘low and sad’. The letter went on: ‘[I] sit in my room and cry. I cannot write and tell you why, there are so many things ought not to be as they are … I am expected to agree with them and yet I cannot when I know a thing to be wrong.’ In December she wrote to her friend again, ‘I am often sad, but I never let others see that I am.’
In the autumn of 1867, Prince Arthur wrote a letter to his sister. He had been in trouble for mentioning a taboo subject and he now wrote to explain: ‘As to the great secret, I did not know that I could not mention it to you, of course I would not speak of it to anybody else.’ In his privately published book Royal Mistresses and Bastards, Fact and Fiction 1714–1936 Anthony Camp dismisses the idea that Louise had a baby by suggesting that the queen’s ‘great secret’ was that she was planning a trip to Switzerland. As Louise was the queen’s personal secretary at the time and was travelling to Switzerland with her mother, she would certainly have known about the travel plans. A holiday could not have merited the words written by Prince Arthur, nor the secretive tone of his letter.
When Frederick Locock adopted his son at the end of 1867, he began to receive a mysterious large allowance. When Henry Locock died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1907, his personal estate was only £800. Six months after Henry’s death a deed was passed to his widow from the Public Trustee making over stocks to the value of £59,893. In 1911, when Henry’s adoptive father Frederick, died his estate was in excess of £100,000. This money did not come from Sir Charles’s estate nor did Frederick have an income that would have allowed such a generous settlement. It seems that someone with a pertinent reason for doing so was in a position to ensure that the children of the baby adopted by the son of the queen’s accoucher would be provided for financially. When Dr Locock died there was a codicil in his will which changed Fred’s allowance to a much smaller amount than that which went to his brother, to take into account the grace-and-favour apartment that Fred had been provided with alongside the large income he had been receiving. The codicil was drawn up by Arnold White, who happened to be Queen Victoria’s personal solicitor. It was he who had the responsibility of drawing up all the Queen’s daughters’ marriage settlements. Arnold White would almost certainly have been the person the queen would trust to make the arrangements for the adoption of an illegitimate grandchild.
When Nick Locock began his court cases, what he was hoping for was to obtain a sample of his grandfather’s MDNA. A few years previously, MDNA tests had been carried out on nine skeletons found in a shallow grave in Russia. The Russian authorities had, tentatively, suggested that these were the bodies
of the murdered Tsar and his family, but there was no conclusive evidence. It was suggested that if a blood relative would supply a sample of MDNA, the identification could be carried out. The illfated Tsarina of Russia was Alexandra, one of Princess Alice’s children and a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. The Tsarina was also the great-grandmother of Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. Prince Philip agreed to supply a sample of his MDNA and as the scientific tests proved that he was blood-related to some of the skeletons, they were declared to be those of the Tsarina and her children.
The Tsarina was Princess Louise’s niece and, therefore, if the Locock family legend is to be believed, she was also first cousin to the baby adopted by Frederick and Mary Locock. Nick Locock hoped to prove where his family came from. They had always known that they were not blood-related to the rest of the Locock family; now he wanted to find out the truth about his ancestry. Retrieving a sample of MDNA from his grandfather’s grave would not have demanded disturbing the earth – Nick’s grandfather’s coffin is entombed within the family mausoleum at a church in Kent. As Nick told me, he himself will be buried there one day. Gathering the MDNA evidence would require unlocking the mausoleum, drilling a small hole in the coffin and removing a fragment of bone. No other graves would have to be disturbed.
The Locock family’s case was fought in the British courts twice in the early years of the twenty-first century. The legal team won on almost every count, but lost their case on the point of ‘The sanctity of Christian burial’. As Nick commented to me with a wry smile a few years after losing the court case, ‘I wouldn’t mind so much if the very same church hadn’t recently moved about two hundred bodies to make way for a coffee shop in the crypt!’
When I contacted the church in question and asked them about the café, it was explained to me that the crypt, or ‘undercroft’, had repeatedly flooded and the bodies had had to be removed in order for essential maintenance work to be carried out. The bodies were then reburied in consecrated ground. The Locock family was told that the specific purpose of the building work was to build an undercroft for the café, not for essential work. They were also told that the skeletal remains were sent to a research department at the University of Oxford. As Nick Locock commented, ‘So much for the sanctity of Christian burial!’ Nick was told that after their sojourn in Oxford the bodies were returned to the church. I was told that they were reburied in consecrated ground. I did ask why they had not been reburied in the crypt once the work had been completed, but no one was able to give me an answer.
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