Soon after Louise’s return to London, the newspapers were whispering that the queen was displeased with her daughter and that the two women had had an argument. To add fuel to the fire, instead of staying at Buckingham Palace, Louise chose to stay with Leopold at Claremont House. Then she spent the next few weeks with friends and carrying out the kind of official duties that had made her so popular in the past, visiting hospitals and planting trees, as well as attending her friends’ exhibitions and concerts. A fulsome letter survives from Whistler (the date is unknown but it is likely to be from this time) on behalf of the Incorporated Society of British Artists. It was sent to Captain Arthur Collins (who was appointed Louise’s equerry in April 1880) and invites the princess to tea:
I do so want the most charming of Princesses to be gracious and kindly intentioned to this most respectable and hitherto dreary dank and most grown body of British artists whose wisdom was in their despair – when they called upon me to join them! I mean to bring upon them and into their very midst the unknown success and joy … and so have created a tabernacle of ‘sharp bright gaiety’ in Suffolk Street to which I venture to entreat the Princess to give her gentle countenance. Do my dear Collins say things nicely for me to H.R.H. She has been so good and indulgent that I really have not the hardihood to trouble her with a note to answer. Tell her that you know how dainty and pretty are our Sunday afternoons – and say that if she would only pass through the galleries next Sunday at about five o’clock or so and touch a cup of tea in the place our triumph would be complete!
Louise responded to say that she would attend – and received a gratified response containing the suggestion, ‘I hope also that perhaps Mr Boehm may be able to come at about half past four.’ Evidently the love affair between Louise and Boehm was no secret to Whistler as he sent Boehm’s invitation not to the sculptor’s own studio, but via princess Louise. Whistler also had confidence in Louise’s work, writing to her a year after his request for her to visit Suffolk Street to remind her of her promise to send them one of her own works. He finished the letter in characteristic flowery style: ‘I pray you bring to us the joy that inaugurated with your own work would attach itself to our Society and distinguish us among all others as the one whom Your Royal Highness has delighted to honor [sic].’
Wherever the princess went, the crowds flocked to see her. On 17 December 1880 the Manchester Evening News quoted an American magazine which bemoaned Canada’s loss of the princess. Lorne on his own, they suggested, was not a resounding success: it was Louise who was making his reign memorable: ‘The Marquis is neither popular nor unpopular. He may be termed rather of the goody type of young man. Neither his vices nor his virtues entitle him to any remarkable prominence. In fact his individuality is lost in the superior position and attainments of his wife.’
Louise settled back into life in England, but Canada had made her impatient with the conformity and stiffness of London regal life. Rumours began to circulate that Louise was kicking against the formality of her mother’s court. For the first time in her life, Louise was living exactly as she had always wanted to do. She was an artist, working professionally, visiting whom she pleased and, although she had the status of a married woman and therefore the social freedom of that status, she did not have the encumbrance of a husband. For Louise, 1881 was the year in which she finally attained liberation. It was also the year in which Queen Victoria named Joseph Edgar Boehm Sculptor in Ordinary to the royal household. This honorary position, which effectively made Boehm the most important sculptor in Britain, gave the lovers greater freedom to spend time together. As an official member of the royal court, Boehm would be an even more acceptable presence in the princess’s social life and court life than he had been as her tutor. (In the same year, Leopold was made Duke of Albany.)
In the spring, Louise left England again, travelling incognito to Italy. Despite the fact that her holiday had been intended to be a secret, her mother’s government consistently sent word to each of her destinations warning that she would be arriving and requesting ‘all the honours due to her rank’. She visited Rome, Venice and the popular tourist resort of Ventimiglia. While Louise was away, the Duke of Argyll paid a visit to Osborne House. It was assumed by journalists (many of whom wrote erroneously that she was present at Osborne) that Louise had returned to her family, so when it was discovered she was still in Italy, several newspapers hinted that she was deliberately snubbing her father-in-law and that the Lornes’ marriage was in serious trouble. Immediately, the royal physicians issued a statement that Louise was in Italy for medical treatment and too unwell to make the long journey back to England.
It is likely that Louise was avoiding her father-in-law. The duke’s children had been deeply hurt by his decision to marry again. His second wife was the widowed Amelia (‘Mimi’) Anson. Initially, Louise had attempted to play peacemaker, but the situation became so explosive that she had found herself caught in the middle and attacked by both sides. It is possible that she stayed in Italy to prevent herself becoming any more deeply involved in the Campbell family feud. On 19 March 1881 the Gloucester Citizen made a veiled dig at the fact that the princess was away from her husband for their wedding anniversary: ‘Yesterday was the 33rd anniversary of the birth of Her Royal Highness Princess Louise … Her marriage with the Marquis of Lorne … was solemnised on March 21st 1871, and Monday next will accordingly be the 10th anniversary of their marriage. The Princess is now in Italy, where she is travelling as Lady Sundridge.’
Louise returned to England before the end of April, in time to take care of her mother who was in mourning for Benjamin Disraeli. She spent the summer months travelling around the country, staying with friends and keeping out of the public eye as much as possible. She was unwell, and unhappily preparing to see her husband for the first time in over a year. Lorne sailed back to England in November 1881. Louise, it was claimed, had intended to meet him in Liverpool, but when his ship was delayed, she went instead to Eaton Hall in Chester, as the guest of the Duke of Westminster. Lord Ronnie Gower was at Liverpool to meet Lorne and together they travelled to Eaton Hall. Both husband and wife must have been relieved that their reunion did not happen under the watchful eyes of the British press. At the end of November, they travelled to Windsor to see the queen; the monarch was depressed, as she recorded in her journal, because Leopold had announced his engagement (to Princess Helen of Waldeck-Pyrmont).
Lorne remained in Britain until early January 1882, but he was longing to get back to Canada, having grown extremely fond both of the country and his exalted life out there. When he sailed from Liverpool on 11 January Henry Ponsonby wrote to his wife that Lorne was ‘apparently happy’ without Louise. In Canada, the suspicions about his sexuality were gaining force, mainly because he seemed to be so much more content living as a ‘bachelor’ than he had been when his beautiful and vivacious wife was sharing his home. The archives in Ottawa have been carefully purged of any but the most vague references to the Lornes’ extramarital love affairs in Canada, although time and again one reads that there was unspecified ‘gossip’ about these as well as about Lorne’s sexuality. Apart from the general tantalising gossip, there is no record of a specific man (or men) whom he was linked with. There was talk of his relationship with his male servants (again unspecified). This is unsurprising, as if Lorne had been known to be what was termed a ‘practising homosexual’ he would have been punishable by law, and likely to get a harsh and severe sentence. The son of a duke, and especially the son-in-law of the queen, could never be allowed to have such a scandalous private life exposed. In his book, Royal Rebels, Robert Stamp asserts his belief that Lorne was known to be gay and that it stemmed back to his time at Eton and the culture of homosexuality that pervaded the British boarding school system.
Perhaps Lorne’s unusual personal habits also worked against him in Canada. His family seem to have found his eccentricities charming and overlooked many traits that others would consider odd, such as the fact that he oft
en refused to wash and that he regularly wore inappropriate attire. He might turn up for a formal dinner in old clothes or, conversely, dress in full military regalia for an informal occasion. Nina Epton recorded an interview with one of Lorne’s nieces who said he was a ‘little odd in his behaviour … [he might] appear at breakfast wearing the Order of the Garter’.
Charles Warr, who knew Louise and Lorne only in old age (when he was a young man), described the princess’s husband as ‘an affable and amusing man, simple and unaffected, immensely knowledgeable, who loved the company of his chosen friends … He was attracted to spiritualism and the investigations of psychic phenomena.’ This description seemed sweetly eccentric when it was published in 1960, but in the mid-Victorian period, a man who spoke of his psychic visions and advocated spiritualism would have been considered distinctly strange.
In London, Louise slipped easily back into life as an independent woman, although the queen did all she could to prevent her daughter from living as she chose to, regularly requiring her assistance. On 2 March 1882, Louise took lunch with her mother at Buckingham Palace on what was to prove another dramatic day in the life of the longest-reigning monarch. After lunch, the queen travelled to Windsor, where yet another attempt was made on her life. The would-be regicide was Roderick Maclean, described in the papers as ‘an unsuccessful poet’. He was alleged to have a personal grievance against the queen, having sent her his poetry and not received a satisfactory reply. Maclean aimed a pistol at the queen, but the shot went wide. At his trial he was found ‘not guilty, but insane’ (a verdict the queen was not happy with as she insisted he was guilty despite being insane); he spent the rest of his life in a prison asylum.
With Lorne back in Canada, Louise was thoroughly enjoying being in England. She attended the christening of yet another niece, visited Harrow School (in the company of the Gladstone family) and met the Crown Prince of Denmark on his official visit to Britain (the man to whom she had allegedly been engaged in 1868). She also inspected the preliminary excavations of the proposed Channel Tunnel; but more exciting than all of these duties was the chance to spend time with Boehm.
One of the reasons Louise had wanted to remain in Britain was to attend her favourite brother’s wedding. Leopold married Princess Helen of Waldeck-Pyrmont at St George’s Chapel in Windsor on 27 April;1 Louise’s presents included a Dutch landscape in oils and one of Lorne’s paintings of Canada. After Leopold’s wedding was over, Louise had run out of excuses to remain in England. She was preparing to return to her husband – and feeling nervously unsure what kind of reception the Canadians would give her. She sailed from Liverpool on 25 May, missing Oscar Wilde’s visit to Canada. If Louise had been there it is likely she would have taken the opportunity to spend time with him, but for some reason Lorne snubbed the visiting writer.
Much has been made of the fact that Lorne spent the few days of Oscar Wilde’s time in Ottawa being ‘otherwise engaged’. Claims have been made that Lorne avoided Wilde because of the risk of being ‘outed’ as homosexual. This cannot be true, however, as Wilde, although a flamboyant figure, was, in 1882, not yet known to be bisexual. He had, in fact, recently met the woman who would become his wife, the aptly named Constance (née Lloyd). Wilde had a history of falling painfully in love with women who rejected him, including Lillie Langtry (whose husband famously fell over Oscar Wilde, huddled in misery on their doorstep) and Florence Balcombe (who declined his proposals and married Bram Stoker, author of Dracula). Even though Wilde was not yet suspected of being a ‘somdomite’ (in the ill-spelt accusation that would later be hurled at him by the Marquess of Queensberry), at the time he visited Canada, some of his writing was already being claimed to be ‘dangerous’ to both men and women. In his travels around North America, Wilde confounded all his would-be critics. Those who had heard about his ‘effete’ reputation were stunned to encounter a man well over six feet tall with the physique of a soldier. He might dress like a dandy, but there was nothing about Wilde’s physical features, except his flowing hair, that could mark him out as ‘unmanly’.
Lorne cannot therefore have been avoiding Wilde in case he was ‘tainted’ by his reputation; as Wilde’s biographers agree, he did not have his first sexual relationship with a man for a number of years after his visit to Canada.2 He did already have a number of ‘scandalous’ friends – but so did Lorne. So why did Lorne refuse to meet Wilde, especially when it seems an invitation had already been issued? They had a number of mutual friends, thanks to Lord Ronnie Gower, and Wilde was under the impression that he had been invited to Rideau Hall. On 15 May 1882 Oscar Wilde wrote to his friend Norman Forbes-Robertson claiming, ‘Tomorrow night I lecture Lorne on dadoes at Ottawa.’ Yet the meeting did not take place. Was it because Wilde’s writing was already considered ‘dangerous’? Or because Lorne knew a number of Wilde’s associates were also a part of Lord Ronnie’s gay underworld? Or was Lorne frightened that Wilde, renowned for his acerbic wit, would pick up on a facet of Lorne’s personality that he was anxious to keep hidden? Wilde was well known for parodying people in his writing.
Canadian academic Sandra Gwyn wrote that Lorne ‘made a point’ of not inviting Wilde to Rideau Hall and that he spent the two days of Wilde’s time in Ottawa deliberately out of his office and playing golf. She believed the snub was deliberate: ‘Not only was [Wilde] not invited to dine at Rideau Hall, the Governor General did not even bother to interrupt a round of golf to ask him to lunch. Nor did Lorne attend Wilde’s public lecture at the Grand Opera House.’
Louise arrived back in Canada on 4 June 1882, on board the Sarmatian. Her new lady-in-waiting was the recently bereaved Miss Ina McNeill, whose fiancé had died just before their wedding. Louise had felt sorry for her and the two women would become good friends during their time in Canada. Almost as soon as Louise returned, Lorne and the Prime Minister received coded messages from the Home Office in London warning them of Fenian threats against her life. Louise threw herself back into public events, attending Lorne as he travelled around the country on viceregal business and winning hearts. The Fenians proved less of a threat than Canada itself as, once again, Louise and Lorne narrowly escaped death, this time when they were sailing and their yacht collided with a schooner. The couple returned to Montreal mercifully unharmed and visited the town that Louise would name Regina, in honour of her mother.
In September, Louise and Lorne travelled into the USA. As they neared Sacramento, the couple were involved in yet another dangerous accident, when their train collided with ‘a yard engine’. The force of the jolt knocked Louise to the ground, where she bruised her shoulder very badly; she also suffered a minor cut to her face. Yet again, her neck and shoulder were damaged and she was plagued by the headaches that had become such a regular feature of her life. They travelled on to San Francisco, where they were particularly interested in visiting Chinatown. After this they returned to Canada, but with plans to return to the USA as soon as possible.
In 1882 Louise and Lorne visited Vancouver for their first official tour of the region. According to author Colin MacMillan Coates, in Majesty in Canada, Louise was so well loved that Robert Beaven, the premier of British Columbia, considered asking her to become queen of a separate kingdom of Vancouver Island. While the couple were on Vancouver Island the papers reported, ‘During the visit of the Marquis of Lorne and Princess Louise to the water works to-day, a child fell and broke its arm. The Princess carried it into a house, remaining with it, and endeavouring to relieve its sufferings, until the arrival of a surgeon.’ Although the story was laudatory, every time the newspapers wrote about Louise’s attitude towards children, it was another reminder that Lorne and Louise were childless.
That the princess and her handsome husband had no children continued to cause debate and gossip throughout their marriage, until Louise was deemed too old to have children. One extraordinary rumour was alleged to have been started by the Campbell family, a claim that Louise had never started menstruating and was physically in
capable of getting pregnant. The basis for this rumour is lost in history. The majority of historians who have touched on the subject – even those writing today – seem to attribute the lack of children to Louise’s being ‘barren’, rather than to the possibility that Lorne may have been infertile or that the marriage may have been sexless.
She may not have had children, but Louise had many name sakes, including several Canadian landmarks. At around this time, the Northwest Territories of Canada were being divided and it was proposed that one of them should be named the territory of Louise. She suggested that her middle name, Alberta, would be better and would also honour her father, just as her mother was being honoured by the naming of Regina. Lorne wrote a dreadful poem about the occasion, as he was formally asked to name the new District (later Province) of Alberta:
In token for the love which thou hast Shown
For this wild land of freedom, I have Named
A Province vast, and for its beauty Famed,
Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter Page 23