Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter

by Lucinda Hawksley

  Despite Lorne and Louise’s close connections with some of the most important suffrage campaigners of their day, their marriage was not an example of gender equality. Lorne attempted to impose his will on Louise’s behaviour, just as her mother had done – most notably refusing to allow her to play billiards, something he was extraordinarily strict about. Just as Louise ignored her mother’s orders not to smoke, she ignored this dictate of her husband – but she only played billiards in secret. Even as late as 1905 one of her ladies-in-waiting wrote to her husband that Louise was ‘afraid’ anyone would mention this to Lorne. Ironically, knowing his sister’s love of the game, Bertie had given Louise and Lorne a billiards table when they married.1

  As the new century dawned, Britain was painfully divided by the fighting in Africa. Many of Victoria’s subjects were patriotically behind the armies and the government, but there was a growing voice of those who thought the war and its aims were wrong. Many voiced concern that the Boers were being treated in a ‘barbaric’ fashion and that those in power were guilty of allowing atrocities to happen. The anger was felt across Europe, and in Ireland many felt an affinity with the Boers, as fellow sufferers of British oppression. In the spring of 1900 amid increasing political tension, Bertie and Alix found themselves the target of an assassination attempt. While they were travelling by train across Belgium, their would-be assassin took advantage of the train’s stopping in Brussels. As it was about the leave the station, an Italian gunman jumped up on to the step of their carriage and fired directly at them. He missed. Newspapers described him as ‘an anarchist’, but he was simply a 15-year-old boy, named only as Sipido, reacting to the news from Africa and nursing a hatred of the British as a result of the war. Although Bertie and Alix escaped unhurt, the war did not leave the royal family unscathed. Many members of the royal family served in the military (as both Prince Alfred and Prince Arthur had done) and in the Boer Wars Helena’s eldest son, Prince Christian Victor, joined the fighting. He contracted malaria in Africa, and died of what was described as ‘enteric fever’.

  While Louise was busying herself with war relief work, one of her large-scale statues of her mother was making its way to Canada, where it would be unveiled with great ceremony in Montreal. The newspapers continued their love affair with Louise, writing proudly about their princess’s statue being placed ‘at the imposing entrance to the Royal Victoria College for Higher Education of Women’ (where it still stands today). Louise retained a strong connection to Canada and saw herself as an ambassadress between the two countries. She regularly attended Canadian events in London and invited visiting Canadians to her home. On one such occasion, a journalist interviewed Canadians who had attended a lunch at Kensington Palace. He reported that the visitors had enthused about the kindness and friendliness shown by the princess: ‘she talked to me and all the rest just as if we were her brothers’, one remarked. Lorne’s success as Governor-General of Canada was still being discussed, and at the start of 1900 it was suggested he should be sent out to Australia as Governor-General. Before anyone could speak to Lorne about it, the queen refused. Louise’s health, she said, could never stand it.

  Lorne’s future, however, was about to change regardless. At the end of April 1900, the 8th Duke of Argyll died. He had not reconciled himself to his son and heir (the situation between the duke and all his children had deteriorated steadily ever since his third marriage) and Lorne refused to go to his father’s funeral. Duchess Ina attempted to prevent all of the children and their spouses from attending, but Louise went anyway. She had tried, and failed, to change Lorne’s mind. Reportedly, Louise ‘hid’ in the church with several other Campbell relations and when Ina saw them, she stalked out and did not return to the service. (Louise and her Campbell in-laws had several nicknames for Ina, including ‘Bitchina’ and ‘Hell Cat’.)

  Following the 8th Duke’s death, it was discovered that Lorne, now 9th Duke of Argyll, had inherited an estate in financial crisis. Inveraray Castle would have to be let out (as the only alternative to its being sold). Between his father’s financial mess and his brother’s political and social disgrace, Lorne had inherited a very difficult title. He was also in dispute with his brother-in-law. Lorne’s decision not to attend the funeral infuriated Bertie. He was disgusted by the ‘bad form’ Lorne displayed by refusing to go and, for several months, the two men would not speak to each other. Whenever Bertie invited Louise to an event, she had to attend alone; the future king made it very clear that the 9th Duke of Argyll was not welcome.

  In the year in which she celebrated her eighty-first birthday, Queen Victoria was beginning to suffer serious health problems. Then the family was rocked by two deaths, the news of which reached them on the same day. The first was of the assassination of King Umberto of Italy. Soon afterwards they were informed of the peaceful, but shockingly sudden, death of Prince Alfred, fourteen months after the suicide of his son. The queen wrote in her journal, ‘It is merciful that Affie died in his sleep without any struggle, but it is heartrending.’ In her biography of Bertie, Jane Ridley writes poignantly: ‘Affie had been Prince Albert’s favourite son; so much cleverer than Bertie as a boy, in middle age he was a friendless alcoholic.’ Louise and Arthur in particular had been very concerned about Alfred and with their encouragement he had tried taking ‘cures’, being sent off to rehabilitation centres, but nothing had worked. The alcoholism contributed enormously to his ill health and he died at the age of only 55. It was just a few weeks later that the family learnt of the death of Helena’s son, Prince Christian Victor, in Africa.

  In addition to the deaths of her brother and her nephew, Louise was informed of the deaths of two of her close friends. The composer Arthur Sullivan died suddenly, aged 58, at his home. Not only had he been a friend of hers; he had been a particular friend of Prince Alfred (before Alfred’s marriage to the disapproving Marie). Sullivan and Louise had often corresponded and spoken about the twin tragedies of Prince Alfred’s life: his alcoholism and his very unhappy marriage. An undated heartfelt letter from Sullivan, written to Louise from France, reads as a letter from a friend about a friend, forgetting all about ‘protocol’. Louise had responded to an earlier worried letter from Sullivan, which he had regretted as soon as he sent it in case it was too informal, but her response made him realise that she felt the same way he did about Prince Alfred.

  The composer thanked her for ‘the kind tone, and the true womanly sympathy evident in every line’ of her response. Now, shortly after the death of his unhappy friend, the composer had died too. Louise was devastated by the loss of another good and kind friend.

  The queen, urged by her daughter, requested that Arthur Sullivan be buried at St Paul’s Cathedral. A memorial was unveiled three years after Sullivan’s death, in Embankment Gardens in London. The sculpture, designed by William Goscombe John, is placed a short walk from the Savoy Theatre, where Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas were staged. Leaning against the pedestal that supports the bust of Sullivan is a curvaceous weeping woman, beautifully sculpted in flowing art nouveau style. She is usually identified as the grieving Muse of Music, but she is also symbolic of the women Sullivan loved. Sullivan did not marry, but he had many lovers. His final mistress, Fanny Roberts, was summoned when Sullivan became ill, but she arrived too late to see him before he died.

  On Christmas Day 1900, Louise was devastated to hear of yet another death, that of her great friend Lady Jane Churchill. It had been a truly miserable year. Perhaps it was Louise’s unhappiness that made Bertie and Lorne realise they had to end their argument. How the reconciliation was effected is uncertain, but on 18 January 1901, Bertie arrived at Kensington Palace to have lunch with his sister and her husband. The reconciliation was timely. The day after their Kensington Palace lunch, the newspapers posted their first bulletin about the grave state of Queen Victoria’s health.

  Four days previously, the queen had carried out what would be her last official engagement. She had received Field Marshal Frederick
Roberts, who had just returned from commanding British forces in the Boer Wars. The frail queen, who remained seated in her chair throughout the meeting, made him a Knight of the Garter. She also took the unusual move of granting his daughter the right of inheriting his title – because his only son, Freddy, had died in action in Africa. Earlier in the year, Roberts had written a letter in which he had commented, ‘Honours, rewards and congratulations have no value to me. So very different to what they were when I used to think of the son who would bear my name.’

  Bertie, Alix and Louise were summoned to Osborne House, while Lorne stayed in London, waiting for telegrams and instructions from his wife. Kaiser Wilhelm also arrived to visit his dying grandmother, still resentful of his uncle Bertie and desiring to cause problems within the family he believed had rejected him.

  At half past six on 22 January 1901, the longest-reigning monarch in British history died. It was four decades since she had written despairing letters about her longing not to see old age but to die as soon as she could after her beloved Prince Albert. As her life came to an end, the queen was surrounded by many of her children and grandchildren, including Wilhelm, and Beatrice’s 12-year-old daughter Ena. Bertie sent a telegram to Lorne, summoning him to Osborne. Louise, shell-shocked by the death of her seemingly indomitable mother – the mother who had clung so tenaciously to life that she had confounded doctors for several days – began the arduous administrative tasks that had to be performed on the death not only of a parent, but of a monarch. The queen had left very specific instructions about her death and burial. She had stipulated that certain precious items be placed in her coffin and buried with her. The person she relied upon to do this was Dr James Reid, by now her senior Physician in Ordinary and one of her most trusted confidants; he had been with her right to the end.

  The Reid family papers show that when he was alone with the queen’s body, the doctor carried out her secret instructions to him. The numerous possessions she wanted to be buried with her included rings and other jewellery, photographs, handkerchiefs and plaster casts made of her husband’s and children’s hands. She also requested several other photographs, including:

  A coloured profile Photograph in a leather case of my faithful friend J. Brown, his gift to me – with some of his hair laid with it and some of the Photographs which I have marked with an X and have often carried in a silk case in my pocket, to be put in my hand. All these objects, which have been so dear to me during my life time and have never left me – I should wish to be near my earthly remains.

  In addition, she had instructed her doctor to bury her with a simple golden wedding ring, which she said had belonged to John Brown’s mother and which she had ‘worn constantly’ since Brown’s death. (The queen’s constant wearing of this ring had led to much speculation, including rumours that the queen had married John Brown in a secret ceremony. In 1872 a Scottish Presbyterian minister named Dr Norman Macleod had died; his sister later claimed that, on his deathbed, he had confessed to having performed a marriage ceremony for the queen and John Brown.) Queen Victoria had asked that two handkerchiefs be placed on her body: one had belonged to Albert, the other to John Brown. Dr Reid placed the leather-bound photographs of John Brown in the queen’s right hand, then covered it and the handkerchiefs with Alix’s mourning flowers, so that the relatives would not be aware of everything that had been placed inside the queen’s coffin. He then tenderly covered with her wedding veil the face of his queen, who for so many years had refused to wear anything except black.

  The queen’s funeral procession began on 1 February, and Louise, her sisters and the new Queen Alexandra walked solemnly behind the coffin for important parts of its journey. The coffin began its journey at Osborne, from where it was taken to the royal yacht Alberta and across the Solent to Portsmouth. The royal family spent the night at Gosport. On 2 February, the coffin and its melancholy procession reached London from where it was taken to Windsor for a ceremony at St George’s Chapel. At the queen’s request, the gun carriage on which her coffin was placed was pulled by eight white horses. The horses detailed to carry the coffin through the streets of Windsor got into difficulties and broke their harnesses; because the Royal Horse Artillery was unable to re-harness them, the naval guard of honour was detailed to pull the coffin on its carriage themselves. On 4 February, Queen Victoria’s coffin was laid to rest beside that of Prince Albert. On 21 April 1901, Princess Louise would write to her friend, Audrey Tennyson: ‘The sorrow … never wears off.’ Within the space of a year she had lost her mother, a brother, a nephew and several friends. It was a desperately lonely time as she tried to adjust to what life would be like without her indomitable mother.

  Ten days after the queen’s funeral, Louise stood by her brother’s side as Bertie opened Parliament for the very first time as King Edward VII. Despite his mother’s wish that he make the name Albert that of a British king, Bertie insisted on being known by the already regal name Edward (his second name).2 No longer could his mother make him bend to her will.

  Full mourning was observed for the queen until 24 July 1901. Vicky had been unable to attend the funeral as she was extremely ill and unable to travel and, shortly after the family had stopped their official mourning for her mother, Vicky was also dead. Her health had been problematic for some time and Queen Victoria had long been convinced – ever since Vicky’s confinement with Wilhelm – that the Prussian doctors were not as skilful as British doctors. This seemed to have been confirmed when Vicky visited Balmoral in 1899 and her debilitating illness that had defied the Prussian court’s medical establishment was diagnosed by the queen’s physicians as cancer. As soon as he was able, following his mother’s death, Bertie had travelled to visit his sister, taking with him Dr Laking and a large amount of morphine: the Prussian court doctors were nervous of prescribing high doses of morphine and Vicky had suffered agonies as the dosage was woefully inadequate to ease the pain of her final months. It was thanks to this visit from Bertie that Vicky was able to ship back to England (in secret) private family papers, including all the correspondence she had received from her mother. Vicky died on 5 August 1901, at the age of sixty.

  Unlike Princess Beatrice, whose role in the family became difficult and unhappy once Edward VII had ascended to the throne, Princess Louise was a vital part of her brother’s official court. Queen Alexandra was suffering very poor health, so, when necessary, Louise accompanied her brother to official events – it was just like the old days of the 1870s when the rebellious brother and sister attended public events and covered up for their mother’s shortcomings, gaining the affection of the newspapers and the public. Once again, it was Louise and Bertie standing together.

  In April 1901, Louise went to Windsor for the first time since her mother’s funeral. The dinner parties held at Windsor by King Edward VII could not have been more different from those ponderous, dull dinners presided over by a stern Queen Victoria and so complained about by Henry Ponsonby in letters to his wife. Under Queen Victoria’s watchful eye no one had dared to smoke in public. On 4 May 1892, the Auckland Star had printed an extraordinary paragraph: ‘Queen Victoria smokes! This is a fearful strain on our Loyalty. The Tobacco Trade Journal says so, and mentions the gift of a silver cigarette case to Her Majesty by the frisky Princess Louise, who certainly does smoke and apparently makes no secret of it.’ With regard to Victoria the newspaper article was certainly not true. The queen had always adhered to Prince Albert’s strict dislike of smoking. She had attempted to stop her sons from smoking (she ordered any rooms in which Bertie could have smoked to be locked up for the duration of his visits), and refused to countenance even the idea of her daughters taking up such a masculine habit. Now, under the reign of the new king, all guests, male and female, were positively encouraged to smoke and Edward VII was seldom seen without his signature cigar.

  For Princess Louise, lighting up a cigarette in the Green Drawing Room at Windsor Castle was a symbol of the freedom of the new century. For Lorne, the
death of his motherin-law gave him licence to publish a book he had been working on for many years: The Life of Queen Victoria. For once the new British king and the Kaiser of Germany were united – they were both scandalised by the 9th Duke of Argyll’s literary endeavours.

  For Beatrice, the new reign was a time of misery. Bertie had never got over the inequality of his mother’s treatment of her children and now Beatrice bore the brunt of the king’s anger. The homes that she had once been mistress of were now the property of her brother, and she was made to feel unwelcome. Louise, who did not have her sister’s strong ties to Osborne House, was not especially unhappy with Bertie’s plans to give the property to the nation, but Beatrice was devastated. Bertie remained unmoved by her pleas; Beatrice, in his view, had had her own spoilt way for far too long. Louise and Beatrice both had their own properties on the Isle of Wight and, as far as Bertie was concerned, that was all Beatrice needed. Osborne House was costly and too far away to be of real use to him. After decades as the overlooked child, at last he was king and Beatrice was his subject – and whatever he wanted, finally, was what was going to happen.

  It was not only Beatrice who was relegated to her rightful place; Bertie also got rid of a servant whose presence had galled the family as much as that of John Brown had done: ‘the Munshi’. His real name was Abdul Karim and he had arrived from India in 1887, for the queen’s jubilee, at the age of just 24. For four years, the queen had been mourning John Brown and by the time of Abdul Karim’s arrival she was ripe to fall under the spell of another strong personality. Within a remarkably short space of time the Munshi had captivated the monarch, who was forty-four years his senior, and had made himself invaluable, teaching her to speak Urdu and Hindi and advising her both on politics and family matters. He became her most trusted advisor on Indian politics – which led to accusations that he was a spy. Just as John Brown had done, the Munshi drove a wedge between the monarch and her children; now that his mother was dead, Bertie was determined to erase all memories of her ‘shameful’ relationship with the young (and married) man. Although Abdul Karim was seen prominently in the queen’s funeral procession, he knew his situation at court was precarious. It was not only the queen’s family who disliked him; he had also become deeply unpopular with the queen’s courtiers.