Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter

by Lucinda Hawksley

  Within a few days of the queen’s funeral, Bertie had ordered soldiers to seize and destroy everything that the queen had written to the Munshi. He also ordered Abdul Karim and his wife to return to India. They left as quickly as possible, moving to Agra where the queen had purchased land for him – she had been fully aware that after her death his position in England was likely to become impossible. Paranoid (and rightly so) that the Munshi had managed to smuggle out private documents concerning his life at the British court, Bertie sent detectives to India to keep an eye on the former servant. Yet despite these precautions, Abdul Karim managed to keep at least one of his precious British diaries a secret, bequeathing it to future generations of his family living in what is now Pakistan.

  Louise threw herself into the renovation of her own Isle of Wight property, Kent House. Initially, she had thought of hiring Lutyens, but their relationship was now less close and, in common with many of his former clients, she felt that Lutyens was charging far too much for his expertise. For some time Lutyens had been working in an unequal partnership with fellow architect Baynes Badcock, but the partnership had recently come to an unamicable end. It was Badcock whom Louise commissioned to work on Kent House, working closely with him on the plans. She then sent him to Scotland to oversee the renovations at Rosneath Castle. (Lutyens was hurt and unimpressed by the way he felt the princess and his former ‘assistant’ had abandoned him, at one of the busiest times in his career.) Lorne did not share Louise’s or Badcock’s taste and fought them every step of the way – but the money being used for the much-needed renovations of Rosneath was not the duke’s, it was his wife’s. Lorne’s father had left the estate in such financial ruin that Lorne had no choice but to let Louise have a free hand, although he challenged Badcock constantly. Many local residents were struck by how artistic the princess was and how proficient in organising the renovations. (Surprisingly, a document written in the 1970s by a resident of Rosneath made the claim that Princess Louise was ‘a qualified architect’.)

  A child who lived near Rosneath at the time when Louise and Lorne were in residence recalled in adulthood: ‘There was an enormous wall completely surrounding the garden … it could have been 12’ to 15’ high and the wall was completely round. I can remember that striking me at the time as having been very cleverly built … I can remember the pink[?] trees on the inside of the wall all very beautifully pruned and each branch fixed to the wall at the proper angle – all so tidy.’ Another local story was that when Louise wanted any building work done, she used a local man named David Buchanan Spy. Having realised that he felt very awkward in her presence she said to him, ‘You are never very sure what to call me when you come to see me, sometimes you call me Your Grace, sometimes it is Your Highness and sometimes it is Ma’am, so in future when we are in private, as we are now, I’m Mrs Argyll and you are Mr Spy.’

  Not all the local residents were happy with Louise’s plans. Charles Warr, who knew from childhood what it was to be one of Louise’s favourite people, included in his book The Glimmering Landscape several stories about the princess. His accounts are warm and full of love, but he was aware how difficult she could be. One incident concerned a new bicycle shed, which Louise saw as an eyesore and wanted to replace with an aesthetically pleasing alternative:

  A good friend of the parish, Mr Wilfred Thom, offered to erect a bicycle-shed in a small laurel grove in the church precincts where worshippers from a distance could house their bicycles on rainy days … It was an unobtrusive wooden structure with a corrugated-iron roof, and painted dark green to blend in with the surrounding laurels. But when Princess Louise first saw it she was very much incensed. Accustomed to call a spade a spade, she declared it a hideous monstrosity. She said that it was a blot on the landscape, and insisted upon its immediate demolition. She also said that in its place she would build an attractive stone bicycle-shed in the clachan which would harmonise with the surroundings. My father pointed out that the bicycle-shed was a gift … to supplant it with another would be a grievous insult to the donor … The Princess remained obdurate. Interminable arguments took place between her and my father, in which the Duke wisely took no part. Eventually the Princess resolved to take a chance. One day the beadle came to the manse and said that carpenters from the estate were about to pull down the bicycle shed on the instructions of H.R.H. My father … sent for the village constable and instructed him to … arrest the first man who dared to lay a hand on it. This was immediately reported to the Princess by a local factor. The factor recalled later that, on hearing the news, H.R.H. was immediately seized with an immoderate burst of laughter. She laughed till the tears ran down her face. ‘I’d have pulled it off,’ she declared, ‘if only I’d had a different sort of parson to deal with’.

  Another tale was recalled by the daughter of a captain in Louise’s regiment. Captain Macarthur, recently returned from fighting in Africa, invited Louise to lunch with him and his wife. The couple were excited about entertaining royalty, but had not counted on their dogs. ‘All was prepared and the housemaid announced the luncheon was served. The Princess on father’s arm entered the dining room – four spaniels were on the table, two tearing a side of ham apart, the other two eating a roast of beef, the silver meat covers lying on the floor! The Princess laughed and said she had plenty of time and was enjoying herself – and something else could be cooked!’

  The second Boer War had come to an end in 1901 and the country was looking forward to a celebration of a new and peaceful century. King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra held their first official court on 14 March 1902 and their coronation was due to take place on 26 June. The plans for the coronation were thwarted at the last moment, however, when the new king developed what was said to be appendicitis just before the celebrations were to start. For some time, his subjects feared he would die before he could be crowned. Once again, churchgoers around the country began praying for Bertie’s safe recovery. Jane Ridley, his biographer, has scotched all rumours that the illness was appendicitis, confirming that the king’s appendix was not removed and that the operation – which the doctors feared might reveal a tumour – was for a very large and painful abscess.

  A date in August was set for the coronation and the souvenir sellers had their work cut out, creating an entirely new set of memorabilia. Louise was kept busy with two important jobs: while Bertie was convalescing, she had to perform a number of his public appearances as well as her own. The artist Sydney Prior Hall produced a popular illustration for The Graphic (19 July 1902) entitled ‘Princess Louise Reviewing Twenty Thousand Children in Battersea Park’, recording a special children’s parade at a coronation fête.

  Louise was also overseeing the creation of Alix’s coronation robes: no queen consort had been crowned in living memory, so no one was certain what the etiquette for her robes should be. Louise designed the robes and employed one of her favourite charities, the Ladies’ Work Society, to bring the ideas to fruition. The design for the delicate gold-thread embroidery incorporated symbols to represent England, Scotland and India. On top of her perfectly coiffed wig, Alix wore a crown she had commissioned – complete with the Koh-i-noor diamond which Queen Victoria had worn so proudly at Vicky and Fritz’s wedding. The month of the coronation was, however, a time of great sadness for Louise and her siblings, as they were struggling to cope with the news of Vicky’s death just four days previously.

  CHAPTER 26

  The death of Henry Locock

  The Lady Frances Balfour, who is coming to Devonshire to address four meetings in support of the cause of Women’s Suffrage, is the daughter of the late Duke of Argyle [sic] … She is, consequently, the sister-in-law of Princess Louise … For many years she has been a member of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, which has dissociated itself wholly from the militant section.

  Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 19 February 1909

  Throughout Edward VII’s reign, Louise and Lorne continued to work towards emancipation and suffrage
for both genders and all classes, travelling around the country to make public appearances. Their work had to be kept mostly in the background as they added their weight to campaigns and fund-raising efforts and promoted the causes of female education and equal rights for women in the workplace. Much as Louise may have longed to have been at the forefront of the marches and rallies, she was never able to be. Despite her early support for Josephine Butler and the Garrett sisters, Louise could not take as full a part in the suffrage campaign as she had wished – at first because her mother, the queen, was so fervently against it and then because her brother, the king, was far less enthusiastic than his sister at the prospect of female emancipation.

  Bertie railed against the changes that were taking place and looked back longingly to an age when women were more compliant and submissive, when they did not chain themselves to railings or throw stones through MPs’ windows. When the king heard that some women were abandoning the practice of riding side-saddle in favour of riding astride a horse in the same manner as men, he announced that any woman who rode in the masculine style was no longer welcome at court.

  To keep the peace, Louise and Lorne tried to keep their political opinions out of family events, but Louise was very happy to cut ribbons, make speeches and promote the cause of female-oriented charities and educational establishments. By the start of the twentieth century, both Louise and Lorne were heading towards their sixtieth birthdays and were feeling older; both suffered from poor health. Louise was feeling the strains of the physical work of sculpting in a way that she never had when she was younger; for Lorne it was more than the physical signs of ageing. His mental health was also suffering. His behaviour was becoming erratic and the strain of looking after him and coping with his temper led to a recurrence of Louise’s debilitating headaches and neuralgia. She also suffered from insomnia, an affliction that often affected her at times of stress. Their marriage, which had been so much improved, was in trouble again as Lorne was fighting what may have been Alzheimer’s disease.

  Louise was still held in great affection by the public, loved just as much for being the artistic sister of the king as she had been as the unconventional daughter of the queen. Glasgow University awarded her an honorary degree in recognition of her work to further the cause of women’s education and she felt gratified that, at last, Glasgow University had agreed to treat female staff and students as full members of the college. Louise’s life was a constant round of visits to schools and orphanages and hospitals. She opened new buildings, and campaigned for help with fund-raising. She was involved with the Boy Scouts, the Boys’ Brigade and the Territorial Army. Bertie was growing more worried about the possibility of a war with Germany; Louise was worried that she was powerless to help.

  Even before Vicky’s death, her son had been showing increasing antagonism to his mother’s country, but since Vicky had died Wilhelm’s hatred for the British, and particularly the uncle he had fallen foul of so many times in his youth, became more marked. Bertie, aided by his excellent French, began to spend more time in France, intending to create a strong alliance between the two countries, in the hope that they would unite against a belligerent Germany. He encouraged visits to England from foreign royalty and heads of state, including the King and Queen of Italy and the imperial family from Japan; Louise often presided over these events with her brother and sister-in-law.

  In the spring of 1905, Louise was exhausted by the erratic behaviour of her husband and from the physical rigours of creating her memorial to those who had died in the Boer Wars. The memorial, commissioned by the Colonial Troops Club and the Boer War Memorial Committee, can be seen at St Paul’s Cathedral, in London. Louise created a finely sculpted grieving angel, its huge wings (huge only in relation to the angel itself) seeming to offer shelter to those who died in the conflict. The angel raises up to Heaven the dead Christ, emblematic of Britain’s dead soldiers. The figures owe more of a debt to the sculptural styles of Lord Leighton and Alfred Gilbert than to Boehm; the flowing draperies evoke later Pre-Raphaelite paintings and are reminiscent of Simeon Solomon’s Love in Autumn. The model for the lithe angel was a professional model named Mrs Lloyd, who was recommended to Louise by Sir William Blake Richmond, a friend of many Pre-Raphaelites and Aesthetic artists and an adherent to the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

  At the same time that Louise was using Mrs Lloyd as a model, she was helping the artist Edwin Abbey with his painting of King Edward VII’s coronation. She lent Abbey the clothes she had worn on the day so he could paint them from life and helped him with his portraits of her relatives. In return, Abbey sent her the details of a male model for the study of the dying Christ (naked except for drapery), explaining that he was ‘a tall, thin model – a restless person, to whom repose, unfortunately, means sleep. In the pose you require, however, Madam, this failing may not be a drawback.’ Modelling the statue was hard, physical work and Louise complained of aching muscles and pain in her arms and hands.

  The model Louise ended up using for the figure of Christ was an Italian named Antonio Corsi, who had modelled for her on previous occasions and has left revealing insights into what it was like to work with the princess. Corsi modelled for some of the most famous artists in Britain and America, including Alma-Tadema, Burne-Jones, Sargent and Felix Moscheles. In an interview given in 1908, Corsi explained that he found posing for the princess’s Boer War sculpture extremely demanding, and that his limbs would start to shake from the exertion. Princess Louise, he revealed, would hold a cigarette to his lips, to allow him to smoke without changing his position and to alleviate the shaking. Corsi had a well-muscled physique.1 The story of the princess standing close enough to her almost nude model to place a cigarette between his lips was one that would have shocked readers of the newspaper – but would have surprised no one who knew her.

  On 17 December 1905, shortly after he finished posing for the Boer War memorial, an interview with Corsi appeared in the New York Times. In it he spoke both about the princess and her mother. He talked of taking tea with the princess every day for months at a time on the days that he modelled for her. He talked of two earlier occasions on which he met the queen and candidly revealed that he had chatted with her about the princess’s ability. It is a surprisingly frank interview, but by this date Corsi had left England to live in America, following a scandal. If the interview can be believed, it also reveals the queen’s disloyal attitude to her family, gossiping about her daughter with a man she barely knew. In the interview it was claimed that, on one occasion, Corsi saw the queen alone. The journalist reported:

  It seems that she asked Corsi what he thought of the work of her daughter.

  ‘The Princess is a very clever woman,’ Corsi answered.

  ‘But there are better sculptors, are there not?’ the Queen asked.

  ‘Your Majesty, to be frank, I think there are,’ Corsi replied.

  In early 1905, needing to escape her exhausting husband and schedule, Louise left for her first overseas trip in several years. Unlike Lutyens’s wife, Baynes Badcock’s wife had become very friendly with Louise and it was Ethel Badcock whom Louise took with her on an incognito tour through France, Switzerland and Italy. Although Ethel found the princess at times difficult and tiring, she also commented ‘She has a wonderful heart and sympathetic character’ which, she said, more than made up for her defects. Louise’s enthusiasm for travelling was infectious and Ethel noted how she could suddenly become as giddy as a child with excitement (though their other, more staid, companions found the princess’s mood swings exhausting). The Royal Collection owns a large number of paintings and sketches by Louise showing Italian landscapes and figurative scenes. Most are undated, so it is impossible to say on which of her several trips to Italy each was done, but whenever she went travelling, she took her painting paraphernalia and relaxed by sitting outside and painting or drawing the scenes that unfolded in front of her. In September 1905, after her return to England, Louise travelled north to Blackburn to unvei
l a statue of her mother (sculpted by Bertram Mackennal); the visit was filmed by the cinematographic pioneers Mitchell & Kenyon and the enthusiastic crowds can be seen welcoming her with affection. Buildings were draped with banners that proclaimed ‘Welcome to Princess Louise’ and ‘Welcome Royal Lady’. (There are a number of Mitchell & Kenyon films in existence recording Princess Louise’s official duties.)

  Some years earlier Louise had decided to start trying to publish her writing, and under the pseudonym Myra Fontenoy she submitted articles to newspapers and magazines. In 1899 the Sydney Morning Herald published an article in which they claimed ‘Princess Louise, the Marchioness of Lorne, has published a good deal of poetry … She has also written notes on art and literature for London weeklies. One editor reputedly accepted articles in art matters from her before he discovered the identity of his contributor. The Princess said that the proudest moment of her life was when she received a cheque – made out to “Myra Fontenoy” – for literary work sent in and accepted in the ordinary manner.’ In 1906, Louise published an article entitled ‘The Art of Childhood’. In the same year, one of her paintings was featured in the New Zealand International Exhibition, alongside works by several deceased artists, including Lord Leighton, Millais, Watts, and Louise’s mother.