Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter

by Lucinda Hawksley

  The holiday seems to have worked its magic and Louise once more threw herself into public appearances. She went to the East End to see the pearly kings and queens at home and much was made of Princess Louise meeting ‘Princess Norah’ the nine-year-old granddaughter of the Pearly King of the Old Kent Road. In July, she went for lunch at Buckingham Palace and attended a garden party and in August drove out to the Croydon Aerodrome as the official welcome party for Princess Ingrid of Sweden. Louise was still a tireless hospital visitor – and an ardent appreciator of male beauty, as Dr Mavis Stratford attested:

  In 1934 I was House Surgeon at the Princess Louise Hospital for Sick Children in North Kensington and my fellow house man was Dr William Strain,3 a Northern Irishman from Queen’s University Belfast. The Princess often visited “her” hospital, but liked it to be a surprise – but Matron had a pact with one of the footmen at Kensington Palace, who telephoned her directly the Princess gave instructions “Drive to my hospital” – consequently there was a panic rush for all the wards to be tidied up and the children’s faces washed, and all the nurses rushed for clean aprons and we two doctors for clean white coats, to be presentable when the Princess arrived for her “surprise” visit. She was very charming to the children particularly if one was playing with a Teddy Bear which she called “Bruin” with a German accent. She took a great fancy to my colleague … We both enjoyed her visits – so did the children.

  The year ended, however, on a sad note. Louise’s long-term friend Alfred Gilbert died on 4 November; Prince Arthur sent Louise a letter of condolence for what he described as ‘your natural grief at the rather sudden death’. Gilbert had been her last tangible contact with Boehm and she felt his loss keenly. She wanted his ashes to be placed in the crypt at St Paul’s Cathedral, alongside many of his peers. Initially, this request was refused, but Louise persevered and was triumphant, attending his memorial service at St Paul’s Cathedral and seeing his ashes interred there so close to the remains of her lover.

  At around this time, Louise was made privy to a family scandal, learning that the king was furious with his son, David, the Prince of Wales. The prince had invited his scandalous married lover Wallis Simpson to Buckingham Palace and had attempted to introduce her to his parents. King George V had refused to meet her. The family detested Wallis Simpson and the way that David was behaving. A letter from Prince Arthur to Louise a couple of years later includes the comment ‘Your American joke about Mrs S. and the only throne that she would ever sit on, is very funny and very strong.’

  The king had been preparing for his silver jubilee. As part of the celebrations, Louise was honoured by the borough in which she had lived for so long: she became the first honorary freeman of the Royal Borough of Kensington. Despite being in her late eighties, Louise carried out a number of official jubilee functions, returning to Deptford to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone of the building that she had declared open in 1886. She accompanied the king and queen to several events, including the opening of the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy; attended weddings and memorial services; and became godmother to the son of the Duke and Duchess of Kent.

  At the end of the year, the jubilee celebrations were marred by the death of Louise’s niece, Princess Victoria. The monarch survived his younger sister by only a few weeks. King George V died on 20 January 1936 and was succeeded by his wayward son, King Edward VIII. Directly after her nephew’s funeral, Louise left London for Bath to join Arthur; they stayed at the Pulteney Hotel. Her arrival in the city was warmly anticipated, but the reception was necessarily muted, because of the mourning period for the king. Instead of loud cheers, Louise was met by the spectacle of people raising their hats in silent greeting as she passed by. Still trying to distance herself from the royal gossip that was buzzing around London, Louise spent the summer in Scotland. Although the British newspapers were more discreet, those on the continent and in America were filled with stories of the new king’s summer holiday with a group of friends including Ernest and Wallis Simpson. The king and Wallis had been photographed by the paparazzi several times on their own.

  CHAPTER 31

  One last rebellious command

  Probably few people who travelled by the 10.20am train from Bath LMS Station on Tuesday realised that a Royal personage was among their fellow-passengers. Fewer still who looked casually at a tall lady walking briskly, albeit with dignity, from the waiting room to a first-class compartment on this train would have believed that she was in her 91st year … HRH has been staying at Chavanage House, Tetbury, as the guest of Mrs Lowsley Williams. She came to Bath by car and was on her way to Bournemouth. Her hat and coat were black. She took a window seat facing the engine when she entered her compartment at Bath station.

  Bath Chronicle, Saturday 29 October 1938

  When Louise returned to London in October 1936, the city was agog with the news that Ernest and Wallis Simpson had begun divorce proceedings. Louise’s wayward great-nephew had rented for his royal mistress a beautiful home in Regent’s Park. On 16 November, the king told Stanley Baldwin he was prepared to abdicate if the government opposed his intended marriage. Perhaps it was coincidence, but a couple of days later Louise was forced to cancel an engagement through ill health – she had been intending to hear a performance by a Salvation Army home choir, composed of twelve of her contemporaries, a group of female singers, almost all of whom were over 90 years old.

  On 3 December 1936 the story of the king and Mrs Simpson finally broke in the British newspapers. A week later, the king signed the Instrument of Abdication and Stanley Baldwin announced the news to the House of Commons. On 11 December 1936 the king’s abdication was endorsed by Parliament and King Edward VIII broadcast his decision to the nation via the BBC. The following day, the former king’s brother (known in the family as ‘Bertie’) was declared King George VI. Although most members of the royal family thought that Edward VIII would not have been a good monarch, it was not an easy transition and the public was shocked. For all members of the royal family, it was a deeply worrying time. The scandal made Louise depressed and frightened. She was already well aware that things were not as they should be in Europe, that Germany was once again becoming a threat to Britain and that her great-nephew, who was thankfully no longer the king, had sympathies more akin to those of Herr Hitler than to his British subjects. For all those who had lived through the First World War, the late 1930s was a time of shock and disbelief; no one wanted to believe that ‘the war to end all wars’ had only been the precursor of a new war about to be played on the battlefields of Europe.

  Over the next three years, Princess Louise, now in her late eighties, began to disappear from public life. Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, the wife of King George VI, was asked in the 1970s what her memories were of Princess Louise. A lady-in-waiting wrote the reply: ‘The Queen Mother told me that the Princess lived a very quiet life, doing a lot of painting, and Her Majesty very rarely saw her.’ By this time, Princess Louise was living vicariously through the lives of her younger friends, one of whom was Charles Warr, who had adored the princess since childhood. When King George VI was crowned in 1937, Louise lent the Duchess of Kent the beautiful train that she had worn for the coronation of her brother, King Edward VII. Warr attended the coronation and recalled some years later, ‘I had promised to telephone Princess Louise that evening … She was most concerned to know how the Duchess of Kent had looked. I said, “Radiantly beautiful, as always!” To which the Princess replied, “Of course, she was wearing my train!”’

  For the last two years of her life, Louise became increasingly incapacitated. As she approached her ninety-first birthday, she was exhausted and depressed by the awful news from Europe. The world was, once again, heading into the misery of war and for an elderly lady who had lived through so many wars already, it was time to give in to the inevitability of old age. She refused to agree to have an air-raid shelter built for her, fully prepared to take her chances wi
th any bombs that might fall and insisting she would trust only to the thick old walls of Kensington Palace to protect her.

  Princess Louise, the Duchess of Argyll, died at 6.50a.m. on Sunday 3 December 1939, at her home in Kensington Palace. For many listening to the wireless that day, the important news would not have been the death of a child of Queen Victoria, it would have been one of the many horrific stories about the Second World War; but to those who remembered her, Louise was one of the last great Victorians.

  In her will Louise had left specific instructions: if she died in Scotland, her remains should be interred beside Lorne. If she died in England, she should be interred near her parents in Windsor. Either way, she desired to be cremated. This wish was her last rebellious command. Cremation was still a very controversial subject. Many Christians were firmly against the idea, and for a princess to request it was a deeply divisive issue. Her wishes were respected, however, and a very private cremation was carried out at Golders Green Crematorium in north London. The urn containing her ashes was then transported to the Albert Memorial Chapel in Windsor.

  On 12 December 1939, a funeral service was held at St George’s Chapel in Windsor. The princess had requested that people send no flowers to her funeral, but donate the money instead to the Princess Louise Kensington Hospital for Children, or to Charing Cross Hospital. Her funeral was attended by royalty, the military and her artistic friends – and she was also mourned, on the streets outside the chapel, by some of the poorest people from the East End of London, showing their appreciation of the charity work she had done on their behalf. The following day, Louise’s ashes were interred at the family mausoleum, Frogmore.

  The princess’s steward, John James (who had left Louise’s employment in 1915 but remained a regular visitor to the household) related what he called ‘an extraordinary story’ to the former lady-in-waiting Marjorie Crofton. James told Crofton that Louise had made him promise he would remove her wedding and engagement rings from her fingers before she was cremated, so they were not destroyed by the heat. He was then to place the rings in the urn with her ashes, to be buried with her. Following Louise’s death, however, James was forbidden to touch her body or remove the rings so she was still wearing them when she was placed in her coffin to be cremated. As Crofton wrote many years later, ‘after the cremation when the ashes were brought to him, the curate said “An extraordinary thing has happened, here are the two rings found intact, it is a mystery how they survived the heat.” So in the end the rings were placed as H.R.H. had wished.’

  Epilogue

  By the time the Second World War and its attendant horrors finally drew to a close, Princess Louise was little remembered, except by those who had known her well. Prince Arthur had died in 1942 and Princess Beatrice in 1944; there were no more reminders of Queen Victoria and her family. The world and its politics, society and art had changed immeasurably. People wanted to look forward to a brighter future and, in many ways, to try and forget the past.

  The centenary of Princess Louise’s birth, in March 1948, was not marked and she seemed to have been forgotten. Her story, however, was so unusual that, from time to time, her name has come back to prominence. At around the time of the fiftieth anniversary of her death in 1989, there was a flurry of activity and several books were written about her and Lorne, yet despite the interest and the number of researchers wanting to find out about her, Louise’s story has been whitewashed and sanitised, with the most important elements often hidden away. Instead of looking into the truth of what happened, it became common to dismiss her as ‘unpleasant’ and a liar, as the discordant element in the family. The more I read of these books, the more I realised there appeared to have been a concerted attempt to change the public perception of the princess who had been so loved in her lifetime; it seemed to be a deliberate attempt to stop anyone from wanting to seek any further.

  It seems that all the children of Queen Victoria were so emotionally damaged that each of them, at times, could be extremely unpleasant. Louise, far from having been the discordant element in an otherwise harmonious family was named the ‘favourite sister’ of Bertie (after Alice’s death), Arthur and Leopold and usually got on well with Vicky and Alice. Although there were regular arguments with her sisters, and – particularly with Beatrice – the arguments could be vindictive and spectacular on both sides, it is testament to all of the princesses’ personalities that even the angriest of disagreements was always made up.

  Among the many obituaries of Princess Louise, one contained the words: ‘Although in her early years she suffered from the austerity of her family life, the modern trend of thought found in her a sympathetic friend. Regarded as the most unconventional member of the Royal Family in her earlier years, she was yet the most meticulous upholder of the dignity of the Crown.’

  One reason why Princess Louise’s contemporaries found her so difficult was that she was a woman ahead of her time. From her first ‘public’ appearance at the age of two, through to the exhausting schedule she still pursued in her late eighties, she was an indomitable force. She stood alongside three successive monarchs, all of whom relied upon her to be the acceptable and kindly face of the British monarchy, smoothing over troubles just as she had during her mother’s darkest years of depression. In her roles as an artist, the wife of a politician and the friend of many impassioned social thinkers, Louise embraced the modern world and was an active voice in calling for change. She was genuinely concerned about the plight of the people she represented and fought constantly for the rights of those who were unable to fight for themselves. She was a champion of women’s and children’s rights long before the most famous suffragists and suffragettes made the cause fashionable and, in an age before the National Health Service and free education for all, Louise insisted on the creation of more, and better-run, hospitals and schools. She insisted that boys and girls should be treated equally and – as the testimony of the many children she knew shows – she attempted to improve the lives of every child who came into her world. Princess Louise paved the way for the royal family of the twenty-first century, her example instilling in future generations the need for royalty to have a more accessible, approachable side than they had ever had before.

  In terms of the legacy that Louise attempted to bequeath, however, there is still a long way to go. That the life of a woman born in 1848 remains so hard to research is a sad testimony to the fact that, in many ways, the trappings of monarchy are still stuck in the era of Queen Victoria. That a woman who was so innovative and independent continues to have some of the most important aspects of her life bowdlerised and shrouded in secrecy is an ironic and rather sad end to the story of one of our country’s most fascinating princesses and one of the most intriguing of Victorian women.

  Princess Louise was a remarkable woman. She intensely disliked excessive formality and kept to a minimum the etiquette associated with her exalted station in life. Yet she was royal to her finger-tips. No one would have dreamed of presuming upon her gay approachability. She was greatly gifted and her personality was vital and magnetic … Had she been born half a century later, with the larger freedom that our times afford to royalty, she would have been one of the most outstanding women of her day. (Charles Warr, The Glimmering Landscape, 1960)

  In Queen Victoria’s family, dogs were considered as important as people and many were immortalised in portraits. Princess Louise often travelled with her dogs and even took Frisky on her honeymoon.

  Even after Prince Albert’s death, he remained a constant presence in the royal children’s lives. This family photograph of Bertie and Alix’s wedding day includes a sculpted portrait bust of the deceased prince consort.

  Princess Louise and Prince Leopold were always the closest of allies – especially when it came to their shared dislike of Queen Victoria’s most trusted servant, John Brown (pictured below with the queen and Princess Louise). It has long been rumoured that Brown was the queen’s lover.

  Princess Louise was an in
tegral part of the London art scene. Her closest friends included her tutor – and lover – Joseph Edgar Boehm (above) and the flamboyant James Abbott McNeill Whistler (self-portrait, below).

  Windsor Castle by Whistler. Princess Louise was a great admirer of Whistler’s work, but many of their contemporaries considered his art controversially avant garde.

  Louise’s statue of her mother at Kensington Palace gained critical acclaim.

  The Reverend Robinson Duckworth was Prince Leopold’s trusted tutor, and he became one of Princess Louise’s close friends.

  This ring was a present to Duckworth from Louise and Leopold.

  The inscription is from a bible given to Duckworth by Prince Leopold.

  This sculpture of a baby may have been by Princess Louise; it was a present from the queen to Sir Charles Locock, whose son Frederick adopted the baby Henry Frederick Leicester Locock.