Queen Victoria's Granddaughters 1860-1918 Read online

  When it came to raising her children, unconventional Alice was equally determined to go her own way. Unlike many princesses of the day, she was not content to abandon them to the care of nannies in remote nurseries but intended to take personal responsibility for their welfare, education and upbringing. Aristocrats might gape askance and the Queen might rant and rave, but when infant mortality rates were so high, breast-feeding was the surest means of protecting her daughter from dysentery, and on this, as on so many matters, she refused to be swayed.

  Moreover, as Alice constantly reminded her mother, life in Hesse was very different from the comfort of the English court. The Queen could afford to employ numerous retainers to wait on her every need, but Alice, denied that luxury, had to keep her staff to the minimum.

  By royal standards, she and Louis had never been wealthy. At the time of their wedding there were many in England who looked down on the paltry Grand Duchy, ruled by a mere Serene Highness,[·] considering it unworthy of a daughter of the British queen. Alice, very much in love with her dashing young husband and undoubtedly eager to escape from her mother’s excessive mourning, paid little attention to the criticism. She had not objected to living first with her parents-in-law at Bessungen, nor afterwards in the damp old Schloss in Darmstadt until her mother sent sufficient contributions for the building of the New Palace in the town.

  Now, with children of her own, even unworldly Alice was beginning to feel the strain of raising a royal family on a less than princely income. Much of her £30,000 dowry had been spent on the building of the New Palace, and her £5,000 annuity barely covered her expenditure or the numerous charitable institutions she had established. Irksome as it was to Queen Victoria, Alice’s frequent requests for more money were anything but selfish. Since childhood, her father had instilled in her the belief that those in privileged positions had a duty to help the less fortunate and from the moment she arrived in Darmstadt she had, at great cost to herself both physically and financially, made a commitment to improving the lot of her husband’s people.

  “I earnestly devote myself to the duties of my new life,” she had written to the Queen, “striving to act always as dear papa would wish.”[3]

  Inspired by Florence Nightingale and the housing reformer, Octavia Hill, she embarked upon numerous schemes for updating the medical services, founding hospitals and a ‘mental asylum’, establishing groups of district nurses, and instigating housing programmes and co-operatives of women workers. Though her projects were gradually winning the hearts of the Hessians, they were proving very expensive and, within eighteen months of Ella’s birth, Alice, pregnant for a third time, faced an even greater strain on her resources. In June 1866, the little Grand Duchy was about to become embroiled in the Austro-Prussian War.

  The Hessians had neither the desire nor the means to take on the might of Prussia but, fearing that they would lose their independence to Bismarck’s rising Prussian Empire, saw no alternative but to side with Austria. For Alice the prospect of a costly war was made all the more difficult by the fact that her elder and closest sister, the Crown Princess of Prussia, was now, in effect, her enemy.

  Still more disturbing, at a time when the spread of disease was an inevitable side-effect of war, she feared for the safety of her children from whom she could hardly bear to be parted. Nonetheless, she hastily dispatched Victoria and Ella to their grandmother in England, confident that:

  “In your dear hands they will be so safe; and if we can give you a little pleasure in sending them, it would be a real consolation in parting from them, which we both feel very much.”[4]

  Within a fortnight of the children’s departure, Alice, almost nine-months pregnant, faced a second wrench as she watched her husband set out for battle at the head of his ill-equipped cavalry on their fourth wedding anniversary, 1st July 1866:

  “The parting now was so hard!” she told the Queen, “and he feels it dreadfully. I can scarcely manage to write.”[5]

  In spite of the sweltering heat and her advanced pregnancy, Alice immediately set to work organising hospitals to receive the wounded while assuring Louis that she would join him at the front as soon as her baby was born.

  In the event, the plans proved unnecessary. After only seven weeks the triumphant Prussians marched into Hesse and, as the sound of their boots echoed on the palace walls, Alice gave birth to a third daughter, Irène, named after the goddess of peace.

  By the terms of the peace treaty, Hesse fared better than many of its neighbours. The Grand Duchy, renamed Hesse-and-by-Rhine, was permitted to retain its independence but a large area of Hessian land was appropriated by Prussia and the reparation payments virtually bankrupted the Grand Ducal family.

  “We are almost ruined and must devote all our energies to the reconstruction of our suffering country,”[6] Alice sighed to her mother with further requests for financial assistance – assistance that the volatile Queen was not always willing to give.

  Regardless of the pecuniary difficulties, Alice’s first experience of war gave even greater impetus to her philanthropic schemes. As cholera and smallpox spread through Darmstadt, she applied herself more fervently to improving the medical services. Wandering incognito through the slums of the poor, she tirelessly sought out new schemes to improve their lot. Often unrecognised by her patients, she personally tended the sick in their own homes and, on a larger scale, established a committee of trained nurses who would be ready to tend the wounded in any future conflict.

  Her commitment to the reconstruction of the Grand Duchy, however, did not distract her from her responsibilities to her own children. All three little girls grew quickly; Victoria flourished, breast-fed Ella soon became quite chubby and strong, while Irène thrived on donkey milk.

  More enlightened than the majority of German princesses who saw the purpose of their daughters’ education as creating future wives, Alice firmly believed that ‘marriage for the sake of marriage is the worst mistake for a woman,’ and was determined to prepare her children to live independent lives.

  “I strive to bring them up totally free from pride of position, which is nothing save what their personal worth can make it. I feel…how important it is for princes and princesses to know that they are nothing better or above others, save through their own merit; and that they have only the double duty of living for others and of being an example - good and modest. This I hope my children will grow up to do.”[7]

  Naturally, Alice’s daughters had to master all the accomplishments expected of 19th century princesses: riding, painting, music and the art of making polite conversation with strangers. An accomplished musician who had once accompanied Brahms on the piano, Alice inspired in them an appreciation of music, and many leading performers of the day were invited to the New Palace to introduce them to opera and literature. She was equally eager to provide them with a far broader curriculum of academic and practical subjects. According to Alice’s plan, the girls followed a strict regimen of study in a purposely created schoolroom within the New Palace. Their lessons began early in the morning and continued throughout the day, broken only for physical exercise and meals. From their earliest years they were fluent in two languages, speaking German to their father, and English to their mother, and tutors were employed to instruct them in religion and French. Though later their grandmother would complain that they sought any excuse to escape from their lessons, Victoria in particular proved a remarkably enthusiastic and gifted pupil, whose ‘facility in learning is wonderful,’ as Alice told her mother, ‘and her lessons are her delight. Her English history and reading she has learned from me. I give her a lesson daily…’[8] Victoria’s aptitude for languages and love of learning would continue throughout her life.

  Though the academic curriculum was wide-ranging, Alice also ensured that her daughters developed practical skills. She taught them cookery, book-keeping and household management, and even at the age of three Ella displayed a ‘wonderful talent for sewing’. From their father they learned t
o tend the gardens and grow flowers and vegetables.

  “All my children are great lovers of nature,” Alice told the Queen, “and I develop this as much as I can…I bring up my children simply and with as few wants as I can, and above all teach them to help themselves and others so as to become independent.”[9]

  To outsiders they were princesses but within their own home they cleaned their rooms, made their own beds, laid fires and black-leaded the grates as their mother insisted that they must not expect servants to carry out duties which they could easily perform for themselves.

  Above all, Alice was determined to instil in the children her own unstinting sense of duty. From their earliest childhood they participated in fund-raising schemes for her charitable institutions, sewing clothes for the poor and donating many of their toys to the less fortunate children of Hesse. They accompanied their mother on her regular visits to hospitals and the homes of the sick, where they assisted in rolling bandages and talking freely with patients of all classes. ‘It is good to teach them early to be generous and kind to the poor,’[10] Alice wrote, and her efforts would prove far-reaching. Witnessing her mother’s willingness to carry out the most menial chores, inspired Ella with ‘a longing to help those who suffer,’ – a longing which, many years later, would come to fruition in a most remarkable manner.

  Notwithstanding the long hours in the school room and the time devoted to the poor, life was not all duty and study for the little Hessian princesses. They had inherited their mother’s quick sense of humour and delighted in each other’s company, playing tennis, riding through the parklands, caring for their pets and boating on the lake. As the eldest, Victoria soon gained dominance over her younger sisters but, while Ella was happy to let Victoria take the lead, she could be as intransigent as her mother when it came to matters of principle. Princess Alice confessed to Queen Victoria that at times she found Ella less biddable and more difficult to manage than her elder sister, but her stubbornness was balanced by a deeply spiritual nature that made her ‘the personification of unselfishness, always ready to do anything in order to give pleasure to others.’[11]

  While the sisters were devoted to one another and to their parents, the birth of a brother, Ernst Ludwig (Ernie), in 1868 brought them additional joy. Visitors to the New Palace were touched by the tranquillity of the bright, airy rooms decorated in the English style, and the obvious devotion of the close-knit family whose happy boisterousness was commented on by everyone who met them.

  “On the same floor as the nurseries,” wrote Baroness Buxhoeveden, “were [Princess Alice’s] rooms, and there the little Princesses brought their toys and played while their mother wrote or read…Sometimes all the old boxes containing their mother’s early wardrobe were brought out for dressing up. The children strutted down the long corridors in crinolines, and played at being great ladies, or characters from fairy tales, dressed in bright stuffs and Indian shawls, which their grandmother, Queen Victoria, could not have imagined being put to such a use…The children were full of fun and mischief.”[12]

  There were regular dinners with their father’s eccentric uncle, the Grand Duke of Hesse, and visits from their numerous royal relations including their father’s sickly aunt, Tsarina Marie Feodorovna of Russia. Although money was scarce, holidays were plentiful. There were trips to the seaside in Belgium, and annual holidays in England, staying, when Alice was in favour with the Queen, at one of their grandmother’s palaces or in a hotel in Eastbourne, where the girls played on the sand while their mother toured the poorest fishermen’s cottages. There were visits to romantic Heiligenberg, the summer residence of their father’s Battenberg relations, and occasional trips to Potsdam, near Berlin, the home of Aunt Vicky and their Prussian Hohenzollern cousins.

  In spite of the delight that Alice took in her children and the evident happiness that filled the New Palace, the princess’s frequent confinements and her work for the Grand Duchy were gradually taking their toll on her health. Since contracting scarlet fever in childhood, she had never been physically strong, and the stress of the Austro-Prussian War had left her so frail that Queen Victoria feared for her psychological state – or, as she put it, ‘her nerves’.

  By the late 1860s, Alice’s nervous problems, exacerbated by exhaustion, often led her into bouts of depression. Watching her boyish and well-meaning husband enjoying the company of their children and finding contentment in their childish pursuits, highlighted her awareness that, for all his good intentions, Louis was totally incapable of understanding her spiritual and emotional needs. While he willingly supported her charities and welcomed reformers into their home, there was another more enigmatic aspect to her character which he could never quite reach. A talented artist and accomplished musician, Alice longed for someone with whom she could share her aesthetic feelings but deep conversation bored Louis; he fell asleep during musical evenings; and his inability to empathise with her spiritual doubts left her lonely and unfulfilled.

  In the summer of 1869, the aging and controversial Swabian theologian, David Strauss, arrived in Darmstadt. His contentious work La Vie de Jesus, in which he disputed too literal an interpretation of the scriptures, had horrified the established Church. Alice, however, intrigued by reports of his unorthodox opinions, eagerly invited him to the New Palace. Unused to the company of royalty, Strauss accepted the invitation with some trepidation and yet, from his first encounter with the princess, he was amazed not only by her friendly manner but also by her ‘rare intellectual qualities.’ Regardless of the disapproval of the Hessian aristocracy, their meetings became more frequent and with each conversation Alice fell deeper under the philosopher’s spell, delighted that at last she seemed to have found the soul mate that her husband could never be. Yet Strauss’s cynical opinions did little to alleviate Alice’s spiritual doubts as, according to the French Ambassador, Maurice Paléologue:

  “…[He] at once obtained a great influence over her. But the romance of their minds and hearts was still wrapped in a deep mystery, though it is impossible to doubt that he shook her faith to the depths and that she passed through a terrible crisis.”[13]

  In the midst of her terrible crisis, during which the superficial Prussian Queen Augusta, branded her an atheist, Alice sought the support of the one person who might best empathise with her doubts: her elder sister, Vicky.

  The Austro-Prussian War had not damaged the relationship between the sisters, and in the summer of 1869 the Hessians enjoyed a visit to Potsdam where the sisters planned a second holiday later that year. That autumn their husbands were to travel together to Egypt for the opening of the Suez Canal, and in their absence the princesses seized the opportunity of embarking on a trip of their own.

  In early winter, Alice and Vicky arrived with their children in the French resort of Cannes where, as the young cousins played together, their mothers shared memories of a childhood in England, their various experiences of marriage and the effect that their now very different lives were having on their children.

  Chapter 2 – The Prussian Influence

  Hessians

  Alice: Queen Victoria’s second daughter

  Louis: Alice’s husband, heir to the Grand Duchy of Hesse

  Children of Alice & Louis:

  Victoria

  Ella

  Irène

  Ernie

  Hohenzollerns (Prussians)

  Vicky (Victoria): Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter; Crown Princess of Prussia.

  Fritz (Frederick): Vicky’s husband, Crown Prince of Prussia

  Children of Vicky & Fritz:

  Willy (Wilhelm/William)

  Charlotte

  Henry

  Sigi (Sigismund)

  Moretta (Victoria Moretta)

  Waldemar

  A cool winter wind blew in from the Mediterranean as Queen Victoria’s two eldest daughters strolled along the sea front in Cannes. To all outward appearances, Vicky, the elder and cleverer of the two, had made the better match. Prussia was so
much wealthier and more powerful than the impoverished Grand Duchy of Hesse-and-by-Rhine, and she could not have found a more devoted husband than Fritz, with whom she was still in love after eleven years of marriage. Yet, as she watched the children playing croquet, running on the sand, swishing through rock pools and collecting botanical specimens, the Crown Princess could not help but wonder who had the happier lot.

  Short in stature and, by the age of twenty-nine, already developing her mother’s matronly figure, Vicky had always considered her sister far prettier than she was, and the sight of Alice’s girls running beside her own clumsy daughter, Charlotte, gave rise to a rueful envy. Although Victoria of Hesse was quite a tomboy with a tendency to talk too much, both she and her younger sister, Ella, looked so much healthier than their painfully thin Prussian cousin, who suffered continuously from nose and throat complaints and appeared far younger than her nine years.

  Only two years earlier, Vicky had written hopefully to Queen Victoria that Charlotte ‘is very good looking and much admired’ but seeing her now beside her Hessian cousins, the optimism seemed premature. Confident yet unassuming in their hand-me-down clothes, Alice’s daughters appeared elegant and charming compared with the nervous and graceless Charlotte, whose hair was so thin it had to be cropped short like a boy’s and who was such a nail-biter that Vicky had resorted to strapping her hands to her sides and making her wear gloves all day. When Queen Victoria played down the difference, remarking that Alice’s third daughter, Irène, was plain, Vicky replied frankly that her own son, Henry, was ‘ugly,’ though conceding that he could not help being ugly and could be very amusing.

  More disappointing for Vicky than her children’s appearance, was their behaviour. With true Hohenzollern pride, her eldest son, ten-year-old Willy, strutted about giving orders and reminding his cousins of the recent Prussian victory over Hesse. Even in his more placid moments he changed his mind on the spur of the moment, abandoning one game to start another. While his younger sister and brother, Charlotte and Henry, were happy to follow his lead, Alice’s boisterous but impeccably mannered daughters yielded to his whims, perhaps making allowance for his pomposity out of pity for his atrophied left arm. Though every attempt had been made to conceal the deformity – specifically-designed suits with raised pockets and shortened sleeves – it served as a constant reminder to his mother that she had failed in her first duty to produce a flawless heir.