At the age of twenty-seven, ‘Baby’ Beatrice seemed destined for a life of spinsterhood. Since the plans to marry her off to Louis of Hesse had come to nothing, the Queen had decided that her youngest daughter should remain single as her constant support and companion, and by the age of twenty-two she had only ever spent ten days away from her mother. Beatrice appeared so content with her lot that no one, least of all the Queen, believed her capable of falling in love but, just in case she should have other ideas, handsome young men were discouraged from paying her any attention and guests were forbidden to even mention marriage in her presence.
The sudden disclosure that Beatrice wished to marry the dashing Prussian cavalry officer, Henry (Liko) Battenberg, struck Queen Victoria like a thunderbolt. She had no objection to the Battenbergs per se - she was still encouraging Moretta in her hopeless pursuit of Sandro – but what angered and shocked her was the fact that Beatrice had dared to fall in love at all! Offended that the daughter on whom she depended could even consider leaving her side, she dismissed the suggestion as ludicrous and adamantly refused to discuss the matter. The more Beatrice persisted, the more obstinate her mother became until she would not speak to her at all and for several months communicated only by note.
But Beatrice was not without allies. Vicky, tactfully pointed out to their mother that Beatrice was no longer a child and if the Queen were to persist in her opposition, who could tell what scandals may follow - perhaps ‘Baby’ may even follow Grand Duke Louis’ example and marry in secret! Grudgingly the Queen began to give way. Yes, she would consent to the marriage on condition that Liko resigned his Prussian commission and agreed to come and live with her in England.
Liko hesitated. Unlike Lenchen’s husband, Prince Christian, he was young, energetic and active, and the prospect of exchanging the exciting life of the Prussian Cavalry for one of servitude to a demanding mother-in-law lacked appeal. But Liko’s brothers favoured the match, and when Louis and Victoria invited him to their Chichester Home, Sennicotts, they succeeded in winning him over. He agreed to resign his Prussian commission and remain under the Queen’s roof for the duration of his marriage. Faced with such compliance the Queen raised no further objections.
While Beatrice rejoiced, republican journalists bewailed the arrival in England of another ‘German pauper’ who would have to be kept at public expense. Adopting the Queen’s own simile of ‘the rabbits in Windsor Park’ they complained of the expected surfeit of ‘Battenbunnies’ and made cruel suggestions as to how they might be disposed of. In parliament, too, there was discord as Republican Members objected to Beatrice’s marriage settlement. But the muttering in England was nothing compared to the furore in Berlin. That Victoria of Hesse had married a Battenberg was galling enough but that the Queen of England should allow her own daughter to do the same was positively unpalatable. In a typical about turn Queen Victoria flew to Liko’s defence. Elevating him from ‘Serene’ to ‘Royal’ Highness, she berated Vicky’s husband, Fritz, for voicing his opinion that Liko was not ‘of pure blood,’ and was even more furious that the upstart Willy dared to criticise what she had sanctioned. After all, she was quick to point out, Willy’s wife, the plain and fawning Dona, was a parvenu, whom the family had accepted in spite of her less than regal origins.
At least Vicky’s younger son, Henry, proved more compliant. Since he was busily courting Irène of Hesse, it would not do to belittle her brother-in-law’s family. When he heard that Irène and her younger sister Alix had been chosen as bridesmaids, he was even prepared to brave Willy’s scorn to attend the wedding.
As the ‘fatal’ day drew nearer, Queen Victoria’s misgivings returned. The prospect of handing over her ‘baby’ to a man was even more traumatic than the marriages of all her elder daughters. If a girl knew in advance what marriage entailed, she said, she would refuse to approach the altar. In Beatrice’s case she could only hope that there would be ‘no results’ - in fact there would be four: three sons and a daughter.
The wedding took place at Whippingham Church, not far from Osborne, after the briefest of honeymoons, they returned to take up permanent residence with the Queen. They holidayed with her in the south of France or the Italian Riviera and followed her annual rotation between Osborne, Balmoral and Windsor where their first son, Alexander (‘Drino’) - a ‘very pretty child’ in Queen Victoria’s opinion - was born in the autumn of 1886. Within months Beatrice was pregnant again and would soon give birth to Queen Victoria’s youngest granddaughter - the ‘jubilee baby’
In June 1887, as Londoners prepared to witness the greatest pageant of foreign royalties the capital had ever seen, Queen Victoria saw her well-ordered Court thrown into disarray. She understood that so many of her relatives wished to join in the celebrations for her fifty years on the throne, but, at the age of sixty-eight, her distaste for entertaining the ‘royal mob’ was as strong as ever. While hundreds of officials planned the route, the festivities and the service, the Queen was preoccupied with arranging the order of precedence (and no doubt someone would be put out by her decision). Still more troublesome was the problem of where to house her numerous foreign guests. Buckingham Palace was bursting at the seams; Affie had offered the use of rooms in Clarence House and Bertie at Marlborough House, but still the guest list grew. Willy was, as usual, causing trouble. Almost relishing the fact that his father was unwell, he suggested that the Crown Prince should stay in Prussia so that he could glory in the limelight of representing the Kaiser. His behaviour had become so obnoxious that Queen Victoria was loath to invite him at all and only Vicky’s politic persuasion had led her to change her mind. Even so, he could not be trusted not to insult the Battenberg princes and, to avoid any unpleasant scenes, it would be necessary to keep him as far from Louis and Liko as possible.
Then there was Charlotte. Not only was she actively encouraging Willy’s bombastic demands, but the Queen knew her well enough to realise what trouble her tales could cause and would have preferred her to stay in Prussia. There was no space for her at Buckingham Palace, the Queen explained to Vicky, and ‘much as I should like seeing her, I don’t think she ought to go to Marlborough House.’
Osborne was so crowded that Princesses Alix and Irène of Hesse were forced to share the same bed; and, if that were not enough, there was the unwelcome prospect of entertaining the Russians. Delighted as Queen Victoria was to see ‘dear lovely Ella’, (not least to grill her about her marriage•) the prospect of meeting her husband was far less enthralling. She could only hope that Ella’s sister, Victoria, who had recently been struck down by typhoid, would be sufficiently recovered to attend and would do her utmost to keep the Russian well away from her.
Hitches and bickering apart, Queen Victoria journeyed to London on 20th June 1887, and that evening entertained the bejewelled princesses and uniformed princes to a formal dinner. The next day, as a warm summer morning dawned, the cousins made their way to Westminster Abbey for a Service of Thanksgiving. Shortly before eleven-thirty, bugles sounded the National Anthem to announce the arrival of the sparkling procession of princesses who made their way to their seats to the left of a raised dais. Their titles were as ancient and illustrious as their surroundings: the Princesses Victoria Moretta, Sophie and Margaret Hohenzollern of Prussia, Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna, the Hereditary Princess Charlotte of Saxe-Meiningen, the Princesses Helena Victoria and Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein, the Princess Louise of Wales, the Princesses Alix and Irène of Hesse and the Princesses Marie and Victoria Melita of Edinburgh.
As the chatter of sisters and cousins echoed on the Abbey walls, the Queen’s landau, preceded by a procession of princes of horseback set out from Buckingham Palace. At the entrance to the Abbey, the princes, arrayed with the emblems of their Orders, dismounted and made their way to the right of the dais on which the tiny Queen would sit during the service.
When the prayers were completed, the princesses, some ‘with tears in their eyes’ stepped forward to curtsey to their grandmother, who embraced and kissed each of them in turn. As the royalties emerged from the abbey enthralled crowds cheered the magnificent procession, hailed their monarch, and waved their flags, oblivious to Willy’s grumbling that his wife came lower in the order of precedence than the black Queen Kapiolani of Hawaii. For the first time since the death of Prince Albert, the British public turned out in their thousands to demonstrate their affection for the Queen. Later a grand formal dinner was held, during which the Queen granted the Order of the Bath to several of her grandsons and awarded each of her granddaughters the Jubilee Medal and brooch. In the evening royalties gathered in the gardens of Buckingham Palace to watch a magnificent firework display.
The celebrations continued for several days, during which the Queen frequently appeared in public with her granddaughters. There were opportunities, too, for small family gatherings. The Queen bounced little Alice Albany on her knee; she took tea at Frogmore with Alix and Irène of Hesse, whose engagement to Cousin Henry of Prussia had recently been announced. She drove through Windsor with five-year-old Daisy Connaught, visited Prince Albert’s tomb with Marie Louise, entertained Charlotte at a large family dinner and, beneath the trees at Windsor, plied Ella with questions about her Russian marriage.
By the time the celebrations were over and the guests had returned home, Queen Victoria could rest content that, in spite of her years of seclusion, her popularity among her subjects was greater than ever, and the family reunions had passed off without incident. By autumn, she believed she had earned a rest at her favourite retreat, Balmoral, and there, in October, Beatrice’s jubilee baby was born.
The confinement was not easy. After a prolonged labour, the child was removed by forceps leaving Beatrice prostrate for several weeks. But the baby, was a healthy, sturdy daughter who, according to her grandmother, bore a striking resemblance to her cousin, Ella of Hesse.
As the first princess to be born in Scotland for many centuries, she was feted by the Scots and much was made of her baptism in the Presbyterian Crathie Kirk, where she was christened Victoria Eugenie after her godmother, the Roman Catholic Empress Eugenie of France. In the family, however, she was always known by her third name, Ena.
Boisterous and lively, the young Battenbergs brought a breath of youth to the English palaces and revived in the Queen a jollity that she had rarely displayed since the death of Prince Albert. ‘Drino and Ena are flourishing and very amusing,’ she told Vicky in 1879. ‘He is getting more impudent.’ Servants and guests alike were amazed to hear her laughing so freely with the children whom she claimed to love ‘as much as their parents do.’ When Ena was two years old, a second brother, Leopold was born, and two years later the family was completed with the birth of Maurice. To accommodate the growing an extra wing - the Durbah Wing - was added to Osborne House, and there, in the freedom of the Isle of Wight the children learned to cycle and swim. Raised in a family of boys, Ena was a wild unruly child and, though the Queen was extremely indulgent with her, there were occasions when she found it necessary to give the little girl a slap.
Cousin Moretta visiting Windsor in 1889, wrote to her mother that:
“Ena runs about all over the place & the Indians & nurses after her to try and get her back, she is so strong.’
Marie Louise was equally enchanted by her naughty little cousin and recognised that she possessed such ‘great qualities’ that ‘great possibilities’ lay ahead of her.
“Even when she was a small child with golden curls all over her head and at times very naughty, [she] was always nearest my heart.”
Ena’s adventurousness rivalled that of her brothers and on one occasion, at least, almost culminated in tragedy. One Saturday afternoon in February 1894 the six-year-old princess was riding at Windsor when her pony stumbled and threw her before rolling on top of her. The little girl managed to walk home but on reaching the palace was violently sick before lapsing into unconsciousness. Fearing a brain haemorrhage, the Queen’s physician, Sir James Reid, remained in attendance all night but by the following morning the ‘splendid child’ began to show the slightest signs of recovery.
“The little princess is much better than she was, but I am still anxious about her,” wrote Sir James. “She is quite conscious when awake but rambles a little when asleep…I trust the improvement may go on steadily but I tell them that she is not yet out of danger and I watch her very closely both when she is asleep and awake.”
After so serious an accident, it came as a relief to see her gradually becoming ‘obstinate and troublesome’ again and, following her recovery she remained as fearless as ever. In fact, as she later confessed, the most daunting aspect of her childhood was the terror she felt when her grandmother grilled her about her Bible studies.
This excerpt is placed here in breach of copyright. I wrote this article (an extract from my book) and it has been used without permission. Kindly remove it.
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