The Advice of a Mother of 9 Children

A swish of black skirts broke the silence as a short, round figure bustled along the corridors of Osborne House, huffing in indignation. Queen Victoria was definitely not amused. She sat down at her desk, her back as straight as a rod, and taking a pen in her podgy red hands, hastily scratched at the paper.

“It hurts me deeply that my own 2 daughters should set at defiance the advice of a Mother of 9 Children…”[i]

It was not the first time that Princess Alice had offended her mother. Before she left home, she had been such a dutiful daughter but in the two years since her marriage to Louis, heir to the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, Alice’s behaviour was becoming increasingly out-of-hand. It was one thing to show an interest in Florence Nightingale’s theories of nursing, quite another to develop so unseemly a fascination with anatomy. Alice thought nothing of discussing unsuitable matters with all and sundry and so indelicate was her conversation that the Queen was reluctant to allow her younger daughters to visit Darmstadt for fear of what they may hear.

And now this!

It had been traumatic enough for Queen Victoria to hand over to a husband her innocent child ‘from whom all has been so carefully kept and guarded,’ but the speed with which Alice became pregnant had been even harder to bear. At the time of her wedding in July 1862, Alice had, according to her mother, ‘the greatest horror of having children and would rather have none’ and yet exactly nine months later she had returned to Windsor to give birth to a daughter. For the Queen, who remained at her side throughout the eight-hour labour, the experience was more harrowing than if she were going through it herself and she promptly berated Louis for inflicting such torture on her child. Though placated by the news that the baby would be named Victoria Alberta, the Queen made it clear that she hoped it would be a long time before the ordeal was repeated.

Alice ignored the advice and in less than a year she was again in ‘an unfortunate condition.’ This time she spared her mother’s nerves by staying in Germany for the birth of a second daughter, Elizabeth (Ella), but the Queen barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief when the appalling news arrived from Darmstadt. Alice had dispensed with wet nurses to breast-feed her baby herself!

Queen Victoria could hardly contain her revulsion. That her own daughter should indulge in such an ‘animal’ and time-consuming practice, which was demeaning for any woman but for a princess unheard of and unnecessary, was beyond her comprehension. And still more devastating was the discovery that Alice’s elder sister, Vicky, was to blame!

The podgy red hand flew over the paper:

“You said you did it only for your health…& because you have no social duties…Well Vicky has none of these excuses.”[ii]

Crown Princess Victoria Adelaide, her late father’s favourite child, had seldom, if ever, stepped out of line before. Intellectually brilliant, artistically gifted, she had even conveniently fallen in love with her parents’ first choice of marriage partner - Crown Prince Frederick (Fritz) of Prussia. Through the ups and downs of life in Berlin (and in spite of Fritz’s unfailing love there were more downs than ups) she had maintained a regular, almost daily, corres-pondence with her mother and struggled against insurmountable odds to remain a dutiful daughter. Until now!

Not only had Vicky defied the Queens of both Britain and Prussia to breast-feed her own fourth baby, Sigismund, but had positively encouraged Alice to do the same! Queen Victoria put down her pen and seething with disgust sent word to the Royal Dairy that a cow should be named ‘Alice.’

[i] Packard, Jerold M. Victoria’s Daughters Sutton 1999

[ii] ibid