Princess Helena Victoria, known in the family as Lenchen, trudged through the corridors of Windsor, doing her utmost to fulfil the Queen’s requests in the manner appropriate to her station. It was not a role that she relished. As a child, having neither the vivacity nor intellectual brilliance of her elder sisters, she had preferred to play with her brothers in the model fort at Osborne than to master the usual accomplishments of a young princess. Her father, with an understanding ahead of his time, appreciated her skills as a horsewoman and her love of the outdoor life and, rather than stifling her natural talents, encouraged her to develop her gifts however unconventional they appeared. It did not matter to him that she lacked the grace of Vicky and Alice. He recognized her musical, linguistic and artistic abilities and praised her equestrian skill; and few things in life gave Lenchen greater joy than winning her father’s approbation.
Now, as she moved awkwardly along the corridors of Windsor, Lenchen was only too aware that Prince Albert’s untimely death had brought those halcyon days to a premature and permanent end.
“Oh, if you knew how miserable I am…” she wrote to a friend, “I adored Papa, I loved him more than anything on Earth. His word was a most sacred law and he was my help and adviser.”
Only seven months after the Prince Consort had died, Lenchen faced a further wrench: her sister Alice departed for Darmstadt, leaving her to take over her duties as their mother’s chief support and confidante. Forced into a role to which she was ill suited, Lenchen had seen her talents smothered in the morbid atmosphere of the court and there were times when she had to confess that she wished she had been born a boy.
In 1865 the future appeared bleak for Queen Victoria’s third daughter. Her only hope of escape from the gloom of perpetual mourning was marriage, but finding a suitable husband was proving no easy quest. The Queen, considering her easier to please than her elder sisters, had become so dependent on her company, that she was unwilling to with her. There were younger sisters who might eventually replace her, but Louise was so volatile and Beatrice so young that for now there seemed little hope of escape. The Queen had no serious objection to the idea of Lenchen marrying but having already ‘lost’ two daughters to foreign courts, she insisted that any prospective suitor must be willing to settle in England. Since a commoner was out of the question for a daughter of the monarch• and few foreign princes would accept the Queen’s stipulations, the prospects were unpromising.
To make matters worse, as Lenchen well knew, she had few personal charms to attract an appropriate parti. A plain girl, in her mother’s opinion, with a tendency to put on weight too easily, Queen Victoria left her with few illusions about her desirability:
“Poor dear Lenchen,” she had written to Vicky, “though most useful and active and clever and amiable, does not improve in looks and has great difficulties with her figure and her want of calm quiet graceful manners.”
Vicky remained optimistic. In spite of the Queen’s disparaging remarks, her sister, she believed, had a good deal to offer a husband. Though she may not have been the most beautiful of princesses, her amber eyes were accentuated by her masses of wavy brown hair and, apart from the fact that she was the daughter of the Queen of England, her docile nature and kindly manner gave her all the attributes of an ideal Victorian wife.
Clutching her Almanac de Gotha, Vicky scoured the German principalities and before the end of the year, a rather sorry suitor was unearthed in the person of an old friend of Fritz’s, Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein.
At first sight, Christian had little to offer the twenty-year-old princess. Fifteen years her senior, balding, with poor teeth and a propensity to stoutness, his family, the Dukes of Augustenburg, had lost their lands during Prussia’s annexation of Schleswig-Holstein. To the Queen, however, his impoverishment proved advantageous: landless himself, he would be more than willing to settle in a house that she would provide in England. Lenchen was whisked off to Germany for a meeting and was delighted by what she found. What Christian lacked in youth and good-looks he made up for in kindness and good manners.
He shared her love of horses and was, as his daughter later recalled:
“…A very remarkable person…a splendid shot, a very keen horseman, and had a profound knowledge of forestry. In addition to all these outdoor interests he loved poetry and literature…He had inherited from his mother a love of flowers and gardening.”
What was more, since he readily accepted the Queen’s offer of a home in England, Lenchen would face none of the traumas of leaving the familiar world to become a stranger in a foreign court as her elder sisters had done.
From their first meeting Queen Victor liked Christian enough to make allowance for his habit of chain-smoking cigars and, though she sighed, ‘if only he looked a little younger!’ she shared Vicky’s view that, with a few adjustments to his teeth and manners, he would make an ideal son-in-law.
The future suddenly appeared brighter, and when Christian proposed Lenchen gladly accepted him. The Queen was content; Lenchen was happy; Vicky was satisfied with her part in bringing them together; and none of them was prepared for the furore that the engagement was about to raise.
The outraged Princess of Wales objected that, since Christian had fought against the Danes in the seizure of Schleswig-Holstein, she could not accept him into the family. Bertie supported his wife and stated categorically that if the wedding went ahead they would not attend. From Darmstadt too, Alice opposed the match. Her sister, she believed, was being rushed into marriage with an unattractive and older man simply so that her mother could keep her ‘in service’ forever. The Queen responded by writing to her relatives across Europe that Alice was being ‘sharp and grand and wanting to have everything her own way’ and when the press caught a whiff of the dispute, all kinds of improbable stories appeared in the papers. Christian, it was reported, was a madman and a bigamist who had already fathered several children whom the princess was about to adopt.
In the end, it was left to much-maligned Alice to restore the peace. When a flustered Lenchen assured her that she truly wished to marry her not-so-handsome prince, Alice relented,
“I am so glad she is happy,” she wrote to the Queen, “and I hope every blessing will rest on them both that one can possibly desire.”
Though her third pregnancy and Austro-Prussian War prevented her from travelling to England for the wedding, she was delighted to hear that the Queen had provided her two elder daughters with new frocks for the occasion and even succeeded in persuading Bertie to attend the ceremony, which took place at Windsor Castle in July 1866.
The newly-weds settled into Frogmore House on the Windsor estate where life was peaceful but dull. As Alice had predicted, Lenchen remained on call to the Queen’s slightest whim, following her progress to the tedium of Balmoral each spring and autumn, Osborne for Christmas and summer, and back to Windsor in early spring. For her efforts she received the same £30,000 dowry as had been granted to her sisters, but, to impecunious Alice’s great annoyance, she also received a larger annuity of £6,000 and, of course, a free home.
Christian settled easily into his new life in England. With no official duties to occupy his time, he was perfectly content to loll about the gardens, puffing at his cigars until the Queen, watching him through the window, found his idleness disconcerting and, after sending a curt message telling him to find something useful to do, created him Ranger of the Windsor Estate. Even then, the responsibilities were so undemanding that for the most part he occupied himself by shooting birds. One day while out on a shoot, his brother-in-law, Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught (ironically, a great marksman), accidentally shot him in the eye. Doctors were rushed to the scene and after a careful examination informed Queen Victoria that the wounded eye would have to be removed. Whatever Christian’s view of the matter, the prospect of a one-eyed son-in-law so disgusted the Queen that she refused to permit surgery, which was, in her opinion:
“…Quite unnecessary as formerly she knew several people with shot eyes who did not have it done and who did not become blind: that nowadays doctors were always taking out eyes; and in short spoke as if [the doctors] wished to do it for [their] own brutal pleasure.”
Eventually, she relented and the damaged eye was removed after which Christian acquired a large selection of glass eyes which he would take out and display to guests.
A year after the wedding, Lenchen gave birth to her first son, Christian Victor (Christle) -‘a nice little thing’ according to Vicky. Two years later a second boy, Albert, was born to be followed in May 1870 by Victoria Helena (Thora) and, in the summer of 1872, Marie Louise, whom the Queen had wanted to be named ‘Georgina.’ By the time of Marie Louise’s birth the ‘Christians’ had moved into Cumberland Lodge - ‘a warm red brick covered with Virginia creeper and honeysuckle’ - where in 1876 a third son, Frederick Harold, was born but lived for only eight days.
The stresses of pregnancy weighed heavily on Lenchen’s nerves and, following the birth of a stillborn child in 1877, she became increasingly convinced that all kinds of ills had befallen her, the symptoms of which were largely in her own imagination. Even her mother, while conceding that Lenchen was ‘good’ and ‘amiable,’ lost patience with her bouts of hypochondria, and warned Vicky to show her less sympathy as:
“…complaining is partly her (unfortunate) habit…But she is so inclined to coddle herself (and Christian too) and to give way in everything that the great object of her doctors and nurse is to rouse her to make her think less of herself…”
To calm her nerves Lenchen took up smoking in secret (since her mother detested the habit and would not permit it in her palaces) and frequently badgered her doctors for prescriptions of laudanum. Eventually her addiction became so alarming and made her behaviour so bizarre that the Queen and Prince Christian persuaded the doctors to prescribe her with placebos instead.
In spite of her personal problems, Lenchen diligently carried out her duties both as a princess and as a mother. Patronising various medical organisations, she helped establish the Red Cross in England and played a major role in establishing the Princess Christian Nurse Training Schools and the Princess Christian District Nurses, which proved so successful that, years later, her niece the Tsarina would establish similar institutions in Russia. Like her elder sisters, Lenchen took a passionate interest in music, religion and politics - a subject about which her elder daughter, Thora, would prove equally enthusiastic.
Devoted to her children, Lenchen raised them according to the broad educational principles established by her father. Her eldest son, Christle, was the first royal prince to attend school, Wellington College, as opposed to being educated at home. The girls too, like their cousins in Darmstadt, were provided with an extensive curriculum and learned several languages from an early age. They spoke French to their maid in French, and German to their father who also taught them mathematics and inspired them with his own love of poetry and music.
Living in such close proximity to their grandmother, the children were particularly close to Queen Victoria who was happy to take care of them while their parents travelled abroad.
“Nothing can beat Lenchen’s boy – who one really sees grow daily,” the Queen wrote of Christle – “He is a splendid fellow,”
She was not, however, quite so taken by his sister. On one occasion while Lenchen was in the South of France the Queen sent her a telegram reporting:
“Children very well but poor little [Marie] Louise very ugly.”
Marie Louise purported ‘ugliness’ (which certainly was not in evidence as she grew older) did not prevent the Queen from taking a great interest in her granddaughters’ upbringing. From their earliest years she instilled them with the her own belief in the value of simplicity and necessity of treating members of the household with respect. Like their Hessian cousins, the girls were not permitted to expect servants to do for them what they could for themselves. On one occasion, while staying at Balmoral, Thora asked if she might be allowed to play tennis with two maids of honour.
“Grandmama’s reply was ‘Yes, so long as you pick up the balls yourself. Since it’s Sunday I do not think it right to make others work for your amusement.’”
Respect for servants was one thing, over-familiarity another. The Queen would never allow her granddaughters to forget that they were princesses with all the advantages and duties that their position entailed. Marie Louise recalled a dinner at Balmoral when she was fifteen-years-old:
“I was sitting next to the Lord Chancellor, feeling very shy and rather inarticulate. I was completely dumbfounded when a voice from over my head whispered in my ear, ‘The Queen wishes the young princesses to remember that their duty is to entertain the neighbours at table.’ After this, before coming down to dinner, I used to rehearse little bits of conversation so as to carry out my grandmother’s injunction.”
Poor Thora received a further reprimand on her way into dinner, when the Queen, noticing her low décolletage, whispered:
“A little rose in front dear because of the footmen.”
Though firmly established in England, the girls spent much of their youth traipsing after their mother through the spas of Germany and France in search of a cure for her numerous psychosomatic ailments. The continental tours not only inspired Marie Louise with a great love of travel that would remain with her all her life, but also brought her and Thora into frequent contact with their German cousins in Potsdam and Hesse. Intelligent, gentle and unassuming, they were welcome guests in Berlin and were equally well-received in Darmstadt, where they soon discovered they had a great deal in common with Princess Alice’s daughters. Similar in age to the younger Hessian children, they too had been raised simply, cleaning their own rooms, wearing inexpensive clothes, and assisting their mother in her many nursing projects. All the cousins loved animals (a trait no doubt inherited from Queen Victoria, who spoiled and pampered her numerous dogs), and like Uncle Louis in Hesse, Prince Christian, the avid gardener, taught his daughters to grow flowers. Like Aunt Alice, too, Lenchen often invited the great performers of the day to sing for them. Princesses or not, the children did not always appreciate their mother’s theatrical guests and were not above making occasional social gaffes. Once, following a private performance by a renowned German actress, Irène of Hesse had candidly declared, “That was ghastly!”
Marie Louise made a similar faux pas when the singer Jenny Lind appeared at Windsor:
“She came up to the schoolroom and said she would like to sing to the ‘dear children’ - which she did…I went up to her when she had finished and said, ‘Dear Madame Goldschmidt, must you always make such a noise when you sing?’ All she said was ‘Sweet child’ - and kissed me.”
With so much in common, it was unsurprising that Marie Louise and Alix of Hesse, born within two months of one another, soon became the closest of friends, and ‘more like sisters than cousins.’
Back in England, life in Cumberland Lodge passed serenely for Lenchen’s daughters. They continued their lessons, looked after their pets, and played happily together by the lake or in the woods of Windsor.
“Few sisters were really so different in temperament and perhaps character as [Thora] and I,” wrote Marie Louise, “yet I do not think that any two sisters have been quite such close and intimate companions and friends as we were. I always referred to her in everything. She had such wonderful judgement, was so clear-headed and wise, and was so loyal and strong in her affection. With it all, she was very humble and very diffident about her own gifts.”
Their gentleness and good sense endeared them to their Wales cousins, though time had done nothing to ease Princess Alexandra’s prejudice against Prince Christian. While Queen Victoria delighted in having the little princesses so close at hand, ‘Aunt Alix’ could never forgive their father’s part in the Schleswig-Holstein affair and she was not above making childish and cruel remarks about the girls. Overlooking the plainness of her own frail daughters, she mocked their appearance, referring to Thora as ‘the Snipe’ - a nickname chosen by her brothers because of her long nose and thin features.
If the Christians were aware of her jibes, they might have known better than to take her words to heart. After all, their aunt could be equally cutting in her descriptions of the most flamboyant of all the royal cousins - the daughters of ‘Uncle Affie,’ Duke of Edinburgh.
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