"The Sun Has Gone Out of Our Lives" - More of Queen Victoria's Granddaughters

A decade after her Golden Jubilee, Queen Victoria prepared to celebrate her sixty years on the throne. Older now and frailer, she had no desire to entertain the numerous foreign royalties who had descended upon London ten years before, and insisted that this time it was to be more of a celebration of British Empire. Even so, no less than eighteen of her granddaughters attended the event, preceding the Queen in seven carriages as the stately procession made its way from Buckingham Palace to St. Paul’s Cathedral•. No longer able to walk unaided, the tiny monarch remained in her carriage for an open-air service of thanksgiving, before returning to the palace for a grand jubilee dinner at which Ella and her brother Ernie and sister-in-law, Ducky, were invited to share the Queen’s table. Neither Ella nor her grandmother could have failed to notice that the couple had arrived separately for the celebrations and would later depart separately, drawing further attention their unhappy marriage.
Of the granddaughters who were unable to attend, Missy was ‘terribly, terribly, disappointed’ not to be there but her husband had recently been struck with a near-fatal bout of typhoid; the Tsarina of Russia was pregnant with her third daughter, Tatiana; and it would have been incongruous for Sophie to enjoy the celebrations when her country was in the throes of the Turko-Greek War.• Noticeable too for his absence was the Kaiser, to whom the Queen Victoria had refused an invitation since he was openly supporting the Turks in the conflict. Willy was furious at the snub and so ‘frantic’ that he ‘would like to kill his poor brother [Henry] for daring to accept the Queen’s invitation.’
The celebrations were a great success and the rapturous applause that the Queen received reaffirmed her popularity. Marie Louise, sitting beside her grandmother in the carriage recalled that:
“The crowd was immense, the cheers and acclamations deafening. The Queen had asked me to accompany her back to Windsor and on the way I turned to her and said: ‘Oh, Grandmama, does this not make you very proud?’ She replied, ‘No, dear child, very humble.’”
For the Queen, though moved by the demonstrations of affection, the occasion was tinged with sorrow. She felt deeply the loss of her son-in-law, Beatrice’s husband, Liko Battenberg, whose death, the previous year, had been the first in a series of family tragedies that would cast a dark shadow over the remainder of her reign.

In spite of her initial misgivings about Beatrice’s marriage, the Queen had soon come to love Liko. His cheerful sense of humour and obvious commitment to his family, not to mention his striking good looks, greatly appealed to her and she noted, with satisfaction that, though he and Beatrice were devoted to one another they made none of the tasteless shows of affection that so grated on her nerves. So fond was the Queen of his company that he had even succeeded in persuading her to provide a more comfortable smoking room than the one which had been reluctantly allocated to Prince Christian. In fact, she had come to enjoy his company so much that she was unwilling to let him out of her sight.

But Liko was straining at the leash; the Queen’s affection, and the love of his wife and children could not compensate for the extreme dullness of life at Court. Unable to renege on the promise made before his marriage he watched enviously as his brothers went about their exciting adventures, while he frittered away his hours attending to his children’s education and carrying out minor duties for the Queen. In 1889 she appointed him Governor General of the Isle of Wight and Carisbrooke Castle, but still he remained unfulfilled and sought any opportunity to escape abroad.
Beatrice understood his need for excitement and raised no objections when he disappeared for months at a time on various yachting and continental expeditions but in his absence she missed him terribly, wept as he departed and worried that far from home his affections might stray. At the first hint of a possible scandal she dispatched a ship to bring him back.
Holidays and expeditions allowed him some release, but could not satisfy his need to find a more useful role until the autumn of 1895 when he heard of a mission to end the slave trade in Ashanti in Ghana. The Queen, reluctant to be parted from him and fearful for his health in that notoriously disease-ridden part of Africa, hesitated about granting him permission to participate in so dangerous a venture until Beatrice selflessly prevailed upon her mother to give him leave to go. Queen Victoria could hardly refuse; after all her soldier grandson ‘Christle’ of Schleswig-Holstein was taking part in the same campaign.
For Beatrice, Liko’s departure aboard the Coramandel on 8th December was traumatic:
“[She] is inconsolable,” wrote Marie Mallet, “but so patient and unselfish and declared she is glad he should do some real work and she will never stop him in any way...Of course he is bursting with excitement, it is the climate I fear, not the enemy.”
Mrs. Mallet’s fears were justified; hardly had the ship reached Africa when, on 10th January 1896, Liko contracted malaria. For a while his condition appeared to improve and he wished to continue the expedition, but his doctors and fellow officers thought him too ill to carry on and sent him homewards aboard the Blonde. Before the ship docked at Madeira, Liko suffered a relapse and realising he was dying, sent long and affectionate messages back to his wife and children, grieving at the thought that he would die so far from home. He died on 20th January 1896.
“Our grief and our misery is untold!” the Queen told Vicky, “The sun has gone out of our lives.”
When his body, preserved in rum, was eventually brought to the Isle of Wight, the Queen accompanied his family - including his nine-year-old daughter Ena - to receive the coffin:
“This was a terrible day, but one never to be forgotten…Shortly after 12 drove down to Trinity Pier with darling Beatrice, Ena and little Leopold [Ena’s brother]To attempt properly to describe the whole sad proceedings and ceremony is more than I can do.”
The funeral took place in Whippingham Church near Osborne, where eleven years earlier Liko and Beatrice were married.
For Liko’s grieving widow, a minor family squabble brought further grief. While Beatrice was in mourning, her elder and more beautiful sister Louise, cruelly announced that her own grief was equally deep, since Liko had always preferred her to his wife and had once made amorous advances towards her. As Louise’s own marriage was something of a sham and she was renowned for making mischief in the family, Beatrice dismissed her allegations as lies. Whether or not there was any truth in Louise’s tale, Beatrice loved Liko deeply and enjoyed eleven blissful years with a husband she had never hoped to find.
According to all who met her, Beatrice, though heart-broken, accepted her widowhood with remarkable courage and dignity. For her grieving mother, however, further sorrows were soon to follow. Within five years of Liko’s death, she had lost a son and two grandsons and discovered that her eldest daughter was dying.

In 1898, the royalties returned to Coburg to celebrate to celebrate the Duchess Marie’s twenty-five unhappy years of marriage to the unfaithful, alcoholic Affie. Among the intended guests was their only son, ‘Young Affie,’ who had been sent away from home at an early age to be groomed in Potsdam for his future role as Duke of Coburg. The training was intended to turn him into an efficient and reliable officer but it had had the opposite effect. Young Affie had developed into a dissolute and unstable young man with his mother’s fiery Russian temperament and his father’s addiction to drink. By the age of twenty-five, he had contracted venereal disease and was consequently dismissed from the German army.
“It is true,” Vicky wrote to Sophie, “that he was always giddy & wild, as many young men are, & that he contracted an illness of which I know next to nothing, as I have never asked or heard anything about it, one dislikes thinking about it and still more speaking or writing about it. This was neglected and the poor boy led a dissipated life, besides, Potsdam! – that was not the place for him.”
His Orthodox mother despaired of his licentiousness and, shortly before her Silver Wedding anniversary, an argument flared between them when he announced his intention of marrying an unsuitable bride. In the course of the argument, according to several erroneous reports, Young Affie shot himself and sustained a serious though not fatal wound. His true illness - which had led to ‘paralysis of the larynx, caused by the state of the brain’ - was an even greater scandal to his mother who decided that it would be better if he were absent from Coburg when her visitors arrived for the celebrations. His doctors warned that he had very little time to live but the duchess dismissed the prognosis and, against his and his father’s wishes she packed him off to recuperate in Meran in Austria. Just over a week later, on 6th February, he died. The official reports stated that the cause of death was consumption.
“But oh, the poor, poor parents!” wrote Queen Victoria, “To lose their only son in whom their hopes and life were bound up is fearful…Affie [was] in a dreadful state on first going to see the dear remains.”
Her lady-in-waiting, Marie Mallet was less sympathetic:
“How strange Royalties are, their children seem to lack the ordinary care bestowed on our humblest middle class. Such a thing could never have happened to any of the boys I know and if it had the parents would be blamed by the whole of society.”
Affie never recovered from the loss of his son and within eighteen months, he too was dead of throat cancer, exacerbated by his excessive drinking. ‘Poor Marie,’ wrote a heartbroken Queen Victoria, and ‘those poor girls who adored their father!’

Young Affie’s death was to have unexpected consequences for his seventeen-year-old cousin, Alice of Albany. The Salic law precluded females from inheriting the Dukedom of Coburg and since Affie had no other son, there was much debate about who would succeed him. The next in line was Affie’s younger brother, Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, but neither he nor his son had any desire to leave England or to show obeisance to the proud German Emperor. The Kaiser, too, always in awe of his English uncles, expressed his preference for a younger man and accordingly, offered Coburg with its £300,000 a year income to the late Prince Leopold’s son, thirteen-year-old Charles, Duke of Albany.
After a great deal of soul-searching, Charles’ mother, Helen, accepted the Duchy on his behalf and agreed that Cousin Sandra’s husband, Ernst of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, would act as regent until Charles came of age. Notwithstanding the fact that his young cousin spoke very little German, the Kaiser insisted that he should leave Eton at once to enrol in the Lichterfelde Military Cadet School at Potsdam. Aunt Vicky, fearing that Charles might go the same way as Young Affie, was firmly opposed to the scheme and vehemently made her feelings known to her mother. Queen Victoria agreed:
“It is most stupid and ill-judged, to take the poor boy away in the middle of his education and before he knows enough German to be able to learn in German. William unfortunately set this idea going.”
But the Kaiser had made his decision and, in spite of their reluctance to leave their beloved Claremont House, the Albanys had to comply.
In August 1899, Alice and her mother moved into the Villa Ingenheim, a relatively small cottage near the cadet academy in Potsdam, where Charles was to spend three miserable years, taunted and bullied by the other boys in the school. For Alice, the contrast between Windsor and the Kaiser’s militaristic court, governed by etiquette and tradition, appeared both amusing and bizarre.
“It’s hard to convey to English readers,” wrote Marie Louise, “the Medieval conditions in which people in our state of life lived in Germany.”
Serving officers were not permitted to appear at any social gatherings, except in uniform and, the numerous ceremonies that littered the German calendar were even more trying for the princesses who were obliged to appear at State banquets in ‘full regalia of tiaras and trains.’
“These ceremonies began…at 10a.m. and it was 5p.m. before we got back to our respective homes. At 7p.m., in full evening dress we proceeded to the opera, and then staggered home to bed at 10p.m.”

Yet, unlike Marie Louise, Alice, with a cheerful disposition and an eye for the comic, was delighted by her new surroundings. If Cousin Willy was pompous, he could also be generous, hospitable and amusing. She and Charles were regular visitors to his home where they became close friends of his sons. Formal balls were an almost nightly occurrence and for a young and beautiful princess there was no limit to the number of handsome young officers to partner her in the dances.
She and her mother remained in Germany until Charles had completed his education and was deemed old enough to fend for himself. By the time that Alice returned to Claremont in 1903, her grandmother’s staid and seemingly changeless Court had gone forever; the Victorian era was over, its sobriety replaced briefly by all the glamour and gaudiness of the new Edwardian age.

"My Beloved Leopold"...More of Queen Victoria's Granddaughters

The cloud of sorrow descending over Windsor and Osborne following Princess Alice’s death was alleviated slightly by the cheerful preparations for the wedding of Queen Victoria’s favourite son. Healthy, handsome and untainted by scandal, twenty-nine-year-old Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, was since childhood his mother’s ideal of a prince. ‘[He is] really the best child I ever saw,’ she told Vicky when he was eight years old, and the passing of time only added to the charms of this ‘angel of goodness,’ on whose many virtues his mother loved to dwell.
The godson of the Duke of Wellington, after whom he was named, Arthur had always taken a keen interest the army and it was only to be expected that he would pass through the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich with distinction. Following his commission in the Royal Engineers, he had had taken an active part in several military expeditions and earned his promotions through personal displays of courage. His lack of affectation and insistence upon being treated like any other officer, had won the respect and affection of the troops and, in all his subsequent appointments, he made a favourable impression on the peoples of India, Canada and Ireland. Noble in every sense, he so resembled his father that he could not have pleased of Queen Victoria more:
“Arthur is dearer than any of the others put together,” she had once told Prince Albert, “and after you, he is the dearest most precious object to me on earth.”
In fact, Arthur seemed so perfect and so utterly chaste that she saw no reason for him to marry at all and was taken aback when he returned from a wedding in Potsdam in February 1878, to announce that he had chosen a bride.
With her preference for German spouses, the Queen might have been overjoyed that her favourite son had proposed to Louise (‘Louischen’) of Prussia, but for a cloud that shaded the princess’s background. Her father, a cruel and vindictive man, inflicted so many inhuman tortures on his children that his wife had deserted him, bringing disgrace upon the family. To nineteen-year-old Louischen, the dashing English soldier must have appeared like a knight in shining armour rescuing her from a terrible past and, though she was not the most beautiful of princesses, her devotion captured Arthur’s heart.
In spite of her initial shock, Queen Victoria could deny her favourite son nothing, and though she suggested he would do well to consider other more beautiful brides before rushing into marriage, she raised no objections to the match. After all, she could hardly complain of Louischen’s unfortunate background since it was not so different from that of her own beloved husband. When Prince Albert was still a child, his mother had likewise deserted an unfaithful husband for another man and for her sins she was never permitted to see her children again. The trauma had left Albert with a great horror of infidelity and doubtless Queen Victoria hoped that Louischen’s experiences would turn her into an equally faithful spouse.
Louischen was duly invited to Windsor where she made a pleasing impression upon everyone, despite shocking the Queen by riding unchaperoned with Arthur to Frogmore.
Even the recent death of Princess Alice was not permitted to impinge on the wedding celebrations, which took place on 13th March 1879 in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. The occasion was commemorated in a poem by Tennyson, dedicated and addressed to Princess Alice:
“…and this March morn that sees
Thy soldier brother’s bridal orange-bloom
Break thro’ the yews and Cyprus of thy grave,
And thine Imperial mother smile again,
May send one ray to thee!”
After the wedding, the Connaughts moved into Buckingham Palace before settling at Bagshot Park in Surrey where, on 15th January 1882 their first daughter Margaret (Daisy), was born. A year later the Duchess gave birth to a son, Arthur, at Windsor Castle; and her youngest child, Victoria Patricia, (Patsy) was born on 17th March, 1886, at Buckingham Palace where her godparents included Aunt Lenchen and Cousin Willy of Prussia.
Queen Victoria was fond of Louischen, and visitors found her affable and charming with a pleasant sense of humour:
“[The Duke] is such a gentleman,” wrote one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, “so courteous and kind, and they are both very simple in their ways and rather enjoy hardships.”
And yet, within her own home, the Duchess adopted an almost militaristic discipline that often left her daughters trembling in terror. It came as a relief to the girls when their parents travelled abroad leaving them in the care of their doting and indulgent grandmother. Freed from the Duchess’s restraint, Daisy showed all the boisterousness of her Hessian cousins and her antics so delighted the Queen that she made allowance for her cheeky vivacity because she was ‘a gt. Darling - & such a pretty little thing with such fine large eyes & such a pretty mouth & is so good.” So fond was the Queen of Daisy that when Arthur, as Commander-in-Chief of his regiment was posted to India in the autumn of 1886, she declared that the climate was unsuitable for a child of her age, and she should be left in England.
Patsy (‘such a beauty and so good’) was still a babe-in-arms at the time of her father’s posting, and deemed too young to be left behind. Instead she travelled to Bombay with her parents, remaining under the strict and unyielding discipline of her mother. Though as pretty as her sister, and a gifted linguist and water colour artist, Patsy quailed under her mother’s authoritarian regime, which gradually destroyed all her confidence. Quaking in her hand-me-down dresses and too tight shoes, Patsy would have preferred to sink into the background with the whispering Waleses than effervesce with the Edinburghs. It was a handicap that would remain with her throughout her childhood and adolescence.
In 1888 Daisy joined her family in India and following their return to England they resettled into Bagshot Park from where they made frequent visits to Windsor and Osborne. But their travelling days were far from over. In 1899, Arthur was posted to Dublin as Commander-in-Chief of the troops in Ireland. His family were provided with an official residence in the city and a house in Phoenix Park, loaned to them by a member of the Guinness family:
“It was a lovely house,” the Queen’s Equerry recalled, “with oak and tapestry and the Duchess of Connaught and Princess Patsy preferred it to the official house.”
Regular visits to Windsor, Osborne and Balmoral continued and the Queen found constant delight in Arthur’s ‘darling’ and ‘lovely’ daughters.


By the time of Arthur’s wedding, Queen Victoria’s fourth son, Leopold, longed more than ever to find a wife and a life of his own. Princess Alice’s recent death had come as a great blow to her brother, who had spent many happy holidays in Darmstadt, becoming a particular favourite of his Hessian nieces. Haemophiliac himself, he had understood better than anyone, Alice’s concerns for her son, Frittie, and, after the little boy’s death, had gloomily assured his sister that death was often preferable to a life that would bring nothing but suffering.
Leopold’s own childhood had been blighted as much by his mother’s near-neglect as by the agonizing effects of his illness. Although he was certainly the cleverest of her sons, Queen Victoria thought him the ‘ugliest and least pleasing child of the whole family…’ and since ‘an ugly baby is a very nasty object,’ there were times when she could hardly bare to look at him. When he was only five years old she complained to Vicky that he was ‘a very common looking child, very plain in face, clever but an oddity – and not an engaging child though amusing.’ As episodes of bleeding left him crippled, she found his bearing still more unattractive, again writing frankly to Vicky that:
“He walks shockingly and is dreadfully awkward - holds himself as badly as ever and his manners are despairing as well as his speech - which is quite dreadful.”
That Leopold was a badly-behaved little boy was largely the Queen’s own doing. While his family travelled around the country, he was often left in the care of governors and doctors, whose over-protective supervision made him rebellious and difficult. His father, who might have understood his frustration, died when he was only eight years old, and the Queen became too absorbed in her own grief to expend much energy on the ugly ducking in her nest.
In spite of his physical difficulties, however, Leopold intelligence was quickly becoming apparent. By the time he was fifteen, even his mother was aware of his ability, writing to Vicky that he:
“Is very clever, taking interest in and understanding everything. He learns, besides French and German, Latin, Greek and Italian; is very fond of music and drawing, takes much interest in politics – in short everything.”
Fortunately for Leo, the Queen was not the only one to recognize his considerable intellect and his tutors eventually succeeded in persuading her to allow him to attend university. The reports of his excellent progress came as pleasant surprise to the Queen and she finally began to realise that her son was a very gifted young man. So impressed was she by his achievements that, once his studies were complete, she took him into her confidence, allowing him access to government papers and relying on his advice in much the same way as she had once relied on the Prince Consort. While his elder brother, the Prince of Wales, remained firmly excluded from affairs of state, Leopold was even granted a much-coveted key to the Queen’s cabinet boxes.
Yet, while she appreciated his intelligence and trusted him implicitly, Queen Victoria, fearful for his health and determined to keep him by her side, continued to treat him as a child. In 1877, at the age of twenty-four, he begged her to allow him to represent her at an exhibition in Australia but she could not ‘bring herself to send her very delicate son…so great a distance.’ Later, he would ask to be appointed Governor of Victoria, Australia, but again his request was refused. Stifled and frustrated, Leopold dedicated much of time to worthy causes - in particular institutes for deaf children - and escaped from his duties at Court at every possible opportunity. In spite of his mother’s early misgivings he had grown into a handsome young man and his health did not prevent him from enjoying the pleasures of Paris and Monte Carlo, or the company of the ‘fast set’ at Marlborough House. He became a close friend of his sister-in-law, Marie, Duchess of Edinburgh and a firm favourite with all his nieces. But the devotion of his extended family could not alleviate Leopold’s dissatisfaction and his intense longing for independence with a wife and children of his own.
It took Queen Victoria some time to accept that her frail son was not content to devote his entire life to her service and, considering the fragility of his health, she despaired more of his ever finding a bride than she had of Lenchen ever finding a groom. Nevertheless, moved by his evident unhappiness, she agreed to help where she could. To add weight to his position, she created him Duke of Albany, granted him the moderate freedom of his own home, Claremont House at Esher near London, and encouraged him to seek out a bride among the numerous German princesses. Shortly before Arthur’s wedding, she packed him off to Darmstadt with his Hessian nieces, from where he could visit an old friend, Frederica, daughter of the blind King of Hanover. The visit was unsuccessful. Fond as she was of the prince, Frederica had to admit that she had fallen in love with someone else, and Leo, accepting her refusal with good grace, returned home disappointed.
The following winter Queen Victoria invited Daisy, the seventeen-year-old stepdaughter of Lord Rosslyn, to Windsor with a view to ‘looking her over’ as a prospective daughter-in-law. She was sufficiently impressed to recommend the girl to her son but again, the plans again came to nothing since neither Leopold nor Daisy was attracted to the other. Within months, Daisy had announced her engagement to Lord Brooke, the future Earl of Warwick. For Leopold, perhaps it was a lucky escape - the flighty ‘babbling Brooke’ became renowned for taking numerous lovers, among them Leopold’s brother, the Prince of Wales.
In the autumn of 1880, Queen Victoria had a brainwave; twenty-year-old Princess Helen of Waldeck-Pyrmont lived in Arolsen not far from Darmstadt. She was intelligent, well-educated and well-travelled and would certainly be worth a visit. Leopold made the journey and was sufficiently impressed to inform his mother that here was a woman he would be more than happy to marry. He thought her pretty and she came with the highest recommendation from his Hessian nieces. To the Queen’s surprise the princess was equally enamoured of him, and her genuine delight in their happiness was made all the greater by her admiration for the spirited Helen. Unlike most newcomers to the court, Helen was not in the least overawed in the presence of the Queen and, although her appearance was unremarkable, her charm and grace immediately endeared her to the household:
“Though the idea of his marrying makes me anxious, still,” Queen Victoria wrote, “as he has found a girl so charming, ready to accept and love him, in spite of his ailments, I hope he may be happy and carefully watched over.”
The wedding took place at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor on 27th April 1882, a fortnight after Leopold’s twenty-ninth birthday. Though the prince had hurt his leg and was forced to lean on a stick throughout the service, it was a happy occasion made all the brighter by obvious elation of the young couple.
The Albanys moved into Claremont House where Helen proved a devoted wife, nursing her husband through his numerous episodes of bleeding and paralysis.
“I pity her,” Queen Victoria wrote to Vicky, “but she seems only to think of [Leopold] with love and affection.”
If his mother was pleasantly surprised that Leo had at last found the happiness he craved, she was still more astonished to hear that only a month after the wedding, Helen was pregnant. Queen Victoria had not believed her frail son capable of fathering a child but a perfectly healthy daughter was born at Windsor on 25th February 1883, and named Alice after her late aunt. Uncle Louis of Hesse and Aunt Vicky were among her godparents, as was Queen Victoria herself who, for once, was able to enthuse about the ‘beautiful child, so plump and so big with such neat little features and such a complete head of hair.’
The Queen was still more enchanted by Alice’s eyes which were soon, ‘becoming quite brown which is what I so much wished – as since the Stuarts we have had no brown eyes in the family.’
Delighted by his little daughter, Leopold continued his duties and charitable works, but there was no relief to his medical condition. A year after Alice’s birth, he was troubled by particularly painful swelling in his joints and his doctors recommended a trip to the warmer climes of the south of France. By then Helen was again in the early stages of pregnancy and not well enough to accompany him to Cannes. Although his life had often hung in the balance, as she watched him depart she had no idea that she would never see him again.
One afternoon, he slipped on the tiled floor of his hotel and banged his knee. A painful swelling ensued and the subsequent haemorrhage was so severe that he did not recover. After less than two happy years with Helen, he died in Cannes on 28th March 1884.
“My beloved Leopold!” Queen Victoria wrote, “That bright clever son who had so many times recovered from such fearfull (sic) illnesses, and from various small accidents has been taken from us! To lose another dear child, far from me, and one who was so gifted and such a help to me, is too dreadful.”
Later, in a more tranquil moment, the Queen reflected that death had almost come as a blessing. So often, in his hours of agony, Leopold had cried out that death would be preferable to his suffering and his mother noted that ‘there was such a restless longing for what he could not have; this seemed to increase rather than lessen.’
Although Leopold’s haemophilia had prevented him from entering the armed forces, he was given a full military funeral. His coffin, having been returned to England on the royal yacht Osborne, was carried by eight Seaforth Highlanders and laid in the vault in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor.
As ever in a crisis Queen Victoria’s heart went out to the twenty-two-year-old widow and she insisted on being present at Claremont House when, six months later, the Duchess gave birth to a son, Charles. It was ‘heartbreaking’ to see little Alice, ‘a very intelligent and such a healthy child’ deprived of her father, and, as with her Hessian granddaughters, she promised to do all she could to help in her upbringing. To Alice her grandmother was nothing like the prudish old lady of popular myth; she found her so kind, approachable and interesting. Her affection was returned in full, and the Queen’s admiration for Helen was boundless; she was:
“So good and such an example to all, I do love respect and admire her, poor darling – always a kind sweet smile on her poor, sad face and cheerful and always thinking of others and not herself.”
In fact so great was the Queen’s affection for the Albanys that at times it aroused a little jealousy among other members of the family. On one occasion the Queen felt obliged to ask Vicky to persuade the Duchess of Connaught to be a little kinder to her.
Like so many of her sisters-in-laws the Duchess of Albany - ‘such a dear and so un-stiff’ - devoted much of her time to charitable works. She took an interest in nursing and, along with Princess Beatrice, the Duchess of Connaught and the Princess of Wales, she obtained a first aid qualification from the recently formed St. John’s Ambulance. The Duchess, too, paid special attention to the fate of ‘fallen women’ and established an Institute in the Deptford market for the improvement of the slaughterhouse girls, providing them with regular meetings for Bible reading, singing, sewing and the occasional treat.
The loss of her father at such an early age had none of the dramatic effects on little Alice that the loss of her mother had on Cousin Alix of Hesse. Inheriting the strong spirit of both parents, and the appearance of her father, she was a confident, vivacious child. While the Queen thought her ‘pretty,’ ‘merry’ and ‘good,’ visitors were not always so impressed by her precocity. Following a meeting with the six-year-old Alice, the author Lewis Carroll wrote to a friend:
“The little Princess I thought very sweet but liable, under excitement, to betray what is called ‘self-will’ (it’s really weakness of will) and that selfishness which is the besetting sin of childhood. Under weak management, that child wd, I should fear, grow up a terror to all around her.”
Fortunately, Alice was brought up under the strong management of her mother and grandmother and Carroll’s fears were not realised. The death of Prince Leopold had drastically reduced the Duchess’ income and as a result Alice, like her Hessian and Christian cousins, was brought up in relative simplicity and not allowed to become inflated by her royal status. What was more, though the Duchess was devoted to her children, she raised them strictly and the effect became apparent. Two years after their first meeting, Lewis Carroll’s opinion of ‘little Alice’ changed considerably. She was, he thought:
“ improved…not being so unruly as she was two years ago: they [Alice and her brother Charles] are charming children. I taught them to fold paper pistols, and to blot their names in creased paper…”
While Alice and her brother were young, their mother spent many hours in their nursery, reading to and playing with them. As they grew older she encouraged them to study a wider range of subjects alongside the usual accomplishments of riding, music and dancing, and even arranged for Alice to travel into London to attend extra classes.
Like her cousins, Alice was fortunate in having so many relations across the Continent with whom she could spend happy holidays. Among the chief pleasures of her childhood were the visits to her mother’s native Arolsen where many happy family reunions were enacted with cousins squabbling over toys and running boisterously through the woods. Usually among the guests was her mother’s widowed sister, Emma, Queen Regent of the Netherlands with her little daughter Queen Wilhelmina. When Alice was thirteen her young cousin joined her at Balmoral where Queen Victoria’s lady-in-waiting was much amused by Alice’s description of Wilhelmina’s plans to have a year of freedom before taking up her responsibilities as Queen:
“What would she do? Give balls and parties?’
‘No,’ replied Princess Alice, ‘She only likes dancing by herself, twirling round on one leg or in a ‘valse’ but when she is really Queen she means to visit her own Indies and she is learning the language one lesson at a time.’
I replied, ‘The Duchess won’t let her out of the country.’
‘Oh, she has thought of that. She will leave her mother as Regent. Grandmama goes abroad, why should she not?’
It was amusing to see how these children confidently look up to the Queen as an example to all sovereigns and meant to model their conduct on hers.”
Apart from visits to Arolsen, the Albanys often holidayed in France with the Queen, who was present with them in Cannes in 1898 for Alice’s confirmation in a chapel built as a memorial to her father.

Recording of Queen Victoria

On a radio programme yesterday (most of which, unfortunately I missed), Queen Victoria's biographer, Giles St-Aubyn was talking with the presenter of a wax cylinder of the recording of Queen Victoria's voice. The little I heard of the programme led me to believe it is a strong possibility that the recording is genuine and, what was definitely genuine, was a BBC archive recording of an interview with Queen Victoria's granddaughter, Princess Alice of Albany (later Athlone) beautifully describing her grandmother's voice which, to my slight surprise, she said had no hint of a German accent. The Queen's voice, she said, was light and bright and youthful, as indeed was the Queen herself - and not at all like the sombre woman of popular imagination.

This fits, of course, with Marie of Roumania's lovely description of her grandmother's child-like enjoyment of many of the events she organised to entertain her grandchildren, and Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein's mention of the warmth and humour of her grandmother.

It often seems that one of the most endearing characteristics of Queen Victoria, is that she never really lost a child-like heart. Perhaps that was due to insecurity and unhappiness of her own childhood but, rather than becoming a miserable old woman, she seems much more to me a tender and open-hearted person, with a sort of childlike innocence. Like a child, too, she could be petulant and stubborn but she was such a romantic, and sometimes quite naive in, for example, her wishing to publish the second 'Leaves from a Highland Journal' in which she wrote effusively of her servant, John Brown, in a way that less innocent people might interpret quite differently. It is interesting that the older she grew, the more tolerant and understanding she became. After the dreadful gaffe of the Flora Hastings affair (when she was still very young) perhaps she learned a lesson, or perhaps she stopped listening to advisors! She stood by her granddaughter, Marie Louise, during a scandalous divorce and she encouraged the Duchess of York (later Queen Mary) to go to Mecklenburg to ride alongside the disgraced daughter of a relative, who had been disowned for becoming pregnant by a footman. Again, she offered a home in England to a Hanoverian princess who had been refused permission to marry the man she loved, and who was cast out by her father for so doing; and she enjoyed what her daughter, Vicky, considered frivolous romantic novels.

I like to think that is Queen Victoria's voice on the recording - the snatch of it that I vaguely heard reminded me a little of the earliest recordings of our present Queen. She allowed herself to be filmed (albeit briefly) so it seems likely that she would be equally willing to allow herself to be recorded.

Bertie and Queen Victoria's passing

When Queen Victoria died in January 1901, the whole of Europe seemed to reel in shock at the end of a magnificent era. Her granddaughter, the then Crown Princess Marie of Roumania, wrote: "To see it all again if only for a day or two…to have a last peep at the old house…with out dear old Granny the last link is cut off!...I tell you it is inconceivable sorrow for me..."
Another granddaughter, Alice Albany (later of Athlone) wrote: "I had come to regard her as permanent and indestructible - like England and Windsor Castle.”

And a granddaughter-in-law, the future Queen Mary of England wrote: "The thought of England without the Queen is dreadful even to think of. God help us all.”

However, her heir, Bertie, King Edward VII, while dutifully paying his respects to his mother, seemed to breathe a huge sigh of relief and took very little time to throw out many vestiges of her reign. Statues of her favourite servant, John Brown, were disposed of in no time; Buckingham Palace was redecorated and Osborne House was given to the nation (with the exception of the Queen's rooms, which were for many decades gated off).

It might seem quite cold that Bertie should change everything so quickly and, at the same time, the Queen's passing was the passing of a person whose name had become synonymous with all that was best and worst of almost a century. Even to this day, the epithet of 'the Victorians' evokes so many images and it is interesting to look at the small woman who created such a mystique, with which her eldest son was so eager to dispense. "The Albertian era" would probably be more accurate a description of that time, since virtually all of the Queen's positive influence came from the influence of beloved Albert.

For Bertie, though, life in such a household was not an age of enlightenment, but an age of incarceration and asphyxiation. He was unfortunate in being the eldest son of a mother who had such fear of anyone in her family turning out like her 'wicked' Hanoverian uncles, and a father whose horror of infidelity sprang from the effects of his earliest childhood. These parents wanted to do the very best for their son - to keep him 'pure' and turn him into the ideal prince, and eventual king. Instead, unwittingly, they attempted unsuccessfully to curb everything which they saw as 'wrong' and to mould him into their image of what was perfect. Small wonder the poor boy sought outlets in excess; small wonder, too, that while he loved his parents, he strained at the bit and, eventually finding freedom, threw out so many relics of their era, which seemed to him the age of oppression.

Equally interesting is the speed with which Grand Duchess Elizabeth altered everything following the murder of her husband, Serge. Within a few months her life changed in such a way that it appears she must have been dreaming of something quite different for years. It's almost like a simmering, overheated engine that suddenly blows a gasket and it is shocking....but suddeny settles down into a quite different place. The influence of one person over another is tremendous but ultimately, everyone finds his/her own level and nothing lasts forever...

It's interesting that when someone passes on, there are those who choose to mourn for a length of time, and those who choose to move on. There's a weird obligation to feel sad about them, and about someone's passing and not to feel sad is seen as heartless but that isn't always the case. Bertie, without sentimentality, was surely correct. It was immensely sad that the era had gone...but to him a tyrant had let go of the reins and he was free.

It's a bit of a pity that Bertie didn't live long enough to really come into his stride and enjoy the power of his own benign influence for longer. King for only 9 years...had he lived as long as his mother did, I think the First World War might have been avoided.