"A Mere Child and Quite Inexperienced" More of Queen Victoria's Granddaughters

In June 1892, members of Queen Victoria’s household were shocked to read in the newspapers the announcement of the engagement of sixteen-year-old Missy of Edinburgh to the twenty-six-year- old heir to the throne of Roumania. For some months there had been much speculation about the young princess’s future; her name had already been linked with several continental princes, including ‘the odious Gunther,’ brother of the German Empress Dona and by the summer of 1892 the Prince and Princess of Wales were under the definite impression that Missy was on the verge of accepting their son, George’s proposal of marriage. The sudden announcement of her engagement brought a swift and unexpected end to all speculation.
“It seems to have come very rapidly to a climax,” wrote a stunned Queen Victoria, “The country is very insecure, the Society dreadful & she is a mere Child & quite inexperienced.”
The Prince and Princess of Wales, believing that George had been snubbed, were incensed but when the they berated Missy’s father, Affie, for his part in settling the affair, they soon learned that he had had no say whatsoever in the matter. His wife, the Anglophobic Duchess of Edinburgh and Coburg, had engineered and arranged everything without so much as consulting her husband. Her own unhappy marriage to unfaithful Affie, left the Duchess with a very low opinion of English princes and, determined to keep Missy from the overbearing influence of her grandmother, she had long ago decided that her daughter would marry a German. Ferdinand of Hohenzollern Sigmaringen, a German-born cousin of the Prussian Imperial family, suited the Duchess’ purpose in every respect. Unassuming to the point of dullness, he was living a lonely existence in Bucharest as heir to his uncle, the childless King Carol of Roumania. According to Vicky, he was popular in Roumania and: ‘Is very nice and good and behaves so well to the King and Queen as is as much liked there as they are capable of liking any foreigner.’
The Duchess had little doubt that her sparkling daughter, ten years his junior, would make an instant impression on the shy young man and arranged a meeting at the home of their mutual cousin, Charlotte of Prussia.
The first encounter appeared unpromising. Unaware of what was expected of her, Missy paid little attention to the prince, who seemed far more engrossed in the scintillating conversation of the more sophisticated Charlotte. But the Duchess refused to give up hope and immediately arranged a further meeting in Munich. Now, in a more romantic setting, Missy, uninhibited by her cousin, found the opportunity to shine. Munich was, as she later recalled:
“…the town of towns for this sort of thing…We were both young, there was love in the air, it was springtime and Mamma had a happy, expectant face.”
By the time they met again that summer at Cousin Willy’s Potsdam palace, the brief courtship culminated in the prince’s proposal. Eager to please her mother, Missy accepted him.
If Queen Victoria was stunned by the news, her Court was horrified. Apart from Missy’s youth, stories of the strange goings-on in Bucharest, made the prospect of sending the innocent girl to Roumania appear even more unsavoury. Ferdinand’s aunt, Queen Elizabeth, was a somewhat eccentric figure who, writing under the pseudonym, Carmen Sylva, had earned a considerable reputation as an author. She surrounded herself with Bohemian friends who shared her literary tastes, among them a young poetess named Hélène Vavarescu. So alarmed was King Carol by his wife’s extreme attachment to the mystical Hélène, that he had exiled the Queen from Court and sent her back to her mother the Princess of Wied.
Throughout her three-year banishment, Queen Elizabeth refused to abandon her protégé and actively encouraged her nephew, Ferdinand, to fall under her spell. Although Hélène was not the most stunning of women, being, in Vicky’s opinion, ‘…not at all handsome, short, rather fat and not distinguee looking, but has fine large oriental eyes and beautiful teeth, with very marked eyebrows and black hair,” the lonely prince fell unashamedly in love. Marriage to a mere poetess was out of the question for the heir to the throne, yet even at the time of his engagement, it was rumoured that Ferdinand’s infatuation remained undiminished.
“Disgusted to see the announcement of the marriage of poor pretty P. Marie of Edinburgh to the P. of Rumania!!!” wrote one of Queen Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting, “It does seem too cruel a shame to cart that nice pretty girl off to semi-barbaric Roumania and a man to the knowledge of all Europe desperately in love with another woman.”
With her usual concern, Queen Victoria decided to discover the facts for herself and invited Ferdinand and Missy to Windsor. Satisfied by the appearance and manners of the tongue-tied prince, she commented that ‘Missy looked very pretty, and seemed very happy about her engagement,’ and gave the couple her blessing.
In early January 1893, an excited, if nervous Missy arrived in Sigmaringen with her million franc dowry. In the presence of the usual gathering of royalties the wedding ceremonies took place according to both the Protestant and Roman Catholic rites and the couple departed for their honeymoon. The wrench of leaving her family to begin a new life with a virtual stranger was heart-rending for the young bride, and her diffident groom did little to ease the tension. The wedding night proved disastrous:
“I tried to respond to [Ferdinand’s] passion but…there was an empty feeling about it all; I still seemed to be waiting for something that did not come.”
Matters did not improve in the coming weeks and it was not only in the bedroom that phlegmatic Ferdinand disappointed his exuberant bride. When the brief honeymoon was over, the couple moved on to Bucharest where Missy quickly realised that her husband lived so much in awe of his uncle that he dared not contradict him in anything. When the king forbade the young couple from entertaining or attending social functions to avoid creating an unpleasant rivalry among the Roumanian aristocracy, Ferdinand meekly yielded to his order. Missy’s familiar ladies-in-waiting were dispatched home and the adolescent Crown Princess found herself isolated in a foreign country with a husband she barely knew.
Life in the gloomy and gaudy Byzantine palaces was intolerably tedious for such a high-spirited girl and when, much to her surprise, she became pregnant within a fortnight of her wedding, her loneliness was more acute than ever. Contrary to Missy’s wishes that the baby should be born at her country estate, Sinaia, King Carol insisted on her remaining in Bucharest, and resolved to make all the arrangements even to the appointment of midwives and doctors.
Homesick and friendless, Missy could hardly wait for her mother’s arrival but the appearance of the Duchess merely exacerbated the tension. Not only did the Duchess override all King Carol’s plans, insisting that the baby should be born at Sinaia, but was equally determined to resist Queen Victoria’s attempts to provide an English midwife.
“I had terrible fights with Granny dear about an English nurse…but will not give up the [Russian] one I have already engaged and will bring her with me, instead of the old gossip Granny wants you to have.”
Whatever Missy made of her mother’s choice of midwife, she was at least grateful that the Duchess insisted that she should be given chloroform during labour. Within months of the birth of a son, Carol, in October 1893, Missy was pregnant again and consequently denied the possibility of any social life whatsoever. What was more, as she suffocated in the stifling atmosphere of the Court, her husband, she soon discovered, was happily enjoying affairs with various other women.
The return of the eccentric Queen Elizabeth did little to ease Missy’s plight. With more than a hint of jealousy for the Crown Princess’s youth and charm, the Queen went out of her way to crush Missy’s spirit. Though childless herself, she constantly interfered in the upbringing of Missy’s children, even appointing the nursery staff and giving them instructions to report to her any misdemeanour on the princess’ part. Matters came to a head when the Queen insisted on keeping a governess of whom Missy did not approve. At her wits’ end, Missy ‘ran home to mother’ in Coburg and refused to return until the woman was dismissed.
Such behaviour earned the Crown Princess the reputation of being ‘neurotic and arrogant’ but with her ‘instinctive sense of self-preservation’ she refused to be crushed. By the time she returned to Bucharest, she was determined to take charge of her own life and make use of her many talents. She had never doubted her own fascination and, if Ferdinand did not give her the attention she craved, numerous admirers were constantly on hand to flatter and reassure her.
“Princess Marie was…famous for her beauty,” wrote the Russian Prince Felix Youssoupov, “she had wonderful eyes of such a rare shade of greyish-blue that it was impossible to forget them. Her figure was tall and slender as a young poplar and she bewitched me so completely that I followed her about like a shadow.”
The youthful Prince Felix was not the only one to express his devotion to the beautiful Crown Princess and rumours - fuelled largely by the malevolent tongue of Cousin Charlotte who had recently arrived in Roumania - spread that she had embarked on an affair with a Russian cousin, Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich. When the news reached Coburg, her horrified mother demanded an explanation. Affronted by the accusations Missy vehemently denied any wrongdoing, but even she knew that her passionate personality could not long endure a disappointing marriage to a prematurely aging husband.
“What does one find,” she wrote in frustration, “a man intensely in love with you & who has the right to ask everything of you, when you ask him to read to you in the evening he hurries over it only to get to bed for other amusements, when one wants to talk to him, he is reading he newspapers, when one says she is lonely, he says you have the children, he is perfectly devoted to you and yet he will not even give up a cigar to sit a moment with you!”
The romance with Boris may have been innocent enough but, unlike Sophie in Greece, Missy was not prepared to accept the prevalent view that there were different moral codes for men and women. She had done her duty by providing the country with an heir, and now, aware of her husband’s infidelities, she sought lovers of her own. Tales of her penchant for handsome young men circulated through the Courts of Europe, leading Cousin Willy to refer to her as a ‘meddlesome little flirt’ and ‘English harlot.’
Though the rumours were exaggerated, Missy made little effort to conceal her affairs and so complacent was her husband that he happily employed her long-term lover, the dashing Prince Barbo Stirbey, in his household. For her part, Missy often praised the beauty of Ferdinand’s mistresses. Their mutual acquiescence suited all parties and allowed the Crown Prince and Princess to become good friends.
Whatever her opinion of Ferdinand, Missy loved their six children: Carol, Elizabeth, Nicolas, Marie, Ileana and Mircea (the youngest of whom was probably fathered by her lover Prince Stirbey). Thriving on adulation herself, she lavished praise upon them, refusing to reprimand them and spoiling them so terribly that the result would eventually be disastrous not only for Missy personally but for the whole country.
Her relationship with her eldest son bore striking similarities to that of Aunt Vicky and Cousin Willy. At an early age, Carol was taken from Missy’s care to be placed under the supervision of tutors appointed by the King. The most prominent and influential of his teachers was a repressed homosexual who fell in love with his pupil and filled him with such an inflated sense of his own importance that his arrogance rivalled that of the Kaiser. Like Willy, too, Carol simultaneously worshipped and resented his mother, one moment gazing adoringly at her, the next going out of his way to wound her.
Missy’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth was, like Cousin Charlotte, a difficult and moody child who grew into a cold, unaffectionate woman, intent on stirring up trouble for her family. As was the case with Aunt Vicky, Missy’s chief consolation came from her younger children all of whom, like Moretta, Sophie and Mossy, remained devoted to their mother.
It was characteristic of Missy that, out of a seemingly desperate situation she had risen and would continue to rise in the estimation of her husband’s future subjects. Outwardly she and Ferdinand played the role of a happily married couple and, as Crown Princess, her personal charm endeared her to the people of ‘semi-barbaric’ Roumania in a manner that could never be rivalled by her more puritanical cousin, Sophie, Crown Princess of neighbouring, civilised Greece. With her natural flair and verve, Missy compensated for a loveless marriage in the arms a fervent lover - an example that would soon be followed by her younger sister, Ducky.

"A Passion for Beauty" - Marie of Roumania

I came across this very beautiful work of art, taken from the diaries of Queen Marie of Roumania, read beautifully and with beautiful music and pictorial accompaniment. I love her descriptions of beauty and her eye for beauty, and felt so uplifted by it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnMDG14Ll58
Now, as November with its dark rains, dark nights and winds and occasional glimpses of the beauty of autumn comes around again, we are into the remembrance of the dead, of old faded assassination attempts, of poppies and the muddy battlefields of war and in such circumstances, I think Marie of Roumania’s view of the world is so uplifting. I do not know of any other character of the era who when life gave her lemons, made lemonade’ so brilliantly.

"After all, they are English..." - More of 'Queen Victoria's Granddaughters"

By the time of Lenchen’s wedding Queen Victoria’s second son, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh was causing his mother almost as much consternation as his elder brother, Bertie, had done. A rough-speaking, hard-drinking sailor, ‘Affie’ first shocked the Queen by enjoying an affair with a woman in Malta before developing an infatuation for his sister-in-law, the Princess of Wales.
For a brief spell in early 1868 the Queen saw a possibility of redemption. That spring, during a visit to Australia, Affie fell victim to a would-be assassin and was shot in the back. While deploring the violence Queen Victoria hoped that the realization that God had spared him from death, might bring about a change of character. She was quickly disillusioned. The good wishes he received merely increased his arrogance and his behaviour became so brash that the Queen could hardly bear his company:
“His presence in my house…” she wrote to Vicky, “was a source of no satisfaction or comfort. He came only for moments and, when he did, displeased high and low and made mischief. In short he was quite a stranger to me.”
As ever the Queen saw no alternative but to adopt her typical remedy for the treatment of errant princes and set about seeking him a wife. Various brides were suggested and rejected until, at a gathering in Denmark, Affie came across twenty-one-year-old Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna, daughter of Tsar Alexander II.
The Princess of Wales was quick to promote the match; she had received favourable reports of the Grand Duchess from her own sister, Dagmar, who was married to Marie’s brother, the Tsarevich Alexander. Princess Alice, too, spoke highly of the Grand Duchess who, as a first cousin of Alice’s husband, Louis, had been a regularly visitor to Darmstadt:
“[She is so] dear and nice, with such a kind fresh face, so simple and girlish….She is very fond of children, and of a quiet country life - that is the ideal she looks for.”
But, for all their flattering descriptions and Affie’s enthusiasm for the match, the notion of an Anglo-Russian alliance was received very badly both in St. Petersburg and Windsor.
While the Tsar doubted that a rough sailor prince, nine years her senior, was worthy of his only daughter, Queen Victoria could not have been more disgruntled had Affie said he intended to marry his Maltese mistress. Since the Crimean War she distrusted all Russians and considered the Romanovs far too decadent for her liking. The prospect of an Orthodox princess tripping through her palaces surrounded by chanting priests was more than she could bear and, as usual it was Alice who took the brunt of her rage. This time she was accused of spoiling Affie and giving him ‘grand ideas’ during his visits to Darmstadt.
In an effort to distract him from Marie, Queen Victoria frantically searched for alternative candidates but Affie, dazzled by the prospect of an exotic bride and the immense wealth that she would bring from St. Petersburg, refused to be impressed. Rejecting all other suggestions, he became so obnoxious, loitering gloomily about the palace and insulting the servants that at last Queen Victoria yielded. After a great deal of haggling with the Russian court about the correct protocol, she eventually allowed Affie to depart with the Prince and Princess of Wales for Russia where the lavish wedding took place in St. Petersburg in January 1874.
When the couple returned to England, Queen Victoria saw her new daughter-in-law in a different light. She found her charming, ‘a treasure,’ and, if not conventionally beautiful, she had a ‘pretty bust.’ What was more, unlike the Princess of Wales, the Duchess of Edinburgh had no desire to fritter away the hours in endless entertaining, but enjoyed the more studious pursuits that appealed to the Queen.
“I have formed a high opinion of her, her wonderfully even, cheerful, satisfied temper - her kind and indulgent disposition, free from bigotry and intolerance, and her serious intelligent mind - so entirely free from everything fast - and so full of occupation and interest in everything makes her a most agreeable companion.’
Though it was true that she surrounded herself with icons and chanting priests, her devotion to Orthodoxy did not impinge on the rest of the family. Nor was she as materialistic as Queen Victoria had anticipated. Members of the Court were shocked to discover how little attention she gave to her appearance within her own home. On formal occasions, however, dripping in so many priceless jewels, she made her English in-laws appear dowdy in comparison.
Marie made an equally favourable impression on the British public. Shortly after the wedding, The Ladies’ Treasury reported that:
“The Grand Duchess speaks English better than most English girls; she has a most pleasing manner, and a presence singularly ladylike and distinguished.”
Unfortunately, Marie could not reciprocate the English sentiments. Life at the English Court was exceedingly tedious after the ostentation of St. Petersburg. The late nights were tiring; the food bland; and her home, Clarence House, uninteresting. Her mother-in-law’s constant interference was more than the proud daughter of the Tsar could stomach and it irked her that she, an Imperial Highness and daughter of the Tsar, should come lower in the order of precedence than her sisters-in-law - mere Royal Highnesses.
Nor, as she learned to her cost, was the taciturn Affie an ideal Prince Charming. Disliked by the servants, to whom he was often rude, his favourite occupation was drinking to excess and entertaining his guests with discordant tunes on his violin until it almost came as a relief to Marie that he spent much of his time at sea. Nevertheless, the marriage produced five children: one son and four daughters.
Nine months after the wedding the Queen was delighted at the birth of ‘young Affie,’ but relations between her and Marie were less cordial a year later when it came to a second confinement. Queen Victoria, no doubt recalling Vicky’s traumatic experiences in Prussia, was convinced that English doctors were far more skilful and delicate in matters of childbirth than any of their foreign counterparts. It both annoyed and alarmed her that, when Marie retired to her country house, Eastwell Park in Kent, she insisted on being attended by German medics. In spite of the Queen’s strong objections, Marie stuck to her guns and a perfectly healthy daughter, was born on 29th October. The christening at Windsor Castle on 15th December brought a further disagreement between mother- and daughter-in-law. Although delighted by her new granddaughter, Queen Victoria was most put out that the child was not to be called Victoria, but rather Marie Alexandra Victoria - though, within the family, she was always to be known as ‘Missy.’ Nonetheless, when Marie went further and insisted on breast-feeding the baby, Queen Victoria grudgingly resigned herself to the inevitable:
“She nurses the child - which will enchant you,” she wrote to Vicky. “As long as she remains at home - and does not publish the fact to the world - by taking the baby everywhere and can do it well - which they say she does now - I have nothing to say (beyond my unfortunately - from my earliest childhood - totally insurmountable disgust for the process).”
Whether or not Marie knew of the Queen’s aversion to breast-feeding, she was already growing weary of her constant interference and it came as relief to know that soon she could escape from England and her overbearing mother-in-law. At birth Affie had been chosen as successor to his uncle, the Duke of Coburg, and the family would eventually settle in Germany•. In the meantime, his appointment as Commander of the Mediterranean fleet provided an opportunity to move to Valetta in Malta. There, in the secluded freedom of the San Antonio Palace the Duchess of Edinburgh came into her own. There, and later in Coburg, she was able to live, as Missy described:
“…entirely according to her desires, uncontrolled by Grandmama Queen and uncriticised by those who were inclined to find her ways foreign and out of keeping with British traditions.”
It was in Malta that a second daughter, Victoria Melita (Ducky) was born on the evening of Saturday 25th November 1876 and christened in the San Antonio Palace on New Year’s Day 1877. Three weeks later, leaving their children in the care of governesses and nannies, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh embarked on a tour of Greece. Two years were to pass before Marie’s third daughter Alexandra (Sandra), was born in Coburg, and in 1884, she gave birth to her last child, Beatrice (Baby Bee), at Eastwell Park.
Just as Vicky had became increasingly determined to protect her children from the Prussian influence, so Marie, disenchanted with England, resolutely ensured that her children would be free from the English influence. Bearing in mind that her son should one day be Duke of Coburg, she dispatched him at the earliest opportunity to the military academy in Potsdam. Her daughters, too, she decided to raise as Germans, appointing for them a German governess, who spoke no English and, as Marie herself refused to speak to them in English, German became their first language causing Danish ‘Aunt Alix’ to carp:
“It is a pity those children should be entirely brought up as Germans. Last time I saw them they spoke with a very strong foreign accent - which I think is a great pity as after all they are English.”
With her great love of all things German, the Queen might have been content, but their visits to England became so infrequent that she complained that she hardly knew the ‘darling…lovely children’ and wished she might see more of them. The Princess of Wales was even more disgusted when Missy and Ducky were confirmed in the German Lutheran Church, and wrote bitterly to her son, George:
‘Now they won’t even know they have ever been English…even Aunt Vicky was furious about it.’
Her criticism fell on deaf ears. By then George was smitten by his lively Edinburgh cousins who contrasted so dramatically with his insipid sisters it was hard to believe that they had sprung from the same stock.
Histrionic and intriguing, the granddaughters of two of the most powerful monarchs in the world grew up with a love of adventure, an awareness of their own charisma and a Russian pride inherited from their mother. From their father, whom the Queen claimed they worshipped, they learned a complete disregard for convention, bordering on eccentricity.
Though strict and exacting, the Duchess did everything possible to encourage the girls to develop their many talents. Beautiful Missy, a gifted artist, sculptress and writer, was equally proficient at riding and dancing, and the mere sight of her was enough to make Cousin George’s heart race. She was deeply attached to her younger - and taller - sister, Ducky, whom she described as a ‘rather passionate and often misunderstood child.’ Like their cousin, Victoria of Hesse, the girls had a passion for riding fast horses and, on the ponies that their father had brought over from England, they galloped apace through the Maltese fields, dispelling the tension in the household as their parents grew further apart.
Compared to her adventurous sisters, Sandra, having neither their healthy constitutions nor strength of will, appeared dull. Even her mother considered her ‘uninteresting’ but her more placid temperament provided a stabilising influence among the siblings and made her an easier companion than the youngest ‘Baby Bee’ - a ‘somewhat critical’ child who would later ‘almost lose her mind’ in the throes of unrequited love.
If the Wales children gaped in wonder at their fascinating cousins, the Edinburghs must have been equally baffled by the frailty of the English girls. No two families could have differed more starkly. While the Princess of Wales’ daughters fell ill at the slightest whim, the Duchess of Edinburgh insisted that her daughters must maintain a ‘stiff upper lip’ in the face of tragedy or illness. They were not allowed to be ill; they must eat, without complaint, everything set before them and even throughout their childhood they were encouraged to participate in adult conversations.
Far from being coddled in sheltered nurseries the Edinburghs were forced, from their earliest years, to confront the very real scandals and perils faced by many monarchies of the age. Not only were the girls aware of their parents’ unhappy marriage, but they doubtless heard stories of their Russian grandfather’s affair with a woman thirty years his junior, who bore him four children. His wife, the sickly and consumptive Tsarina, unable to tolerate the cold Russian winters, frequently repaired to the warmer climes of her native Darmstadt. In her absence the Tsar installed his young mistress in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg and there, to the horror of the Imperial Family the young woman remained giving birth to his child even as his unhappy wife lay on her deathbed. With inordinate haste after the Tsarina’s death, the Tsar secretly married his mistress. The whole of Europe was shocked, sympathising wholeheartedly with the late Tsarina who had, in Vicky’s opinion,
“Suffered cruelly from her husband’s infidelity and that she never uttered a murmur, complaint or reproach – nor ever mentioned the subject to a living soul but died of a broken heart.”
Within the Imperial Family a feud ensued that would remain unresolved for many more years than the brief spell that the Tsar enjoyed with his young bride.
One afternoon in March 1881, when Missy was barely six years old, her grandfather, Tsar Alexander II, was returning from a meeting at the Mikhailovsky Palace in St. Petersburg when a bomb exploded beneath his carriage. Miraculously, the Tsar emerged from the wreckage unharmed but as he turned to tend to his wounded guard, a second terrorist rushed forward hurling another device that exploded at his feet. Disfigured and bleeding, he was rushed to Winter Palace where, as his young wife fell hysterically upon his mangled body, he died in agony.
Marie hurried to St. Petersburg for the funeral and even the Russophobe Queen Victoria was aghast at the news.
“I share your horror, condemnation and sorrow,” she wrote to Vicky, “at the death (unparalleled) of the poor, kind Emperor Alexander…Poor darling Marie on whom her poor father doted, it is almost too much to bear. But she is very courageous.”
The shock waves rippled across the continent and nowhere were they felt more keenly than in the quiet Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, where Princess Alice’s daughters were already struggling to come to terms with a tragedy of their own.

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.