The Kiss of Death

From the room next door, 18-year-old Princess Alice could hear her beloved father’s ragged and uneven breathing. She had moved her own bed to this chamber so that she could be by his side in seconds whenever he needed her. For two weeks, Alice had been Prince Albert’s chief care giver; mopping his fevered brow, changing his linens, following after him when he was strong enough to take a few steps. Never hearty, Albert was left with little energy or will to fight off typhoid.

Quietly and tenderly, young Alice saw to his every need and, when she heard the death rattle in his throat, she personally went to bring her mother, Queen Victoria, to say good-bye. On Dec. 14, Prince Albert passed away with the loyal Alice at his side. As Victoria lost herself in the dramatic realization of all she had lost, Alice shifted her care to her mother, nursing her through the early, violent stages of a grief that would ultimately last for almost 40 years. Alice also became Victoria’s unofficial secretary for the next several months—until her own wedding, a marriage pre-approved by her late father, took her to her new home in the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt in Germany.

Alice quickly started her own family; five daughters and two sons arrived at fairly regular intervals. Unlike her mother, Alice was a natural and devoted mom. She even breastfed her children—much to Victoria’s disgust.

But Alice’s loving-kindness extended well beyond her own family. She began visiting the homes of the poor and offering her assistance, sometimes without her benefactors even knowing who she was. “I feel the want of going about and doing the little good that is in my power,” the newlywed princess wrote home.

Alice actively supported and visited hospitals, often caring for the sick and injured herself. When war pushed its way into Hesse-Darmstadt, she spent the last few days of her third pregnancy making bandages for the wounded. A friend of the famous Florence Nightingale, Alice created an institute to train nurses using Nightingale’s modern nursing techniques.

Unafraid to personally nurse soldiers and the most destitute of the poor, Alice naturally waited upon her own children whenever they were ill. When her oldest daughter was stricken with diphtheria, a highly contagious bacterial disease, in early November 1878, Alice automatically looked after her, careful always to avoid personal contact for fear of infection. One by one, each child became ill, except Elizabeth the future martyred saint of the Russian Orthodox Church. Even her husband contracted the dreadful disease. Alice tirelessly nursed them all and, one by one, they each recovered.

Each except the youngest, four-year-old Mary. The swelling in little Mary’s throat and mouth continued to grow until the tiny princess finally suffocated to death on Nov. 15. Her devastated mother barely allowed herself time to grieve as she continued to fight for the rest of her family’s survival. “The pain is beyond words,” she telegraphed to Queen Victoria.
The tragic news was kept from the other patients for a couple of weeks until 10-year-old Prince Louis, now past the worst danger, asked about his little sister. Alice broke the news to him as gently as she could. When the broken-hearted little boy began to cry, Alice hugged him and kissed him tenderly.

It was her last act of kindness. The disease struck the exhausted princess with virulence. On Dec. 14, exactly 17 years after she heard the death rattle in her father’s throat, Alice drew her final breath.

A mournful Victoria, who had sent her own doctor racing to Alice’s side, wrote “that this…sweet child…should be called back to her father on the very anniversary of his death seems almost incredible and most mysterious.”

Ever mindful of that dreadful anniversary, Alice’s last words were, “Dear Papa.” She was 35.

Darling Baby: Beatrice's Brief Childhood

Nine children is a large family in any age. For Queen Victoria, who had prayed not to have too many children, the arrival of the ninth child might have been a less-than-delightful occasion. And yet, the birth of this child welcomed one of the brightest periods in the marriage of Victoria and her husband, Albert. Two months later, Victoria officially gave Albert the title of “Prince Consort,” finally providing him with an official role in the country he had called home for nearly two decades.

From the moment she arrived, Beatrice Mary Victoria Feodore, or “Baby” as she was usually called, was the darling of the family. Her nearest brother was four years older and her closest sister was nine years older—she was, indeed, the baby of the household and she was indulged in ways that her oldest siblings would never have imagined.

Both of her parents adored her. The Queen, who herself admitted that she only liked pretty children, was delighted by Baby’s big blue eyes and tiny mouth. The oldest child, Vicky, remarked that Baby was “quite the prettiest of us all, she is quite like a fairy.” Their father agreed, but also added that she was also “the most amusing baby we have had.”

As with most daddies, he was, of course, prejudiced. He could find humor in even the most annoying of Baby’s behaviors as evidenced when he wrote of the day-old princess’s wailing: “Baby practices her scales like a good prima donna before a performance and has a good voice!”

Albert was a strict father but could also be lovingly indulgent. He was certainly a more natural parent than Victoria. “It is indeed a pity that you find no consolation in the company of your children,” he once wrote to his wife, “. . . It is not possible to be on comfortable terms with people you have just been scolding.”

Baby suffered far less of Mama’s scolding: her big blue eyes and naughty charm earned more laughter than reprimands. Even when the bouncing toddler used the Queen’s apron strings to tie her to her chair, no punishments followed. The youngster was still invited down to tea and encouraged to entertain guests with songs and bits of poetry.

Once, when Baby took too much of a treat, Victoria gently reminded her, “Baby mustn’t have that. It’s not good for Baby.” To which the golden-hair pixie replied, “But she likes it my dear.”

While Beatrice showed none of the fear that characterized the relationships between her siblings and the Queen, her adoration of her father was even more apparent. She was definitely a daddy’s girl. Beatrice was born at just the right moment to earn Albert’s deep affection, for she was able to fill a hole left in his heart by the marriage of his oldest daughter, Vicky. Bright and lovely, Vicky had always been Albert’s favorite. She was more clever than any of her brothers, more lovely than any of her sisters and more responsive to the education Albert had outlined for his children. But, at 17, she was in love with the future German emperor and Albert sadly had to watch her sail away to a new life on the Continent when Beatrice as only nine months old.

Although he corresponded frequently with Vicky, her departure left plenty of time for him to indulge his prettily charming new baby. When Vicky began having children in rapid succession, Albert wrote that these infants should model themselves after their Aunt Beatrice. Baby herself delighted in being an aunt—whenever she was asked to do something she didn’t like, the three-year-old excused herself because she needed to write letters to her niece.

Baby Beatrice started most days by toddling into her father’s dressing room where she would watch him as he shaved. Then, Albert would sing to her in English and his native German and enjoy her own little songs and stories. Later, he would place her on his knee as he played piano or organ, sharing with her a love and talent for music that would be even more pronounced in her than among all of his children, each of whom was musically gifted.

At supper time, Albert would sometimes wrap Beatrice in a large napkin and swing her in the air. Even when she was naughty, he couldn’t help but chuckle at her cleverness. Once, when he scolded her for being troublesome, she replied, “No, Baby’s not. She’s a little girl.”

Each day of Beatrice’s early childhood seemed more golden than the day before: playing in the miniature house Albert had constructed, walking along the seashore of their house at Osborne, having tea with her mother on the family yacht, entertaining her brothers and sisters who rewarded her for reciting words in French.

Then, suddenly, Baby’s world turned upside down. Early in December 1861, Albert became terribly ill with typhoid. By Dec. 6, Victoria was desperate to raise his spirits and help him rally. She led the four-year-old Beatrice to his bedside. The bubbly little girl recounted her latest French verses to him and managed to make him laugh. She kissed him and held his hand for a long time before being led away so that he could rest.

It was the last time she would ever see him.

Eight nights later, the Princess was sleeping peacefully down the hall, when Albert took his final breath. Shocked and horrified, Victoria raced from his deathbed to the room where Albert’s littlest angel lay nestled in innocence, unaware of the family’s grief. Victoria gently lifted Beatrice from her bed, careful not to awaken her, and dashed back to her own room. She wrapped Beatrice in Albert’s nightshirt and placed her in the bed beside herself.

There, the restless and distraught mother awaited a dawn that would forever change her sleeping Baby’s life.

Victoria’s Secrets: 10 Things You Don’t Know About the Famous Queen

She’s so famous they named an entire age for her. Towns, provinces, lakes, waterfalls, etc., etc. around the globe (in Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas!) were given her name. The popular conception of Victoria is that of a staid, matronly old lady who was stubborn and, perhaps, a bit of a prude. These things may all be true—in part—but the real Victoria was also lively and not quite as immune to temptations of the flesh as she might have history believe. Here are ten things you might not know about one of the most famous women in history.

1. Victoria was raised by a single mother.
Victoria’s father, the Duke of Kent, died when she was only eight months old. She was raised, therefore, by her German mother, Victoria of Saxe-Coburg. She was the only child of the Duke although his Duchess had two other children, Charles and Feodora, by her first husband. The elder Victoria was only 17 when her family married her to Charles Prince of Leinengen, who was 23 years older . She became a widow for the first time at 27. When she married the Duke, 19 years her senior, she was overseeing a small German principality on behalf of her young son. After the Duke’s death, she remained in England, although she received little support from the royal family or the government. In fact, she feuded with her brother-in-law, King William IV, and grew increasingly paranoid that her daughter’s life was in danger from the royal family. It was not a pleasant environment for a lonely young girl. Queen Victoria later wrote that, in her childhood, she “did not know what a happy domestic life was.” As soon as she became queen, she made sure that her mother had no authority.

2. She became queen through multiple tragedies.
The Duke of Kent was the fourth son of King George III. All three of his elder brothers should have had many children who would have been ahead of Victoria in line to the throne. (See “The Royal Baby Race”) The eldest brother, the Prince of Wales (later George IV), hated his wife and only managed to have one child, Princess Charlotte, who died after giving birth to a stillborn son. The Duke of York also was not fond of his wife and they had no children. The Duke of Clarence (later William IV) had 10 little FitzClarences by Mrs. Jordan but his two daughters by his wife died as infants. All of these barren marriages and premature deaths left the path clear for the Duke of Kent. Then, his own premature death from pneumonia secured the throne for his infant daughter. Had he lived longer, he might have fathered sons who would have taken precedence over their older sister in the line of succession. In all, eight people had to die for her to become Queen.

3. Her name wasn’t Victoria.
When she was born, the Prince of Wales was serving as Regent for his father, “mad” King George III. The Regent wasn’t particularly excited about the Duke of Kent’s new child. Recently bereaved by the death of his only daughter and grandchild, he also did not think the Kent child had a chance of succeeding to the throne. He, therefore, was less than thrilled when the parents proposed the rather grandiose name of Georgiana Charlotte Augusta Alexandrina Victoria (after, respectively, the Regent, his dead daughter, one of his sisters, the Emperor of Russia, and the baby’s mother.) As nominal head of the family, he delayed the baby’s christening and refused to allow the proposed name. During the christening, the Archbishop of Canterbury had to ask (with rather more urgency than usual) what the baby would be called. “Alexandrina,” the Regent responded petulantly. The Duke of Kent asked whether she might have a second name, perhaps Elizabeth. The Regent finally allowed her to be named for mother, but only if Victoria came after the Emperor’s name. So, Queen Victoria was called “Drina” as a child and Alexandrina remained her official name until she herself insisted on Victoria.

4. Victoria inherited the throne in her nightie.
At barely 18 years old, Princess Victoria of Kent was awakened at about six o’clock in the morning. Knowing the news she was about to receive—her uncle King William IV’s illness had been no secret—she put on her housecoat and met alone with the Lord Chamberlain and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Despite her extremely casual attire and her tender years, the new Queen quickly asserted herself. She refused to allow her mother to accompany her, she met that day with the Prime Minister and with the Privy Council unattended by any female chaperone, in contrast to the standards of the day. Barely five-foot tall with a tiny, bell-like voice, the new Queen was rapidly establishing herself as a giant among the men of the day.

5. Victoria married her first cousin.
The closest father figure in Victoria’s childhood was her maternal uncle, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who was also the widower of her tragic cousin, Charlotte, the Regent’s daughter. Leopold had a keen interest in Victoria’s advancement, seeing himself as a protector of her claims to the throne that should have gone to his own child. Even after securing another throne for himself—as the first King of the new Kingdom of Belgium—Leopold maintained a strong influence on the young Victoria. He decided that the Coburgs should try to keep the British throne in their family and advocated a marriage between his sister’s daughter, Victoria, and his brother’s son, Albert. At first, 17-year-old Victoria was not impressed with 16-year-old Albert. However, she soon changed her mind. She wrote to Albert’s father, her Uncle Ernest, that Albert, “possessed every quality” to make her “perfectly happy.” Two years later, after becoming queen, she proposed to Albert, whom she found “beautiful” and “fascinating.” The arranged marriage became a devoted love match.

6. Victoria enjoyed her sex life. . .
From the moment of her engagement, Victoria indulged in kissing Albert “again and again.” She not only relied on Albert’s advice in their public lives together, and promoted nearly any project or plan he proposed, but she also enjoyed a quite intense physical relationship him. At a time when many young married women were admonished to endure their marital duty (“close your eyes and think of England”), Victoria clearly did not have to rely on patriotism to inspire her in the bedroom. When the death of his father required Albert to return briefly to Germany without her, Victoria bemoaned her uncomfortably chaste state to their Uncle Leopold, saying the thought of being separated for even one night was “quite dreadful.” Even more bluntly, she later wrote her oldest daughter about being “clasped and held tight in the sacred Hours at Night when the world seemed only to be ourselves.” Imagine your own mother saying that!

7. But not the consequences.
Despite her chemistry with Albert, Victoria was openly unhappy to find herself pregnant again and again and again. She had hoped to have a few years alone with her handsome husband, but their first child was born barely nine months after the wedding and the second just 12 months after that. By their 17th anniversary, the couple had nine children. While Albert proved an attentive father, in many ways the opposite of the stereotypical Victorian father, Victoria was not a natural mother. She did not like infants and even wrote that two of her babies were “too frightful.” She wrote that “as a rule children are a bitter disappointment.” Even as a grandmother, she could be less than affectionate; after the birth of her fourteenth grandchild, she wrote that the birth of yet another “little red lump” was “a very uninteresting thing.” She later clarified that she admired “pretty children” although she did not like to have too many around her. Early in her marriage, she had written that a large family would be “a hardship and inconvenience”—an insightful statement from the mother of nine and grandmother of 42.

8. Victoria was a single mother.
Alas, one of the reasons she was so burdened by her maternal role, or so she said, was because she had to head such a huge family entirely alone. Like her mother before her, Victoria became a single mother; Albert died of typhoid at a tragically young age. Only 42 at the time, Victoria still had seven children at a home, aged four to 18. Her eldest daughter was married and living in Germany. Her eldest son, Bertie, was in college. In fact, she blamed Bertie for Albert’s death, believing that his fatal illness had been contracted when he rushed to Cambridge to chastise Bertie for a sexual indiscretion. Although Albert had been ill for some time prior to this and had been involved in other stressful activities—including his successful intervention in the Trent Affair of the American Civil War—Victoria never forgave their eldest son. She also clung to her youngest child, Beatrice, allowing her to marry only when the prospective bridegroom agreed to live with his mother-in-law for the rest of her life.

9. She was the grandmother of Europe.
By the time Victoria died in 1901, she had 96 descendants, some of whom had predeceased her. Among her children and grandchildren were the crowned heads of England, Germany, Greece, Norway, Russia, Rumania, Spain and Sweden. All of the current monarchs in Europe are descended from her except the Queen of the Netherlands and the King of the Belgians. As of September 1, 2009, according to the Monarchies of Europe website, there have been 1,053 descendants of Queen Victoria, including 828 who are still living. The number would be even higher except that many cousins married cousins. In fact, Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip are both her great-great grandchildren. She is descended through Victoria’s oldest son and he through her second daughter.

10. We’ll never know all of her secrets.
Although Victoria was a prolific writer, (it is estimated she wrote 60 million words!) documenting her long life through thousands of letters and journal entries, we have not inherited this vast resource in tact. Victoria herself often edited earlier journals. More crucially, her youngest daughter Beatrice transcribed her journals after Victoria’s death, electing to omit or revise passages she felt unworthy of her mother’s heritage and then burning the originals. Although an earlier copy exists of Victoria’s journals prior to Albert’s death in 1861, the four decades of her widowhood have been whitewashed by her well-meaning daughter. Among the topics that may not have survived Princess Beatrice’s editorial work is the true nature of Victoria’s relationship with her Highland servant, John Brown. Speculation at the time alleged that Victoria had an improper, even sexual, relationship with him, and her sharpest critics called her “Mrs. Brown.” That unusual friendship (or more!) is the subject of the excellent film for which Judi Dench earned an Oscar nomination in the title role.