Grandmama of Europe: The Crowned Descendants of Queen Victoria

by Theo Aronson

  And there were other, less tangible things that this bevy of princesses introduced into the courts of Europe. Although many of them were shy, inarticulate and a little too convinced of the superiority of all things English, they brought with them some of their grandmother's more admirable characteristics: her refreshing lack of bigotry, her fund of common sense, her high moral code, her transparent honesty and her unshakeable sense of duty. Different from each other in many ways, these princesses, grand duchesses, queens and empresses retained always something of the direct, practical, honest-to-goodness qualities of the plump old lady in the white widow's cap.

  PART ONE

  1887 – 1901

  CHAPTER ONE

  Vicky of Germany

  1

  Of all the marriages of Queen Victoria's nine children, that of her eldest daughter, Victoria, the Princess Royal, to Prince Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia, had been the most politically significant. It had been planned as a royal alliance on the grand scale: a traditional linking of two states by a match between their reigning houses. This joining together of the eldest daughter of the Queen of England to a prince who would one day be the King of Prussia had been designed as the first step towards an understanding between the two countries.

  The idea had been Prince Albert's. Having grown up in a Germany that was fragmented into scores of states, some large, some tiny and most of them despotically ruled, the Prince had always dreamed of the day when these fragments would be united into a single, democratic country.

  The lead for such a movement, reckoned Albert, would have to come from Prussia. For one thing she was the most dynamic of the states, for another she was Protestant. It would thus be her task to guide Germany towards a united, enlightened and influential future. This Greater Germany would then dominate the Continent, by holding the balance between fickle France and reactionary Russia.

  Although Prussia, thus far, had shown unmistakable signs of vigour, she had shown precious few of liberalism. It was therefore up to Britain to give her all the encouragement she could. Injected with generous doses of British greatness and British enlightenment, Prussia could set about unifying and liberalizing Germany. Between them, Britain and Greater Germany would be able to set a shining example to the rest of Europe.

  As a first step towards achieving this high-minded goal, Prince Albert – backed up to the hilt by his adoring wife – decided on a link between the royal houses of Great Britain and Prussia. Fortunately, there were two eminently suitable candidates to hand. The one was Prince Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia, the other was Vicky, the Princess Royal. Prince Frederick Wilhelm – known to his family as Fritz – was a tall, handsome, good-natured young man with suitably progressive views; Vicky was something of a prodigy.

  From babyhood, almost, and in marked contrast to her brother Bertie, Vicky had shown signs of an exceptional intelligence. She was quick-witted, hard-working and eager to learn. As such, she had delighted Prince Albert. This earnest, liberal, conscientious Prince found in her the ideal pupil. To his tireless course of instruction she responded with an enthusiasm and a comprehension which was little short of amazing. No master could have wished for a more willing disciple. That this lively young princess (for in addition to being clever, she was attractive, vivacious and energetic) would one day be capable of playing a significant role in European affairs, Prince Albert never doubted. To this end he instilled in her his Coburg brand of democracy; by the time he had finished with her, his concept of constitutional monarchy could hardly have had a more dedicated exponent.

  In the autumn of 1855, when Fritz was twenty-four and Vicky a mere fourteen, Victoria and Albert invited the Prussian Prince to Balmoral. To the gratification of all concerned, the two young people fell in love. Not until after the Princess had turned seventeen, however, were they married. The four-day honeymoon at Windsor over, the two of them left for Berlin. The first step towards the realization of Prince Albert's dream had been taken. Through this idealistic young couple – and, more particularly, through Vicky – would his progressive ideas be introduced into Prussia.

  Of this important vocation, Vicky was deeply conscious. She was determined not to fail her father. With her father-in-law, who ascended the Prussian throne as King Wilhelm I in 1861, already in his sixties, it was assumed that the young couple would not have long to wait before taking control of Prussian affairs. Together, they could then lead Prussia, and ultimately Germany, towards a radiantly liberal future.

  Such had been the plan in theory; in practice, it had all worked out very differently.

  In the first place, King Wilhelm I of Prussia would have no truck with any new-fangled liberal ideas. He was a firm believer in Gottesgnadentum – the Divine Right of Kings. A man of simple tastes and unaffected manners, King Wilhelm I was nonetheless an intransigent autocrat, determined that the crown should yield none of its rights. In his reactionary attitude, he was supported by the Prussian ruling caste – that conservative and insular class of landowning noblemen known as the Junkers. To them, no less than to the King, all talk of such things as parliamentary rule, constitutional monarchies and a united Germany was just so much nonsense.

  Yet, at the start of Wilhelm I's reign, Vicky – now Crown Princess – could take comfort from the fact that, at sixty-four, the King could not be expected to live a great deal longer. Another reassuring factor was that King Wilhelm was not nearly as iron-willed as many imagined. His conservatism was that of a weak man who fears change; with patience and perseverance, he might yet be coaxed along a more enlightened path.

  On both scores, the Crown Princess's hopes were destined to be dashed. King Wilhelm was to live for twenty-seven years after his accession; he was not to die until the age of ninety-one, in 1888. And, in the year after his accession, he appointed Otto von Bismarck as First Minister. With the assumption of power by this astute and ruthless Junker, all hope of the King being encouraged to follow a more democratic line could be forgotten. It did not take Bismarck long to get the King under his thumb; for the remainder of Wilhelm I's long reign, it was Bismarck who ruled.

  And, paradoxically, it was Bismarck who turned Prince Albert's dream of a united Germany under Prussian leadership into a reality. He did it, not – as all liberals had hoped – by means of democratic example and parliamentary persuasion, but by the altogether more brutal method of 'blood and iron'. Three wars, one against Denmark, one against Austria, and one against France, established Prussia as the leading military power on the Continent. By January 1871 Bismarck had coerced the various German states into forming an Empire and the reluctant King Wilhelm of Prussia into becoming its Emperor. The Second German Reich, instead of being the enlightened Kulturstaat of the Crown Princess's fond imaginings, became an oppressive and powerful Militarstaat.

  Thus, as year succeeded year, with the old King showing no signs of dying and Bismarck none of loosening his grip, so were the Crown Prince and Princess forced to sit by in helpless frustration while the state developed along lines utterly opposed to everything they planned one day to inaugurate. Against Bismarck's rock-like will, their liberal protestations dashed like so much froth. In the year of Queen Victoria's Jubilee, Vicky turned forty-six. Almost thirty years after first arriving in Berlin, she was still waiting to fulfil her mission.

  2

  But not quite all the blame for the unhappy position in which the Crown Prince and Princess found themselves could be laid at Bismarck's door. At least some of the fault lay in themselves. Their particular defects of character were the very ones which they could least afford in their delicate situation.

  Prince Frederick, for all the soldierly magnificence of his appearance, was a weak man – fretful, irresolute, easily depressed. Nor was he quite as dedicated a liberal as had once been assumed. Humanitarian he certainly was, but – unlike his wife – he lacked the conviction that all his beliefs were necessarily the right ones. 'He is not born a free Englishman,' explained Vicky self-righteously to her mother on one occasio
n, 'and all Prussians have not the feeling of independence and love of justice and constitutional liberty they ought to have . . .' Indeed, Fritz was often plagued by soul-searing doubts. A dutiful son, he hated opposing his father. A patriotic Prussian, he could not help delighting in Bismarck's aggrandizing of his country. A proud Hohenzollern, he could not but approve of the fact that he would one day be Kaiser of the triumphant new Reich. Prince Frederick was an honest, well-meaning and high-minded man but he lacked single-mindedness of purpose.

  Vicky, of course, was very different. There was never any doubt about the strength of either her character or her beliefs.

  At forty-six, the Crown Princess Victoria was one of the most remarkable women in Europe. It was true that she was not much to look at. She was short, plump and high-coloured but her smile was radiant and her eyes a brilliant sea-green. Her hair, in contrast to the elaborately ridged, curled and fringed fashion of the day, was drawn neatly back into a braided coronet. Her clothes, in which she did not take an excessive interest, showed something of the same simplicity of style. In repose her air was tranquil, almost melancholy. At first glance, she could have been mistaken for a sensible, middle-class matron, hardly different from the Prussian Hausfrauen amongst whom she had spent almost thirty years of her life.

  The reality was very different. A few minutes in the Crown Princess's company revealed her as a stimulating, assertive and highly individual personality: clever, diligent and dynamic. Her admiring father used to say that she had 'a man's head on her shoulders' and, compared with her fellow princesses, she was remarkably emancipated. In the Berlin of her day, when women were expected to confine themselves to Küche, Kinderstube, Krankenstube und Kirche – kitchen, nursery, sickroom and church – she never ceased to astonish her contemporaries by the range and unorthodoxy of her interests. She had a passion, not only for such things as painting, poetry and architecture, but for politics, economics and social reform. She took an active interest in prisons, hospitals, social welfare and sanitation. She read widely.

  On the other hand, Vicky was no mere bluestocking. If she had a man's head, she had a woman's warmth and impetuosity. She might, in intellect, have been her father's daughter, but in ardour, she was very much her mother's. Like Queen Victoria, she was impulsive, partisan and emotional. Beneath that plain exterior beat a passionate heart. Her charm, when she chose to exercise it, could be prodigious; she was capable of extreme kindness.

  But whereas Queen Victoria's emotionalism was tempered by a sound common sense, Vicky's was not. For all her brilliance, the Crown Princess completely lacked wisdom. The British statesman who once summed her up as 'always clever, never wise', knew exactly what he was saying. She was outspoken, dogmatic and assertive. A woman of strong opinions, she never hesitated to air them; nor did she ever doubt that they were the right ones. She was incapable of making allowances or of adapting her views. With her, it was always all or nothing. She could be extremely tactless. Of the art of handling people, she knew nothing. She would set out to win their heads, it was said, 'rather than their hearts'.

  That this unconventional princess should have found life difficult at the hide-bound Prussian court is understandable. Amongst the narrow-minded bigots who made up the bulk of Prussian society she was extremely unpopular. They considered her cultural interests unseemly, her advanced religious views scandalous and her intellectualism positively dangerous. They distrusted her passion for open windows, modern plumbing and long walks. They never ceased to be affronted by the fact that such things as the number of quarterings, by which they set so much store, meant nothing to her: on making up her guest lists, she simply invited whoever she thought might be interesting. When she accepted the honorary chairmanship of a newly-founded orphanage for Jewish girls, they were appalled.

  Most annoying of all, however, was her persistent Englishness. On Vicky's arrival in Berlin, Bismarck had announced that she would be a blessing to her new country only if she left the Englishwoman at home and became a Prussian. It was sound advice, but Vicky was incapable of following it. To her, England was always 'home', superior, in every possible way – were it politics or plumbing – to Prussia. It was, she claimed to her mother, 'my country which I shall love so passionately to my dying day and to have been too proud to have belonged to ever to let myself forget'.

  In this regrettable attitude Vicky had been encouraged, during her early years in Prussia, by Queen Victoria. The Queen had insisted that her daughter remain as English as possible. If Vicky had suggested following some harmless Prussian custom, Victoria had replied that she could 'let the German ladies do what they like, but the English Princess must not'. She had instructed her daughter to sign her name Victoria, Princess Royal and Princess Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia; 'you are the eldest daughter of the Queen of England with a title and rights of your own,' she had written.

  But whereas, in time, Queen Victoria came to show better sense, Vicky did not. With that grating lack of tact, she continued to sing the praises of all things English. Before long she came to be known (as the hated Marie Antoinette had been known as 'l'Autrichienne') as 'die Engländerin'.

  The death of Prince Albert, in the very year of Wilhelm I's accession, robbed Vicky of the one person who would have been capable of keeping her vehement nature in check. Although Prince Albert's views had been no less strongly held than hers, he had been more tolerant, more able to compromise. He had always been able to see both sides of a question. This was something she never learned. She could never appreciate that by giving way on small issues one could yet hold to larger principles. Once Prince Albert died, there was no one to teach her these lessons.

  The truth was that Vicky, no less than Fritz, was trapped in a dilemma. She had exulted in Prussia's march to greatness while being appalled at the way in which the march was being conducted. She had rejoiced in the unification of Germany but had disapproved of the manner in which it had been achieved. She was torn between pride in her native and her adopted countries. Her brother, the Prince of Wales, was not far off the mark when he claimed that she was always pure Prussian when she was in England and pure English when she was in Prussia. She even spoke English with a German accent and German with an English. At one moment she was claiming that the Prussians were a superior race; at another she was praising Britain to the skies.

  That this inconsistency did nothing towards enhancing her reputation in Germany is understandable. Despite her bursts of patriotic fervour, Vicky remained as distrusted and unpopular as ever.

  'To be friends with the present régime is impossible,' she complained to Queen Victoria, 'and yet to be in opposition is a thing as impossible. I always feel like a fly struggling in a very tangled web, and a feeling of weariness and depression, often of disgust and hopelessness, takes possession of me. . . .'

  3

  To Vicky's political difficulties were added domestic ones.

  Her marriage was happy enough. She and Fritz had been in love when they married and they were to remain so throughout their life together. They suited each other very well. Both were enlightened, cultured, hard-working and conscientious; where there were differences, these were complementary. If she was quick, clever, impetuous and domineering, he was placid, serious-minded, reflective and tolerant. While she might dazzle guests by the force and mobility of her personality, it was he who won their hearts.

  Their home life was extremely simple. The atmosphere in their town and country palaces – the Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin and the Neues Palais at Potsdam – was lively and natural. Of the formality, the friction and the philistinism of other Prussian royal households there was not a trace; guests were always struck by the unaffectedness, the tranquillity and the air of culture pervading the Crown Prince's ménage. In their role as host and hostess, Fritz and Vicky were charming: he, tall, bearded, superbly mannered; she small, graceful and vivacious. 'Nothing in the world is more natural and cordial than he is,' noted Disraeli on one occasion, while he pronounced Vicky to be
'most animated and entertaining'.

  Between the years 1859 and 1872, Vicky bore her husband eight children – four boys and four girls. She raised them in as unaffected a fashion as possible and, in the early days, they made a delightful, harmonious family group. The harmony did not last long. One son died in infancy, another at the age of eleven. Vicky felt the death of these two sons keenly. Their passing left her, she sighed, with two stupid sons: 'good boys, but nothing in them'.

  In fact, they were not even good. And, as they matured, so – as far as Vicky was concerned – did they become less and less good. The younger, Prince Henry, developed into a shallow, self-opinionated pup ('ignorant, green and misled,' complained his mother to Queen Victoria); the elder, Prince Wilhelm, was infinitely worse.

  His was a difficult case. At his birth, in January 1859, a nerve in Prince Wilhelm's neck had been injured, leaving him with a poor sense of balance and a stunted left arm that was all but useless. To a large extent – for he was a determined boy – he overcame the physical aspects of his deformity: he learnt to ride, to shoot and to swim. If he kept his left arm bent, he looked hardly different from any other youngster.

  How much his crippled arm had affected his character is another matter. Whether or not his arrogance, his bombast and his conceit were due to the fact that he, who longed to be thought of as a typically militant Prussian prince, was trying to compensate for the inadequacy of his body, is impossible to prove. Of perhaps more importance to the development of his character was his relationship with his mother.