Grandmama of Europe: The Crowned Descendants of Queen Victoria

by Theo Aronson

  An indication of the atmosphere of suspicion in which the couple lived in Berlin was provided when, prior to setting out for England, Vicky asked her mother whether she could bring over all their private papers for safe-keeping in Buckingham Palace.

  A few days before the couple left Berlin, Dr Gerhardt warned the Crown Princess that he was becoming increasingly anxious about the Crown Prince's throat. He claimed that the hitherto healthy right vocal cord was now affected. If Dr Mackenzie's cure was not successful, then the operation would have to be performed – but in much less favourable conditions than before. Every day lost was dangerous. 'Of course you can understand this makes me utterly miserable!' wailed Vicky. She was being driven half distracted, she admitted, by the uncertainty; she simply could not bring herself to believe that the German doctors were right. For one thing, she could not bear the thought that her beloved husband might be fatally ill; for another, she could not face the fact that he might never ascend the throne. They had both lived for the day when his accession would mean the inauguration of their democratic ideas. Would all these years of waiting prove to have been in vain? Was the prize to be snatched away at the very moment of its coming within reach? Were her long-cherished ambitions about to turn to dust? Surely Fate would never be so cruel. Surely her husband would be cured.

  It was in this tormented state of mind that the Crown Princess arrived in London to celebrate her mother's Golden Jubilee.

  2

  The Jubilee festivities over, the couple spent two months in England. During all this time the Crown Prince was being treated by Mackenzie. Twice the doctor removed further particles of the growth and sent them to the German pathologist for analysis. Again he could detect no sign of cancer. By the autumn, with Fritz at Balmoral, everyone – including the doctor – was convinced that his complete recovery was simply a matter of time. 'He is wonderfully better,' noted the gratified Queen, 'still hoarse, but not without any voice, as when he arrived in England. He seemed in excellent spirits.' In a rush of premature relief, Queen Victoria knighted Dr Mackenzie.

  As Berlin was hardly the place for a convalescence, it was decided that, on leaving Britain in September, the couple would move on to Toblach in the Tyrol. When Toblach proved too wet, they made for Baveno, near Lake Maggiore. As the Crown Prince still showed no real sign of improvement, they moved on to an even warmer climate; this time to San Remo on the Mediterranean. Here, at the beginning of November 1887, the Crown Prince's little court established itself in a large villa set in an exotic garden.

  During the course of these wanderings, public opinion in Berlin was becoming increasingly critical of the manner in which the whole business of the Crown Prince's illness was being conducted. Some said that he should return home at once. The Kaiser was not expected to last much longer and in certain liberal circles it was feared that Prince Wilhelm was gaining too much influence. Others suspected that the German doctors' diagnosis of cancer had been the correct one. No one had much faith in Mackenzie. He was accused of being a fraud, anxious for the acclaim which having the Crown Prince under his care would bring him. Why indeed, was the German Crown Prince in the care of a British, and not a German, doctor? Because, ran the rumours, the Crown Princess – die Engländerin – had insisted on this.

  Vicky, in fact, was being blamed for everything. Never had she been more abused than during this period of her husband's illness. Her main concern, it was said, was to keep her husband alive long enough for her to become Empress; she was determined that he should reign and not be passed over in favour of their son Wilhelm. This was why she had persistently minimized the seriousness of her husband's illness. This was why she had refused to concede that the growth was cancerous and had forbidden her husband to be operated on at a time when the operation might have saved his life. This was why she had insisted that an English, and not a German, doctor be called in. She had impressed on Mackenzie – a fellow-liberal – the importance of the growth not being diagnosed as cancerous. Together, she and Mackenzie had hurried the Crown Prince away to England and so kept him out of the hands of the German doctors whose proposed operation might have cost her husband his voice. By her persistent optimism she had buoyed up her husband with false hopes and misled the public about the seriousness of his illness. It was claimed that her passion for power and her hatred of her eldest son were costing her husband his life.

  The accusations were entirely without foundation. Ambitious, wilful and highly emotional Vicky certainly was, but throughout her husband's illness her only concern was to save his life and alleviate his sufferings. Quite naturally, she looked forward to the day of his accession to the throne and was appalled at the thought that the splitting of his larynx might make him an Emperor without a voice. But she could never have believed that her husband would simply be declared unfit to reign; Bismarck himself admitted that there was no provision in Germany for altering the succession in the event of physical incapacity.

  Nor was there any truth in the accusation that she had summoned Dr Mackenzie. She had merely backed up the German doctors' decision to do so. His doubts about the cancerous nature of the growth had delighted her. It is not surprising that she had put her faith in Mackenzie and his cure rather than in the German doctors and their operation: both Mackenzie and the German pathologist were pre-eminent in their fields, so why should she doubt their judgement? And then, far from insisting that her husband go to England to follow Mackenzie's treatment, she had confessed to her mother that the decision lay with the German doctors, not her. To the accusation that both she and Mackenzie were too optimistic by half, she insisted that it was her duty to remain cheerful. By a show of optimism, she would speed her husband's recovery. 'You know how sensitive and apprehensive, how suspicious and despondent Fritz is by nature,' she wrote to her mother; it was thus up to her to counteract his melancholy by remaining determinedly bright.

  Indeed, far from behaving like some unfeeling, power-hungry virago, the Crown Princess was acting with exemplary nobility throughout this trying time. Her courage and devotion were of the highest order. At a time when she was tortured by the thought of her husband's fate, when she was forced to put on a smiling front lest he sink into an even deeper depression, when she was both physically and emotionally exhausted, she was being abused, privately and publicly, by her numerous enemies. She deserved all the sympathy and encouragement she could get.

  But the worst was yet to come. Twenty-four hours after they had settled in at San Remo, there was an alarming deterioration in Fritz's condition. On examining the patient's throat, Dr Mackenzie discovered a new growth. This time he felt certain that it was malignant. The Crown Prince, begging to be told the truth, asked the doctor if it was cancer.

  'I am sorry to say, Sir,' answered Mackenzie, 'it looks very much like it, but it is impossible to be certain.'

  After a moment or two's silence, Fritz calmly thanked the doctor for his frankness. Only later, when he was alone with his wife, did the Crown Prince's control break down. Sobbing bitterly, he gasped out against the injustice of Fate. 'I had so hoped to be of use to my country. Why is heaven so cruel to me? What have I done to be thus stricken down and condemned?'

  3

  That Fritz had not much longer to live, there was now no question. A few days after Mackenzie's admission that the growth might be cancerous, his diagnosis was confirmed by a panel of German doctors. It was now simply a matter of whether the Crown Prince would outlast his ailing father or whether his son Wilhelm would be the next Kaiser. While the German public whispered a half-forgotten prophecy that Kaiser Wilhelm I would live to be ninety-six and be succeeded by a man with one arm, the official world began preparing openly for the next reign but one. With one sun sinking so fast, it would be as well to turn and face the coming dawn. Fritz was being treated, complained Vicky to Queen Victoria, as 'a mere passing shadow soon to be replaced by reality in the shape of Wilhelm'.

  Yet she refused to accept the situation. She simply would not allow hers
elf to believe that her husband was beyond recovery. She seems even to have convinced herself that he did not really have cancer. When the doctors, after their latest examination, had given the couple the choice of a complete removal of the larynx or a palliative measure whereby an incision would be made in the throat to avoid suffocation, they had plumped for the lesser operation. The doctors' opinion that the Crown Prince had less than six months to live, Vicky dismissed as nonsense, 'a mere guess and a conjecture'. The German doctors might convince the court and the public that Fritz was dying, but they certainly did not convince her, she declared.

  In her stubborn belief, the Crown Princess was being backed up by the urbane Mackenzie. Despite the fact that he had concurred with the German doctors' recent verdict, within a few weeks he was assuring Queen Victoria that there was nothing malignant in Prince Frederick's throat. Did he really believe this? Or did he simply not know what to believe? He might well have been puzzled by the fact that the course of the disease was somewhat unusual, not really typical of cancer of the throat. Or was he perhaps concealing the true nature of the illness? Did the Crown Prince have syphilis of the larynx? One of the German doctors had suggested that he be given large doses of potassium iodide – the customary treatment for late syphilis – and with this the other doctors had agreed. He even went so far as to make a public announcement to the effect that the Crown Prince was suffering from a disease of a 'contagious origin'. Mackenzie himself is said to have confided to a close friend, Dr Pierce, that the Prince had 'syphilis of the larynx before the cancer appeared'. This opinion has recently been backed up by R. Scott Stevenson in his detailed study of the Crown Prince's illness. Given Fritz's character, it seems unlikely, but there was talk of his association with a Spanish dancer at the opening of the Suez Canal which he had attended some years before.

  Bolstering Vicky's determination to remain sanguine about her husband's illness was her suspicion of a plot to force him to renounce his rights to the throne. She was convinced that the conservatives would go to any lengths to see that Prince Wilhelm gained power so that Bismarck's reactionary policies could be continued. To this end they were not only spreading alarming reports on the seriousness of the Crown Prince's illness, but were bent on getting his English doctor dismissed so that they could replace him with someone of their own choosing. This doctor would then convince the patient of the hopelessness of his case and of the necessity of renouncing his claim to the throne. It was the Junkers who wanted the Crown Prince's larynx removed; it was they who were trying to force an operation which would certainly cost the patient his voice, perhaps even his life. 'Against this,' declared Vicky to her mother, 'it is my duty to fight!'

  The Crown Princess's suspicions could not be dismissed as mere hysteria; the imaginings of an ambitious and overwrought woman. Prince Wilhelm's behaviour gave ample grounds for her fears. He was certainly making no secret of his impatience to ascend the throne. Already he had drawn up an Imperial Edict to be dispatched to the various German princes on the day of his accession. At this even Bismarck drew the line. Both the Kaiser and his heir apparent were still alive, explained the Chancellor to his headstrong protege; it really would not do for the public to learn that the heir presumptive had drafted his Imperial Edict.

  Disturbing, too, were Prince Wilhelm's visits to San Remo. Twice, during his parents' stay there, did he come to see them and on both occasions his manner was insufferable. Arrogant, conceited and unsympathetic, he behaved as though he were already Emperor. Making much of the fact that he was there as the 'Kaiser's representative', he insisted on giving orders to the doctors. He is even said to have claimed precedence over his mother as he entered the local Lutheran church.

  However, Vicky was not one to put up with such high-handedness. Always ready to give as good as she got, she 'pitched into him,' she assured her mother, 'with considerable violence'.

  'I will not have him dictate to me – the head on my shoulders is every bit as good as his,' she declared.

  Still, Prince Wilhelm was able to return to Berlin with the German doctors' assurance that his father had not much longer to live. Wilhelm I might yet be succeeded by Wilhelm II.

  He was not. On 9 March 1888, the old Emperor died, two weeks short of turning ninety-one. Fritz was walking in the grounds of the villa at San Remo when he received the news that he was now Kaiser Frederick III. Returning to the house, he entered the drawing-room in which his household stood assembled. His first task was to write out the announcement of his own accession. His second was to invest his wife with the highest decoration he could bestow – the Order of the Black Eagle. To underline further his appreciation of all she had done, he handed Dr Mackenzie a piece of paper on which he had written: 'I thank you for having made me live long enough to recompense the valiant courage of my wife.'

  Queen Victoria's reaction to the news was more effusive. 'My OWN dear Empress Victoria,' she wrote to Vicky, 'it does seem an impossible dream, may God bless her! You know how little I care for rank or Titles – but I cannot deny that after all that has been done and said, I am thankful and proud that dear Fritz and you should have come to the Throne.'

  Two days later, on a bitterly cold night, the stricken Emperor arrived in Berlin to begin his long-deferred reign. 'I pray,' wrote the new Empress to her mother, 'that he may be spared to be a blessing to his people and to Europe.' By now,' even she must have realized that there was little hope of that.

  At last, and in this sad and untriumphant fashion, did the first of Queen Victoria's descendants come to sit upon a throne.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Ninety-eight Days

  1

  On the day after Crown Prince Frederick's accession to the throne – 10 March 1888 – the Prince and Princess of Wales celebrated their silver wedding. Queen Victoria, having made a somewhat disgruntled entry in her Journal to the effect that she and Albert had not been 'permitted' to celebrate this happy anniversary, presented the couple with a huge silver loving-cup. That night she attended a family dinner at Marlborough House. Princess Alexandra, in white and silver, looked radiant: 'more like a bride just married than the Silver one of twenty-five years,' noted the Queen.

  By now the forty-three-year-old Alexandra, no less than her husband, had perfected the appearance that was to characterize her throughout her life: the crown of elaborately coiffured brown hair, the creamy complexion, the jewelled 'dog-collars' (to hide a girlhood scar), the tiny waist, the superbly elegant clothes. She already walked with the famous 'Alexandra limp', an affliction caused by a stiff knee and converted by her into a movement of such grace that it was copied by a number of society ladies. 'To the very end,' wrote one of her nieces, 'there was about Aunt Alix something invincible, something exquisite and flower-like. She gave the same joy as a beautiful rose or a rare orchid or an absolutely flawless carnation. She was a garden flower that had been grown by a superlative gardener who knew every trick of his art.'

  How had Alexandra managed to retain this aura of youthful perfection? Her life, after all, had not been a particularly easy one. To be the wife of so restless, mercurial and licentious a man as the Prince of Wales would have tested the resilience of the most angelic of women.

  Angelic the Princess certainly was, but she had, in addition, certain qualities that created a sort of immunity from her domestic problems. Even before Alix's marriage to Bertie, the Queen – with characteristic perspicacity – had noted that 'there is something frank and cheerful in Alix's character, which will greatly assist her to take things without being too much overpowered or alarmed by them.' Immature, impractical and happy-go-lucky, Princess Alexandra was never one to fret about things which could not be helped. Even her one political passion – an undying hatred of Prussia – came from a child-like pig-headedness rather than from any real appreciation of the nature of the Prussian state. Prussia had once waged war against her native Denmark; therefore she was prepared to hate Prussia to her dying day.

  Creating a further barrier
between Princess Alexandra and the realities of life was her increasing deafness. This hereditary affliction, known as otosclerosis, was worsening with the years. It forced her to cling to the company of those whom she knew well and to avoid meeting new people. Not being a reader, she never learnt much from books; by now she was no longer able to learn by listening to intelligent conversation. More and more did she submerge herself in the things she anyway liked best – her children, her horses, her dogs and her homes.

  This, in turn, kept her away from that gregarious society so loved by her husband; the two of them spent less and less time in each other's company. Yet, she rarely complained. She took Bertie's absences, as she did his infidelities, in her stride. Unlike Queen Victoria, Alix simply accepted that there was one code of behaviour for men and another for women. She had been born into a family in which masculine unfaithfulness had been the rule rather than the exception and she never made a fuss. On the contrary, she always behaved extremely graciously towards such of her husband's mistresses as she met. So goodnatured, she rated jealousy a worse sin than licentiousness.

  Bertie was always grateful to his wife for her understanding attitude. In this way he was very fond of her and treated her with unfailing chivalry and protectiveness. 'After all,' she is reported to have said after his death, 'he always loved me the best.'

  Thus, if the marriage was not an especially happy one, then neither was it especially unhappy. There might have been no close bond between Bertie and Alix such as there was between Fritz and Vicky, but the two of them suited each other well enough. Not entirely without justification could Queen Victoria, on the occasion of their silver wedding, wish that God might give them 'many more happy years together!'

  The silver wedding celebrations, which were to have embraced more than that family dinner at Marlborough House, had been cut short by the death of Kaiser Wilhelm I. For one thing, the court had to go into mourning; for another, the Prince of Wales had to attend the old Kaiser's funeral. Four days after his silver wedding, Bertie, accompanied by his eldest son, the apathetic Prince Eddy, was in Berlin. They put up at the British Embassy.