Grandmama of Europe: The Crowned Descendants of Queen Victoria

by Theo Aronson

  'That dear Victoria is an angel of a girl,' claimed the Empress Frederick, 'so good and unselfish, so helpful and useful and true. Of all the nieces I have, I love her the best. And Maudie is a perfect duck and so bewitching. I long to squeeze her when I see her.' The Empress preferred them to their cousins – the Hesse girls, Ella and Alicky. She considered them more graceful and more natural, and so much more agreeable. 'How I wish they would marry,' she sighed. 'It does seem a shame for such nice charming girls not to have homes of their own. They would make such perfect wives and mothers.'

  In truth, Princess Victoria was not entirely without experience in affairs of the heart. She is said to have wanted to marry a member of the Baring family, and to have fallen in love, in later life, with one of her father's equerries. There was also a story that Lord Rosebery, at one time Prime Minister, had thought of asking for her hand. Not by any stretch of the imagination, however, could any of these men have been thought suitable for the daughter of the future King of England. So Victoria remained unmarried. She stayed with her mother and gradually developed into a hypochondriacal, embittered and sharp-tongued old maid.

  It was the younger daughter, the slightly prettier, livelier and sweeter-natured Princess Maud, who married.

  2

  Princess Maud of Wales was known, in the chaffing way of her family, as Harry. The nickname derived from the fact that of the three Wales girls – all of whom were happiest when out of doors or playing some knock-about family game – she was the most boyish. 'As an all-round sportswoman few of her own sex can touch her,' writes a member of her parents' household. 'With horses, dogs and birds she is wonderful, and she is the one amongst her sisters who is really fond of yachting.' She could also lay claim to the distinction of being the only royal lady to have thus far 'ridden a bicycle through the public streets'.

  None of this is to imply that Princess Maud was in any way mannish. Indeed, for all her love of outdoor sports, she was a rather gentle creature. She might not have been especially cultured or intellectual, but she had a kind and cheerful disposition. Of the three Wales girls, she was the most attractive. 'She did look so pretty and fresh,' wrote the Empress Frederick of Princess Maud in 1895, like a little rose, with her bright eyes and dear intelligent expression.'

  At that time, this bright and natural creature was suffering from the most bitter-sweet of ailments – unrequited love.

  The object of Princess Maud's affections was one of her sister-in-law Princess May's brothers – Prince Frank of Teck. Twenty-five years of age in 1895, Prince Frank was as unlike his sister, Princess May, as it was possible to be. Where she was modest, discreet and conscientious, he was flamboyant, feckless and brimful of life. Tall and handsome, with dark hair and bright blue eyes, Frank had inherited much of the vitality, charm and extravagance of his mother, the Duchess of Teck. He gambled, he lived on credit, he was alarmingly outspoken. Time and again, he had to be rescued from some scrape.

  That the tomboyish Princess Maud should fall in love with so exotic a beau was indeed unfortunate. Prince Frank might be good-natured, affectionate and well-intentioned but he could certainly not return poor Maud's love. In fact, he hardly gave her a thought. He certainly never bothered to answer her letters. His affections, it seems, were otherwise engaged. Prince Frank had embarked on a liaison with a married woman much older than himself and, despite his fond mother's wishes, was prepared to waste no time on the likes of the immature Princess Maud.

  To teach the errant Frank a lesson, his parents applied the customary Victorian remedy: in 1895 he was packed off, in disgrace, to India. And there, until after Princess Maud was married, he remained.

  If the Princess of Wales was likely to favour one suitor above another for the hand of her daughter, then he would have to be a member of her own – the Danish – royal family. At one stage there had been some talk of Maud, or even Victoria, marrying their cousin, Prince Christian (afterwards King Christian X) of Denmark. 'Alix,' wrote Queen Victoria, 'to whom I said I had hoped for something for the girls, said she would be very glad and would like it, but she feared the girls thought him too young for them.'

  The idea petered out but in the following year, 1895, Prince Christian's younger brother, Prince Charles of Denmark, began paying court to Princess Maud.

  Charles and Maud had known each other all their lives. On the Princess of Wales's frequent visits to her father's court, her children and the children of her brother, the Danish Crown Prince, had always played their boisterous games together. They had bicycled, they had ridden, they had indulged in those practical jokes which were such a feature in the life of the Danish royal family. Three years younger than Maud, Charles had entered the Danish Navy at the age of fourteen. Since then, the Navy had been his career. In 1893 he had passed out as a second lieutenant and not until three years later, after his engagement to Princess Maud, did he become a first lieutenant. On being asked why he had remained a second lieutenant for so long, his unblinking reply was, 'lack of strings and influence'. Indeed his father, in true Danish democratic fashion, had refused to allow him to be favoured in any way.

  In 1895, Prince Charles was twenty-two years of age: a tall, fair, slender, good-natured and level-headed young man. The Duchess of Teck considered him very goodlooking. '[He] seems charming!' she wrote, 'but looks fully three years younger than Maud, has no money . . . .'

  Nevertheless, during one of those Danish family gatherings at Fredensborg, Prince Charles proposed and Princess Maud accepted. He might not have set her pulses pounding to the extent that Prince Frank of Teck had once done, but he would certainly make her a better husband. The couple were officially engaged in October 1895.'The announcement . . . caused much excitement here yesterday,' wrote one of Queen Victoria's ladies from Balmoral, 'and has been the cause of endless telegraphing. The Queen is delighted and healths were drunk at dinner.'

  As Prince Charles was due to set off on a five-month-long cruise to the West Indies, the marriage date was set for July the following year.

  The wedding, on 22 July 1896, was a relatively small one. It was held in the chapel at Buckingham Palace and public display was confined to the drives between Marlborough House, Buckingham Palace and St Pancras station. It was essentially a family gathering. From Denmark came the bridegroom's parents, the Crown Prince and Princess of Denmark, and their other children (the old King, Christian IX, could not attend); from Athens came the Crown Prince Constantine and the Crown Princess Sophie of Greece (he was cousin to the bridegroom and she cousin to the bride); and from Windsor, of course, came Queen Victoria.

  'Never,' wrote the London Times effusively on the day of the wedding, 'has a more charming and graceful bride issued from an English home, and never has a Royal Princess looked happier upon her wedding day than Princess Maud of Wales.' This might have been carrying deference a little too far but it was true that Princess Maud, thanks to her mother's unerring taste, was considerably better dressed than most royal brides. Her dress of ivory satin was unusually simple and she wore no jewels. On her hair was a crown of orange blossom and as she passed, 'the perfume of orange blossom escaped from her dress and filled the air round her'. Followed by her bridesmaids, in white trimmed with red geraniums (the national colours of Denmark), the bride moved up the aisle on the arm of her father, the Prince of Wales. At the altar, in the uniform of the Danish navy, stood the tall, straight and slender Prince Charles.

  The ceremony concluded, the newly married couple made their obeisances to the seated figure of Grandmama Queen.

  The marriage service was followed by a wedding breakfast. At the end of it, with the Queen about to take her leave, an Indian servant wheeled in her chair. But Her Majesty waved it away. 'Behind the door,' she said imperiously and, leaning on her stick, went stumping out of the room. Bride and bridegroom left from St Pancras station at a quarter to six that evening. They were bound for Appleton House, near Sandringham, which the Prince of Wales had given his daughter for use as an English home. T
hey were to spend a short honeymoon there before leaving for Denmark.

  The honeymoon lasted, in fact, for five months.

  Before Princess Maud's marriage, the Duchess of Teck, with some perspicacity, had written, 'My feeling is, Maud does not care for him enough to leave England for his sake and live in Denmark, and I dread her finding this out when too late.' The Duchess of Teck was proved right. Fond as Maud might have been of her husband, she was more fond, by far, of her country. For years she had been kept tucked under the wing of her possessive mother; now she could not face the thought of leaving home and family. Already almost twenty-seven at the time of her marriage, Maud had become too accustomed, not only to the company of her mother, but to the life of an English princess. How could she live without her dogs, her horses and all the other outdoor delights of Sandringham; without Cowes week; without her visits – under the improbable alias of 'Miss Mills' – to her old governess in the West of England? How could she, who had no taste or talent for public life, who was so shy in strange company, face the demands of life in a different country?

  During the first few months of her marriage, Maud decided that she could not.

  Once established in Appleton House, nothing could induce her to leave it. By mid-August – three weeks after the wedding – the Danish royal family were all assembled at Bernsdorff Castle to welcome the newly married couple. There was no sign of them. By the end of August, the Princess of Wales and her daughter Victoria joined the family in Denmark. Still Maud refused to move from Appleton. By early September, King George of Greece was at Bernsdorff; by mid-September the Tsar and Tsaritsa of Russia were there. And still Maud would not budge. There could be little doubt that the Prince of Wales, instead of losing a daughter, had indeed gained a son.

  In October the Princess of Wales came home. King George I returned to Greece. The Tsar arrived at Balmoral. The Danish royal family trooped back to Copenhagen. But Maud stayed put. She could not think of leaving England. The couple rode, they drove, they cycled, they sat for portraits, they received congratulatory addresses, they inspected the Technical and Cottage Schools on the Sandringham estate, they went up to London to the theatre, they listened to the band in Green Park, they visited Queen Victoria at Windsor, at Osborne and at Balmoral. They were still in England when that melancholy anniversary of the deaths of the Prince Consort and Princess Alice – 14 December – came round, and were able to join the rest of the family at the service in the Mausoleum at Frogmore. Not until Prince Charles's six months' leave from the navy was almost up could Princess Maud be coaxed into making a move. She would, no doubt, have dearly loved to have spent Christmas with her parents at Sandringham, but on 21 December she steeled herself to set off.

  In Copenhagen they were received with relieved enthusiasm. As their train steamed into the gaily decorated station, a military band struck up the Danish National Anthem. On the platform were gathered the royal family, the ministers, the corps diplomatique and a galaxy of dignitaries. They drove through cheering crowds to their new home beside the Amalienborg Palace. That night they attended a state banquet. Princess Maud, sporting the Danish colours in her white dress trimmed with red roses, sat beside her husband's grandfather, old King Christian IX. In proposing her health, the King expressed the hope that 'as my dear daughter Alexandra has won all British hearts, so may my granddaughter win the hearts of the whole Danish nation'.

  But Maud's own heart was in England.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Vicky, Willie and Sophie

  1

  By the mid-1890S, relations between the widowed Empress Frederick and her son, Kaiser Wilhelm II, were hardly better than they had ever been. Although she played no part in public life and lived, for most of the year, in her new home, Friedrichshof, near Homberg, Vicky could not reconcile herself to her son's conduct. She resented both her own eclipse and his increasing megalomania. She could not forget his outrageous behaviour at the time of her husband's death; nor the way he had subsequently humiliated her by publicly associating himself with the various accusations levelled against her.

  'I cannot forgive or forget all his deeds . . .' she admitted to her daughter Sophie, Crown Princess of Greece. 'I am the sufferer, not he . . . and he is the offender, let him ask and wish for forgiveness and he shall have it, but not in the way he goes on now!'

  She was expecting the impossible. Wilhelm was too much his mother's son to admit that he was ever wrong. 'My mother and I,' he wrote with some sagacity, 'have the same characters. I have inherited hers. That good stubborn English blood which will not give way is in both our veins. The consequence is that, if we do not happen to agree, the situation becomes difficult.'

  In her wisdom, Queen Victoria realized that the fault did not lie entirely with her grandson. The Queen always did what she could to sweeten relations between mother and son. When Vicky's sister, Princess Helena, once visited Germany, she decided that the Kaiser's rudeness to his mother was more a matter of thoughtlessness than intention. He meant well, it was simply that his manner was unfortunate. Nor did the Empress make the slightest effort to meet him half-way. Princess Helena, who came to a quick understanding of the young man's character, advised her sister to flatter him by consulting him about little things; this way she would win his confidence and gain considerable influence over him.

  But things had gone too far for such remedies. Besides, with her transparently honest nature, Queen Victoria's eldest daughter was incapable of such guile. As the years passed she did, however, learn to keep a check on herself in his company; to live, as she put it, 'with a padlock on my mouth'.

  Her self-control was helped by the fact that she did not very often see her son. His occasional visits to Friedrichshof, always marked by great state and bustle, were merely formal calls. Outwardly, their behaviour towards each other became more decorous. But if experience had taught the Empress to hold her tongue in his presence, in private she aired her views on his arrogance with all her old spirit. She was still capable of flinging a newspaper to the floor and of stamping about in exasperation. His provocative public statements, his sudden whims, his appalling lack of finesse, distressed her considerably. If only, she declared, he would make no more of those terrible speeches and would not write those braggartly messages in books and on photographs of himself. It was enough to 'make one's hair stand on end'.

  If Queen Victoria was prepared to make allowances for her grandson in some cases, she was certainly not prepared to do so in all. Indeed, there were times when she found his behaviour no less insufferable than did his mother. Particularly irritating was that sense of his own importance. With his notoriously thin skin, Wilhelm could never quite shake himself free of the suspicion that some of his relations, and the British royal family in particular, did not take his status quite seriously enough. Not long after his accession, the Kaiser complained, through official channels, to Queen Victoria, that the Prince of Wales tended to treat him as a nephew rather than as an Emperor.

  This impertinence earned him one of his grandmother's most withering replies.

  'This is really too vulgar and too absurd,' wrote the Queen to Lord Salisbury, 'as well as untrue, almost to be believed.

  'We have always been very intimate with our grandson and nephew, and to pretend that he is to be treated in private as well as in public as "his Imperial Majesty" is perfect madness! He has been treated just as we should have treated his beloved father and even grandfather, and as the Queen herself was always treated by her dear uncle King Leopold. If he has such notions, he [had] better never come here.

  'The Queen will not swallow this affront.'

  More and more, during the last decade of the nineteenth century, did the Empress Frederick devote herself to her home and her three youngest daughters. Friedrichshof, by now, was a house of considerable charm and character. The rooms, furnished with Vicky's superb taste, were always filled with flowers from her garden; its atmosphere was cultured, relaxed, quite free of the fustiness of so many roy
al German homes. To the people of nearby Kronberg, the Empress was a kindly châtelaine and, to her guests, an informed, enlightened and intelligent hostess.

  When Vicky was not in residence, she would be travelling. For so active a personality, movement was essential. She would visit her daughters Moretta and Mossy, both of whom were now married and living in Germany; she would travel to Athens to stay with her daughter, Crown Princess Sophie. 'In sheer beauty nothing comes up to the Greek landscape for colour, purity of outline, transparent atmosphere, and everywhere the lovely sea . . .' she enthused. She was devoted to Italy. Each summer found her scrambling about its ruins, wandering through its palazzi, studying its sculpture or sitting in its hot, white sunlight, painting in the bright colours she loved so well.

  But perhaps, most of all, she enjoyed her visits to England. London's shops and museums were a source of endless delight. In the rooms at Windsor, Osborne and Balmoral, with their brightly blazing fires and their bowls of freshly picked flowers, she felt eminently at home. 'Really dear old England is a most fascinating place and it is indeed hard to leave it,' she admitted to one of her daughters. 'There is so much to be seen, and so many kind friends to see, that the time seems to pass like a dream and one cannot do half what one intended . . . Dear England! How I love it! I cannot help it!'

  With her mother, Queen Victoria, she always remained on affectionate terms. Throughout Vicky's turbulent life, the Queen had provided understanding, sympathy and support. 'I have had my very last drive with beloved Grandmama before she leaves for Florence,' she once wrote to Princess Sophie from Windsor. 'It was a glorious evening without a cloud or a breath of wind, and the dear old Park looked so fine. But I felt sad. At her age partings seem doubly melancholy, as you can imagine, and the thought of living far away from her in her old age is very painful. However, I must be thankful to have seen her.'