Grandmama of Europe: The Crowned Descendants of Queen Victoria

by Theo Aronson

  King Alfonso was at San Sebastian when he heard of the coup. Refusing to be hurried, he returned to the capital on 14 September. At the station he was met by his apprehensive Ministers. The choice seemed to be between civil war and the acceptance of General Primo's military dictatorship. When the Prime Minister offered his resignation, Alfonso accepted it. At noon he asked General Primo de Rivera to form a government. Spain, in other words, had become a dictatorship. King Alfonso had broken his constitutional oath.

  Throughout all this upheaval, Queen Ena played no part. It is doubtful that Alfonso would have consulted her or that she would have expressed any opinion. Her role, in the political life of the country, had always been a negative one. Unlike her cousins, the late Empress of Russia or Queen Marie of Romania, Queen Ena did not interfere, either directly or indirectly, in affairs of state. She never discussed politics with anyone, says one of her daughters. Queen Ena always confined herself to such non-partisan duties as nursing services. Her pioneer work on behalf of Spain's backward hospitals would one day be regarded, it was claimed, as her most lasting memorial. Her Red Cross Hospital in Madrid, to which she devoted so much time and energy, was in many ways a model institution.

  'How this English princess feels,' wrote the famous novelist and political exile, Blasco-Ibanez, 'now that the constitution has been torn up like a scrap of paper and a military tyranny rivalling that of the former Czars inflicted on the country of her adoption, it would be hard to describe.'

  It would not only be hard; it would be almost impossible. One could merely speculate. That the Spanish were a fiery, unstable, capricious people, Ena needed no convincing. The bomb on her wedding-day had left its mark. Nor had it been the only one. There had been at least half a dozen attempts on the King's life and countless abortive plots. The Peninsula was in a permanent state of eruption. It was no wonder that when Queen Ena drove in procession through the streets of Madrid and Barcelona she looked anxious and unsmiling. But whether she would agree that the only way to manage this difficult people was by force is another matter. Was this very English Queen too imbued with British concepts of constitutional government to approve of her husband's easy acceptance of dictatorship? One does not know. In this matter, as in everything, Queen Ena behaved with tact, dignity and discretion.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Louise of Sweden

  1

  Queen Victoria, with her penchant for the handsome Battenberg princes, had sanctioned the marriages of two of them into her own family. Prince Henry of Battenberg had married the Queen's youngest daughter Princess Beatrice (and had fathered the future Queen Ena of Spain) while his elder brother, Prince Louis of Battenberg, had married one of the Queen's granddaughters: Princess Victoria of Hesse.

  Princess Victoria of Hesse was a daughter of Queen Victoria's third child, Princess Alice. The early death of Princess Alice in 1878 meant that Princess Victoria, like her sister Princess Alix of Hesse (later the Empress Alexandra of Russia) grew to womanhood under the eye of her grandmother, Queen Victoria. That eye, which could be so devastatingly disapproving, could also be surprisingly understanding. Thus, when Princess Victoria fell in love with the dashing but relatively unimportant Prince Louis of Battenberg (the Battenbergs were a morganatic branch of the Hesse family) Queen Victoria was all approval. Other royalties – and the Prussian chief amongst them – might declare themselves horrified at Prince Louis's morganatic blood but the Queen dismissed their objections as nonsensical bigotry. She considered Prince Louis of Battenberg to be an eminently suitable husband for her granddaughter. Not only, with his coal-black hair and beard, would he supply the family with that 'strong dark blood' after which the Queen was always hankering, but he was an Englishman.

  This had come about by registration. As a youngster, the German-born Prince Louis of Battenberg had changed his nationality in order to join the British Navy. Developing into a man of considerable ability and charm Prince Louis had won rapid promotion. By the time he was in his late twenties he regarded himself, and was generally regarded, as a British naval officer rather than a German prince. Indeed, in describing his future wife, Princess Victoria of Hesse, to a friend, Prince Louis assured him that she was 'more English than German' and that they always spoke English to each other.

  Louis and Victoria were married, at Darmstadt, in the spring of 1884. He was thirty, she twenty-one. Their life together was happy and Princess Victoria bore her husband four children. As a family, they were forever on the move. Heiligenberg Castle in Hesse was their permanent home but with Prince Louis so often away at sea, his wife and children spent long periods with relations all over Europe. There were holidays with Queen Victoria at Osborne, there were visits to various Continental palaces, there were stays in different houses throughout England. For several periods, they lived on Malta.

  As both Prince Louis and Princess Victoria were people of culture and intelligence, their children were brought up in a lively and enlightened fashion. Two of the children, George and Alice (she was to become the mother of the Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Queen Elizabeth II) were somewhat contemplative by nature; the other two were brighter. They were Louis, who later became Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and Louise, who became the Queen of Sweden.

  Princess Louise of Battenberg was born on 13 July 1889, the second of the four children. Although her parents' constant moves and widespread continental relationships gave her early life a somewhat cosmopolitan flavour, it was essentially as an English princess that Louise grew up. Two things ensured this: Queen Victoria's position as head of the family and Prince Louis's career in the British Navy. In 1889 he was Assistant Director of Naval Intelligence; within ten years he was Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet. Heiligenberg Castle might have been regarded as their permanent home but it was in or near British naval stations that Princess Louise spent the greater part of her time. She loved England. The thought that marriage might one day compel her to leave the country always appalled her.

  In the year 1907, Princess Louise turned eighteen. She was by no means a beauty. The features which made the men in her family so good-looking were too strong for a woman. Her face was too thin, her nose too long, her mouth too wide. She was toothy, angular, gaunt. For clothes, she cared hardly at all. Only her eyes – dark, expressive, heavy-lidded – saved her from ugliness. When that indefatigable painter of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century royalties, Philip Laszlo, arrived to paint a portrait of Princess Louise, even he seems to have been at a loss to make something of his gawky and unsuitably dressed sitter. First he caught up a bright yellow shawl and draped it round her shoulders. Then, catching sight of an old gardening hat hanging on the wall, he turned it inside out and tilted it across her upswept hair. Finally, still not satisfied, he found two curling ostrich plumes and pinned them to the hat. But not even all these romantic and frothily brushed-in accessories could soften the sitter's angularity. Nor, on the other hand, could they disguise the character in her face. For what Princess Louise of Battenberg might have lacked in prettiness, she more than made up for in personality.

  Hers was a strong character. She was intelligent, sharp-witted, knowledgeable; she suffered fools badly. Yet she was without a trace of malice. Her manner was warm, affectionate, kindly; her aunt, the Empress Alexandra, used to speak of her 'self-sacrificing nature'. Although, like so many of Queen Victoria's descendants, Louise was shy in public, among friends and relations she was known for her quickness, her gaiety, her vivacity and her ready laughter. She had a strong sense of humour; sharper, more subtle than the knockabout variety of so many of her cousins. Of those less endearing but honest Battenberg characteristics, she had her share as well: a quick temper, a certain outspokenness, strong likes and dislikes. All these, however, stopped well short of arrogance, and were invariably kept under control.

  It may have been this combination of plainness of feature and forcefulness of character that kept Princess Louise of Battenberg single for so long. It was true that in
1909, when Louise was twenty, King Manuel of Portugal asked for her hand. She refused. Not only was she not attracted to him but she had no desire to become a queen. She did not relish the limelight. That opportunity lost, she seems not to have had another for well over a decade. The First World War might have had something to do with this. For one thing, Princess Louise threw herself, with characteristic verve, into nursing services; for another, the Battenbergs suddenly found themselves out of public favour.

  In 1912, Louise's father, the handsome and bearded Prince Louis of Battenberg, became First Sea Lord. The appointment marked the apex of his brilliant career: he was now in supreme operational command of the British Navy. The family moved into the splendours of Mall House in Admiralty Arch. With the outbreak of war, however, Britain was swept by a strong and unreasoning hatred of all things German. Everything, from dachshunds to Wagnerian operas, came under attack. And one of the first people to be agitated against was Prince Louis. Despite the fact that Battenberg princes (Louis's sons and nephews) were fighting for England, it was alleged that a Battenberg could not be trusted as First Sea Lord. In the Press, an increasingly frenzied campaign was launched against Prince Louis. Finally, on 28 October 1914, after a particularly vicious attack, Prince Louis handed in his resignation.

  'I feel deeply with him,' wrote King George V, Prince Louis's wife's cousin, that evening, 'there is no more loyal man in this country.' For the fifty-eight-year-old Prince Louis, who had devoted his whole life to the British Navy, it was a tragic moment. For his devoted daughter, it was hardly less tragic.

  'Our father's resignation cut up Louise very, very much,' wrote her brother Louis, afterwards Lord Mountbatten. She knew what the Navy meant to her father, she knew that from 1868 to 1914, almost half a century, he had given up his entire life to the Navy. It was his one passion and his one joy, his one pride.'

  But she was not one to brood on misfortune. Early in 1915, deciding that her work for the Soldiers and Sailors Families' Association was not enough, Princess Louise joined the V.A.D. – the Voluntary Aid Detachments – as a nurse. Having completed her training, she was sent to a French military hospital at Nevers. For the following three years she worked as hard, and in conditions as difficult and horrifying, as any other nurse behind the front line. Although frail, she never spared herself. Her experience of the sufferings of the wounded matured her and brought to full flower her concern for others. From this time on, unselfishness became her most notable quality. Louise would go to any lengths to help anyone in trouble. 'She was the kind of person,' says Lady Zia Wernher, 'who would give her last crust to help someone in need.'

  In 1917, with anti-German feeling running as high as ever in England, Lloyd George suggested to King George V that those branches of the British royal family bearing German names and titles should change them for English ones. The proposal would no doubt have shocked Queen Victoria; the 'German element', she used to say, was the one which she wanted fostered in the family. Now, a mere sixteen years after her death, her grandson changed the name of her beloved Prince Albert's dynasty of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor. Queen Mary's relations changed from Teck to Cambridge and the Battenbergs anglicized their name to Mountbatten. Prince Louis of Battenberg became the Marquess of Milford Haven; his daughter, Princess Louise, became Lady Louise Mountbatten.

  The change took place on 17 July, 1917. Prince Louis, having lost his family name, seems to have retained his family sense of humour. Arriving to spend a few days at the home of his eldest son two days before the change, and leaving three days after, he wrote, in the visitors' book, 'arrived Prince Jekyll . . . departed Lord Hyde'.

  Louise returned from the war to face a bleak period. The year 1918 had seen the murder of her Russian relations (the Empress Alexandra was her aunt; her five children were her cousins) and the collapse of the thrones of her German relations. Her family lost considerable sums of money after the war and were forced to economize. Many of the young men whom Louise had known before the war had been killed in battle; the young women were married, with families of their own. In September 1921, her father, still bitter at his forced resignation from the Navy, died suddenly at the age of sixty-seven. On his death, his widow and unmarried daughter were obliged to move into an apartment in Kensington Palace.

  Louise was now thirty-two, a plain, thin, frail, somewhat awkward woman; 'figuratively and almost literally,' as she put it, 'in no man's land'. With her keenly developed sense of social responsibility, she dedicated herself to welfare work and, with relations all over the Continent, she travelled. But for someone of her undeniable qualities – her spirit, her warmth, her compassion, her intelligence – this could hardly be enough. Was she destined to lead the purposeless and circumscribed life of a royal old maid?

  2

  'I will never marry a king or a widower,' Louise Mountbatten used to say. Yet in 1923 she married the widowed Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf who became, in time, the King of Sweden.

  In 1923 Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden turned forty-one. He had been a widower for three years. His wife had been Princess Margaret of Connaught, a daughter of Queen Victoria's son Arthur, Duke of Connaught. The couple had had five children, the eldest of whom was seventeen and the youngest seven, in 1923. Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf was a tall, not unattractive man, gentle by nature with a kindly, somewhat studious air. Having done his obligatory military service as a young man, he gave military matters very little further thought; his interests lay in quite different directions. He was a highly civilized and cultured prince, interested in history, art, music and gardening. Archaeology was his passion; he developed into an authority on Chinese antiquities. With this feeling for the past was allied an interest in contemporary affairs: he was a student of politics, a progressive thinker and an ardent democrat. Calm, modest and well-mannered, Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf struck one as being more like a professor than a future king.

  As such, he suited Louise admirably. Herself a woman of culture and intelligence, unaffected and forward-looking, she would never have been satisfied with some royal nonentity. Indeed, shortly before his death in 1921, Louise's father had said, 'There is only one person in the world who would suit Louise, and that is Gustaf of Sweden; and the only person who would suit Gustaf is Louise.'

  Yet, at first, the thought of marrying Gustaf Adolf terrified Louise. They had known each other for some years but when, on a visit to England in the summer of 1923, Prince Gustaf Adolf began paying court to her, she did all she could to avoid being left alone with him. She liked him well enough but she could not face the thought of leaving England, of living in a strange country and of one day being a queen. She had no taste for ceremonial, she had no interest in clothes, she had no talent for small talk. And how would the children take to her? To become the stepmother of five young children was a daunting prospect. In mounting panic Louise consulted her friends and relations. They all urged her to accept.

  Accept she finally did. Yet she remained full of doubts and self-depreciating comments. She was too old and thin, she protested, to be a bride. And how could she think of wearing white?

  In Sweden too, there were some signs of apprehension. To the majority of the Swedish people, the name of Lady Louise Mountbatten meant nothing. Even the government knew very little about her. With the Swedish constitution expressly forbidding the marriage of the heir to a commoner, the government wanted to know if this mere 'Lady' was of royal blood. The query, which would probably have earned the Swedes one of Queen Victoria's most withering replies, was answered by the sending of the list of precedence at the Court of St James's. The Mountbattens, despite their war-time changes of title, remained listed among the members of the British royal family.

  Yet the Swedish royal family was hardly in a position to demand proofs of unsullied royal blood. The dynasty, by now respectably royal, had distinctly plebeian origins. The founder had been that Napoleonic soldier, Jean Baptiste Bernadotte; his wife, whom Napoleon himself had once considered marrying, had been a si
lk merchant's daughter named Désirée Clary. To strengthen still more the Napoleonic flavour of the dynasty, Bernadotte's son, King Oscar I of Sweden and Norway, had married the daughter of Napoleon's adopted son, Eugène Beauharnais. Only with the nineteenth century well under way did the Bernadottes begin marrying into less exotic but more firmly established royal houses.

  As a result, perhaps, of these parvenu origins, the court at Stockholm was now the most formal and lavish of the three Scandinavian courts. There was no talk here of riding on trams. The Royal Palace, the Stockholm Slott, situated on one of the fourteen islands which make up this beautiful water city, was sumptuously furnished. King Edward VII of England, visiting the Crown Prince's father, King Gustaf V, delighted in the ornate, somewhat Frenchified atmosphere of the Palace; even the soldiers lining the main staircase wore the 'uniform and bearskins of the Old Guard of Napoleon'. Things were not quite so French, however, as to prevent the King's suite from enjoying a hearty English breakfast. Drottningholm, the palace outside Stockholm, was no less lavishly decorated and furnished.

  As Louise's future mother-in-law, Queen Victoria of Sweden, was never well enough to play a public role, many of her duties would revolve on Louise. In other words, the relatively unimportant Lady Louise Mountbatten would overnight become the leading female figure at this elegant Swedish court. For someone of her retiring nature, it was a frightening prospect.

  Louise and Gustaf Adolf were married on 3 November 1923. The ceremony took place in the Chapel Royal at St James's Palace. The Crown Prince looked uncharacteristically military in the uniform of a Swedish general. Louise's dress was of silvery silk. A tiara, worn low on the forehead in that particularly unbecoming style of the early 1920s, held her lace veil. Her bouquet was of lilies-of-the-valley. Compared with the grey mistiness of the day outside, the scene within the Chapel Royal was rich, warm and colourful.