Born to Rule: Five Reigning Consorts, Granddaughters of Queen Victoria

by Julia P. Gelardi

  The democratic nature of the monarchy and the easygoing manner of the new king and queen proved to be complementary. Had Haakon and Maud not possessed down-to-earth personalities and instead exhibited imperious ways, more than likely their time on the Norwegian throne would have been far less stable. Whenever Haakon referred in public to Maud, for instance, he spoke of her not as “the Queen” or “Her Majesty” but simply as “my wife.”12 This was in keeping with the kind of court both sovereigns preferred at Christiania.

  Although she agreed completely with her husband’s desire for a democratic and informal court, Queen Maud nevertheless did not escape some form of criticism, however minor, during her first year in Norway. What irritated some was that Maud seemed to be taking her role as “bourgeoisie Queen” too far. A contemporary noted that “she has been stigmatized in some quarters as a ‘mere court personage.’ “13 Maud’s shyness, though, did not harm her reputation to the same degree as Alexandra’s did in St. Petersburg. Maud, after all, tried harder at playing the queen, and she also lacked the disdainful ways that Alexandra seemed to affect so much of the time when on show.

  By early 1907, Ena found herself settling into her new country. “We have had the most splendid autumn & early winter,” she wrote at the start of the new year, “& I much prefer Spain when it is like this to the fearful heat we get in the summer.”14 In the autumn of 1906, Ena had been excited to learn that she was expecting a child. The pregnancy progressed well, and unlike Tsarina Alexandra of Russia, who retreated during her pregnancies, Ena was seen in public even a few weeks before her scheduled confinement. Among many public events, Victoria Eugenie made numerous visits to churches around Madrid. In intensely Catholic Spain, Ena, Alfonso, and Queen Maria Cristina all prayed for a safe delivery and the health of the unborn child—as was the custom in the Spanish court—at various churches dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. These visits taxed the queen, who had to struggle in and out of carriages at a late stage in her pregnancy.

  When one of Ena’s childhood friends from the Isle of Wight, Joan Kennard, visited her a month before the birth, she saw how immersed in excitement and anxiety the Spanish court was as the confinement drew near. “She was so nice and evidently so pleased to see us,” Joan noted in a letter to her father about Ena. Then, mentioning King Edward VII’s upcoming visit to Spain (Cartagena was chosen over Madrid because the Spanish capital was deemed too unsafe), Joan described the scene:

  There is great perturbation in the Court owing to King Edward’s visit to Cartagena. This, of course, means that King Alfonso has to leave Madrid tomorrow night, and they are all terrified that the infant will arrive, while he is away. This would be the most awful affair in Spain, the baby is kept in the dark until the King has seen it…. The Queen is very amusing, but also very pathetic. She says she could bear anything, if only they would not fuss her so much!…the Queen said “Alfonso is so worried, he cannot even eat!!”15

  Joan Kennard’s father in turn told his wife: “I am glad poor little ‘Ena’ is to have English [people] about her at her time of trouble…I daresay she will have many children—even if next month does not produce a son & heir for Spain. She will have to take care not to offend the Spaniard by having too many English about her.”16

  A little over a month after that letter was written, the waiting ended. Just twenty-one days shy of her first wedding anniversary, nineteen-year-old Queen Victoria Eugenie of Spain was set to give birth to her first child at the Royal Palace in as public a manner as was decently acceptable. As soon as the signal was given, the king’s halberdiers dashed off to summon the country’s ministers and members of the diplomatic corps accredited to Madrid. Modern automobiles jostled with traditional horse-drawn carriages to convey brilliantly dressed notables to the gates of the Royal Palace.

  The queen’s labor pains began in the early morning of 10 May; they were intense and lasted twelve hours. Like her cousin Missy in Romania before her, Ena was encouraged to get on with it and bear the excruciating pain. Her well-meaning but overbearing mother-in-law was not much help, urging: “We Spaniards do not cry out when we bring a King into the world.” Exasperated, Ena could only murmur to herself, “and now they will see what an Englishwoman is like!”17

  The queen’s chief physician at the birth, Eugenio Gutiérrez, was a Spaniard, but he was assisted by a British doctor by the lyrical name of Bryden Glendin-ning, as well as a nurse, Miss Greene. The presence of a British physician mirrored the experience of Marie of Romania’s first confinement, when she was attended by Dr. Playfair.

  Every care was taken to ensure the safe delivery of Ena’s child and the life of both mother and baby. Sacred relics were delivered from different parts of Spain and placed in the queen’s room, in accordance with a centuries-old custom. Ena most certainly had not experienced anything quite like it: according to one historian, the relics consisted of “the arm of John the Baptist and the girdle of the Virgin from Tolosa.” The latter “is handed to the Queen at certain critical moments, and a prayer, while it is held in the hands or being kissed, insures a safe and happy delivery”18

  At this crucial moment, the queen was still a slave to Spanish court etiquette and subjected to giving birth almost in public. Just outside her room, in various ornate salons, were some 150 people, all of them men, with the exception of six of Ena’s ladies. Dressed in full military uniforms (complete with decorations), diplomatic attire, or full evening dress, statesmen, diplomats, prelates, representatives of civic organizations, and court officials awaited the birth of the queen’s first child. True to its reputation as the most rigidly formal court in Europe, these waiting diplomats and ministers were grouped by rank and seniority; those holding the most senior positions were placed in the salon closest to the laboring queen’s room.

  Suddenly, the massive double doors swung open. All eyes turned to the man stepping through them, Antonio Maura, the prime minister. Queen Ena’s ordeal ended at twenty minutes to one in the afternoon. Maura, moved by the occasion, announced to the dignitaries: “Gentlemen, it is a Prince.” The jubilation was genuine as the crowd shouted, “Viva la Reina! Viva el Príncipe! Viva el Rey!”19 “Veteran generals, former ambassadors, Ministers of the Crown, were actually hugging each other with delight.” The American minister to Spain recalled how “servants were running through the corridors shouting: ‘Es niño! (‘It is a boy!’)” while “outside the palace thousands—perhaps more than ten thousand people” greeted the news with joy.20

  Within a quarter of an hour of the birth, a beaming King Alfonso emerged from Ena’s room. Dressed in the uniform of a captain general of the army, with the Charles III chain and medal around his neck, the king presented his firstborn child to the assembled crowd, resting naked in a golden cradle and placed on a silver tray.

  The new father’s pride was understandable. Ena had given him an heir who showed every promise of being a fine, healthy son. According to one eyewitness, the baby prince, who had “an abundance of fair hair, was beyond question an unusually strong and healthy-appearing infant.” Another, describing the presentation ceremony, reported “the almost phenomenal physical strength of this baby, looking as if strong enough, like the infant Hercules, to strangle serpents in his cradle.”21

  Eight days after his vigorous debut, the baby was baptized in an imposing ceremony in the chapel of the Royal Palace. The baptismal font was the same one used by St. Dominic, the twelfth-century founder of the Order of the Dominicans. The child’s godfather was none other than Pope Pius X (later St. Pius X). As water from the Jordan River was poured over the newborn prince’s forehead, he was given the names Alfonso Pius Cristino Eduardo Francisco Guillermo Carlos Enrique Eugenio Fernando Antonio y Venancio de Todos los Santos. For years, Ena’s oldest child was known as Prince of the Asturias, a title granted to Spanish heirs to the throne. But to his family he would always be “Alfonsito.”

  Ena had done her duty. She had given birth to a boy—the coveted heir— within a year of her wedd
ing to Spain’s reigning monarch. It was an achievement that took her cousin, the Tsarina Alexandra, ten long years to fulfill. In recounting the couple’s feelings as well as her own, Princess Beatrice, the doting grandmother, wrote from Madrid to the British royal family’s confidant, the Bishop of Ripon:

  No words can say the intense joy that this happy event causes the dear young Parents, & all classes in the country here. My dear daughter passed through her hours of great suffering most bravely & is a very tender mother, hardly liking to have the child out of her arms. He is a splendid strong boy & thank God both he & my daughter are doing as well as possible. I shall find it hard to tear myself away from them…I have had such a delightfully undisturbed 3 months, with my dear child, & it is such a comfort to feel how happy & contented she is in her new house & how this additional joy has come to complete all.22

  After cheating death on her wedding day, the birth of Alfonsito certainly seemed to presage a better life for Victoria Eugenie; perhaps everything might now go well after all. She had come out of her ordeal successfully; King Alfonso was a proud father and loving husband; their beautiful baby boy was the very picture of health; and Ena, the young beautiful queen, commanded the admiration of a majority of Spaniards. Yet within a short space of time, Ena’s world was to be shattered.

  Thirteen

  REVOLUTIONARY FEVER

  “THE YEAR 1907 WILL BE A MEMORABLE ONE IN THE ANNALS OF Roumania, in consequence of the outbreak in the early spring of the most formidable insurrection which the country has ever seen.” So began a narrative of events sent by Sir Conyngham Greene, the British minister at Bucharest, to his superior in London, the foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey. As the movement gained momentum, upon reaching Wallachia “it changed its character and became anarchistic, wholesale destruction rather than plunder being its leading feature. The rebellion was accompanied by murders, mutilations, and crimes of the most atrocious description, committed not so much by the peasants as by organized bands of criminals from Bucharest.…So threatening did the outbreak become towards the end of the month that it was feared the rebels might effect a concentration and march upon Bucharest itself.”1 Thousands of protestors did march upon the capital, frightening many. In order to protect his family, the crown prince sent his wife and children to the mountain resort of Sinaia. Many aristocratic families fled there too, waiting until things cooled before returning to Bucharest. Among them was Nadèje Stirbey, the wife of Prince Barbo Stirbey

  While she stayed at Sinaia, Crown Princess Marie visited her friend Nadèje. Barbo, like many male members of the aristocracy, and the crown prince, stayed put in Bucharest. Nevertheless, Barbo also visited his family at Sinaia, and it was during these visits that he and Missy came to know each other well.

  Barbo did not originally set out to conquer the crown princess, but when circumstances threw them together, the two found themselves irresistibly drawn to each other. Besides Barbo’s obvious charms, title, wealth, political influence, and intelligence (he read law at the University of Paris), it perhaps might have been to Stirbey’s advantage that he bore a slight physical resemblance to Waldorf Astor. As for the crown princess, “still recuperating from Waldorf Astor, Marie was not an easy conquest.” But “Barbo demanded what Waldorf had not, an adult relationship. In return he offered total commitment.”2 This set the stage for a long-lasting and devoted friendship between Marie of Romania and Prince Barbo Stirbey that would survive the most trying tests in the years to come.

  After Waldorf Astor married his Nancy, Missy gravitated to the next male admirer to come her way. Never in want of attention from the opposite sex, the crown princess had easily conquered the heart of the new man in her life, the popular and desirable Prince Barbo. In the eyes of a Romanian aristocrat of the time, Princess Callimachi, there was hardly a man who could offer “so intensely attractive a specimen of virile masculinity as Barbo Stirbey. Extremely personable, elegant, dark without Oriental exaggeration, some strange hypnotic quality lingered in his beautifully expressive eyes.” Nor did Princess Callimachi’s admiration stop there. “His manner was unassuming, yet full of charm; he spoke little, but a gift of persuasion and instinctive psychological insight made him rarely miss his aim whenever he set himself one. Extraordinary was the way he always struck the right note.”3

  Barbo was part of the smart set in Bucharest. As scion of one of Romania’s wealthiest families, he easily crossed paths with the rich and powerful. In the maddeningly complex intertwining that marked Romania’s aristocracy, Barbo Stirbey provides a perfect example of how members of his class could easily find themselves related to one another. Stirbey’s wife, Nadèje, was a member of the Bibesco clan, of whom the most famous, Princess Marthe Bibesco, was known internationally for her writing. Barbo’s sister, Elise, became the second wife of Ion Bratianu, son of the man of the same name who was instrumental in bringing King Carol I to Romania. The younger Bratianu also took an active role in politics, eventually becoming head of the Liberal Party and premier of Romania. Bratianu and Stirbey saw in Missy the makings of someone who might easily be an asset to their country. Ion had never taken Missy for granted ever since she arrived in Romania, always treating her without condescension. As Missy matured and Bratianu’s political star rose, the crown princess would find her interest in politics rising in tandem. This was thanks in no small measure to Barbo Stirbey. While their personal relationship blossomed, so did Barbo’s mentoring of the politically inexperienced Marie.

  For a man who “relished pulling strings behind the scenes,” Marie became an “ideal pupil.” Whatever Barbo had to offer in the field of politics, she eagerly embraced. The crown princess came to see Stirbey’s guiding hand as indispensable. Barbo was what no man had ever been to her, a mentor. And “with his careful analytical mind and her rapid powers of comprehension,” Prince Barbo Stirbey and Crown Princess Marie of Romania soon developed into “a formidable team.”4 This friendship, which blossomed into love and took on the added dimension of mentoring, was officially cemented when Prince Stirbey was appointed by King Carol in 1913 to become Superintendent of the Crown Estates. Fortuitously for Missy and Barbo, the post provided them with a cover for their relationship. His new position meant that he and Marie were thrown together every day. But more important, in giving his imprimatur to the affair, King Carol I had shown keen foresight. Realizing the potential, as yet untapped, in the future queen, and the significant role the “tactful and efficiently influential” Stirbey5 was playing where Missy was concerned, King Carol decided to foster the couple’s devotion. He understood full well that the intelligent but indecisive Crown Prince Ferdinand would need strong support once he ascended the throne. Who better to buttress and guide him than Missy, Barbo, and Bratianu? Carol I’s instincts would prove correct. His hopes were to bear great fruit in the years ahead.

  Missy and Barbo’s close relationship was destined to bring dividends for Romania. At thirty-one years of age, not only was Marie at the height of her beauty, she had also reached a greater sense of maturity. The interest in her adopted country planted by Waldorf Astor had taken root, nurtured by Stirbey. Under Prince Barbo’s careful tutelage, Marie found herself fascinated not only by her new mentor but also by the intricacies of Balkan politics upon which her country’s success rested. Romania’s future queen had entered a new and significant phase of her life. Moreover, the ever astute Stirbey had not only fallen in love with the princess, he had seen in her a potent force for Romania; for here was a woman who was bound to be of immense help to the more self-effacing Ferdinand when he became king. Stirbey was determined that an opportunity not be lost. He counseled King Carol that Marie must be molded to play a strong political role for the sake of Romania. It did not take much for Barbo to convince the king.

  “It’s essential not to break her will,” Barbo told King Carol. “But if we can persuade her to take herself and her duties more seriously, her natural intelligence will do the rest.” Barbo Stirbey was not the only one to no
tice the potential in Marie of Romania. Sir Conyngham Greene told Sir Edward Grey in January 1907: “It is often said that when Prince Ferdinand comes to the Throne it will be the Princess who will be the true Ruler, but I feel sure that Her Royal Highness will be far to [sic] clever to step outside her own rôle, and that she will know how to supplement any possible deficiencies of her husband by the savoir-faire and tact which she has inherited from her father and the Royal Family of England.”7

  Just before the outbreak of World War I, Count Ottokar Czernin, then the Austro-Hungarian minister to Romania, was so struck by Marie that he predicted “in the near future Roumanian policy might well come to depend not so much upon Ferdinand as upon his versatile wife. Her character and mentality,” wrote Czernin, “is one of the most important reasons for putting relations with Rouma-nia on quite another basis.”8

  All of these astute observers would have to wait until Marie became queen before their opinions were put to the test. For the time being, however, it was left to King Carol to see to it that the Peasants’ Revolt of 1907 was quelled forcefully and swiftly if the dynasty was to remain on the throne of Romania. The price for bringing back order was exceptionally high: It is thought that at least ten thousand peasants lost their lives in the uprising. According to Italian diplomats serving in Bucharest at the time, the revolt was very serious, particularly in Wallachia, where the rioting “equaled the Russian uprising of 1905–1906 in ferocity”9 There is little doubt that the chaos that engulfed the Russian Empire in 1905–06 had infected the neighboring kingdom of Romania. Though the uprising was successfully stopped, the Romanian royal family and the country’s elite were thoroughly shaken by events that had erupted so suddenly and so violently. Writing afterwards to Nancy Astor, Marie admitted just how frightening the whole episode was: