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

by Julia P. Gelardi

  Washington, D.C., was next on the itinerary. It was virtually impossible to get a taxi because they were being commandeered by people wishing to follow the celebrated queen. One of the most solemn moments of Marie’s trip took place at Arlington National Cemetery. Wearing a tan-colored gown and sable scarf, the queen was driven in an open motorcar on a sunny day past rows of white headstones marking the graves of fallen American soldiers. She proceeded to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier perched high on a hill. The Queen of Romania stood in silence to pay her respects, made the sign of the Cross, then laid a wreath at the tomb. Touched by the sight of so many war dead, Queen Marie noted in her diary: “The churchyard is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The soldiers and sailors fallen in America’s different wars are burried [sic] there in a lovely word [world] of beautiful trees upon marvellous emerald green grass small squares stones marking the thousands of graves, all of them in the shade of trees—dignified, beautiful & not melanc[h]oly, I have never seen anything better or more tastefully done anywhere in Europe.”27 After a lightning visit to George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, it was back to Washington and an official dinner at the White House.

  Like President Wilson before him, a morose President Calvin Coolidge was not prepared to be enchanted by Marie of Romania. The White House visit, in which Marie sparkled in her diamond tiara and a Jean Patou gown of white velvet, had its awkward moments, thanks to the Coolidges’ dour attitude. After lighting up a cigarette together with Alice Longworth, Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter, Marie was ushered out of the White House in less than two hours.

  The rest of her frenetic journey was awash in fulsome banquets, speeches, and a blaze of publicity. Back in New York City, Marie presided over a ball at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. According to one eyewitness,

  We had a queen from a medieval legend that night.…She was startling. Her gown was black with diamante sequins. From her shoulders hung a brocaded green and gold shawl shifting in iridescent light as she moved in stately splendor under a crown of diamonds studded with sapphires, set above a medieval cap effect of pearls fitted close to the face and finished with hanging bands of pearls. Strings of them hung to her waist. There was a heavy chain of diamonds also, broken at intervals with squares of massive design. From this chain was suspended an unbelievable egg-shaped sapphire, one of the largest, it is said, in the world. This stiff Gothic figure moved with the creak and swing of jewels to an erected throne and received for more than an hour with all the aplomb and finesses that only a modern woman can assemble.28

  Marie always tried to write to her husband about her experiences. She recorded her first impressions a week after her arrival—“our life has been a whirl, a rush.” Ten days later, she wrote from “somewhere west” that “all the time I am making friends & what the Americans call ‘putting Roumania on the map.’ I would have volumes to write but not time. But I am putting all down in my diary which I shall read to you all on my return. But I keenly feel not being able to write home more & keep you up on all my news, because I never forget any of you at home.…The conception of America can only be had by being here.”29

  As she charged through America (with side trips to Canada) on the crosscountry tour on board the Royal Roumania, the circus really began. The parties vying for Queen Marie’s ear, eyes, touch, nod—anything to show they were at the center of her attention—multiplied. Ordinary folk, local dignitaries, and children all beckoned Marie to be with them. And so it went, through West Point; Toronto and meeting with Joe Boyle’s intimates; Ottawa and the hundreds waiting on Parliament Hill. In Canada, Marie thrilled audiences when she told them that she had always wanted to visit their country ever since, as a child, she heard stories about it from her grandmother, Queen Victoria.

  The list of places visited continued to mount—Philadelphia, Baltimore, Montreal, Utica, Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany, Hamilton, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Winnipeg. Hoping to get a glimpse of American farmers she thought might be the equivalent of her Romanian peasants, she even chose to visit North Dakota.

  The most unusual part of her American trip was Marie’s encounter with the Sioux Indians in that state. The queen’s reputation as a wartime leader had reached this remote area, and it was because of her significant contribution during the war that Marie was welcomed in friendship by Chief Red Tomahawk, famous as the man who killed Sitting Bull. She entered a teepee, where her finger was pricked for blood and she was welcomed into the Sioux Nation. No fewer than half a dozen chiefs lifted the buffalo robe on which Marie was sitting and ceremoniously carried her in. Kneeling on the robe, Marie then graciously accepted the gift of a spectacular feathered war headdress and her adoption into the tribe as “Winyan Kipanki Wim—The Woman Who was Waited For.” In a fitting end to the ceremony, members of the tribe danced round the queen in full costume, to the beat of a drum. Though long accustomed to theatricality and well versed in the art of being regal, even the magnificent Marie of Romania could hardly top such an original event.

  When, on 3 November, Queen Marie finally arrived at Maryhill—the climax of her journey—to dedicate Sam Hill’s museum, the site and its surroundings must have sent her heart sinking. Hundreds of miles from civilization, set in a stark, treeless landscape marked by volcanic rock, Maryhill looked out over the mighty and treacherous Columbia River.

  The queen, along with other visitors, was in for a shock. Awaiting them was not some magnificent building, ready to house the many treasures Marie had brought from Romania (worth an astonishing $500,000 or so). Instead, there was the mere shell of a dream. Maryhill was nothing but an empty, concrete, win-dowless edifice, more like an overblown carport. The queen’s car drove right inside the main hall and deposited her beside a mounted throne draped in scarlet. “We drove up to that strange uncouth cement building erected by the just as strange old Samuel Hill,” Marie noted. “I knew when I set out that morning to consecrate that queer freak of a building that no one would understand why…but a spirit of understanding was strong on me that day & I managed by my own personality, by my words, by my spirit, to move all hearts beating there this morning.”30

  Rising to the occasion, Marie gave one of the best speeches of her entire trip. “There is much more than concrete in this structure. There is a dream built into this place—a dream for today and especially for tomorrow. There are great dreamers and there are great workers in the world. When a dreamer is also a worker, he is working for today and for tomorrow as well. For he is building for those who come after us.”31 Marie talked of Sam Hill and the gifts she was leaving Maryhill. She ended by saying, “Mr. Hill, I would very much like to shake your hand.”32 The queen had rescued an awkward moment and in the process acquired even more admirers.

  Loie Fuller had already annoyed a number of individuals, including Marie. Then an ugly and very public fight broke out between the jolly-looking Sam Hill and the queen’s personal aide, Major Stanley Washburn. An alcoholic who suffered from shell shock, Washburn, like so many others connected with Marie on the trip, kept a jealous eye on her, just as Sam Hill did. Things finally came to a head when Hill brandished a pistol at Washburn, who barricaded himself inside the royal train. Loie sided with Hill. In no time, a ravenous press was onto the story. Finally, Hill was booted off the train. But no sooner had that episode ended than some of the Romanians accompanying Marie were up in arms over Washburn. Then followed an altercation between Marie’s official host, Colonel John H. Carroll, and Loie. By the time the party made it to Denver, Loie had left the train.

  Marie turned fifty-one years old on board the Royal Roumania on its way to Winnipeg, lumbering past a desolate Canadian landscape, broken only by the occasional glimpse of lakes and Hudson Bay Company log cabins inhabited by fur trappers. The most touching message she received for her birthday was a telegram from Ferdinand, telling her how proud he was of her success.

  But Queen Marie’s trip was cut short by word that King Ferdinand was seriously ill. She rushed from Indianapolis to New York, th
en boarded the Beren-garia for Europe. In just six weeks, Marie had journeyed over 8,700 miles and had been affectionately mobbed by millions.

  Looking back on that exhausting, sometimes exasperating, but always exhilarating journey, she summed up the whole episode for Loie Fuller. The queen’s trip, which, “above all…was to have been a voyage of love” and which was supposed “to carry a message of love and understanding from the Old World to the New,” instead degenerated into a circus. In the end, however, Queen Marie would not let all the criticism mar her memories of the United States and the American people. The “sympathy shown me wherever I passed,” she told Fuller, “will live with me to the end of my days.” She stressed that she and her children, “in spite of these planned or unplanned contrivances, kept an unspoiled picture of our visit and our love for the American people who received us with open arms.” And she admitted that

  both my children and I have but one dream: to return! To return to that great, stupendous New World which makes you almost guiddy [sic] because of its immencity [sic], its noise, its striving, its fearful impetuous [sic] to get on, to do always more, always bigger, quicker, more astonishingly a restless, flaring great world, where I think everything can be realised….

  I know, as long as I live, breathe and think, the love for America will beautify my life and my thoughts…. Perhaps Fate will allow me one day to go back to America.33

  But Fate had other things in store. For King Ferdinand, exhausted by the dynastic and personal headaches wrought by his eldest son, was dying of cancer.

  Back in Romania, the queen was surprised to find Nando a shadow of his former self. Suffering from cancer of the intestines, the king was a victim of blood poisoning. Seeing her husband’s pitiful state, Marie prayed fervently that their life together would not yet end. She and Ferdinand had gone through so much, had served their country through thick and thin, and were not ready to relinquish Romania to a five-year-old boy. Leaving the throne to Prince Michael at this stage would surely mean trouble for the child and the volatile nation. Neighboring countries might be tempted to seize their former lands and internal political factions might lead to civil disturbance. But by April 1927, the king’s death was so evidently near that he was given the last rites of the Catholic Church. As Marie tried to comfort her husband she was also confronted by Carol’s desire to reclaim his place as heir to the throne. Far from being content living abroad with Lupescu, Carol was now itching to play a strong political role.

  The queen’s generous spirit shone forth as she invited the king’s longtime mistress, Aristitza Dissesscu, to his bedside. Marie even lightheartedly encouraged Ferdinand to start listing gifts in his will for his many female conquests, particularly the ever faithful Aristitza.

  Even as Ferdinand fought for his life, the political jockeying for power began. The prime minister, General Alexander Averescu, attempted a coup but was thwarted. Ferdinand replaced him with the ever loyal Prince Stirbey, which naturally had people wondering whether the queen had anything to do with the installation of her favorite. Three weeks after Stirbey was nominated, he resigned after the government collapsed. Next came Ion Bratianu. Meanwhile, Ferdinand’s condition grew worse. Marie brought her husband to spend his last days in the place they both loved: Sinaia. She hoped that the beauty and cooler air of the mountain resort might do some good. It was an ideal choice, for the botanist king could admire the fir trees, flowers, and mountains around him. He died at Sinaia in July 1927, in the arms of the woman who had been his wife for thirty-five years. Marie wrote: “ ‘I am so tired’ were his last words and when he lay so quiet in my arms about one hour later, I knew that I must thank God for him at least. This was rest indeed.”34

  If Queen Sophie’s husband had been “one of the doomed,” Queen Marie’s husband was “a man of sorrows and of self-abnegation.”35 Ferdinand suffered much for Romania: a devout Roman Catholic, he had to raise his children in the Orthodox faith, in return for which he was denied the sacrament of Holy Communion for years; a Hohenzollern to the depths of his being, he threw in his country’s lot with the Entente cause against Germany, and as a result was struck off the Hohenzollern roster; and finally, as a father who loved his heir but could not abide his son’s conduct toward Romania and the dynasty, as he lay dying, Ferdinand gave up his wish to say good-bye to Carol for fear that his return to Romania might cause untold discord. Throughout all this time, in spite of their differences, Ferdinand was supported by the woman who was always there for him—“my Maddy” as he affectionately called her—without whom the king might not have proved a successful monarch. The queen was well aware of this, admitting: “A great consolation to me is that I was the one he always needed, I was a sort of anchor—till the end I was the anchor, and his eyes always searched me even when he hardly spoke anymore…I had, all through our long life together, been the one who found solutions, who refused to consider anything beyond one’s strength and he had got accustomed to lean, to rely on my unfailing optimism.”36

  Ferdinand was buried at Curtea de Arges, like his uncle, King Carol I. Queen Marie was genuinely saddened by her husband’s death. His last months had brought the couple closer than they had ever been. Their partnership had endured and even thrived for the sake of Romania. From then on, Marie would have to fight whatever battles lay ahead without Ferdinand by her side. Before the year was out, old Bratianu had also died, making it seem as if all Marie’s old associates were deserting her. Thankfully, she still had the love and loyalty of Barbo Stirbey.

  In the summer of 1928, after repeated attempts at bullying his wife for a divorce, Carol finally succeeded. Helen reluctantly conceded, counseled by Stirbey as well as others. The situation had become so intolerable that she felt there really was no other alternative than to go ahead with a divorce. The deteriorating relationship would prompt Queen Marie to record in 1930: “The situation is profoundly tragic.”37

  It is worth mentioning Queen Helen’s strength of character at this stage to illustrate the stark contrast in the way the children of Queen Marie and Queen Sophie were raised. However bitter Princess Helen felt about her husband’s conduct toward herself and her son, she never let her personal feelings get in the way of raising her only child to place the interests of Romania above all, and to be a decent human being. Helen derived her own values from her mother. Of his maternal grandmother, King Michael of Romania has noted that “she was a very grand lady…and a very strong moral person. And at the same time, she was a very sweet person, loving. But there was no nonsense about certain things.”38

  Mother and daughter had always been close and Helen’s own troubles caused Queen Sophie unending misery. Sophie’s visits to her daughter in Romania were a Godsend to both women. Sophie never took to Romania—“things are very weird & difficult here…one feels so far away out of the world.” Nevertheless, she went there for her family’s sake. In September 1928, she wrote to her friend the Reverend R. W. Cole, “Of course I must not grumble as I am with all my children, happy to be with my dear daughter in her loneliness.”39 Six weeks later, as Sophie prepared to return home to Florence, she confessed: “I dread leaving my daughter—hate to be seperated [sic] fr. any of the children—it was a great comfort being together. She is wonderfully brave in all her trouble.”40

  In Sinaia, Sophie found, “one meets no people. Well there is as much to thank for one must not grumble!!! but one feels wicked with others in a difficult atmosphere rather strained circumstances—but then God sends us this—to teach one patience it must be borne and submitted to—and has a good reason. How curious & complicated life is—In England I find the harmony that is missing in these countries.”41

  The accession of the boy-king ushered in a new era in Romania’s history, for it marked the beginning of the decline in Queen Marie’s influence and power. In a mixture of pomp and poignancy, young Michael, accompanied by his mother, was solemnly proclaimed in Parliament as Romania’s new monarch. Sworn in as regents were his uncle, Prince Nicholas; the P
atriarch of the Orthodox Church; and the Chief Justice of the High Court. It turned out to be a motley crew. Neither Nicky nor the Patriarch proved particularly keen on taking on their new responsibilities, paving the way for an increasingly bold Carol to plot his comeback. In May 1928, he acted. With the help of a British newspaper owner, Viscount Rothermere (who was intent on seeing Hungary get back Transylvania from Romania), Carol was poised to take off from England for Romania. But he was prevented by English officials from proceeding further, and then expelled from England. Queen Marie was understandably infuriated by her son’s actions and sent her apologies to King George V. Unrepentant, Carol needed only to bide his time before another shameful coup attempt. As the 1920s drew to a close, an opportunity arose for Carol to make a second bid for power—this time with serious consequences for Queen Marie.

  Twenty-seven

  “I THOUGHT I HAD DONE WELL”

  BY THE TIME THE NEW DECADE ARRIVED, ROMANIA WAS ONCE AGAIN in political crisis. The power of the Liberals may have been broken, but the prime minister, Iuliu Maniu, of the National Peasant Party, had nevertheless failed to push through needed reforms. The three-man regency, meanwhile, was to be impotent. When the most competent member, the Chief Justice, died in 1929, Maniu offered Queen Marie the vacant position if Prince Nicholas would resign. She declined, not wishing to become regent by striking a deal. But so well known was Queen Marie’s involvement in her country’s politics while King Ferdinand was alive that it would not have struck people as strange if Marie had gone after the post. In fact, a report to London by a British Legation member from Bucharest maintained that an “interview,” purportedly given by Marie, “cannot fail to strike the average observer as being either most indiscreet or else deliberately intended as a coup against the Government.” The “interview” had “stirred the political and social circles of Bucharest to their depths.” Princess Helen, among others, felt that “Her Majesty was meditating some coup.” The “efforts of the Liberal party to use the Queen as a political weapon” backfired, however, which meant that the National Peasant Party “must regard Her Majesty as their definite opponent.” This would mean that the Peasant Party “should turn henceforth towards Prince Carol.”1