Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires

by Justin C. Vovk

  Only a few months after Bertie’s birth, George and May traveled to Coburg in April 1896 to represent the aging Queen Victoria at another family wedding. They journeyed to Coburg via Darmstadt, where they visited Tsarina Alexandra’s brother, Ernie, and his wife, Ducky. It was May’s first official foreign tour as the Duchess of York. Once they reached Coburg, George and May stayed as guests of the Duke and Duchess of Coburg, George’s uncle and aunt. Their daughter Princess Alexandra (“Sandra”) was marrying Prince Ernest of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. Although it was not nearly as grandiose as Ernie and Ducky’s wedding two years earlier, it still brought together the venerated royal mob. The Yorks were reunited with Wilhelm and Dona.368 George was undoubtedly excited to see Sandra’s sister, his old flame, Crown Princess Marie of Romania, though it is unrecorded what affect the presence of her husband, Crown Prince Ferdinand, had on the reunion. From Coburg, May penned a note home to her mother describing their first day.

  We arrived here at 2.30 on Thursday. Ernie & Ducky came with us in our carriage, & we were met at the station by U[ncle]. Alfred, Missy [Marie] & Ferdinand, Sandra, Baby [Sandra’s sister], etc.—General embracing & presentations of suites—Drove to Palais Edinburgh, comfortable nice house, where A[un]t. Marie received us. Lunched & then we came over to this nice large Schloss where we are installed in the rooms Grandmama had 2 years ago—They are furnished in a terribly old fashioned style but we are quite comfortable and have lots of room.… Sandra is delighted with your & Papa’s present which is very pretty & will be most useful to them, they have very few presents, such a contrast to our mass [from their wedding].369

  The formal portrait that was taken to commemorate the occasion bears a striking similarity to the one from Ernie and Ducky’s wedding in 1894. In the photograph, May and Dona cut contrasting figures. The duchess, though rigidly formal, is tightly surrounded by grinning cousins locked arm in arm. The empress, however, stands in the front, aloof, as the highest-ranking woman present. Unlike May, Dona is given a wide berth by those standing around her. And rather than looking at the camera, the empress is glaring austerely at Marie, the Russian-born Duchess of Coburg. Dona’s disdain for the haughty duchess—and all things Russian, for that matter—was no secret. One can only speculate what she was thinking at the time this portrait was taken.

  The pleasure the Duchess of York received from visiting Germany and the Coburg wedding was fast eclipsed by a prolonged period of familial adversity spanning 1895–96. After years of gambling, mounting debts, and scandals, May’s brother Frank was sent into exile in India. Queen Victoria could no longer tolerate the damage Frank was doing to the monarchy, and she would not approve of members of the royal family paying off any more of his debts. The final straw came “when he incontinently wagered £10,000 on a ridiculous bet when he probably could not have raised 10,000 pence.”370 The task of gathering the money fell to May, who somehow managed to pay off the debt. The government decided Frank should “rejoin” his military regiment, which was now stationed in India. Perhaps for the first time, a major gulf emerged in the Teck family. Frank grew estranged from his mother and sister, who had always adored him. His letters home from Mahabaleshwar and Ganeshkhind were superficial, unrepentant, and sometimes tinged with bitterness—he described India “as being the nearest place to hell.”371

  The grief Frank caused his family was temporarily brushed aside for a happy occasion. In April 1897, May gave birth to another child, a daughter. It was no secret that George and May had longed for a girl for years. “Heard from Georgie that May had given birth to a little girl, both doing well,” Queen Victoria noted.372 George was especially delighted to have a daughter. The couple’s eldest son, David, was now old enough to be curious about where his little sister came from. The answer he received from his unprepared parents was timeless: “He was told that she was a little angel who had flown in through the window and had her wings cut off.”373 April proved to be a month of particular turmoil for the Tecks that year. While May was still recovering from her accouchement, she was informed that her mother had undergone emergency surgery to remove kidney stones. Mary Adelaide seemed to be doing well after the operation, but no one could deny that her health was failing. Even once she was discharged from hospital, doctors warned that, because of her size, there was the very real possibility her heart could give out. Dire warnings such as this did not slow down the sixty-three-year-old Mary Adelaide. A few weeks after surgery, she was spotted at one of Queen Victoria’s garden parties, being pushed around in a wheelchair.

  The Duchess of Teck insisted on being present at the christening of her granddaughter. Held at the tiny church at Sandringham on June 7, it was performed by the archbishop of York, who used a golden bowl that had been a wedding present to George and May. The godparents included the queen; the Duchess of Teck; and the baby’s paternal great-aunt and uncle the dowager empress of Russia and the king of Greece. Whereas Queen Victoria looked upon Bertie’s birth with sadness because it fell on Mausoleum Day, she saw the arrival of May’s daughter as a good augury because it fell on the year of her Diamond Jubilee—the sixtieth anniversary of her accession to the throne. So excited was the queen about her “dear little Diamond Jubilee baby”374 that she even suggested the Yorks’ new daughter should be named Diamond. That idea soon fizzled out when she realized the child would spend the rest of her life being known as Princess Diamond. Instead, the Duke and Duchess of York made Victoria the first of her four names, but she would always be known as Mary, after her maternal grandmother.

  The Diamond Jubilee of 1897 was a milestone that was significant not only for the British royal family but for the British Empire itself. It was an unprecedented moment in history. The British Empire directly controlled more than a quarter of the world’s landmass, boasting a population of 444 million people. Its imperial dominions included Canada, India, Australia, Jamaica, the Caribbean, the Malay Peninsula, Sierra Leone, parts of present-day South Africa, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Malta, New Zealand, many of the South Pacific islands, Cyprus, Sudan, Nigeria, the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana), the Gambia, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The British territories were not limited to vast countries on the largest continents. Piles of rocks scattered throughout the world’s oceans were part of the imperial spectrum. The farthest reaches of the British Empire stretched to the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina and Saint Helena and Ascension Island in the Atlantic, nearly a thousand miles west of Africa.

  In England, the jubilee marked a defining moment in the history of the monarchy. The diminutive Queen Victoria—known sarcastically at the beginning of her reign as “Little Vic” because she was barely five feet tall—sat upon what was now the most powerful throne in Europe, a throne that had weathered a number of incredibly turbulent events throughout the centuries. The Wars of the Roses (1455-85) had placed a distant scion of the Lancaster dynasty named Henry Tudor on the throne of England. His son Henry VIII would become the most famous ruler in English history by breaking ties with the Roman Catholic Church and giving birth to the Church of England in 1534. The full effects of Henry’s actions were not felt until the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when any chance of Catholicism being reestablished in England was permanently ended. It was also decreed that the monarch could neither be Catholic nor marry a Catholic.375 Of greater import to the long-term survival of the monarchy was the Glorious Revolution’s end to absolutism in the kingdom. Never again could the monarch rule absolutely. The Bill of Rights, passed by Parliament on December 16, 1689, gave Europe one of its earliest forms of constitutional monarchy. All of these events culminated in creating a throne that had endured. The ingredients for revolution—absolutism, corruption, oppression—were largely kept in check by the balance established between the monarchy and Parliament. And because of these parliamentary advances throughout English history, when Queen Victoria—who was Britain’s first queen regnant since Queen Anne in 1714—celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 1897, she was the head of an unbroken royal line dati
ng back nearly a millennium. Since the Battle of Hastings in 1066, England has been ruled by a total of six dynasties, all directly related to one another. As a result, England has the longest-reigning successive monarchy in European history.376

  On June 22, the entire royal family attended a thanksgiving service at Saint Paul’s Cathedral. On the way to the cathedral, thousands of soldiers who had arrived in London from the four corners of the globe followed Queen Victoria’s carriage through the streets. Estimates placed the number of spectators as high as one million. That day, the queen refused to wear her crown or the robes of state. Instead, she preferred her typical black dress topped by a bonnet accented with diamonds. The Duchess of York was in awe of the grandeur. She was especially overwhelmed and flattered by the public response she received. “A never-to-be forgotten day,” she wrote in her diary. “No one ever, I believe, has met with such an ovation as was given to me, passing through those six miles of streets …”377

  The arrival of little Princess Mary of York and Queen Victoria’s jubilee coincided with the birth of Tsarina Alexandra’s second child, a daughter named Tatiana, who had been conceived around the time of her stay in Scotland with Queen Victoria. Helping Alexandra through this time was her sister Irene, who was by far the most amiable of all her sisters. When Irene heard from Ernie that their sister was pregnant again, she immediately left her estate, Hemmelmark, near Kiel, to be at Alexandra’s side during the last months of her pregnancy and for the delivery. When the cannon salute in Saint Petersburg heralded the arrival of a second girl, the news was greeted with disappointment. After the delivery, when Alexandra had awoken from the effects of the chloroform used to dull the pain, she looked around the room and saw the expressions of sadness on everyone’s faces. Overcome, she began to cry. “My God, it is again a daughter,” she wailed. “What will the nation say, what will the nation say?”378

  Once both Alexandra and Tatiana were sufficiently recovered from the delivery, Emperor Wilhelm II decided it was time to make a state visit to Russia. Unlike many of his previous trips abroad, the emperor chose to bring his wife with him this time. It was Dona’s first visit to Saint Petersburg and was one of the few interactions she ever had with Alexandra after both women were married. Wilhelm, who had been denied permission to attend Queen Victoria’s jubilee celebration, mostly planned the visit as an attempt to reingratiate himself with his extended family; a string of political blunders, family insults, and direct confrontations had damaged Germany’s—specifically Prussia’s—relationships with both Britain and Russia. Still falsely believing he played Cupid in getting Nicholas and Alexandra together, and with the empress making a concerted effort to hide her Russophobia, Wilhelm and Dona arrived in Saint Petersburg in the autumn of 1897.

  To his surprise, Nicholas found he and Wilhelm got along better than expected. At a banquet given for the visiting couple, the tsar made a lofty speech in the hope of building on his friendship with Wilhelm.

  The presence of your majesties among us causes me very lively satisfaction. I desire sincerely to thank you for the visit, which is a fresh manifestation of the traditional bonds uniting us and the good relations so happily established between our two neighboring empires. It is at the same time a precious guarantee of the maintenance of the general peace, which forms the object of our most fervent wishes. I drink to the health of the Emperor-King William and the Empress-Queen Augusta Victoria, and to the health of the august members of their family.379

  Wilhelm raised his glass and, in typical fashion, made an even more grandiose speech about friendship and unity, heavy on circumlocution. But no political headway was achieved in creating the Russo-German alliance Wilhelm had hoped for; and unlike her husband, Alexandra did not get along with Wilhelm. She detested his flamboyancy, to which she responded with utter disdain. “He thinks he is a superman,” she once said, “and he’s really nothing but a clown. He has no real worth. His only virtues are his strict morals and his conjugal fidelity.”380 When Wilhelm gave her a silver toilette set that once belonged to the famous Queen Louise of Prussia, Alexandra was indignant. She declared that only a gold toilette set would be sufficient for an empress. Understandably insulted, the German emperor said that by giving his cousin such a gift, he was “paying her a great compliment.” Incensed by Wilhelm’s remark, she shot back that “it seemed to her that her cousin William still thought her the little Hessian princess of as little importance as she had been before her marriage.”381

  Things were just as bad between Alexandra and Dona. The two empresses never got along, and this latest visit only reminded them of that. In fact, Alexandra’s hatred for Dona was one of the only things she had in common with the members of the Russian court, whom the latter failed to impress with her lack of style. “Thank God the German visit is over,” Nicholas wrote to his mother afterward. “On the whole Wilhelm was very cheerful, calm and courteous, while she [Dona] tried to be charming, and looked very ugly in rich clothes without taste; the hats she wore in the evenings … were particularly impossible.”382 At the end of the visit, Wilhelm and Nicholas were better off than they had been before, but there was no doubt that Dona and Alexandra were worlds apart.

  By the autumn of 1897, the Duchess of Teck’s health was once again failing her. In her heart, she knew her time was growing short. “Oh, I don’t want to die,” she cried. “My children, my husband, need me.”383 In October, tests revealed a malignant tumor, prompting her doctors to perform emergency surgery. Follow-up tests revealed the operation was unsuccessful. The doctors decided to perform another emergency surgery, less than forty-eight hours after the first. The combination of two high-risk operations in only two days proved too much for the elderly duchess. She passed away from heart failure at 3:00 a.m. on October 20, 1897. In a letter to the duchess’s sister, Grand Duchess Augusta, the Princess of Wales described the scene after Mary Adelaide died.

  Everyone plunged in the most terrible grief – poor man [Duke of Teck] heart-broken utterly crushed, poor darling May & her two brothers calm but in perfect despair – Uncle George [Duke of Cambridge] very much upset – Bertie was also there having come up from Newmarket with the former – [Bertie’s] Sister Louise also there … so nice & feeling – We had a long talk together. Darling May who so far bears up wonderfully well took me upstairs at once into Mary’s room! Where she was lying in her last sleep. She looked so beautiful & peaceful with such a happy expression on her dear face.384

  “I dread to think how we can live without her,” May wrote to her aunt Augusta. “For Papa it is cruel & his sad state makes it so much worse. He was so dependent on Mama for everything & now God knows what he will do.”385 Queen Victoria wrote to one of her granddaughters, “You mourn dear Aunt Mary Teck with us, as I’m sure you wld. She was a true, warm friend & so clever and charming … Poor Uncle Teck is in a most sad & anxious state which is a terrible trouble to the poor sons & dear good May.”386

  Consumed with grief, May York rushed to be with her aunt Augusta, who was in the south of France at the time. The death of her sister came as a crushing blow to the grand duchess, who was living through an already unbearable period in her own life. Her granddaughter Princess Marie became pregnant by a palace servant and was being blackmailed. In this situation, the Duchess of York’s giving nature came to the fore once again. She took it upon herself to care for her Mecklenburg cousin, bringing her back to England with her and allowing her to be in an environment where she felt safe and protected.

  As the twentieth century dawned, May learned she was pregnant again. This news was especially welcome because her family was deeply saddened by the death of her father, the Duke of Teck, in January 1900. The death of his wife in 1897 had precipitated the duke’s final collapse. In his last three years, he retreated entirely from public life. After spending some time with relatives in Germany, he returned to White Lodge and lived in near seclusion under the care of a doctor and two male nurses. He even refused to see his children except for brief periods
every few months. To console herself during her pregnancy and in an effort to keep her spirits up, May remained in close contact with her aunt Augusta, who became a second mother to the duchess after her parents died. The Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz wrote to her niece that her “old loving heart will be with you in the ensuing century as it is and ever has been in this.”387

  Just five months after her father died on May 17, 1900, May went into labor again. She delivered a son, Henry, whom the family affectionately called “Harry,” a common British nickname for Henry. Emperor Wilhelm II was asked to be the godfather as a sign of the closer relationship George and May had with Wilhelm and Dona. Things were going so well between the two couples that, later that year, the Yorks were invited to Germany for Crown Prince Willy’s confirmation in the Lutheran Church. “I think I have done my duty and may now stop,” May wrote to Aunt Augusta after this delivery, “as having babies is highly distasteful to me …”388 Queen Victoria, once again chosen as godmother, recorded in her journal that Harry “is a very pretty little boy.”389