Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter

by Lucinda Hawksley

  Louise spent much of her early adult life trying desperately to alleviate boredom, not only for herself and her siblings, but also for the household staff and invited guests, acutely and embarrassingly aware of how dull her mother’s hospitality could be. The composer Sir Charles Hallé remembered visiting Osborne in the late 1860s, where the royal children still living at home were fulsome in their desire to talk to him, to play duets with him and to listen to him perform. The composer, despite understanding the great honour of this welcome, was nonetheless bored and frustrated by the atmosphere at Osborne and the lack of amusements. He wrote to his family: ‘When shall I get away from here? That is the rub. The Queen speaks, and Princess Helena speaks, as if I were going to stay here for ever.’

  The astute Lady Caroline was worried about Princess Louise; and in general she found all the queen’s children neglected and unhappy. By the time Caroline arrived at Windsor, Leopold had been diagnosed with haemophilia for some years, yet at times the queen strangely insisted on not giving him special treatment. On a day in which the royal party had endured a miserably cold carriage ride, Caroline wrote, ‘Poor little Prince Leopold was full of talk and cheerfulness, but his small thin face grew pinched with cold; and I wished I cd take him into my arms and cover him warmly up.’ Knowing the severity of her brother’s illness, Louise talked to the medical attendants and made sure she knew as much as possible about his condition. The queen, who never seemed to feel the cold and had developed a passion for all things Scottish, was adamant her sons should wear kilts, even when they were not at Balmoral. In November 1863, while Arthur was being trained for the army, Louise wrote to tell him that ‘poor Leopold has had the rheumatism in his leg, and it was very much swollen yesterday … he must be carried up and down stairs, the doctor says it comes from wearing the kilt in such cold weather, but Mama does not think so, poor little boy he says it hurts him very much’.

  The siblings became united in their dislike of Balmoral and its associations, as later letters attest. Leopold wrote to his friend Walter Stirling of ‘that detestable Scotland’ and in a letter Prince Arthur told Louise, ‘You must summon your courage and energy now for the amusements of your approaching Highland life … for if it is wet (a thing which occasionally happens in Scotland) it will be rather a bore.’ A few weeks later, as he was about to join the family, he wrote again: ‘The time when I am going to Balmoral is now fast approaching, but I do not know that I thoroughly appreciate the pleasure, for as you well know one is under a good many restrictions at home. There are also constant squalls and squabbles which give rise to a great feeling of bad feeling and jealousy … The only reason why I do not dislike the idea of going to Balmoral is that we two shall be able to see a little more of each other and that I shall be able to keep your company on long expeditions.’ When Louise was overseas, Leopold wrote to her: ‘The day after tomorrow we go to that most VILE and most ABOMINABLE of places Balmoral.’

  In addition to her worries about Leopold, Lady Caroline was concerned about Helena who, since the departure of Alice, had become her mother’s lackey. On 7 May 1864 Caroline wrote, ‘I am much distressed about poor Prss. Helena who is cruelly overworked, the Queen having no notion how her mind and body are strained, and indeed having no one to take her place.’ Louise was equally concerned, knowing that Helena would be married as soon as a suitable match could be made; Louise would then be the one ‘cruelly overworked’ and have no time for art.

  At the start of 1864, the royal family was waiting for a exciting event. Bertie and Alix were expecting a baby. It was due in the spring, so when Alix went into labour at the beginning of January, the worst was feared. She was only seven months pregnant and it is testimony to the skill of the royal physicians that a baby born so prematurely in the mid nineteenth century survived. The queen, in her letters to Vicky, blamed the baby’s prematurity on Bertie’s late nights and dissolute lifestyle and on Alix for trying to keep up with him. Even more shocking, to the queen, was the news that Alix’s labour had begun shortly after she returned home from sitting in a sledge beside the lake at Virginia Water watching a game of ice hockey. The queen considered such an activity unacceptable for a pregnant princess.

  The tiny baby, who weighed less than four pounds, was named Albert Victor (both of which names Lady Caroline derided in her journal as being far too ‘foreign’), though he would become known as ‘Prince Eddy’.7 The circumstances of his premature birth had reached the newspapers and comedians, learning of the ice hockey game, quickly dubbed him not ‘Prince Albert Victor’ but ‘Prince All-but-on-the-ice’. Like his father, Prince Eddy would suffer from poor academic skills and during his childhood his grandmother bemoaned that yet another heir was not living up to her expectations. She attempted to take charge of Eddy’s education and the young prince experienced similar bullying to that which his father had suffered.

  A few weeks after the birth of Prince Eddy, Louise celebrated her sixteenth birthday, which meant it was just one year until she expected to ‘come out’. The following twelve months should have been spent organising her wardrobe, completing her education and preparing events to herald her arrival into adulthood and society. When she talked of her party for the following year, however, Queen Victoria announced that Louise would not have a coming-out ball. Despite the fact that Albert would have been dead for over three years by the time of Louise’s seventeenth birthday, the queen made it clear that she thought her daughter selfish, forgetting she was in mourning for her father, and that she should not be thinking about parties. The ballroom at Buckingham Palace had been closed since Albert’s death and the queen had no intention of opening it up for her wayward daughter to make an exhibition of herself in. Eventually she agreed that Louise could have a formal religious confirmation (for which she wore a white dress decorated with swansdown) after which she would be considered ‘out’ and therefore able to attend formal parties and balls held by other people. Her confirmation was intended to be at the end of 1864, but ill health intervened.

  In the autumn of 1864, while staying at Balmoral, Louise became suddenly ill. She was treated by Dr Edward Sieveking who diagnosed ‘meningitic complications’ or tubercular meningitis, an illness frequently fatal, even today. In more recent years, this diagnosis has been challenged,8 but whatever Louise was suffering from, it was a violent illness and one that left her considerably weakened. In October 1864, the queen was moved to write in her journal, ‘Quite worried about poor Louise, who looks so ill.’ The princess’s headaches were so blinding that she needed to be kept in a darkened room as the light hurt her eyes. She was kept in bed and nursed carefully for over two months. Despite her daughter’s illness, however, the queen insisted the household travel to Windsor. The train journey was agonising for Louise, who was too ill to make the full journey. She was carried off the train in Carlisle to sleep in a proper bed and continue to Windsor at a later date. It was not until December that Louise was able to move her head without pain and Sybil Grey wrote in her diary that even the sound of a rustling silk skirt was agony for the princess. For the rest of her life, Louise would suffer with intermittent health problems, often incapacitated by attacks of neuralgia; many of these were attributed to her severe illness at the age of sixteen.

  By March 1865, a couple of days after her seventeenth birthday – which was marked in her mother’s journal by the words: ‘She is so handsome & talented, & has so much taste’ – Louise had been confirmed and was considered ‘out’. She was well enough to attend a ball at Marlborough House for Bertie and Alix’s wedding anniversary, together with Helena. It was, as Louise wrote to Prince Arthur, her very ‘first ball’. Alix was pregnant again, and would give birth to her second son, George, in mid-June. (Victoria described her grandson – who was to become King George V – as ‘very small and not very pretty’.) That Alix hosted a ball while so heavily pregnant is interesting, as women were expected to hide away when their bump became visible. As fashionable women were increasingly reluctant to do s
o, however, a whole new industry had been spawned, which included corsets for pregnant women made to fit over the bump and then be tightly laced to create as small a waist as possible, despite the baby. Maternity corsets were terrifying-looking contraptions composed of buckles, straps and boning. For women whose pregnancy was advanced, an ‘abdomen belt’ could also be worn, under the corset.

  Many medical specialists published articles on the danger of maternity corsets and abdomen belts – pointing out how often they resulted in miscarriage – but as long as society’s rules dictated that pregnancy should not be discussed, or acknowledged in public, women had no choice but to try and conceal it, or to remain at home, hidden away. Fashion also allowed women to hide any aspects of their body that they chose to conceal by the judicious use of frills, pleats, padding and decorations, such as silk flowers, all designed to deceive the eye. Wearing a spectacularly low-cut dress was an intentional way of reducing the likelihood of anyone, in particular men, looking below a woman’s bustline. The use of such artifice in combination with maternity corsets enabled many women to conceal a pregnancy entirely; it was often possible for an unmarried woman to hide an unwanted telltale bump.

  When Louise was deemed well enough after her illness, she was taken abroad to convalesce. A family party travelled to Prince Albert’s home town of Coburg, where Louise met many of her Prussian relations and stayed at Albert’s beloved home, Rosenau. Louise wrote to Arthur about the journey, which she found exhausting and on occasion terrifying: ‘I forgot to say that when we landed at Antwerp it was quite dark, and there was nothing but lanterns everywhere, and there was such a crowd of people, some men held torches: as we were getting into the carriage, a man put his head in, blew a quantity of smoke from his cigar in my face, and screamed ‘God bless Victoria.’ I think he was rather mad, he screamed the same thing out several times already when we were walking up the pier.’ In Prussia she enjoyed herself. It was a family party, as Louise’s siblings were in attendance for the occasion of unveiling a bust to Prince Albert. Before Arthur arrived, Louise wrote to him, happy to report that Leopold was ‘much better’ and chivvying him to hurry up and join them so they could enjoy ‘some nice walks and drives together and rides’. Vicky loved the opportunity to see all her siblings and was longing for at least one of her sisters to move closer to her. She hoped Louise would marry a Prussian and, over the next few years, would suggest several suitable men, but Louise refused to show interest in them. Later she declared Prussian men were boorish and boring, and that they smelt bad.

  Louise’s brothers had a much better idea of the type of men Louise preferred. She confided in them in a way she did not with her sisters. In 1865, Louise had written to Arthur from the royal yacht saying, ‘I have had nothing to do this morning so I have been drawing the sailors’; in 1867 Arthur sent her in a letter a sketch of a handsome Highland soldier, writing, ‘I thought it would please you.’ In the same year, he added a teasing postscript to another letter to her: ‘I saw Capt. Rideout yesterday and he told me about all the fun you had on board the yacht together.’

  Although she was unsuccessful in match-making Louise, Vicky did suggest a suitable match for Helena: she introduced her to Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, a distant relative of the queen and fifteen years Helena’s senior. (In appearance he seemed much older than that.) The queen had despaired of trying to find a husband for Helena: ‘Poor dear Lenchen,’ she wrote, ‘though most useful and active and clever and amiable, does not improve in looks and has great difficulties with her figure and her want of calm, quiet, graceful manners. Nature certainly divides her gifts strangely.’ In comparison, Louise was held up as a paragon: ‘so handsome (she is so very much admired) … so graceful and her manners so perfect in society, so quiet and lady-like, and then she has such great taste for art’. What her mother lamented was that Louise’s perfect behaviour in public was not exhibited at home. Vicky was thrilled with her successful match-making, but Bertie and Alix felt betrayed – Prince Christian’s family had recently been at war with Denmark. The situation within the royal circle was miserably tense, and Louise was torn between her quarrelling eldest brother and sister.

  In 1866, the year of Helena’s wedding, Louise was heading inexorably towards the drudgery of becoming her mother’s constant companion. At that year’s Marlborough House Ball, Helena was noticed to be glowing with happiness; quite what Louise’s feelings were that night were not revealed. After Helena and Christian’s wedding, Louise wrote to Louisa Bowater, one of her few confidential friends, that she was ‘low and sad’ and spent much of her time alone in her bedroom crying. Her brothers, in particular, felt sorry for their usually vivacious sister, who was so seldom allowed to express her true personality and barely ever to attend balls or parties. Before Helena’s marriage, the two sisters had stayed at home together, but now Helena was free to attend parties and events with her husband. Louise was feeling isolated and depressed.

  Although the queen was very strict that her daughters remain in mourning, she allowed her sons a much wider rein; they could take part in the London season and were allowed to travel. The princes would try to compensate for Louise’s lonely existence by sending long letters about people they had met, countries they had visited and events they had attended. These letters kept her tantalisingly close to the world she longed to enter. When Arthur was in Italy, Louise wrote longingly: ‘I envy you having been to Naples, such a beautiful place, I should give anything to see it. We have had such dreadful cold weather here … it must be charming weather with you,’ and ‘You will get my letter when you are at Venice. Oh! what a lovely place to see, I will ask you to tell me a great deal about it, I have always longed so to see it.’

  It seems, however, that Louise may have had a secret to help stave off the loneliness. For a few months of 1866, Prince Leopold had a new tutor or ‘governor’. His name was Walter Stirling and for many years there has been speculation about just how important Stirling was to his charge’s older sister, and why he was so suddenly dismissed.

  CHAPTER 6

  What really happened with Walter Stirling?

  I cannot say how I miss you, I always expect to see you come in the morning as you always did, and as I was carried down to breakfast Louise and I missed you looking over the banister at the top of the staircase at us.

  Letter to Walter Stirling from Prince Leopold, 1866

  For the public, 1866 was notable as the year in which Queen Victoria finally attended the opening of Parliament, for the first time since her husband’s death.1 For Louise, the year began with the knowledge that she was, once again, in trouble with her mother. Louise had been thinking independently and making ‘shocking’ decisions. The princess always liked to think carefully about what presents she should give to the servants so, at Christmas 1865, at the age of seventeen, she presented all the male servants with pipes or cigar cases, knowing they had a fondness for smoking. Unfortunately smoking was a taboo subject, as Prince Albert had abhorred it. Louise’s choice of gifts, and that she had bought them without consulting her mother, infuriated the queen. It also shocked several of the household staff – a princess was not expected to encourage such a vice. Bertie wrote his sister a letter of support, telling her: ‘I am very glad that your Xmas went off well – tho very lively it cannot have been – I wish that you could once spend it with us – how nice that would be and what fun we would have. I think you did quite right to buy pipes and cigar cases for the servants, although Sir Thomas2 was very much shocked.’

  The year 1866 was also notable for Louise as the year in which she completed her first unaided sculpture, a bust of family friend Lady Jane Churchill. She had been the queen’s lady of the bedchamber since Louise was six years old and became a close friend of the young princess, a friendship that endured until Jane’s death in 1900. The two women were often seen together and were even described on occasion as belonging to that curious elite known as ‘professional beauties’ (an odd description that encompas
sed everyone from actresses to bohemian princesses). Many songs and poems were written by admirers of the women who hoped to gain a patron. One such poem described Jane as a woman ‘whose sweet tones make her the St Cecilia of the day’ and coupled Jane and Louise together, including the lines ‘… warmly beautiful like the sun at noon, glowed with love’s flames our dear Princess Louise’. Louise’s sculpture of her friend was a significant artistic achievement and Mary Thornycroft determined to persuade the queen that Louise should receive more formal training. She also began to introduce Louise to other artists and, that spring, Helena and Louise visited the studios of the sculptors Baron Marochetti and William Theed.

  In May, the princess’s artistic desires were put on hold because, once again, Louise was ill, this time with whooping cough. She was visited regularly by Leopold, who understood how miserable it was to be an invalid. Leopold had also developed whooping cough, but luckily only mildly. Louise was exhausted and grateful for her brother’s visits. At this time of his life, Leopold was unusually happy. The reason for this was the appointment of a sympathetic young army officer as his new ‘governor’, or tutor. Louise also warmed to her brother’s handsome new tutor. On 25 March 1866, the queen had recorded in her journal that she had met Lieutenant Walter George Stirling of the Horse Artillery and declared herself ‘much pleased’ with him. Stirling and Prince Leopold became good friends as soon as Stirling took up his position, and Louise, who had just celebrated her eighteenth birthday, spent a great deal of time with them.

  The queen’s journal notes several instances of family outings, parties and dinners at which Stirling was present, and there is no sign of disquiet in her jottings. To all observers, Stirling seemed to have become an important part of the royal household and the young prince blossomed under his care. So it came as a shock to many when the handsome young lieutenant was dismissed from his post in July 1866, just four months after being appointed. The queen’s journal mentions him several times between March and May – then, in the journal that survives following Beatrice’s heavy editing, his name appears no more until 4 August 1866. The queen wrote baldly: ‘Breakfast in the Lower Alcove, after which took leave of Mr Stirling & gave him a silver inkstand & a bust of Leopold.’ Later she took Louise and Leopold out for a ‘nice drive’, with no mention of what must have been their tears and fury about their mother’s decision.