Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter

by Lucinda Hawksley

  Alongside her usual commitments, Louise had become interested in a relatively new charity. The idea of the National Trust was born in 1884, when the philanthropist and social campaigner Octavia Hill had been asked to help save a threatened garden in south-east London. Octavia Hill and Princess Louise shared a love of gardens, architecture and history. Louise was frequently found working in her garden and stories, especially from Lorne’s tenants in Scotland, make regular mention of her pruning the roses and clearing the paths instead of relying on gardeners to do all the work for her (she shocked one of her Scottish gardeners by her use of the coarse word ‘dung’ instead of the expected ‘manure’). One local farmer recalled that when Louise was asked ‘Why do you not let the gardeners prune the rose bushes?’ she responded, ‘If you want a thing done right, do it yourself!’

  Louise joined Octavia Hill in her campaign to preserve the country’s heritage, helping to raise funds to buy Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s cottage and presiding over meetings on the preservation of endangered buildings on the Windsor Castle estate. She was also involved with the Royal Horticultural Society and, in December 1909, opened the annual exhibition of Colonial Fruits and Vegetables, at which great excitement was caused by the appearance of frozen fruit from New Zealand. The papers were astonished to report that, despite having been frozen for twelve months, the fruits ‘appeared to be as sound as when packed’. (The exhibition also introduced crystallised fruits into the country for the first time.)

  Although Louise’s primary concern at the start of 1910 was for the health of her husband, it was her brother who was fated not to survive the year. At the start of May, Louise was summoned to Buckingham Palace with the news that the king was dying. He had been suffering from emphysema and had had a series of heart attacks; he survived for only a few hours after his sister’s arrival. Alix was devastated by his death, and the papers reported that her grief was ‘pathetic’ (with the word used in its true sense). She reportedly clung to his body, refusing to allow it to be removed. The decision was made that the king’s coffin would lie in state at Westminster Abbey for the public to pay their respects. At his funeral on 20 May eight kings and an emperor were in attendance. Many members of Bertie’s family were shocked by the behaviour of Kaiser Wilhelm who inappropriately rushed up and kissed the mourning Alix, pushing ahead of all other mourners. The mourner who most fully captured the public’s imagination, however, was Caesar, the king’s dog, which walked behind the coffin. Dogs had always played an important role in the life of the royal family. The queen and Prince Albert had portraits painted of their dogs (most notably by Landseer) and all the children gave dogs a special place in their lives. Louise was seldom without her dogs, which she adored. In 1894 the queen had written her daughter a touching reply when Louise had written to her mother in misery following the death of her much-loved pet: ‘Darling Loosy, Many thanks for your dear letter received yesterday and which made me so sad. I do feel so deeply for you. The loss of a dear, faithful darling dog is that of a devoted friend – almost of a Child!’

  Shortly after her brother’s death, Louise appealed to the National Trust to make the viewpoint at Grange Fell in Borrowdale a memorial to her brother. She began the fund-raising by making a very large donation of her own. The viewpoint is marked with a memorial stone, which reads:

  In loving memory of

  King Edward VII

  Grange Fell is dedicated by his sister

  Louise

  as a sanctuary of rest and peace.

  Here may all beings gather strength

  Find in scenes of beautiful nature a cause

  For gratitude and love to God giving them

  Courage and vigour to carry on his will.

  Louise had always found solace in nature and, almost as soon as her brother’s funeral was over, she travelled to Scotland. She had invested much in the renovations of Rosneath, not only money, but her artistic and horticultural expertise, as well as her time. She was heartbroken to hear, at the start of 19113, that a fire had broken out while she and Lorne were in London. Louise’s studio and all the works inside it were destroyed. Part of Rosneath House was gutted, but most of the building was saved by the people of Rosneath, who battled to extinguish the fire. Everyone who had helped was rewarded with a present from Louise and Lorne, engraved with personal messages of thanks for their bravery.

  Louise had planned on spending much more time than usual in Scotland to help with the cleaning up and renovations at Rosneath, but following her nephew George’s coronation, as King George V, Lorne became very ill with bronchitis and Louise gave up her plans of escaping to Scotland in order to stay at Kensington Palace and nurse him. (Her nephew retained his fondness for his unconventional aunt, still signing his letters to her, despite being the king, as ‘your devoted nephew Georgie’.) Lord Ronnie Gower, who had recently been through the public humiliation and social disgrace of the bankruptcy courts, was one of Lorne’s most faithful visitors at this time, and he was shocked both at Lorne’s wandering mind and erratic temper and at the effect Lorne’s illness was having on Louise. Lorne was also jealous that his brother-in-law Prince Arthur (the Duke of Connaught) was about to leave for Canada, where he had been appointed the very first royal Governor-General.

  Arthur kept Louise in touch with what was happening in Canada and consulted her regularly by letter. Ever since Leopold’s death, Louise had been growing closer to Prince Arthur, and even more so after Bertie’s death. The siblings had started to spend as much time as possible together and Louise often chose to attend events with Arthur instead of her husband; she missed him dreadfully when he moved to Canada. In a letter to her about the Titanic disaster in 1912, Arthur wrote, ‘I am very grateful to say that very few Canadians lost their lives and those belonged almost entirely to Montreal…’ He knew she would understand his feelings about the problems between the British-owned and French-owned areas of Canada. (He also told her that a letter she had sent to him in the diplomatic bag was lost on board the ship.) It seems likely that during his year in Rideau Hall he went through the archives and destroyed (or returned to England) any sensitive information about Louise and Lorne’s time in Canada.

  Lorne’s memory was seriously affected by his illness, and his dementia was becoming more pronounced. Niall Campbell4 wrote that his uncle was becoming increasingly ‘queer’. Lorne exhausted Louise and Ronnie by constantly repeating himself and by firing angry questions at them. By the start of 1912, Lord Ronnie’s fears about Louise’s health were also becoming more apparent. She had been diagnosed with a heart condition and had succumbed to both laryngitis and a debilitating attack of influenza. Her doctor recommended that she go abroad to a warmer climate for her health, so she returned to the French Riviera to recuperate. In the warmer climate she seemed to improve and was able to return to England in the spring. At the start of May she travelled to Blackpool, where she declared open a new promenade named after her, Princess Parade. Louise’s visit was the first royal visit to Blackpool and the city put on a magnificent display of its now-famous illuminations to mark the occasion. Around 10,000 light bulbs were used – and the display proved so popular with residents and tourists that the council decided to stage a similar display a few months later.

  Soon afterwards, it was Lorne’s turn to leave for the continent, for his health. While he was away, Louise began working on one of her pet projects. Her country home, at this date, was Ribsden Hall near Windlesham in Surrey. On a visit to Suffolk, she had seen a derelict half-timbered building, in the town of Lavenham, known as the Old Wool Hall. It had been built during the reign of King Henry VII and was falling into ruins. Deciding she wanted to restore it, the princess bought it – then made the extraordinary decision that she would remove the building brick by brick and have it rebuilt in Surrey.5 Not surprisingly, there was public fury in Lavenham. According to the locals and Louise’s friends, as soon as the princess became aware of the outcry she apologised, halted the removal process at once and retur
ned everything that had been moved so far, insisting that the Old Wool Hall be returned to its original state. Today, the beams still bear the numbers that were written on them at the time Louise was arranging for their removal, intended as a guide to the builders, so they knew where each one was to be placed during the rebuilding.6

  One of Louise’s close friends at this time was Mrs Edith Bruce Culver (three years previously, Louise had become godmother to Mrs Culver’s son). Louise presented the building to Mrs Culver ‘to use as she wished’. As Mrs Culver’s daughter later recorded, ‘My mother formed a small committee and most skilfully restored and adapted the building as a convalescent home for railway women and the wives of railway men – and in 1921 … she presented it to the Railway Convalescent Homes (for men) of which father was secretary. This met with the Princess’s warm approval, for she had already taken a keen interest in this work and had opened an extension to the first Railway Convalescent Home at Herne Bay.’ In the 1960s, the railway was closed and, as a consequence, the railway home was closed too.7 In 1913 Princess Louise returned to Lavenham by train, to visit the neighbouring town of Sudbury and unveil a memorial to Thomas Gainsborough. Although her previous association with the town could have made her unpopular, people had been so impressed by her quick turnaround that, when she arrived at Lavenham station, she was given ‘a ceremonial welcome’.

  The year 1912 ended on a sad note, with the death of Louise’s former lady-in-waiting, friend and loyal confidante, Lady Sophia MacNamara. Louise mourned the loss of the much-loved ‘Smack’ with whom she had shared so much. In January, the papers reported that Louise was to leave for Italy for the remainder of the winter, yet the Court Circulars record that she was in England throughout the next few weeks. Once again, she threw herself into work to alleviate her sadness, and carried out an astonishing number of public appearances in 1913. She was, by now, in her mid-sixties, which, in the early twentieth century, was considered ‘elderly’. She was kept busy by the new king, who seems to have appreciated Louise’s presence at his parties as much as his father had. She attended the first ‘private ball’ to be held at Buckingham Palace during King George V’s reign, where, it was reported, there was a complete ‘absence of ceremony’ and the royal family joined in the dancing with enthusiasm. The new king recognised his aunt’s contribution to the country by agreeing to keep paying her the annual income that his father had provided her with.

  A few days before her sixty-fifth birthday, Louise was present at Buckingham Palace for an intriguing invention: to witness Mr J.P. Bickerton presenting ‘a series of cinematograph pictures of Mr Paul J. Rainey’s African hunt’. A few weeks later she was in Stepney Green to open a tuberculosis dispensary, which she named in honour of her recently deceased brother. It was one of three planned dispensaries, and Louise commented in her speech that she hoped their work would be successful and that ‘London would soon banish the dreadful disease of consumption, which was felt so severely by the poorer classes’.

  Louise’s many engagements included laying the foundation stone of the new children’s hospital in Birmingham, where she unveiled a statue of King Edward VII; presenting the ‘Princess Louise Prize for animal drawing’ at the Royal Drawing Society exhibition; and laying the foundation stone of the South London Hospital for Women. She attended the Royal Irish Industries Association exhibition, opened a bazaar in Nottingham in aid of ‘waifs and strays’, attended a fund-raiser for the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, a garden party in aid of the Jubilee Institute for Nurses, and opened a Military Bazaar at the Horticultural Hall in Westminster. This frenetic working life was a way of masking the difficulties she was experiencing at home, as Lorne’s illness made him problematic to live with. At this time, Louise must have felt very keenly the loss of her mother and the lack of children to help deal with Lorne. She was always wary of confiding too closely in Helena and Beatrice, who still had a tendency to ‘gang up’ against her and, with Arthur in Canada and so many of her friends now dead, she felt very lonely.

  Her work schedule continued to be punishing – until she was forced to stop by another violent attack of influenza. She had become so run down and stressed that her recovery was slow and painful. Lorne too was feeling unwell and was anxious to leave London and recuperate on the Isle of Wight. Unfortunately the journey to the island proved cold and damp and made him even weaker. Louise, still recovering from the flu, was summoned to Kent House to care for him. On Wednesday 29 April, the official bulletin from Kent House declared: ‘The Duke of Argyll … is suffering from double pneumonia, and his condition is serious.’

  The 9th Duke of Argyll died on 4 May 1914, at the age of 68. The announcement of his death was posted on the gate of Kent House and all flags on the island were lowered to half mast. Louise’s great-niece, Princess Louise of Battenberg (Alice’s granddaughter), arrived on the Isle of Wight to console her aunt. Louise was also comforted by Lorne’s sister, Lady Frances Balfour, and his nephew, of whom Louise was very fond, Niall Campbell, now the 10th Duke of Argyll (to whom she once confided that ‘poor Mama [was] so deluded by Beatrice … and by Helena’). As preparations were being made to transport Lorne’s coffin from the island, Louise was gathering flowers and greenery from her gardens to create a wreath of her own design. A memorial service was held in Westminster Abbey on Friday 8 May;8 but Lorne’s body was taken to Scotland, where his funeral was held exactly a week later; it was estimated that over 9,000 mourners arrived to pay their respects to the chief of the Campbell clan. Lorne’s body was placed in the Campbell family mausoleum at Kilmun. An obituary in The Times, written by an anonymous author who had been at Eton with him, described the schoolboy Lorne as having been ‘remarkable for his manly beauty of a fine Celtic type’. Princess Alice’s daughter, Irene (now Princess Henry of Prussia) wrote to her sister Victoria (Princess Louis of Battenberg), ‘poor dear Aunt Louise she must have gone through terrible days till the end came and will miss him sadly I fear in spite of all, after such a long married life’. The strangeness of Louise and Lorne’s married life had not escaped the notice of the younger generation.

  Edith Bruce Culver told her children an interesting story about Lorne’s memorial service. Louise had said that she was not up to coping with the memorial service and asked if Edith would represent her. Edith’s daughter wrote down the following account:

  My mother sat in the Household pew, immediately behind that reserved for the Princess. As the service began, she was astonished to see a heavily veiled figure in black, walk up the aisle and enter the Princess’s pew – her walk and carriage typical of the Princess … After her arrival home, my mother telephoned the [Kensington] Palace and spoke to the lady-in-waiting. ‘So, the Princess attended the service after all?’ ‘Indeed, she did not: I have been with her the whole time’!

  Following the funeral, the 66-year-old Louise became very ill and was diagnosed with laryngitis and ‘exhaustion’. She told her lady-in-waiting her ‘loneliness [was] quite terrible’. Exactly three months after the death of her husband, Louise watched helplessly as the country she loved went to war against her nephew’s country. Within a few months, the family heard the melancholy news of the death of Beatrice’s son, Maurice, at Ypres. He was 23.

  Louise was rocked by widowhood, grief for her nephew and the overwhelming miseries of war. Just before Christmas she wrote to Ethel Badcock, ‘I cannot get over my loss at all … I am, apart from the sorrow, utterly lost[,] and desolation is all around me.’ Alix wrote to her on 20 April 1915, almost a year after Lorne’s death, apologising for having complained of her own troubles to her sister-in-law ‘when you poor darling Louise were so sad and lonely! With a fit of the blues as you call it … My poor dear Louise, I am so awfully sorry for you in your terrible loneliness which at times must be almost too great a burden to bear!’

  CHAPTER 28

  Widowhood and war

  Yesterday the House of Lords presented quite a martial appearance by reason of the fact that some of its members appe
ared in khaki … The influence of the war was apparent to-day, but in another respect altogether. There were a few peeresses in the aide galleries … One of these ladies of high degree evidently thought that the occasion could be improved by a little useful knitting. Accordingly she produced from a bag the now familiar needles and the no less familiar wool and resumed the knitting of a muffler. Her example was speedily followed by a lady in the gallery opposite.

  Western Daily Press, Friday 8 January 1915

  Louise had been convinced for some years that England and Germany would end up at war. While others talked with blind optimism of agreements being brokered, Louise had spent time convincing her friends, including Edith Bruce Culver, to prepare for war and it was thanks to the efforts of so many of these women – most of whom had been denied the chance to work until now – that the VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) was so successful. The organisation had been formed in 1909 and Louise was a prominent advocate of the movement. She was more aware than most of her friends of the escalating hostility between Britain and Germany, through her close association with the king and her knowledge of the personality of the kaiser, her nephew. The war would prove, for Louise, a deeply testing time. Widowed and lonely, she must have spent many hours pondering over whether she, or anyone else in the family, could have behaved differently and therefore helped change the kaiser’s angry attitude to his mother’s country. Remembering Vicky and imagining what she would have thought of her two countries going to war must have been heartbreaking for Vicky’s siblings.

  Like so many women of her generation, Louise was galvanised by the adrenalin-fuelled years of what would become known by the ironic title of the Great War. She, like many of her peers, was caught up in the fever of needing to be busy. Within months of the start of the war she had sent a number of sculptures and oil sketches to be exhibited at the War Relief Art Exhibition (to which Queen Alexandra also sent a watercolour), alongside works by artists including Sargent and Poynter. One reviewer gave an unintentionally patronising critique of Louise’s works, describing them as ‘some very pretty and characteristic specimens of her art as a sculptress’. Over the ensuing years, the War Relief Art movement held exhibitions to raise funds for the Red Cross, St John Ambulance and other wartime charities. Her great-nephew, the future King Edward VIII, wrote to thank Louise on 9 August 1914 for a donation of £1,000 for the National Fund: ‘How good and kind of you to send such a magnificent sum in response to my appeal,’ he wrote, ending his letter ‘I remain ever, your most affectionate nephew, David’.1 Louise also donated a number of her own precious possessions to be sold at auction houses to raise money for the war effort. To one such sale, at Christie’s, she donated a beautiful jade bowl and an oak day bed dating from the reign of King Charles II. To a sale of rare books and papers in aid of the Red Cross, she donated a letter from her collection, sent in 1815 by William Wordsworth to Coleridge. Some years later, she donated a carved ivory box which had belonged to Queen Victoria to a sale that was raising money for the Victoria Docks Settlement.