Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter

by Lucinda Hawksley

  While Arthur and Alix welcomed the troops back to London, Louise was waiting in Scotland. She stood proudly on the docks at Leith to welcome home over 1,000 POWs (including thirty Americans). Forty of the prisoners were so brutally injured that they had to be transported in cots. These prisoners had been incarcerated in a camp in West Prussia. Journalists reported that the returning men ‘presented an emaciated and pitiful appearance. Her Royal Highness chatted with many of the men as they were being hospitably entertained.’ Louise could never quite stop feeling guilty for being the aunt of Kaiser Wilhelm.

  CHAPTER 29

  The Grande Dame of Kensington

  Louise spent much of the last twenty years of her life at Kensington Palace. In her ninety-eight roomed home in the broad Gardens.

  David Duff, The Life Story of H.R.H. Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, 1940

  I have read several accounts of Princess Louise’s life which claim that, following the death of her husband, Louise barely left her home. Some describe her as having become ‘a hermit’. That is, quite simply, wrong. Even well into her eighties she was making regular public appearances. Perhaps it was the many long, debilitating periods of illness, which left her unable to leave her home for weeks at a time, that gave rise to this erroneous opinion of her final years. Looking at the newspapers and official records, it is surprising to see quite how much travelling Louise did in her seventies and eighties and how many times successive monarchs relied on her to stand in for them on official occasions, just as she had once done for her mother. She was a grand old lady of British royalty and the public appear to have felt towards her in much the same way as they did towards Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, in the late twentieth century.

  Princess Louise’s love of exercise and her strict diet had been overseen by her personal attendant, Mme Klepac, an Austrian health and nutrition specialist, who in twenty-first-century language would be described as a ‘personal trainer’. When Mme Klepac no longer worked for Louise (she had left the princess’s employment in 1912), she gave an interview to a newspaper in which she revealed her former employer’s obsession with staying slim and talked about her strict diet and exercise regime. While Beatrice, who was nine years her junior, grew increasingly infirm, Louise remained astonishingly capable and sprightly. She did, however, grow more envious of youth and its ability; one lady-in-waiting remembers feeling as though she was in disgrace because she was so quick and able. ‘At times,’ she recalled, ‘she could be very gay and we had quite a lot of laughter together, but there was always a tinge of jealousy about my youth. When I ran downstairs when she called she said “oh how ridiculously young you are”.’

  That Louise was at times obsessive about retaining a trim figure is something that comes across in many reminiscences of her. Princess Alice of Battenberg,1 Louise’s great-niece, remembered one occasion at a dinner when Princess Louise ate the sum total of four brussels sprouts while everyone else tucked into an enormous meal. Whenever Louise was teased about refusing fattening foods or taking exercise in inclement weather, she would say ‘I’ll outlive you all’. If she ever faltered in her regime, she would scare herself with the fear that she would start to look like her short, fat mother.

  The British Pathé website contains a short film of Louise visiting Glasgow some time between 1910 and 1920 (although the date is unknown, Louise’s clothing suggests it was towards the end of that date range). She was filmed inspecting troops and planting a tree. In the footage, making allowances for the jerky movements of the film, Louise’s gait appears uneven, as though she has a limp or perhaps pain in her hip; it may well have been caused by her sciatica. Despite this she remains energetic, wielding the spade with the strength of an expert gardener then ably supporting the tree while the remaining earth is packed in around it. She is also shown walking to, and then nimbly climbing into, her waiting car, without assistance – reaching the car some moments before her aide was there to hand her inside. Most notably, the footage shows Louise smiling and laughing spontaneously.

  The princess was a woman with both a very public and a very private persona. Those who worked for her often spoke of her bad temper; as one lady-in-waiting complained, Louise often bullied her (although the lady-in-waiting’s letters also suggest that having a difficult and volatile personality was a trait the two women shared), but all agree that when she was in a good mood she was the most enchanting of companions. As she grew older, Louise became more like her mother than she probably cared to realise. Interestingly, the accounts of Louise’s bad moods (or ‘a real royal rage’, as one acquaintance called it) all seem to be given by women who could be as feisty as the princess. It seems Louise chose to surround herself with strong women who would be able to stand up to her when she was at her most unpleasant – and she could be very unpleasant when she wanted to. Edith Bruce Culver’s daughter, Celia, wrote of one such spat between the princess and her attendant:

  One day the Princess took my mother with her, on a drive to visit her brother, the Duke of Connaught, and on arrival went in alone. My mother, somewhat piqued … went for a short walk, and on her return was dismayed to see the Princess already in the carriage, sitting very upright and looking distinctly annoyed. No greeting was given, just the order to drive on! Presently, with a side-long look at the Princess, my mother exclaimed ‘You look very handsome when you’re angry, ma’am!’ Whereupon the Princess burst into laughter and all was well!

  Celia Culver-Evans also recalled how kind Louise was to her and her sister: when her mother was called to work with Louise, the princess always made sure that the girls were kept amused by sending out members of her staff to play with them and make them laugh.

  One of Louise’s most loyal servants was her steward, John James. He claimed that he and Louise shared an interest in spiritualism. Very little has been written about this, but Lorne was known to have been interested in the subject. It is unknown whether Louise shared Lorne’s enthusiasm or whether it became important to her after she was widowed. Another former member of the royal household commented that Lorne would arrange for mediums to visit Kensington Palace. This is a side to Louise’s life that has been very difficult to investigate. In 1922, Professor Conrad Lisle, a palmist, placed an advertisement in a newspaper to alert people to the fact that he had opened new consulting rooms; in the advertisement he states that he has read the hands of the Prince of Wales and Princess Louise. One letter about Louise’s spiritual beliefs explained that, because she was always so closely related to the reigning monarch, and the monarch was the head of the Church of England, Louise’s interest in mediums and spiritualism had to be kept a secret from the eyes of the press. It does not, however, seem to have been a very great love of hers, more something that, in keeping with the bohemian spirit of the age, she showed an interest in, rather than being a strong aficionado.

  During the last decades of their lives. Princess Louise and Princess Beatrice – although retaining strong differences – seem to have clung together. They, Helena and Arthur had become the last bastions of the Victorian age. (After Helena’s death, Beatrice was always the ‘extra’ when the three of them got together and she never developed the closeness to Arthur that Louise did. Throughout the 1920s, there was a trend in the papers to write about the trio in terms of their advanced age; for example, ‘their combined ages are 247 years old’.) They were seen by the modern generation as fascinating dinosaurs, relics of a bygone age. Most of the Bright Young Things would have been amazed if they had known the truth about the aged princess’s life and love affairs.

  Far from becoming a hermit, Louise, or ‘the grand old lady of Kensington Palace’, as she became, seems to have embraced the new era of peace with its promise of universal suffrage. She enjoyed being ‘the artistic one’ right up to the end of her life, and fashion journalists would continue to comment on her dress sense and style. In 1919, Louise had used her fashionable reputation to help boost British industry, giving her patronage to a glove-maker Mr W. Pinkh
am, who was setting up a new factory in Chelmsford. This was not only about fashion: before the war, German imports had dominated the glove industry, meaning that few British glove-makers had survived. Pinkham’s new factory would provide not only an important British product but many new jobs – mainly for women. Louise was very keen to support any ventures that helped women to achieve independence.

  In the same year she attended the wedding of her niece, Arthur’s daughter Princess Patricia of Connaught. Like her aunt, Patsy married a commoner, Alexander Ramsay, upon her marriage relinquishing her titles of Princess and HRH (although the public still continued to call her Princess Patsy). The papers reported that Louise wore to the wedding ‘blue chiffon velvet, gracefully draped to show an under-dress of black satin. The coat of the same velvet was finished with a large collar of soft grey fur, and she wore a becoming hat to correspond.’ In 1922, when Louise attended the wedding of her grand-niece Princess Mary to Viscount Lascelles, she was reported as looking ‘very lovely in a rich gown of mole-coloured panne with steel embroideries and rosy lights running through it … [she] might also have been the fairy godmother of the occasion, with that kindly twinkle in her grey-blue eyes’. (Princess Mary touched the hearts of the people by asking a soldier to lay her bridal bouquet on the Cenotaph in honour of those who had died in the war.) A few weeks later, Louise attended the king and queen’s garden party at Buckingham Palace at which she wore ‘[a] crêpe-de-chine dress … of a very rich tone of brown with handsome lace panels and trimmings. She also wore a brown lace hat with flower shading from deep yellow to primrose colour, and the shoes and parasol were en suite.’ One cannot help wondering if she and Beatrice had not had the foresight to consult one another before dressing for the wedding of the Crown Prince of Sweden and Lady Louise Mountbatten in 1923. The newspapers tactfully reported that the sisters were, ‘both dressed in sapphire-coloured gowns of varying but harmonious shades, with sable stoles’.

  The war meant that Louise had been forced to curtail her love of travelling. As soon as it was safe to do so, she crossed the English Channel and spent a month in the spring of 1919 in and around Nice. This became the pattern for the rest of her life. By the end of the same year, she and Helena were amongst the royals who gathered to welcome the French President to London, a visit during which much was made of the strong ties between Britain and France in this postwar era.

  Louise continued her community work, particularly among young people. In the summer of 1920 she reviewed 1,000 Salvation Army Life Saving Guards in Hyde Park (aged between 11 and 18), she visited Chelmsford to inspect a Girl Guides’ rally and, together with Arthur, attended an international Scouts jamboree in London. A few weeks later, she and Helena attended a moving ceremony for the unveiling of a memorial on London’s Victoria Embankment ‘as an expression of Belgium’s thanks for Britain’s hospitality to her war refugees’. She also lent her support to an ambitious fund-raising plan to raise £500,000 for the Royal Free Hospital and School of Medicine for Women. The newspapers reported that she would be taking part in ‘A unique luncheon … There are a hundred hostesses and each is under an obligation to entertain a representative male guest, who is expected to contribute handsomely to the fund.’ She was continuing, despite the infirmities of old age, to work as an artist. In 1920 the publisher John Murray wrote to thank her for the present she had sent him, one of her paintings: ‘Your very beautiful picture has just arrived … It is especially refreshing after a recent visit to the Cubist deformities in Burlington House.’

  The following year, in which Louise celebrated her seventy-third birthday, she presided over a luncheon for Mrs Lloyd George and the wives of Dominion prime ministers, held by the British Women’s Patriotic League. She was still remembered by the Dominions and in 1921 a ship named Princess Louise, ‘the largest passenger ship ever built in British Columbia’, was launched at Wallace Shipyards. It was the only ‘Princess’ ship to be designed and built in Vancouver.2

  At the end of the year, Louise was back in the newspapers, as the caring face of the royal family. It was a couple of weeks before Christmas and a cold December day when Louise travelled to Holloway in north London, to open a bazaar in aid of the Royal Northern Hospital. After the opening, a journalist reported, Louise was ‘making her way through the cheering crowd when she caught sight of a working man carrying a child, who looked ill. The Princess insisted on the man being taken in out of the cold weather to the warmth of the gaily lighted bazaar, and when he left later the baby was hugging a large bottle of sweets, the gift of the Princess.’

  Louise’s fear that she would be permanently blamed for the kaiser had proved unfounded. In the postwar era, public adoration of Louise seems to have reached the height it had done when she was in her early twenties. She felt, however, that she was less appreciated by her family. In a depression, in 1922, she sent a sad letter to Dr James Reid claiming, ‘I am feeling very much that some of my family would be glad if I were out of the way. It’s always been so but I am not as strong as I was and I cannot throw it off so easily … One can rise above minding, and I try to.’ It is not known which family members she was talking about, or if there was any reason for her to have felt as she did, but she was growing older and less able and that upset her. As the princess had written, she was no longer ‘strong’ and her childhood sadnesses still plagued her.

  One family project that Louise was involved in wholeheartedly was the creation of the remarkable Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House. Louise’s role was to contact notable artist friends and request them to contribute miniature versions of their works.3 Although the journalists who wrote about Louise at this time had a tendency to assume she was now too old to be anything other than a ‘hobby’ artist (often making such comments as ‘the Princess used to be an artist’) she still took an active interest in the artistic scene, entertaining artists to lunch at Kensington Palace and attending private views and openings of exhibitions; sadly much of her involvement now included sending wreaths to artists’ funerals, such as that of William Blake Richmond in 1921. Louise had started to break up her own art collection, giving items to friends or to galleries. In 1923 she donated to the Victoria and Albert Museum an Italian sculpture named Centurion; she and Lorne had bought it in Florence on their honeymoon.

  In June 1923, Princess Helena died at her home in London. Louise, Arthur and Beatrice were now the only remaining children of Queen Victoria – and Louise had attained the dubious honour of being the oldest surviving member of the British royal family. Helena’s funeral was held at St George’s Chapel in Windsor. Louise’s public appearances were noticeably lacking in the few months following her sister’s death. She and Beatrice spent much of their time together at Kensington Palace, mourning their older sister and one of their last ties with the world in which they had grown up. In November, Louise resumed her public engagements, and back in Scotland she visited Glasgow to declare open the War Memorial Club of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. In December, in London, she attended a special party at East Ham Palace for ‘hundreds of local school children … [The princess] received an ovation from the boys and girls … and watched with interest the distribution of bags of sweets and fruit as the audience filed out after the performance’.

  In 1924, London was buzzing with excitement and people were flocking to the city just as they had in the time of Victoria and Albert for the Great Exhibition of 1851. This time they were travelling not to Hyde Park, but to Wembley, to visit the new Empire Stadium where the British Empire Exhibition was opened by King George V and Queen Mary on St George’s Day (23 April). The stadium could be reached by a new branch of the railway line and had a smart new station to connect it to central London. Newspapers reported that when the princess ‘visited the walled city of West Africa at Wembley for the first time, she was particularly interested … in the beautiful timber … and the exquisite work in leather of the Africans at Kano, the chief city of the Emir of Kataina. HRH bought a leather cushion, one of those artic
les which society is making popular just now.’

  While Louise was visiting the Africa pavilion at Wembley, Beatrice was making plans to visit Africa itself. She travelled to South Africa to spend Christmas of 1924 with Helena’s daughter Princess Alice and her husband the Earl of Athlone (the recently appointed Governor-General of South Africa). Louise and Arthur also spent that Christmas overseas. Arthur had bought a villa at Beaulieu at Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera, and had begun spending a large portion of each year out there, usually during the winter months. Louise was one of his most regular visitors. After returning to London, Louise became seriously ill with bronchitis and was forced to cancel a number of engagements, taking over a month to regain her health. She did, however, manage to submit a painting to an exhibition of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours; it was a landscape of a garden in Scotland. A couple of years later, she sent some of her work to the Applied Arts and Handicrafts Exhibition at the Royal Horticultural Hall in Westminster.4

  In early April 1925, as soon as she was well enough to travel, Louise returned to Cap Ferrat, where she remained for a month. Even the overseas travel was not a truly effective cure and for much of the next few months she felt unwell and depressed. The newspapers assumed this would be Princess Louise’s last illness, but she defied the rumours and determined to get better and back into her usual routine. She was aware that living in a cold, grey climate was one of the triggers for her illness and depression. In sunshine, she invariably felt better, so she was particularly interested in a new facility which had opened in London: the Sunlight Clinic established by the British Humane Association. In August 1925, the Maharajah of Patiala and his brother, Baro Raja Birendra Singh, were paying a state visit to the capital and one of the institutions they visited was the Sunlight Clinic. Although Louise was not well enough to accompany them, she did send a message, and requested that it be read out to the Maharajah: ‘It must seem strange to the Maharajah that what comes as a matter of course in India should have to be cultivated here with much science and care; but we find that satisfactory results can be obtained, and that artificial sunlight has much the same power of doing good as the natural sun’s rays have in the Far East.’