royal wedding celebration

This post is in response to a comment by ‘Anonymous’ on the previous post.

Throughout Marie Louise’s lovely book, there are many references to Kaiser Wilhelm and they present him as a sympathetic, cheerful and warm man for whom Marie Louise obviously had great affection. While Marie Louise was living in Anhalt, she often took tea with the Empress Dona – who comes over as a little bit stiff (e.g. being thoroughly shocked that Marie Louise was – horror of horrors! – once seen riding a bicycle, and another time travelling in an ordinary fiacre rather than a royal carriage!). They obviously had a friendly and close relationship though. Here are a few excerpts from: “My Memories of Six Reigns”:


“I want to give all...a true and quite different side to the character of that much-maligned man, William II, German Emperor. At heart he was pro-British, though not, I agree in his policy for there his country and its interests had, of necessity always to be first. He was devoted to his grandmother, Queen Victoria, and admired everything English....I can say in perfect truth that the Emperor did not want war. He was against the invasion of Belgium for two reasons – first, he did not wish Germany to break her word, she having guaranteed to neutrality of Belgium, and second that he knew it would bring this country [Britain] into the war. I can also say that when the Emperor saw the telegram sent to Serbia by Berchtold, he was terribly upset....”
“To return to the affection he had for my parents, the following fact will give you a very touching proof of what I am endeavouring to tell you. In 1916 my parents celebrated their golden wedding. I spite of the war, it was a very happy day...in the afternoon, while we were talking, the steward handed a telegram to my mother. It was from the Crown Princess of Sweden, Margaret, daughter of the Duke of Connaught. The telegram was as follows: “William asks me to transmit to you his loyal and devoted good wishes to dear Uncle Christian and Aunt Helena on the occasion of their golden wedding.” “
Marie Louise’s brother, Albert, served in the Prussian army. She writes:

“Although he was on the retired list when war broke out, he was honour bound to place his services at the disposal of the Emperor. But he made on stipulation: that he would under no circumstances serve on the Western Front. The Emperor fully understood his objections and in consequence appointed him to the staff of General von Loewenfeld, who was in charge of the Berlin defences. The General’s mother was an English woman and the Emperor, knowing this, told my brother that he had arranged this appointment on purpose, realising that the General was in an equally difficult position.”

In the dark, snowy nights of December, when everything seems so bleak and stark and the trees look like skeletons with their white limbs all frozen, it’s small surprise that there is an ancient tradition of telling ghost stories. Perhaps Nature’s hibernation is designed to take us on inner journeys at this time of year – a sort of balance with the activity of Spring. Or, perhaps, it is just that from days long ago there was nothing else to do on winter nights but tell stories and the season lends itself to mystical or ghostly tales.

Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein,
in her most beautiful book, “My Memories of Six Reigns” – in which she comes across as such a delightful, interesting, lovely person of great humility and filled with admiration or understanding of almost everyone she met (including her husband who treated her so badly) – writes of some fascinating and interesting mystical/ghostly experiences. This one, however, is so touchingly beautiful.


“On my return to England, after the dissolution of my marriage, I took a small house in South Kensington and this is what happened to me soon after I moved in. I was arranging my books and odds and ends in my sitting room when the door opened and in walked my eldest brother, Christian Victor. “Oh Kicky, [the pet name we brothers and sisters always called him by], how nice to see you again.” He replied: “I just came to see that you were all right and happy.” He sat down in the chair next to the fire, and I then noticed he had his favourite dachshund on his knee. We talked a little, then he got up and told me I was not to follow him downstairs, that he was very happy and all was well with him. After he had gone and shut the door, I realised that he was in khaki but did not have his medal ribbons on. I then remembered that during the South African War, an order had been issued that officers were not to wear their ribbons so that the enemy would not be able to distinguish them from their men. Only then did I suddenly realise that this dearly beloved brother had died eighteen months previously and lay in his last resting place in South Africa.
My sister came to see me that same afternoon and I told her of what had taken place. She was sitting in the same chair as he had done and when she got up she remarked, “I know he has been here – I can feel it.”

Some people might write it off as some psychological response to her grief for the death of her brother and the stress of the unhappy annulment of her marriage, but both Marie Louise and her sister, Thora, were very down-to-earth women and I believe it completely.

‘Poor dear Lenchen,’ dependent on laudanum and placebos, had never found life easy, but her nerves were strained to the limit in the summer of 1900 when an alarming telegram arrived at Cumberland Lodge. The message tersely informed her that her daughter, Marie Louise, must return at once to the little German Duchy of Anhalt to face divorce proceedings. According to the message, her husband found life with her ‘intolerable’ and since she had ‘neglected her marital duties’ and the marriage had never been consummated, her father-in-law, the Duke of Anhalt, intended to declare it null and void.
Reeling with shock, a frantic Lenchen rushed to Windsor Castle to bear the dreadful tidings to the Queen. Divorce under any circumstances was a scandal that Queen Victoria could not countenance and yet in this case, knowing the full facts, the Queen had nothing but sympathy for her maligned granddaughter.
Ten years earlier, eighteen-year-old Marie Louise was living a sheltered existence in Cumberland Lodge, interspersed with frequent trips to German spas with her hypochondriac mother. Fair, slim and graceful with striking blue eyes, the princess had already attracted the unwelcome attention of Crown Prince Ferdinand of Roumania, but it was the dashing Prince Aribert of Anhalt-Dessau who caught her eye when she arrived in Berlin for Cousin Moretta’s wedding. Bored by the interminable torch dance, and flattered by Aribert’s attention Marie Louise was instantly infatuated.
“He was very tall and good-looking, and a very striking personality,” she recalled, “and I suppose to a young girl of eighteen, he was the beau ideal of a cavalry officer. I have no hesitation in saying that I fell completely under his charm - in others words, fell in love. He paid me a good deal of attention which both flattered and bewildered me.”
The Kaiser was quick to encourage the romance and, bewildered or not, then and there Marie Louise decided that this was the man she would marry. Within a week of their meeting Vicky was writing to the Queen:
“I think it would be a very nice marriage. Aribert is a nice and amiable young man and one may hope that it would be for both their happiness.”
Though Queen Victoria was disconcerted at the speed of events, Marie Louise’s parents approved of the match and on ‘a very cold snowy day’ in December 1890 the couple were engaged at Cousin Willy’s home in Potsdam. From there they made the three-hour journey to Anhalt where a nervous Marie Louise was to be formally introduced to Aribert’s family.
“I loved my mother-in-law from the first moment,” she wrote later. “My father-in-law was rather frightening, but I soon found out he was a dear, kindly but not very intelligent old gentleman.”
The following month Queen Victoria invited Aribert to visit Osborne for her usual inspection of future grandsons and found him entirely suitable. English journalists, however, were less convinced. Even before his arrival, newspapers hinted that there was something ‘not quite right’ about the ‘youthful lover’ but Marie Louise was enraptured and the family agreed with Marie Mallet’s opinion that ‘he really is extremely good looking even for a Prince.’ With the Queen’s blessing, plans were made for a July wedding at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor.
The celebrations coincided with a state visit from the Kaiser who ‘insisted on being present,’ though, for once, proud of his part in bringing the couple together, he behaved himself well. When the ceremonials were over, the newly married couple drove in an open carriage through the streets of Windsor, where crowds of Eton schoolboys who had been given a day off in honour of the occasion, gave them a warm reception. The set out for a honeymoon in Cliveden, and spent further ten days in Marie Louise’s childhood home, Cumberland Lodge, before embarking on a tour of Holland. In the autumn, Prince Aribert took his wife home to the quaint sleepy town of Dessau in eastern Germany.
For all her youth and naïveté, it did not take Marie Louise long to discern that her husband was not quite the ‘nice amiable young man’ of Aunt Vicky’s imagination. It soon became clear that, as a serving officer in the German Cavalry, Aribert much preferred the company of his fellow soldiers to that of his wife. Abandoned to her own devices in the medieval atmosphere of dull Dessau, Marie Louise came to the sad and humiliating realisation that her handsome husband had married her solely to conceal his homosexuality and protect his reputation.
“From the Anhalt side I think it was a mariage de convenance.” she wrote many years later, “To marry the granddaughter of the Queen of England was a very important alliance especially as the girl of eighteen was also first cousin to the German Emperor - in fact she was related to the entire Almanach de Gotha.”
Doubtless, Marie Louise had heard the rumours surrounding Cousin Ella’s marriage but at least Ella had the consolation of knowing that, in spite of his difficult nature, her husband loved her. Ella had enjoyed many splendid hours in the glittering ballrooms of St. Petersburg but Marie Louise, denied even that solace, found herself isolated and trapped by the thousand rules that governed the lives of princesses in Anhalt. Every aspect of her existence was organised according to an ancient code of etiquette that had been in existence for centuries. She was not even permitted to leave her rooms without the prerequisite number of attendants and, as she quickly discovered, if she dared to flout the rules there was always someone on hand to reprimand her. On one occasion, Willy’s wife, the Empress Dona, was appalled to hear that Marie Louise had dared to venture out in an ordinary cab, unaccompanied by footmen and pages.
Marie Louise might have coped with her husband’s predilection for young men had he, like Serge, shown her the least consideration but Aribert not only preferred his male friends but made it clear that he resented her being there at all:
“I was not wanted, my presence was irksome to him, and we were two complete strangers living under the same roof. We occasionally met at meals and when we had guests, otherwise days might pass without our even seeing each other - and from the enthusiastic girl of eighteen, I became a disillusioned woman.”
Drawing on her cigarettes, the unhappy princess sought escape from Anhalt whenever possible. She paid regular visits to Aunt Vicky and her circle of interesting artists and intellectuals in Berlin, and taking advantage of Aribert’s apathy, indulged her lifelong love of travel in a series of tours. She visited Italy with her brother and Cousin Charlotte, before journeying further afield to meet with the Roman Catholic White Fathers in their African mission. Her husband, meanwhile, squandered her dowry, sold her jewels and made her life so unpalatable that Marie Louise, disheartened and alone, fell ill.
As usual, the observant Queen Victoria was among the first to detect that something was amiss and in June 1898, and invited her granddaughter to England:
“[Marie-] Louise has been here for two nights,” she wrote to Vicky, “very far from well but not in bad spirits. She is only so weak and everything tires her.”
But, after eight years of marriage, Marie Louise’s spirits were sinking rapidly. She remained with her grandmother at Osborne throughout the summer, enjoying visits from Cousin Sophie and Tino of Greece. On the 12th August, she celebrated her twenty-sixth birthday on the Isle of Wight in the company of her sister, Thora, and her uncle and aunt, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught, receiving telegrams from her Wales cousins, then aboard the Royal Yacht Osborne.
The peaceful rest in comfortable and familiar surroundings made Marie Louise’s return to the gloom of Dessau all the more depressing, and the outbreak of the South African War intensified her unhappiness. The strength of anti-British feeling in Germany made life unbearable for an English princess, particularly one whose own brother was serving with the Queen’s forces. Weary with the façade of her sham marriage and desperate to escape from Anhalt, Marie Louise asked her grandmother’s and husband’s permission to take an extended break in America. Aribert, scarcely aware of her absence, was more than happy to agree.
For several weeks in the spring of 1900, she toured the United States and Canada, thoroughly enjoying the break until the telegram from Anhalt brought an abrupt end to the holiday. To her horror, her father-in-law was summoning her back to Dessau. The same day, her parents had received the letter informing them of Aribert’s intentions.
Queen Victoria, utterly indignant, and appalled at Marie Louise’s ‘cruel treatment,’ immediately dispatched a telegram of her own to Lord Minto, the Governor of Canada:
“Tell my granddaughter to come home to me. V.R.”
After a gruelling and anxious sea crossing, Marie Louise returned to the solace of Cumberland Lodge:
“My parents and my sister were there to meet me in the hall. You can imagine all the babel of talk! I was completely bewildered and could not understand or in the least manner grasp why I had been summoned back across two continents in this peremptory manner by my father-in-law.”
As a horrified Marie Louise listened to the list of ‘obscene’ charges that her husband levelled against her, her humiliation was absolute and she could only take comfort in the knowledge that ‘there was one accusation which my husband did not bring against me, because he could not, and that was the charge of infidelity.’
Only later did the princess learn the true reason for the urgent summons. In her absence Aribert had been caught in flagrante delicto with a homosexual lover. To avoid bringing scandal on the family, his father demanded an immediate annulment of the marriage laying the blame for its non-consummation squarely at his wife’s feet. Rather than facing a prolonged and humiliating court battle, the Christians agreed to the annulment and Marie Louise, though deeply distressed by the outcome, was finally released from a life that had brought nothing but disappointment and unhappiness.
She returned to her family and, having acquired rooms for herself in London established a small studio where she made jewellery. Most of her time, however, was devoted to numerous charitable foundations, including the ‘Princess Club’ for the factory workers of Rotherhithe, centres for down-and-outs and former prisoners and those connected with her mother’s nursing foundations. Like Aunt Alice and her Hessian cousins, Marie Louise was often to be found in the homes of the poor, witnessing first hand the lives of workers ‘which otherwise might have remained a closed book to me.’
In spite of all she had suffered, Marie Louise shared Ella’s belief that vows made before God were binding for life. She never saw her husband again yet continued to wear her wedding ring and, to the end of her life, considered herself a married woman.
“The reason I have never married again,” she wrote towards the end of her life, “is because my marriage was according to the Church of England with its solemn and binding vows, and no arbitrary local family law could absolve me from these marriage vows.”
It was hardly likely that her passionate Edinburgh cousins, Missy and Ducky (Victoria Melita) would resign themselves so patiently to life with unfaithful husbands

Princess Helena Victoria, known in the family as Lenchen, trudged through the corridors of Windsor, doing her utmost to fulfil the Queen’s requests in the manner appropriate to her station. It was not a role that she relished. As a child, having neither the vivacity nor intellectual brilliance of her elder sisters, she had preferred to play with her brothers in the model fort at Osborne than to master the usual accomplishments of a young princess. Her father, with an understanding ahead of his time, appreciated her skills as a horsewoman and her love of the outdoor life and, rather than stifling her natural talents, encouraged her to develop her gifts however unconventional they appeared. It did not matter to him that she lacked the grace of Vicky and Alice. He recognized her musical, linguistic and artistic abilities and praised her equestrian skill; and few things in life gave Lenchen greater joy than winning her father’s approbation.
Now, as she moved awkwardly along the corridors of Windsor, Lenchen was only too aware that Prince Albert’s untimely death had brought those halcyon days to a premature and permanent end.
“Oh, if you knew how miserable I am…” she wrote to a friend, “I adored Papa, I loved him more than anything on Earth. His word was a most sacred law and he was my help and adviser.”
Only seven months after the Prince Consort had died, Lenchen faced a further wrench: her sister Alice departed for Darmstadt, leaving her to take over her duties as their mother’s chief support and confidante. Forced into a role to which she was ill suited, Lenchen had seen her talents smothered in the morbid atmosphere of the court and there were times when she had to confess that she wished she had been born a boy.
In 1865 the future appeared bleak for Queen Victoria’s third daughter. Her only hope of escape from the gloom of perpetual mourning was marriage, but finding a suitable husband was proving no easy quest. The Queen, considering her easier to please than her elder sisters, had become so dependent on her company, that she was unwilling to with her. There were younger sisters who might eventually replace her, but Louise was so volatile and Beatrice so young that for now there seemed little hope of escape. The Queen had no serious objection to the idea of Lenchen marrying but having already ‘lost’ two daughters to foreign courts, she insisted that any prospective suitor must be willing to settle in England. Since a commoner was out of the question for a daughter of the monarch• and few foreign princes would accept the Queen’s stipulations, the prospects were unpromising.
To make matters worse, as Lenchen well knew, she had few personal charms to attract an appropriate parti. A plain girl, in her mother’s opinion, with a tendency to put on weight too easily, Queen Victoria left her with few illusions about her desirability:
“Poor dear Lenchen,” she had written to Vicky, “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.”
Vicky remained optimistic. In spite of the Queen’s disparaging remarks, her sister, she believed, had a good deal to offer a husband. Though she may not have been the most beautiful of princesses, her amber eyes were accentuated by her masses of wavy brown hair and, apart from the fact that she was the daughter of the Queen of England, her docile nature and kindly manner gave her all the attributes of an ideal Victorian wife.
Clutching her Almanac de Gotha, Vicky scoured the German principalities and before the end of the year, a rather sorry suitor was unearthed in the person of an old friend of Fritz’s, Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein.
At first sight, Christian had little to offer the twenty-year-old princess. Fifteen years her senior, balding, with poor teeth and a propensity to stoutness, his family, the Dukes of Augustenburg, had lost their lands during Prussia’s annexation of Schleswig-Holstein. To the Queen, however, his impoverishment proved advantageous: landless himself, he would be more than willing to settle in a house that she would provide in England. Lenchen was whisked off to Germany for a meeting and was delighted by what she found. What Christian lacked in youth and good-looks he made up for in kindness and good manners.
He shared her love of horses and was, as his daughter later recalled:
“…A very remarkable person…a splendid shot, a very keen horseman, and had a profound knowledge of forestry. In addition to all these outdoor interests he loved poetry and literature…He had inherited from his mother a love of flowers and gardening.”
What was more, since he readily accepted the Queen’s offer of a home in England, Lenchen would face none of the traumas of leaving the familiar world to become a stranger in a foreign court as her elder sisters had done.
From their first meeting Queen Victor liked Christian enough to make allowance for his habit of chain-smoking cigars and, though she sighed, ‘if only he looked a little younger!’ she shared Vicky’s view that, with a few adjustments to his teeth and manners, he would make an ideal son-in-law.
The future suddenly appeared brighter, and when Christian proposed Lenchen gladly accepted him. The Queen was content; Lenchen was happy; Vicky was satisfied with her part in bringing them together; and none of them was prepared for the furore that the engagement was about to raise.
The outraged Princess of Wales objected that, since Christian had fought against the Danes in the seizure of Schleswig-Holstein, she could not accept him into the family. Bertie supported his wife and stated categorically that if the wedding went ahead they would not attend. From Darmstadt too, Alice opposed the match. Her sister, she believed, was being rushed into marriage with an unattractive and older man simply so that her mother could keep her ‘in service’ forever. The Queen responded by writing to her relatives across Europe that Alice was being ‘sharp and grand and wanting to have everything her own way’ and when the press caught a whiff of the dispute, all kinds of improbable stories appeared in the papers. Christian, it was reported, was a madman and a bigamist who had already fathered several children whom the princess was about to adopt.
In the end, it was left to much-maligned Alice to restore the peace. When a flustered Lenchen assured her that she truly wished to marry her not-so-handsome prince, Alice relented,
“I am so glad she is happy,” she wrote to the Queen, “and I hope every blessing will rest on them both that one can possibly desire.”
Though her third pregnancy and Austro-Prussian War prevented her from travelling to England for the wedding, she was delighted to hear that the Queen had provided her two elder daughters with new frocks for the occasion and even succeeded in persuading Bertie to attend the ceremony, which took place at Windsor Castle in July 1866.
The newly-weds settled into Frogmore House on the Windsor estate where life was peaceful but dull. As Alice had predicted, Lenchen remained on call to the Queen’s slightest whim, following her progress to the tedium of Balmoral each spring and autumn, Osborne for Christmas and summer, and back to Windsor in early spring. For her efforts she received the same £30,000 dowry as had been granted to her sisters, but, to impecunious Alice’s great annoyance, she also received a larger annuity of £6,000 and, of course, a free home.
Christian settled easily into his new life in England. With no official duties to occupy his time, he was perfectly content to loll about the gardens, puffing at his cigars until the Queen, watching him through the window, found his idleness disconcerting and, after sending a curt message telling him to find something useful to do, created him Ranger of the Windsor Estate. Even then, the responsibilities were so undemanding that for the most part he occupied himself by shooting birds. One day while out on a shoot, his brother-in-law, Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught (ironically, a great marksman), accidentally shot him in the eye. Doctors were rushed to the scene and after a careful examination informed Queen Victoria that the wounded eye would have to be removed. Whatever Christian’s view of the matter, the prospect of a one-eyed son-in-law so disgusted the Queen that she refused to permit surgery, which was, in her opinion:
“…Quite unnecessary as formerly she knew several people with shot eyes who did not have it done and who did not become blind: that nowadays doctors were always taking out eyes; and in short spoke as if [the doctors] wished to do it for [their] own brutal pleasure.”
Eventually, she relented and the damaged eye was removed after which Christian acquired a large selection of glass eyes which he would take out and display to guests.
A year after the wedding, Lenchen gave birth to her first son, Christian Victor (Christle) -‘a nice little thing’ according to Vicky. Two years later a second boy, Albert, was born to be followed in May 1870 by Victoria Helena (Thora) and, in the summer of 1872, Marie Louise, whom the Queen had wanted to be named ‘Georgina.’ By the time of Marie Louise’s birth the ‘Christians’ had moved into Cumberland Lodge - ‘a warm red brick covered with Virginia creeper and honeysuckle’ - where in 1876 a third son, Frederick Harold, was born but lived for only eight days.
The stresses of pregnancy weighed heavily on Lenchen’s nerves and, following the birth of a stillborn child in 1877, she became increasingly convinced that all kinds of ills had befallen her, the symptoms of which were largely in her own imagination. Even her mother, while conceding that Lenchen was ‘good’ and ‘amiable,’ lost patience with her bouts of hypochondria, and warned Vicky to show her less sympathy as:
“…complaining is partly her (unfortunate) habit…But she is so inclined to coddle herself (and Christian too) and to give way in everything that the great object of her doctors and nurse is to rouse her to make her think less of herself…”
To calm her nerves Lenchen took up smoking in secret (since her mother detested the habit and would not permit it in her palaces) and frequently badgered her doctors for prescriptions of laudanum. Eventually her addiction became so alarming and made her behaviour so bizarre that the Queen and Prince Christian persuaded the doctors to prescribe her with placebos instead.
In spite of her personal problems, Lenchen diligently carried out her duties both as a princess and as a mother. Patronising various medical organisations, she helped establish the Red Cross in England and played a major role in establishing the Princess Christian Nurse Training Schools and the Princess Christian District Nurses, which proved so successful that, years later, her niece the Tsarina would establish similar institutions in Russia. Like her elder sisters, Lenchen took a passionate interest in music, religion and politics - a subject about which her elder daughter, Thora, would prove equally enthusiastic.
Devoted to her children, Lenchen raised them according to the broad educational principles established by her father. Her eldest son, Christle, was the first royal prince to attend school, Wellington College, as opposed to being educated at home. The girls too, like their cousins in Darmstadt, were provided with an extensive curriculum and learned several languages from an early age. They spoke French to their maid in French, and German to their father who also taught them mathematics and inspired them with his own love of poetry and music.
Living in such close proximity to their grandmother, the children were particularly close to Queen Victoria who was happy to take care of them while their parents travelled abroad.
“Nothing can beat Lenchen’s boy – who one really sees grow daily,” the Queen wrote of Christle – “He is a splendid fellow,”
She was not, however, quite so taken by his sister. On one occasion while Lenchen was in the South of France the Queen sent her a telegram reporting:
“Children very well but poor little [Marie] Louise very ugly.”
Marie Louise purported ‘ugliness’ (which certainly was not in evidence as she grew older) did not prevent the Queen from taking a great interest in her granddaughters’ upbringing. From their earliest years she instilled them with the her own belief in the value of simplicity and necessity of treating members of the household with respect. Like their Hessian cousins, the girls were not permitted to expect servants to do for them what they could for themselves. On one occasion, while staying at Balmoral, Thora asked if she might be allowed to play tennis with two maids of honour.
“Grandmama’s reply was ‘Yes, so long as you pick up the balls yourself. Since it’s Sunday I do not think it right to make others work for your amusement.’”
Respect for servants was one thing, over-familiarity another. The Queen would never allow her granddaughters to forget that they were princesses with all the advantages and duties that their position entailed. Marie Louise recalled a dinner at Balmoral when she was fifteen-years-old:
“I was sitting next to the Lord Chancellor, feeling very shy and rather inarticulate. I was completely dumbfounded when a voice from over my head whispered in my ear, ‘The Queen wishes the young princesses to remember that their duty is to entertain the neighbours at table.’ After this, before coming down to dinner, I used to rehearse little bits of conversation so as to carry out my grandmother’s injunction.”
Poor Thora received a further reprimand on her way into dinner, when the Queen, noticing her low décolletage, whispered:
“A little rose in front dear because of the footmen.”
Though firmly established in England, the girls spent much of their youth traipsing after their mother through the spas of Germany and France in search of a cure for her numerous psychosomatic ailments. The continental tours not only inspired Marie Louise with a great love of travel that would remain with her all her life, but also brought her and Thora into frequent contact with their German cousins in Potsdam and Hesse. Intelligent, gentle and unassuming, they were welcome guests in Berlin and were equally well-received in Darmstadt, where they soon discovered they had a great deal in common with Princess Alice’s daughters. Similar in age to the younger Hessian children, they too had been raised simply, cleaning their own rooms, wearing inexpensive clothes, and assisting their mother in her many nursing projects. All the cousins loved animals (a trait no doubt inherited from Queen Victoria, who spoiled and pampered her numerous dogs), and like Uncle Louis in Hesse, Prince Christian, the avid gardener, taught his daughters to grow flowers. Like Aunt Alice, too, Lenchen often invited the great performers of the day to sing for them. Princesses or not, the children did not always appreciate their mother’s theatrical guests and were not above making occasional social gaffes. Once, following a private performance by a renowned German actress, Irène of Hesse had candidly declared, “That was ghastly!”
Marie Louise made a similar faux pas when the singer Jenny Lind appeared at Windsor:
“She came up to the schoolroom and said she would like to sing to the ‘dear children’ - which she did…I went up to her when she had finished and said, ‘Dear Madame Goldschmidt, must you always make such a noise when you sing?’ All she said was ‘Sweet child’ - and kissed me.”
With so much in common, it was unsurprising that Marie Louise and Alix of Hesse, born within two months of one another, soon became the closest of friends, and ‘more like sisters than cousins.’
Back in England, life in Cumberland Lodge passed serenely for Lenchen’s daughters. They continued their lessons, looked after their pets, and played happily together by the lake or in the woods of Windsor.
“Few sisters were really so different in temperament and perhaps character as [Thora] and I,” wrote Marie Louise, “yet I do not think that any two sisters have been quite such close and intimate companions and friends as we were. I always referred to her in everything. She had such wonderful judgement, was so clear-headed and wise, and was so loyal and strong in her affection. With it all, she was very humble and very diffident about her own gifts.”
Their gentleness and good sense endeared them to their Wales cousins, though time had done nothing to ease Princess Alexandra’s prejudice against Prince Christian. While Queen Victoria delighted in having the little princesses so close at hand, ‘Aunt Alix’ could never forgive their father’s part in the Schleswig-Holstein affair and she was not above making childish and cruel remarks about the girls. Overlooking the plainness of her own frail daughters, she mocked their appearance, referring to Thora as ‘the Snipe’ - a nickname chosen by her brothers because of her long nose and thin features.
If the Christians were aware of her jibes, they might have known better than to take her words to heart. After all, their aunt could be equally cutting in her descriptions of the most flamboyant of all the royal cousins - the daughters of ‘Uncle Affie,’ Duke of Edinburgh.

On a radio programme yesterday (most of which, unfortunately I missed), Queen Victoria's biographer, Giles St-Aubyn was talking with the presenter of a wax cylinder of the recording of Queen Victoria's voice. The little I heard of the programme led me to believe it is a strong possibility that the recording is genuine and, what was definitely genuine, was a BBC archive recording of an interview with Queen Victoria's granddaughter, Princess Alice of Albany (later Athlone) beautifully describing her grandmother's voice which, to my slight surprise, she said had no hint of a German accent. The Queen's voice, she said, was light and bright and youthful, as indeed was the Queen herself - and not at all like the sombre woman of popular imagination.

This fits, of course, with Marie of Roumania's lovely description of her grandmother's child-like enjoyment of many of the events she organised to entertain her grandchildren, and Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein's mention of the warmth and humour of her grandmother.

It often seems that one of the most endearing characteristics of Queen Victoria, is that she never really lost a child-like heart. Perhaps that was due to insecurity and unhappiness of her own childhood but, rather than becoming a miserable old woman, she seems much more to me a tender and open-hearted person, with a sort of childlike innocence. Like a child, too, she could be petulant and stubborn but she was such a romantic, and sometimes quite naive in, for example, her wishing to publish the second 'Leaves from a Highland Journal' in which she wrote effusively of her servant, John Brown, in a way that less innocent people might interpret quite differently. It is interesting that the older she grew, the more tolerant and understanding she became. After the dreadful gaffe of the Flora Hastings affair (when she was still very young) perhaps she learned a lesson, or perhaps she stopped listening to advisors! She stood by her granddaughter, Marie Louise, during a scandalous divorce and she encouraged the Duchess of York (later Queen Mary) to go to Mecklenburg to ride alongside the disgraced daughter of a relative, who had been disowned for becoming pregnant by a footman. Again, she offered a home in England to a Hanoverian princess who had been refused permission to marry the man she loved, and who was cast out by her father for so doing; and she enjoyed what her daughter, Vicky, considered frivolous romantic novels.

I like to think that is Queen Victoria's voice on the recording - the snatch of it that I vaguely heard reminded me a little of the earliest recordings of our present Queen. She allowed herself to be filmed (albeit briefly) so it seems likely that she would be equally willing to allow herself to be recorded.

On 6th July 1868, when told of the birth of her seventh granddaughter, Queen Victoria remarked that the news was ‘a very uninteresting thing for it seems to me to go on like the rabbits in Windsor Park.’ Her apathy was understandable - this was her fourteenth grandchild, and over the next two decades twenty-six more would be born. Though the Queen herself had given birth to nine children she had never been fond of babies, viewing them as ‘frog-like’ and ‘rather disgusting…particularly when undressed.’ The early years of her marriage had, she claimed, been ruined by frequent pregnancies; and large families were unnecessary for wealthy people since the children would grow up with nothing worthwhile to do.

Nevertheless, her initial reaction to the birth of Princess Victoria of Wales belied the genuine concern that Queen Victoria felt for each of her twenty-two granddaughters. ‘As a rule,’ she wrote, ‘I like girls best,’ and for the rest of her life she devoted a great deal of time to their well-being and happiness, showering them with an affection she had seldom shown her own children. Though at times she found them too big, too noisy, too boisterous or too ill mannered, she was ever on hand to offer support and to welcome them into her homes. No matter how pressing affairs of state, she never missed their birthdays and was always available when they were in need. When one was in labour the Queen was quickly at her side, holding her hand and mopping her brow; when one’s marriage failed or another’s love was unrequited, the Queen held her as she wept. She felt deeply for their troubles, sympathised with their sorrows and worried about their futures. Even when they exasperated her by ignoring her advice, she was quick to forgive them. She missed them when they were far away and took offence if they did not accept her invitations to Osborne, Balmoral, or Windsor. The truth was that, almost in spite of herself, she loved them deeply: “They are like my own children;” she wrote to the Earl of Fife, “their happiness is very near my own heart."

The twenty-two princesses were raised in eight separate family groups - the Hohenzollerns, the Waleses, the Hessians, the Edinburghs, the Christians, the Connaughts, the Albanys, and the Battenbergs - and their lives and personalities were as varied as their names. Some lived and died in virtual obscurity, others played a major role in world events. Some were pale and sickly, others robust and energetic; some strikingly beautiful, others tragically plain. Several met with appalling violence and tragedy, while others enjoyed the carefree lives of wealthy Victorian women. They grew up as far apart as England, Germany, Malta, and India, sometimes amid great wealth, other times struggling to maintain royal standards. Twenty-seven years passed between the birth of the first and the birth of the last, but they shared the common bond of being shaped by their English grandmother, whose influence was apparent even in their names. The Queen often expressed the hope that all her grandchildren would be called after her or their grandfather, Prince Albert, resulting in seven Victorias, while the majority of the rest had Victoria or Alberta somewhere in their litany of names.

By 1914, through a series of dynastic marriages, the Queen’s granddaughters included the Empress of Russia, the Queens of Spain, Greece and Norway, and the Crown Princesses of Roumania and Sweden. As their brothers and cousins occupied the thrones of Germany, Britain and Denmark, Prince Albert’s dream of a peaceful Europe created through bonds of kinship seemed a real possibility.

“All our cousins,” wrote Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein, “were more like brothers and sisters than mere blood relations.”

Yet in little more than a decade after Queen Victoria’s death, the Prince Consort’s dream would lie shattered in the carnage of the First World War. Royal cousins and even siblings would find themselves on opposing sides; two of them would die horrifically at the hands of revolutionaries and several others would be ousted from their thrones. They had lived through the halcyon days of European monarchies but their lives, like the lives of millions of their subjects, would be changed forever by the catastrophe played out on the battlefields of France.

Through all the upheavals, tragedies and conflicts one person had bound them together and, even when wars had divided their nations, to the end of their lives, they would look back and remember ‘dearest grandmama’ with love.

So many, many books have been written of Queen Victoria and so many websites speak of her, and happily, unlike books and sites about other members of her extended family, most are appreciative. While doing a New Year sorting out today, I was looking at several books that have become 'dear friends' and would just like to mention them.

The first is so seldom seen and difficult to find (I wanted to send it to a friend and couldn't find a copy anywhere). I bought it at Osborne House and it was first published by Hamish Hamilton in 1978 (reprinted later in paperback) and it has the most beautiful title: "Dear Osborne" by John Matson. Before the lovely book by the Duchess of York appeared, this was the loveliest link to Osborne. I hope other people find it easier to come by.

The second is also a slim volume, purchased in Northumberland at quite some expense but worth every penny. It is the letters written from Queen Victoria's granddaughter, Moretta of Prussia, to her mother, the Empress Frederick (Queen Victoria's daughter, Vicky) during her brief sojourn in Britain on the anniversary of her father's death: "Queen Victoria at Balmoral & Windsor" edited by James Pope Hennessey. It is such an intimate book; the thoughts of a young lady in mourning for her father and for her own lost love. Very, very beautiful.

The memoirs of Fritz Ponsonby in his autobiography, and the recollections of the Queen's doctor, Sir James Reid, written by his daughter are equally fascinating....as are the somewhat acerbic views of Marie Mallet, as seen in her letters compiled by her son. The letters compiled by Roger Fulford and later Agatha Ramm are continuously absorbing. Princess Marie Louise's "My Memories of Six Reigns" is beyond beautiful...how gently she describes people she knew!

There are so many more but if I were stranded on a desert island, these are the ones I would take in the 'Queen Victoria' section! What treasures these books are and how lovely that we can still read them!