Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter Read online

  CHAPTER 8

  An art student at last

  I think of thee, my sister,

  In my sad and lonely hours;

  And the thought of thee comes o’er me

  Like the breath of morning flow’rs.

  From Prince Leopold’s poem to Louise written for her twentieth birthday in 1868

  The year in which Louise turned twenty was to be as dramatic for the royal family as the year of her birth had been. The year began with Prince Leopold becoming very ill; he recovered, but the family and the British public for several days expected to hear the news of his death. Haemophilia was so little understood, and the doctors so nervous about it, that it seemed this ‘severe attack’ might be fatal. Louise nursed him as much as her mother would permit. Louise wrote of Leopold’s illness to Lady Augusta Stanley, who commented, ‘There is something so natural and true in Pss Louise’s letter – so the reverse of the wordiness characteristic of most of this young generation.’ Lady Stanley mentions in the same letter that she had recently taken the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Windsor where he had met Louise, Leopold and the queen.

  By the spring, Leopold was fully recovered, but within a few weeks the family was shocked to hear that Alfred had suffered a close brush with death. As the very first member of the British royal family to visit Australia, in March 1868, Alfred was at Clontarf, in Sydney, when he was shot by a would-be assassin, an Irishman named Henry James O’Farrell. The Fenian threat to the royal family had long been worrying their guards and in the autumn it was claimed that the family had been besieged in Balmoral while troops outside prepared for the attack they were sure was to come. No one, however, had expected the Fenian threat to get so close to the royal family in somewhere as far away as Australia. The main demand of the Fenian movement was simple – Irish independence from British rule. Following the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, in which over a million people are estimated to have starved to death, anger against British rule intensified. The Fenian movement gathered force in many Irish communities overseas, most forcefully in North America and Australia.

  The naval prince had been attending a charity picnic, held to raise funds for the Sailors’ Home at Port Jackson. It was a public event, so there was little to prevent O’Farrell from getting close to the prince, raising his gun and shooting him in the back. O’Farrell was immediately grabbed, whereupon he fired again, painfully shooting in the foot one of the men who had arrested him. Prince Alfred had a miraculous escape, as the bullet just missed his spine. The Lancet reported that it ‘entered the back half an inch to the right of the spine, struck the ninth rib, followed round the course of the rib, and lodged five inches from the umbilicus … having thus traversed a distance of twelve inches and a quarter’. It was considered astonishing that the bullet had caused so little damage and missed all of his major organs.

  O’Farrell was arrested and very quickly brought to trial; he attempted to plead insanity, but the plea was refused. A few weeks after the attack, he was hanged. The newspapers claimed that O’Farrell was just one member of a gang and a large reward was offered for information leading to the arrest of his fellow conspirators. The incident caused an upsurge of anger in Australia against the Irish and Catholics, and a political headache for the government. Initially, the queen was understandably horrified by the assassination attempt, but the story soon began to pall and she became irritated with how much attention her son was receiving. In July, she wrote to Vicky: ‘I am not as proud of Affie as you might think, for he is so conceited himself and at the present moment receives ovations as if he had done something – instead of God’s mercy having spared his life.’ By August, in a quite uncharacteristic manner, she was praising Bertie for being so much better behaved than Affie; he was being so affectionate to her, his only offence being that he was ‘imprudent’.

  *

  While Alfred was recovering from being shot by an Irishman, Bertie and Alix were preparing to visit Ireland, a trip which could, very easily, have been a disaster. The question of Irish Home Rule was being fiercely debated in both houses of Parliament and all over Britain and, as had been proved in Sydney, there was a very real threat from the Fenians. Interestingly, despite the queen’s belief that her son and heir was a buffoon who would never be capable of running the country, his visit to Ireland was a great success. People turned out in droves to see the Prince and Princess of Wales (who was heavily pregnant with their daughter Victoria) and the atmosphere was friendly and welcoming.

  In August, the queen, Louise, Leopold1 and Beatrice travelled to Switzerland to escape a heatwave in Britain; it was a holiday on which the mother and daughter would spend time more easily together than before, attaining a closeness they were seldom able to enjoy at any other time. Occasionally they travelled without the others, just the queen, Louise and a couple of courtiers. The absence of Beatrice helped the harmony, but even when they were all together, the atmosphere was one of happiness. The queen seems, in her journal entries, to have reached a level of contentment unknown since Albert’s death. At the start of their holiday, she recorded: ‘breakfasted together, in a charming spot, in the shade, near the house & I sat and wrote in a little summer house … The air was very pleasant, though the sun scorching. – After luncheon sketching the heavenly view from my window … Drove with Louise, Baby & Janie E. [Jane, Marchioness of Ely, lady of the bedchamber] through Lucerne & along the Lake, a most beautiful drive. Took our tea with us.’

  The party left Osborne on board the royal yacht Victoria and Albert and sailed to Cherbourg. There, Emperor Napoleon III provided them with a special train, on which they travelled to Paris. After calling on the Empress, they continued to Lucerne, incognito with the queen as the Countess of Kent and Louise calling herself ‘Lady Louise Kent’. (This caused some consternation amongst the royal entourage, none of whom could use their real title if it made them grander than the ‘Countess of Kent’.) Amongst their number was the court physician Sir William Jenner, paranoid about foreign sanitation and fearful of typhoid wherever they went, and the now-ubiquitous John Brown. None of the royal children liked John Brown, Bertie in particular despised the influence the ghillie had over their mother and the lack of respect he showed for the queen’s children. The diplomat and diarist Wilfrid Scawen Blunt recorded in his journal,

  Brown was a rude, unmannerly fellow … but he had unbounded influence with the Queen whom he treated with little respect, presuming in every way on his position with her. It was the talk of all the household that he was ‘The Queen’s stallion’ – He was a fine man physically, though coarsely made, and had fine eyes (like the late Prince Consort’s it was said) and the Queen, who had been passionately in love with her husband … got it into her head that somehow the Prince’s spirit had passed into Brown.

  As Louise would remark, in reference to the queen’s unexpected displeasure with another royal servant, Sir John Cowell, as soon as John Brown took a dislike to anyone their card was marked for ever more.

  Those accompanying the queen and princess to Switzerland expected the usual stormy relationship between the two women, and were instead pleasantly surprised by how amicable the atmosphere was. Henry Ponsonby, the queen’s private secretary, recorded delightedly an evening in which everyone, including the queen, had laughed uncontrollably. Louise, he said, was ‘choking’ with laughter and he had never seen the queen laugh so hard. Their improved relationship on this holiday was helped by the two women’s artistic affinity and the splendid opportunities for drawing and painting. The queen had begun to feel an admiration for her daughter’s work and knew that Albert would have been proud to have an artist for a daughter. Even in 1866, a year in which the queen spent most of her time being cross with her daughter, she had been moved to write, ‘Your print after Winterhalter’s picture is quite lovely!’ For some months before their holiday, Louise had been working on a sculpture bust of her mother; it had changed the balance of their relationship, because the queen had to sit stil
l and quietly while her daughter worked. Now, on their holiday, mother and daughter happily painted, sketched and drew their way all around Switzerland’s most picturesque sights. The queen’s journal makes several mentions of walking with Louise, and of driving out with Louise and a lady-in-waiting to picturesque spots, where they would take tea and sit sketching until forced to leave either by the weather or the sun going down. It was a pivotal time in their relationship and, perhaps, indicates that the queen understood the depression her daughter had experienced in the previous twelve months. On several occasions, she permitted Louise to go off by herself (accompanied by courtiers, of course). Queen Victoria seemed, finally, to be gaining an acceptance of her daughter’s independent spirit.

  Although the Swiss holiday seemed idyllic, the threat of danger was ever present. The New York Times reported with relish while the queen was in Lucerne, that a Fenian would-be assassin had forced his way into her apartments and attempted to kill her. The story was grossly exaggerated and eventually reports began to trickle through that it was not a Fenian – not even an Irishman – it was an Englishman who had no weapons nor any apparently malign intent: he simply wanted to see the queen. Whether the ‘madman’ had even made it – or attempted to make it – as far as her apartments is also in doubt, but the story was a huge drama in the newspapers.

  When the two women returned to England it was with an acceptance that, although Louise would continue to help her mother, her art was important as well and she needed to share some of her duties with Princess Helena. When Helena had married both she and Christian had understood that permission for their marriage was only being granted with the proviso that they remain living in England. The queen had not been happy at having to rely on Louise as her amanuensis, despite admitting reluctantly that Louise was more intelligent than Helena. Whenever Louise was ill or indisposed, Helena was expected to step back into her old role. The queen usually preferred to work with Helena, as Louise was too ready to challenge her mother and often made the great mistake of offering advice. The queen did not want advice: she wanted Helena’s compliant meekness, not a daughter with a mind of her own. That aside, she was adamant that she would not hire a paid secretary and allow Louise to live her own life. By the time Louise was twenty, however, the queen’s journal shows that she was growing increasingly pleased with her daughter, not least because she had ‘such an affectionate heart’.

  Despite Helena’s occasional presence, however, Louise still had very little time to herself. She had been promised she would have every afternoon free to work on her art and to exercise. Louise was a great lover of exercise, something that bemused the rest of her family; she walked, rode and, when they had been invented, rode a bicycle as often as she could. Bicycling did not come naturally to her and her first efforts were said to be ‘bad’, but she persevered with lessons until she had mastered the art. (Louise loved speed and terrorised her milder sisters by driving a horse carriage as fast as she could make it go.) Those promised free afternoons were inevitably eaten into by work.

  Louise was desperate to move out of her mother’s home, to do as Bertie had done with White Lodge and have her own apartments. She wanted a proper studio, to go to art college and to become a full-time artist. In much of this she had the support of Mary Thornycroft, who had been trying to persuade the queen that Louise deserved more advanced artistic instruction. They were helped in this endeavour, unexpectedly, by the spectre of Prince Albert.

  By 1868, Victoria had reached such a point of deification of her dead husband that she wrote to Vicky comparing Albert to Jesus Christ. She was, however, slowly starting to come back to life and was returning to the public duties neglected for so long. The newspapers had been printing angry articles about the queen’s lack of interest in her people for years. Her advisors, well aware of the ever-present threat of revolution, told the queen that she needed to start earning her subjects’ affection. That year she made several public appearances, including laying the foundation stone for the new St Thomas’s Hospital in London. She also allowed Leopold to have a concert (albeit of ‘sacred music’) and a small celebratory dinner for his fifteenth birthday. Just a week later, Beatrice was allowed a dance for her eleventh birthday (which must have galled her older siblings, given the memory of all their uncelebrated birthdays, even important ones, since Albert’s death). These changes were not enough to endear the queen to her subjects again, and in May 1868 there were calls for her to abdicate when she missed another very important parliamentary session.

  The queen refused to listen to the newspapers. She was feeling proud of her latest achievement, a book entitled Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands. She had had it privately printed for her family the year before (Bertie was derisive and scathing – although not to her face) and in 1868 she allowed it to be published commercially. The book was drawn from her diaries and contained her own illustrations. Some of her family may have scoffed, but it was an extraordinarily open thing for the queen to have published her own thoughts and drawings. Although the book grew out of Victoria’s desire to praise the beloved home of her beloved John Brown, it turned out to be an important exercise in public relations. The elusive queen now seemed much more accessible to her people.

  More important for Princess Louise was the fact that in 1868 her mother had mellowed enough to agree at last with Mary Thornycroft that Louise should be allowed to go to art school. The Thornycroft family had long had influence with the monarch and Victoria respected Mary because she remembered that Mary’s father, John Francis, had helped Prince Albert learn to sculpt. Mary wanted her talented pupil to work with one of the most popular sculptors of the day, Joseph Edgar Boehm. It was under his tutelage that Louise would be attending the National Art Training School – and in doing so becoming the first British princess to attend a public school. The queen had been persuaded to give her approval because the National Art Training School had been one of Prince Albert’s innovations, made possible with money raised by the Great Exhibition.

  Although her mother had agreed to the training, the princess ended up missing a large number of her lessons because the queen would insist there was too much work to be done for her secretary to be allowed leave in order to go to class. As a result, Louise was constantly behind the other students and desperate to catch up; her classmates were astonished that a princess was made to work so hard: they had envisaged her as having an easy, privileged life. Louise loved the classes and the chance to study with fellow artists; she also relished the chance to make friends, real friends from the outside world. Her classmate Henrietta Montalba,2 and Henrietta’s sister Clara (also a sculptor), would become important friends to the princess who strove so desperately for a non-royal life.

  That Louise was entranced by Boehm is apparent from early in their relationship. He was a charismatic man, extremely talented and capable, and Louise longed to spend more time with him and to learn everything he could teach. She also had private lessons with Boehm, although she hated the fact that they were never allowed to be alone. Prince Arthur wrote a letter commiserating with Louise about the need for a chaperone in the studio, usually the German governess Fräulein Bauer.

  For some time now the family and the outside world had been speculating about Princess Louise’s future. Alix had hoped Louise would marry her older brother, the heir to the Danish throne, and the newspapers got hold of the rumour. For a few days in 1868, the story that Louise was engaged to a Danish prince spread around the country. The rumours were easily quashed, but speculation continued about who the queen’s prettiest daughter was likely to marry. Louise found this stressful, as she confessed to Sybil Grey (who was now married and had become Sybil St Albans). Vicky wanted her to marry a Prussian, Alix wanted her to marry a Dane, and her mother wanted her to marry someone who was preferably German but who wouldn’t require her to move overseas and would be content to live close to his motherin-law.

  Louise declared she disliked foreign men and would not marry a
foreigner. Eventually, and somewhat surprisingly, the queen was won over and wrote to Bertie: ‘I just wish to say that Louise is most decided in her wish to settle in her own country … and indeed I am equally of this opinion … and I have written to Vicky … that neither Louise or I would ever hear of the Prussian marriage, which must be considered at an end.’ That the queen was willing to comply with Louise’s demands lends weight to the suggestion that she was growing desperate for her difficult daughter to be married, and as quickly as possible. Victoria’s capitulation, however, led to a new problem: there was no one in the British Isles of a suitable rank to marry a princess. By this time, the queen was becoming more insistent that Louise find a husband and the clamour from all sides was very stressful for the princess. Still, Louise remained adamant she was not yet ready to marry. There may have been a very good reason for her stalling. It seems it was not the idea of a foreign man she was averse to, but the idea of having to leave England. It is possible that there was someone other than the members of her family whose company she was loath to part with.

  CHAPTER 9