Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter Read online

  As had been the case with Leopold’s birth, the queen’s last baby, Princess Beatrice – born on 14 April 1857 – was eased into the world under the anaesthetic effects of chloroform. During the preparations for the birth, the medical establishment was divided firmly into two sides: those who admired Dr John Snow as a medical pioneer performing exciting work and those who thought that he was playing with the health of the monarch for his own glory.5 One writer in The Lancet declaimed angrily, ‘In no case could it be justifiable to administer chloroform in perfectly ordinary labour.’ Snow suffered from the professional jealousy of his peers. When Prince Leopold had been diagnosed with haemophilia in the late 1850s, many doctors were quick to claim that his illness must have been caused by the use of chloroform. There was even a powerful lobby of medical men who insisted that God intended women to suffer in childbirth, and to die if necessary, and that any medication which alleviated the necessary pain went against the teachings of the Bible.

  The queen and Prince Albert ignored the detractors; to them chloroform was a miracle. Victoria claimed that she felt ‘better and stronger’ after Beatrice’s birth than she had after any of the others. As a result, she felt immediately more kindly disposed towards this baby than she had to any of her older children. Prince Albert described Beatrice as ‘an extremely attractive, pretty, intelligent child – indeed the most amusing baby we have had’. Princess Beatrice was born a month after Louise’s ninth birthday and seems seldom to have been written about in childhood without use of the phrase ‘golden curls’. She was constantly favoured from the moment of her birth. The queen was delighted with how pretty her new baby was. Some years later, when Vicky (by that time married with children) censured her mother for disliking children, Queen Victoria responded: ‘You are wrong in thinking that I am not fond of children, I admire pretty ones immensely.’

  ‘Poor Louise’ (as her mother usually referred to her), Arthur and Leopold were all deeply affected by the arrival of the new and adored baby. In Darling Loosy, royal biographer Elizabeth Longford noted that it was around the time of Beatrice’s birth that Louise began suffering from ‘night terrors’, an ongoing affliction that became exacerbated in times of stress.

  Although the queen could have had no idea that Albert’s life would end so soon, she knew Beatrice would be her last child. She was getting older and the gap between her most recent pregnancies had been wider than those between her first few. With the arrival of Beatrice, Queen Victoria finally discovered her maternal side. She petted and spoilt her new daughter and Beatrice was the one she wrote about glowingly in letters as the brightest star in her home. None of these comments and sentiments were likely to endear Beatrice to her siblings. Her relationship with them would be troubled throughout her life: Arthur and Leopold resented her almost from birth, and Beatrice had a particularly complicated relationship with both Bertie and Louise. Despite being almost 16 at the time of Beatrice’s birth, Bertie found his mother’s spoiling of her youngest child unbearable. When he finally became king, in 1901, Bertie began taking back from his youngest sister almost everything Queen Victoria had bestowed on her. Even in his sixties, Bertie still burned with the resentment created by his mother during his adolescence. Prince Albert’s comment is very revealing: perhaps the reason Beatrice was such an amusing and alert baby was because she received so much more stimulus and affection from her mother than any of the other royal babies.

  Louise was now pushed even more firmly out of the limelight. No longer the youngest daughter, she was not the most intelligent and she was certainly not the best behaved. She was simply one of those ‘difficult’ middle children, an overlooked, often ignored little girl. As she grew up, Louise would strive to become unique.

  In 1848, while the queen was recovering from the ordeal of Louise’s birth, the government was anxious about the monarch’s safety. This fear had nothing to do with the possibility of puerperal fever or infection (a common cause of maternal mortality); what the government was worrying about was the threat of revolution. In 1848, one of its chief concerns was Chartism (the name arose from the People’s Charter they had drawn up which demanded social reform). As the queen had been preparing for her ‘confinement’ (to use Victorian terminology) with her sixth child, the Chartists had been preparing to march from the north of England to London.

  This march was the culmination of many years of protest. Between 1839 and 1848 millions of working people in Britain had signed petitions to the government, organised by the Chartists. A large percentage of those who had signed the petition were women (an unusual circumstance at a time when women had no political voice). Since 1839, many of the movement’s most prominent activists had been imprisoned for their beliefs and protests, and by 1848 Britain’s working classes were desperate and angry. The Chartists decided to march to London and hand in yet another petition to Parliament. It was rumoured that 150,000 protestors were on their way to the capital city. The government ordered strategic buildings, including the Bank of England and the British Museum, to be guarded against possible marauders. Thousands of new police officers were recruited to guard the streets of the city.

  In the same year, a very different type of revolution had also begun in London. It would be a bloodless revolution and at the time was relatively little remarked upon, but it was to change the world in which Princess Louise grew up and it would have an enormous impact on her life and her career. A few months after the birth of the new princess, seven young men banded together to form a secret society. They called themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (or PRB) and they aimed to change the face of British art from within and, in particular, to challenge the antiquated views of the Royal Academy. The Brotherhood was composed of seven young men: John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, Thomas Woolner, Frederic George Stephens, James Collinson and William Michael Rossetti. They believed artists should not be stifled by the kind of restrictions that their Royal Academy tutors imposed; instead they longed for the freedom to create their own, unique style of art. These idealists would prove remarkably influential. They would spawn a movement that continued for decades and changed not only fine art, but the worlds of fashion, architecture and design and, through their ‘social conscience’ paintings, society at large. At the time of Louise’s birth few people would have heard of their names; by her twenty-first birthday, they were famous. As an adult, the princess would come to know these young men and their circle both socially and professionally and they would have a positive impact on her life. By the time Princess Louise started to make her own mark on the art world, most of the PRB were pillars of the artistic establishment.

  To the government, the queen and all those with political power, any revolution, be it political or artistic, was a threat to the social order. Those who ran the country were of course perfectly happy with the status quo and agitation was considered dangerous, subversive and in need of suppression. Throughout her reign, the queen would express fury with anyone who tried to usher in changes. Yet despite the early opposition to both movements, the Chartists and the artists changed British society.

  Eight days after Louise’s birth, on 26 March 1848, the order was given that a specially written prayer be read aloud throughout Britain:

  Almighty and merciful God, by whose Providence the whole world is governed and preserved; we yield Thee hearty thanks that it hath pleased Thee to deliver Thy servant, our Sovereign Lady the Queen, from the perils of childbirth, and to make her a joyful mother. We humbly beseech Thee to keep her under Thy fatherly care and protection; and enable her in the hour of weakness to feel the support of Thy everlasting arm. Defend the infant Princess from all dangers which may happen to the body and from all evil which may assault and hurt the soul; and grant that as she grows in years she may grow in grace, and in every Christian virtue.

  Just days after the reading of this prayer for the health and security of the princess, the royal family was advised – some say ordered – to leave London in f
ear of their lives. The military commander and former Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, was so nervous of the Chartists, whose numbers were growing exponentially, that he genuinely believed that if the monarch and her family stayed in Buckingham Palace they would be in danger of being murdered. Prince Albert was fully aware of how many people posed a threat to his wife and children: he was so scared someone would harm his children that he was reputed to keep the keys to the nursery wing on his person at all times. People who would, in the twenty-first century, be defined as ‘stalkers’ posed a very real danger. Threatening letters were often received and Queen Victoria would suffer several assassination attempts. Despite the very young age of the new princess, the royal family and their servants made rapid arrangements to leave the city.

  On 8 April 1848, the family party and its entourage travelled through a sodden, grey London to Waterloo station. This proud edifice, usually teeming with the public, was eerily empty – except for a large consignment of special constables. Records suggest that several hundred constables were employed to guard the family. A royal train and boats took the party to one of Prince Albert’s favourite places, Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, even though the house was not yet ready for habitation. Due to necessity, the family moved in while the builders were still trying to finish off their summer home.

  Prince Albert had fallen in love with the Isle of Wight a few years previously. He was a great lover of Italy and believed the view from Osborne House was like that of the Bay of Naples. The original eighteenth-century house on the site was not to Victoria or Albert’s liking, so Albert hired the famous builder-architect, Thomas Cubitt, to replace it with his dream villa. Cubitt was told to emulate the style of Italian Renaissance architects, to lay out the grounds like an Italian garden and to fill the gardens and the house with classical sculptures. In 1848, when the royal party arrived for sanctuary, the original house was still standing, albeit vastly changed, and the new house was growing up around it.

  In future years as Albert’s Italianate vision took shape, Osborne House would become one of the royal family’s most praised homes. The queen often bemoaned in her journal the necessity of having to return to London when they were all so happy at Osborne. Thanks to Queen Victoria’s love of the island, the Isle of Wight gained a new status as a fashionable place to visit. It attracted poets, writers, artists and photographers and was immortalised by many of the leading names of the day. Alfred, Lord Tennyson (the Poet Laureate) and photographer Julia Margaret Cameron were among those who purchased homes there. The poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, who was born on the island, made regular trips home from his house in London. Famous visitors included Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, the artist G.F. Watts and the illustrator John Leech. Osborne House, which is owned today by English Heritage, remains one of the island’s chief attractions. When the family arrived so precipitately in 1848, however, the Isle of Wight was still fairly inaccessible and, in early April, the climate was markedly different from that in Naples. It was an arduous journey to undertake with such a young baby.

  The Chartists had departed and the family had returned to London by the middle of May, for Louise to be christened. In her journal of 13 May 1848, the queen commented on the christening:

  Another intensely hot day … Mama most kindly sent the Baby a string of pearls, to which was attached a locket with her hair, similar to what she gave Lenchen … I wore a silver moiré dress with my wedding lace wreath of acacias, with diamonds. The 4 Children came down with us into the Drawingroom [sic], Bertie, in a light blue velvet jacket, embroidered with gold, Vicky & Alice in white English lace dresses and Affie in a white and silver blouse … After the 1st piece of music (Albert’s last Hymn, composed as a Christmas one) the Ld Chamberlain left, to fetch the child who was brought in by Mrs Bray the nurse and Ly Lyttelton [the governess] in attendance. I offered up my fervent prayers, that God would bless & protect through life, our dear little child. She looked very pretty, – so white plump. She cried a little at first, but behaved very well when the Archbishop took her up in his arms & christened her … We went upstairs in procession, excepting Aunt Gloucester whom Aunt Cambridge took up another way, as she had been seized by giddiness and faintness … The Baby and Lenchen were brought into the Throne Room where we were all assembled.

  Despite the many laudatory illustrations and written accounts of the beauty and unity of Victorian family life, and the way in which the royal family was held up as an ideal to the rest of the world, the reality of life within the monarch’s home was very different from the fiction. Initially, her journals would show an appreciation of a new baby in the family, mostly because of its connection to Albert, but Queen Victoria’s later journals and letters regularly reveal exasperation, at times fury, with her children. She would praise them, but more often than not even her praise was marred by a backhanded compliment or a criticism in the form of an aside. For most of the time the queen found her offspring tiring and irritating. When writing about Princess Louise, the queen’s initial comments were about the ‘baby’ as being sweet or pretty, or she would note that ‘poor Louise’ was ‘still not well’, but always she wrote from a guarded point of view, as though she were a casual observer rather than the baby’s mother. As was considered normal at the time, the parents rarely saw their new baby; Louise lived in the nursery where she was cared for by servants and specially appointed ladies-in-waiting. In her journal the queen noted that the new baby was brought down to see her two or three times a day (usually at mealtimes); she and her clothing would be admired and then she would be sent away again.

  As Louise started to grow up and develop a personality, the queen’s letters began to make frequent mention to her daughter being ‘odd’ or ‘difficult’. The queen herself often pondered if Louise’s wilful personality was a direct result of her being born in that difficult 1848, the year of revolution. On Louise’s fifth birthday, her mother commented: ‘How well I remember all that eventful time when she was born, which timed with hourly news of revolution & civil war &c.’

  On meeting Louise for the first time, the royal governess, Lady Lyttelton (known in the nursery as ‘Laddle’), was entranced. She described the new baby as ‘Extremely fair with white satin hair, large long blue eyes and regular features: a most perfect form from head to foot.’ One of the ladies-in-waiting of the Duchess of Kent (the mother of Queen Victoria) wrote of the ‘delicious baby, Princess Louise, it is a delight and a beautiful creature’. Sadly the baby’s mother seldom went into such raptures, although on Louise’s first birthday, the queen noted in her journal: ‘May God bless the dear little child, who is so fat, strong & well again. She was born in the most eventful times, & ought to be something peculiar in consequence.’ Louise was dressed in pink for this milestone birthday and had a table full of toys to play with in the breakfast room. Her siblings were dressed up for the occasion too, the boys in new kilts, and the queen noted with satisfaction that she also had two new dresses for the day, one for the morning and one for the evening.

  The family was back at Osborne House for the birthday, where Louise was taken out to ‘plant a tree, not far from the house’ in commemoration of her special day. She took her first steps (or at least the first her mother knew about) a couple of months later, on 6 May 1849, at Buckingham Palace. It is likely she had already started walking in the nursery, but that the attendants wisely did not tell their queen that she had missed the event. In November, the queen wrote, ‘Little Louise gets very amusing & says such droll things. She is very tall for her age & broad & fat.’ From a very young age, Louise was noted to have a love of dancing – when she was seven the queen noted that she and Albert were ‘quite astonished’ at Louise’s aptitude on the dance floor.

  In the first years of her life, Louise appears in her mother’s journals almost as a plaything, a pretty doll-like creature to be dressed up. It is also notable how often the queen writes that Louise ‘sobbed bitterly’ when her parents prep
ared to go away and leave her behind. While Prince Albert was alive, the queen, who would later become renowned for her refusal to wear anything except ‘widow’s weeds’, took a great interest in clothing and fashion: the new gowns she possessed, which she described in detail, the matching outfits her children were wearing, and in which new styles the little girls had had their hair arranged. The princesses seem to have spent much of their lives being dressed and undressed and kept looking perfect, unable to move for fear of disarranging their outfits before they were taken to see their parents. Queen Victoria notes in her journal on 21 February 1852 that ‘Lenchen & Louise had their ears bored [pierced] today, – very successfully.’ From the beginning of their lives, royal princesses had to be beautiful and admired and were expected to make good marriages. There was to be no exception.

  In the earliest years of Louise’s life, the queen comments on her daughter being amusing or clever – on her seventh birthday, Louise was described in her mother’s journal as ‘so clever in many ways, affect[ion]ate, & a very pretty child’ – but it did not take long for the queen to become far less enchanted with her daughter. More usually, the queen would write comments about Louise being ‘backward’, ‘difficult’, ‘awkward’, ‘naughty’ or ‘rebellious’. Almost as soon as Louise was considered old enough to spend more time with her parents, her presence and personality began to irk her mother. At those times the queen seemed to forget that Louise had ever amused her and wrote of her daughter as if her development had been retarded since birth.