Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter Read online

  The queen’s ‘hands’off’ attitude was demonstrated in 1855, when Louise and Arthur became ill with what the doctors diagnosed as scarlatina (also known as scarlet fever). They were quarantined. Fearful of catching it herself, the queen refused to see them. On 2 August, she noted that Louise was out of quarantine: ‘Louise came down for a moment to my room, but I did not touch her.’ Although the popular myth is that all Victorian aristocratic children were ignored by their parents and brought up by nannies, this was not always true. Most mothers, at least, took an active and tender part in their children’s welfare, even though the routine work was expected to be performed by servants. Victoria was not a representative parent of her era. The queen’s indifferent and hurtful behaviour would plague Louise into adulthood, but it had the effect of ensuring that Louise herself became adored by the children who knew her as an adult – she strove never to make the same mistakes as her mother.

  CHAPTER 2

  A royal education

  Luckily the habit of moulding children to the same pattern has gone out of fashion. It was deplorable. I know, because I suffered from it. Nowadays individuality and one’s own capabilities are recognised.

  Princess Louise in a newspaper interview, 1918

  That Louise was always considered the beauty of the family was mentioned regularly in contemporary accounts. Despite the country’s loyalty to their queen and the often repeated belief that she was the woman on whom girls should model themselves, neither Victoria nor most of her daughters would have been considered great beauties had their veins not run with royal blood. Despite the fact that Louise was a very intelligent and able adult, as a child her mother refused to acknowledge these qualities in her. She had the same attitude to her eldest son and heir, Bertie, who spent so much of his childhood and adolescence fearful of letting down his parents that he went to pieces, academically. It is likely that Bertie suffered from an undiagnosed educational problem: some experts suggest he was dyslexic, others that he had ADHD. Bertie suffered the dual torments of having an extremely intelligent older sister and constantly disapproving parents.

  The queen’s lack of kindness to her children did not go unnoticed; and several members of the royal household were uncomfortably aware of it. In her biography of Princess Louise, written in the 1980s, Jehanne Wake comments: ‘From an early age Princess Louise had to accept frequent admonishments, punishments and whippings for misbehaviour. Whereas the Lady Superintendent naturally hesitated before beating the princesses, the Queen knew no such qualms.’

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  The queen was not an easy person to appease. Although their marriage was essentially very happy, there were times when the monarch and prince consort became so furious with one another that they communicated only by letter. In later years, the queen would do the same to her children; they always knew they were in trouble when a servant arrived with a note. The queen would even use the servants to pass angry notes to people she was sitting next to. Prince Albert was frustrated by the queen’s lack of maternal instinct and attempted to make her more gentle towards the children. In a letter written when Louise was a small child, Albert wrote to his wife: ‘It is indeed a pity that you find no consolation in the company of your children. The root of the trouble lies in the mistaken notion that the function of a mother is to be always correcting, scolding, ordering them about and organizing their activities. It is not possible to be on happy friendly terms with people you have just been scolding.’

  Alice was derided as ‘backward’, Helena was regularly criticised for not being pretty – especially for her face being too long – and, before Vicky became a dutiful wife and mother, she was regularly accused of being ‘difficult’. The worst of the queen’s caustic tongue however was usually aimed at Bertie, the son and heir, who could do almost nothing right. Bertie grew up in fear of both his parents, especially the queen. To the people of Britain he was a king in waiting, but to his parents he was an irresponsible child whose character was weak and needed to be moulded. In a letter to Vicky, dated 6 May 1863, the queen writes bitchily about Bertie and his new wife, the Danish Princess Alexandra (‘Alix’). Victoria, outwardly so friendly to her new daughter-in-law, wrote privately to Vicky that Bertie and Alix were sure to have ‘unintellectual children’, because they both had small heads. The excerpt from her letter (and this is what remains after Princess Beatrice’s heavy editing) reads:

  Are you aware that Alix has the smallest head ever seen? I dread that – with his small empty brain – very much for future children. The doctor says that Alix’s head goes in, in the most extraordinary way, just beyond the forehead: I wonder what phrenologists would say.

  The queen enjoyed expounding her theories about other people’s brains. She wrote to General Grey (Albert’s and then Victoria’s private secretary) that her physician had told her Louise had a ‘peculiar constitution of [the] brain’. She did, however, praise her daughter’s beauty and artistic ability. General Grey and his daughter Sybil were close friends with Princess Louise until the end of their lives. Louise was devoted to them both.

  Prince Albert was extremely interested in his children and in shaping them to become well-rounded, useful members of society. His sons’ testimonies show he was a very stern father, who insisted on physical punishment and could be cruel, but he seems to have treated his daughters with more care and less physical correction. When she was 10 years old and Albert was away, Louise wrote him a heartfelt letter: ‘My dear Papa, How long it seems that you are away, I long very much to see you again.’ On Louise’s eleventh birthday, the queen wrote in her journal that Albert took Louise out in the afternoon for her first ‘ride out’; it was just the two of them, something that Louise had ‘begged for’ as a special birthday treat. On this birthday, the queen prayed almost resignedly that her already difficult daughter ‘may … turn out all one could wish!’.

  Albert’s ideas on education and child-rearing were fascinatingly modern and he and the queen harmoniously agreed that all their children should be brought up to have essential life skills, as well as an academic education. The prince wrote to his brother after Louise’s birth,

  The education of six different children, for they are none of them the least like the other in looks, mind or character, is a difficult task. They are a great deal with their parents and are very fond of them. I don’t interfere in the details of their upbringing but only superintend the principles, which are difficult to uphold in the face of so many women, and I give the final judgement. From my verdict there is no appeal.

  It was not only his children whom Albert had grand ideas about educating. He was passionate about educating the people of Britain; a cause Louise would continue many decades after her father’s death. While Louise would concern herself with ragged schools and the educating of girls to the same standard as boys, what Albert was involved with was the higher ranks of education. He wanted Britain to be the ideal country in which to live and for other countries to recognise it as such. He believed that art was one of the most important aspects of a well-rounded education.

  That Princess Louise was artistic was not surprising. Both her parents were talented artists and Louise grew up in a home in which art was valued and enjoyed. Her parents took their roles as artistic patrons (a vital part of the economy before the creation of the welfare state) very seriously. Many of their presents to one another were in the form of art, often commissioned for special occasions, such as birthdays or wedding anniversaries. Although they had their favourite artists, including Winterhalter and Landseer, both Victoria and Albert also had a shrewd collector’s instinct and made original and interesting purchases from new artists and artisans.

  When Louise was three or four years old, she had her very first art lesson. The royal art tutor, Edward Corbould, had trained at Henry Sass’s academy and the Royal Academy and was well schooled in the traditions of British art.1 He was a painter and sculptor who was hired after Prince Albert bought one of his biblical paintings. Corbould taught th
e royal children from 1852 until the mid-1860s. After he had left her employment, the queen continued to pay him an annual pension.2

  Corbould praised and encouraged his young pupil, recognising that Louise’s art was an area in which she could shine. Because Victoria and Albert were such good artists themselves, they saw nothing particularly special in their daughter’s talent. Louise would have to work very hard to gain recognition or be considered exceptional. In later years, she did this by dressing artistically and becoming part of London’s bohemian artistic elite; as a child, however, she could simply keep trying to be noticed, and often that was achieved by being ‘naughty’ or disruptive.

  Albert was the ideal consort for Queen Victoria. He was an intelligent and questioning man, interested in the affairs of state and yet wise enough to take a step back, out of the limelight, when necessary. One of his enduring legacies was the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the projects that were financed by the money it raised. The grand plan was to allow all countries to display their works of industry and manufacturing – with Albert secure in the knowledge that Britain was at the forefront of both. Ironically, he was more passionate than Victoria about Britain. It is common to read in Queen Victoria’s letters complaints about her children being ‘too English’ and not as ‘Germanised’ as she would have liked. This was partly because, after Albert’s death, she longed to cling to anything that reminded her of him, but even before he died she had less enthusiasm for the country over which she ruled than her ‘convert’ of a husband.

  People travelled from all over the globe to the Great Exhibition, arriving at Hyde Park in their thousands. It was estimated that, in addition to the overseas visitors, more than a quarter of the British population attended. There were tickets in a range of prices, with certain days being affordable for those who could not manage the normal entrance fee. A visitor who walked past every single stall, along every single aisle, would have walked for over ten miles. There were representatives from almost every country in the world: 15,000 exhibitors showed off over 100,000 innovations. There were sculptures from France, textiles from India, watches from Switzerland, gold from Chile, armour from Russia, tea from China and furs from Canada.

  Visitors could marvel at the inventions of science and engineering, and debates grew up about which of the many thousands of new ideas would become popular – and which could end up putting people out of a job. Brilliant inventions were showcased, many of them from British manufacturers. There were carriages, a working lighthouse, umbrellas that turned into weapons, the latest techniques for producing artificial limbs, innovatively designed false teeth, the world’s biggest diamond and a wondrously powerful microscope. Before the exhibition, the organisers had worried about the need for ‘public conveniences’ for this vast number of anticipated visitors. An innovative idea won the day: individual water closet cubicles were provided, which had the great benefit of being able to pay for themselves. For one penny a customer could pee in privacy.

  When the author Charlotte Brontë visited the exhibition, she was overwhelmed, as most visitors were, and wrote: ‘Its grandeur does not consist in one thing, but in the unique assemblage of all things. Whatever human industry has created you find there. It seems as if only magic could have gathered this mass of wealth from all the ends of the earth.’ The queen described the opening ceremony as ‘one of the greatest and most glorious days of our lives … a day that makes my heart swell with thankfulness’. She returned to the Great Exhibition regularly and the younger children, including three-year-old Louise, were taken to it on the morning of 17 May 1851. The exhibition was a burst of colours, artistic styles and gorgeous textiles. The exhibition space itself – with its unusual architecture, waving palm trees, fountains and sculptures – was equally entrancing. It was a liberating and exciting place for children whose life was so tightly controlled. The queen’s journal entry for their visit mentions ‘fine black lace from Barcelona … beautiful richly brocaded stuffs … fine silks, some beautiful marble, particularly some of a rose-coloured tint which is quite lovely … carpets & tapestry … The taste & execution are quite unequalled, & gave one a wish to buy all one saw!’ The queen did not expect her children to be able to take it all in, and was greatly impressed with Affie who talked about the amazing things he had seen for hours afterwards.

  Lord Ronald (‘Ronnie’) Gower, with whom Louise would become closely connected in later life, was six years old when the Great Exhibition took place and in his memoirs he wrote of the wonders it had held for such a young child: the ‘splendour and height’ of the Crystal Palace and how cleverly the building had been constructed around the old elm trees in Hyde Park, which many people had feared would be sacrificed. He described the Crystal Palace as ‘enchanted … [with its] crystal fountains and marble statues … also the vast crowds of peoples of all countries and nationalities, so full of variety and character’. He remembered ‘the Turkish Court, where … we were given dates to eat’ and ‘the German department, where our childish fancy was charmed by stuffed frogs and weasels in every attitude of civilised life’.

  The Great Exhibition was a great success and improved the prince consort’s popularity. Although the idea for the exhibition had not been his, he had been a pivotal member of the committee and the public appreciated not only his work on the exhibition, but his plans for what to do with the profits. The exhibition raised almost £190,000, which was used to purchase land in South Kensington (then outside central London). Today, the land that Prince Albert earmarked for his educational programme houses three of London’s most important museums: the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

  Albert constantly devised plans for his own children’s education and enjoyment. He was determined they would not grow up to be pampered royals, but would become useful members of society, capable of running their own households as well as the country. Albert understood that the role of monarchy was changing and that the modern royal would need to be very different from Victoria’s Hanoverian ancestors. This belief was passed on to Princess Louise. She was always grateful to her father for having provided her with such a well-rounded, and intelligently thought out, education.

  In 1854, the year in which Louise celebrated her sixth birthday, the royal children were presented with a wonderful gift: a Swiss Cottage, in the grounds of Osborne House. This exquisite royal playhouse is no mere ‘Wendy house’; it is a two-storey cottage designed perfectly in proportion for children to feel at home in. Inside was a real working kitchen, where the girls were taught to cook and bake. There was also a dining room, where they could entertain their parents or attendants and sample the food they had prepared. The children were encouraged to learn about nature, to go out into the park that surrounded Osborne House and the cottage and to learn about the world around them. The Swiss Cottage has been preserved and visitors today can see the remains of the little natural history collection, containing items that the children carefully sought out in the grounds, labelled and preserved. There are also specimens of their art, needlework and the boys’ carpentry.

  Outside the cottage remain nine neat little gardens, each marked out and named; they were expected to be kept beautifully by their royal owners. The children had their own tools and wheelbarrows. In their mini allotment, each child had dominion, choosing what vegetables, fruit or flowers she or he would like to grow. When their labours proved successful, Prince Albert would ‘buy’ them for use in the Osborne House kitchens or to decorate the tables, just as if they had been sold at a market. Louise became notable for her bakery and cooking skills. The children retained fond memories of the Swiss Cottage all their lives; it was an educational project, but it was also a place of fun and happiness. Shortly after her marriage, Vicky wrote to her mother, ‘I must confess that I cried bitterly last night at the thought of your going to dear Osborne, and without me. My pretty rooms that I loved so much, the dear view out of the windows – the darling Swiss cottage, my garden, the tree I
planted the day we left…’ As its name suggests, the cottage was built in the style of a traditional Swiss home. It had working fireplaces, a balcony to sit out on on sunny days, a sleeping space for the housekeeper and a working loo.

  For the royal children, life was spent travelling between Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Osborne House and, once their mother fell in love with Scotland, Balmoral. Louise was desperate to pursue her art regardless of how often the family moved around and, as a young woman, she was granted a studio of her own at Osborne House. She decorated it with copies of works by Old Masters. Today much of Osborne House does not look like a royal home; following the death of Queen Victoria, it was handed over to the nation and became a naval cadets’ training college, then, during the First World War, a hospital. Princess Louise’s former studio was one of the rooms in which wounded soldiers were nursed. I was surprised, when I was allowed to see the room, at how very different it was from what I expected – and from what I imagined a budding artist would have needed. At Osborne House, the young princes and princesses were segregated by gender. The boys’ rooms were on the second floor and the girls’ on the first floor. The royal children had rooms that looked out on to the sea, and their attendants’ rooms faced away from the sea. I expected that Louise’s studio would have been a light, airy room with big windows and a beautiful view. Instead it was a very small room on the first floor, with the sole light source being one small window. Even with modern electric light, the room felt dark and cramped. It seems an uninspiring room in which to imagine an artist working, but for Louise, having her own studio in which to paint and sculpt was a much-longed-for form of freedom.

  While Louise was taking her first lessons in drawing, the world was preparing for the brutal art of war. Despite the seemingly cordial relationships being played out in Joseph Paxton’s palace of glass, at the time of the Great Exhibition, tensions were running high in Europe. Britain, France, Russia and the Ottoman Empire had begun to compete for influence and trade in the Middle East. As Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and Orthodox Christians battled over religious sites in the Holy Land the tension increased exponentially, until the vast might of the Russian and Ottoman Empires reached crisis point. In 1853, Turkey declared war on Russia. The following year, France and Britain became Turkey’s allies and the Crimean War had begun.