Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter Read online

  After Vicky left home and became a married woman, the queen began to treat her eldest child in a quite different manner. Not only did she write multiple letters telling Vicky how much she missed her, but she began to treat her as an adult, on an equal footing to herself, someone in whom she could confide her feelings about the rest of the family – feelings that often made Vicky very uncomfortable.

  A few days after Vicky’s wedding, the queen sent a letter exclaiming ‘Everything recalls you to our mind, and in every room we shall have your picture!’ Just as she would do following a death, the queen began to idealise Vicky and to make a virtue of missing her. She did censure her daughter still – many of her letters contain a scolding for something – but she was also overly clingy, wanting to continue to exert control. Having found motherhood tiresome in the extreme for most of Vicky’s life, the queen was now greedy to know all that her absent daughter was doing, plaguing her with daily letters insisting that she needed to know everything: no detail was too minute or prosaic. It was an odd facet of Queen Victoria’s character that she made her children’s lives claustrophobic by her constant intrusions into every area of privacy, yet she found their company irksome when they were with her. When Queen Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent, died the queen was plunged into a depression. Her relationship with her mother had been as difficult and frustrating as the relationships she had with her own children. When a friend enquired of Albert how the queen was coping following her bereavement, he responded: ‘In body she is well, though terribly nervous, and the children are a disturbance to her.’

  The queen’s attitude to her family was engendered by her own unhappy childhood. Her father had died when she was less than a year old, after which her mother kept Victoria claustrophobically close and controlled every aspect of her life. As an adult the queen would relate how she was allowed to do nothing on her own; she slept in the same bed as her mother every night until the day she was proclaimed queen. She was forbidden to walk up or down stairs without holding someone’s hand, in case she fell and hurt herself. She had an older half-sister, Feodora, from her mother’s first marriage, to whom she felt very close, but when Feodora married, Victoria was left even more alone, reliant entirely upon the company of her mother and of her governess, Baroness Lehzen (whom Victoria regarded as a second, kinder mother). Much of Victoria’s parenting problems were bequeathed to her by her own mother, who wrote regularly in her diary how disappointing the young Princess Victoria’s behaviour had been, who could be bullying and unkind, and who had tried to control every aspect of her daughter’s life.

  Although the Duchess of Kent appeared to have mellowed by the time she became a grandmother, the damage was done, and Queen Victoria had inherited her worst traits. When Queen Victoria’s daughters travelled with their mother the queen’s controlling instinct became even worse than normal; they were forced to spend all day with her. Even though the queen so often complained that as a child she had known no privacy, and had had no space to call her own, she jealously guarded her own children’s free time and, even when they were married, expected them to be at her beck and call. As sovereign she was allowed not only to request their presence, but to command it. It was often noted that she seemed to derive pleasure in thwarting her children’s plans, particularly by insisting they attend to her on occasions when she knew they had already accepted another engagement.

  The queen harried Vicky constantly for letters and criticised her for not including enough details, such as what people were wearing and what conversations had taken place. She expected to know everything about her daughter’s private life, such as when she was menstruating and if her periods remained regular; perhaps partly because the queen hoped her daughter would not get pregnant as early in marriage as she had done. The queen’s dislike of babies was so well known as to be a joke to those who knew her. She famously commented: ‘an ugly baby is a very nasty object – and the prettiest is frightful when undressed’. Her most tactless comment about babies, however, was in a letter she sent to Vicky on discovering her daughter was pregnant for the first time. Complying with royal etiquette, the news had been sent by Vicky’s husband in a letter to Prince Albert. This is the queen’s astonishing response: ‘The horrid news contained in Fritz’s letter to Papa upset us dreadfully. The more so as I feel certain almost it will all end in nothing.’ She then goes on to complain how little affection any of her children show her.

  Victoria’s prediction of a miscarriage was not fulfilled and her first grandchild, Wilhelm, usually called ‘William’ by his aunts and uncles, was born on 27 January 1859.1 For Vicky’s siblings, especially the youngest ones still in the schoolroom, becoming an aunt or uncle made them feel important. Even at a very young age, Beatrice would try to get out of schoolwork by insisting she needed to write to her sister’s children. Shortly after Wilhelm’s birth, Louise protested to a member of the household who had addressed them as the ‘royal children’ that they were no longer mere royal children: ‘we are uncles and aunts’.

  CHAPTER 4

  An Annus Horribilis

  Helena was deeply involved in domesticity, Beatrice was growing to be a thoughtful child … while Louise, according to the Queen, needed watching.

  Nina Epton, Victoria and her Daughters, 1971

  Throughout 1859 and 1860, Louise continued to study art and her interest in becoming a ‘real’ artist increased. On her tenth birthday, she had been greatly impressed by being taken to the studio of John Rogers Herbert to see him working on a large fresco about the life of Moses. Herbert told his royal visitors that his art had kept him going following the heartbreaking death of his son. He had felt like giving up, but art, he declared, had ‘kept him alive’.

  Beyond the oppressive family home, Louise was noted to be less shy than many of Queen Victoria’s children (this family propensity was often commented on). This seems to have stemmed from Louise’s natural curiosity about people and a desire to find out more about those who interested her (though, throughout her life, if she found herself bored or irritated, Louise would willingly pretend to be overcome by the fabled family ‘shyness’ and use it as an excuse to leave a room). In 1858 she had shocked her family, but delighted a visitor to Balmoral when she stepped forward spontaneously to shake his hand. She loved the opportunity to meet new people and any variety they could add to what was often a very dull day-to-day existence was warmly welcomed.

  While life for the youngest children continued as before, Bertie set off for an extended journey through Europe, where he studied art in Italy and was even granted an audience with the Pope. As was customary for the royal family, he travelled incognito, using one of the many titles he had inherited to make him seem like a little-known baron. This did not necessarily mean he travelled in secrecy or expected not to be recognised – often being ‘incognito’ meant simply that the royal personage was not there in an official capacity. All the while his parents kept a close eye on his behaviour, through constant communication with the tutors sent to guard him. Bertie never seemed to know how to handle his parents. His letters lack any kind of understanding of European politics and as soon as he mentioned going to a ball or anything that might suggest he had been in the company of women, his parents flew into a panic. While Bertie remained a disappointment to his parents, there was great excitement when Alfred came home to visit from his naval ship; and admiration not only from the family but in the newspapers.

  In 1860, Vicky became a mother again, giving birth to a daughter. She was still attempting to settle into Prussian court life, something she would never find easy; Queen Victoria grew frustrated with Vicky’s constant longing for England. Meanwhile Prince Albert shared with the family his enthusiasm for his new artistic hobby: photography. He arranged for a darkroom to be installed in Windsor Castle and Louise and her siblings were thrilled to discover this new form of art.

  As Louise grew towards adolescence, her mother found her increasingly irritating. The queen’s journal on 18 March
1860 reports, ‘Our dear Louise’s birthday, her 12th! May God bless her! We went to the schoolroom to wish her joy’, but this is the version copied out by Beatrice and may not tell the whole truth. A letter written by the queen to Vicky the day before tells quite a different story: ‘poor Louise’s birthday, she will be twelve and is in fact only 6!’ When writing to Vicky about Louise’s sixteenth birthday, the queen could not help but sound patronising: ‘God bless the dear child – who is so affectionate and has so many difficulties to contend with. I hope and trust she will get over them all in time and still become a most useful member of the human family.’ The myth of Louise having learning difficulties or a personality disorder was still being perpetuated by the queen, despite the fact that no one else seemed able to see it. In 1866, the year of Louise’s eighteenth birthday, when she was suffering from whooping cough, her mother wrote her a very tender letter: ‘I can’t say how grieved I am not to be able to be more with you and to hold you, darling, when those nasty coughs come on, – but it is a trial I can’t.’ Yet in the same year she was complaining once more to Vicky about Louise, ‘she is not discreet, and is very apt to take things always in a different light to me’, and again: ‘she is very indiscreet and, from that, making mischief very frequently’. The following year the queen found Louise ‘so very difficile’ and the year after that she was censured as being ‘so vy wayward & unreasonable’.

  Bertie was proving equally problematic, and Alfred and Arthur were held up to Vicky as examples of everything their oldest brother was not. The monarch was quite happy to tell anyone who would listen that Bertie would be a terrible king and in April 1859 she confided to Vicky: ‘Bertie continues such an anxiety, I tremble at the thought of only three years and a half being before us – when he will be of age and we can’t hold him except by moral power!… His only safety – and the country’s – is in his implicit reliance in every thing, on dearest Papa, that perfection of human beings!’ The queen’s own ability to rely on ‘dearest Papa’ was, however, about to come to an abrupt end – and as far as Queen Victoria was concerned it was all Bertie’s fault.

  The year 1861 was to prove the most unhappy in Queen Victoria’s life. She had always had a difficult relationship with her mother, yet when the Duchess of Kent died, Victoria went into a prolonged depression. She felt her mother’s death so keenly, it was, she said, as if every aspect of her childhood had come back to haunt her. The duchess died two days before Louise’s thirteenth birthday. It was to be the first of many miserable birthdays. The queen wept copiously over the gifts her mother had already delivered for Louise and wrote in her journal about her agony over the loss of ‘such a mother, so tender, so loving’ – a marked difference from the way she had usually spoken about her. Now the queen set about creating the myth of a perfect relationship with her deceased parent. It was bewildering for the children, and Albert confided to his friends that he was worried about how solitary Victoria had become, seemingly impossible to comfort. She refused to see her children, wanting only her husband. Bertie was berated for almost every thought and action. The queen became furious when Bertie – a man who had been taught not to show his emotions – did not openly shed a tear at the funeral for his 74-year-old grandmother. Bertie was a persistent worry: he was too wayward, his parents felt, and needed to settle down and become respectable. Albert threw himself into the task of finding his eldest son a suitable wife – and a suitable queen – while Bertie threw himself wholeheartedly into the army and its accompanying social life.

  While still sunk under the grief of her bereavement, the queen became aware that Albert was also suffering. He was not looking well and was obviously feeling even worse. They had spent several weeks in a orgy of reading through her mother’s private correspondence and journals and, in compliance with the deceased duchess’s request, burning them afterwards. Victoria had been so caught up in the task, in her own grief, and in her need for Albert to be her rock, that she had not noticed the early stages of his illness.

  In November, the couple were devastated to hear rumours that had been circulating in society: Bertie had slept with the actress Nellie Clifden, an affair that would soon be reported with glee in the newspapers. Albert was horrified. Victoria wrote that she could never forget the look on Albert’s face when he heard the news: ‘Oh!! that face, that heavenly face of woe and sorrow which was so dreadful to witness.’ Albert was the son of a lecherous father and an unhappy mother driven to infidelity, and the brother of a man who was as debauched as their father had been. When he discovered that Bertie had lost his virginity to an actress, he overreacted, scarred by his parents’ sexual behaviour. The nightmare he had sought to avoid by creating his own ‘perfect’ family within the cloistered atmosphere of the royal household was about to break through. Heredity had made itself known in Bertie and all that Albert thought he had ever taught his sons had been ridiculed. Despite feeling unwell, he set off for Cambridge to confront his son and his wife’s heir.

  The prince consort enjoyed an active sex life with his wife, but had what almost amounted to a phobia about the idea of sex outside marriage. ‘You must not,’ he admonished his son, ‘you dare not be lost; the consequences for this country & for the world at large would be too dreadful! There is no middle course possible … you must either belong to the good, or to the bad in this life.’ Although Bertie’s behaviour was nothing abnormal, Victoria and Albert acted as though he had been guilty of the most evil of transgressions. Victoria declared herself physically repulsed by the very thought of her polluted son and even a couple of years later, when Bertie was about to marry, she rebuked him again with the loss of his virginity, which she described as ‘the white flower of a blameless life’. She and Albert believed both men and women should be virgins when they married – a desire for equality in sexual experience that was a world away from the usual double standard of Victorian sexual behaviour, in which men were expected to be ‘worldly wise’ and women ‘pure’. Although the younger children were kept in ignorance of the facts, Louise and her siblings were aware that their parents were furious with their eldest brother.

  When he returned from his visit to the now-contrite and scared Bertie, the prince consort was feeling desperately ill. This was exacerbated by the fact that he had insisted he and Bertie take a long walk so they could talk, ignoring the fact that it was a cold November day and pouring with rain. By the time he reached Windsor, via a very uncomfortable carriage journey, Albert was feverish and complaining of dreadful pains all over his body. He was physically and emotionally depressed and it was Victoria’s turn to become her husband’s comforter. Nothing the medical experts could tell the queen about the nature of her husband’s illness could persuade her that it wasn’t Bertie’s behaviour that had caused his father’s illness.

  The first time the public became aware anything was wrong was when a party at Windsor Castle was cancelled because the prince consort was unwell. In reality, Albert had been suffering from agonising toothache for several months and had seemed generally in poor health. He had had gastric trouble for many years, a situation that had worsened following his return home to Prussia the previous summer, and he had also been racked with what were described as rheumatic-type pains. Nevertheless the newspapers made much of his visit to Cambridge as the catalyst for his illness.

  By 7 December 1861 both royal doctors, Sir James Reid and Dr William Jenner, were in permanent attendance at Windsor Castle. By 11 December, the queen was cheered enough by what was believed to be Albert’s good progress to write a letter describing his illness as an inconvenience to her. In the same letter, to her uncle and advisor, King Leopold of the Belgians, she claimed that when she had typhoid at the age of 16 she had been far more ill than Albert: ‘I can report another good night, and no loss of strength … It is very sad and trying for me, but I am well, and I think really very courageous; for it is the first time that I ever witnessed anything of this kind though I suffered from the same at Ramsgate and was much worse. The tr
ial in every way is so very trying, for I have lost my guide, my support, my all, for a time – as we can’t ask or tell him anything.’ In her grief, the queen forgot that her children were likely to be as worried as she was about their father. For Louise, the whispered conversations, muted mumblings of the doctors and all the paraphernalia of the sickroom were frightening because everything was being kept from her. She and her siblings had no idea of how ill their father was.

  The queen’s optimism that she had survived a more serious bout of typhoid and her hope that her husband would be well enough to advise her again was short-lived. Three days after the queen’s letter to King Leopold, her husband was dead. Ironically, on the morning of the day he died, the prince seemed to be rallying and at 10.40 a.m. a bulletin stated: ‘There is a slight change for the better in the Prince this morning.’ By 4.30 p.m. an update announced he was ‘in a most critical state’ and later that night a bulletin declared: ‘His Royal Highness the Prince Consort became rapidly weaker during the evening, and expired without suffering at ten minutes before eleven o’clock.’ There has been speculation in recent decades as to whether the royal physicians’ diagnosis of typhoid fever was correct, but that was what it was believed to be at the time.1