Childhood at Court, 1819-1914

J
OHN
V
AN DER
K
ISTE

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © John Van der Kiste, 1995, 2003, 2011
All rights reserved

The right of John Van der Kiste, to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 1995

This edition published in 2003

This ebook edition first published in 2011

Original typesetting by The History Press

Foreword

1 ‘No scope for my very violent feelings of affection’

2 ‘Mamma d’une
nombreuse
famille’

3 ‘May it all turn to good!’

4 ‘Away from the happy peaceful home’

5 ‘Dreadfully wild, but I was just as bad’

6 ‘A real atmosphere of love and happiness’

7 ‘I don’t see the wings’

8 ‘Innate boisterousness’

9 ‘The securest and happiest lot humankind had ever known’

Genealogical Tables

Reference Notes

Bibliography

T
his book is an examination of the childhoods of royalty during the Victorian and Edwardian era. What were the education and upbringing of Queen Victoria and her descendants like, and how did it prepare them for the years ahead? What recreational pursuits and pets did they have? How much effect did tutors and governesses have on the Princes and Princesses? Was it a life of privilege and unbounded luxury? How did other children at court, such as the sons and daughters of members of the household, react to their glimpses of life at court? Were the days of their youth the happiest of their lives? To Princess Feodora, Queen Victoria’s half-sister, childhood was ‘that dismal existence of ours’, while that of Queen Marie of Roumania was ‘a happy, carefree one, the childhood of rich, healthy children protected from the buffets and hard realities of life’.

I have explored their lives, individually and collectively, in more or less chronological order, from the infancy of Queen Victoria herself to that of her great-grandchildren in the Edwardian age, taking the outbreak of the First World War as marking the end of the latter. Some might argue that to choose the date of birth of the Queen herself as the beginning of the Victorian age is taking liberties, but for this I offer no apology. While I have written on royal childhoods by families in some of my previous books, this new treatment is an attempt to throw new light on them – thanks in part to letters which were previously unavailable – and focus in greater detail than before, particularly on what might be termed the social and domestic, rather than biographical, aspects.

To cover the royal cousins in European reigning families of the age would have been impossible in a book of this size, but I have made allusion to the early years of some of the German and Russian imperial children, particularly where their paths crossed with their cousins in Britain.

Royal nicknames are used on occasion in the text, not in order to assume a false familiarity with the personages involved, so much as to try to minimize confusion between similarly named people and avoid perpetual use of the complete, sometimes rather cumbersome, title. Thus Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, is generally ‘Affie’, while his son is usually ‘young Alfred’ – as it so often was in the letters of Queen Victoria, equally keen to differentiate between the two.

I am grateful to the following for advice, assistance and access to previously unpublished material: the Trustees of the Broadlands Archives, Pat Bryan, Jim Hanson, Steven Jackson of the Commemorative Collectors Society, Ian Shapiro of Argyll Etkin Ltd, and Charlotte Zeepvat. Once again, the staff of the Kensington and Chelsea Public Libraries have generously allowed me access to their incomparable biography collection; my editors Jaqueline Mitchell and Rosemary Prudden have worked hard in seeing the work through to publication; and as ever my parents Wing Commander Guy and Nancy Van der Kiste have been an unfailing source of encouragement and help throughout.

N
ot to have enjoyed the pleasures of youth is nothing,’ Princess Feodora of Hohenlohe-Langenburg wrote to her half-sister, Queen Victoria (17 March 1843), ‘but to have been deprived of all intercourse, and not one cheerful thought in that dismal existence of ours, was very hard.’
¹

‘Our childhood was a happy, carefree one,’ Princess Marie of Edinburgh, later Queen Marie of Roumania, wrote in contrast some ninety years later, ‘the childhood of rich, healthy children protected from the buffets and hard realities of life.’
²

Princess Victoria of Kent, who succeeded to the throne as Queen Victoria less than a month after her eighteenth birthday, had a comparatively deprived childhood. Most of her grandchildren, including Queen Marie of Roumania, grew up as one child of several in a large nursery. So did many of her subjects, among them Molly Hughes: ‘A girl with four brothers older than herself is born under a lucky star. To be brought up in London, in the eighteen-seventies, by parents who knew how to laugh at both jokes and disasters, was to be under the influence of Jupiter.’
³

Queen Victoria was never under the influence of Jupiter. Her father married for reasons of state, to a widow nearly nineteen years younger than himself; only a long journey by her parents when her mother was seven months pregnant ensured that she was born on British soil; her christening was the scene of a family quarrel which had her mother in tears; and she was a mere eight months old when her father died.

On 6 November 1817 Princess Charlotte, wife of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg Saalfeld and daughter of George, Prince Regent, died in childbirth after producing a stillborn son. The prospects for the British line of succession were ominous. None of the thirteen sons and daughters of King George III and Queen Charlotte who survived to maturity had produced a single legitimate child among them, with the exception of the hapless Princess Charlotte. It was vital for the King’s bachelor sons to contract officially recognized marriages and ensure the succession – with the bait of generous marriage grants. Since most of them were better at spending money than saving it, such offers were irresistible.

On 30 May 1818 the King’s fourth son Edward, Duke of Kent, married the widowed Princess Victoire of Leiningen at the Ehrenburg Palace, Coburg. Aged thirty-one, she had two children by her marriage to Emich Charles, Prince of Leiningen, Prince Charles and Princess Feodora. In order to prevent doubts as to the validity of the marriage, and succession problems in either country – as the King of Great Britain was also King of Hanover – a second ceremony was held at Kew Palace on 11 July. The latter was a double wedding, the union between William, Duke of Clarence and Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen being solemnized at the same time.

Marriage, and a parliamentary grant, did not put an end to the Duke of Kent’s financial problems. On the contrary, it intensified them. He had increased his debts by borrowing to pay for presents to his wife, including a splendid wedding dress. The Prince Regent, no novice at the art of spending lavishly himself and no friend of his radically minded brother, refused to help him. The rest of the family urged the Kents to leave the country, since living abroad was cheaper, and in September they returned to Amorbach.

Within weeks, the Duchess knew that she was with child. Like his newly married brothers, the Duke had lost no time in obeying the call of duty. Convinced that the irregular lives of his brothers would ensure that his children would rule over England one day, the Duke realized how vital it was for his first-born child to be born in England. That the Clarences, who were higher in the succession than the Kents, were preparing for their confinement in Hanover, carried no weight with him. A few friends lent him sufficient money to return to England, and in March 1819 they set out on their journey.

The Duchess of Kent was seven months pregnant as they began their 427-mile odyssey, the Duke driving her and his stepdaughter Feodora in a cane phaeton over rough roads, in order to save the expense of hiring a coachman. The motley procession also comprising a landau, a barouche, two large postchaises, a cabriolet and a caravan, reached Calais and had to wait a week for favourable conditions at sea. On 24 April they crossed the Channel; the Duchess was very sick on the journey, but according to Madame Siebold, an obstetrician in the suite, there were no harmful symptoms. They settled at Kensington Palace, and after a labour of more than six hours, at 4.15 on the morning of 24 May the Duchess gave birth to a daughter. The father had remained at her side throughout, while the Duke of Wellington, Archbishop Manners Sutton, and other privy councillors, waited in an adjoining room. It was their duty to ensure that no suppositious infant could be smuggled into the bed.

Madame Siebold was responsible for helping to bring the Princess into the world. Also in attendance at the birth was a Welsh doctor, Dr David Daniel Davis. Legend has it that the labour was so difficult that Madame Siebold gave up hope of saving either mother or child, and Dr Davis had to intervene. This was untrue. Madame Siebold was a foreigner and a German, and the Duke of Kent had been advised that it would bode better for his popularity if a well-known British obstetrician was on hand at the same time, just in case anything should go wrong.

The Duke was overjoyed, writing that evening to his mother-in-law, the Dowager Duchess of Coburg, that her new grandchild was ‘truly a model of strength and beauty combined. . . . Thank God the dear mother and the child are doing marvellously well.’
⁴

For the first three weeks, their existence seemed blissfully happy. The Duke had been only momentarily disappointed that his firstborn child had not been a son, declaring that ‘the decrees of Providence are at all times wisest and best’. The Duchess was determined not to engage a wet-nurse, but breast-fed the child herself. The Duke, who took an intense interest in all details of nursery management, observed ‘the process of maternal nutriment’ with fascination.

The constant shadow that spoilt the proud father’s state of happiness was not slow to appear. As he knew only too well, the Prince Regent was determined to make life uncomfortable for the family. He had never forgiven the Duke of Kent for the sympathy he had shown to his estranged wife Caroline, the Princess of Wales, who had since retired abroad. That the Wales’s only child Charlotte had died prematurely while the Kents’ daughter appeared healthy enough was a further source of bitterness and resentment on the part of the Prince Regent. The Duchess of Clarence had also given birth to a daughter in March, a sickly baby who only lived for seven hours. To the Prince Regent, his detested brother Edward had evidently been born under a lucky star.

As acting head of the family, in lieu of the blind, insane King George III, the Prince Regent decided when the christening of the Princess should take place. On 21 June the Duke of Kent was abruptly notified by the Prince’s private secretary and privy seal, Sir Benjamin Bloomfield, of the arrangements. The ceremony would be three days later, on 24 June, at 3.00 p.m. It would be held privately, with only the Duke and Duchess of York, Princess Augusta, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, Prince Leopold and Princess Sophia invited as family guests. There would be no chance of the Duke of Kent being allowed to make a grand occasion of the ceremony. No foreign dignitaries would be invited to add pomp and splendour to the occasion. The Prince Regent would stand as godparent in person, Tsar Alexander I of Russia would be represented by the Duke of York, then second in succession to the throne, and the remaining godparents by other members of the royal family. The parents were not even permitted to choose the names themselves, which the Prince Regent ‘will explain himself to your Royal Highness, previous to the Ceremony’.
⁵