Childhood at Court, 1819-1914 (20 page)

Not all royal pupils behaved themselves so well at school. Prince Francis of Teck, reputedly the cleverest and most amusing of the brothers of the future Queen Mary, was enrolled at Wellington a little later. His time there was cut short when he threw the headmaster over a hedge in order to win a bet, and was promptly expelled.

In May 1878 Arthur, now Duke of Connaught, became engaged to Princess Louise of Prussia. The months of preparation for the wedding were overshadowed by the death of his sister Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, from diphtheria, that December – ironically, on the seventeenth anniversary of the Prince Consort’s death – but court mourning was suspended for the ceremony at Windsor on 13 March 1879. The Duke had never been a disappointment to the Queen, who could not speak highly enough of her son. At one point, she confided rather possessively to Vicky that Arthur was so good that he did not need to get married at all.

They set up house at Bagshot Park, Surrey, and on 15 January 1882 the couple’s first daughter, named Margaret, was born. As she grew older she was known as ‘Princess Daisy’. She was joined in the nursery on 13 January 1883 by a brother, Arthur, and another sister, Patricia, on 17 March 1886. The Duchess of Connaught passed on her artistic talents, and her love of animals, to the children. Margaret became a gifted painter, and all of them enjoyed being taken to the stables to help their mother feed the horses with sugar. When a model dairy under the Duchess’s directions was built at Bagshot, helping to make butter and cheese was a hobby eagerly shared by them all.

Meanwhile Leopold, the ‘child of anxiety’ whom Queen Victoria had hardly dared to expect to reach maturity, was created Duke of Albany in April 1881, and in November that year became engaged to Princess Helen of Waldeck-Pyrmont, sister of Queen Emma of the Netherlands. They were married on 27 April 1882 at Windsor.

Their first child, a daughter named Alice, was born on 25 February 1883. When the Queen first set eyes on the baby, Leopold was recovering from a bad knee on one sofa, and Helen was resting on another. When the Queen, leaning heavily on her stick, hobbled in ‘as a third helpless creature, it had quite a ludicrous effect’.

Sadly, Leopold died thirteen months later. On medical advice he was sent to Cannes to avoid the worst of the winter weather in March 1884. He slipped on a staircase at his hotel, and died from a brain haemorrhage. Helen was expecting a second child, and the posthumous son and heir, Charles (‘Charlie’), was born at Claremont on 19 July 1884. Sir William Harcourt was the cabinet minister appointed to certify the birth, and before his departure from Claremont next day he left a letter to the Duchess, offering his heartfelt congratulations on the happy event: ‘God has granted you a son of consolation in your great sorrow and I pray that the little child I was so happy to welcome into this world may grow up to be a comfort and support to you.’
²⁷

The other royal grandchildren were obliged to take their part in court mourning. From Cumberland Lodge, Christian Victor wrote to Raphael (26 April), apologizing for the long gap in correspondence, ‘only as you know my uncle died suddenly & there was such loads of things to do & I really have had scarcely any time to myself. My holidays were not very brilliant at first but since my grandmother has been at Darmstadt I have been allowed to play cricket & shoot rabbits, which I might not do as long as she was here.’
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Princess Alice of Albany, who lived to a record age for any member of the British royal family – ninety-seven years and ten months – long retained vivid memories of her fatherless childhood at Claremont with her mother and brother Charlie. There was mother in deepest black for a long time after her husband’s death, before she changed into a pale grey summer dress; ‘Nanna Creak’ who found that ‘delicate, nervous and tiresome baby brother’ got on her nerves so much that she had to go; and there were expeditions to feed wild ducks on the lake at Claremont with baskets of dry bread cut into squares, though Alice enjoyed eating the bread herself.

Their household included Frederick, the nursery footman, ‘rather a rough diamond’ with a drink problem, who brought their meals up from down in the basement, and Mr Long, the butler, who carried the children upstairs. Every day they demanded him to explain the story behind a print, ‘
La Dernière Cartouche
’, of the Franco-Prussian War. There was an under-butler, Benton, whose family they visited regularly, various footmen, housemaids, housekeepers and a nursemaid who married the footman, Jo, a lovable yet curious-looking individual with curly black hair and a wall-eye. There was also Mrs Lawley, with a lace cap and little twisted curls at each side, who gave the children sugar candy on long strings from her store cupboard. She served the family faithfully until she was eighty, and on her birthday the Duchess of Albany had a large birthday cake made, bearing eighty small candles. All these people played an important part in their young lives, ‘and so we grew up in a real atmosphere of love and happiness, but with scarcely any outside contacts’.
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Only at Windsor did they mix with their young relations. The Queen would regularly invite her daughter-in-law and grandchildren, and they always came by train. To young Alice, there was ‘something indescribable’ about the castle, or the ‘Sovereign’s Entrance’, as she called it – a special Windsor Castle smell, ‘a smell like nowhere else – old furniture kept very clean, flowers and, altogether, a special delicious and welcoming smell that only now is fading away’.
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There was a unique aura to the whole place, from the page who escorted them in, the housekeeper in black silk and a lace cap at the door, and the equerry-in-waiting, to the wide corridor at the castle ‘with all its treasures which one accepted yet never noticed’. Their nanny was always admonishing them to curtsy at the door, kiss their grandmother’s hand, behave themselves and not make a noise in her presence, until they were quite filled with awe. Once they met her, she was less intimidating. She would sit writing at her table while they played with their toys and built walls with her despatch boxes. In the same room was a spinning wheel and a glass containing the water for twisting the wool, which they loved to play with – and were invariably scolded by her for doing so.

Alice’s bedroom was on the ground floor at Claremont. When she was four, she was awakened one night by a burglar who had got into the room through the open window, with the aid of a ladder stolen from the nearby farmhouse, two accomplices following him. The incident was reported in several newspapers. One stated that it had occurred in January when the infant Princess had not yet got over the Christmas festivities and was overjoyed to think that Father Christmas had returned so soon. Others stated that she asked the burglar why he had come through the window instead of the chimney, why was he not wearing a white beard and red coat, and why were his associates so untraditionally attired. To the best of her memory, the incident occurred in the autumn, not after Christmas. She refused to be taken in by her mother’s soothing explanation that it was a visit from Father Christmas. Alice had heard the nurse’s screams, which woke everyone and forced the burglars to beat a hasty retreat.

The young Alice was educated by a governess, Jane Potts, who came when Alice was seven and stayed for eleven years. ‘We emerged from the nursery very stuffy little things,’ Alice remembered. Miss Potts made them climb fences, pick up apples and took them for delightful long walks. She was responsible for firing them with a tremendous love of history, encouraging them to play at acting out Roman wars, assuming the names and characters of their favourite heroes. It was the same with Greek history, and Alice and Charlie used to quarrel over Darius and Alexander the Great, as Alice always chose the victor. She was Julius Caesar and Charlie was Pompey. A friend, Kitty, was Croesus, though she knew nothing about her role. They always acted people out of books they read. Though Alice feared that Miss Potts must have had a very dull and lonely time, she evidently realized how quiet their lives were at that time, and put up with all their games and sham fights during their walks in the Claremont woods.

Every evening before dinner, Alice knitted or did needlework while the Duchess of Albany read aloud to them. Starting off with Henty, Charlotte Yonge, and Molesworth, she introduced them to Dickens, Scott, Kingsley, and R.L. Stevenson when they were older. Knitting was not always the drudge for them that it might have been for other children. As a reward, and to tempt them to help her, one day the Duchess wrapped a collection of little bronze animals in paper and then wound them inside a great ball of wool for the children to find. They were enchanted with the animals, and kept them in tins given to them by Lewis Carroll with pictures from
Alice in Wonderland
on the sides, and their own names scratched by him on the bottom.

Lewis Carroll, or more correctly Dr Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was particularly kind to Alice and Charlie. When Alice was five, she attended a party at Hatfield, and he was telling a story. He was afflicted with a stammer, and she had some difficulty following his story. She asked suddenly in a rather loud voice, ‘Why does he waggle his mouth like that?’ She was quickly removed by the lady-in-waiting. Afterwards he wrote that he ‘liked Charlie but thought Alice would turn out badly’. Yet she was soon forgiven, and he gave them books for Christmas with anagrams of their names on the fly-leaf.

The Duchess continued to have a number of her husband’s literary and artistic friends from Oxford to stay at Claremont. The children found they seemed very old, but they were always kind, and after tea the children invariably brought out an illustrated
Comic History of England
which they never tired of showing to the guests.

In winter Alice recalled being dressed in a thick frock, covered by a pinafore with lace at the neck and shoulders, long black stockings and button boots. Like her cousin Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein, she changed into summer outfits of cotton frocks on 1 May, regardless of the temperature. The summers, she thought, like many an adult of advancing years reminiscing on the joys of childhood, ‘seem to have lasted longer than nowadays’.

When Charlie grew out of, or as Alice put it, became ‘too much for’ Miss Potts, he became a day boarder at the nearby Sandroyd School, riding there daily on Puck, a Shetland pony. Later he went to prep school at Lyndhurst, while Alice stayed at home to be taught by Miss Potts. In due course she went to London for drawing classes and instruction in chemistry and literature, while Charlie entered Eton.

As Queen Victoria had ‘lost’ her other children, she decided that her youngest daughter – still ‘Baby’ – must always remain with her as confidante and secretary. However, in the summer of 1884 Beatrice had fallen in love with the dashing Prince Henry of Battenberg, whose elder brother Louis had recently married her niece, Princess Victoria of Hesse. The Queen was furious, and for several weeks mother and daughter communicated merely by means of written notes across the breakfast table. However, Beatrice had a will of her own as well – she was not her mother’s daughter for nothing – and stood firm. The Queen was persuaded, particularly by Vicky, that ‘Baby’ should be allowed to marry her ‘Liko’. At last she gave her consent, on condition that Prince Henry would retire from the Prussian army, and live with his wife and mother-in-law in England.

The young couple married on 23 July 1885 at St Mildred’s Church, Whippingham, and their marriage gave Queen Victoria a new lease of life. Once more there was a man in the family, and moreover one who was not in awe of her. Henry could make light-hearted conversation with her and encourage her to laugh at meals. Christmas 1885 was the happiest at Osborne since the last time the Prince Consort had presided over the festivities. Beatrice and Liko were allocated a suite in the new wing, Helen of Albany and her children, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught and theirs, were there to share presents on the tables, party games, theatrical performances, and watch beech logs burning brightly in the polished steel grate of the Queen’s sitting-room.

On 23 November 1886 at Windsor, Beatrice gave birth to a son. The baby inadvertently caused a change in royal routine. Christmas had always been spent at Osborne, but the Queen decided that it would be unwise to make the young mother and child travel so soon, and they stayed at the castle. Here he was christened on 18 December. Despite a suggestion from
Punch
that in view of the coming year’s anniversary ‘the Battenberg Baby should be called Prince
JUBILEE
’, he was given the names Alexander Albert. The first was in honour of his uncle ‘Sandro’, the ill-fated sovereign Prince of Bulgaria, who had been forced by Russian agents to abdicate his throne a few weeks earlier, and had arrived in England a virtual exile. The christening was held in the White Drawing Room, where the gold font with figures of naked children playing round its base was used.

It seemed as if no grandchild had given the Queen more pleasure than the arrival of this thirty-seventh child.* The family noticed how cheerful she now became. According to legend, some days later a small boy ran beside her carriage at Windsor to get a better view of her. She ordered the coachman to stop, and handed her young admirer a florin. She did the same for a blind man singing ‘Abide with me’ by Windsor Bridge.

During a respite after the busy summer and the Golden Jubilee celebrations in London the following summer, the family moved north to Balmoral, where Beatrice produced a daughter on 24 October 1887. She was the first royal child to be born in Scotland since the future King Charles I had entered the world in 1600. The locals were delighted at the news, and even more so when told that the christening would be on Deeside. No royal child had been christened in Scotland since Prince Henry, son of King James VI, in 1594. The former Empress Eugenie of the French, who had been staying at Abergeldie earlier that season, was invited to be one of the sponsors, and the baby was baptized Victoria Eugenia Julia Ena – the last name in error, as the rector misread the handwritten documents which had specified her last name was to be ‘Eua’.