Dearest Vicky, Darling Fritz (38 page)

Not before time, she had one stroke of good luck in her first few months as a widow. During the Franco-Prussian war she had spent some time at Homburg, the former home of her great-aunt Elizabeth, Landgravine of Hesse-Homburg, near the Taunus mountains in an area famed for its considerable natural beauty. A villa that had belonged to a wealthy wholesale tea-merchant came up for sale, and she was also left a substantial legacy by her friend the Duchess of Galliera. With this she bought the villa and 250 acres of land surrounding it, had it demolished and commissioned the building of a new Schloss on the site, under the supervision of the architect Ernst Eberhard von Ihne. All this happened just in time, for a few days after the purchase was completed Wilhelm ordered her out of the Villa Liegnitz.

While her new home was being built, she had to live in the old palace at Potsdam during the winter (though she had to ask special permission each time), her dower house in the Schloss at Bad Homburg during summer, or her little farmhouse at Bornstädt. Permission was denied her for any modernization of the house at Homburg, surrounded by rubbish and weeds growing up to the front door, with no heating, drainage or indoor plumbing. She asked for these to be installed, only to be told that His Majesty could not afford to do so as he still needed to refurbish his palaces. Within five months of his accession he had demanded and received an increase to his annual income of six million marks, part of which was required to convert a warship into an imperial yacht,
Hohenzollern
. If his mother was not satisfied with her house, she was informed, she could remain in the palace at Berlin.

Though she and Fritz had sent over most of his papers to England in the last twelve months and burnt others, she was advised to ask Queen Victoria to return everything only a month after Fritz’s death. Friedberg, one of the few men still loyal to her, convinced her that it was essential to prove to the government that in doing so she had not removed German state property. Back came the numerous boxes from England to Berlin, but Fritz had left them all to Vicky in his will. When Friedberg was obliged to inspect them, he confirmed that they were not state documents but personal papers for her to do with as she liked.

Her wish to have documentary evidence to put the record straight was prompted by a pamphlet war which soon broke out. Less than a month after Fritz’s death, a broadside was written by Bergmann and Gerhardt (but significantly excluding the more politically liberal Virchow), defending themselves and attacking Mackenzie for not consenting to an immediate operation on the then Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm’s throat. Two weeks later an article appeared in a government paper stating that Kaiser Friedrich had declared he would not ascend the throne if it could be proved that he was suffering from an incurable illness, and claiming that those close to him, namely his wife and Dr Mackenzie, had tried to deceive him as to his real condition.

Rather against his better judgement, Mackenzie was persuaded to answer it with his angry book
The Fatal Illness of Frederick the Noble
. On publication in October 1888 it was an instant success in terms of sales; 100,000 copies were bought in Britain within a few days, and a similar print run was commissioned by the German publisher who outbid more than thirty rival firms to issue a German translation, but his entire stocks were confiscated by the imperial police. To Vicky this was ‘a perfectly despotic proceeding worthy of St Petersburg’.
⁷
Its popularity cost the author dearly, for in London he was censured by the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons for airing sickroom secrets in public. Most of his detractors were jealous or resentful fellow physicians who thought him too keen to advertise himself, and few if any of them had made an effort to read the German pamphlets against which he was attempting to vindicate himself.

The medical controversy was nothing to the affair of Fritz’s war diary. After the Franco-Prussian campaign he had showed some of his writings to Heinrich Geffcken, a friend from university days and now Professor of Political Science at Strasbourg. With his approval Geffcken had copied extracts for his personal use, and by September 1888 he was so angered by the continued posthumous attacks on his late sovereign and friend that he published them in the
Deutsche Rundschau
. At last the public were made aware of their late Emperor’s nationalist beliefs, his passionate desire for German unification, and his role in the founding of the German Empire, especially in the face of Bismarck’s hesitation. Geffcken was arrested and charged with treason, but no case could be brought against him and he was released from prison three months later. Nevertheless it marked the beginning of a savage witch-hunt against the late Emperor’s partisans, derided as conspirators against the welfare of Germany. Roggenbach, Morier and others suffered similar persecution, their houses were broken into, and their private correspondence seized. Morier, now ambassador to St Petersburg, was accused of having betrayed military secrets from the then Crown Princess of Prussia to one of the French commanders in 1870, thus enabling the French to inflict heavy losses on the German forces in a surprise attack during the Franco-Prussian war. Sadly he received no support in defending himself against this libel from Sir Edward Malet, the British ambassador in Berlin, who in his eagerness to prove accommodating to the new regime was evidently prepared to sacrifice Morier’s reputation on the altar of Anglo-German relations.

With a few notable exceptions, most of Vicky’s relatives in Germany had unhesitatingly thrown in their lot with Kaiser Wilhelm and Bismarck. Though she still cordially disliked the new Empress, her sister-in-law, the wayward Ditta fawned on her elder brother; she and her husband Bernhard told others it was their mother’s fault that Wilhelm and Dona had not been permitted to take their rightful places at Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, as she had prevented Wilhelm from representing his grandfather. The Duke of Saxe-Coburg, a fervent disciple of Bismarck, sanctioned (if he did not actually write) a couple of anonymous pamphlets accusing her, Fritz and Queen Victoria, as well as Morier, of treason against Germany and colluding with France during the Franco-Prussian war.

Dowager Empress Augusta gave the impression of being quite unaffected by her son’s death, and did not allow mourning to interfere with her social programme. Though wheelchair-bound, she still ruled her attendants with a rod of iron and her sharp tongue, keeping up appearances and attending all receptions and parties given in her name as far as possible. She had always spoilt her eldest grandson, and made a point of asking his permission every time she intended to go from one residence to another. In turn Wilhelm and Dona made a great show of asking her opinion on various domestic and procedural matters, making it obvious that to them Vicky’s opinions were not worth knowing. She lamented bitterly that as far as the three of them were concerned she might as well not exist.

Thankfully there were exceptions to this roll of dishonour. Her widowed brother-in-law Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, had been deeply saddened at the ‘quite incomprehensible’ way the political establishment of Prussia had moved so quickly to efface any memory of Fritz, and assured her that he for one had not altered his political principles; ‘when I can do anything to propagate Fritz’s views I will do so’, adding that he had to take care not to do anything that would bring down reprisals on his duchy.
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His third daughter Irene, now Vicky’s daughter-in-law, had done much to make Henry more amenable to his mother, and he no longer felt obliged to side with his brother against her, against his better judgment.

Queen Victoria had urged her daughter to come back to England for a visit ever since Fritz’s death. The British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury cravenly suggested it was too soon, and that it would undermine Anglo-German relations, but the Queen retorted that it would be ‘impossible, heartless and cruel’ to prevent her daughter from coming back, and only encourage the Bismarcks and the Emperor in their disgraceful behaviour towards her.
⁹
On 19 November Vicky and her
Kleeblatt
or trio, Moretta, Sophie and Mossy, arrived in England for three months. Queen Victoria sent the royal yacht
Victoria & Albert
, with Bertie and his second son George on board, to Flushing to meet them and accompany them on the crossing to Gravesend. Though as a matter of course the Queen normally never went further than her front door when welcoming even her most exalted guests to England, this time she made the journey to Gravesend to meet her daughter draped in crêpe, trembling with grief, a thick black veil concealing the tears running down her face. Her granddaughters on board the yacht were equally overcome when she landed. Nothing was too much trouble for the Queen’s eldest daughter whose brightest hopes had been dashed so tragically, and she hoped that when he heard of this reception Kaiser Wilhelm would be shamed into treating her with more respect when she went home. Two days later there was a family gathering to observe her first birthday since being widowed, with a present table laid out with gifts, as there always had been in her childhood. The Queen’s present was a generous contribution towards a mausoleum for Fritz at the Friedenskirche.

The Queen had always been ready to make allowances for her firstborn grandchild, but even her remarkable patience with him had come close to snapping after his high-handed refusal to meet the Prince of Wales at Vienna the previous month. She agreed with Lord Salisbury that Anglo-German relations should not be affected by ‘miserable personal quarrels’, but ‘with such a hot-headed, conceited, and wrongheaded young man, devoid of all feeling, this may at ANY moment become
impossible
.’
¹⁰
However she knew that there must be no deepening of the rift between mother and son, and while Vicky was in England they had long conversations during which she tried to soften her resentment and anguish. The Queen appreciated, and Vicky realized in her heart of hearts, that Wilhelm was not fundamentally evil, so much as thoughtless, weak and easily swayed by others.

The time she and her daughters spent in England did them much good. ‘It has been a great boon and blessing to me to have been allowed to spend these months here in beloved England with the Queen, whose goodness and kindness and sympathy helps me to bear the heavy burden of bitter sorrow and bereavement laid upon me!’ she wrote to Lord Napier in February. ‘I shall want much strength and courage to live on, now that the light and joy has passed from my life, and its object has gone, its hopes buried. But if it be God’s will I should remain yet in for a while, to struggle on alone, I must try and turn my time to good account, and be what little use I can to my 3 dear girls, left without a father at this age, when they most wanted him!’
¹¹

Slowly but surely she began to regain her perspective, and could even make sardonic jokes about herself. To the end of her days she wore mourning for her husband, and in accordance with German custom she had a peaked cap with two long streamers hanging down the back. One day while in England she met her old friend Lord Ernle; during their meeting she accidentally sat down on one of the streamers and pulled it slightly out of shape. As she straightened it out afterwards she remarked how glad she was that she had not done so in Berlin, as otherwise ‘the whole press would have shouted that I had insulted the national mourning’.
¹²
Nevertheless it was surely the saddest, most difficult journey of her life when she and her daughters had to return to Berlin.

Kaiser Wilhelm was desperate to be forgiven and invited to England himself, and with some misgivings the Queen asked him to come the following summer. In the process she had to receive his advisers, many of whom had behaved disgracefully to Vicky. If the widowed Empress felt bitterly hurt at what looked like a change of loyalty, or jealous of her son, she could hardly be blamed. Yet the British government felt obliged to put state expediency before the personal feelings of the royal family by building bridges between England and Germany. Her son and his entourage, who had denounced her and Fritz for being too friendly to England, were now doing exactly the same. It was a cruel reminder of what she had lost, and of what had been denied to her husband. Without him she could not even be an ambassador for the country or empire over which he had reigned so briefly. She had to accept that she was no longer of any significance in diplomatic relations between both countries, and neither Queen Victoria nor the Prince of Wales, the two closest members of her family, were officially obliged to treat her as of political importance, though in private they showed her every courtesy. As she had written on the first evening of her widowhood, ‘I shall disappear as much from the world as possible and certainly not push myself forward anywhere!’
¹³
It was not easy for a German Dowager Empress, the eldest child of the Queen of England, to ‘disappear’. Yet unlike her mother, she was no reigning monarch, but a foreigner ostracized by the political establishment of the day, reminded that she was a foreigner, and not considered an asset to Germany.

Vicky’s
Kleeblatt
were an ever-present personal support during these dark days. The news that Sandro had closed an unhappy chapter for them all by his marriage to Johanna Loisinger in February 1889 came as a relief to all concerned, though he was a sick man, destined to die of peritonitis some four years later at the age of thirty-six. By this time Sophie was betrothed to Constantine, Crown Prince of Greece, and Vicky was among those who went to Athens for the wedding on 27 October 1889. The occasion brought sadness to Moretta, whom her mother feared might become an old maid after the thwarted romance with Sandro. Vicky was also deeply affected by the breaking up of the trio, and decided that returning to Berlin straightaway would be too miserable for all of them. Instead mother and spinster daughters went to Rome to spend the rest of the winter. The climate was mild, King Umberto and Queen Margharita treated them like members of their own family, and they were thoroughly enjoying themselves when sad if not unexpected news arrived from home.