Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires (20 page)

The Princess of Wales and the Duchess of Fife had been prodding Eddy toward May for some time though. Queen Victoria was also keen on seeing Eddy and May together: “I think & hope that Eddy will try & marry her for I think she is a superior girl—quiet & reserved
till
you know her well,—but she is the reverse of
oberflächlich
[shallow or superficial]. She has no frivolous tastes, has been very carefully brought up & is well informed & always occupied.”
²¹⁸
All these questions about Eddy’s feelings for May prompted the Empress Frederick to write, “I wonder whether Eddy—will ever marry May?”
²¹⁹
By the winter of 1891, he decided to propose by candlelight at a ball in Lutton Hoo, at the home of the Danish ambassador. “To my great surprise Eddy proposed to me during the evening in Mme de Falbe’s boudoir,” May recorded in her diary. “Of course I said yes—We are both very happy.”
²²⁰
Once she heard of the engagement, Queen Victoria immediately sent a letter to May at White Lodge welcoming her into the family. She rejoiced that May was becoming “My Grandchild” and assured her of

how much confidence I have in you, to fill worthily the important position to which you are called by your marriage with Eddy.

Marriage is the
most
important step which can be taken & should not be looked upon lightly or as
all roses
. The trials of life in fact
begin
with marriage, & no one should forget that it is only by mutually giving way to one another, & by mutual respect & confidence as well as love – that true happiness can be obtained. Dear Eddy is a dear, good boy …
²²¹

Once the date was set for the wedding, May excitedly sent a letter off to Aunt Augusta in Strelitz: “Our wedding is fixed for Feb 27th at Windsor and afterwards we are to drive thro’ the principal streets of London on our way to St Pancras to Sandringham for the honeymoon.”
²²²

Like Dona Holstein with Wilhelm’s proposal, May Teck accepted Eddy on the spot. What most appealed to her was that since her fiancé was expected to ascend the British throne, her family’s financial future would be secure, and her parents would never have to worry about money again. The engagement did not come as a surprise to everyone, though. “We are much excited and delighted about the happy event of May Teck’s engagement to dear Eddy,” the Empress Frederick wrote to her daughter Sophie. “Aunt Mary Teck will be in the 7th heaven, for years and years it has been her ardent wish, and she has thought of nothing else. What a marriage, and what a position for her daughter!”
²²³

After the proposal was made, however, doubts about the match began to surface. May found to her dismay that Eddy’s listless side shone forth. She was soon being asked by the Prince and Princess of Wales to take an almost mothering role with their son. “Keep Eddy up to the mark,” Bertie reminded her, which was usually followed with, “See that Eddy does this, May,” or, “May, please do see that Eddy does that.” Within a month, she had taken on the role of her fiancé’s private secretary, answering stacks of correspondence. At one point, it proved too much for the princess, who cried to her mother, “Do you think I can
really
take this on, Mama?”
²²⁴
The duchess’s reply was blunt and direct: “Of course you can. If I can put up with your father for twenty-five years, you can handle the Heir Presumptive of Great Britain.”
²²⁵
May’s aunt Augusta was under no illusions about the future that lay ahead of her niece. “It is an immense position and has ever been your heart’s desire,” the grand duchess wrote to Mary Adelaide, “but it is a serious, great undertaking for poor May.”
²²⁶

In January 1892, in the midst of wedding plans, the British royal family gathered at Sandringham, their seven-thousand-acre estate in the Norfolk countryside, to celebrate Eddy’s twenty-eighth birthday—his last as a bachelor. Everyone seemed to be sick that winter. The Princess of Wales and Princess May both had heavy colds. Eddy’s sisters were virtually quarantined in their rooms with influenza. Toria had some type of lingering infection. And Prince George was recovering from typhoid fever. At first, Eddy seemed in the best health—relatively—with only a slight cold.

During a celebratory hunt, he caught a chill and came down with influenza. After only a few days, Eddy was on his deathbed. A simple bulletin was posted outside Marlborough House.

Sandringham, 9:30am

Symptoms of great gravity have supervened, and the condition of his Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence is critical.
²²⁷

Pneumonia set in, his fever skyrocketed to 107 degrees, and he fell into fits of delirium. The royal family—save for the queen, who was deemed too ill to make the journey from Osborne—stayed at Eddy’s bedside for days, racked with anxiety and fear. During this difficult time, it was observed that Princess May often sought consolation with Eddy’s brother, Prince George. Dr. Manby, the physician in attendance on the royal family at Sandringham, was gazing out the window one day and noticed George and May walking hand-in-hand. Lady Willens, Manby’s daughter, later said in an interview that her father “appears to have suspected that the prince and princess were, in reality, much closer than protocol made out.”
²²⁸

Eddy’s suffering ended after a six-hour vigil at 9:35 a.m. on Thursday, January 14, one month before his wedding to May. A few moments after Eddy died, May rose slowly from her chair and, coming around side of the Princess of Wales, leaned in and kissed her beloved’s brow. Eddy’s mild-mannered brother George was now heir to the throne, though it was a role he never wanted. “Gladly would I have given my life for his, as I put no value on mine,” George wrote to his mother. “Such a tragedy has never before occurred in the annals of our family.”
²²⁹
The day that Eddy died, the Duchess of Teck wrote a grief-stricken note to the queen describing the suffering everyone was enduring.

I clung to hope
even through the terrible watch of that awful
never
to be forgotten night of agony. It wrung one’s heart to hear Him [Eddy], & to see Alix’s [the Princess of Wales] wretched, imploring face, Bertie’s bowed head, & May’s
dazed misery
. It seemed
too much, too hard
to bear! … All today telegrams have been
pouring in
& I have been much with darling Alix & the dearest girls and
angelic
George who is the
tower
of strength to us all! & in His room (where he lies amid flowers, chiefly
Maiblumen—Her
flower
now
being woven for the wedding train!) … his adoring Mother & poor May could not tear themselves away—they have just 11 o’clock borne him to the church … Bertie & Alix kindly wished to keep us on [at Sandringham], united as we all are in common sorrow—Our presence seems a comfort to them!—Of course their kindness to our May, I cannot say enough. They have quite adopted her as their daughter and she called Alix “Motherdear”—& hopes you will allow her to call you “Grandmama”? These privileges &
two rings
are all that remain to her, poor child! of her bright dream of happiness.
²³⁰

May was devastated, but even in the midst of her grief, she still thought of others first. Her heart went out to Eddy’s family. She wrote to Queen Victoria, “How too dear & touching of you in the midst of your sorrow to write to poor little me.… Never shall I forget that dreadful night of agony and suspense as we sat round His bed watching Him get weaker & weaker.… I shall always look back with gratitude to your great kindness to darling Eddy and me at Windsor last month.”
²³¹
Queen Victoria’s thoughts and prayers went out to Eddy’s heartbroken fiancée. She confided to her journal about how tragic it was for “poor May to have her whole bright future to be merely a dream!”
²³²
The nation, shocked by Eddy’s sudden death, went into deep mourning. It was not long after that a ballad began circulating to the tune of “God Bless the Prince of Wales.” At one village in East Anglia could be heard the song:

A nation wrapped in mourning,

Shed bitter tears today,

For the noble Duke of Clarence,

And fair young Princess May
.
²³³

It was the first death of an heir to the throne in nearly a century. As such, it was treated with appropriate dignity. Eddy’s body was laid out for five days at the small church near Sandringham, surrounded by exotic flowers and the silken Royal Standard. From Norfolk, the unpolished oak coffin was ceremoniously taken by gun-carriage to Saint George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, the royal family’s traditional parish church. The mournful procession was led by the Prince of Wales and Prince George and included the Royal Horse Artillery, the foot guards, and the Tenth Royal Hussars—Eddy’s own regiment. When the coffin reached the Albert Memorial Chapel at Saint George’s Chapel, Princess May—wearing a long black dress with a white collar and cuffs—placed a wreath of orange blossoms on her beloved’s tomb.

Perhaps for the first time in her life, May was utterly at a loss. She did not know how her life could possibly go on. Two days after the funeral, she wrote to her friend Emily Alcock, “It is so difficult to begin one’s old life again after such a shock. Even reading, of which I am so fond, is a trouble to me & I cannot settle down to anything—As for writing I simply
cannot
write … for it is so dreadful to have to open the wound afresh.”
²³⁴
What she failed to realize was that she would have a greater role in life than to grieve for Eddy and step off into the shadows. Princess May of Teck was truly born to rule and one day would still be queen of England.

5
A Touch of Destiny
 

(1892–94)

T
he 1890s was a decade of tremendous change for Empress Augusta Victoria, May Teck, and Alix of Hesse. Dona, increasingly conservative but popular with her people, was reigning over the German Empire alongside her larger-than-life husband; May was grieving the unexpected loss of her beloved Eddy; and Alix longingly pined for her darling Nicky. In a remote corner of northwestern Italy, a new life was set to come into the world, which would complete the circle of the four royal women who were destined to preside over the fall of the age of empires.

In the spring of 1892, Maria Antonia, Duchess of Parma, was in labor with her fifth child. Her husband, Robert I, Duke of Parma, already had twelve children from his first marriage to Princess Maria Pia of the Two Sicilies. So many hopes had been attached to Robert and Maria Pia’s union that their wedding was performed by Pope Pius IX himself in the Sistine Chapel. But because of the close blood ties between the couple
²³⁵
, three of their children died in infancy, while another six were mentally disabled. Maria Pia died shortly after giving birth to a stillborn child in 1882. So when Robert married Maria Antonia of Portugal in 1884, he made sure he and his new wife were not even distant relatives. The outcome was highly successful. Their first four children—like Maria Pia, Maria Antonia would eventually have twelve children—were lusty with strong constitutions. The Duchess of Parma had delivered her first four children in Austria. Her latest accouchement took place at Villa Pianore in Tuscany, Robert’s red-roofed, two-story Italian estate located between Pietrasanta and Viareggio, only a few miles from the Ligurian Sea. After a long delivery, the duchess delivered a healthy baby girl on May 9, 1892.

At her baptism, the infant received the lofty names Zita Maria delle Grazie Adelgonda Micaela Raffaela Gabriella Giussepina Antonia Luise Agnese, which were made at the suggestion of her aunt and godmother, Princess Adelgundes of Bourbon-Parma. The first of her eleven names, Zita, proved prescient. It was chosen for the thirteenth-century saint who became the patron of servants, the pious, and the laboring poor, all qualities that would come to be associated with this future empress of Austria and queen of Hungary. Officially known by her first name, Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma was more than thirty years younger than Augusta Victoria of Germany—the empress with whom Zita’s political fate would be the most connected—and she could not have been more different. While Dona could be neurotic, prudish, haughty, and was convinced that she had been born to rule, Zita was the spitting image of her namesake and was content to lead a quiet life doing good works.

Unlike Dona, May, or Alix, Zita had no real connection with Germany or the British royal family. Although she was born in Italy and her father was the Duke of Parma, Zita and her family thought of themselves first and foremost as Frenchmen. “We are French princes who reigned in Italy,” Robert once told Zita.
²³⁶
Robert’s father had been assassinated when he was six, leaving the young duke to be raised by his French mother, Princess Louise of Artois, who inculcated into her son a deep love for France. After leaving Parma during the turbulent Italian unification of the 1850s and 1860s, the
Risorgimento
, Robert spent most of his life living at the home of his uncle Henry, Count of Chambord. As the great-nephew of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Henry was the sole heir to the entire French royal fortune. When the unimaginably wealthy Henry died in 1883
²³⁷
, he left his entire estate—a priceless treasury of monies, jewels, and palaces—to Robert. The connection Robert had with his ancestral home can be seen in the fact that many of his children were born in France and were given French names. Where Dona was unequivocally German, and Alix and May were fiercely British, Zita was devotedly French.

Similarly to May Teck’s parents, there is little doubt that Zita’s parents were in love and shared many things in common. Like her husband, Maria Antonia came from a deposed family. Her father was the one-time King Michael I of Portugal, who had led a revolution against his brother King Peter IV in 1828. Michael reigned for six years before Peter reclaimed his throne, sending Michael into permanent exile in Germany in 1834. As he approached middle age, the still-unmarried Michael decided it was time to start a family. He may have hoped that if he produced a son, that son might one day reclaim the Portuguese throne. In 1851, Michael married Princess Adelaide of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg. Whereas Michael was forty-nine, his new German wife was only twenty at the time of their marriage. After the wedding, Adelaide assumed the courtesy title queen of Portugal.

This eclectic mix of French, Italian, and Portuguese influences gave Zita’s family an inimitable flavor. As an adult, Zita recalled that her family “grew up internationally. My father thought of himself first and foremost as a Frenchman, and spent a few weeks every year with the elder children at Chambord, his main property on the Loire.” She later realized that “of the twenty-four children, only three including me, were actually born in Italy.”
²³⁸
Of the four imperial consorts, the blissfulness of Zita of Bourbon-Parma’s childhood was unmatched—she herself described it as “
particularly joyful and happy
.” She and her siblings, including her half brothers and sisters from her father’s first marriage, were a close-knit group. The Duchess of Parma was a loving mother who doted on all twenty-one of her children equally. Robert was just as dedicated. Unlike other royal fathers, he preferred to pass much of the day in the company of his children. A gifted academic, he encouraged his children to spend hours on end with him in his study, listening to him read from his library of books in French, Italian, German, and English. Their education “was a mixture of austerity, charity, and profound piety.”
²³⁹

The homes that the Bourbon-Parma children grew up in were hardly what one expected for a deposed duke; they were more suited to a reigning monarch. Thanks to Robert’s French family, he owned half a dozen awe-inspiring castles, mansions, and villas spread across central and southern Europe. There was Frohsdorf, a castle-like estate in Lanzenkirchen in eastern Austria; Villa Pianore in Tuscany, a typical Mediterranean manor house; and Schwarzau am Steinfeld, an old, somewhat intimidating castle in Lower Austria on the edge of the Neuenkirchen Forest and less than twenty miles from Vienna. But all of these residences paled in comparison to their most luxurious home, their iconic French palace of Chambord, in the Loire Valley, where Robert spent many happy years as a young man. Famous for its French Renaissance architecture, Chambord was commissioned by King Francis I in the sixteenth century. The five-story limestone palace accommodated the Duke of Parma and his family nicely, with more than four hundred rooms, three hundred fireplaces, and a dozen towers. It even dwarfed the Neues Palais in Potsdam and some of the British royal family’s homes. Trips to Chambord were not as frequent as the family would have liked, though. Despite their enormous fortune, Zita’s parents were keenly aware of living within their means—a quality learned by both Zita and May Teck. The duke and duchess realized that the cost of moving their entire family and court from Italy to France was often prohibitively expensive.

The times they did move, however, left a vivid impression on the young Princess Zita. “We spent about six months of the year at Schwarzau,” she recalled, “usually beginning in July, when the heat got intense in Italy, and staying over Christmas and the New Year until early January, when the real winter cold set in in Austria. Then we would go down to Pianore and stay there through the spring and early summer until moving north again.” When the family moved, it was always an adventure for the children. “And what moves they were!” Zita reminisced. “Every year and for each journey back and forth we had our special train. When fully assembled for the trip, it must have had fifteen or sixteen coaches and two engines were needed to pull it over the Semmering Pass just south of Schwarzau.”
²⁴⁰
Zita’s happy childhood, an intellectual wonderland presided over by her passionate father and loving mother, laid the best possible foundation for the rest of her life. “It was a peaceful, happy time,” she said later in life.
²⁴¹
Decades later, it would give Zita the strength to hold together not only her family but her empire.

It was the norm for many Victorian widows to shy away from public life. In fact, Victorian England essentially wrote the book on mourning. It was a morbid cult for many people, carried out with an almost thespian flare. When one’s loved ones died, society expected them to mourn for them with a fanatical obsession. Princess May was no exception to this. For the first few months of 1892, she and her mother stayed in near seclusion at White Lodge. Many in London’s social circle who had been close to Eddy felt it was May’s responsibility to spend the rest of her days pining for her lost love, wearing only black and setting up a shrine to his memory. The Princess of Wales did just that, turning the room where he died into a memorial to her firstborn.For the rest Alexandra’s life, she visited Eddy’s room every day she was at Sandringham, often bringing flowers to place on the bed in which he died. May was expected to be no less devout in her grief.

In the aftermath of Eddy’s death, there was genuine concern in Britain for the future of the monarchy. Eddy’s brother George was now heir to the throne, but he was somewhat sickly and was recovering from deadly typhoid at the time of his brother’s death. Typhoid fever—not to be confused with typhus, a lice-spread illness—made an indelible mark on the British royal family. It had killed George’s grandfather Prince Albert in 1861 and nearly claimed his father’s life a decade later. Many feared in the winter of 1891/92 that George would succumb too. If he did, the throne would pass to his eldest sister, Princess Louise, and her commoner husband, the Earl of Fife. Louise was not generally esteemed in England; many took notice of her dim intellectual accomplishments and listless nature that seemed endemic to the Wales family. The idea of Louise as queen regnant left many people unsettled. It became imperative that George marry as quickly as possible so as to produce an heir of his own. A number of brides were considered. George would have preferred his cousin Princess Marie of Edinburgh, whom he had romanced while stationed with the Royal Navy on Malta. Marie’s Anglophobic mother quickly ended their teenage romance. The Empress Frederick, George’s aunt, had hoped he might marry one of her daughters—perhaps her youngest, Mossy—but the prince expressed little interest. There appeared to be one other candidate, though.

A year after Eddy died, May commemorated his passing by visiting the Chapel Royal at Windsor Castle. “How beautiful it is … and how calmly and peacefully our Loved One lies there at rest from all the cares of this world,” she wrote to Prince George. “God be with us and help us to bear our cross is the fervent prayer of your very loving cousin—May.”
²⁴²

In 1893, the Empress Frederick visited Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. While she was there, the grieving Tecks arrived for a visit. Those who were privy to the details of May and Eddy’s relationship expressed their sympathies to the princess. “Aunt Mary Teck was here with May whom I thought very nice indeed,” Vicky wrote. On the day planned for the wedding, February 27, the Prince and Princess of Wales presented May with a dazzling group of diamonds, along with a beautiful handbag covered with gold and jewels, all of which had been intended as wedding gifts. Saddened by May’s tragedy, the Empress Frederick did not mince words: “Her position is most difficult and embarrassing. She is still in mourning for our poor darling Eddy, and the newspapers are constantly writing about her becoming engaged to Georgie, and the whole public seem to wish it ardently.”
²⁴³