The Last Princess (43 page)

Prey to worsening health, marginalized within a large and much younger family, Beatrice embarked on her protracted ‘twilight’ period, increasingly forgotten by the public, busy with small-scale duties and private concerns, chief among them her
ongoing work on her mother's Journal. Publicly her stock was boosted by her position as mother of the Queen of Spain. Despite Spanish political instability and Ena and Alfonso's unhappiness—Alfonso was openly unfaithful to Ena and, at some point during the twenties, probably considered requesting from the Pope an annulment of their marriage – Ena's life had settled into a pattern. From October until the end of May she lived in Madrid, before travelling to England in June or July, returning to the royal seaside palace at San Sebastian in time for Alfonso's mother's birthday on 20 July. Beatrice looked forward to Ena's yearly summer visits, invariably without Alfonso but with one or more of her six children. In 1924 Ena's holiday coincided with the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. She and Beatrice visited twice. Unsurprisingly, since both were fond of precious stones -in Ena's case the predilection amounted to a passion – their visits were characterized by a curiosity about the displays of jewels and they lingered in the areas devoted to Ceylon, Burma (with its famous rubies) and India. In the Indian quarter they also admired a display of Madras lace, Beatrice still loyal to one of her earliest loves. When finally they tore themselves away to inspect the Canadian pavilion, they received an escort of Canadian Mounties.

Beatrice withdrew gradually from public life. In June 1926, she was created Dame Grand Cross of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, an appropriate decoration for the author of
The Adventures of Count Georg Albert of Erbach,
which partly traces the history of the order. The following year she sat for the last time for Philip de Laszlo. His ‘winter’ portrait is a handsome image showing her in profile, her face thinner with age; not crushed by the years but wise and kindly, staring into the distance, as always in Beatrice's case avoiding eye contact with the viewer.

Not until the following decade would her rheumatism significantly affect her mobility. In the meantime she was troubled by cataracts, and rheumatism in her hands and fingers effectively curtailed her piano-playing. One of the last formal photographs for which she sat, taken in 1930, shows her at her desk in her
apartment in Kensington Palace, writing in a large notebook like those into which she transcribed her mother's Journal, a task she would not complete for another year. Beside the notebook, close to hand, is a magnifying glass. Th e compass of her interests contracted. With work on the Journal complete, she devoted herself to her responsibilities on the Isle of Wight. On 2 November 1934, she wrote to Lady Mottistone,

I am much interested at what you tell me about a Branch of the Personal Service League being started in the Isle of Wight, and I shall be very pleased to become its Patroness. You can say in the letter you intend publishing in the County Press that I am very glad to hear of and much approve the effort to organize a Branch of the League in the Island, as it is a movement that is doing so much good all over the country, and I wish it every success. I am already Patroness, as President, of the Hampshire Branch.
¹²

Two years later, her lady-in-waiting Bessie Bulteel wrote again to Lady Mottistone to tell her how interested Beatrice had been to hear of the fledgling branch's success, ‘which she thinks is wonderful!’
¹³
In August 1935, at Northwoo d Park, Cowes, she presented medals for long service and efficiency to the men of the Isle of Wight Rifles. Two years later, following the death of George V, she became at last Honorary Colonel of the regiment -fifty-two years after it was renamed in her honour in the summer of her wedding.

Increasingly, bouts of activity sandwiched protracted periods of unwellness, the winter proving particularly hazardous. ‘I unfortunately have been laid up for a long time with a bad attack of septic Bronchitis,’ Beatrice wrote in February 1930. ‘[It] has left me very frail, but I am getting better at last, and in time trust to be able to get away to the south, to get a change, and pick up again.’
¹⁴
She suffered almost continuously from respiratory problems, eventually finding relief in a Coltixone inhaler, which she used daily to positive effect and thereafter recommended enthusiastically to friends and fellow sufferers. In January 193 1 she slipped at Kensington Palace. Falling heavily, she broke tw o bones in her left arm. In the aftermath of the accident she
developed bronchitis again – so severely on this occasion that her doctors feared the worst and Ena hurried from Spain to be at her mother's bedside. Happily, Beatrice rallied. On 16 February Ena returned to Madrid and Beatrice made plans to remove to Torquay to recuperate.

The Spanish capital was in a state of fermenting political turmoil. On 10 January the Queen of Greece, Beatrice's niece Sophie of Prussia, had written, ‘Poor Aunt Beatrice must be anxious about her daughter – Fortunately it looks quieter in Spain just now.’
¹⁵
The Queen was wrong in her second contention. Elections held on 12 April returned an overwhelming republican majority in Spanish cities and on 14 April, Beatrice's seventy-fourth birthday, Alfonso suspended his power (he refused to abdicate) and left the country. The morning after, Ena followed him into exile, accompanied by her children, her sister-in-law Irene Carisbrooke and a handful of courtiers; she took with her her jewels. Though understandably afraid, Ena accomplished her flight unharmed. But the collapse of Alfonso's throne did nothing to speed Beatrice's recovery.

Recover she did, however, and in 1932 she was well enough to journey south again, this time to San Remo, close to the French Riviera, with Ena, who had settled temporarily in Paris. In 1935 Ena took the lease of a house at 34 Porchester Terrace in London, which placed her close to her mother in the event of an emergency. Beatrice for her part continued to spend part of each summer at Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight. She also undertook a limited number of engagements on the mainland, including, on 27 October 1935, laying a wreath at the Cenotaph in Whitehall to mark the fifteenth anniversary of the Ypres League. The date was significant. It was exactly twenty-one years since Maurice's death. Her health remained fragile and she received close regular medical supervision. In March 1936 lady-in-waiting Bessie Bulteel wrote to Lady Mottistone with a degree of uncertainty on seeing Beatrice again after a short interval, ‘I think the Princess seems well…’
¹⁶
She did not attend the coronation of her great-nephew Bertie as George VI on 12 May 1937, although her granddaughter Iris Mountbatten was a
train-bearer to the Queen, but remained in London and was at Buckingham Palace to greet the new King and Queen on their return from Westminster Abbey. In April of the same year she had spent her eightieth birthday quietly at Kensington Palace, dining with her sister and neighbour Louise.

The islanders of the Isle of Wight had different ideas, however, and decided to offer Beatrice a special token to celebrate not only her birthday but also her long period as governor. Friends elicited from Beatrice that she coveted an organ said to have been played by Charles I's daughter Princess Elizabeth when she was a prisoner at Carisbrooke Castle. The organ, dated 1602, belonged to Lady Maud Warrender, who let it be known that she was willing to sell the instrument for £400. Mrs Pearson Crozier and Mrs Wilson Heathcote initiated an island-wide subscription to raise the sum, explaining in the
Isle of Wight County Press
on 9 September 1937 that each subscriber would be entitled ‘to sign a commemorative book, which is to be presented to the Princess’. The subscription list was closed on 25 September, the instrument bought, and the presentation of what was referred to as the ‘All-Island Gift’ made at a special ceremony at Carisbrooke Castle on Sunday, 3 October. Alfred Noyes had composed a sonnet in Beatrice's honour; his son Hugh, a future parliamentary correspondent of
The Times,
presented her with the book containing the signatures of the subscribers. Beatrice, according to the local newspaper ‘obviously delighted’, made a speech of acceptance in which, simultaneously, she donated the organ to the castle. ‘The pleasing ceremony’, reported the
County Press,
‘will remain in the memory of all who were privileged to witness it as a remarkable demonstration of the Island's affection for the gracious lady who has spent her life here, never sparing herself in promoting its welfare and that of all worthy works.”
¹⁷

If those who had conceived the idea were motivated in part by the fear that, though she had served as governor for forty-one years, Beatrice was unlikely to make it to her fiftieth anniversary, their fears were well founded: the service, which was followed by a reception in her lodgings in the castle, proved to be her swansong on the Isle of Wight. Within less than two years Britain
was again at war, and Beatrice was prevented from travelling to the island. ‘It is very kind of you to say that you miss seeing my flag fly at Carisbrooke Castle and I am truly sorry to be kept away from there for such a long time but it is impossible under the circumstances to go there,’ she wrote to her old friend Lord Mottistone on 28 July 1940. ‘I cannot help rather worrying about all my nice things which I left there, and their being possibly destroyed should bombs fall on the Castle.’
¹⁸
Some time previously Beatrice had injured her knee. The injury failed fully to heal and, with her mobility definitely impaired, she had taken to using a wheelchair, which made travel difficult even without the added complication of the war. ‘An injury to her knee which nothing could cure, caused her intense pain both day and night, as she herself once confessed to me,’ Lord Mottistone told his audience in his obituary address to the House of Lords.
¹⁹
Before the war had ended, Beatrice was dead. Carisbrooke Castle, Osborne and St Mildred's all happily escaped enemy bombing. Late in 1945 Beatrice did return to the Isle of Wight, her body escorted by a naval guard of honour to its final resting place alongside that of her adored Liko. She had been his widow for forty-eight years.

But before then she had one last task to accomplish.

TWENTY-EIGHT

‘She struggled so hard to
“carry on”’

Eighty-two is an unusual age at which to begin building follies. If local legend is true, Beatrice's first and only exercise in folly-building occurred during the eleven months, from late September 1939 to mid-August 1940, she spent at a house called Ravenswood near Sharpthorne in West Sussex. Her health had deteriorated since the happy eightieth birthday presentation at Carisbrooke Castle in October 1937. By the spring of 1939 she was too unwell even to visit her sister Louise, close by at Kensington Palace.

I can assure you I am [thinking] of you morning noon and night [she wrote to Louise on 9 March], and felt it terribly not being able to go over and see you, if you cared for me to come. But my tiresome bronchial asthma has been very troublesome of late, I suppose owing to the cold winds, and I am at times so breathless I can hardly talk, and the least exertion brings it on. I am so grieved that your foot and ankle cause you so much pain and can thoroughly sympathise with you as mine are much the same.
¹

By September, with war declared and the prospect of worsening weather through the course of the London winter, Beatrice decided to leave Kensington Palace for Sussex. ‘I must send you a little note to say that I am off to the country as it has been thought better for me to go away for a little while, my bronchial asthma having been so very troublesome of late,’ she wrote again to Louise. She was still not well enough to make her farewell to her only remaining sister by any other means and had for the first time this summer not made her annual journey to the Isle
of Wight. ‘I hate not being able to wish you goodbye, but my breathlessness is so bad every exertion and agitation brings on an attack which makes me speechless and choky, so I could not dare venture to come for fear of upsetting you.’
²

With her ladies-in-waiting Minnie Cochrane and Bessie Bulteel, both of whom had been with her now for almost a lifetime (Minnie Cochrane's appointment coinciding with Beatrice's engagement in January 1885), and a secretary Mrs Norah Thomas, Beatrice left London for Sharpthorne. Ravenswood is a part-sixteenth-century house with later, mock-Tudor, half-timbered additions. Beatrice's contribution – a narrow tower with a spire and half-timbered upper storey, set just off centre of the irregular rear facade and distinctly German in appearance -represents an eccentric act of beautification and a surprising undertaking for a woman of her age and state of health at a time of international crisis. But Beatrice, whom Marie Mallet had once dismissed as lacking in imagination, had, like her mother, a strong romantic streak, as well as a love of the past. She also loved the German landscape and its buildings, writing to a friend as recently as 1936, ‘Of course the whole Valley of the Rhine is beautiful.’
³
Germany occupied her thoughts during her stay at Ravenswood, and not solely on account of the war.