Childhood at Court, 1819-1914 (21 page)

On 21 May 1889 Beatrice had another son at Windsor, named Leopold in honour of the brother to whom she had been so close. Three days later the Queen celebrated her seventieth birthday, and the two elder Battenberg children went to her bedroom, ‘Drino’ shyly holding a nosegay as he wished ‘Gangan’ many happy returns.

Just over two years later, on 3 October 1891, a third son to Beatrice and Henry was born at Balmoral. His birth in Scotland was a signal for great celebrations. The gold font was brought up from the south, and a battery of artillery discharged the royal salute. A bonfire was built on the top of Craig Gowan, with a procession of pipers, followed by ghillies, cottars and keepers, carrying flaming pine torches, marching up the hill to light a blaze that could be seen for miles around Deeside. With whisky to fortify them on their way, they danced on the flat rocky space reserved for such occasions. At the end of October, the baby was christened in the drawing-room at Balmoral. The Queen held him proudly, dressed in the historic christening robe worn by so many princes and princesses before him, and by her side stood the father, wearing the Royal Stuart tartan. The names given to Queen Victoria’s fortieth and last grandchild were Maurice Victor Donald, the last as a compliment to the people of Scotland.

The young Battenbergs were of the same generation as the young Connaughts and Albanys, and the three groups of cousins were regular playmates. Most of the other cousins were already grown up, but sometimes they were happy to join in their games, in particular giving the smaller children pick-a-back rides. It was a heart-rending occasion for the adults in November 1888 when Vicky, the once young and optimistic Princess Royal, returned for a visit to her homeland five months after the death from cancer of her beloved husband, Emperor Frederick III. With her came their three younger, unmarried daughters, all dressed in deepest mourning. ‘Those cousins were lovely to us,’ Alice of Albany recalled, ‘and raced each other with Charlie and me seated pick-aback on their bustles.’
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*The museum collection was regularly added to until around 1900. In 1916 it was rearranged and amalgamated with certain items from the Swiss Cottage by Guy Laking, Keeper of the King’s Armoury and Curator of the London Museum, who gave each object its own distinctive gold label.

*Thirty-ninth, if two who had been stillborn were included.

M
uch as she still disliked babies, in old age Queen Victoria enjoyed the company of young children, and seemed more tolerant towards adolescents. Age had mellowed her, and she became a kindly old lady. She found it much easier to get on with her grandchildren than her own children. It was good to have granddaughters staying with her, particularly the motherless son and daughters of Alice, in whom she took a special protective interest after the tragic weeks of winter 1878.

In November that year Princess Victoria had contracted diphtheria which spread rapidly to her brother, sisters and father. Only Elizabeth, the second daughter, escaped as she had gone to stay with relatives before the infection started. The youngest child, four-year-old May, succumbed, and Ernie was close to death at one stage. From Darmstadt, their lady-in-waiting, Wilhelmine de Grancy, took up the sad story, writing to Lady Fanny Howard (17 November):

our dear, sweet Princess May has not been able to resist the dreadful illness. She died very suddenly in the night before last. The Grand Duke, Prince Ernie and the three Princesses are, thank God, getting better. Yesterday Prince Ernie was still
very
ill and seriously in danger. What an anxiety for the poor Grand Duchess, besides the bitter grief of losing that sweet child. May God help her, she must hide her sorrow before them, till they are better. I have not seen her. I have been absent for the last eight weeks and just as I was coming back I got a telegram to say I was not to do so; till yesterday I got another telling me to come, and I am here since this morning but not at the Palace . . . I long to see her, oh how much, but I must be patient, it is at least better to be here, near her; to be away was almost more than I could bear.
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The children recovered, but Alice caught the infection and in her weakened state she stood no chance. She died on 14 December, the anniversary of her father’s death; in Queen Victoria’s words, the coincidence was ‘almost incredible and most mysterious’. Among her adult granddaughters none, perhaps, was closer to her than Princess Victoria of Hesse. As Alice’s eldest child, she virtually took on the role of mother to the children when their father Grand Duke Louis was left a widower.

Queen Victoria, the Princess recalled with admiration and detachment many years later, was invariably gracious to her grandchildren, but still expected perfect manners and immediate obedience from them, and any offender would be left in no doubt as to her displeasure. ‘These are the years of Angeli’s portrait, with its stern and rather forbidding expression of face. My mother’s death broke through many of these outward barriers and the constant signs of affectionate pity and interest, gave to our intercourse a more natural ease.’
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Though she had been strict with the elder grandchildren, the younger generation – particularly the young Connaughts and Battenbergs – found that she had mellowed with the proverbial grandmother’s leniency by then. After the gloom of her early widowhood, when most signs of outward amusement had been severely frowned upon, the Queen’s natural Hanoverian high spirits reawakened.

Like her children, contemporary relatives and close friends, all her grandchildren would receive special personal letters on their birthdays with presents, usually toys for the boys, or jewellery for the girls. ‘I hope you like the pearls &
watch?
’ the Queen wrote to Princess Victoria of Hesse (5 April 1874), wishing her a happy eleventh birthday. ‘It belonged to me as a child – & as it has a V on it – I thought it would do for you.’
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The grandchildren often responded with items of carefully crafted handiwork as presents. In May 1888 the Edinburgh Princesses, then living at San Antonio Palace on Malta, made her a quilt which the Duke and Duchess brought to England on a brief visit at around the time of her birthday.

Despite the ageing Queen’s indulgence, there were limits as to what the youngsters could get away with. The eldest child of Princess Victoria of Hesse, by then Princess Louis of Battenberg, was born on 25 February 1885, in the same room and bed overlooking the Long Walk at Windsor, as she had been born in herself nearly twenty-two years earlier. She was named Alice in memory of her grandmother. When she was about four, Alice refused to kiss her great-grandmother’s hand. ‘Naughty child,’ the Queen said in a severe voice, slapping her hand gently. ‘Naughty Grandmama,’ Alice retorted, returning the slap. Princess Victoria hurriedly removed her.
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Although the Queen was fond of small children, sometimes she seemed shy when confronted by them. When she was seventy-five, she met Victor Mallet, then a month off his second birthday. Victor was the son of her lady-in-waiting, Marie Mallet, and one of her many godsons. She described the ‘audience’, at which she introduced Victor in his smart brown velvet blouse, muslin collar and ruffs, to kiss her hand and answer ‘Good morning Queen’, boldly. He was ‘charmed at once by the Queen’s beaming smile’, as she announced that she had a little present for him. On a low table was a miniature landau drawn by a pair of grey horses, gaily painted and lined with blue satin. His eyes grew large as he murmured ‘Gee-gees’, running excitedly to the table. While his mother and the Queen were talking, his eye wandered round the room and he suddenly pointed to a picture by Landseer of one of the Prince Consort’s greyhounds, murmuring ‘Bootiful dog’. No courtier, his mother commented approvingly, could have spoken better. After further conversation, she touched her electric bell to signify the audience was at an end. ‘Thank-oo kind Queen,’ Victor piped up when prompted by his mother, and kissed hands. It was with some difficulty that Marie persuaded her son to leave the room with her.
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Well-behaved children were a delight to the Queen, but bad manners were never tolerated. Entering a room at Windsor one day, she saw movement behind the curtains. Tearing them open, she found a page-boy evidently sucking a sweet. ‘You horrid small boy!’ she snapped, smacking his cheek. A saliva-covered bull’s-eye promptly shot across the floor.
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The experiences at court of the son of John Dalton, now Canon of St George’s, Windsor, left their mark on him. The tutor to the Prince of Wales’s sons, who remained a bachelor well into his forties, had married Catharine Evan Thomas in 1886. The following year their son Hugh was born at the family home, The Gnoll, a country mansion near Neath, Glamorgan, and brought up at The Cloisters, near St George’s Chapel, Windsor. One of his godparents was Prince Albert Victor, who was in Denmark when the christening took place, but sent a set of drinking cups bought in Copenhagen as a present for his little godson: ‘I think they ought to come in useful when my Godson grows older as I used to have the same kind of cups for drinking out of as a child.’
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One of Hugh Dalton’s first memories, he claimed, was being wheeled in a pram by his nurse down the Long Walk, at Windsor, between lines of elm trees. Seeing a woman picking up odds and ends of firewood, he pointed at her, saying, ‘Look, there’s a lady picking up sticks!’ The nurse who, he said, was ‘well trained in the stiff class structure of our society’, retorted, ‘That’s not a lady. That’s only an old woman.’ At tea, he was presented to a titled visitor. ‘Come and say “how-do-you-do” to this lady,’ his mother instructed. ‘You’re not a lady,’ he snapped at the visitor, ‘you’re only an old woman.’
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From that incident, he averred, dated his sense of social equality.

At the age of four Hugh attended a Christmas party at Windsor Castle as, he says, one of ‘hundreds’, seated at long tables. Queen Victoria entered with a lady-in-waiting, and the children were all called to attention, ordered to stand up and stop eating. The Queen passed slowly, evidently told by the lady the name of each child, saying a few words to all in turn. When she came to Hugh she looked at his plate, which he had just filled generously.

‘What a lot of grapes you’ve got,’ she remarked with some asperity.

‘Yes, Queen,’ he replied shrilly.

‘I expect you’d like me to go away, so that you can eat all those grapes.’

‘Yes, Queen.’

She turned to the lady-in-waiting and said crossly, ‘What a loud voice that child has, just like his father!’
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Nobody, it was said, could ever fall asleep during his sermons.

In his memoirs Hugh Dalton looked back on his royal surroundings with ill-concealed distaste. He had no affection for royalty, partly as they offended his ‘sense of social equality’, and partly as the royal family had the first claim on his father’s affections. In particular, the Canon was too devoted to the development and welfare of Princes Albert Victor and George of Wales, and his own family – particularly his son – paid the price. The former died when Hugh was only four, but George, created Duke of York a few months after his brother’s death, treated Hugh with ‘only well-trained politeness’ when he was an adult. As King, George V once had to receive father and son together, and afterwards turned to the Canon, ordering him never to bring that anarchist son of his near him again.

John Dalton’s second child was stillborn, and his third was a daughter, named Alexandra Mary, always ‘Georgie’ in the family after the Duke of York who was her godfather. Her father was so disappointed at not having another son that when he was given the news he turned on his heels in disgust and left the room. He never took more than a grudging interest in his son and daughter, who bore the scars throughout childhood. Sad to say, this shared parental coldness did not bring them any closer. As a boy Hugh disliked his sister, bullying and teasing her persistently. The mutual antipathy lasted throughout their lives.*

Princess Ena was a special favourite at court. Queen Victoria doted on her, and Henry was especially proud of his fair-haired daughter. He spent more time with their children than Beatrice, who seemed curiously unmaternal. Perhaps she had been so used to acting as an unofficial honorary secretary and companion to her mother that old habits died hard. Henry it was who could be relied on to make time to attend to his children’s games and lessons. From time to time he went sailing abroad, as a safety valve from the boredom of life at his mother-in-law’s court. When he returned after these trips he always brought back presents for his children. From Seville, he brought Ena a fan when she was five. Her first link with the country of which she would one day be Queen Consort, she treasured it throughout her life.

Though Queen Victoria adored her Battenberg grandchildren, there was no question of her granting them any licence not accorded to the others. On wet days at Windsor they had to stay indoors, and were not allowed to play the piano or sing, or make a noise. In order to keep boredom at bay, they devised a game called ‘Christian martyrs’, in which they prowled around the rooms looking for each other, then inflicted pain on their victim, who was not allowed to make a noise.

As the only girl with three brothers, Ena longed to take part in the boys’ games and activities. Forbidden to climb a high tree her brothers used to enjoy, she would sit sobbing underneath, ‘I can
do
it. I can
do
it. And I fall softer than they do.’
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Often disobedient, she came in for her fair share of punishment. One day the governess tied her hands together with rope, and connected it to the outside knob of the door. Anyone passing could see her, and she was terrified the Queen would come past. Soon the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, came on his way to see the Queen on official business. ‘Surely you must have stolen the Crown Jewels to be punished like this?’ he asked her gravely. Had she been impertinent? She could not remember. Laughing good-naturedly at her plight, he untied the rope.
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