The Heir Apparent (17 page)

Victoria (being Victoria) began to worry that Alix would never have children.
²⁸
Alix complained of sickness, but this was dismissed as insignificant. Sieveking prescribed quinine to strengthen her. Not until a month later, in August, did he see Alix alone for the first time. He spoke German to her, in an attempt to put her at her ease, but he didn’t examine her. She gave him a list of the dates of her periods, from which it appeared that she had last menstruated on 30 April, and then only for one day on 7 June. Sieveking recorded: “I expressed the opinion that the 7th June did not count and that she must reckon pregnancy, if enceinte, from the middle of May, accordingly she may be nearly three months gone.”
²⁹

Sieveking still had doubts about the pregnancy, as the princess’s figure remained unchanged. Not until a month later did Bertie report to Sieveking that her dresses were becoming too tight, “whereat I expressed my joy, as it was the first confirmatory symptom of pregnancy which had occurred.” A few days later he saw the Queen, who still refused to believe that the princess was pregnant.
³⁰

Even after the pregnancy had become visible, Alix put on hardly any weight and felt and looked unusually well. Victoria feared the worst. “They say it is not a sign of strength,” she wrote ominously.
³¹

The real danger to Alix’s well-being came from Denmark. In November 1863, the old King of Denmark died and Alix’s father succeeded as King Christian IX. He was at once confronted with a crisis over the vexed issue of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. The Danish parliament had already voted to incorporate Schleswig, which was half Danish and half German (Holstein was German), into Denmark, but King Christian knew that if he signed this new constitution, he risked conflict with Germany. “Germany” meant the German Confederation, a loose grouping of thirty-nine states, but the rise of Prussia gave it a new military significance.

Vicky and her husband, Fritz, were staying at Windsor when the
news came through that King Christian had signed. After a disagreeable breakfast with Fritz, who, as Crown Prince of Prussia, was “very violent” in his support for the claims of Germany, Victoria was in despair—“
miserable
, wretched, almost frantic without my Angel to stand by me, and
put
the
others
down, and in their right place!
No
respect is paid to
my
opinion
now
, and this helplessness almost drives me
wild
.”
³²
So divided were her family over this question that Victoria’s uncle Leopold urged her to forbid them from discussing it in her presence.
³³

Between the conflicting claims of Denmark and Germany, Victoria’s mind was soon made up. King Christian, she insisted, had brought his troubles on himself by his foolish attempt to incorporate Schleswig into Denmark, and he must face the consequences.
³⁴
She supported the claims of the prince of Augustenburg, who was her nephew, known in the family as Fritz Holstein and married to the daughter of her half sister, Feodora.
^†

Victoria claimed that in opposing Denmark, she was merely doing what Albert would have done. Why oh why, she wailed, could her beloved not be here “to write those admirable
memoranda
which are
gospel now
.”
³⁵
Albert had indeed criticized the Treaty of London, which imposed a Danish ruler on the predominantly German population of Holstein. His logic went as follows: “Schleswig is entitled to insist on union with Holstein; Holstein belongs to Germany, and the Augustenburgs are the heirs.”
³⁶
But Victoria also found it convenient to claim Albert’s support to vindicate her own prejudices. Naturally, she sided with “dear Germany,” aligning herself with Vicky and Fritz. She despised Alix’s family and thought King Christian a fool. And, by now, she had come to believe that Bertie’s marriage was a mistake. Alix was “dear and amiable,” but (she told Alice), “I do
regret
deeply the connection and feel
those
 … who so strongly opposed it
were right
.”
³⁷

The Schleswig-Holstein crisis roused Victoria to make her first political intervention since Albert’s death. It was badly misjudged. Her
support for Germany placed her in opposition to Palmerston, her prime minister, and foreign secretary Earl Russell, who urged mediation in the interests of Denmark. Palmerston argued that King Christian had not yet violated international law, but this cut no ice with the Queen, who saw the Schleswig-Holstein issue as a family quarrel where justice was on the side of the Augustenburgs. That the monarch was not supposed to pursue a foreign policy of her own but support her government’s policy worried her not at all. When Russell attempted to deter the Germans by warning that Britain might be obliged to intervene on the side of Denmark, the Queen overruled him and protested to the Cabinet.
³⁸

The Schleswig-Holstein question was notoriously complicated—Palmerston famously quipped that only three people understood it: Prince Albert, who was dead, a German professor, who had gone mad, and he himself, who had forgotten all about it. Victoria certainly did not understand it, and she acted not as a constitutional monarch ought but (in the words of one diplomatic historian) as “a violent partisan inspired by emotion rather than reason.”
³⁹
She failed to realize that “Dear Germany” was changing. Albert’s dream of a liberal, “good” Germany united by Prussia and ruled by Vicky and Fritz was melting away. In Prussia, Otto von Bismarck secretly prepared for war against Denmark, the first step in his program of uniting Germany by iron and blood, creating an autocratic royal state. By refusing support for King Christian, and blocking her ministers’ efforts to mediate, Victoria was unwittingly playing into Bismarck’s hands, as Denmark’s diplomatic isolation allowed him to go to war and score an overwhelming military victory.

Bertie and Alix stayed at Osborne with the Queen for Christmas 1863. When the news came through that German troops were occupying Holstein, Alix dissolved into tears. Surprising everyone with her assertiveness, she insisted that the duchies belonged to her papa. Victoria was pitiless. From her desk she penned long, stern letters to her ministers: “Should war ensue between the German Powers and Denmark, in consequence of the violation by the latter of her promises respecting
Schleswig … the Queen [could not] consider that any obligation rested upon England to come to the assistance of Denmark.”
⁴⁰

Bertie and Alix retreated to Frogmore near Windsor for New Year’s, thankful to escape Victoria’s anti-Dane politics as well as her ban on smoking. “You need not be afraid that the new
Royal
Edict ag[ain]st the
sinful
practice of smoking will be carried out in my house,” Bertie told his cousin, King Leopold’s son Philip, “the more you smoke when you come, the better I shall be pleased.”
⁴¹

On 8 January, Alix complained of slight pains, but in the afternoon she insisted on being pushed in a sleigh on the ice at Virginia Water to watch Bertie playing a game of ice hockey. The cold was so intense that the photographer summoned from Windsor was forced to abandon his attempt to record the game, as the solution on the photographic plates froze solid.
⁴²
Alix left early, and around six p.m. her pains came on more rapidly. Bertie telegrammed Dr. Sieveking in London: “Please come by earliest train and stay here tonight.” At 8:50 Alix gave birth to a son who was probably two months premature, though no one was quite sure of the dates. Bertie was present in the room throughout the labor. Alix and Bertie were both distressed, fearing that the baby would die. Only the local Windsor doctor, Brown, attended the delivery. When Sieveking eventually arrived, he was met on the stairs by Bertie, who declared, “I am a father!”
⁴³
The baby was healthy and ruddy, but tiny, weighing only 3¾ pounds.
⁴⁴

Nothing was ready. No nurse, no baby clothes, no wet nurse. At least Alix escaped the daunting presence of ministers and grand accoucheurs who might otherwise have been assembled to attend the birth of an heir to the throne. Lord Granville, a Cabinet minister, happened to be staying and acted as witness. “It was very touching to see the Prince of Wales’s emotion,” he wrote.
⁴⁵
Lady Macclesfield, a “precise little stick” who was herself a mother of thirteen, was in attendance at Frogmore.
^‡
46
She made the bed with clean linen, cleared away
the bloodied sheets, and wrapped the baby in cotton wool.
⁴⁷
Because the child was premature, Alix was unable to breast-feed even if she had wished to do so, and a wet nurse was hurriedly procured from Windsor.
^§

After it was all over, looking into the bedroom, Lady Macclesfield saw Alix and Bertie weeping together on the bed.
⁴⁸
Bertie’s devotion and tenderness toward his wife was touching to behold.

The Queen at Osborne was “dumbfounded” to receive a telegram at eleven p.m. from Bertie announcing the birth.
⁴⁹
She spent a sleepless night worrying what had caused this premature confinement and hastened to Windsor next day. She found Bertie “pale and worn, and so quiet and kind and happy.”
⁵⁰
Alix pleased her, too, the more so as she confessed that she “dislikes the whole business extremely and is utterly disgusted with it all.”
⁵¹
To Victoria it all seemed like a dream, and “one wh[ich] I like to dwell on,” though, of course, “it … c[oul]d not bring back my Angel, and I am
ever, ever
lonely.”
⁵²

Victoria insisted that the baby should be called by the double name Albert Victor. Wags dubbed him “All-but on the ice,” and he was always known as Eddy. At the christening, Victoria held him in her arms, and he roared throughout the ceremony.
⁵³

In April 1864, Fritz led the Prussian army in a crushing victory over the Danes. Victoria deplored the war, the more so as it soon became evident that Bismarck planned to ditch the Duke of Augustenburg and take over the duchies for Prussia. In spite of her dismay at Prussia’s war policy, however, Victoria remained close to Vicky. “Politics must never divide relations—at least not the female part,” she told her.
⁵⁴
It was different with Bertie. His marriage created a division in the family. “Oh, if
Bertie’s wife was only a good German and not a Dane!” lamented Victoria.
⁵⁵
“A Danish
partisan
you must
never
be,” she told Bertie, “or you put
yourself
against your whole family and against your Mother and Sovereign—who (God knows!) has been as
impartial
as
anyone
ever was!” Bertie must never forget that “your connexion with Denmark is
only
of a year’s standing, and … your whole family
are
German and you are yourself half German.”
⁵⁶
To Alice, her confidante among her children, the only one to whom she could pour out her “overburdened heart,” Victoria wrote long, heavily underlined letters, over and again regretting Bertie’s marriage, which “ought
not
to
have been
.”
⁵⁷
“Do try and make Bertie feel
how
shamefully
ungrateful
it is of him to be
unkind
to poor
Vicky
,” Victoria implored Alice.
⁵⁸
Victoria blamed the rift on Alix’s scheming mother, Queen Louise.
^‖
59
Bertie, she declared was “
so weak
” that he was “swayed by the
opinion
of the last person he speaks to, and he has no
reasoning
or
reflective powers
.”
⁶⁰
The fact was, however, that Bertie’s views on the Schleswig-Holstein war were far closer to the British government’s than were the Queen’s.

Bertie asked to be sent Foreign Office dispatches. The Queen was predictably dismissive. The last thing she wanted was for him to communicate directly with ministers, undermining her anti-Dane policy. Bertie, she responded, could be sent a précis of the dispatches received by her. This, her secretary assured the foreign secretary, Lord Russell, would allow the Queen to control Bertie’s reading of official papers, as “HRH is not, at all times, as discreet as he should be.”
⁶¹
That Bertie was loose-tongued and probably too lazy to read the dispatches anyway was an unfair charge, which was often to be repeated.

The Schleswig-Holstein war ended in May 1864 with the ignominious defeat of the Danes, who were forced to surrender the duchies. Prussia’s conquest of Schleswig left festering wounds, and poisoned relations between Germany and Denmark. To Alix, Prussia was henceforth known as the “robber’s den.”
⁶²
Bertie’s defection to what Victoria
called the “enemy’s camp” was the first step in the construction of an anti-Prussian dynastic bloc by the Danish royal family.
⁶³
Few would have guessed that Alix, the pretty, docile Danish princess, would be the linchpin in a reconfiguration of dynastic alliances.

The arranged marriage between Bertie and Alix had developed into a genuinely affectionate relationship. Alix’s feelings had never been in doubt, but Bertie’s devotion was now manifest. He supported Alix’s family over the Danish war, though this cut him off from his mother and sisters. He was tender and protective of Alix.

Victoria’s interference only brought them closer together. The Queen worried about Alix’s health. Alix, commented Victoria, three months after the birth of the baby, looked terribly thin, as flat as a board with a face like a knife.
⁶⁴
Victoria enlisted the aging Uncle Leopold, who was instructed to warn Bertie that it would be “a [great] national misfortune if Alix got
weaker
and
weaker.
… You
must not mince
the matter,” the Queen told him, “but
speak strongly
and
frighten
Bertie.”
⁶⁵