THE GERMAN INVASION

“He is a dear, good, amiable, high-principled young man, who, I am sure, will make our dearest---- _very_ happy, and she will, I am sure, be a most devoted, loving wife to him. She is _very, very_ happy, and it is a pleasure to see their young, happy faces beaming with love for one another.”--_Letters of Queen Victoria._

“I am far more proud of my Stuart than of my Hanoverian ancestors.”--_Queen Victoria._

If Queen Victoria never neglected her duty at a funeral, and pleased her sentiment by remembering all death anniversaries, she extended that thought and sentiment to more cheerful things, and gave her protection to constant lovers. It is impossible for the ordinary commoner to believe that royal marriages are not solely the result of interested considerations, and however much it may be protested that a young princess or prince has made a love match, there are few to give the statement credence. However, the Queen helped forward some marriages which seem to have had their origin in sheer romance.

One of these took place in 1880 when Frederica, “the lily of Hanover,” the daughter of Victoria’s blind cousin George, whom Bismarck had deposed in 1866, owned herself in love with one of her father’s late equerries, Baron Pawell von Rammingen. This was certainly not a marriage of high degree for a princess, a great-granddaughter of George III of England and daughter of an ancient line of German kings.

George of Hanover, Frederica’s brother, was then living in Vienna, and there seemed little prospect before Frederica other than that of a lone lady of somewhat restricted means, when love pointed out the way. Finding herself hopeless against the world at the moment of her grand passion, she appealed to her earlier protectress, the Queen of England. The adventure pleased the Queen, who did not go all the way with German punctiliousness where true love was concerned. She arranged that the wedding should take place in her private chapel at Windsor. Remonstrance reached her from the Court of the German Emperor, and the whole of the etiquette-ruled nations looked askance upon the marriage, affecting to disbelieve that the Queen could have promised her support. Victoria was, however, determined that they should make no mistake about her sanction, and ordered that a list of the presents should appear in the Court Circular, and two days later had the dress and veil fully described and acknowledged as her gifts.

Thus she made two people happy, but one would imagine that the Baron was even happier out of Germany than in it; Lord Carlingford, writing to Edward Lear from Balmoral in 1884, said, “I found the Queen remarkably well, better in body and mind than I have seen her for a long time, though anxious about public affairs. The lady-in-waiting is the widowed Duchess of Roxburghe, whom I like. Princess Frederica of Hanover, and her husband Baron Pawell von Rammingen are here. He is a pleasing sort of man in an awkward position--one of the servants informed a maid-of-honour that ‘Mrs. Rummagen was come.’ She is very tall, distinguished and charming.”

If Victoria shocked Prussia by mothering this romance, a little later she found opportunity to flout all the German ideals of caste which have ever existed, and she carried out her rôle of fairy godmother with the same determined and complacent autocracy which she showed in neglecting some of her most important duties at home. Three more marriages she tried to arrange with morganatic bridegrooms on the one hand and one ducal and two royal princesses on the other. The bridegrooms were the Battenbergs.

If English people think of the Battenbergs at all they still either wonder who on earth they were, or content themselves with saying wearily, “Germans, of course.” They were Germans on their father’s side, that father being Alexander of Hesse, uncle to the Grand Duke Louis. But their mother was a Pole, whose father, said to have been of humble origin, rose to be War Minister at Hesse-Darmstadt. Alexander was brother to the Empress of Alexander II, Czar of Russia, and he took service in the Russian army in 1851. Before this he had met at the Court there Mademoiselle Haucke, a Polish maid-of-honour, and when he married her in 1851 the title of Princess Battenberg was given her by the Czar. Of this morganatic marriage at least five children were born, four boys and a girl, the three eldest boys being Louis, Alexander and Henry, two of them becoming German officers. Being first cousins of the husband of Princess Alice, the Queen naturally knew them well, and as they were handsome young men without a penny piece among them, they appealed strongly to her sense of protectiveness. The eldest boy she invited to England, where at the age of fourteen he arrived, and being naturalized entered the British Navy. This is he who, wisely yielding to natural British distrust, in the autumn of 1914 gave up his position as First Sea Lord of the Admiralty.

The second brother, Alexander, was made by the Tsar, in agreement with the other Powers, Prince of Bulgaria, but not being sufficiently subservient to his patron he fell into disgrace and had to give up his dignity, after which he wandered back to more western lands, his one ambition being to reoccupy his old position as a Prussian soldier.

The third boy, Henry, educated in Thuringia, became a lieutenant in the Saxon Hussars, and in 1882 a member of the Berlin “Garde du Corps.”

When her Majesty went abroad, which by this time was almost every year, she would generally see one or more of the Battenbergs. In 1871, when she was staying at the Villa Hohenlohe at Baden-Baden, among the guests was the mother, Princess Battenberg. This villa belonged to Victoria’s half-sister, Feodore; and the Queen went there once again--the following year--as a guest, for Feodore died in the autumn of 1872, after which her Majesty became owner of the property. Her continental holidays were spent in various places, Coburg occasionally attracting her. Baveno, on Lake Maggiore, was the chosen spot in 1879, and there, though it rained nearly all the time, she passed her days in the beautiful garden; from there she went to Les Rosieres at Mentone, where, from her window, she could look down on a forest of orange and citron trees.

In 1880 she went again to the Villa Hohenlohe, and thence to the castle at Darmstadt, where again she lived, her mind filled with memories and regrets, in her dead daughter’s rooms.

While she was there two things happened. One was the engagement, made by Bismarck, between Prince William of Prussia and Augusta Victoria, daughter of Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein-Sondenburg-Augustenburg, and granddaughter of Feodore. Bismarck’s choice was governed by his hatred of the Crown Princess, her sharp intellect and her English leanings, which made him look around for the most German of German princesses, one who would never think of opposing his rule. Augusta Victoria was the embodiment of his ideal; domestic and economical by necessity, the child of a mother whose intelligence was far from strong, all her qualities were simply housewifely. The engagement being an accomplished fact, Bismarck caused articles and paragraphs to appear in all the papers praising the Princess for her German manners, her German appearance, her German ways, until the gilded youth of Berlin jokingly declared that her only use was to make sweets and jam; to which Prince William replied, with pointed irony against his mother, that a wife who could make sweets was preferable to one who could discuss the Constitution. The second event was the birth of a romance between Princess Beatrice, the “permanent Princess,” as some one called her, and Prince Henry of Battenberg.

Princess Beatrice had for years been her mother’s shadow; flower shows, bazaars, Highland servants’ balls, secluded visits abroad, quiet existence at Osborne, Balmoral or Windsor, had made up the sum of her days; all punctuated by dreary drives to tombs and mausoleums and accompanied by all the varying moods of her royal mother, who could be very cross at times; she could, “for no reason, be arbitrary, contest a point and close the argument without further discussion” (_Quarterly Review_).

It is said that Princess Beatrice and Prince Henry became engaged secretly in 1881, but the secret was well kept, even from the Queen.

In 1882 Victoria stayed at Mentone for a month; in 1883 she had intended visiting Darmstadt again, for she had arranged a marriage between her then favourite Battenberg, Louis, and her granddaughter, Victoria of Hesse, they being first cousins once removed. However, her health was in far too precarious a state, and her sprained knee made it impossible for her to move about, for it was nearly a year from her fall on the stairs before the Queen could walk, even with the aid of sticks.

This Battenberg marriage caused more consternation in Germany than did that of Frederica. The Emperor William actually forbade it; the Princess had her grandmother at her back, however, and a grandmother who was not likely to defer to the scruples of another monarch in such a matter. So keenly necessary did the Queen consider her presence to make the affair go off smoothly, that a few days after the funeral of Prince Leopold she went to Hesse-Darmstadt, where the wedding was held on April 26, 1884, the two brothers, Alexander and Henry, being there. Three things happened at this visit: the first being the marked attentions shown by Alexander Battenberg to Princess Victoria of Prussia, daughter of the Crown Prince, which raised very ruffled feelings on the part of the Prussian royalties.

Another event was the confession of the secret between Henry and Princess Beatrice to Queen Victoria, which caused a great upheaval. It was one matter to allow one out of a multitude of granddaughters to marry a handsome young man without prospects, but quite another thing to approve of the same fate for the daughter of the most important royalty in the world. So the Princess went through a strenuous interval before her royal mother calmed down and considered the net advantages to herself of such a match. The more she considered the more solid she saw these advantages to be, and soon became as keen on it as was Princess Beatrice.

The third event--for a little time kept secret--on being revealed produced a more terrible explosion than anything that had gone before. It was the private marriage, on the very night of his daughter’s wedding, of the Grand Duke Louis with Countess Kalomine, another nobody from the royal point of view.

The old William of Prussia and Victoria joined hands over this: the one from Imperial pride and the other from pride and sentiment, for the Queen regarded a second marriage as something irreligious, if not actually blasphemous. The two monarchs worked so hard over the affair that in a few months the Supreme Court of Leipzig decided that Countess Kalomine was not legally the wife of Duke Louis, though it was said that justice and common sense were on the lady’s side. It is curious to see that in all these cases the man who was a nobody from the royal point of view was eligible, but the woman who was not royal was a person to be scorned. It was Victoria’s way.

The engagement of Princess Beatrice was not publicly announced until the end of November, when it created a stir in England, public opinion being intensely against it. People reasoned that here was another German, a lieutenant in the Prussian army with pay of about £70 a year, who would have to be supported by them--and there were already too many such.

Henry’s elder brother Louis had become a commander in the navy, raised over the heads of English officers; Prince Christian, comfortably settled with a good income in a comfortable house in Windsor Park, had no need to seek for a sinecure, or a position with emolument; Count Gleichen was Constable of Windsor Castle and an admiral of the British Fleet; Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar was moved from the Government House at Portsmouth and given the command of the Forces in Ireland early in 1885, a post which should have been bestowed upon an English soldier; Prince Leiningen, commander of the Queen’s yacht, was made vice-admiral; Princess Frederica and her husband were always with us; Prince Teck was raising comment at the time through alleged extravagance, a sale of “surplus” furniture having been effected at Kensington Palace.

Really the most loyal had some cause for complaint at this German invasion; but Victoria did not mind, and calmly went on dealing out posts and honours in the face of all grumblers. She could not understand that her people were a power with which the sovereign should deal, but went straight over all their susceptibilities and prejudices, never failing to make a demand when she needed their money. What is the use of being a queen if you cannot do as you like? The Prince of Wales had a far finer sense of delicacy; that is to say, the somewhat brutal Georgian characteristics were in him modified by generosity and perception. His eldest boy came of age in January 1885, but though he himself was deeply in debt, and had an income which, large as it was, did not do all that was required of it, he asked no settlement for his son. His horror at the inevitable Radical comments made him decide to leave the field open to his sister Beatrice. On her account the Queen made the usual demands--a dowry of £30,000 and £6000 a year--and the weary Commons, seeing at last a temporary end of royal marriages in sight, gave, after the usual strong protests, and with thirty-eight dissentients, their assent.

If Germany was astonished at the Frederica marriage and affronted at that of the Louis Battenberg’s, it was in a state of stupefaction over the Henry Battenberg alliance. Even the Princess Royal could not be reconciled to it, and as usual said what she thought. The Prince of Wales also did his utmost to oppose it, and altogether discord was rampant in the royal family. This was shown in the first week of January 1885, when the Queen and the permanent Princess absented themselves from the great coming-of-age celebrations at Sandringham. Prince Henry, who was in England in December, left our shores without receiving the congratulations either of the Prince of Wales or the Duke of Edinburgh. It is easy to imagine the disgust of the Duchess of Edinburgh, Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna, over so unpretending a bridegroom.

Even Ernst of Saxe-Coburg ranged himself against the Queen and refused to be present at the wedding, which wedding, however, was really of supreme importance only to the chief persons concerned. Prince Henry was constantly coming over to England, and the lovers had opportunities of meeting when in April Victoria went first to Aix-les-Bains and then to Darmstadt, where a great-grandchild, daughter of the Louis Battenbergs, was christened.

The Queen was at this time, 1885, not quite sixty-eight years of age, but she dressed like a very old woman, and it was quite common for people to think of her as aged. The following paragraph from an unidentifiable newspaper cutting gives an interesting picture of her as she appeared just before going abroad--

“Here comes the Queen! The cry is raised far off, and at a rapid rate on comes the imposing cavalcade, through loud buzzing of the multitude of lips, ‘The Queen! The Queen!’ As usual there is a small military escort, cavalry with drawn swords and others. Then come the outriders, jockeys on horseback, riding rapidly and clad in the deepest mourning livery. The Queen’s carriage is drawn by four splendid horses conducted by a postilion mounted on one of them. Two Highlanders now occupy the seat once so proudly held by John Brown, one of them being his brother George, who is now with the Queen. At sight of the aged sovereign every hat is raised. The great lady shows the years of sorrow. Her hair is white and her face careworn. She is dressed in the very deepest mourning, with heavy _crêpe_ veil and the widow’s cap. Beside her sits Princess Beatrice, clad in what is called half-mourning, with a purple velvet bonnet, and a mantle embroidered with the same colour. On the front seat of the carriage is Prince Henry of Battenberg, the Princess’s affianced husband. He is a fine-looking man, with what I should call features rather square cut. One can well understand the rumour that on both sides this may be a love match.”

During that short stay in London the little party went to the Botanical Gardens, and coming away the off-leader took fright, plunged and kicked, and only with great difficulty was got under control. The leading pair had to be detached, and the Queen drove away with only two horses.

By July, when the wedding took place at Osborne, most of the quarrels had at least been smoothed over; the Prince of Wales gave away the bride, the Princess of Wales supported the Queen at the ceremony in Whippingham Church. Prince Louis of Hesse, whitewashed by this time, was of necessity present, but there was no representative at all from Prussia, and the daughters of the Crown Princess did not join the bridesmaids as did the young Princesses of Wales. Gladstone was carefully omitted from the invitation list.

Directly after the marriage Henry of Battenberg was created a royal prince by the Queen, which completed the consternation among her Prussian cousins, who decided that her Majesty was insulting them, and all foreign Courts refused to recognize the title, which, however, gave him in England precedence over the husband of Princess Louise, the Marquis of Lorne, never too well treated by the family into which he had married.

Victoria further bestowed upon her new son-in-law the Order of the Garter, a bestowal which entailed an outlay of about £500, which she intended to defray, but when it came to the point she thought it better to let the privilege devolve upon her faithful subjects.

The German comments upon this new Royal Highness aroused her defiance, and she looked round to see how she could further prove her power in the making of princes. Count Gleichen, another son of her sister Feodore, had in 1861 married a daughter of Sir George Seymour, and this being a morganatic marriage he had renounced his rank as Prince Victor Hohenlohe, taking instead a minor title of his father’s. The Queen commanded him to resume his original title, but of course the German relatives refused to recognize this, though Prince Victor’s children are cousins to the present German Empress.

Early in August Prince Henry’s parents, Alexander of Hesse and Princess Battenberg, were guests at Windsor, and then the royal party went northwards, as the bridal pair were to live with the Queen. Prince Henry was very obedient in those days, for he, and with him Louis of Hesse, wore kilts and sporrans on the journey, and he had to wear these breezy garments for three months, until chill November nearing its end he was permitted to return to town with his wife and mamma-in-law.

The Queen did not often let things be done in Scotland in a half-hearted way. All the male servants and relatives had to don the kilt, the change of costume having to be made _en route_ in the train. Her love for the Stuarts made her choose the Royal Stuart tartan plaid as the dominant adornment of Balmoral. Thus all the carpets were made of it, and much of the furniture covered with it, while the thistle was embroidered on her chairs, and her favourite dinner service was bordered with tartan. It must have been hideously depressing, but she loved it. One of her most cherished possessions was a little pin-cushion on tartan wooden mounts with a portrait of the Prince on one side, and this was said to be always on her dressing-table. This reminds me of an assertion I have seen somewhere that on her breakfast-table every Sunday, and only on Sunday, two little silver saltcellars were always laid, which had been given her by John Brown. When in the north she chose Scottish doctors, and it is on record that one newly appointed medical professor announced the honour to his class by writing on the blackboard that he had been made physician to the Queen. When later in the day he looked at the board again some wag had added “God save the Queen.”

Once Victoria asked a crowd to Balmoral. It was in 1885, when the British Association met at Aberdeen under the presidency of Lyon Playfair, and she first invited him and Lord Rayleigh, the Montreal president, to dine and sleep, the chief point of conversation mentioned being her description of the Prince Consort’s interest in science. This meeting probably suggested an invitation to all the members, and the newspapers supplied details not mentioned in the _Memoirs of Sir Lyon Playfair_, by Wemyss Reid. The British Association arrived there, but found that both the Queen and Princess Beatrice had arranged a day’s excursion for themselves which would keep them away as long as the visitors were near the castle; and probably the former never knew that it was said that the accommodation was defective and the luncheon-table somewhat meagre. A very different reception from that accorded to the British Association by the Queen and Prince Albert in 1859.