Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires (14 page)

Ninety-Nine Days

(1884–88)

T
he exhilarating, stimulating lifestyle May Teck was experiencing after only six months in Florence received a sudden, frightening interruption on March 5, 1884, when her father suffered a massive stroke. Those close to the family were shocked by Mary Adelaide’s efforts to downplay the gravitas of the situation—the duke’s left arm and leg were paralyzed, and his mouth was noticeably crooked. With the Duchess of Teck unwilling to accept the reality of the situation—or more accurately, her unwillingness to allow it to interfere with her highly prized social life—the arduous responsibility of caring for Francis fell on her daughter. May, who was only a teenager, was left profoundly altered from caring for her demanding father around the clock. The tempestuous duke took his dark moods out on his daughter. But instead of lashing back at her father, May “determined to keep her emotions strictly under control and not to allow her father’s quirks to upset her.”
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This decision to keep up a strong front regardless of her internal emotions would become one of the most defining characteristics of May’s personality. From 1884 onward, she rarely lost her temper and never did so in public. It set a pattern for the rest of her life; she reserved her emotions more the worse a situation became.

In April, the Tecks moved out of their hotel and into their own private residence, the Villa I Cedri. A fifteenth-century house three miles outside of Florence, May’s family was offered use of the house, rent-free, by its owner, Bianca Light, whose brother was the president of the English Club in Florence. It was a picturesque Tuscan villa with a flat, tiled roof and yellow-tinged walls. Surrounding it was an elaborate English country garden filled with ilexes, cedars, and magnolias. From the balcony, May could see beyond I Cedri’s walls across the vineyard-covered Tuscan landscape. Moving into her own private residence suited the Duchess of Teck quite well, who used it as an excuse to continue her exorbitant spending by hosting her now-customary parties. Telegrams apprising the British royal family of the duchess’s behavior flew between Florence and London regularly. Most of the ones arriving from Britain were from either the queen or the Duchess of Cambridge, imploring Mary Adelaide to learn some self-restraint. But after years of such unrepentant profligacy, the Duchess of Cambridge began to see her daughter as a financial delinquent of sorts.

After nearly two years in Florence, in April 1885, messengers arrived at I Cedri informing the Tecks that permission had been granted for their return to Britain. The decision had been in the works for some time. Mary Adelaide’s brother, the Duke of Cambridge, made the point to the queen that there seemed little point to keeping the Tecks abroad any longer, since his sister seemed uninterested in mending her ways. It was also hurting the prospects for her children. May, he argued, was not receiving the education necessary for an English princess, while Alge was barely being educated at all. On the evening of May 24, 1885, the Tecks left Florence by train, arriving in Paris the next day for a brief layover. This afforded May the chance to visit the Louvre, stimulating her newfound historic and academic curiosity. “I admired the Rubenses and some of the Murillos immensely,” she wrote about her day in Paris. “The rooms are beautiful … We lunched with Lord Lyons (the British Ambassador), who was kindness itself … We left Paris at eight, and our crossing [the English Channel] was so-so, rather a swell.”
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At dawn on the morning of May 26, the Tecks disembarked at Victoria Station in central London’s Belgravia district. It was Princess May’s eighteenth birthday. She was thrilled to be home, writing to a friend that same day, “we reached London about seven, to find the dear boys waiting for us at the station.” The “dear boys” May spoke of were her brothers Dolly and Frank. “They are so grown,” she wrote, “Frank much taller than Mama.… I am so glad to be in London again.”
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An important milestone in Princess May’s life took place two months after she returned to England. On August 1, 1885, her confirmation was held in the Chapel Royal of Saint James’s Palace. With this acknowledgment that her youth was over, May was invited to take on more official responsibilities as a member of the royal family. In 1886 alone, she was present at the opening of Parliament, attended the ceremony for the laying of the foundation stone when construction began on the Tower Bridge, and accompanied Queen Victoria to the opening of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition. The grandest occasion that May participated in was one of the country’s most highly anticipated affairs of 1887: Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, marking the fiftieth anniversary of her reign. All of London came alive for the first great celebration of monarchy since Prince Albert’s death in 1861. Jubilee fever was epidemic. Coins were minted, medals were created, and jubilee brooches and tie pins were sold. In some cases, convicts were even released from prison, while others had their sentences remitted. Foreign royals flooded into the English capital to celebrate Victoria’s momentous reign. Along with her grandfather George III, only two other English monarchs—Henry III and Edward III—had ever ruled that long. On June 20, Princess May joined nearly forty other members of the royal family as they rode in state to Saint Paul’s Cathedral for a service of thanksgiving. The response from the general public was literally overwhelming. Lady Geraldine Somerset, a lady-in-waiting to May’s grandmother the Duchess of Cambridge, wrote,

[Of the] masses and
millions
of people thronging the streets like an anthill, and
every
window within sight and every roof of every house, men hanging on the chimneys! There was never anything seen like it … And their enthusiasm! The Duke [of Cambridge] … told us he had never seen anything like the enthusiasm anywhere!! It was one continuous roar of cheering from the moment [the Queen] came out of the door of her Palace till the instant she got back to it: Deafening.
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Along with Queen Victoria’s numerous relations was a guest list of nearly fifty other reigning monarchs, dignitaries, and royals. At dinner that evening—a “large family dinner,” as the queen called it—she sat between King Christian IX of Denmark and his son King George I of Greece. Across from her sat her infamous first cousin King Leopold II of the Belgians.
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Twenty-year-old Princess May was in awe of this great royal pageant. Most of the British population had never witnessed a Golden Jubilee before. The last English monarch to reign for anything beyond a decade was King George III, who had died in 1820. There were few people still alive who remembered his reign. Those that did would have been infants when George III ruled under his own name. They most likely recalled the governance of the king’s enormously unpopular son, who became prince-regent—and later King George IV—when George III was left incapacitated by his mental and physical illnesses in 1811. For the jubilee festivities, London came alive in a “bright and beautiful” atmosphere that “was particular clear” and had “a glow and colour about everything.”
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Writing to her friend Emily Alcock, Princess May described the excitement of the jubilee. “I really cannot describe all the fêtes,” she wrote. “The excitement here in London was something not to be imagined, & I believe it was this that kept us up thro’ that fatiguing time when we were on the go from morning till night—
sans relâche
.”
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Two guests who cast a dark shadow over the festivities were Willy and Dona. The queen originally planned to not invite them. Officially, Germany was to be represented by Vicky and Fritz, but the real reason behind Victoria’s decision was Willy and Dona’s conduct toward the queen’s daughter Beatrice and her husband, Henry of Battenberg, on their honeymoon. “You know
how
ill he [Willy] behaved, how rude, to me, to Liko [Henry],” the queen wrote to Vicky. “
Bertie wants
me to invite William & Dona, but … I fear he may show his dislike and be disagreeable.”
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In the end, Bertie and Vicky convinced their mother to invite the couple, saying that Willy really “
ought
to be present” since he was the “eldest Grand Child.”
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In appealing to her mother, Vicky explained that not inviting them could do more harm than good.

[They] need only stay for a very few days. He [Willy] has behaved very badly to you – and to us – but I fear it would only do harm in every way to appear to take more notice of his behaviour than it is worth! It is well
not
to give him a handle for saying he is ill treated! … He fancies himself of immense importance & service to the State – to his country, thinks he is indispensable to Bismarck and the Emperor! As he has little heart or
Zartgefühl
[tact] – and as his conscience & intelligence have been completely
wharped
[
sic
] by the … people in whose hands he is, he is not aware of the mischief he does … His staying away would
only
be used by the [ultraconservative] Party against you & Fritz & me!”
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Willy and Dona arrived in June, bringing with them their eldest son, Little Willy. The grandeur of the event made a lasting impression on the young prince. His first meeting with his great-grandmother the queen remained especially vivid in his memory for many years. “It was at a great garden fête in St. James’s Park that I first saw the Queen,” he wrote in his memoirs. “She was very friendly to me, kissed me and kept on fondling me with her aged and slightly trembling hands.”
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Little Willy may have been received by his English relatives with open arms, but his parents were less welcome. One German lady-in-waiting recalled how “Pr. W[illiam] and the Princess [Dona] were received with exquisite coolness” and “bare courtesy.” When it was announced that, during the royal procession, Dona would take precedence after the visiting queen of Hawaii, she nearly exploded. “
She
was always placed behind the black Queen of Hawaii!!” one witness observed with some satisfaction. “Both [Willy and Dona] returned not in the best of tempers.”
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Dona would never forgive Britain, or the royal family, for this slight.

In the wake of the jubilee festivities, Princess May’s family found a new lease on life. Their participation in the official ceremonies showed that their financial indiscretions had been somewhat forgiven. With a new outlook, they made their permanent home exclusively at White Lodge. Although the Tecks were now more conscious of the money they spent, Mary Adelaide never completely gave up her spendthrift habits. Even after settling in at White Lodge, May spent little time there. Her time in Florence left her with an indelible curiosity about the world around her. For the rest of her life, she would take a profound interest in exotic places and the people who lived there. Eager to mix with people of all classes, she was always keen to ask questions and to get to know others. When she was not learning more about London’s history, she was busy with charity work or lobbying for social reforms alongside her mother. “She never forgot anyone,” wrote one of the Duchess of Teck’s biographers, “high, low, rich or poor—while the slightest act of kindness is remembered.” The people who lived around Richmond Park thought very highly of Princess May. A daughter of one of the locals recalled, “The Royal carriage never went by our gate without Her Royal Highness looking to see if my father was in the garden or at the window, and a gracious cordial greeting was invariably given.”
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Now a young woman, May’s parents became concerned about her eligibility in Europe’s highly contested royal matrimonial stakes. The fact that she was a great-granddaughter of King George III, or that she was born and raised at the English court, seemed overshadowed by the fact that she had morganatic blood in her veins. Although not a great beauty like the Princess of Wales, May’s handsome features won her some admirers. Undaunted by her daughter’s shortcomings, the Duchess of Teck launched her into society. May’s diary from this time is a testament to how active she was. It is filled with passages that echo one another: “Mama opened an industrial exhibition;.… Mama opened an exhibition at King Ward ragged schools, Spitalfields;.… Went to L[ad]y Wolverton’s where Mama read & I sang to some poor men from Westminster;.… drove to Camberwell where Mama opened the Institute & Gymnasium which Ly Wolverton gave to the Parish. The Dean & Mr Chapman made charming speeches & Mama’s speech was so touching that we nearly wept.”
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In accompanying her mother on all these outings, May became her de facto private secretary.