Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires (36 page)

Like so many things in the Hohenzollerns’ lives, the wedding was overshadowed by family politics. George and May planned on attending the ceremony, but owing to the fickle relationship between Edward VII and Wilhelm II, their visit was cancelled on the grounds that the Prince and Princess of Wales had “other commitments.” Furious, Wilhelm responded by refusing to allow Crown Prince Willy to attend King Edward’s birthday celebrations that year. In the end, George and May were barely missed from Willy and Cecilie’s nuptials. The wedding went off smoothly, and it did not take long for the new crown princess to become loved in Berlin. She was an “uncommonly favourable” woman whose “grace and natural amiability charm everyone.”
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Initially, the crown princess joined Dona in promoting charitable causes. One of the more forward-thinking philanthropic organizations they supported was the Central Association of German Actresses. One contemporary wrote that this group, under Dona’s tutelage, “has of late years done more toward elevating the stage than has ever been accomplished by members of the aristocracy who have seen fit to join the dramatic profession with that avowed object in view.”
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Cecilie hoped to forge deeper relationships with her new family in Berlin. She naturally looked to Dona for companionship, but the crown princess found her mother-in-law lacking in the ability to do so. The empress was “an excellent, kindly and extremely good and indulgent woman,” but she was too “absorbed in her housewifely duties” to truly be a close friend to the crown princess.
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Since the Duchess of Teck’s death in 1897, the Princess of Wales had appointed herself the matriarch of the Teck family. Periods of grief as well as joy came with this role. One of the happier moments May experienced was the wedding of her favorite brother, Alge, to the king’s favorite niece and Prince George’s cousin Princess Alice of Albany, in February 1904. It was a propitious match that cemented the Tecks’ ties within the British royal family.

If Alge was May’s favorite brother, the black sheep of the family continued to be Frank. He enjoyed making fun of royalty, something which offended Princess May’s sensibilities. He took particular delight in mocking his sister. Shortly after her wedding, Frank began calling May and George Master and Mistress York. He had earned Queen Victoria’s enmity by refusing to participate in or take seriously Mausoleum Day, December 14, the anniversary of Prince Albert’s death. The Tecks were aghast by Frank’s similar response to the funereal gatherings of Mary Adelaide’s family to commemorate the Duchess of Cambridge’s death.

Frank publicly embarrassed his family and the monarchy when his name was splattered across the tabloid press when he started up an affair with an older, married woman. The situation threatened to tear the Tecks apart when Frank started giving the woman some of Mary Adelaide’s jewels, which had been bequeathed to May. These were no mere trinkets but consisted of a tiara, earrings, a necklace, stomacher, brooch, bracelets, and ring—all of which were covered with the emeralds that had once belonged to the Duchess of Cambridge.

As this personal battle between May and Frank was taking place, a professional gambler approached the Tecks. He informed them that Frank owed him £10,000 and that he “threatened scandal if the loss was not made good.”
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Realizing something had to be done quickly to avoid a scandal, Princess May went to the king. The payment was made, but the royal family had reached the end of its rope with Frank Teck. Edward VII ordered Frank sent back to India for a second exile under the pretense of rejoining his regiment. Frank humiliated his sister when he promptly resigned from the army and refused to leave England. May’s place in the royal family, the expectation that she would one day be queen, and her absolute adherence to the monarchy meant there was no choice but for her to sever ties with her unrepentant brother. It was important that the Princess of Wales not be tainted by scandals, personal or otherwise. Along with her official duties, she was also the mother of the next generation of the royal family. She needed to be seen as pure, untainted, and ideally maternal.

On July 12, 1905, she gave birth to her last child after an excruciating labor. The child, born at York Cottage, was a son whom the parents named John. Sir John Williams, the physician in attendance, remained at Sandringham for eight days after the birth to monitor the princess. During her convalescence, George brought her breakfast every morning at nine and then spent much of each day reading to her aloud from her favorite books. John was baptized nearly a month later, on August 3, at Saint Mary Magdalene Church at Sandringham. A dazzling array of godparents were chosen from the four corners of Europe—from the southwest, the king of Portugal; from the southeast, George’s cousins Crown Prince Constantine and Crown Princess Sophie of Greece; from the northeast, George’s brother-in-law the king of Norway; and from the northwest, Princess Alice of Teck, May’s new sister-in-law. There are conflicting reports over whom the prince was named for. One theory states that it was in honor of George’s Danish cousin Prince John of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg. A more widely publicized account is that he was named for George’s brother Alexander John, who died shortly after he was born in 1871.

By the time of Prince John’s arrival, May was an active, attentive, though noticeably unaffectionate mother who took a dim view of pregnancy, childbirth, and the raising of small children. She echoed Queen Victoria’s sentiments and did not enjoy being “with child.” May detested how ill she felt during each pregnancy, as well as the limits it placed on her official duties. “Of course it is a great bore for me & requires a great deal of patience to bear it, but this is alas the penalty of being a woman!” she once wrote to her husband.
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Like other high-ranking women of that era, she saw her children on a limited basis, usually twice each day in the morning and at tea time. She also entrusted the care of her children to a governess. Some of these women were inept.

One of them was even abusive. Mary Peters harbored an almost obsessive desire for May’s two eldest sons, David and Bertie, but in different ways. With David, Peters was obsessively controlling. She always needed to have him with her. During her time employed by the Wales family, she did not spend even one day away from him. With Bertie, things took on a more malevolent tone. Peters obsessively resented the prince, whom she would summarily punish by refusing to feed him. Evidence has since emerged indicating that Peters misfed Bertie “so badly that he was afflicted for the rest of his life by digestive problems.”
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Determined to keep the children in her care as much as possible, Peters would twist and pinch the children’s arms when they were taken to have tea with their parents. When they began to cry in front of May and George for no obvious reason, they were quickly returned to Peters’ care. This abuse had a profound impact on Bertie. He developed a crippling speech impediment around the age of four or five, which lasted well into adulthood. It was only when a new, much-loved governess named Charlotte Bill was brought into the household that the abuse came to an end after the shocking length of three years. Bill—who, unlike the rest of the Wales’ staff, was not afraid of Peters—reported what was going on to the head of the household, who in turn informed an incredulous and furious Princess May. At first, Peters refused to vacate the premises, though she was gone by that night. A week later, she ended up in hospital after suffering a complete nervous breakdown.

Once word of the Mary Peters imbroglio leaked out, criticism for May and George’s parenting erupted like a mushroom cloud. “The tragedy was that neither had any understanding of a child’s mind,” admitted May’s friend the Countess of Airlie. “They had not succeeded in making their children happy.”
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In private, the Princess of Wales could enjoy some shared activities with her children. There was no question that between herself and her husband, it was the princess who could be more fun-loving. According to David, when his father was not around, his mother “was an amusing woman.”
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This is rather surprising given George’s rowdy childhood. In his youth, he and his siblings shocked visitors at Marlborough House with their antics. Queen Victoria considered George and Eddy to be among the most ill-bred, ill-trained, raucous children she had ever seen. Young George once received a reprimand from Queen Victoria for some minor infraction and was ordered to sit under the dining room table. When the queen summoned him a few minutes later, the little prince reportedly emerged completely naked. The then Princess Alexandra was largely responsible for George’s unbecoming behavior, regularly encouraging her children to play practical jokes. When a stunned onlooker questioned her children’s behavior, Alexandra merely shrugged and admitted she had been worse at that age. By the time George was a father, he had shed the frivolous gaiety of his childhood. As an adult, the Prince of Wales had little use for jokes or lightheartedness. According to his son David, George “retained a gruff blue-water approach to all human situations. I have often felt that despite his undoubted affection for all of us, my father preferred children in the abstract.”
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Compared to her husband, May was seen as much more affectionate. David once fondly wrote of his mother, “Her soft voice, her cultivated mind, the cosy room overflowing with personal treasures were all inseparable ingredients of the happiness associated with … a child’s day … Such was my mother’s pride in her children that everything that happened to each one was of the utmost importance to her. With the birth of each new child, Mama started an album in which she painstakingly recorded each progressive stage of our childhood.”
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The infanta Eulalia of Spain, a famous European courtesan, thought very highly of May’s parenting: “As a mother she stands unequalled; well may her children arise and call her blessed! Her heart has been their home since their birth; to them she has always been the mother and friend … and no shadow of the throne has ever darkened the happy youth of her charming sons and her idolized daughter.”
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In October 1905, George and May set off for another extended international tour. This time their travels took them to India and the Far East. May was determined to go forward with as much knowledge as she could possibly have. She wrote before the trip, “We … are having a nice restful time. I am reading books on India which are most interesting, I read nearly all morning when I have not letters to write.”
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For this second trip abroad, the royal couple would be gone for eight months. Their children were once again being left in the care of King Edward and Queen Alexandra, who lovingly called her grandchildren “the Georgie pets.” The accommodations for this trip would be a cut above the colonial tour. Instead of the scrappy steamship
Ophir
to ferry them, George and May traveled on the HMS
Renown
, Britain’s newest ship of the line. They made their way to Genoa, where they boarded the
Renown
for India.

When they arrived in Calcutta in late October, the British viceroy Lord Minto already had the Government House ready and waiting for them. It was the first time a Princess of Wales had set foot in India, and May was very glad that she had taken the time to read up on this ancient and beautiful country. “Thanks to the amount of Indian reading which I have done I really am not so ignorant about India as most of the English women here are,” she wrote back to Hélène Bricka, her old governess.
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May’s arrival in India was truly unique and went a long way to establishing the credibility of both herself and the monarchy in the eyes of the Indian people.