The Last Princess (28 page)

The Adventures of Count Georg Albert of Erbach
is not a book Beatrice could have written before her marriage. It includes passages of lush romance inappropriate from the pen of any but a married Victorian author. Erbach is Princess Selima's prisoner. Inevitably, the infidel princess falls in love with her Christian captive: ‘When she looked up again, the Count found that her liquid dark Oriental eyes no longer had the same simple expression of kindliness, but that there now burnt a bewitching fiery passion within them, which caused her face to be suffused with a deep blush.’
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This is the violet-hued titillation of the novels of Marie Corelli, an author read by both Beatrice and the Queen. It is surprisingly at odds with the image of Beatrice disliking kissing, which the Queen reported to the Crown Princess at the outset of Beatrice and Liko's engagement. But on that score the Queen had already been proved wrong. She had hoped and prayed that there might be no ‘results’ (children) from Beatrice's marriage. By the time she published her translation, Beatrice had three children already.

'Dear Auntie has been very unwell with the effects of a bad chill but she is nearly quite well again,’ the Queen wrote to a granddaughter on 9 December 1885.
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She omitted to point out that Beatrice's cold came hot on the heels of a more serious illness.

For the Queen's doctor James Reid 11 November 1885 was to be the first of two days of ‘much anxiety'. Reid had planned a short holiday with his mother before the court's departure from Balmoral. Instead, as he noted in his diary, he remained ‘at home all day with the Princess; at 6pm, removed contents of uterus.’
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The four-months-married Beatrice had suffered a miscarriage of some seriousness. The following day, Reid reported to his mother, ‘The Princess was not quite right in the afternoon and wanted
me a good deal. Had I been away she and the Queen would have been a good deal anxious.’
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Reid had been in royal service for four years, long enough to have grown accustomed to the mild daily hypochondria that assailed so many members of the court, the Queen and her family included. Beatrice's miscarriage in the early stages of pregnancy was no such imaginary ailment. Sir William Jenner wrote to Reid, expressing the hope that the Queen – notoriously unsympathetic about other people's illnesses – would ‘not press too much about the Princess going out'. Whatever pressure the Queen brought to bear, the departure from Balmoral proceeded as planned on 17 November, Beatrice making the long journey with her mother.

If on this occasion the Queen had been spared the ‘result’ that she so dreaded from Beatrice and Liko's marriage, she would not have long to wait for a more positive outcome. The following September she postponed the visit to Balmoral of her granddaughter Alix of Hesse, who had contracted scarlet fever in August, in consideration of ‘dear Auntie's state'.
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By then Beatrice was six months pregnant, her due date the first week of December.

Despite her habitual inflexibility about altering her travel plans, the Queen scheduled an early departure from Balmoral to enable the birth to take place at Windsor. She jibbed at this unwonted upset to her calendar – the earliest autumn journey south for seventeen years – but took comfort from Beatrice's flourishing state: ‘Thank God… dear Auntie is so well and active and walks so well and daily.’
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For the Queen the important word was ‘active'. To the Crown Princess, in one of those letters in which she expressed her terror at Beatrice's certain martyrdom at the hands of Liko's libido, the Queen had described her youngest daughter as ‘poor, darling, gentle (and not very strong) Beatrice'.
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When it came to Beatrice's conduct of her pregnancy, one previous miscarriage notwithstanding, the Queen paid no heed to gentleness or lack of strength. A week before the birth Beatrice retired from the Queen's formal dinners, preferring to eat alone in her room. Her mother's response – like her response to Beatrice's announcement that she wished to marry Liko strikes the modern reader as disproportionately robust. To Dr
Reid, she wrote, ‘I urge [the Princess] coming to dinner, and not simply moping in her own room which is very bad for her. In my case I came regularly to dinner, except when I was really unwell (even when suffering a good deal) up to the very last day … I (the Mother of nine children) must
know
what is right and wise and not young inexperienced people who know nothing.’
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It was as well the Queen had brought forward the date for travelling to Windsor. In the event, Beatrice gave birth two weeks prematurely. Happily, the monthly nurse Mrs Brotherstone had already arrived at the castle; the wet nurse by contrast was still engaged with Beatrice's newest niece, Princess Patricia of Connaught, born earlier that year and not yet weaned. ‘Were you in time for the great event at Windsor?’ Patricia's father Arthur wrote to Louise. ‘It surely came off long before it was expected, what a fluster there must have been at the Castle.’
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The labour was not unduly difficult, eased by the generous administration of chloroform. It happened unexpectedly at the end of an ordinary day. The Queen described it to Victoria of Battenberg.

[Beatrice] had walked down to the Mausoleum in the morning, been out with Liko in the afternoon, took tea with us—and was just going to dress for dinner with us… when the water broke! … When I came back from dinner, Auntie was already having pains which increased and became severe and continual. The Doctor (Dr Williams) arrived at twenty minutes past twelve – she went to bed at quarter to one – The pains were very severe and tedious but she was very good and brave. They feared it might go on long – but at four this suddenly changed to bearing pains and at 5.10 the Baby was born!… Dear Liko is very happy; he was very anxious before I think, though he did not say so. He was very helpful and was there continually excepting when he took a little rest while I remained. With the exception of a short time when I laid down on the sofa, I was always with darling Auntie who you know is the apple of my eye.
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Beatrice slept after the birth and within hours the Queen was able to describe her as looking ‘so fresh and pink'.
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Her description of
her newest grandchild – a boy, christened the week before Christmas Albert Alexander and known as ‘Drino’ – is less appealing: ‘The Baby is not big but very vigorous and well developped
[sic]
with a big nose and very pretty small ears. I hope the eyes will be brown but I cannot judge yet, as I have seldom seen them open.’
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Although no complications followed the birth, Beatrice did not hasten her return to active participation in court life, Lady Waterpark noting in her diary as late as 21 December, ‘The Queen dined alone with Princess Beatrice, the latter having been confined of a son on the 23 of November.’
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Later Beatrice would discover that she was not particularly maternal. Like her own mother she had difficulty establishing relations of ease and intimacy with her children as infants. She did, however, like babies. To the Duchess of Teck she sent a photograph of herself with the newborn Drino. ‘I think the enclosed little family group may amuse you. My little man is getting on famously and growing so quick.’
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In the spring she commissioned from Charles Burton Barber, who ten years earlier had painted her collie Watts, a portrait of Drino asleep in his cradle, guarded by two of the Queen's dogs. By then Beatrice was pregnant again.

Her second pregnancy progressed uneventfully, despite the exhaustion she felt steering rhe Queen through her Golden Jubilee celebrations in June, mid-term for Beatrice. The birth would prove considerably more difficult than Drino's. In her last Journal entry for the year the Queen gave thanks for the success of the Jubilee, the apparent improvement in the condition of her sonin-law the Crown Prince of Prussia (who was in fact dying of cancer), and ‘for darling Beatrice coming safely through her severe confinement'.
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That confinement lasted almost exactly as long as Beatrice's previous labour – nine hours – except that on this occasion the Queen, if not the doctors, experienced extreme anxiety for both mother and baby. In her Journal, she recorded, ‘Was up in the night with my poor Beatrice, who was very ill.’
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Again the Queen remained at her favourite daughter's bedside. Beatrice had endured a day of severe pain before labour began
in earnest at seven o'clock on the morning of 24 October. Dr Reid again administered chloroform, and the princess's gynaecologist Dr John Williams ultimately resorted to forceps—a full forty minutes of forceps. For the Queen it made painful viewing: ‘After a terrible long time, the baby appeared to our great joy and relief, a very large fine girl but she was nearly stillborn.’
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The Queen commended Williams's ‘dexterity'. To Dr Reid, who remained in constant attendance on Beatrice for almost a week after the birth, the princess continuing to suffer acute uterine pains, the Queen presented a formal photograph of herself and copies of both her books of Highland Journal extracts. ‘I hope you will accept this photograph and these books in recollection of the birth of my dear little Granddaughter, as well as my best thanks for all your care and attention to my beloved child.’
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Such was the degree of the Queen's concern that as late as January she wrote to Victoria of Battenberg, ‘Dear Auntie is very well and strong and looking very well… but Auntie
must
have a very long rest.’
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Handing his datighter to the Queen, Liko described her as her ‘little Jubilee grandchild'.
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Of greater significance in the Queen's eyes was not the child's coincidence with her Golden Jubilee but the fact that the birth had taken place at Balmoral, the first royal birth in Scotland since that of the future Charles I almost three centuries earlier. The baptism was held in the drawing room of the Queen's Scottish home, and the baby, who was christened Victoria Eugenie Julie, after respectively the Queen, her godmother the Empress Eugenie, and her paternal grandmother the Princess of Battenberg, also received a fourth name – ‘Ena (a Gaelic Highland name)', as the Queen explained to the Duchess of Connaught on 16 November.
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In the double-page illustration published in
The Graphic
on 10 December, the Queen holds the baby while her fellow grandmother looks on; a kilted Liko stands beside his seated wife, who, apparently fully recovered, is tightly corseted and conventionally dressed.

The Queen took to heart Beatrice's suffering over Ena's birth. When, less than a year later, Beatrice discovered she was pregnant for a third time, the Queen planned ahead, clearing her diary of
engagements for the weeks before and after the doctor's predicted due date. Her letter written to the Crown Princess on 15 May 1889 expresses her concern at the quick succession of Beatrice's children and a characteristic frustration at the likely disruption of her travel plans:

I think we may expect Beatrice's (untoward) event (which happens at a most unfortunate time) any moment from the 20th, but it might be before and
now.
I am ready as all my engagements till the last day of June are over. My favourite spring visit to dear Scotland will I fear be very short. I hope for a fortnight but I would not leave Beatrice till a day or two after the fortnight when I have seen her move a little and sit in a chair.
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With fewer complications than Ena, Beatrice's third child, a second son, was born at 2.05 a.m. at Windsor on 21 May, in the presence of the Queen, Liko and Liko's sister Marie. The Queen described him as ‘a particularly pretty child, large, fat and with darkish hair. He weighed 8lb, which is more than Ena did.’
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Marie Mallet shared the Queen's opinion, writing on 26 May, ‘Princess Beatrice is marvellously flourishing and the baby very pretty, with lots of soft brown hair and large blue eyes.’
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The Crown Princess's daughter Victoria of Prussia, Sandro's Moretta, arrived at Windsor at the beginning of June to accompany the Queen north in Beatrice's enforced absence. T o her mother she addressed her first impressions of Beatrice and her newest baby: ‘Auntie is looking very well indeed and so pretty, lying on her sofa in a charming dressing gown and little white cap. The baby I have been carrying about a good deal – it's a love. You would enjoy it, and nibble it – heaps of hair on its little head and a good pair of lungs.’
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Beatrice called the baby Leopold. Ironically, despite his initially blooming appearance, he, too, like the deceased uncle after who m he was named, suffered from haemophilia and would die young. The Queen suspected none of this. ‘The baby really is a very pretty child,’ she told her daughter.
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Beatrice's easy labour and Leopold's apparent health dissipated her earlier resignation to the disruption of her trip to Balmoral, and she began to exercise
herself over what she regarded as Beatrice's self-indulgent convalescence, writing in hectoring tones to Dr Reid,

I am very glad the Princess has been out, though I did not quite understand why she did not go out on Friday, as I thought you expected… After the first day I always went out twice and that was earlier in the year (in April or beginning of May)—and if it rained, in the closed carriage—only always got out. And after Tuesday she should walk up and down stairs…. I mention what my nine experiences have taught me from a most excellent nurse who always attended me and in whom the physicians had the greatest confidence.
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