Childhood at Court, 1819-1914 by John Van der Kiste

Author:John Van der Kiste [Kiste, John Van der]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Royalty, History, England/Great Britain, Nonfiction
ISBN: 978-0752473086
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2016-01-17T05:00:00+00:00

5

‘Dreadfully wild, but

I was just as bad’

A new generation of royal children was growing up at court, overlapping with the old. Princess Beatrice was twenty-one months old when she became an aunt in January 1859 with the birth of Prince William of Prussia. On one of his early visits to England, the boy was most amused to find that his little aunt was called ‘baby’ by the family. Affronted at his copying them, she told him firmly that he must call her aunt. Time after time he refused, before giving in with bad grace. ‘Aunt Baby then!’

When he attended the wedding of his uncle Bertie to Princess Alexandra (‘Alix’) of Denmark, on 10 March 1863, he soon became bored. His uncles Arthur and Leopold, like him clad in Highland dress, had been put in charge of him. When he got the cairngorm out of the head of his dirk and threw it across the floor, his small uncles remonstrated, whereupon he bit them in the legs. In view of Leopold’s haemophilia, such behaviour could have been dangerous, but as Leopold showed no ill-effects the ‘bite’ was obviously not very deep.

At the same time Beatrice made an interesting, if slightly alarming discovery while being taken for a ride round Windsor. Turning to Lady Augusta Bruce, she exclaimed in a shocked tone of voice, ‘Guska, I never thought there was stays in shops.’1 On the subject of her brother’s wedding, she had evidently learnt from her mother that such occasions were not to be regarded as a subject for rejoicing. She did not like weddings, she said, and would never get married herself. She would stay with Mama.

At the time of her brother’s wedding, Alice was eight months pregnant. Denied the chance to be with Vicky at any of her confinements or even christenings, Queen Victoria was determined that with her second daughter it should be different. On 5 April Alice gave birth to a daughter, appropriately named Victoria. Their sister’s ‘interesting’ condition was a source of wonder to Helena and Louise who were still considered not old enough to know, although they may have guessed something of the sort when their mother was growing large before the appearance of Beatrice. It has been suggested that they were vaguely aware of their mother’s jealousy of Alice’s condition, that she could not have another child herself, and that to some extent this new grandchild was a child-substitute.

Princess Victoria of Hesse and Prince William of Prussia were always among the Queen’s favourite grandchildren, although the latter – in childhood as well as in imperial splendour, thirty years hence – was notorious for his mischievous behaviour. When William Powell Frith was painting his officially commissioned portrait of the Prince and Princess of Wales’s wedding later that year at Windsor Castle, the four-year-old Prince gave him endless trouble. ‘Mr Fiff,’ he told the artist, ‘you are a nice man, but your whiskers –’. Helena immediately came and put a firm hand over his mouth. Struggling free, he repeated himself more loudly, ‘Your whiskers –’.

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