Queen Victoria's Granddaughters 1860-1918 by Croft Christina

Author:Croft, Christina [Croft, Christina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19 – Who Can Guess What His Tastes May Be?

Hessians

Louis: Grand Duke of Hesse, widower of Princess Alice

Ernie: Son of Louis and Alice

Alix: Ernie’s youngest sister

Edinburghs

Ducky: Victoria Melita, second daughter of Affie & Marie, Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh and Coburg

Sandra & Baby Bee - Ducky’s younger sisters.

One spring morning in 1892, Grand Duke Louis of Hesse-and-By-Rhine sat down to lunch with his son, Ernie, and youngest daughter, Alix. During the meal he suffered a stroke and was carried, paralysed, to his bed.

While Queen Victoria gasped in horror, his daughters hurried from Prussia, Russia and Malta to be at his side but by the time they reached the New Palace, ‘the best and kindest of fathers’ was barely conscious. He died in the early hours of the morning, 15th March 1892.

Crushed and bewildered as she was, Queen Victoria’s heart again went out to her orphaned grandchildren and particularly to the Grand Duke’s successor, twenty-three-year-old Ernie.

Until then, Ernie had been living a carefree existence, indulging his passion for art, and enjoying the company of his unmarried sister, Alix. Now, suddenly saddled with the weight of responsibility for the Grand Duchy, all that would have to change; and, fond as she was of her grandson, the Queen had little faith in his ability to cope at such an early age. She sent him message after message full of sound advice and, above all, recommending that he should find a wife as soon as possible, not only to help him carry out his duties but also to secure the Hessian dynasty.

There might have been another motive in the Queen’s persistent pestering. Perhaps she wondered why Ernie seemed disinclined to marry and appeared so content with his artistic friends that he would have been happy to continue his bachelorhood indefinitely. Perhaps, too, she had picked up the hint in Vicky’s letter: ‘who can guess what [his] tastes may be?’

Whether the observant Queen suspected Ernie’s bisexual tendencies and hoped to avoid a scandal, or simply believed that he would be happier with a wife, she would not let the matter drop. She had even selected him a bride from among her own granddaughters: Cousin Maud of Wales. As it quickly became apparent that Ernie had little in common with Maud, Queen Victoria simply switched her attention to another cousin: eighteen-year-old Victoria Melita (Ducky) of Edinburgh.

Whenever the couple met in one of her English palaces, the Queen delighted in seeing them laughing together and became increasingly convinced that they were ideally suited. Both were fun-loving and artistic and, since Ducky was living in neighbouring Coburg, she was familiar with the mores of German Grand Duchies and would, in her grandmother’s opinion, make an excellent successor to Princess Alice as Grand Duchess of Hesse.

Throughout the summer of 1892, Queen Victoria cajoled and beleaguered Ernie to propose but neither he nor his sisters were quite so enthusiastic. To his sisters Ducky appeared too frivolous and flippant to take the duties of a Grand Duchess seriously, while Ernie,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.