23

THE BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES

The Crown Princess of Prussia visited Queen Victoria in England when she could. An English courtier commented on one such meeting between mother and daughter in 1863, noting, the “Pr. Royal is now alone with the Q. and young ones, and I hope it will be very good their being thrown completely on one another. [Vicky] is a wonderful creature, gifted beyond expression, delightful, but with much to contend with to bring those strong impulses and that keen intellect into submission, dear child!”¹

As Queen Victoria’s remaining children grew older, she concerned herself with their marriage prospects just as Queen Isabella and Empress Maria Theresa had done with their offspring. But unlike Isabella and Maria Theresa, Victoria did not seek marriages that were necessarily politically advantageous. Vicky’s marriage had been the glaring exception. Next among Victoria’s daughters to marry were Princess Helena (Lenchen) and Princess Louise. In comparing these two daughters, the queen bluntly admitted that Louise was “so handsome … so gracious … so quiet and lady-like … . Poor dear Lenchen, though most useful and active and clever and amiable, does not improve in looks.”² Lenchen married the impoverished Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, fifteen years her senior. They lived happily with their children near Windsor Castle and kept their distance from the queen when possible, much to Victoria’s annoyance, though Lenchen did her share of attending her mother. In 1871 Princess Louise, the prettiest of Victoria’s daughters and a highly accomplished artist, married the Marquess of Lorne (later Duke of Argyll), who became governor-general of Canada. The province of Alberta and Lake Louise were named after the princess. The couple remained childless.

Next to marry was Prince Alfred, Victoria’s second eldest son. Arrogant and short-tempered, Alfred enjoyed a career in the Royal Navy and eventually became the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. In 1874, he married Grand Duchess Marie of Russia, a formidable woman who could never forget that she was a Romanov with a demoted status at Queen Victoria’s court. One of their daughters became the flamboyant Queen Marie of Romania. Prince Arthur, Victoria’s third and favorite son, named after the famed Duke of Wellington, who had defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, fittingly chose a military career. In 1874, he married Louise Margaret of Prussia, daughter of Fritz’s first cousin Frederick Charles of Prussia.

Of all Queen Victoria’s children, her two eldest girls, Vicky and Alice, were fated to lead the most poignant lives. The sisters were close from their childhood days, a bond that did not disappear once marriage sent them both to Germany—Vicky to Prussia and Alice to Hesse. Vicky’s future always held out a far more glittering prospect than Alice’s, thanks largely to Fritz’s position as the future king of Prussia. Prestige and wealth set Vicky apart from Alice. “Vast riches,” in fact, were “expected someday to come Vicky’s way on her accession as queen of Prussia,” whereas Alice’s “fiscal situation seemed almost bleak.”³ In comparing their predicaments, one need only look at the cities where the sisters made their homes. Vicky’s home, Berlin (capital of mighty Prussia), with its Baroque and Neoclassical buildings and the impressive Brandenburg Gate, easily overshadowed Darmstadt, Alice’s home and Hesse’s small, provincial capital, dotted by half-timbered buildings and narrow streets.

The sisters’ marriages also diverged. Though nearly ten years separated them in age, Vicky had unquestionably found her soul mate in Fritz. Like Queen Victoria, Vicky was passionately devoted to her husband, an affection that was heartily reciprocated, despite the fact that the prince was all too aware of his intellectual limitations compared with his cerebral powerhouse of a wife. Vicky made no secret of her dreams for Fritz, telling him, “I have … unlimited ambitions for you & will not rest until you have set an example for the whole world to follow—& through you Prussia has become a worthy example for the others.”⁴

Vicky’s love for and devotion to Fritz never faltered. She wrote appreciatively of her husband to her mother, saying, “Every day I have a new opportunity of admiring all dear Fritz’s sober qualities.”⁵ The queen agreed with her daughter’s assessment. After spending some time with her son-in-law while Prince Albert was still alive, Victoria wrote a glowing letter to Vicky’s husband: “Allow me to tell you, my dear Fritz, how fond I am of you, how close you have drawn to us during this long and yet all too short and pleasant visit, and how we have learned to appreciate, love and respect you more and more every day!”⁶ Fritz was touched by his mother-in-law’s words and wrote to Vicky, “It is a wonderful thing for me to be so honoured by your respected and beloved parents! Since I have called you mine, you have made a different person of me … everything, everything only through mein Frauchen … . If ‘marriages are made in heaven,’ then God has obviously done so in our case.”⁷

The marriage of Vicky’s sister Alice, by contrast, was not so blessed. As the years passed, she and Louis drifted apart, prompting Alice to write candidly to him: “I longed for a real companion, for apart from that life had nothing to offer me in Darmstadt. I could have been quite happy and contented living in a cottage, if I had been able to share my intellectual interests, and intellectual aspirations with a husband whose strong, protective love would have guided me around the rocks … but we have developed separately—away from each other, and that is why I feel that true companionship is an impossibility for us—because our thoughts will never meet.”⁸

Vicky and Alice differed in personality, Vicky being far more outspoken and forward than her more tactful sister (though Alice’s pro-English inclinations, like Vicky’s, were in ample evidence). Vicky understood this difference and uncharacteristically felt at a disadvantage. Alice, Vicky pointed out, “did everything imaginable, or so tells Mama—and Mama believes it all as well—ever increasing Mama’s love for her.”⁹As for herself, Vicky noted disconcertingly to Fritz: “I unfortunately do not have the talent & am not clever enough to say what I do not think … . Alice acts, by contrast, like a smart little lady—& that’s why she has a tremendous amount of influence. She is right & I am wrong, for it would be much cleverer to hide opinions that only irritate others & the assertion of which is not of the slightest benefit. During our childhood it was always so—she was always the docile and loveable one, yielding with bonne grace, easy to praise & almost never getting into trouble. How different things were with your little fat girl, who always had the talent for ‘putting her foot in it.’”¹⁰

Differences between Alice and Vicky made their way in to Vicky’s correspondence with their mother, tinged with sibling rivalry. Queen Victoria once reproached her eldest daughter for this: “I must scold you dearest child, for a little jealous remark about poor Alice which is not right! … Alice’s position is a totally different one to yours—she was much more with me than you had ever been, for you married at 17—she only at 19—and beloved Papa was then my blessed companion and support. Then Alice’s husband has nothing to do at home now; they are not rich, and their best work is to be a support and comfort to me. If Alice could not be with me much hereafter—why, then Lenchen must be, because, dearest child, your position is too great and high a one ever to be able to be here long at a time or to devote yourself solely to me.”¹¹ In reply, a humbled and defensive Vicky wrote: “I am sorry that I should again have so ill expressed myself … . I am not in the least jealous of her. I know the difference of her position and mine quite well, and would not change mine, difficult as it is, for any other in the world.”¹²

Relegated at Darmstadt to a less important court than Vicky’s, Alice nevertheless diligently worked for her adopted country; for instance, she nursed the wounded during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Just two years after the Prussian-Danish War, the opportunistic Bismarck had seized the chance to defeat Austria by fighting over Schleswig-Holstein. This conflict, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, was the latest in the minister’s plans for Prussian aggrandizement. The war proved especially heartbreaking for Queen Victoria, who was perturbed to see two of her daughters with their husbands off to war on opposing sides. Hesse, like most of the German states, viewed Prussia warily because of its aggressiveness and so was not averse to siding with Austria. Alice’s and Vicky’s opposing sides had added poignancy because Alice had recently visited Vicky in Berlin and told their mother that “Vicky is dear, so loving! … There is a reflection of Papa’s great mind in her.”¹³ Alice also told Queen Victoria, “Life with dear Vicky … reminds me in many things of our life in England in former happy days … . We both always say to each other, no children were so happy … as we were; and that we can never … give our children all that we had.”¹⁴ Alice had a particularly difficult time during the war. There was little food, and she had to watch with trepidation as the Prussians marched into Darmstadt.

Prussia won the war in a mere seven weeks. Bismarck’s plan to unify Germany under Prussian dominance at the expense of the Habsburgs’ Austrian dynasty was taking shape. Frederick the Great’s dreams of Prussian hegemony and the subordination of the Habsburgs were finally coming true.

Throughout this turbulent time, Vicky had her share of sorrows when her son Sigismund, not yet two, died of meningitis. The anguished Vicky told her mother of “the long cry of agony which rises from the innermost depth of my soul.”¹⁵ Family tragedies and war were not the only sadnesses that plagued Vicky. Her unpopularity had grown among many Prussians. Vicky, who had so much influence over Fritz, went against the grain of the Prussian aristocracy’s “conception of marriage” as being that “in which the wife was expected to be the compliant mate of an omnipotent husband.”¹⁶ Outrage over her domineering personality and forthrightness “fatally undermined her attempt to establish a place for herself in Berlin by insisting she was her husband’s partner, not his servant.”¹⁷ The years had not dampened Vicky’s raison d’être in relation to Fritz. When she married, Vicky had “plunged with the zealous ardor of a missionary into the task of combating the influence of [the] army and Junkers on her husband.”¹⁸ She had not relinquished and would not relinquish that task.

Back in Britain, Victoria gradually emerged from her seclusion, having understood the need to play a public role. Moreover, the queen had at last gained back her zest for life, telling Vicky: “I have learned to wish to live, and try and keep myself tolerably well—for the sake of my people, children, friends and country!”¹⁹ Besides opening Parliament, another event signaled Victoria’s reentry into public life: the service at St. Paul’s Cathedral held February 1872 in thanksgiving for the Prince of Wales’s recovery from a serious bout of typhoid. For some time, relations between Victoria and her heir had been frosty, though they never degenerated into the exasperating battle of wills that beset Empress Maria Theresa and her oldest son, Joseph II. Yet unlike Maria Theresa, who willingly shared power with Joseph as co-ruler, Queen Victoria did not encourage the future Edward VII to learn statecraft and ruling. In fact, “Queen Victoria guarded her prerogatives jealously and did not allow the Prince of Wales to share any part of her work … . The Prince of Wales had sought refuge from this enforced idleness in a purely social life, for which the Queen criticized him without offering him any interesting or constructive alternative.”²⁰

Victoria was as immersed as ever in the minutiae of reigning—the workload of her private secretary, Henry Ponsonby, attested to this—but she had less power than Isabella of Castile or Maria Theresa had had in their days. Her role as monarch was circumscribed by Parliament. Nonetheless, holding strong political views, Queen Victoria sometimes overstepped the bounds of constitutional behavior. Indeed, the queen “rebelled at the notion that her job stopped at the ‘criticism of detail.’”²¹

For nearly three of her six decades as queen, Victoria dealt with the two most famous of her ten prime ministers: the goliaths of British politics William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli, who alternated their time in power: Disraeli (1868), Gladstone (1868–74), Disraeli (1874–1880), Gladstone (1880–85, 1886, 1892–94). Victoria had a passionate dislike of Gladstone and a deep-seated affection for Disraeli. The two were archrivals, sitting as they did on opposing sides of the political spectrum (Gladstone was a Liberal, whereas Disraeli was a Conservative). They were also polar opposites in almost every other respect; and nowhere were their opposing personas more starkly in evidence than in their conduct toward women. Whereas Disraeli, the Victorian “dandy,” was at ease in the great homes of England’s political elite, seeking their support and friendship, the highly religious Gladstone would seek out prostitutes with the sole objective of trying to rescue them from their life of sin. With his piercing gaze that could turn into a frightening scowl, Gladstone had a forceful personality matched by an impressive intellect, which he did not hesitate to unleash, even on the queen. Disraeli, by contrast, with his pointed face and pleasant countenance, was convivial, flamboyant, and flattering toward his queen. He easily charmed his way into Victoria’s heart. Disraeli gained further accolades from the queen because he praised Prince Albert, a shrewd move since she continued to view her dead husband as incomparable. Whereas Disraeli gladly nurtured his relationship with Victoria in flowery language and actions, the deeply moralistic Gladstone could be dour and hectoring. This browbeating tone greatly annoyed the queen. She once famously commented that Gladstone addressed her as if she were a public meeting.

Gladstone understood the need for the queen to be seen more publicly and urged this upon her, to which an annoyed Victoria replied that she was indisposed. The queen complained of Gladstone to Vicky, describing him as “very arrogant, tyrannical and obstinate, with no knowledge of the world or human nature.”²² Nor did Gladstone’s support of Irish home rule endear him to Victoria, who interpreted home rule as an attack on the empire. Moreover, Gladstone’s tendency to send long-winded memoranda instead of clear, concise ones infuriated her. Added to this were Victoria’s and Gladstone’s divergent political views. At the beginning of her reign, the queen’s sympathies had been decidedly pro-Whig (the Liberals were an outgrowth of the Whigs). But by the time of the Gladstone-Disraeli rivalry, Victoria espoused Conservative views that matched Disraeli’s.

Another reason Victoria disapproved of Gladstone was that she believed he was trying to curtail her importance; thus, the queen “was not above threatening abdication to counteract his attempts to reduce her influence.”²³ In the end, the “war” between Queen Victoria and William Gladstone “lasted longer and was more dramatic than even the great public conflict between Gladstone and Disraeli.”²⁴

Though Gladstone was not as hostile to his queen as Bismarck was to the crown princess, Gladstone and Victoria’s prickly relationship somewhat mirrored Vicky’s antagonistic relationship with the goliath of Prussian politics. Mother and daughter came to see both men as their nemeses. Unfortunately, Vicky was never able to find her political equivalent of a Disraeli. Only Victoria had that good fortune.

If Gladstone was Victoria’s bête-noire, Disraeli was her second Lord Melbourne. It was not a one-sided attachment. The adoration was mutual, for Disraeli’s “taste had always been for dowagers rather than debutantes … his women friends were ‘tout grand mères.’ How much more rewarding then, to be dealing with the greatest grandmother of them all. Here, surely, was the culmination of a life-time’s association with matrons. Here was the mother-figure to end all mother-figures.”²⁵ Disraeli knew exactly what to say to the queen. When she sent for him in 1874 to form a government, she noted with pleasure: “He repeatedly said whatever I wished SHOULD be done.” Disraeli also knew how to act before his queen—dropping on his knees to kiss her hand and romantically declaring: “I plight my troth to the kindest of Mistresses.”²⁶ But there was more substance to the couple’s special relationship than platitudes and gestures, for Queen Victoria was in complete accord with the robust imperial policies pursued by Disraeli. She instinctively disdained Gladstone’s propensity for allowing Britain to “‘swallow insults’ and play a negative role.”²⁷ Victoria had once said that Gladstone had “no strong sense of the dignity and power of England abroad.”²⁸ Not surprisingly, the queen celebrated Disraeli’s desire “to reassert British power in Europe.”²⁹ Disraeli made no apologies for Britain’s greatness and did not retreat from asserting it.

One of his greatest successes was preventing the Suez Canal from falling completely into French hands when the Khedive of Egypt was selling his shares (which amounted to just under half the total). To have allowed France to control that strategic link to India, through which most British ships crossed, would have been an extremely grave forfeiture. In this, Victoria was in complete accord. Disraeli maneuvered so that the British government bought the khedive’s shares in 1875, thanks to a 4-million-pound loan from the Rothschild bank. Having concluded the transaction, Disraeli told the queen: “It is just settled … . you have it, Madam.” Thus did he lay at Victoria’s feet the Suez Canal “like some exotic gift.”³⁰ Next, in 1877, the loyal Disraeli handed Victoria the title Empress of India. Though she never visited the jewel of Britain’s empire, Victoria paid special attention to India and its peoples, making the title “empress” an especially gratifying one. In gratitude for all he had done, Queen Victoria created Disraeli the Earl of Beaconsfield. His greatest service to the queen was to transform her from the “Widow of Windsor into the Faery Queen, [which] enabled Victoria to develop into the revered, magnificent and almost mythical figure of her old age: the Doyenne of Sovereigns … Victoria Regina et imperatrix.”³¹

Vicky, ever Victoria’s confidante through the years, watched events in England closely and was pleased to see her mother’s reign unfolding brilliantly. Vicky espoused outlooks similar to those of her mother and Disraeli when it came to affirming and exercising British power on the world stage. In the mid-1880s, Vicky explicitly voiced this view, noting, “England is a great deal too humble to foreign Powers! They only misunderstand her. We get no thanks for our modesty and moderation.”³² On another occasion, she stated emphatically: “You know I take so passionate an interest in the progress and development of liberty and culture all over the globe that it is not without the greatest pain that I can even brook the idea of England’s abdicating her legitimate part in the work of civilization. She has no right to do so, and thereby do incalculable harm to the good cause and … to all other nations.”³³

Vicky’s appreciation for Queen Victoria’s sympathy and advice had also grown, and she admitted it to her mother: “You cannot think what a word of approbation from you is to me! … A word from you … repays me for oh! so much, so I kiss your dear hand in deep and tender thanks.”³⁴ And in another letter, “As one grows older and lives through more trials and difficulties one’s love to one’s mother grows and deepens.”³⁵ This closeness contrasted with the strained relationship between Vicky and her mother-in-law, Augusta. The outrageously rouged and wigged Augusta loved to meddle, entertain, and gossip. She expected Vicky to dance in attendance and acted the tyrant, ordering her exhausted daughter-in-law to be at her beck and call. Queen Victoria sympathized with her daughter’s predicament in Berlin, confiding to a courtier of the empress: “She is markedly unkind to the Crown Princess.”³⁶ It thus comes as no surprise that, for Vicky, “Queen Victoria and England remained the ultimate refuge in a life dominated by disapproving relations and dynastic jealousies.”³⁷ By the time she had made her home in Prussia for thirteen years, Vicky could hardly be blamed for having definitively concluded that England reigned supreme in her heart. “You cannot think,” she wrote to one of her English friends, “how dull and melancholy and queer I feel away from you all and from beloved England! Each time I get there I feel my attachment to that precious bit of earth grow stronger and stronger … . Going away and returning here [to Prussia] always causes a commotion in my feelings which want a little time and reasoning to one’s self to get over.”³⁸ A large part of Vicky’s continuing devotion to England no doubt stemmed from the steady love and support she received from Queen Victoria, though six hundred miles separated mother and daughter.

Vicky’s closeness to Queen Victoria meant that she continued to relate her impressions of events and individuals to her mother, especially where her children were concerned. Vicky’s relationships with her older children were less warm than those with her youngest brood, a disappointment she did not hide from her mother. Vicky was always frustrated with Charlotte, whom she found dull and possessed of a difficult temper. Willy was “a dear, interesting, charming boy—clever, amusing engaging—it is impossible not to spoil him a little.” But Vicky also noted his failings; such as his inclination to be “selfish, domineering and proud.”³⁹ Two years later, when Willy was nine, Vicky still wrote of his potential but added another drawback to his character, laziness. At the time the young prince’s schooling began, in 1867, his mother wrote of her concern to her brother Prince Arthur: “Now that Willie’s [sic] education has begun in earnest … I often feel how difficult it is, and what a responsibility is laid on one’s shoulders.”⁴⁰

Much to Vicky’s consternation, Willy’s overweening pride became more pronounced with the years. His exposure to Hohenzollern-Prussian militarism inevitably nurtured this arrogance. Vicky tried to soften the edges by sending Willy to England and Queen Victoria as often as possible, visits that he enjoyed. Nevertheless, in the end, Wilhelm was first and foremost a Prussian. He would come to have a love-hate relationship with England, as he did with his mother.

As time passed, Willy became increasingly alienated from his parents. Indulged by his Prussian grandparents, Wilhelm and Augusta, the prince felt a growing affinity for them and came to share their disapproval of his mother. From Willy’s teenage years onward, Vicky found less to extol about him to Queen Victoria and more causes for complaint. Just before his eighteenth birthday, the overbearing Willy was packed off to England to be “cut down to size” by his English grandmother. Although the queen and the prince had very strong differences, thanks to Victoria’s making allowances and Willy’s ability to “take hints,” a major clash between the two was barely avoided.⁴¹

Besides anxieties over Willy, Victoria’s and Vicky’s attentions were riveted to momentous events beyond their family circle. One of these, the Franco-Prussian War, had far-reaching repercussions. France’s Emperor Napoléon III played into Bismarck’s hands. In 1870 the wily minister provoked France into fighting Prussia in a war that would determine whether France or Prussia would become the Continent’s unrivaled power. And as Bismarck had calculated, the south German states took Prussia’s side in the conflict. With victory, a united Germany was set to rise under Prussian domination.

When war broke out, Queen Victoria was aghast, telling Vicky that her prayers were with Germany and that “my heart bleeds for you all!”⁴² Fritz again went off to war, while Vicky, who had recently given birth to her daughter Sophie, was frantic about his fate. In Berlin, Vicky tended to the wounded in hospitals and near the front. The war lasted less than a year, ending when Napoléon III and 100,000 French troops were captured at Sedan. Napoléon was then overthrown. Paris, after months of famine, surrendered. On January 18, 1871, Bismarck watched as the German Empire was proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. King Wilhelm was now the German emperor: Kaiser Wilhelm I. Bismarck became Germany’s first chancellor—the “Iron Chancellor.” As for Vicky, she was, above all, gratified that Fritz not only had survived the war but had acquitted himself well.

Besides cementing Prussia’s position as a European power, the Franco-Prussian War placed Prussia at the fore once and for all among the Germanic states; for “Prussia did not become German. Germany became Prussian.”⁴³ Bismarck’s ambitious plans for Prussia had finally borne spectacular fruit. Vicky’s nemesis had without a doubt become “a truly Machiavellian figure of astounding political skills.”⁴⁴

The outcome of the Franco-Prussian War left Queen Victoria of two minds. On the one hand, she was pleased to see Germany’s success and happy for Vicky and Fritz, but on the other hand, she could not help but feel pangs of pity for her friends Napoléon III and Eugénie. The queen sent the former empress a message, saying “that I could not be unmoved by their dreadful misfortune.” ⁴⁵ Napoléon and Eugénie eventually fled to England and lived there in exile. Victoria was impressed by Eugénie’s demeanor when she arrived, telling Vicky’s mother-in-law that “the Empress bears her tragic fate with dignity. She never utters a word of complaint or bitterness against anyone.”⁴⁶

Back in Germany, instability racked the empire as a battle of wills pitting Bismarck against the Roman Catholic Church emerged. At unification, Germany absorbed a number of states with substantial Catholic populations, many of whom were generally represented by the opposition Center party in the Reichstag (German Parliament). When Bismarck could not persuade the Center party to agree to his policies, he sensed the power of a resurgent Church. To preempt this, the chancellor unleashed a campaign of repression against Germany’s Catholics, known as the Kulturkampf. By breaking the Church’s power, Bismarck aspired to consolidate his own power. Harsh laws were passed against Catholics and their clergy in a campaign that lasted for several years. Bismarck’s Kulturkampf eventually abated and ultimately failed. Within the imperial family, Wilhelm I and Fritz were in agreement with the campaign, while Empress Augusta and Vicky were not, though as the attacks became more vicious, Fritz started siding with his wife. Although Vicky was brought up and confirmed in the Protestant church, she espoused “rational religious views” that “had always scandalized orthodox Christians. Having grown to maturity during a period of religious and intellectual ferment (these were the years of Ecce Homo, Renen’s Vie de Jésus and Darwin’s Origin of Species) she had not the same blind, unquestioning approach to Christianity.”⁴⁷ Vicky took the “side of science and philosophy—as opposed to real faith,” as Queen Victoria put it. This perturbed her, for the queen believed that “both should go together.”⁴⁸ Vicky had little regard for Catholicism and its elaborate rituals. Nevertheless, she believed in religious toleration and opposed Bismarck’s Kulturkampf.

As for Queen Victoria, she admitted being “a fervent Protestant and hating all that approaches Catholicism.”⁴⁹ Her preferences were not too theological and not “high church” (which utilizes practices closely associated with the Catholic Mass). When Marie of Bavaria converted to Catholicism, Victoria told Vicky, “One can’t understand anyone who has been a Protestant ever submitting to this.”⁵⁰ The queen also complained to Vicky about the “alarming innovations” of the Protestant churches in England, which were “too Catholic” for her tastes and bordered on being “most dangerous!”⁵¹ Yet like Vicky, Victoria tolerated those whose faith differed from hers and worried about persecution. Earlier in her reign, the queen had written: “I cannot bear to hear the violent abuse of the Catholic religion, which is so painful and so cruel towards the many innocent and good Roman Catholics.”⁵² And decades later, the queen told Vicky, “Certainly I would never persecute others for their religion and would always respect it.”⁵³

When it came to her own faith, Queen Victoria, who liked plain sermons, was at home in the Scottish Kirk, especially at Crathie Church at Balmoral. The queen expressed her esteem for the Scottish Kirk to Vicky, telling her, “Thank God the Scotch Church is a stronghold of Protestantism, most precious in these realms.”⁵⁴ With such staunch Protestant views, it is not surprising that the declaration of Papal Infallability in 1870 and Bismarck’s Kulturkampf had fired in Queen Victoria a “Protestant militancy” and “the longing to show that in Britain also there was a Defender of the Faith.”⁵⁵ Thus, as in Isabella of Castile’s and Maria Theresa of Austria’s times, religion played a personal and political role in the lives of royalty, though less intensely and pervasively.

For Vicky and Victoria, personal milestones matched the significant political changes of the 1870s. Numerous births augmented the family’s next generation. Vicky’s daughter Charlotte made her thirty-eight-year-old mother a grandmother and fifty-nine-year-old grandmother a great-grandmother in 1879. But the dark cloud of death and family troubles cast its long shadow too. From 1878 onward, tragedy struck the family with unrelenting regularity. That year, diphtheria struck Vicky’s sister Alice and her family. Several of her children came down with the disease that eventually killed Alice’s youngest daughter, May. During their illness, Alice wrote to Queen Victoria that “knowing all these precious lives [are] hanging on a thread, is an agony barely to be conceived.”⁵⁶ After kissing her son Ernie, who also had diphtheria, Alice came down with the disease and died on the seventeenth anniversary of Prince Albert’s death. A shocked Vicky wrote their grieving mother a thirty-nine-page letter upon hearing the news. After Alice’s death, Victoria took her Hessian grandchildren under her wing, becoming almost a second mother to them. Further tragedy struck. In 1879, Vicky’s son Waldemar died of diphtheria at eleven years of age, leaving his mother distraught. Waldemar and Sigismund had been her favorite sons, and now they were dead.

As tribulations mounted, Queen Victoria advised Vicky to turn to her faith. The queen assured her eldest daughter that the only way to face their trials was to accept them as God’s will, echoing the last line of a favored hymn of Princess Alice, which quoted from the Lord’s prayer: “Thy will be done.”⁵⁷ “It is only by trusting in God’s all merciful goodness and in following the precepts of His beloved Son,” noted Victoria, “that one can go through the trials, sorrows and difficulties of this life. Without this conviction sorrows and trials will lead to feelings of despair and bitterness, whereas if you can say ‘Thy will not mine be done’ and ‘God’s ways are not our ways’ you will feel a peace and contentment.” ⁵⁸ Both women would need to cling to this precept, for the coming years were to bring yet more difficulties and heartache.