December 14, 1878: Death of Princess Alice of the United Kingdom

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Alice of the United Kingdom, Alix, Diphtheria, Ernst Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine., Louis IV of Hesse and By Rhine, Marie, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom

Princess Alice of the United Kingdom VA CI (Alice Maud Mary; April 25, 1843 – December 14, 1878) was the third child and second daughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Alice was the first of Queen Victoria’s nine children to die, and one of three to be outlived by their mother, who died in 1901. Her life had been enwrapped in tragedy since her father’s death in 1861.

HRH Princess Alice of the United Kingdom

On July 1, 1862, Alice married the minor German Prince Ludwig of Hesse and by Rhine, heir to the Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight while the court was still at the height of mourning for the death of the Prince Consort.

On the day of the wedding, the Queen issued a royal warrant granting her new son-in-law the style of Royal Highness in the United Kingdom. This elevation of status was only valid in the United Kingdom. The Queen also subsequently made Prince Ludwig a knight of the Order of the Garter.

In March 1877, Ludwig became heir presumptive to the Hessian throne when his father, Charles, died and, less than three months later, on June 13, 1877, he found himself reigning Grand Duke upon the demise of his uncle, Ludwig III.

Princess Alice in her wedding dress

In November 1878, the Grand Ducal household fell ill with diphtheria. Alice’s eldest daughter Victoria was the first to fall ill, complaining of a stiff neck in the evening of November 5. Diphtheria was diagnosed the following morning, and soon the disease spread to Alice’s children Alix, Marie, Irene, and Ernst.

Her husband Ludwig became infected shortly thereafter. Elisabeth was the only child to not fall ill, having been sent away by Alice to the palace of Princess Charles, her mother-in-law. Princess Charles was Princess Elisabeth of Prussia (1815 – 1885) who was the second daughter of Prince Wilhelm of Prussia and Princess Maria Anna of Hesse-Homburg and a granddaughter of King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia.

Marie became seriously ill on November 15, and Alice was called to her bedside, but by the time she arrived, Marie had choked to death. A distraught Alice wrote to Queen Victoria that the “pain is beyond words”. Alice kept the news of Marie’s death secret from her children for several weeks, but she finally told Ernst in early December.

Prince and Princess Ludwig of Hesse and by Rhine

His reaction was even worse than she had anticipated; at first he refused to believe it. As he sat up crying, Alice broke her rule about physical contact with the ill and gave him a kiss. At first, however, Alice did not fall ill. She met her sister Victoria as the latter was passing through Darmstadt on the way to England, and wrote to her mother with “a hint of resumed cheerfulness” on the same day.

However, by Saturday, December 14, the anniversary of her father’s death, she became seriously ill with the diphtheria caught from her son. Her last words were “dear Papa”, and she fell unconscious at 2:30 am. Just after 8:30 am, she died.

I have read a slightly different account of the fatal kiss that allowed Alice to contract diphtheria. In this account the fatal kiss occurred on November 16, the day after the death of Princess Marie. Alice’s young son, Hereditary Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig wanted to give Marie a book but became inconsolable when told she passed away the previous day. To console her son Alice gave him a Kiss.

So instead of early December that the fatal kiss occurred, this account means that Alice contracted diphtheria earlier and suffered for weeks with the disease before succumbing from this terrible illness. I’m still doing some research to discover which account is the accurate one.

Family of the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine

Alice was buried on December 18, 1878 at the Grand Ducal mausoleum at Rosenhöhe outside Darmstadt, with the Union Flag draped over her coffin. A special monument of Alice and her daughter Marie was erected there by Joseph Boehm.

Alicemwas the first child of Queen Victoria to die, with her mother outliving her by more than 20 years. Victoria noted the coincidence of the dates of Albert and Alice’s deaths as “almost incredible and most mysterious”. Writing in her journal on the day of Alice’s death, Queen Victoria referred to the recent sufferings of the family: “This terrible day come round again!”

Shocked by grief, she wrote to her daughter Princess Victoria: “My precious child, who stood by me and upheld me seventeen years ago on the same day taken, and by such an awful and fearful disease…She had darling Papa’s nature, and much of his self-sacrificing character and fearless and entire devotion to duty!” The animosity that Victoria had towards Alice seemed no longer present. Princess Victoria expressed her grief to her mother in a 39-page letter, and deeply mourned Alice, the sister to whom she was closest. However, both she and her husband were forbidden from attending the funeral by the Emperor of Germany, who was worried about their safety.

Alice’s death was felt in both Britain and Hesse. The Times wrote: “The humblest of people felt that they had the kinship of nature with a Princess who was the model of family virtue as a daughter, a sister, a wife and a mother…Her abundant sympathies sought for objects of help in the great unknown waste of human distress”. The Illustrated London News wrote that the “lesson of the late Princess’s life is as noble as it is obvious.

Moral worth is far more important than high position”. The death was also heavily felt by the royal family, especially by Alice’s brother and sister-in-law, the Prince and Princess of Wales. The Princess of Wales, upon meeting the Queen after Alice’s death, exclaimed “I wish I had died instead of her”. The Prince, meanwhile, wrote to Earl Granville that Alice “was my favourite sister. So good, so kind, so clever! We had gone through so much together…”

September 24, 1950: Death of Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine (later Victoria Mountbatten, Marchioness of Milford Haven). Part I

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Alice of the United Kingdom, Diphtheria, Louis IV of Hesse and By Rhine, Marchioness of Milford Haven, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Prussia, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, Victoria Mountbatten, Victoria of Hesse and By Rhine

Princess Victoria Alberta Elizabeth Mathilde Marie of Hesse and by Rhine, later Victoria Mountbatten, Marchioness of Milford Haven (April 5, 1863 – September 24, 1950) was the eldest daughter of Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine (1837–1892), and his first wife, Princess Alice of the United Kingdom (1843–1878), daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Victoria was born on Easter Sunday at Windsor Castle in the presence of her maternal grandmother, Queen Victoria. She was christened in the Lutheran faith in the Green Drawing Room at Windsor Castle, in the arms of the Queen on April 27. Her godparents were Queen Victoria, Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, Ludwig III, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine (represented by Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine), the Prince of Wales and Prince Heinrich of Hesse and by Rhine.

Her early life was spent at Bessungen, a suburb of Darmstadt, until the family moved to the New Palace in Darmstadt when she was three years old. There, she shared a room with her younger sister, Elisabeth, until adulthood. She was privately educated to a high standard and was, throughout her life, an avid reader.

During the Prussian invasion of Hesse in June 1866, Victoria and Elisabeth were sent to Britain to live with their grandmother until hostilities were ended by the absorption of Hesse-Cassel and parts of Hesse-Darmstadt into Prussia. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, military hospitals were set up in the palace grounds at Darmstadt, and she helped in the soup kitchens with her mother. She remembered the intense cold of the winter, and being burned on the arm by hot soup.

In 1872, Victoria’s eighteen-month-old brother, Friedrich, was diagnosed with haemophilia. The diagnosis came as a shock to the royal families of Europe; it had been twenty years since Queen Victoria had given birth to her haemophiliac son, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, and it was the first indication that the bleeding disorder in the royal family was hereditary. The following year, Friedrich fell from a window onto stone steps and died. It was the first of many tragedies to beset the Hesse family.

In early November 1878, Victoria contracted diphtheria. Elisabeth was swiftly moved out of their room and was the only member of the family to escape the disease. For days, Victoria’s mother, Princess Alice, nursed the sick. The youngest, Marie, became seriously ill on November 15, and Alice was called to her bedside, but by the time she arrived, Marie had choked to death.

A distraught Alice wrote to Queen Victoria that the “pain is beyond words”. Alice kept the news of Marie’s death secret from her children for several weeks, but she finally told Ernst in early December. His reaction was even worse than she had anticipated; at first he refused to believe it. As he sat up crying, Alice broke her rule about physical contact with the ill and gave him a kiss.

At first, however, Alice did not fall ill. She met her sister Victoria as the latter was passing through Darmstadt on the way to England, and wrote to her mother with “a hint of resumed cheerfulness” on the same day. However, by Saturday, December 14, the anniversary of her father’s death, she became seriously ill with the diphtheria caught from her son. Her last words were “dear Papa”, and she fell unconscious at 2:30 am. Just after 8:30 am, she died.

As the eldest child, Victoria partly assumed the role of mother to the younger children and of companion to her father. She later wrote, “My mother’s death was an irreparable loss … My childhood ended with her death, for I became the eldest and most responsible.”

Marriage and family

At family gatherings, Victoria had often met Prince Louis of Battenberg, who was her first cousin once removed and a member of a morganatic branch of the Hessian royal family. Prince Louis had adopted British nationality and was serving as an officer in the Royal Navy. In the winter of 1882, they met again at Darmstadt, and were engaged the following summer.

After a brief postponement because of the death of her maternal uncle Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, Victoria married Prince Louis on April 30, 1884 at Darmstadt. Her father did not approve of the match; in his view Prince Louis—his own first cousin—had little money and would deprive him of his daughter’s company, as the couple would naturally live abroad in Britain.

However, Victoria was of an independent mind and took little notice of her father’s displeasure. Remarkably, that same evening, Victoria’s father secretly married his mistress, Countess Alexandrine von Hutten-Czapska, the former wife of Alexander von Kolemine, the Russian chargé d’affaires in Darmstadt. His marriage to a divorcee who was not of equal rank shocked the assembled royalty of Europe and through diplomatic and family pressure Victoria’s father was forced to seek an annulment of his own marriage.

September 12, 1837: Birth of Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine. Part II.

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Countess Alexandrine Hutten-Czapska, Diptheria, Grand Duke Ludwig IV of Hesse and By Rhine, Louis III of Hesse and by Rhine, Louis IV of Hesse and By Rhine, Morganatic Marriage, Prince Charles of Hesse and by Rhine, Princess Alice of the United Kingdom

In March 1877, Ludwig IV became heir presumptive to the Hessian throne when his father, Prince Charles of Hesse and by Rhine, died, and less than three months later, found himself as the reigning grand duke upon the demise of his uncle, Ludwig III, on June 13, 1877.

A year and a half later, November 1878, the Grand Ducal household fell ill with diphtheria. Ludwig’s eldest daughter Victoria was the first to fall ill, complaining of a stiff neck in the evening of November 5. Diphtheria was diagnosed the following morning, and soon the disease spread to Ludwig’s children Alix, Marie, Irene, and Ernst.

Ludwig himself became infected shortly thereafter. Elisabeth was the only child to not fall ill, having been sent away by Alice to the palace of the Princess Charles, Ludwig’s mother.

Marie became seriously ill on November 15, and Alice was called to her bedside, but by the time she arrived, Marie had choked to death. A distraught Alice wrote to Queen Victoria that the “pain is beyond words”. Alice kept the news of Marie’s death secret from her children for several weeks, but she finally told Ernst in early December.

Ernst’s reaction was even worse than she had anticipated; at first he refused to believe it. As he sat up crying, Alice broke her rule about physical contact with the ill and gave him a kiss. At first, however, Alice did not fall ill. She met her sister Crown Princess Victoria of Prussia as the latter was passing through Darmstadt on the way to England, and wrote to her mother with “a hint of resumed cheerfulness” on the same day.

However, by Saturday, December 14, the anniversary of her father, Prince Albert’s death, she became seriously ill with the diphtheria caught from her son.

Grand Duchess Alice’s last words were “dear Papa”, and she fell unconscious at 2:30 am. Just after 8:30 am, she died. Alice was buried on 18 December 1878 at the Grand Ducal mausoleum at Rosenhöhe outside Darmstadt, with the Union Flag draped over her coffin. A special monument of Alice and her daughter Marie was erected there by Joseph Boehm.

From then on, Grand Duke Ludwid IV reigned and raised his five surviving children alone.

When looking for a husband for Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom, the Prince of Wales suggested that Beatrice marry their sister Alice’s widower, Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse of Hesse and by Rhine.

The Prince of Wales argued that Beatrice could act as replacement mother for Louis’s young children and spend most of her time in England looking after her mother. He further suggested the Queen could oversee the upbringing of her Hessian grandchildren with greater ease.

However, at the time, it was forbidden by law for Beatrice to marry her sister’s widower. This was countered by the Prince of Wales, who vehemently supported passage by the Houses of Parliament of the Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill, which would have removed the obstacle.

Despite popular support for this measure and although it passed in the House of Commons, it was rejected by the House of Lords because of opposition from the Lords Spiritual. Although the Queen was disappointed that the bill had failed, she was happy to keep her daughter at her side.

Grand Duke Ludwig IV contracted a morganatic marriage on April 30, 1884 in Darmstadt (on the eve of the wedding of his eldest daughter, for which Queen Victoria and other relatives of his first wife were gathered in the Hessian capital) with Countess Alexandrine Hutten-Czapska (September 3, 1854 –May 8, 1941), daughter of Count Adam Hutten-Czapski and Countess Marianna Rzewuska.

She was the former wife of Aleksander von Kolemin, the Russian chargé d’affaires in Darmstadt. But the couple, facing objections from the Grand Duke’s in-laws, separated within a week and the marriage was annulled within three months. As a compensation, she received the title Countess von Romrod on 31 May 1884. Alexandrine later married for the third time to Basil von Bacheracht.

Death

Grand Duke Ludwig IV died on March 13, 1892 of a heart attack in the New Palace in Darmstadt and was succeeded by his son, Ernst-Ludwig. His remains are buried at Rosenhöhe, the mausoleum for the Grand Ducal House outside of Darmstadt.

September 12, 1837: Birth of Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine. Part I.

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Grand Ducal Highness, Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse and by Rhine, Louis IV of Hesse and By Rhine, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Prince Charles of Hesse and by Rhine, Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom

Ludwig IV (September 12, 1837 – March 13, 1892) was the Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, reigning from June 13, 1877 until his death. Through his own and his children’s marriages he was connected to the British Royal Family, to the Imperial House of Russia and to other reigning dynasties of Europe.

Early life

Ludwig was born at the Prinz-Karl-Palais in Darmstadt, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine in the German Confederation, the first son and child of Prince Charles of Hesse and by Rhine (1809 – 1877) and Princess Elisabeth of Prussia (1815 – 1885), granddaughter of King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia.

As his father’s elder brother Ludwig III (1806-1877), the reigning Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, had been married to his first wife since 1833 without legitimate children and from 1868 was married morganatically, Prince Ludwig was from birth second-in-line to the grand ducal throne, after his father.

First marriage

On July 1, 1862, Louis married Princess Alice, a daughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. On the day of the wedding, the Queen issued a royal warrant granting her new son-in-law the style of Royal Highness in the United Kingdom. In the German Confederation his style remained Grand Ducal Highness. The Queen also subsequently made Prince Ludwig a knight of the Order of the Garter.

Although an arranged marriage orchestrated by the bride’s father Albert, Prince Consort, the couple did have a brief period of courtship before betrothal and wed willingly, even after the death of the Prince Consort left Queen Victoria in a protracted state of grief that cast a pall over the nuptials.

Becoming parents in less than a year following their marriage, the young royal couple found themselves strapped financially to maintain the lifestyle expected of their rank. Princess Alice’s interest in social services, scientific development, hands-on child-rearing, charity and intellectual stimulation were not shared by Ludwig who, although dutiful and benevolent, was bluff in manner and conventional in his pursuits.

The death of the younger of their two sons, Frittie, who was afflicted with hemophilia and suffered a fatal fall from a palace window before his third birthday in 1873, combined with the wearying war relief duties Alice had undertaken in 1870, evoked a crisis of spiritual faith for the princess in which her husband does not appear to have shared.

In 1866 the Austrians suffered defeat in the Austro-Prussian War and the Hessian grandduchy was in jeopardy of being awarded as the spoils of war to victorious Prussia, which annexed some of Austria’s other allies (Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau), a fate from which Hesse-Darmstadt appears to have been spared only by a cession of territory and the close dynastic kinship between its ruler and the Emperor of Russia (Alexander II’s consort, Empress Maria Alexandrovna, was the sister of Hesse’s Grand Duke Ludwig III and of Prince Charles).

In the Franco-Prussian War provoked by Bismarck’s manipulation of the Ems telegram in 1870, Hesse and by Rhine this time found itself a winning ally of Prussia’s, and Prince Ludwig was credited with courageous military service, especially at the Battle of Gravelotte, which also afforded him the opportunity of mending the previous war’s grievances with the House of Hohenzollern by fighting on the same side as his brother-in-law and future emperor, Crown Prince Friedrich of Prussia.

February 25, 1885: Birth of Princess Alice of Battenberg. Part I.

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Duke of Edinburgh, Louis IV of Hesse and By Rhine, Prince Andrew of Greece., Prince Louis of Battenberg, Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Alice of Battenberg, Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom

Princess Alice of Battenberg (Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Marie; February 25, 1885 – December 5, 1969) was the mother of Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark (HRH The Duke of Edinburgh) and mother-in-law of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

A great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, she was born in Windsor Castle and grew up in the United Kingdom, the German Empire, and the Mediterranean. A Hessian princess by birth, she was a member of the Battenberg family, a morganatic branch of the House of Hesse-Darmstadt. She was congenitally deaf.

Alice was born in the Tapestry Room at Windsor Castle in Berkshire in the presence of her great-grandmother, Queen Victoria. She was the eldest child of Prince Louis of Battenberg and his wife Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. Her mother was the eldest daughter of Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, Queen Victoria’s second daughter. Her father was the eldest son of Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine through his morganatic marriage to Countess Julia Hauke, who was created Princess of Battenberg in 1858 by Ludwig III, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, Her three younger siblings, Louise, George, and Louis, later became Queen of Sweden, Marquess of Milford Haven, and Earl Mountbatten of Burma, respectively.

Prince and Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark

Princess Alice met Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark (known as Andrea within the family), the fourth son of King George I of Greece and Olga Constantinovna of Russia, while in London for King Edward VII’s coronation in 1902. They married in a civil ceremony on October 6, 1903 at Darmstadt. The following day, there were two religious marriage ceremonies; one Lutheran in the Evangelical Castle Church, and one Greek Orthodox in the Russian Chapel on the Mathildenhöhe. She adopted the style of her husband, becoming “Princess Andrew”.

The bride and groom were closely related to the ruling houses of the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, Denmark, and Greece, and their wedding was one of the great gatherings of the descendants of Queen Victoria and Christian IX of Denmark held before World War I. Prince and Princess Andrew had five children, all of whom later had children of their own.

Princess Alice with her two eldest daughters, Margarita and Theodora.

The global war effectively ended much of the political power of Europe’s dynasties. The naval career of her father, Prince Louis of Battenberg, had collapsed at the beginning of the war in the face of anti-German sentiment in Britain. At the request of King George V, he relinquished the Hessian title Prince of Battenberg and the style of Serene Highness on July 14, 1917, and anglicized the family name to Mountbatten. The following day, the King created him Marquess of Milford Haven in the peerage of the United Kingdom. The following year, two of her aunts, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia, and Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, were murdered by Bolsheviks after the Russian revolution. At the end of the war the Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian empires had fallen, and Princess Andrew’s uncle, Ernst Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse, was deposed

In 1930, after suffering a severe nervous breakdown, Princess Andrew was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, first by Thomas Ross, a psychiatrist who specialised in shell-shock, and subsequently by Sir Maurice Craig, who treated the future King George VI before he had speech therapy. The diagnosis was confirmed at Ernst Simmel’s sanatorium at Tegel, Berlin. Princess Andrew was forcibly removed from her family and placed in Ludwig Binswanger’s sanatorium in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland.

During Princess Andrew’s long convalescence, she and Prince Andrew drifted apart, her daughters all married German princes in 1930 and 1931 (she did not attend any of the weddings), and her son Prince Philip went to England to stay with his uncles, Lord Louis Mountbatten and George Mountbatten, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven, and his grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven.

During World War II, Princess Andrew was in the difficult situation of having sons-in-law fighting on the German side and a son in the British Royal Navy. Her cousin, Prince Victor zu Erbach-Schönberg was the German ambassador in Greece until the occupation of Athens by Axis forces in April 1941. She and her sister-in-law, Princess Nicholas of Greece, lived in Athens for the duration of the war, while most of the Greek royal family remained in exile in South Africa. She worked for the Red Cross, helped organise soup kitchens for the starving populace and flew to Sweden to bring back medical supplies on the pretext of visiting her sister, Louise, who was married to the Crown Prince. She organised two shelters for orphaned and lost children, and a nursing circuit for poor neighborhoods.

On December 3, 1944 Prince Andrew died in the Hotel Metropole, Monte Carlo, Monaco, of heart failure and arteriosclerosis just as the war was ending. He was 62.

Part II Tomorrow.