Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires (32 page)

Alexandra’s mystic obsession with having a son and the subsequent damage it was doing to the Russian monarchy attracted the attention of many, including the German government. Prince Henry VII of Reuss, whose niece Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna (“Miechen”) had married into the Romanovs, recounted the unsettling situation in Russia to Chancellor von Bülow.

All that I have managed to gather has left a very disturbing impression … certain influences, which can only be described as pernicious, are beginning to make themselves felt. These influences … with a very dubious admixture of mysticism, emanate from the Montenegrin princesses … wielded so decisive a power over the reigning Tsarina that even the Dowager Empress cannot combat it.… The Russian people sense corruption and the Little Father’s [Nicholas II] prestige suffers accordingly. All this is being carefully used by the Nihilists to undermine Imperial prestige still further. Revolution, to-day, has changed its tactics. The
mot d’ordre
is no longer to assassinate a sovereign, but to discredit dynastic infallibility with the people. At the top there is utter ignorance of this danger … Everybody else is ignored. No one who tells the truth can get a hearing, but is jealously watched and pushed aside.
⁴⁵⁴

Her obsession with having a son was not the only matter that caused Alexandra anxiety in 1901. Less than a year after Queen Victoria’s death, the unbelievable news broke that her brother the Grand Duke of Hesse and his wife, Ducky, were divorcing. Ducky announced to her family almost immediately after Queen Victoria’s funeral that she would not be returning to Darmstadt.

The revelation sent shockwaves rippling through royal courts. Until the early twentieth century, divorce was a scandalous affair, and despite ubiquitous unhappy royal marriages, it was a practice wholly unheard of amongst proper upper-class society. But for Ernie and Ducky—who had been forced together by Queen Victoria—divorce was the only answer. They were maddeningly unhappy together, and their tiny court in Darmstadt was tainted with one scandal after another. “I do not think they were at all happy together,” May’s husband wrote to Nicholas II, “but I never thought it would come to this; I am very sorry as I like them both. You and I, thank God, are both so happy with our wives and children, that we can’t understand this sort of thing.”
⁴⁵⁵
Empress Augusta Victoria was aghast at the idea, blaming the divorce on a lack of morality within Ducky’s family. “The last time I saw her,” Princess Antoine Radziwill wrote to a friend, Dona “spoke to me with great severity about the duchess of Coburg [Ducky’s mother], who, according to her, must have raised her daughters very badly.” In Saint Petersburg, Nicholas II was at a loss for words. “Can you imagine,” he wrote to his mother, “getting divorced,
yes
, actually
divorced
!… In a case like this even the loss of a dear person is better than the general disgrace of a divorce.”
⁴⁵⁶

Darmstadt was “shrouded temporarily in dishonor,” according to one historian. Alexandra’s enemies used the scandal in their ongoing campaign of vilification against the empress. The “Romanovs discovered a fresh reason to be contemptuous of Ernie’s sister Alix, who could not, they supposed, have been ignorant of her brother’s unmentionable proclivities.”
⁴⁵⁷
Not everyone was ready to use the scandal against Alexandra, however. Her mother-in-law, Minnie, offered her support. “It is simply awful,” she wrote after a sleepless night. “I am also
extremely
sorry for poor Alix, knowing well how dear Ernie is to her …”
⁴⁵⁸

What made her brother’s divorce so much more painful for Alexandra (which she blamed solely on his now ex-wife) was that Ducky had run off with Grand Duke Kyril Vladimirovich, one of the tsar’s cousins. Alexandra’s Victorian sensibilities were offended when the divorced Ducky was admitted into Russia’s ruling family—Ernie remarried in 1905 to Princess Eleonore of Solms-Hohensolms-Lich. So too was Nicholas. He stripped Kyril of his title, rank, honors, and commission in the navy. Despite a violent altercation with Kyril’s father, his uncle the Grand Duke Vladimir, Nicholas refused to back down. Kyril’s mother, Miechen, blamed the tsar’s reaction on Alexandra’s contempt for Ducky. “And why all this?” she wrote to her uncle Henry VII of Reuss. “Because the Tsarina does not want her hated ex-sister-in-law in the family.”
⁴⁵⁹
In the hopes of winning the tsar’s favor for Ducky, her sister the Crown Princess Marie of Romania named her newborn son Nicolas. This gesture seemed to have little impact on the tsar’s decision, which included forcing the newlyweds to live in exile. It would be another eight years before Kyril and Ducky were allowed to return to Russia.

Dubbed by the international press as “the Colonial Tour,” the Duchess of Cornwall’s trip around the world began inauspiciously. Her passage aboard the
Ophir
only increased her aversion to sea travel. Seasickness left her bedridden in her cabin for most of the first few weeks. “I
detest
the sea,” she wrote home from the Indian Ocean. “I like seeing the places and being on land, the rest of it is purgatory to me.”
⁴⁶⁰
The
Ophir
’s first official stop was Gibraltar, followed by Malta, where George had made many visits during his youthful naval days. Malta held a special place in George’s heart because it was here that he experienced first love. His uncle the Duke of Edinburgh was stationed on the island when he commanded the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Squadron. George fell in love with the duke’s beautiful daughter Marie (“Missy”), but her mother would have none of it. The formidable Duchess of Edinburgh loathed the English court and quickly put an end to George and Missy’s adolescent romance. She later saw to it that Missy married Crown Prince Ferdinand of Romania.

From Valletta, the
Ophir
sailed on to Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon. May deeply enjoyed her time on the exotic island. She became the first English princess to visit a Buddhist monastery. She also received the unique honor of observing a procession of Peraharu priests, an ancient sect of Hindu. Their next stop was Singapore. During lunch at the Government House, the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall were introduced to the four sultans of the Federated Malay States, a British-protected political union on the Malay Peninsula. In the afternoon, May held a private audience with the numerous wives of the Perak sultan and some of the tribe’s lesser chiefs.

Singapore was the last stop before the much-anticipated visit to Australia. “It seems so wonderful to be actually in Australia,” the duchess wrote home. “It is like a second England, with the same people and the same towns, only the scenery is different.”
⁴⁶¹
May’s first glimpse of Australia was fittingly that of Melbourne, the bustling embodiment of English influence stretching to the other side of the globe. The city was named for Lord Melbourne, the famous British prime minister who had once been a close friend and adviser to Queen Victoria in the first few years of her reign. This city, renowned for being built in less than fifty years, welcomed the Duchess of Cornwall and her husband with such exuberance that it nearly eclipsed the fanfare that surrounded her own wedding. The route from their hotel to the Parliament House was lined with triumphal arches erected high above excited crowds numbering in the thousands. The royal couple was present at the opening session of Parliament for the newly formed Commonwealth of Australia, which had united for the first time the provinces of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Tasmania, and Western Australia.

May was immensely popular in Australia and New Zealand. She was the embodiment of the word
royal
. Her tall, stately beauty was even greater than what the populace had believed. She also greatly impressed everyone by her knowledge of the region. Lady Mary Lygon, one of her ladies-in-waiting, wrote home, “Her Royal Highness has quite got over all her shyness abroad … Her smile is commented on in every paper and her charm of manner: in fact, she is having a ‘
success fou.
’” Lady Lygon wrote later, “Every state has successively fallen in love with her looks, her smile, and her great charm of manner. She is at last coming out of her shell and will electrify them at home as she has everyone here.”
⁴⁶²

For the final and most in-depth part of the colonial tour, the duke and duchess headed to Canada. The
Ophir
skirted around Cape Town and up the coast of West Africa before crossing the Atlantic and docking in Montreal. It was here that May received one of her most treasured possessions: a gold maple leaf covered with enamel and diamonds. It would remain one of her favorites, especially once she became queen. May and George’s Canadian visit soon turned into a real adventure. Political parties, dignitaries, and ordinary folk clamored over one another for the Duchess of Cornwall’s attention. But it was with the last group, ordinary people, with whom she was most at ease. When she visited the home of one of the local dockworkers, the hostess was somewhat tongue-tied and embarrassed. Seizing the opportunity, May asked if she could see her children’s nursery and suddenly asked, “And may I show you my children’s pictures?”
⁴⁶³

Ottawa was next on the itinerary. The duke and duchess were impressed by the towering buildings. Later, they watched an awe-inspiring evening of entertainments on the sprawling lawn of the Parliament building, where Edward VII laid the foundation stone during his 1860 visit. Actors recreated a lumberjack’s life and the discovery of Canada by French explorers, followed by a dinner of pea soup and pork and beans to add a dose of reality to the local flavor. After a walking tour of Hull—just across the provincial border in Quebec—it was back to Ottawa for a presentation ceremony in the Senate Chamber. More than a thousand people were paraded past George and May, who had taken up seats on the thrones normally occupied by the governor general and his consort. The Senate Chamber ceremony, in which May was seated beneath a glistening diamond-studded canopy surrounded by thousands of miniature lamps, was exhausting but a success. According to one witness, both George and May “were uniformly gracious to all, without exception, who came with their tribute of respect and duty.”
⁴⁶⁴

The rest of the hectic journey was loaded with speeches, luncheons, banquets, and public ceremonies. In Winnipeg, May presided over a rose-themed ball decorated with sparkling lights awash in pinks and yellows, followed by a torchlight procession to the train station.

The entire route … was lined with cheering spectators, determined to get a good view of the Duke and Duchess, which the gaily illuminated streets rendered an easy matter. Along Assiniboine avenue and down Donald street as far as St. Mary, were stationed lines of torch-bearers. As the royal carriage passed by, these fell in behind, and with the bands at different points playing spirited airs, presented a spectacular appearance along the whole route extending over a mile and a half.
⁴⁶⁵

May and George always tried to write home to King Edward and Queen Alexandra about their experiences. “Darling May is of the greatest possible help to me & works very hard, I don’t think I could have done all this without her,” George wrote to his mother. “Everybody admires her very much which is very pleasing to me. I hope you are as proud of your daughter in law as I am of my wife.”
⁴⁶⁶