Maddening Mothers and Difficult Daughters

From the Queen to the Crown Princess

Osborne, January 9, 1867

I am sorry to see all the trouble and anxiety you have about Charlotte, which reminds me of Louise a little.  She (Louise) is in some things very clever – and certainly she has great taste and great talent for art which dear Lenchen has not, but she is very odd; dreadfully contradictory, very indiscreet, and, from that, making mischief very frequently.

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(Louise at the left with Victoria and Alice, shortly after Albert's death.  Obviously adolescence was a total party for for Louise.  Photo credit: BBC)

Much like a typical family, all of Victoria’s children got under her skin at various points in time.  Some – such as Bertie and Alfred – seemed to find their behaviors criticized by their mother more often than not.  When Victoria had a complaint about a child, she rarely passed on speaking her mind about it.  Siblings, other relatives, or friends could all be privy to news about the offending child.  She had a particularly irritating habit of comparing that child’s transgressions with those of his or her better-behaved sibling, whether warranted or not. Even a compliment to a child could be somewhat backhanded; Victoria does just that in the letter above on comparing Louise’s talents in art with Lenchen’s apparent lack thereof.

But Victoria wasn’t living in a vacuum, and a troublesome relationship between parent and child is something of which Victoria certainly saw the flip side.  Victoria’s own mother, the Duchess of Kent, was at first highly overprotective of her youngest child.  Victoria occupied an important position being so close to the throne; Viktoria’s financial vulnerabilities and lack of anyone she trusted after her husband’s death understandably caused her panic.  The presence of John Conroy, the Duchess’s private secretary and virtual Svengali, exacerbated the uneasy relationship between mother and daughter.  The result was that Viktoria squashed most attempts made by her daughter at independence, refusing to let Victoria have her own room or even walk up or down the stairs unassisted. 

During Victoria’s teen years the Duchess resembled something of a jailer, preventing visits with Victoria’s paternal relatives, refusing to allow Victoria to have access to people her own age, and even attempting to force her daughter to accept regency until her 21^st birthday.   After she became Queen, Victoria broke off most contact with her mother (and Conroy, who was forbidden from even being in the same room with Victoria), hardly seeing her from the time of her accession until Vicky’s birth.  At that point, Conroy had left the Duchess’s household and Victoria’s relationship with her mother was largely peaceful until the former’s death in early 1861.

As for Victoria’s relationships with her own daughters, entire books have been written to cover all of the various complaints expressed, annoyances made, and unappealing qualities had by Victoria’s five daughters. All five irritated her at various times and to differing degrees, but it was Louise, born in 1848, who seemed to alternately fascinate and aggravate her mother most often and to a great degree, particularly during somewhat rebellious young womanhood.

While she praises Louise’s artistic abilities, Louise was more often than not the daughter on the receiving end of criticism from Victoria.  This fourth daughter seemed to lack any of the other qualities Victoria found so endearing in her other girls – she was not as academic as Vicky, as nurturing as Alice, as pliant as Helena, or as sweet as Beatrice. 

This letter was written at a critical time for Louise.  She was nearly nineteen, and Victoria was already beginning to consider a possible husband for her.  At this time, she was working at Victoria’s unofficial secretary and go-fer – running errands, writing and copying letters, delivering brief messages to courtiers, and the like.  Alice and Lenchen had done this before her, and Beatrice did it for the remainder of Victoria’s life after Louise left home.  Of Louise’s help, Victoria had this to say: “I can’t speak à coeur ouvert [with an open heart] to Louise (though she does her best) as she is not discreet, and is very apt to always take things in a different light to me.”  This sentence sums up the nature of Victoria/Louise relationship quite well.

More of a social butterfly than her married and more muted older sisters, Louise was long forbidden by the Queen from accepting Bertie’s and Alexandra’s invitations to events at their London home, disliking their possible influence on Louise and also irritated that not everyone wanted to remain in perpetual mourning for Albert.  When Louise requested a court ball in celebration of her seventeenth birthday and unofficial coming out, Victoria gave a firm no, but did relent to Louise finally attending a party with Bertie and Alexandra. 

Louise also had personal and professional pursuits stemming from her previously mentioned artistic talents.  By far the most gifted of her siblings in art (most of whom were no slouches themselves in terms of ability), Louise began to consider something of a career in the art world in which she felt so comfortable.  In 1868, Louise managed to convince her mother to allow her attend the Kensington National Art Training School; this was the first occasion in which a British princess was allowed to attend a public school. 

Louise flourished at her classes in London.  While there, she had the nerve to visit a professional in which her mother deeply disapproved: a female doctor.  Louise visited Elizabeth Garrett, the first female doctor practicing in London, during Louise’s time at the Kensington School.  Ironically enough, Victoria was anything but a champion for women’s rights, and considered medicine a very inappropriate field for a woman to take up. 

What was more – Louise was considered rather pretty and seemed to know it.  Around the time of her stint at the Kensington School, slim, fine-featured Louise caught the attentions of Reverend Robinson Duckworth, a chaplain and academic who served as a tutor to Louise’s brother Leopold.  Louise approved of Duckworth’s attempts to help Leopold toward independence, moves which Victoria bitterly opposed.  When she discovered Louise’s efforts – as well as her more than strictly formal relationship with Duckworth – Victoria was furious.  Duckworth was dismissed from his position, and as Leopold explained in a letter to a former tutor, “…you can’t imagine how L. [Louise] and I are tyrannised over by headquarters, it is quite unbearable.” 

Louise’s carefree ways had become too much for Victoria.  She began an all-out search for a husband for this wayward daughter immediately.  Louise would need an intelligent, cultured man with varied interests, and when a scan of available Continental princes turned up dry, Louise married a peer.  John Campbell, Marquess of Lorne (later the 9^th Duke of Argyll) married Louise in March 1871.  Lord Lorne was a writer and had traveled extensively.  He and Louise had something of an adventurous life together, but it was not always a happy marriage and the couple lived apart for long periods of time.

(Charlotte, Vicky, Feo, and Victoria in about 1882.  Evidently they stopped annoying each other long enough to take the picture, at least.  Photo credit: The First Waltz) 

And how does all of this trash talk of Louise involve Vicky?  Charlotte, Vicky’s second child and oldest daughter, seemed to annoy her mother much more than her three younger sisters combined.  As a child she was affected by both chronic sinusitis and nervous ticks, driving Vicky mad with her sniffling and nail-biting.  She proved to be a poor student (something that mystified and angered Vicky) and was close to her Prussian grandparents, who often had a strained relationship with Vicky.  Charlotte also enjoyed a good relationship with her older brother William with whom Vicky had a complex and often troublesome relationship as well.

Charlotte married Bernard of Saxe-Meiningen at 16 and became mother of a daughter, Feodora.  Charlotte had little interest in Feodora, often leaving her in Vicky’s care to indulge her interests in Berlin’s social scene.  More scandalously, Charlotte is also believed to have held orgies for the purpose of blackmailing rival aristocrats.  (“Making mischief very frequently” indeed!)  It’s not surprising that Feo herself began to clash with Charlotte in later years, often spending long periods of time not speaking with her mother.  Tests performed years later on Charlotte’s and Feo’s remains point to both suffering from porphyria, a type of genetic disorder sometimes presenting in unusual behavior of the sufferer.

Victoria’s maternal line still carries on within countless royal and non-royal lines.  Although we no longer hear of the private lives of these individuals, it’s likely that among them are still mothers and daughters who really piss one another off.