Alexandra Read Free

castle since the Prince Consort died. Arthur was Victoria’s favourite son; of her other three, Bertie was an ageing roué, Alfred a
stodgy nonentity who had had the audacity to marry the daughter of the Russian emperor (‘The murder is out!’ the queen exclaimed when she heard of his engagement), and young Leopold,
intellectual and engaging, was afflicted with the bleeding disease which earned him the epithet ‘child of anxiety’. For Arthur, her ‘good’ son, the queen would have a grand
celebration, and would, for the first time since the start of her widowhood, add a long white train to her black gown, to be held up by train-bearers. 1
    To six-year-old Alicky and her sisters, brought up on plain food and taught to sew and cook and wait on themselves, entering the opulent precincts of Windsor Castle was akin to entering
fairyland. The vast, high-ceilinged halls and spacious salons, the endless corridors decorated with imposing art works, trophies from colonial wars, and regimental insignia overawed them and all
but forced on them an awareness of their Hanoverian roots. When all the relativesgathered at the long dining table laid with gleaming silver, polished candelabra and banks
of hothouse flowers, and with the queen, her ample chest adorned with flashing diamonds and sapphires, presiding at its head, the sense of dynastic force was strong indeed.
    To little Alicky, however, who disliked crowds and always sought isolation and quiet, the bustle of Windsor was uncongenial. There were too many faces, too much stimulation. She much preferred
spending time alone with her cousin Marie-Louise, Helena’s daughter, or with Ernie, or with her benevolent sister Ella, talking and playing games. The animals on the Windsor grounds attracted
her, and as the weather was mild that winter she was able to go walking and riding in a pony cart through the extensive park – though she could not walk far, for her injured legs were weak
and tired easily.
    What little time she spent on her own with her royal grandmother, ‘Gangan’, was agreeable, for when not presiding over a family occasion or enforcing family discipline Gangan could
be very loving and comforting. Alicky was one of Gangan’s favourites among her twenty-seven grandchildren; the little girl’s cheerful if somewhat reserved nature, her good manners and
the beauty of her delicate features were all pleasing. To Gangan Alicky was a ‘dear little thing’, to be hugged and joked with, fed on biscuits and chocolate sponge cake. To be sure,
the queen subjected Alicky, as she did all her grandchildren, to considerable scrutiny. She had to be certain that the child’s education and character formation were progressing
satisfactorily. But once Alicky passed those tests, she was rewarded with approval and affection, and she had the pleasure of basking in Gangan’s warm smile and hearing her rich,
deep-throated laugh.
    Setting aside a time for solemnity amid all the family activity, the queen took her grandchildren and their father to see the memorial she had commissioned for their mother, then in the process
of being carved. It was a tall granite cross, plain and austere, with the inscription ‘To the dear memory of Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland, . . . by her
sorrowing mother Queen Victoria.’ No doubt she took them to visit Albert’s tomb as well, for she visited it herself often and insisted that all hergrandchildren, most of whom had never known their grandfather, pay their respects to his cherished memory.
    The weeks went by, and the day of the wedding came. Arthur and Louise were joined together in St George’s Chapel, fêted in the dining hall, and sent off in a carriage with
congratulations and trunkloads of gifts. The wedding had been splendid, though the ever-critical queen had detected minor flaws – the bride’s rotted teeth and ‘ugly’ nose,
her father’s vulgarity, the embarrassing estrangement