The visit of the future Tsar Nicholas II
to Queen Victoria in the summer of 1894 has a fabled quality; it
took place a mere two months after his engagement to Princess Alix
of Hesse in Coburg. This visit has a special poignancy when viewed
through later eyes; we know of course, that far from enjoying a
period as Tsarevich and Tsarevna of Russia, Nicholas and Alix
would, in fact, marry in November…
Queen Victoria began her journal in 1832
at the age of thirteen and continued to keep it until old age, with
the last entry made just nine days before she died, constituting,
therefore, a remarkable royal record. She took her journal with her
wherever she went on her…
‘What sorrows this last year brought us,
what endless anxieties, what worries and losses – God grant the new
year may be a calmer and happier one for the whole of dear Russia.
Sleep well and peacefully…’ With these words, Tsarina Alexandra
Feodorovna (1872-1918)…
Queen Victoria famously wrote of her
wedding day – 10 February 1840: ‘“Oh! This was the happiest day of
my life!” The day – 10 February – became one which the Queen – so
peculiarly concerned with dates and anniversaries – would ever
refer to as having been her wedding day, in her great journal; it
formed the exact happy opposite to that grief-stricken 14 December,
(the…
A bedroom gives a uniquely personal
insight into any historical personality and a royal personage no
less so. Many key moments in Queen Victoria’s life also took place
in her bedrooms, which help in no small way, to tell the story of
that life. The furnishing of this most…
Queen Victoria’s love of dogs provided
the inspiration for royal sculpture and painting, as well, of
course, the Queen’s journal entries. References to her dogs abound
throughout. Interestingly, her life may in one way, be charted
through her dogs, because they were with…
On 25 June 1900, Victoria, Princess Louis
of Battenberg – born Princess Victoria of Hesse – gave birth to a
son at Frogmore House in Windsor Great Park, the erstwhile
residence of Queen Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent, until
her death in 1861. Princess Louis of Battenberg had been the
firstborn child of Queen Victoria’s second daughter, Princess
Alice, Grand Duchess of…
Princess Alix of Hesse visited Malta in
1890. Little would appear to have been recorded about it, although
it is possible to piece together some details of the trip from
surviving accounts, biographies by those that personally knew her
and from extracts of letters she wrote…
Biography is also made up of people in
the background; so it is with William Howley, Archbishop of
Canterbury. The appearances he made in the life of the future Queen
Victoria were of extreme significance, in a way that was unique,
and whilst these functions formed a natural…
Princess Alix of Hesse – as the Tsarina
Alexandra Feodorovna was known before her marriage to the young
Tsar Nicholas II in 1894 – visited Cumberland Lodge in Windsor
Great Park on several occasions, as the residence of her maternal
aunt, Princess Helena of Schleswig-Holstein and her cousins.
Cumberland Lodge made a circle for Princess Alix around this part
of her English family. She was…
