Princess Victoria of Hesse and By Rhine - Later Life

Later Life

Prince Louis was forced to resign from the navy at the start of the war when his German origins became an embarrassment, and the couple retired for the war years to Kent House on the Isle of Wight, which Victoria had been given by her aunt Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll. Victoria blamed her husband's forced resignation on the Government "who few greatly respect or trust". She distrusted the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, because she thought him unreliable—he had once borrowed a book and failed to return it. Continued public hostility to Germany led King George V of the United Kingdom to renounce his German titles, and at the same time on 14 July 1917 Prince Louis and Victoria renounced theirs, assuming an anglicised version of Battenberg—Mountbatten—as their surname. Four months later Louis was re-ennobled by the King as Marquess of Milford Haven. During the war, Victoria's two sisters, Alix, Tsarina of Russia, and Ella, Grand Duchess Sergei of Russia, were murdered in the Russian revolution, and her brother, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, was deposed. On her last visit to Russia in 1914, Victoria had driven past the very house in Yekaterinburg where her sister, Alix, would be murdered. Alix's body was never recovered during Victoria's lifetime, but eventually, in January 1921, after a long and convoluted journey, the body of her sister, Ella, was interred in Jerusalem in Victoria's presence.

Later that year, Victoria's husband died in London. After meeting her at the Naval and Military Club in Piccadilly, he complained of feeling unwell and Victoria persuaded him to rest in a room they had booked in the club annexe. She called a doctor, who prescribed some medication and Victoria went out to fill the prescription at a nearby pharmacist's. When she came back, Louis was dead. On her widowhood, Victoria moved into a grace-and-favour residence at Kensington Palace and, in the words of her biographer, "became a central matriarchal figure in the lives of Europe's surviving royalty". In 1930, her eldest daughter, Alice, suffered a nervous breakdown and was diagnosed as schizophrenic. In the following decade Victoria was largely responsible for her grandson Philip's education and upbringing during his parents' separation and his mother's institutionalisation. Prince Philip recalled, "I liked my grandmother very much and she was always helpful. She was very good with children ... she took the practical approach to them. She treated them in the right way – the right combination of the rational and the emotional."

In 1937, Victoria's brother, Ernest Louis, died and soon afterwards her widowed sister-in-law, nephew, granddaughter and two of her great-grandchildren all died in an air crash at Ostend. Victoria's granddaughter, Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark, had married Victoria's nephew (Ernest Louis's son), George Donatus of Hesse. They and their two young sons, Louis and Alexander, were all killed. Cecilie was pregnant at the time and the stillborn child was found among the wreckage. Cecilie's youngest child, Johanna, who was not on the plane, was adopted by her uncle Prince Louis of Hesse and by Rhine but the little girl only survived her parents and older brothers by eighteen months, dying in 1939 of meningitis.

Further tragedy soon followed when Victoria's son, George, died of bone cancer the following year. Her granddaughter, Lady Pamela Hicks, remembered her grandmother's tears. In World War II Victoria was bombed out of Kensington Palace, and spent some time at Windsor Castle with King George VI. Her surviving son, Louis, and two of her grandsons served in the Royal Navy, while her German relations fought with the opposing forces. She spent most of her time reading and worrying about her children; her daughter, Alice, remained in occupied Greece and was unable to communicate with her mother for 4 years at the height of the war. After the Allied victory, her son, Louis, was offered the post of Viceroy of India, but she was deeply opposed to his accepting, knowing that the position would be dangerous and difficult. He accepted anyway.

She fell ill with bronchitis (she had smoked since the age of sixteen) at her son Louis's home at Broadlands, Hampshire in the summer of 1950. Saying "it is better to die at home", Victoria moved back to Kensington Palace, where she died. She was buried four days later in the grounds of St. Mildred's Church, Whippingham on the Isle of Wight.