Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha - Divorce

Divorce

Her marriage to Ernst suffered a further blow in 1897, when Victoria returned home from a visit to her sister Queen Marie of Romania and reportedly caught Ernst in bed with a male servant. She did not make her accusation public, but told a niece that "no boy was safe, from the stable hands to the kitchen help. He slept quite openly with them all." Queen Victoria was saddened when she heard of the trouble in the marriage from Sir George Buchanan, her chargé d'affairs, but refused to consider permitting her grandchildren to divorce because of their daughter, Elisabeth. Efforts to rekindle the marriage failed and, when Queen Victoria died in January 1901, significant opposition to the end of the marriage was removed. The Supreme Court of Hesse dissolved the marriage on 21 December 1901. Ernst, who had at first resisted the divorce, came to believe it was the only possible step. "Now that I am calmer I see the absolute impossibility of going on leading a life which was killing her and driving me nearly mad," Ernst wrote to his elder sister Victoria, Princess Louis of Battenberg. "For to keep up your spirits and a laughing face while ruin is staring you in the eyes and misery is tearing your heart to pieces is a struggle which is fruitless. I only tried for her sake. If I had not loved her so, I would have given it up long ago." Victoria, Princess Louis of Battenberg, later wrote that she was less surprised by the divorce than Ernst was. "Though both had done their best to make a success of their marriage, it had been a failure," she wrote. "Their characters and temperaments were quite unsuited to each other and I had noticed how they were gradually drifting apart." The divorce of the reigning Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Hesse caused scandal in the royal circles of Europe. Tsar Nicholas wrote to his mother that even death would have been better than "the general disgrace of a divorce."

After her divorce, Victoria went to live with her mother at Coburg and at her house in the French Riviera. She and Ernst shared custody of Elisabeth, who spent six months of each year with each parent. Elisabeth blamed Victoria for the divorce and Victoria had a difficult time reconnecting with her daughter. Ernst wrote in his memoirs that Elisabeth hid under a sofa, crying, before one visit to her mother. Ernst assured the child that her mother loved her too. Elisabeth responded, "Mama says she loves me, but you do love me." Ernst remained silent and didn't correct the child's impression. Elisabeth died at age eight and a half of typhoid fever during a November 1903 visit to Tsar Nicholas II and his family at their Polish hunting lodge. The doctor advised the Tsar's family to notify the child's mother of her illness, but the Tsarina delayed in sending a telegram. Victoria received the final telegram notifying her of the child's death just as she was preparing to travel to Poland to be at her bedside. At Elisabeth's funeral, Victoria removed her Hessian Order, a medallion, and placed it on her daughter's coffin as a final gesture "that she had made a final break with her old home."