In Her Majesty’s service

The night Prince Albert died at Windsor (14 December 1861) Queen Victoria rushed wild and sobbing from the death bed to the nurseries, where four-year-old Princess Beatrice lay asleep. Grabbing the child, the queen brought her to her bedroom. According to one account, Victoria, stunned by grief, ghoulishly dressed the little girl in the nightclothes of the dead Albert and lay beside her. Afterwards, the queen insisted on having Beatrice, or ‘Baby’ as she was called, with her for hours each day.

Beatrice was the youngest by four years of Queen Victoria’s nine children, and this closeness to her grieving mother was, in Matthew Dennison’s account, the defining feature of her childhood. It meant that Beatrice was transformed from the fair-haired, happy little girl who said funny things and was everyone’s favourite into a solemn, prematurely sad child. Crushed by Victoria’s overwhelming and totally self-absorbed grief, Beatrice withdrew into herself and became suppressed and nervous. The queen tried to stop her growing up. She was not allowed sexual feelings. Intimidated by her mother, she rarely spoke. She was always ‘Baby’ to the queen and ‘Auntie’ to the queen’s many grandchildren.

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Queen Victoria hated her daughters marrying, finding them more companionable and biddable than her sons. Beatrice was not supposed to marry at all. Her destiny was to act as companion and handmaiden to the queen. Then, at the advanced age of 27, when she had long been written off as an old maid, Beatrice fell in love. Prince Henry ‘Liko’ of Battenberg was a handsome, morganatic prince loosely connected to the British royal family. Victoria was furious. For seven months she sat at meals with Beatrice and refused to utter a word, but communicated by notes. Eventually she gave her consent, but only on condition that Liko gave up his job as an officer in the Prussian army and came to live with Beatrice and her in England.