Princess Beatrice, Queen Victoria’s Youngest Daughter

Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom, c1886. Image from Royal Collection

Beatrice Mary Victoria Feodore was born at Buckingham Palace in London, England on April 14, 1857. She was the fifth daughter and the youngest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Queen Victoria courted controversy while giving birth to Beatrice due to her use of “that blessed chloroform” to relieve her from the pains of delivery. The said chemical was deplored by medical practitioners and the Church of England for it was considered dangerous to both the mother and the baby.

A Favorite Child

Princess Beatrice was a favorite child being the youngest of nine children. Her father described her as “an extremely attractive, pretty, intelligent child—indeed the most amusing baby we have had” in a letter he wrote to his close adviser, Christian Friedrich Baron Stockmar. It is safe to say that she never had to fight for her parents’ attention.

Queen Victoria did not particularly like babies, but things were quite different upon the arrival of Princess Beatrice, whom she loved to bathe as opposed to her previous children. The British monarch adored her, saying she was "a pretty, plump and flourishing child ... with fine large blue eyes, [a] pretty little mouth and very fine skin".

Tragedy at a Young Age

A young Princess Beatrice by Richard Lauchert, c1863. Image from the Royal Collection

Beatrice was only four years old when Prince Albert died on December 14, 1861. This incident shattered Queen Victoria. At the end of that day, she took little Beatrice from the nursery, where she was sleeping, wrapped her in Prince Albert's night clothes and brought her to her own bedroom, where the Queen remained sleepless the entire night.  

The once vivacious Beatrice became withdrawn following the death of her father. She, together with her older sister Alice, became a constant support to her grieving mother, who also lost her mother, the Duchess of Kent, earlier that year. The then six-year-old princess was in deep sorrow that she went as far as to declare: "I don't like weddings at all. I shall never be married. I shall stay with my mother.”  On one hand, Queen Victoria said of Beatrice, “She is my constant companion and hope and trust will never leave me while I live.” By 1871, she remained as the only unmarried daughter of Queen Victoria.

Marital Prospects

Despite promising to never marry, Beatrice met Louis Napoleon, Prince Imperial and son of the exiled Napoleon III  and Empress Eugenie of France. A romance was about to develop between the two but Queen Victoria intervened and the Prince Imperial met his tragic fate at the Battle of Anglo-Zulu War in 1879.

Fate stepped in. Princess Beatrice fell in love with the athletic, muscular,  handsome but impoverished Prince Henry of Battenberg. They first met at the wedding of Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine and Prince Louis of Battenberg, the latter’s brother and one of former’s suitors.

They got secretly engaged in Darmstadt and when Beatrice expressed to Queen Victoria her desire to marry Henry, all she received was deafening silence. Although residing in the same house, the queen did not talk to her for seven months and would only communicate with her through written notes. She feared that if her “baby” would marry, the physical intimacy that came with it would tarnish her favorite child’s innocence.

Queen Victoria only relented to her daughter after Victoria, Princess Royal, and the Prince of Wales reminded her of the happiness Beatrice had brought to her deceased husband. She consented to the marriage only if Henry relinquished his German commitments and lived in England.

Marriage and Family

Queen Victoria with Prince and Princess Henry and their children, c1889. Image from Royal Collection

Prince Henry and Princess Beatrice married on July 23, 1885 at Saint Mildred’s Church in Whippingham on the Isle of Wight. The union produced four children: Alexander, born in 1886; Victoria Eugenie, born in 1887, who would marry King Alphonso XIII of Spain; Leopold, born in 1889; and Maurice, born in 1889.  Princess Beatrice, just like her mother Queen Victoria, was a hemophilia carrier. Her son, Leopold, contracted the disease.

Soon after their honeymoon, the couple lived with Queen Victoria, although the Queen eventually allowed the couple to visit Henry’s family in Germany. The couple’s presence in the court brightened it a bit which had rather turned dull after the death of Prince Albert. But Prince Henry eventually grew bored with nothing to. He yearned to join in military campaigns, which annoyed Queen Victoria, who annoyed his interests in joining life-threatening warfare.

Prince Henry also felt stifled at the court and by the Queen and Beatrice’s need for his presence. For instance, Princess Beatrice sent a Royal Navy Office to fetch him when she learned he joined the Ajaccio carnival with "low company.” In another occasion, when Henry escaped the court to join his brother Prince Louis of Battenberg in Corsica, Queen Victoria sent a warship to bring him back.  To ease his boredom, the queen named Henry Captain General and Governor of the Isle of Wight in 1889.

Prince Henry’s  Rumored Intimacy with Princess Louise

Rumors of Prince Henry getting intimate with her wife’s beautiful and artistic older sister, Princess Louise, caused a strain in the marriage.  according to Jesus Ibarra, Louis even wrote that Prince Henry was almost the greatest friend Louise never had. After the prince’s death, the then-Marchioness of Lorne told her younger sister that she was Henry’s confidant, a claim that strained the two sisters’ relationship.

Prince Henry’s Death

Prince Henry of Battenberg’s desire for military adventure did not waiver. He kept pressing his mother-in-law to allow him join the Ashanti expedition  and fight in the Anglo-Asante war. On December 6, 1895, Henry and Beatrice parted way. He died on January 22, 1896 after contracting malaria, aboard the ship HMS Blonde while on his way back to England. The princess, barely 39, was widowed too soon.

Queen Victoria "[w]ent over to Beatrice's room and sat a while with her. She is so piteous in her misery." Beatrice confessed to her mother that with Henry’s death, “the life is gone out of me.”

Grief-stricken Princess Beatrice was allowed to leave the court for one month. She returned and resumed her duty as her mother's faithful companion. Queen Victoria grew even more dependent, especially in dealing with correspondences.  The Queen also appointed her as her husband’s successor as  Captain-General and Governor of Isle of the Wight and Governor of Carisbrooke Castle, positions which she held until her own death. It was also by this time that the Queen became more considerate of Beatrice, giving her the Kensington Palace apartment which she occupied before she became queen and installing a darkroom at Osborne House to allow Beatrice to pursue her interest in photography.

Life after Queen Victoria’s Death

Beatrice’s life was shattered anew with the death of Queen Victoria on January 22, 1901.  “…You may imagine what the grief is. I, who had hardly ever been separated from my dear mother, can hardly realise what life will be like without her, who was the centre of everything," she wrote of her mother’s passing. Since she was not particularly close to the new king, Edward VII, Princess Beatrice was sidelined in her brother’s court. She also protested when the king decided to bequeathed Osborne House to the state.  Queen Victoria left her the much-smaller Osborn Cottage but with the estate now open to the public, Beatrice feared for her privacy, an issue that the king resolved when he extended the grounds of Beatrice’s home. Beatrice later sold Osborne House when she moved in to Carisbrooke Castle.

Queen Victoria’s Journals

Princess Beatrice, c1936. Image from Wikimedia Commons

After Queen Victoria’s death, Princess Beatrice set about transcribing and editing hundreds of volumes of her mother’s journals, a task that the Queen herself left to her youngest daughter. The former British monarch requested her to delete any private material or passage that could potentially hurt living people. The finished work was only a third of the original bulk of the journals, which distressed the helpless King George V and Queen Mary. The originals and the first drafts had all been destroyed along the process. The task Princess Beatrice thirty years to finish (1931) resulting to 111 blue notebooks kept in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle.

Princess Beatrice died in her last home, the Brantridge Park in West Sussex, England, on October 26, 1944. She was 87 years old. She was first buried in the royal vault in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. A year later, her remains were transferred into a joint tomb, the same place where her husband was laid to rest, in St. Mildred’s Church, Whippingham.