She Came into this World Quite Blue: The Birth of Princess Helena of the United Kingdom

Princess Helena as a child, by Winterhalter, c1849. Royal Collection Trust.

The gas lamps flickered faintly against the heavy drapery of Buckingham Palace. Whispers floated through the adjoining rooms. It was the early hours of May 25, 1846, and the palace was filled with anticipation and anxiety. Queen Victoria was in protracted labour, “longer and more than the other times,” wrote her husband, Prince Albert. A day before, the Queen, who turned 27 that day, already felt the discomfort.

Prince Albert was beside her while she endured the excruciating pain.  Also present were several members of the Privy Council and Ladies of the Bedchamber. Queen Victoria had given birth to three children already, but this time, it was worse.  The royal physicians and attendants worked tirelessly, their faces drawn as the labor dragged on.

In the adjoining rooms, the Duchess of Kent and the rest of the court officials waited nervously. Occasionally, a muffled cry from her daughter’s chamber would reach her ears, and she paused, her face etched with worry. Members of the royal household lingered in clusters, their low murmurs filled with speculation and concern.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, a faint cry broke the tension. A princess was born. The infant was handed carefully to the midwife. A hushed gasp rippled through the room.   Relief swept over everyone around as the baby’s cries grew stronger. They thought she wouldn’t survive. But she would prove to be Queen Victoria’s toughest daughter yet. 

Queen Victoria slumped against the pillows, her face drained of color, her chest rising and falling shallowly. After giving birth to the princess, she had to “remain very quiet to recover”.  

The baby "came into this world quite blue,” Albert told his older brother, Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Nevertheless, the child recovered more quickly than the mother and grew up to be physically the toughest of the royal siblings.

Princess Alice, Prince Alfred and Princess Helena, by Winterhalter, c1847. Royal Collection Trust.

Three weeks later, Queen Victoria noted that her baby was a "pretty, fat and most thriving child darker than any of the others and has a read deal of dark brown hair." 

 The baby was christened on 25 July at Buckingham Palace. She was named Helena Augusta Victoria. Two of her sponsors, George the Hereditary Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and Augsuta, Duchess of Cambridge, were present in person, while the third sponsor, Albert’s cousin Helene d’Orleans, was represented by the infant’s grandmother, the Duchess of Kent. On the day of her christening, the infant disgraced herself by sucking her thumb and crying lustily. It was nevertheless a festive occasion.  Buckingham Palace was illuminated by gas for the first time and ventilated by Professor Faraday's ingenous system of drawing the noxious fumes down the stems of the ormolu candelabras.   

Not long afterwards the baby made her first appearance in a family portrait. In Franz Xaver Winterhalter’s large iconic picture of the Queen, Albert and their elder children for which sittings began towards the end of 1846, and copies of which now hang at the Buckingham Palace and in the dining room at Osborne House, long since familiar through countless reproductions, Helena is clearly visible as the baby who looks out from her cradle at the spectator with questioning eyes.

Read more about Princess Helena here.