Friday 28 January 2005
Philip's Family Matters - Part II
Click here for Part I
When Prince Andrew, Princess Alice, their five children, nanny,
nurses, ladies-in-waiting and other retainers sailed in secret away from their home on the
Greek island of Corfu into permanent exile far away from the death sentence that hung over
Andrew’s head, they left with very little, and less money. Their first stop was a
stay in Kensington Palace with Philip’s maternal grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness
of Milford Haven. The family then relocated to an apartment near the Bois de Boulogne in Paris.
Fortunately, Andrew’s brother George, the currently deposed King of Greece, had
married well. His wife, Princess Marie Bonaparte, was the great-granddaughter of
Napoleon’s brother Lucien. In 1923, George II had been ‘asked’ to leave the
country while the fate of the Greek monarchy was being decided. In 1924, Greece declared
itself a republic, and until 1934 when George II was reinstated, he lived on a large
estate in the neighbourhood of St. Cloud. On that property was a small lodge, and he
invited his brother to bring his family there.
With no money coming in (Andrew likely never received the army
pension he was due), the girls wore hand-me-downs from their Milford Haven cousins and
Philip grew up learning the value of economizing. Paris was full of exiled family members,
but just the same everyone but little Philip was disoriented and at a loss. Andrew spent
his time in sidewalk cafes with other ex-pats, plotting how they would return to Greece.
The girls, the two eldest in their teens, went to public schools. Alice, in an attempt to
make the family some money, and also to help out other Greek exiles, opened a boutique in
the Faubourg St. Honore, selling Greek crafts and products. Alice had become a formidable
woman, but even she had a breaking point, and she was fast reaching it. One of her more
pressing problems was Philip.
He had been brought up in a household of adoring female relatives,
governesses, nurses and his beloved Nanny. But what was to be done about his education?
Andrew was adamant that his son would not suffer the horrors he had. Andrew, who knew only
how to wage war for a living, was also a talented painter, a man of great charm and
humour, with an uncanny way with animals (traits he has passed down to his son and his
grandson Charles). Philip’s first unsettling experience outside his family was
attending a day-boarding school called The Elms, a prep school for rich Americans in Paris.
Things at home were not good either. Alice was experiencing a mental crisis of a
religious nature. She had four unmarried daughters and a rambunctious nine-year-old boy
that she was coping with all alone. A solution was again found in England and Philip was
sent there to attend Cheam. At his Uncle George Milford Haven’s home at Lyndon Manor,
near the school, Philip found a tight-knit, happy family and a brother in his cousin
David. So he was not in Paris in 1931 when his own family fell apart for good.
Unable to deal with his inability to provide for his family Andrew
took himself off to Monte Carlo. Alice suffered what was probably a nervous breakdown and
spent the next few years in and out of sanitariums.
In the space of one year all four girls married German aristocrats
and moved to their husbands’ homes. Sophie married Prince Christopher of Hesse at 16.
Cecile married George Donatus, heir to the Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt. Margarita became
Princess to Godfrey of Hohenlohe-Langenburg and Theodora (Dolla) married Berthold,
Margrave of Baden. Now ten-year-old Philip had four new homes in Germany, two in England,
no surname, and a family that was scattered all over Europe. It might have been easy for
him to feel sorry for himself and act out, but he never did. Nor did he ever try to get by
on his royal status. His schoolmates considered him an orphan and he spent much time
outside school activities alone or championing the school’s other outcasts.
Back in 1919 Prince Max of Baden (Dolla’s father-in-law), and
his former secretary Kurt Hahn, decided to start a school for boys in Max’s Baden
home, Schloss Salem, a former Cistercian monastery. Philip came to visit his sister and
met Hahn. He was intrigued with this eccentric, flamboyant creature and the family decided
that the Salem school was the perfect solution when he left Cheam. Alice was now living
there with her daughter, and had become a nun. (She wore a nun’s habit every day of
her life, except on her son’s wedding day). And it would have been perfect except
Philip, like the rest of his family, had no use for Chancellor Adolph Hitler. Neither did
Kurt Hahn. Hahn had been outspoken in his dislike of the rising Nazis and had already been
arrested once and released. It was only a matter of time before he was taken again, so he
escaped to northern Scotland where he opened a satellite Salem school at Gordonstoun.
Philip openly ridiculed the Nazi salute and their veneration of Hitler, and the terrified
family decided he better get out too. For the next few years Philip was a student at
Gordonstoun, spending vacations alternately with his sisters and their husbands, who he
got along with very well. They taught him to hunt, fish and identify bird species, a love
he has kept all his life. His father was often with Cecile and George Donatus at Darmstadt.
Andrew also spent a lot of time with his children at a beautiful old hunting lodge called
Wolsfarten. Today the Frankfurt airport is close by.
But tragedy continued to haunt the family as Philip passed through
his teens. In 1936 he attended the funerals in Athens for King Constantine I, Queen Olga
and Queen Sophie, who had all died in exile. During a brief restoration of the monarchy,
under King George II’s orders, they were all buried together in the family plot.
Cecile and George Donatus had two young sons and a toddler named
Johanna. She was pregnant with her fourth. In 1937, George’s brother Prince Louis was
to marry the daughter of former British ambassador Lord Geddes. The wedding had already
been postponed once due to the death of the groom’s father Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig.
Now the entire Hesse family was flying from Germany to England for the ceremony. In a
heavy fog just outside Ostend, Belgium the plane’s wing clipped a tall chimney. Only
Johanna survived the crash. (She was taken in by Prince Louis but died of meningitis two
years later).
The wedding took place in full mourning. Five coffins accompanied the
newlyweds back to Darmstadt for burial. This deeply shocked Philip, and although he has
never spoken of it, thereafter he became progressively more thoughtful and pragmatically
unsentimental. In 1938, Uncle George Milford Haven died of cancer, age 46. Philip had lost
yet another father figure.
Uncle George Milford Haven’s younger brother, Lord Louis
Mountbatten, known as Uncle Dickie in the family, took Philip under his wing and got him
into Dartmouth Naval College after Gordonstoun. By now war with Germany was in full swing
and Philip, who would normally not have gone that soon, was sent to sea right after
graduation, where he accredited himself well enough to rise to the rank of Lieutenant.
In the meantime his father Andrew died in Monte Carlo in 1944. Andrew
was cut off from his family by the war, and daughter Sophie had never been allowed to go
see him. He was buried first in Nice. After the war, in 1946, Philip was able to travel
there and pick up what few belongings his father had left in the care of his longtime
mistress Doris. Prince Andrew of Greece was reburied in the royal Summer Palace at Tatoi
in Athens.
The now-famous meeting of the Lt. Philip Mountbatten, RN and the
future Queen of England when he was 18 and she 13 took place at Dartmouth. By 1947, plans
were well in place for his wedding to the 21-year-old Princess Elizabeth, scheduled for
November. His sister Sophie’s husband Christopher had been killed in action with the
Luftwaffe and she had recently become engaged to Prince Georg of Hanover. It had been many
years since she had seen her ‘little’ brother, and she certainly didn’t
expect him to be at the wedding. But somehow this British sailor had snagged a German army
vehicle and driven it across a desolate, charred Europe to attend. It is a characteristic
of his that if there is someplace he thinks he needs to be, regardless of the
inconvenience, Philip will move heaven and earth to get there. His sisters, however, would
not be permitted to pay him the same compliment.
Post-war England was no place to be German, even if it was just by
association, and all possible methods to play down Philip’s connections were
employed. This was judged necessary so the people would accept him more willingly as
Consort to their future Queen. His surname was officially changed to Mountbatten, although
that name came from his mother’s side (Battenburg in English translation). His royal
title was left off the wedding invitations. He was created Baron Greenwich of Greenwich,
Earl of Merioneth and Duke of Edinburgh on his wedding day. (The Queen made him a Prince
ten years later). Despite all this certain members of the establishment refused to trust
him. “Germans were Germans” after all. His German-married sisters were not
invited.
Before the war Andrew had placed some possessions in a safe deposit
box in a French bank and Princess Alice had been requesting to see them. But the bank
refused unless all three signatures of her daughters, who had his joint power of attorney,
were presented. Sophie signed, but all attempts to reach Dolla and Margarita had brought
no response. Germany’s infrastructures were still in ruins and mail had not reached
them. A young Scots Guard was dispatched to go find the women and get their autographs. He
finally found them living separately with relatives in straightened circumstances.
Fortunately, this anti-German sentiment was soon forgotten.
Philip’s sisters were all in attendance at the Queen’s coronation and invited to
Birkhall after. This passed without outcry and they were all welcome at all royal homes
from then on.
Both Dolla and her mother Princess Alice died in 1969. Alice had been
living in Buckingham Palace with her son’s family since her health had started to
fail. The Bolsheviks had murdered her great-aunt Ella, (Grand Duchess Elisabeth of Hesse)
in a particularly horrible way, in 1918. Ella was married to Grand Duke Serge, brother of
Tsar Nicholas II. She was thrown down a mineshaft, and as she lay broken at the bottom a
live grenade was tossed down on her. It took her three days to die from her wounds. She
had died singing hymns and Alice had revered her ideals and her faith. Like Ella, Alice
declared she wished to be buried in Jerusalem , in the Garden at Gethsemane. Alice had
once run a nursing order in Athens based on Ella’s religious ideas. The logistics of
this were very daunting to Philip and Sophie. Apart from this they would have a hard time
visiting her grave. For nearly 20 years she lay in the vault at St. George’s Chapel
at Windsor while the details were worked out. The negotiations were fraught with
misunderstandings, delays and red tape. Finally in 1988 Sophie, with the then Dean of
Windsor, watched as her mother was laid to rest under the olive trees beside Ella. For
security reasons Philip was unable to attend.
Margarita died in 1981. Philip’s cousin King Constantine II, who
succeeded his father King Paul in 1964, was finally deposed in 1974, and settled to live
in exile in London with his wife Queen Anne-Marie of Denmark and their five children.
Sophie died in a nursing home in Germany in 2001, aged 89, survived by her husband Georg,
seven children, and several grand and great-grandchildren.
Today Prince Charles spends several days each year at a monastery on
Mt Athos in northern Greece to recharge his batteries. Philip’s children and
grandchildren are close to their European cousins. The Greek Constitution still contains
Articles directing powers of the crown and rules for a hereditary monarchy. Perhaps
someday King Constantine II (whose sister is the Queen of Spain) or his son Pavlos, could
once again occupy the Greek throne. If so the prayers of the monks on Mr. Athos would at
last be answered.
By blood ties Philip, Prince of Greece is Danish, Russian, German and
British. He considers himself an International. His contributions to the monarchy and his
care of the Queen are his greatest accomplishments. It is sad that he has not been able to
develop the same strong ties with his own sons that he had with his father. Despite the
times they were apart there was always a great love and pride of Philip in Andrew’s
heart. Could it be that because his children have never lacked for anything or had to
fight for their own survival, as Philip always had to, they find it hard to relate to each
other?
He is now the last of his generation. He is the senior member of his
vast family. No matter what public face he puts on, the underlying fact is that Prince
Philip was and is loved, and that it is always, first and foremost, his family that
matters the most to him.
Anon,
- The Court Jester
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