Ian Handford: The royal who partied in Torquay

H. Princess Marie Louise was a frequent visitor to Torquay throughout her long life.

Born on 12 August 1872, she was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and the youngest child of Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein and Princess Helena Augusta Victoria. The princess enjoyed a conventional education in England, relieved only by frequent trips to Germany.

By the age of eight, she and her sister were spending time at the same house as the D’Oyly Carte actor George Grossmith, where the impressionable youngsters were entertained by this “real live actor” — exciting times indeed.

Princess Marie Louise, early on, came to understand the needs of the sick; her mother had been instrumental in setting up a State Register of Nurses and was a founder member of the Red Cross. She had even previously tended to the wounded during the Russo-Turkish War of 1878.

At 17 years old, in March 1890, Princess Marie Louise first visited Torquay to open the town’s first Arts and Crafts Exhibition at the Bath Saloons on Beacon Quay on 5 May. She also laid the foundation stone of the Princess Pier (today, a replacement stone may still be seen). The Princess Gardens were named in her honour.

Over the years, she became a frequent visitor to Torquay, always accompanied by her lady-in-waiting, Evelyn Adams (née Wills, of the famous Imperial Tobacco Company). Evelyn would later visit her aunt, Ella Rowcroft — as we shall learn later.

After her first visit, the princess returned to London. Encouraged by her cousin, Emperor William II, she eventually became betrothed to Prince Aribert of Anhalt at a lunch held in Potsdam on 6 December 1890.

She was 18 when she married Aribert at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, the following July. The honeymoon was spent at Bayreuth, where the princess first encountered Wagner and Cosima Wagner and was introduced to many famous players and ballet stars at a series of musical evenings.

Meanwhile, she had sadly learnt that the House of Anhalt had manipulated the marriage of convenience for the newlyweds, who were aware that Aribert was homosexual. Eventually, in realising he was to be an unsatisfactory husband, he chose to ask his father to intervene on his behalf and get the marriage annulled.

It took the German sovereign a staggering nine years as true disillusionment and unhappiness of a failed marriage set in before finally he exercised a mediaeval family prerogative and granted an annulment to the loveless and childless marriage.

Aribert had seen fit to write formally to his father-in-law that “he was a young man and had the right to live his life in his own way” and signed it “Your devoted and obedient son-in-law Aribert, Prince of Anhalt”. To this the princess openly stated, "Truly the Germans have no sense of humour,” a typically British remark on what she saw as stiff, humourless behaviour.

Another typical example of this came when she learnt she had been banned from riding a bicycle, as officials saw it as “not seemly” – to her ridiculous. The offending bicycle was later removed and then given a Royal Imperial Seal so that it was never ever used again.

Appointed Lady of the Imperial Order of the Crown of India by Queen Victoria in 1893, Marie Louise inherited a passion for Bach from her mother and, in appreciating Wagner, regularly attended Covent Garden concerts and even became a friend of the tenor Lauritz Melchior.

She became a patron of the arts and was a skilled enameller and yet was also a tireless traveller when few corners of the world escaped her curiosity. With a huge circle of personal friends, that was unusual for a single member of the royal family in her era. Next week the princess returns to our town on numerous occasions.