Alexandra of Denmark

Biography

In 1852, in London, six powers decided who should inherit childless Denmark, and the choice fell on a modest prince, Christian. His daughter Alexandra was in her eighth year.

She was born on 1 December 1844 in the Yellow Palace in Copenhagen, next to Amalienborg, the second of the six children of Christian of Glücksburg and Louise of Hesse-Kassel. In the family she was called Alix. Her father served in the army and earned about £800 a year; they lived in a house the king had lent them, and after 1852 they were given the summer residence of Bernstorff as well, but their income did not rise. The children made their own clothes and made their own beds, and until she was sixteen Alexandra shared a room with her sister Dagmar, the future Russian empress Maria Feodorovna. Hans Christian Andersen told them stories, and the Swedish swimmer Nancy Edberg taught them to swim. She learned English from a governess, Matilde Knudsen, and music and drawing were part of her lessons too. Her school exercise books for 1854–1862 survive.

The search for a bride for the Prince of Wales began at the end of 1859. Queen Victoria at first did not want a Dane because of the dispute over Schleswig-Holstein: the British court leaned towards the Prussian side. The matter was settled by the reports of the queen’s eldest daughter, Crown Princess Victoria of Prussia, and by a photograph she sent to her mother. The two young people met on 24 September 1861 in Speyer. Then Prince Albert died, the heir’s affair with the actress Nellie Clifden came to light, and everything was put off. The proposal was made on 9 September 1862 at Laeken, the Belgian palace of the groom’s great-uncle, Leopold I.

The wedding took place on 10 March 1863 in St George’s Chapel, Windsor. The choice of venue was criticised: guests had a long way to travel, and the public could not get in. The court was in mourning, and the ladies were required to wear grey, lilac or mauve. The queen’s wedding present was Sandringham. That same year Alexandra’s father became king of Denmark and her brother William became King George I of Greece. The war of 1864 over Schleswig-Holstein gave her a dislike of Germany that she kept for the rest of her life, and brought a quarrel with Queen Victoria.

Of her six children, two died young, before their mother: her eldest son, Albert Victor, in 1892, and Alexander John, who lived one day, in 1871. Her second son, George, became King George V. After a birth in 1867 she was left with rheumatic pains and a limp; fashionable women across England copied it, and it was called the “Alexandra limp”. Hereditary otosclerosis left her almost deaf in later years. A scar on her neck, probably from an operation in childhood, she hid under chokers and high collars, and the fashion for them lasted some fifty years.

In 1868–1869 the couple spent half a year travelling through Europe, Egypt, Turkey and the Crimea, and then Greece. They also went to Saint Petersburg: for Prince Alfred’s wedding in 1874, for Alexander II’s funeral in 1881, for Alexander III’s coronation in 1883, and for Alexander III’s funeral in 1894. She opened bazaars, visited hospitals and concerts, and regularly went to the London Hospital, where she met Joseph Merrick, the “Elephant Man”. From the early 1870s she became keen on photography and took lessons from the photographer Frederick Ralph; some of her photographs were shown at an exhibition in 1897. Albums with her watercolours and family photographs from the 1860s also survive.

She was hardly allowed any political influence. In 1890 she circulated a memorandum to ministers and military men against the exchange of Heligoland for Zanzibar, but the treaty was signed. She did not change her husband; according to the documents, she knew of many of his liaisons, and in 1910 she allowed Alice Keppel to visit the dying king.

Alexandra became queen on 22 January 1901, the first Lady of the Order of the Garter since 1488. The coronation was postponed because of the king’s appendicitis and held on 9 August 1902 in Westminster Abbey. In December 1903 a beam caught fire at Sandringham, and her woman of the bedchamber, Charlotte Knollys, led her out of the room. Edward VII died on 6 May 1910; Alexandra herself gave him oxygen. She had sat in the gallery of the House of Commons during the debate on the Parliament Bill, the first queen consort to do so.

Widowed, she stayed at Marlborough House and Sandringham. Alexandra Rose Day has been held since 1912: artificial roses made by people with disabilities were sold in aid of hospitals. In the First World War she demanded that the German banners of the Order of the Garter be taken down at Windsor, but she defended her Hessian relatives. In 1918 her nephew Nicholas II was shot with his family. In 1919 the battleship HMS Marlborough took her sister Maria Feodorovna out of the Crimea, and the sisters met in London on 8 May.

From 1888 Alexandra collected Fabergé, beginning with gifts from her sister; in 1904 she supported the first Fabergé exhibition in Britain, whose proceeds went to a children’s hospital, and bought a nephrite bottle and a cigarette case, and between 1902 and 1914 she spent £3,197 on the firm’s pieces. She made her last purchase in December 1916.

Alexandra died on 20 November 1925 at Sandringham, aged eighty. Her funeral took place on 27 November in Westminster Abbey. She was buried beside her husband in St George’s Chapel, Windsor.