Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse and by the Rhine (1843-1878) - part 2 -

Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by the Rhine

Princess Alice of Great Britain, Grand Duchess of Hesse

Inspite her dissaponting marriage, Alice turn her interests to other matters. She met the German theologian and philosopher David Friedrich Strauss and she soon begin to admire his writtings. In his treatise "The life of Jesus". Strauss questioned the historical accuracy of the Bible, explaining the miracles of the Gospel narratives as a series of myths; he said that the Bible could not be considered a literal interpretation of God's word and that such views would diminish the sense and the future of Christianity. Alice believed that Victorian society had turned God into a unrecognizable creature to the early Chistians. It was not her husband but Strauss, who helped Alice to understand these diffcult concepts of great interests for her. Alice had been nursing the wounded during the Franco-Prussian War so she was in a state of nervous strain. In a period of her life where she needed the solace of faith, the skeptical influence of Strauss had a bad effect on her; she began to doubt the excistence of God.    A terrible tragedy occured in Alice's life on May 28, 1873: her younger son Friedrich, who was an hemophliac, fell from an open window on Alice's bedroom about twenty feet down to the stone terrace below. The three year old boy layed unconsciuos with an internal bleeding into the brain. Friedrich, who was his mother's favourite child, died that same afternoon. Alice wrote to Queen Victoria that pain was above all words. After Friedrich's death, she stopped frequenting Strauss and began to pray again.    On March 1877, Louis became heir to the throne of Hesse at the death of his father, Prince Charles, brother of Grand Duke Ludwig III. Three months later the Grand Duke himself  died and Louis became Grand Duke Ludwig IV of Hesse and by the Rhine. Her new duties as Grand Duchess overwhelmed Alice; each day she grew increasingly tired. On the autumn of 1878, Alice's eldest daughter Victoria contracted diphteria; Soon Alix, May, Irene , Ernest and the Grand Duke became ill too. Ella was the only one who escaped form the disease and was sent away. Alice devoted herself to nurse her sick family, avoiding any physical contact with them to prevent getting sick herself. By November 15 May was critically ill. When Alice arrived her daughter's bedside, the girl was dead. Alice didn't tell the rest of her children about their little sister's death. But when she finally told Ernest, who had been asking about his sister, she was brokenhearted and couldn't avoid to bent over her sick son and kissed the boy to comfort him. On December 7, Alice herself became ill. Her bad physical condition couldn't resist the disease and seven days later, on December 14, exactly seventeen years later after her father's death, Princess Alice died; she was only thirty five years old.    In his address of condolence to the House of Lords after Alice's death, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli said: "It became her lot to break to her son, quite a youth, the death of his sister, to whom he was devotedly attached. The boy was so overcome with misery that the agitated mother to console him clasped him in her arms and thus received the kiss of death.

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Bibliography        Packard, Jerrold M.; Victoria's daughters  King, Greg; The Last Empress Buxhoeveden; Baroness Sophie; The Life and Tragedy of Alexandra Feodorovna Noel, Gerard: Princess Alice