The Wild Princess

Twelve



London, 1866

“It’s so unfair! Why won’t you let me go to art school? I shall never be a true artist without proper training.” Every afternoon at tea, and sometimes even at family breakfast, Louise fought with her mother, using every weapon in a princess’s arsenal.

“Stop it, Louise,” Victoria scolded. “You are becoming an embarrassment. Royal children do not mix with their mother’s subjects.”

“I shall stop eating entirely,” she proclaimed, pushing aside the tempting plate of biscuits and sandwiches. “Not a bite will pass my lips until I’m allowed to attend art school. If I am to become a professional artist, I must have a proper education.”

Her mother looked toward one of her elder daughters, Lenchen, for support. “Tell your sister how ridiculous she’s being.”

“How can you even think of walking out among ordinary people, mixing with men and women off the street, uneducated, working-class commoners?” Her sister actually shuddered, or pretended to for their mother’s benefit.

“It’s dangerous, Loosie,” her brother Arthur said, more intent upon his newspaper and choosing a delicate pastry from the tray than on the conversation. “You must be reasonable and confine your socializing to the appropriate class of people.”

Louise lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “Don’t you see that talent doesn’t depend upon who an artist’s parents might be and whether or not they have a title? And I hardly think people wander in off the street to register for art classes.” She huffed. “This is utterly ridiculous. The National Art Training School is a highly respected institution of learning and within walking distance of Buckingham. Yet you deny me a proper education, Mama.”

“For your own protection, yes.” Victoria observed her, lips pinched. “Experiment all you like with your paintings and sculpture here in the palace. Listen to your tutors. They are more than sufficient for teaching you all you need to know. When you marry, your husband will want a wife, a mistress over his household, and mother for his children, not a vagabond artiste.”

“Oh!” Louise screeched in protest, pushing herself up and out of her chair. She let her cup and saucer clatter carelessly onto the silver tray. “You are all impossible.”

She ran in tears from the room but didn’t give up pleading her case. When hunger strikes didn’t work, she tried formal letters of petition to her mother. When that didn’t work, she enlisted Mr. Brown’s influence and, finally, threats of running away to Paris. In the end, exhausted by her daughter’s hysterical pleading, Victoria gave in.

Louise arrived victorious by carriage on her first day at the school, positively thrilled with her new and hard-won freedom. But when she stood before the registrar’s desk that most perfect of all mornings, she was shocked by her reception.

“We are most honored to have you join us at NATS, Your Royal Highness.” The registrar gave her a fatherly smile. “Let me show you to where our young ladies take their lessons.”

Louise turned with confusion to her chaperone. On entering the building they’d passed a room where she’d seen several young men in smocks setting up their easels. “Are you saying I won’t be with those students across the hallway? The girls have separate classes?”

“Of course, Princess.” He gave her an impatient scowl and moved toward the door, as if wanting her to follow him and stop asking questions.

She stood her ground, suspicious of the separation of the sexes. Was this another way to control her, to take away from her what by rights should be hers? “Why? Why should we be separated if we are to learn the same skills?”

He let out a breath of exasperation. “Because young men and young women study and learn in different ways. It’s not healthy for girls to be exposed to the same rigorous demands as boys.” She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at him. He shook his head, as if amused by her reaction. “You’ll be with the other young ladies in a very nice building all your own. I’m certain you will enjoy yourself, Your Highness.”

This did not sound good at all. “Which building?”

“The Female School of Art, just across the way there.” He pointed toward the door she’d just come in.

And so Louise, accompanied by the elderly Lady Vail, who had been appointed by her mother to watch over Louise whenever she left the palace for school, turned around and followed the registrar back into South Kensington’s streets, overlooking Hyde Park, and walked the few hundred feet down the brick walkway to classrooms kept solely for students of the “fragile” sex. At the end of that day, and each one after, Louise and Vail were retrieved like loaned pieces of furniture by the same carriage, driver, and footman that had brought them.

Louise felt robbed. The lessons at the Female School were little more than the same tedious instruction she’d received at home. Her one pleasure was carrying back to the palace tales to amuse and shock Lenchen and their baby sister, Beatrice.

“Do not men paint too?” Bea asked when Louise told them of the all-girl classes. The littlest princess sat at Louise’s feet in the nursery, gazing up at her with huge, worshipful eyes.

“Of course, they do,” Lenchen said before Louise could answer. The eldest unmarried daughter at that time, Lenchen was only two years ahead of Louise but beat Beatrice into the world by more than ten. “You have seen their portraits and landscapes right here in the castle.”

“But they take no classes at the academy?”

“Oh, Bea, they certainly do.” Louise shot to her feet to pace off her frustration over the nursery floor. “The boys have their own much more professional curriculum.”

“Why?” Lenchen asked.

“Because our parents and teachers think they are protecting us delicate, too easily influenced females. They believe we’ll be damaged emotionally or turn to evil ways if we so much as glimpse a nude figure.” Louise threw up her hands in disgust. “Women are encouraged to paint flowers, woodland creatures, studies of ripe fruit, stinky dead fish, and glass goblets. Absolutely no naked people for us girls. Especially not ones with hairy bottoms or dangly thingies between their legs.”

Lenchen giggled, her eyes dancing at the danger of speaking such words. Happily, their governess had nodded off in her chair in front of the fireplace.

Little Beatrice tilted her head and observed Louise with a solemn expression. “I wouldn’t mind so awfully just painting pretty flowers. I don’t think I ever want to see a naked person.”

“I do!” Louise felt her skin glow with a heady warmth. “Well, a naked man anyway. I’ve seen my own body and know what we women look like.”

Beatrice wrinkled her nose. “That’s so dirty. Looking at a bare man.”

“Someday you will see your husband’s body,” Lenchen reminded her gently, “when he comes to your bed.”

“I will make him wear a nightshirt clear down to his toes. Or not come beneath the linens with me.”

“Then how will he make babies in you?” Louise asked.

Beatrice stared at her. “Babies come whenever God pleases.”

Louise and Lenchen exchanged knowing looks. Young women of good families didn’t learn the truth of such things until their wedding night. But the two older girls had caught their eldest sister, Vicky, alone one night after her marriage to Fritz, when she’d had a bit too much wine. The Crown Princess had described in great and delicious detail the event of a man and woman joining their sexes. Her sisters had been horrified . . . and delighted.

Later, when Louise combined this secret knowledge with her private studies of nudes painted or sculpted by the masters—Michelangelo, Rubens, Caravaggio, Donatello, and even Jan van Eyck—she was able to understand how a man’s organ cleverly fit into a woman’s secret hollow between her limbs. Best of all, Vicky (blushing furiously when she’d said it) claimed the act was not unpleasant, and sometimes a child came as a result.

“Well, I for one look forward to seeing a man in his altogether,” Louise repeated. “I wish to be a sculptress, not a painter of plucked blooms and boring lifeless objects. How else, other than by observing real human bodies, may I make my art honest and realistic?”

Beatrice crossed her chubby arms and pouted. “Sculpt for me a little cat or one of our hunting dogs. I’d like that a whole lot better than a dirty old boy without clothes.”

Louise laughed and hugged her little sister. “I’ll make you a kitty then,” she promised. But she vowed that very day to find a way to get into the advanced sculpting classes that were offered only to young men.