Curious Chapbooks & Hysterical Histories

Chapter 10

CURSES PLACED and LIFTED

Curses are old and universal artifacts of human behavior. Some are placed intentionally upon others, like the blood curse the Kohary kinsman placed on the descendants of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. Others are discovered later, as if to provide explanations for inexplicable disasters. An example of the latter sort is the legend of the Flying Dutchman. The Flying Dutchman is a ghost ship without helmsman or rudder; its captain and crew are composed of dead men doomed to sail forever without reaching port. Legends vary on the cause of their torment--either murder, blasphemy, or a pact with the devil. Moreover, not only is the crew cursed, but legend has it that all who see the ghostly ship are doomed to sudden, premature deaths. Oddly enough, Prince Eddy as a young man at sea recorded a sighting of the Flying Dutchman:

July 11, 1881--At 4 a.m. the Flying Dutchman crossed our bows. A strange red light as of a phantom ship all aglow, in the midst of which light the masts, spars and sails of a brig 200 yards distant stood out in strong relief as she came up on the port bow. The look-out man in the forecastle reported her as close on the port bow where also the officer of the watch from the bridge clearly saw her, as did also the quarterdeck midshipman, who was sent forward at once to the forecastle; but on arriving there no vestige or any sign whatever of any material ship was to be seen either near or right away on the horizon, the night being clear and the sea calm. Thirteen persons altogether saw her, but whether it was the Van Diemen or the Flying Dutchman or who else must remain unknown . . . The tourmaline and Cleopatra, who were sailing on our starboard bow, flashed to ask whether we had seen the strange red light . . . At 10:45 a.m. the ordinary seaman who had this morning reported the Flying Dutchman fell from the foretopmast crosstrees on to the topgallant forecastle and was smashed to atoms (Harrison, 50-51).

The "young ordinary seaman" fell to his death immediately after spotting the ghost ship; moreover, the young, extraordinary prince who also witnessed the phenomenon died early, and under mysterious circumstances. Sir James Frazer would call the process of such a curse the "Law of the Contagion." In The New Golden Bough, Frazer defines the Contagious Magic as "the idea that things or persons which have once been in contact can forever after influence each other (xxi)." If someone should see a ghost or ghost ship, whether a prince or ordinary seaman, that person comes into contact with death in its most material form. Therefore, the person dies.

Sometimes the ghost may not even be present. A message from beyond is enough for contagious Magic to work. Frazer notes that "Taboos are applied not only to acts and objects but also to words (235)." Thus, the bad blood of the Hanovers can be traced to one such curse in which a husband came in contact with the spirit of his dead wife through her last words.

George I, the Elector of Hanover, was the first of his house to sit on the British throne. He was universally disliked for a variety of reasons, although history claims his ill treatment of his wife Sophis Dorothea as his most heinous act. Claiming that his wife was unfaithful to him, George I divorced her in 1694 and imprisoned her in the castle of Ahlden, where she was kept for 32 years until her death. According to author Jean Morris, "There had been a prophecy that he would not long survive the death of his wife, the sad imprisoned Sophis Dorothea (319)." George I was riding in his carriage on the road to Hanover on June 11, 1729, shortly after his wife's death, when he was intercepted by a rider with a message from his late wife. Lockhart of Carnwath tells the tale this way.

It seems when the late Electress was dangerously ill of her last sickness, she delivered to a faithful friend a letter to her husband, upon promise that it should be given into his own hand. It contained a protestation of her innocence, a reproach for her hard usage and unjust summons or citation to her husband to appear within the year and day at the Divine Tribunal, and there to answer for the long and many injuries she had received from him. As this letter could not with safety to the bearer be delivered in England or Hanover, it was given to him in his coach on the road. He opened it immediately, supposing it to come from Hanover. He was so struck at its unexpected contents, and his fatal citation, that his convulsions and apoplexy came fast upon him (Morris, 319).

In November of 1726, Sophis Dorothea had died, and George I died in June the following year. From the enmity between George I and his wife, bad blood between father and son was passed like a curse all the way to Queen Victoria and Bertie, her Prince of Wales. Then when Bertie became King Edward VII, a strange event took place in which he too was contacted from beyond the grave. According to Anita Leslie, Edward VII summoned Lady Fingall for a private audience when both were staying at a country house one weekend:

'I want to tell you,' said the King, 'that one of your friends has hurt me deeply. She knows how much I loved my sister Alice and she has written to me giving a message: The time is short; you must prepare.'
Lady Fingall asked, 'But did she give you any proof that this message came from Princess Alice?'
'Yes,' he said huskily, 'she said that I was to remember a day when we were on Ben Nevis together and found white heather and divided it.'
The party broke up the next day, and Daisy Fingall never saw King Edward again. Within four months he was dead. (303-304).

White heather was used by the British royal family as a sort of charm, considered lucky for brides. Queen Victoria records in her diary on September 29, 1855, when Prince Frederick of Prussia proposed marriage to Vicky, "They were interrupted in fact three times, upon one occasion by the picking up of some white heather, which he said was good luck--which he wished her--and she him (Hibbert, 98)." Likewise, on September 3, 1862, the Queen gave some to Princess Alix of Denmark upon her marriage to Bertie. The Queen writes, "I gave her a little piece of white heather, which Bertie gave me at Balmoral, and I told her I hope it would bring her luck (167)." Then on July 6, 1893, at the marriage of the Duke of York, Queen Victoria observed, "Mary of Teck wore white heather in the bridal wreath on her hair (325)." It is pleasant to think that the memory of white heather brought the dying king some peace as he passed from one world to the next.

When Mary of Teck married the Duke of York, they essentially formed a new royal house. The House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha changed to the House of Windsor. The act was accomplished during the height of anti-German feeling during World War I when the Duke of York, as King George V, officially changed the family name. This official act was ridiculed by some: Wilhelm II, the Kaiser and Queen Victoria's grandson, reportedly joked that he was off to see a production of Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg Gotha (Weintraub, 140). Nevertheless, there might be reasons other than political for renaming the family. By changing the name of the family, George V, either intentionally or by happy coincidence, also ended the family curse. An example in Greek folklore illustrates this ritual.

In the saga of The Seven Against Thebes, the infant Opheltes, once killed by a snakebite, was renamed Archemorus after the snake was interpreted as an ill omen. Bergen Evans explains the significance of the name change: "The changing of the name obviously did the dead child no good, but it might have diverted an evil omen. That is, a sign dispatched to the Seven through Opheltes could not be delivered, as it were, because there wasn't any Opheltes; there was only an Archemorus and he was dead. The omen would have to be returned "address unknown" ("Archemorus"). Frazer also comments on this ancient practice of avoiding bad luck: "The same fear of the ghost, which moves people to exchange it for another, lest its utterance should attract the attention of the ghost, who cannot reasonably be expected to discriminate between all the different applications of the same name (240)." By renaming the family, the bad blood of the Hanovers came to an end. Likewise, George V can be seen as ending the curse of the Coburg by turning bad luck into good luck through the selection of a name. Ever since Prince Albert had died on December 14, that particular date was dreaded by Victoria and had come to be feared in family superstition. Edward VII nearly died on that date. Princess Alice did. Then on December 14, 1895, a death in the family was exchanged for a new life. The Queen writes:

This terrible anniversary returned for the 34th time. When I went to my dressing room I found telegrams saying that dear May [Duchess of York] had been safely delivered of a son at three this morning. Georgie's first feeling was regret that this dear child should be born on such a sad day. I have a feeling it may be a blessing for the dear little boy and may be looked upon as a gift from God (Hibbert, 331)!

The little baby grew up to become King George VI, but he was named Albert. The Albert who died on December 14 was replaced with an Albert born on that date. With the birth of George VI, neither porphyria nor hemophilia has plagued the royal line since.

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