Alice

Вышла новая книга
ALICE princess of Greece/ Mystery of Modern Monarchy
ISBN 978-620-0-49572-3

До 31 декабря её можно заказать  в интернет-магазинах "MORE BOOKS" через форму у меня на Фейсбуке с Рождественской  скидкой 60%. (На странице или профайле "Лариса Миронова")
 или в OZON, AMAZON.
***
Конец второй части:
Кончина и похороны в Иерусалиме
Матерь Мира
Статус святой
***
In December 1967, King Constantine instigated his counter-coup, but the army was unable to support him. He and his family were forced to flee to Rome. This made Alice's return to Athens even more unlikely, although in response to press inquiries, the Greek Embassy said, “She will be welcome at home. The people love her very much .
It has sometimes been suggested that Alice was some kind of strange recluse, locked up in Buckingham Palace. She was weak, but perfectly collected. She had many visitors, Gustav, who came to her palace every time she visited London, noting: “I was always amazed that she was not only well looked after, but actually felt comfortable and even happy”.
Her daughters will take turns to come and stay, as Alice is not well enough to leave the palace. When Alice's 83rd birthday fell on a Sunday in 1968, the Queen and Philip stayed in London for the weekend with her.
Dickie came to see her during his weekly visits to London, armed with news from the outside world. One of the projects they teamed up on was a biography of Louise by Margit Fjelman. Alice enjoyed her younger brother's visits, but she scolded him without hesitation, complaining that: “He only comes to me to write letters on royal writing paper” with Buckingham Palace watermarks!
In October 1968, Alice appointed a palace solicitor as her executor, making him a confidant of her will, but she was still attentive to the news: “The newspapers are full of Olympic Committee ire over political demonstrations and Jackie. [Jacqueline] in connection with President Kennedy's marriage.
In February 1969, on the 25th, Alice celebrated her eighty-fourth birthday. In April, her cousin Battenberg Ena died in Lausanne, and on October 16, her daughter Theodora died suddenly in the B;dingen sanatorium in Constance. Philip toured Canada and the United States, so Charles flew to Salem alone for the funeral. A few days later, Alice sent her last letter to Philip. She dictated most of it to the nurse:
“From here, the guests went to the funeral by helicopter, flew out in the morning and returned in the evening, otherwise the funeral was exactly the same as that of her husband.
I received such lovely letters from Margarita and Baby.
Margarita is most upset because there was only 1 year between them, and she became so close to Theodora during this time.
They didn't say anything to Edward. Charles and Anne have paid me the most moving visits. The doctor does not find me worse. My thoughts are always with you."
Alice lived less than two months after that. She didn't want to live longer anymore. She was annoyed when the doctor brought her back to life, when she was almost certain that she was slipping away into another world. Princess Margaret recalled that “she made a pact with God and decided that she would die next Thursday. She called Dickie and he changed all his plans to see her on Wednesday. She didn't die then, and Dickie was furious!"
By the end of her life, the general public hardly remembered that she was still alive, and hardly suspected that she was at Buckingham Palace. But there were still a handful of Alice's followers. Harold Albert, who wrote books under the name Helen Cathcart, recently wrote a chapter on her life for an upcoming book, and one evening he was strolling through the mall and watching the lights in the rooms he correctly assumed were Alice's possession.
In November, Alice saw her priest, Father Gregory, and told him that she would soon die. "She was a very brave woman." - Рe said. Later, he performed the last ceremony on her - he confessed her.
Once Dickie accidentally went to Alice, as it turned out, on the last evening of her life: "I saw her at 6.15 pm, when she was not dead yet, she was very calm, even seemed happy and was all immersed in memories from the past."
Alice (like almost all of her close relatives) died peacefully in her sleep, it was on the morning of December 5. The Queen and Philip were at the palace at the time. All she had left were three gowns that Sophie gave to the nurses who took care of her, and there was also a letter from her old friend Gerald Green, to which she began to write a response. Sophie returned this letter to him.
It so happened that Ann did not pay her usual visit to Alice on the day of her death. Therefore, she asked the undertakers if it was possible to enter the grandmother's room and see her again. “I'm glad I did it. She looked very peaceful. All the wrinkles on her face completely disappeared, and for the first time I saw a great resemblance to her own beautiful portrait of de Laszlo, painted when she was still very young. "
The coffin was moved from her bedroom through the hallways of the palace to a small part of a private chapel that survived the wartime bombing. From there, the body was taken to Windsor for the funeral at St George's Chapel and arrived at the chapel on 9 December. Family mourning was ordered for a week.
Alice's death was briefly noted in British newspapers, and some of them included obituaries. In a judicial circular documenting her birth in Windsor eighty-four years ago, it was announced that the Queen had "heard" of Alice's death "with great regret."
Now the news came from different directions. Gustav wrote to Dickie:
“I am glad that I can say that Alice and I have always remained friends, and also understood each other well. I will never forget her kindness and understanding when Louise, dear to my heart, was taken from me. I am also glad that I can say that, in my opinion, the two sisters became close and finally began to understand each other well. "
Dickie's daughter, Patricia, recalled her devotion to her grandmother and continued her father's letter as follows: "Aunt Alice was also such a characteristic personality that she will never be forgotten!"
Alice was eighty-four years old when she died. However, one of the messages came from her old aunt Anna in her room in Territet. Aunt Anna was then ninety-five.
Among the few mourners, but very sincere, was the former gay girl Ruby Miller, who wrote: “When I was a little girl, I always admired her immensely. I was hoping she would make the most beautiful queen. Undoubtedly, she gave birth to a wonderful son in the person of Prince Philip. "
Alice's funeral took place on December 10 at St George's Chapel in Windsor. She was born in this castle, and in the same bed on which Queen Victoria herself gave birth to Alice's mother (this was Victoria's desire, and now she returned to the castle after what Philip described as “a life full of wars, revolutions, divisions and tragedies ".
Margarita and Philip followed the coffin, followed by Sophie and Dickie. Gustav was unable to attend due to the Nobel Prize ceremony. The Queen brought with her Charles, Anna and nine-year-old Andrew. The British royal family was all assembled, about twenty-two royal guests from overseas also arrived in Windsor, despite a thick fog, due to which numerous flights were canceled. King Constantine, who was staying with the Belgian king Baudouin, asked for a car and horse-drawn carriages and arrived by ferry to Dover. Princess Olga and Princess Eugenie would have been here too, but because of the thick fog their plane landed in Paris.
Among the mourners was that “other little Alice,” as Queen Victoria called her, Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, who was born on the same day as Alice, but two years earlier. Queen Victoria's other surviving granddaughter, Lady Patricia Ramsay, was also there, accompanied by her old husband, Admiral Sir Alexander Ramsay, whose loud voice, less suppressed by his own deafness, asked many questions before the service, such as: “Should we go to Frogmore? It's terribly cold there! '
The guests also included Alice's royal nannies and nurses, who, as always, were looked after by Miss Alice Saxby, matron of the King Edward VII Hospital. Father Gregory, Archimandrite, wore a dark robe and a high hat. The service was sometimes in English, then in Greek, according to the Orthodox rite. The Gospel was read from St. Luke, the Dean of Windsor ended the service, assuring Alice that "the memory of her long life, her service to the needy, all her courage in the face of adversity and her devotion to the Lord and His Church" will endure for centuries, and the People will never will not forget. ' Then, for the third time in ten years, the coffin descended into the royal crypt, the old elevator worked silently but effectively, the coffin quickly disappeared from view
After the funeral, the fog thickened even more. The Queen stayed overnight at Windsor Castle, where she was joined by other fog-bound mourners.
* * *
Shortly before her death, Alice gave oral instructions that she would like to be buried next to her aunt Ella, who died in the post-revolutionary Russian nightmares, in Jerusalem. When the family announced that it was far away and it would be difficult to visit her there, she categorically objected: “Nonsense! The bus service is excellent everywhere”.
For several years nothing happened, Alice's coffin still rested on one of the two hearses in the royal crypt. After Michael Mann was appointed the 62nd Dean of Windsor in 1976, he immediately began negotiations to fulfill Alice's wishes. He did not know that there was a long journey ahead of him.
There were serious religious, political and diplomatic problems along the way. Alice was a Greek Orthodox, but the Jerusalem monastery belonged to White Russian emigres. Moreover, after the 1967 war in the Middle East, Great Britain refused to recognize East Jerusalem, where the monastery was located, as Jordanian, considering it part of Israel, and only on August 3, 1988, Alice's remains were buried in a crypt under the monastery, in which her aunt's coffin was buried Ella.
Today the coffin rests on a small, portable marble pedestal, and the Greek royal standard still rests on it. On the far wall is a simple inscription:

Alice
PRINCESS ANDREW
GREECE
PRINCESS OF BATTENBERG
FEBRUARY 25, 1885
DECEMBER 5, 1969
Below in Greek are the words:
"Thy will be done"

* * *
On April 11, 1993, a posthumous award found her hero - Alice as "Righteous Among the Nations" was approved by the Holocaust Memorial and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, thereby recognizing that "during the Holocaust in Europe" she "risked her life to save the persecuted Jews ". ' The lengthy medal-winning process was initiated by Freddie Cohen, one of the family members that Alice hid during World War II, after he learned in 1988 that Alice had been reburied on the Mount of Olives. Freddie died in 1989, and his widow Stella and brother Jacques had to see the case through. This is the highest award for a non-Jewish foreigner, “it was not so easy to get it,” Jacques Cohen recalled.
On October 31, 1994, her two surviving children, Prince Philip and Princess George of Hanover, traveled together to Jerusalem. Philip, after listening to the priest's speech about Alice's attempts to hide Jews during the Nazi occupation in Greece, said dismissively: "As far as I know, she never told anyone about this, considering that she had given refuge to the Cohen family at a time when Jews throughout Greece were in danger of being arrested and transported to the death camps».
Afterwards they went together to the beautiful spot where Alice lies, near to the aunt she loved and whose life had been her inspiration.
In a life often touched by tragedy, Alice never allowed adversity, penury, near starvation, wars or revolutions to bring her down. She was isolated by her deafness, brought low by ill health. But, like Ella, she wanted to serve humanity in a practical way, and when a challenge presented itself, she rose to the call.
Her work in the Balkan Wars, her care of the afflicted in the Second World War, and her attempts to emulate Ella’s example in Greece by creating a nursing sisterhood were tackled with determination, and if failure sometimes resulted, it was not for want of effort.
Shy, sometimes austere, remote, self-sufficient beyond the point of coping, she put much into life. Had she lived in different times, it might have been possible for her to achieve more. Had she been less determined, less obstinate, her life might have been gentler. But in spite of all the disappointments and sorrows, she never flinched. Above all, she saw hers as a life of service, in which she did her best to help those less fortunate than herself. After that, they went together to the place where Alice now lies, next to Aunt Ella, whom she loved, and whose life has always been an inspiration to her.
In a life that often comes into contact with tragedies, Alice never allowed adversity, poverty close to starvation, wars or revolutions that crushed her more than once, take over. She, moreover, was, to a certain extent, isolated from the outside world due to her deafness and poor health. But like Ella, she wanted to serve humanity in practice, and when a problem arose, she naturally responded to this emotional impulse. Her work to save the wounded during the Balkan Wars, her care for the victims of the Second World War and her attempts to imitate Ella's example by creating sister houses in Greece to really help people in need, were carried out with courage and determination, and if sometimes they ended in failure, it is just not because of her lack of personal effort.
Shy, but also fearlessly straightforward when required, sometimes harsh, detached, self-sufficient, able to cope with any business, she has invested a lot in improving this life. If she lived in a different era, perhaps she could have achieved more. If she were more determined, less stubborn, her life could be softer. But, despite all the disappointments and sorrows, she never shuddered, did not retreat from her plans for the revival of humanity, here on earth. Above all, she viewed her life as a ministry in which she tried her best to help those less fortunate than herself.



Appendix: Alice's Funeral

Alice's coffin was still in the royal crypt, still covered with the Greek royal standard, when in 1976 the new dean of Windsor, b. The Reverend Michael Mann took a tour of St George's Chapel. Lord Chamberlain told him that one of his tasks was to bury Princess Alice in Jerusalem. Prince Philip allowed him to continue.
The dean began with a letter to Patriarch Diodorus I of Jerusalem to ask if he had any objections:
I got the answer: yes, he would have all the objections. Answer: She was Greek Orthodox and must be buried in the Greek Orthodox Church. B: The Church was White Russian Orthodox, and the person responsible for it was a person whom he considered difficult. They were by no means ready for this. Then I wrote to the Russian Patriarch in Moscow and said: “This is the correct position, this is the White Russian Church, but it is also the desire of a dying woman. It really matters. "And he wrote a letter in response, which said: "Of course not, they would not have any objections." Then, having received this, I returned to Diodorus and said: “The Russians have no objection. That's it, do you still have your question? "And he said: "In principle, no, but we do not like the structure of the White Russian Church." Then I contacted Archimandrite Anthony. Grabbe, and he welcomed the idea.
Talks were further postponed due to the Queen and Prince Philip's five-day state visit to Jordan in late March 1984. It was considered imprudent to push the plans forward until the visit took place.
Without warning, Archimandrite Grabbe decided to pay a visit to Prince Philip to discuss what he called "your pious concern." He traveled to Amman and found that the royal group had moved to Aqaba. He followed them there and asked to meet with Prince Philip. Grabbe failed to understand that he had arrived in connection with the funeral. Since no one knew anything about him, and there was little time, he was not accepted. A grave insult was committed, and Grabbe wrote to Prince Philip in London, informing him that he had come to the conclusion that he must have changed his mind about burying his mother in his church, and exressed surprise that neither the dean nor the local Anglican bishop had found time to bring the news to him, and in the end, Prince Philip should feel free of further obligations to him.
The dean's delicate negotiations seemed to come to naught at once, and seven years later they returned to where they started. Prince Philip personally wrote to Grabbe, apologizing for the unintentional insult and reassuring him that he was willing to proceed as before. He thought that the border between Jordan and Israel was closed, and that he was told that "there was a Russian priest who claimed to know my father." Since I was in Aqaba at that time and was going to leave the next morning, I did not understand what I could do about it. "
The dean wrote another conciliatory letter, “I spoke with HRH the Duke of Edinburgh, who is also upset”. He tried to calm down the insidious archimandrite.
Then another problem arose when the dean received a call from Sir Anthony Ackland, the permanent undersecretary for foreign affairs, and advised him to end negotiations immediately, as burying the royal body in the West Bank would give the Israelis a chance to force the British government to recognize its occupation of the West Bank. The dean recalled:

«So I talked to Prince Philip about this, which he thought was nonsense, and so I wrote to King Hussein, with whom I had some connections, and explained the situation to him, and asked him if he would mind if he was asked to do make a fuss. King Hussein said they had no objection. But at that moment it became quite clear that if everything worked out, the Duke of Edinburgh would not be able to come to the funeral. Meanwhile, Grabbe was silent until November 1985. At this point, he wrote to the dean, proposing to build a special storage for the coffin, and asked the dean to present plans for this and announce how much Prince Philip could contribute to its development.
In the meantime, the Dean wrote a letter calling for help to the Metropolitan of the Russian Church Philaret in New York. The letter remained unanswered because the Metropolitan died. Only some time later the letter was found among his papers. Meanwhile, a local dispute arose in Jerusalem over some of the funds raised to decorate the golden domes of the monastery. It was done cheaply, and too soon the domes lost their luster. Grabbe was fired in January 1986 for "moral licentiousness, gross misappropriation of church funds, unauthorized sale of church property and relics," sowing discord among the parishioners of the White Russian Church, some of whom supported him and others did not. He then gathered a splinter group around him that posed a hidden threat to these burial plans.
The dean did not stop, but took the matter into calmer waters. He contacted a friend at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, Canon Edward West and other important persons. He brought him to Prince Teimuraz Bagration of Mukhran, President of the Palestinian Orthodox Society in the United States, a courteous and sympathetic aristocrat of the old school, and coincidentally, a relative of Grand Duchess Elizabeth and, indeed, Alice.
Prince Bagration was the perfect person to deal with all the disparate factions. Calmly and quietly, he dealt with the issues and quickly resolved them, one after another. In April 1986, he was able to reassure the dean: “I hope we are finally on the right track. We have good will and discretion, and with this baggage it will be easier for the rest, which lie in the main body of the church due to their recent canonization. The archimandrite told him that the coffin of Princess Alice could not get there, since she was not canonized, but then there were open vaults, and then this was piled up with construction rubble on both sides of the stairs leading to the church. One of them could be cleared and then it could serve as a burial place. The dean went on to say:
"And I thought, 'Oh, heaven.' Knowing what the timeline was, they probably wouldn't have started doing it until the coffin arrived. However, it was ok * and after all this I went back and explained it to Prince Philip: “I think the risk we should take is that I can go with the coffin and come back with it, but this is the worst, what could have happened. Worth a try". And he said: Come on. "
The trip was remembered no less than the negotiations. On the evening of August 2, Alice's coffin was brought privately from the royal crypt of St. George's Chapel, where it lay for nearly nineteen years. Father Gregory came to pray, and the small group set off. They were the Dean, Alice's daughter, Princess George of Hanover, the Dean's wife Jill, who was acting maid of honor, and Christopher Kenyon, the undertaker. They took a scheduled flight from Heathrow to Jerusalem and arrived at about 4.30 am. They were ushered into a VIP room, where, to his surprise, the dean was asked for ; 100 in cash. There they were met by an Israeli undertaker and taken along a winding road to the Mount of Olives, where they arrived at 6:00 am.
The coffin was brought directly into the church, and immediately the Greek Orthodox service, the requiem began, all the participants stood, as is customary in an Orthodox church. The Dean managed to get a chair for Princess George. The Patriarch then invited everyone to a hearty breakfast that seemed endless, during which the Dean presented the Patriarch with an autographed photograph of Prince Philip. At about 10.30 they went to the Garden of Gethsemane. The final leg of Alice's journey was as dramatic as many other parts of her long life. The dean recalled:
“We found TV journalists and crowds of people there. Christopher Kenyon, on the advice of an Israeli undertaker, I hired many strong men. Fortunately, the Garden is surrounded by a large wall and an iron gate, and as soon as we got inside, the guards fought the press and drove them out. Then the nuns of the White Russian Orthodox Church began a Russian Orthodox liturgy for the dead, and when they started, the Greeks rushed inside and also began to sing. The Russians behaved impeccably. They just stopped and waited for the Greeks to sing their chant. Then they again began the liturgy, which they sang beautifully and touchingly, the coffin was removed and placed on a stretcher, and Princess George was obviously very moved and really felt that they had fulfilled her mother's dying wish. The burial was carried out safely after enduring countless dangers, after which a small group of enthusiasts attended a very long lunch. Then everyone went to their hotels. It was 3:30 pm and they were on their feet for almost twenty-four hours.
* * *
Shortly after Alice's funeral in Jerusalem in August 1988, the Dean of Windsor wrote to Prince Teimuraz to thank him for his help, and the prince replied, "Princess Alice's last wish has been done and her children can be calm."
 
Notes
Abbreviations People
Alice – Princess Andrew of Greece
Andrea – Prince Andrew of Greece
B – Dr Ludwig Binswanger
C;cile – Princess C;cile of Hesse
Edwina – Countess Mountbatten of Burma
GMH – George, Marquess of Milford Haven
KGV – George V
KGVI – George VI
Louise – Queen Louise of Sweden
Margarita – Princess Margarita of
Hohenlohe-Langenburg.
MtB – Earl Mountbatten of Burma
NK – Nona Kerr
PL – Prince Louis of Battenberg
QM – Queen Mary
QV – Queen Victoria
Theodora – Margravine of Baden
VMH – Victoria, Marchioness of Milford Haven
Places
BP – Buckingham Palace
KP – Kensington Palace
Sources
BA – Broadlands Archive
BP – Buckingham Palace
FO – Foreign Office
HL – Mountbatten papers, Hartley Library, University of Southampton
PRO – Public Records Office
RA – Royal Archives
TB – Bagration papers
UT – Binswanger papers, University of T;bingen


Рецензии