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Prince Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg

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Prince Victor
Prince Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg
(undated)
Born(1833-12-11)11 December 1833
Died31 December 1891(1891-12-31) (aged 58)
SpouseLaura Seymour, Countess von Gleichen
IssueLady Feodora Gleichen
Lord Edward Gleichen
Lady Valda Gleichen
Lady Helena Gleichen
FatherErnst I, Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg
MotherPrincess Feodora of Leiningen
Commodore James Graham Goodenough by Count Gleichen,1877

Admiral Prince Victor Ferdinand Franz Eugen Gustaf Adolf Constantin Friedrich of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, GCB (11 December 1833 – 31 December 1891[1]), also known as Count von Gleichen, was an officer in the Royal Navy, and a sculptor.

Biography

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He was born at Langenburg in Württemberg, the third son of Ernst I, Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg (1794–1860) and Princess Feodora of Leiningen (1807–1872). His mother was Queen Victoria's half-sister, and his family was therefore closely related to the British Royal Family.

Victor (sometimes spelled Viktor) became an officer in the British Royal Navy in 1848 and was promoted to lieutenant in 1854. As a lieutenant at the time of the Crimean War, he served on the first-rate HMS St Jean d'Acre in the Mediterranean under Captain Henry Keppel in 1855; commanded the gunboat HMS Traveller for a few months in 1856 after her launch until she was paid off; served again under Keppel again on the fourth-rate HMS Raleigh in the East Indies and China, until she was wrecked near Macau in 1857. He was recommended for the Victoria Cross for his service in China in 1856. He was promoted to commander in 1857, and commanded the first-rate sloop HMS Scourge in the Mediterranean. Promoted to captain in 1859, he took command of the 21-gun corvette HMS Racoon from commissioning in 1863 until 1866, during which time Queen Victoria's second son, Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh (1844–1900) served on board as a lieutenant.

Gleichen by Franz Goedecker, 1884

He retired from active service in 1866, and was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) that year (advanced to GCB in 1887). In retirement, he was promoted to the rank of Retired Rear admiral in December 1876, and advanced to Retired Vice admiral on 23 November 1881 and to Retired Admiral on 24 May 1887.[2]

Prince Victor resumed use of his native title, "HSH Prince Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg" in December 1885, when Queen Victoria authorised his wife to share his princely style at the Court of St. James's instead of bearing her lower, morganatic title. He died in London,[1] before his children were obliged by King George V in 1917 to exchange their German comital titles for British courtesy titles during World War I.[3] He was buried at Sunningdale.

Works

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Statue of Alfred the Great, Wantage

He became a sculptor after retiring from the Navy.

Examples of his work include

Family

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He married Laura Williamina Seymour, the younger daughter of Admiral Sir George Francis Seymour (under whom he served on HMS Cumberland in the 1850s) on 24 January 1861 in London.[6] Shortly before his morganatic marriage, his wife was created Countess von Gleichen,[1] after Gleichen which was at one stage owned by a branch of the Hohenlohe family. They had four children:

Prince Victor's only son Edward, also known as Count Gleichen, became a major general in the British Army.

Legacy

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A popular legend, confirmed in his daughter Helena's biography, was that Count von Gleichen was responsible for the introduction of the smoking room at Windsor Castle. As Queen Victoria had forbidden gentlemen from smoking in her residences, Count von Gleichen discreetly smoked his pipe into his chimney. Unfortunately, his bedroom was underneath the Queen's and so the smoke and smell of tobacco flew into the Queen's bedroom through her chimney. Afterwards, the Queen remonstrated Count von Gleichen but arranged for a smoking room to be built in another part of the castle.[7]

Ancestry

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References

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  1. ^ a b c "Hohenlohe". Almanach de Gotha (in French). Justus Perthes. 1908. pp. 140–141.
  2. ^ 1891 Navy List page 422
  3. ^ "London Gazette" (30551). 1 March 1918: 2632. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  4. ^ a b Original features Times Higher Education. 5 February 2009
  5. ^ Pollard, Richard; Pevsner, Nikolaus (2006), Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West, The Buildings of England, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, p. 432, ISBN 0-300-10910-5
  6. ^ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 20 June 2012.
  7. ^ Gleichen, Lady Helena (1940). Contacts and Contrasts. Butler & Tanner Ltd. pp. 18–19.
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Honorary titles
Preceded by Governor of Windsor Castle
1867–1891
Succeeded by