Daisy Princess of Pless

[Marlene]

Daisy and Marie were good friends -- Lexel and Ileana's engagement was officially announced, and plans for a wedding were made.  Missy then learned about Lexel's homosexual involvement several years earlier - and broke the news to Ileana  .. and the engagement was broken off.

Marie of Romania wanted to marry off her daughter Ileana to one of Daisy´s sons, right?

[lababoc]

Thank you Marlene  (I love your books )I wonder how did Queen Marie  of Romania  learned about Lexel's homosexuality?any pictures of Him? by the way found great pictures of Ileana in the Usa(how to post pictures in this site?)

[Marlene]

There is an official engagement photo of Lexel and Ileana ... and there is also a book about him ..

Thank you Marlene  (I love your books )I wonder how did Queen Marie  of Romania  learned about Lexel's homosexuality?any pictures of Him? by the way found great pictures of Ileana in the Usa(how to post pictures in this site?)

[ashdean]

I think Daisy had a fascinating but not particulary happy life and the end was very sad to say the least...The story of her eldest son is similary sad but he showed the same stoicsm and courage in the face os adversity as had his mother....

[Eddie_uk]

Ivé seen Daisy mentioned in the odd biography and wondered about her, I love her name!

Why did she end up is such reduced circumstances I wonder? What a sad contrast!!

[ashdean]

Daisy ended up in very poor circumstances due to her divorce settlement being income on certain properties that were after WW1 being annexed by Poland and then in WW2 being occupied by Germany so all in all a tangled beaurcratic nightmare !!!!. She was also in those interwar years bled dry by her  son who took advantage of her poor health etc. Lexel was a very nasty piece of work !!!. Those who would have been kindest to her...her eldest son and her siblings were far away in enemy England. Her last days were spent in a small flat in a degree of comfort loyally cared for by an expatriate English woman.

[lababoc]

whatever happened to  the husband  the Prince of Pless  ?....Pless has a polish name now   I saw some pictures of the castle cannot recall in wich site maybe a polish one...what was the source of such a fortune  coal mines ? and I wonder why she did not return to England after the divorce or  between  the wars?   

[Eddie_uk]

Thank you very much for the information. Very sad!! Pity she didn´t return to England..

[lababoc]

I just found the polish name to Pless it's      PSZCZYNA ( have no idea of pronunciation)  and after I saw pictures of the Castle and the surrounding parks  and terraces  I think the Pincess's life is more  tragic  than I thought....from absolute luxury to extreme poverty... what a fascinanting life    it's material for an opera.

[Yseult]

whatever happened to  the husband  the Prince of Pless  ?....Pless has a polish name now   I saw some pictures of the castle cannot recall in wich site maybe a polish one...what was the source of such a fortune  coal mines ? and I wonder why she did not return to England after the divorce or  between  the wars?   

To use the right title, the husband, a descendant of the ancient kings Piast of Poland, was styled Jan Henryk XV von Hochberg prince of Pszczyna and baron von Fürstenstein, so the married name of Daisy was: Daisy von Hochberg, princess of Pszczyna, baroness von Fürstenstein. Not easy to pronounce, I suggest to use the form Pless   They had a wonderful castle-residence, also named Pszczyna, at the old town of Pszczyna, close to Warsaw But they liked more the Castle Fürstenstein, that also appeared named as Zamek Ksziac, in Lower Silesia.

This is a picture of Fürstenstein/Zamek, the favourite residence of Daisy:



By the way, Lababoc, you asked before about how knew Missy of Romania that Lexel (Alexander) von Pless, engaged to her daughter princess Ileana, was homosexual. I have read somewhere that romanian prime minister, Iuliu Maniu, forbade the marriage because he discovered that Lexel was involved in an homosexual affair years later. I think he was aged eighteen or nineteen when he was involved in the scandal.

This is a picture that I´ve found of the "affeminate" Lexel von Hochberg:



Best regards!

[Yseult]

Ohhh, I forgot something 

We know both Daisy and Shelagh, but I´ve found a wonderful portrait of their mother, Patsy Cornwallis-West. She was also a beauty and she loved to flirt. When she had fifteen years old, she had a brief but passionate relationship with Bertie, prince of Wales, later Edward VII. She was aged sixteen when she was married to Cornwallis-West, twenty years her senior. A lot of years after, in 1915, during the First World War, the relationship between Patsy and Patrick Barret, a young soldier who has been sent home to convalescence, aroused a great scandal. Patsy uses her influence to get Patrick promoted to officer, but in exchange the details of their relationship were used to shame Mrs Cornwallis-West in front of Parliament and, of course, the press.

[ashdean]

Thank you very much for the information. Very sad!! Pity she didn´t return to England..

It would have been very akward for Daisy to come back to England. After the father's death the creditors of her brother George seized both family homes and auctioned of the contents. Daisy's mother was thus made homeless and ended the very short remainder of her life living with her sister....So there was no home and no parents plus the money from her husband was paid in German marks which soon were devalued in the catastrophic devaluation. Daisy had even to give up her villa on the Riviera ( about 20 years ago this was totally renovated and refurbished by Karl Lagerfeld,and featured in the glossy magazines). I think she settled in Munich because her husband provided her with a villa there.Lexel's machinations and the increasing difficulties in recieving her income because of the polish/german tension made an enforced economic move back to Furstenstien inevitable and she lived in a small flat near the gatehouse. Later after the German occupation ( Furstenstien was then Polish) she was again forced to move because of the castle being requsitioned. She was amongst countless millions in that her life was ruined by war. At least she was spared the flight west that would have been her lot had she lived another year and death in a cart or ditch that was the tragic lot of thousands in the winter of 1945

[ashdean]

whatever happened to  the husband  the Prince of Pless  ?....Pless has a polish name now   I saw some pictures of the castle cannot recall in wich site maybe a polish one...what was the source of such a fortune  coal mines ? and I wonder why she did not return to England after the divorce or  between  the wars?   

The Prince/ Duke of Pless was in a very akward position after the war and the boundaries drawn up by the treaty of Versaillies. The greater part of his Silesian properties were now in Poland and although various strategems were tried it meant ruin for the family because of taxation,confiscation etc. The rise of Nazism and WW2  were the final death knell. The Prince fared equally badly in his love life...his second wife a Spanish aristocrat young enough to be his daughter eventually left him and married his youngest son with whom she had been conducting a long,scandalous affair !!!Both the Prince and his youngest son were dead before WW2 so did not witness the final disentigration of the Pless/ Hochberg family.The children of this couple were Daisy's only grandchildren .

[lababoc]

Many thanks to YSEULT and ASHDEAN...for the insights...it'such  a tragic life...or better lifes ...What is most intriguing for me is the "TO HAVE AND TO HAVE NOT" that so many of the royals went through...kind of CINDERELLA story backwards...from riches to rags...during the wars and in between Wars....Thank you again...

[CountessKate]

John Koch's biography ('Daisy Princess of Pless - a discovery') is rather a disappointment.  For example, he makes great play of not revealing 'Maxl', the pseudonym Daisy gives to the great love of her life, with whom she subsequently parted when he married in 1908.  However, Koch provides sufficient information so that any cursory reading of Daisy's diaries easily identifies him as Prince Gottfried of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingfurst who married Archduchess Marie Henriette of Austria (younger sister of Daisy's great friend Marie-Christine of Salm).  It's difficult to know why he bothered to "retain the discretion chosen by Daisy of Pless" when he easily provides the means to inform the reader of what he leaves out.  In addition, he completely omits any mention of the sensational circumstances of Clothilde de Silva y Gonzalex de Candamo's marriage successively to Hans Heinrich of Pless and his son Bolko.  A better picture of Daisy is actually given in Michael Luke's biography of her son, 'Hansel Pless - prisoner of history', even though she's not the main subject of the book, as Luke does not obscure the facts with false delicacy.