Princess Louise,Princess Royal, Duchess of Fife

[Margot]

The 1911 edition went into the sea during the wrecking of the Delhi!

Louise was absolutely tiny! As tiny as Maud I dare say! Somehow though I simply can't see Louise having been that much of a diet fiend! Maybe her health so such that she just had to be careful what she ate!
'
I still can't believe that Louise was over forty when the photograph was taken! I guess her corset may have been tied to an 'nth' of suffocating her, but then again considering all we ever hear about how delicate she was, perhaps she would have fainted had this been the case! Perhaps she really was naturally very very slim!

[Eddie_uk]

So Louise's chattels are somewhere on the ocean floor?! Get your submarine out Magot darling, we're off!!!

[Margot]

Yes her jewel case is somewhere in the sand and mud off Cape Spartel having been torn from her clutches in the gale and crashing waves, unless it was washed up in the beach later!

[ashdean]

Yes her jewel case is somewhere in the sand and mud off Cape Spartel having been torn from her clutches in the gale and crashing waves, unless it was washed up in the beach later!

Margot dear...you dont need trinkets .....yr a fine bird without needing fine feathers!

[Margot]

You're too kind Ashdean...but what if the Floral sprays and leaves that Horace Farquhar and the Sassons gave her as wedding presents are smothered in mud lying at this moment on the seabed! I do wonder about this as Louise certainly lost a jewel case during the sinking and those sprays have never been seen since have they? I have only ever seen Louise wearing them as a tiara for Margaret Connaught;s wedding and then never again, and Alix C and Maud S never seem to have wore them and nor have Caroline Fife, Caroline Souhthesk or Lady Alexandra Etherington as far as I can tell!

[Kalafrana]

Margot

Given your devotion to Louise of Fife, you're going to have to orgaqnise a diving expedition to find the jewel case! How deep is the water in the area of the sinking?

Ann

[Eddie_uk]

Thank goodness she didn't take the beautiful Fife tiara with her on her travels! Surely if she had completed an insurance claim the jewels she lost would have been listed...

[Margot]

There is very scant information about the wreck. As the Delhi was beached in the storm I often wonder what happened to her afterwards! Perhaps she became one of those skeleton wrecks that dot the western coast of Africa. I do wonder if salvage operations were undertaken to try and locate some of the manifest but have had little luck finding anything!

The water can't have been that deep if the Delhi was beached! Like Eddie says there must be insurance claim archives somewhere around which would throw light on what was lost by passengers including Louise.

[ThePrincessPerfect]

[Eddie_uk]

I wonder if she hasn't had a touch of air brushing!

[Naslednik Norvezhskiy]

Louise had a son named Alastair Duff, Marquess of Macduff who was born on 16th June 1890.

Even though the designation might be referring to the town the Duffs founded, the Duff/Fife subsidary titles "Marquis of Macduff" and "Earl Fife" really is the oddest couple of designations!

[Carolath Habsburg]

Little Louise

[Naslednik Norvezhskiy]

Some might find Balmoral ghastly kitschy, but certainly the Fifes displayed outright bad taste when they built their nearby hunting retreat, Mar Lodge, in a strange mixture of granite and Elizabethan half-timbering and with very unseemly proportions. It really looks like a Transylvanian McMansion or something the Kaiser could have built. And very out of place against the backdrop of the Grampians.

If they were so alienated from local customs in the architecture department, I presume they didn't take any interest in the fact that their estate was one of the last pockets of Gaelic-speakers in Aberdeenshire, with 46 % still speaking Gaelic as late as 1891, or?

[Eddie_uk]

Mar Lodge is really rather ghastly and lacks character I agree, but I suppose it lost a lot of it's character following the fire in 1991? What would help is if they did something with the front gardens & planted some trees, it's awfully baron! If I owned it I would cover the front with ivy or Virginia creeper and plant some cherry blossom trees, it badly needs some colour.

[Teddy]

Mar Lodge is really rather ghastly and lacks character I agree, but I suppose it lost a lot of it's character following the fire in 1991? What would help is if they did something with the front gardens & planted some trees, it's awfully baron! If I owned it I would cover the front with ivy or Virginia creeper and plant some cherry blossom trees, it badly needs some colour.

Indeed Eddie, its so awfully baron. I like your idea of the cherry blossom trees. You have such great taste!