Barbara Cartland: The Lovelight of Apollo

I fell in love with Greece when I first read The Splendour of Greece by Robert Payne.

When I went there, I found that this fascinating book answered so many questions and made me understand the mystery and beauty of the Ancient Gods.

Delos, where Apollo was born, is just as I have described it.

Some of the top Greek families are a part of my story, but the description of the Parthenon in the Erechtheion is exactly as I saw and felt it.

After 2,500 years Greece is still a mystical enigma to the Western World.

Just as Robert Payne puts it so clearly,

The splendour of Greece still lights our skies, reaching over America and Asia and lands which the Greeks never dream existed. There would be no Christianity as we know it without the fertilising influence of the Greek Fathers of the Church, who owed their training to Greek philosophy.

By a strange accident all the images of Buddha in the Far East can be traced right back to portraits of Alexander, who seemed to the Greeks to be Apollo incarnate.

We owe to the Greeks the beginning of science and the beginning of thought.

They built the loveliest Temples ever, carved marble with delicacy and strength and set in motion the questing mind which refuses to believe that there are any bounds to reason.

That is why we journey to Greece like pilgrims to a feast.

“No! No! No! I will not do it ‒1 will not !” Princess Marigold’s voice rose to a shriek on the last word.

Pulling off her slipper, she flung it as hard as she could at her Comptroller, Colonel Bassett, who was standing nearby

As this had happened to him before, he deftly side-stepped the missile.

The slipper landed on top of a cabinet, knocking over a pretty piece of antique Dresden china.

Princess Marigold was lying on the sofa and now she said in a slightly quieter voice,

“You can inform Her Majesty that I will not go to Greece and so that is the end of the matter!”

Colonel Bassett sighed and persevered.

“I am afraid, Your Royal Highness, that you cannot refuse a Royal Command from Her Majesty Queen Victoria.”

“Why not?” Princess Marigold asked sharply. “This is supposed to be a free country.”

Colonel Bassett did not reply and after a moment she carried on furiously,

“Free! Of course it is free for everyone, except someone like myself who is supposed to be Royal, but without a throne, and without anyone paying any attention to what I want or do not want to do!”

This again was something that Colonel Bassett had heard before and he remained silent.

Then unexpectedly the door opened and a voice came from it,

“Is anyone at home?”

The Princess sat up abruptly.

“Holden!” she exclaimed. “Thank Goodness you have come. What do you think has just happened?”

Prince Holden then came a little further into the room, nodded to Colonel Bassett and walked towards the Princess.

He was a tall, broad-shouldered and handsome young man but with somewhat Germanic features.

“I heard you shouting,” the Prince said, “so I knew that there was trouble.”

“Trouble!” Princess Marigold echoed. “Oh, Holden, Holden, what am I to do?”

The Prince took the Princess’s hand and raised it to his lips.

“You are upsetting yourself, but you promised me that I should cope with your troubles and you would not become agitated over them.”

“Agitated?” Princess Marigold exclaimed. “Of course I am agitated! Have you heard what that monstrous old woman here in Windsor Castle wants me to do?”

Prince Holden turned his head towards Colonel Bassett.

“What has happened?” he asked.

“Her Majesty,” Colonel Bassett answered, speaking in a somewhat pompous voice, “has now informed Her Royal Highness that she is to represent Great Britain at the funeral of His Royal Highness Prince Eumenus of Malia.”

“Oh, is he dead?” Prince Holden replied. “I had heard that he was ill.”

“His Royal Highness is dead and his body has been embalmed so that he can be buried in Athens in two weeks’ time,” the Colonel went on. “While he was not of any great Diplomatic importance, Her Majesty feels that she personally and so, of course, Great Britain, should be represented at the Ceremony.”

Prince Holden had been listening attentively.

Now he said quietly as he turned towards the Princess,

“You will have to go, my dearest.”

“And leave you?” Princess Marigold exclaimed. “Can you not see what Queen Victoria is up to? She has never approved of our engagement and now she is doing everything in her power to separate us!”

“She will never do that,” Prince Holden averred.

At the same time there was an anxious expression in his eyes.

After months of discussion Queen Victoria had finally allowed Princess Marigold, who was a near relation, to become engaged to Prince Holden of Allenberg.

No one could pretend that it was a marriage of prestige for the Princess.

But she had fallen madly in love with Prince Holden and she firmly refused to consider any other man who might be suggested to her.

Ever since she had been small, Princess Marigold had been what Queen Victoria thought of as a problem.

She had arrived to live in England with her father and mother after Prince Dimitri had been thrown out of Panaeros in a revolution.

It was a smallish Greek island where his family had reigned as Monarchs for generations.

Queen Victoria had, however, found the family a burden on her hands.

At first Prince Dimitri had begged Her Majesty over and over again to send British ships and British guns to restore him to his Throne by force if necessary.

When she refused to do so and he died, his wife Helen, who was English and a cousin of the Queen, had died of a broken heart.

In fact she had never forgiven Queen Victoria for refusing her husband’s heart rendering request.

It was whispered amongst the Courtiers at Windsor Castle that she had put a Greek curse on the Queen before she herself had died.

Whether this was true or not, she had certainly left Her Majesty a considerable bundle of trouble in the shape of her only child.

The Princess had been christened ‘Mary Gloriana Amethyst Victoria’.

The names had been chosen as compliments to her grandparents, her Godmothers and, of course, the Queen of Great Britain.

As soon as she could talk, Princess Mary, as it had been decided she should be called, refused to answer to any other name except that of ‘Marigold’.

No one quite understood why it had taken her fancy and yet she insisted over and over again to her Nannies, her Governesses and anyone else who would listen, that her name was ‘Marigold’.

It became impossible to call a child by her real name who would not answer to anything but the name that she had chosen for herself.

First her Nannies gave in to her whim, then her Governesses and Tutors.

Finally through sheer exasperation, Queen Victoria herself gave in as well.

Princess Marigold she then became and was undoubtedly a major thorn in the flesh of her benefactress.

She was brought up at Windsor Castle and indeed there was plenty of room in that huge unwieldy edifice for a dozen or more children if necessary.

But it was often felt by those in attendance that it was too small for Princess Marigold and she was invariably in trouble of one sort or another.

However, as she grew up, she became extremely pretty, in fact a real beauty.

She resembled her mother with her fair hair and pink-and-white English complexion. But her eyes were definitely Greek, dark, expressive and stunningly beautiful in their depths.