Exile
The Duke and Duchess of Teck chose to reside in London rather than abroad, mainly because Mary Adelaide was the only breadwinner for the Tecks. She received £5,000 per annum as a Parliamentary annuity for carrying out Royal duties. Her mother, the Duchess of Cambridge, also provided her with supplementary income. Requests to Queen Victoria for extra funds were generally refused. However, the Queen did provide the Tecks with apartments at Kensington Palace and White Lodge in Richmond Park as a country house.
Despite their modest income, Mary Adelaide had expensive tastes and lived an extravagant life of parties, expensive food and clothes and holidays abroad. The debts soon built up and the Tecks were forced to flee the country in 1883 to avoid their creditors. They travelled to Florence, Italy and also stayed with relatives in Germany and Austria. Initially they travelled under the names of the Count and Countess von Hohenstein. However, Mary Adelaide wished to travel in more style and reverted to her royal style, which commanded significantly more attention and better service.
Read more about this topic: Princess Mary Adelaide Of Cambridge
Famous quotes containing the word exile:
“The exile is a singular, whereas refugees tend to be thought of in the mass. Armenian refugees, Jewish refugees, refugees from Franco Spain. But a political leader or artistic figure is an exile. Thomas Mann yesterday, Theodorakis today. Exile is the noble and dignified term, while a refugee is more hapless.... What is implied in these nuances of social standing is the respect we pay to choice. The exile appears to have made a decision, while the refugee is the very image of helplessness.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“No exile at the South Pole or on the summit of Mont Blanc separates us more effectively from others than the practice of a hidden vice.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“the bird in the poplar tree
dreaming, his head
tucked into
far-and-near exile under his wing ...”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)