Prince Arthur of
Connaught
(1883-1938)
This page is about the son of Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught. See here for the 1st Duke.
Prince Arthur married Alexandra, Duchess of Fife in 1913.
They had one son, Alistair Arthur, born the following year.
A correspondent has kindly sent me this picture of Princess Alexandra. The signed photo and a gift had been given to someone she had worked with in a hospital during the war.
Prince Arthur died four years before his father and so never inherited the title of Duke of Connaught, which passed to his son Alistair, who thus became the 2nd Duke of Connaught.
A
collector has found an old
autograph book once owned by Captain Vaughan of the White Star Line's
RMS Majestic. The book contains a fascinating collection of signatures
of the famous and not-so-famous. Among the signatures are Arthur and
Alexandra, and it is reasonable to assume that these are Prince Arthur
and his wife, the signature of Alexandra matches that of the portrait
above..
Whether the third signature has any connection with them is not clear
as the page contains several other signatures.
Sean Rumage has
written from the USA :
I have come into possession of a sterling silver match safe made in
1917 and inscribed in 1918. On one side it reads "Bagshot Park May 20th
1918". On the other side it has a crown over the letters AW. The A
being overlaid on the W. [Jun 15 X]
My guess is that
this is a prize or keepsake from an event, perhaps a competition, that
took place on that date in the grounds of Bagshot Park - the only thing
against that theory is that the war had not ended and would such events
have taken place then? The Royal Family had changed its name
to
Windsor (from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) the year before. Both the Duke and his
son had the Christian name Arthur, so both might be considered to have
the initials AW as Sean describes in the monogram. But I
fancy
that the Duke is likely to have styled himself as HRH The Duke of
Connaught, so on balance I think this may relate to his son, Prince
Arthur. But I have no idea what might have been going on on
20
May 1918 to warrant this.
In a remarkable cooincidence, two other correspondents had written describing identical match safes in their possession. Margaret wrote that the one she has was awarded to her father who was serving with the Canadian Army and stationed at the time at a camp established on Smiths Lawn, Windsor Great Park. Writing home he described the circumstances "Well, we are getting along pretty well with baseball. We have played 10 games and won 7 of them. A week ago today we played at the Duke of Connaught’s and had a very nice time. We received a silver match safe each for winning the game and the Duke and Princess Patricia gave us the presents. The Duke of Connaught is the brother of the late King Edward and an uncle of the present king. He was quite a jovial old fellow and shook hands with all of us and told me I had “some rare smoke” on the ball. He used to be Governor General of Canada you know, and knows quite a little about baseball. Princess Pat is quite good-looking, but rather tall. She was not a bit frigid looking, but on the contrary looked to be rather jolly." [689] [vi 06] [15020 X]
Unfortunately I have now lost contact with all three correspondants.
Many of my pages have been prompted by, or include questions or information from, my readers. If you can add anything to the above please write to me using the message pad below.
This page is part of the Bagshot
village web site.
My site has no connection with the Royal Estates or any member of the
Royal family, and I am not able to forward messages to them.
Data provided only for personal background information. While every effort has been made to provide correct information no assurance as to its accuracy is given or implied. Check any facts you wish to rely upon.
Sources used include
- www.aoqc42.dsl.pipex.com/majauto/intro.shtml