The Memoirs of Crown Princess Cecilie (Gollancz, 1931) kicks off with a press photo of Princess Marina cooing over a godchild named Victoria Marina Cecilie in May, 1952. The other half of the picture is occupied by Crown Princess Cecilie, another godmother. A written quotation finds Daisy of Pless attending the 1905 wedding. "The Grand Duchess Cecile looked very nice and graceful in silver, only her crown was too much over her nose. Her mother, the Grand Duchess Anastasia, looked handsome, cold and proud. And no wonder, after what the papers said of her …… Another day the Grand Duchess came to see me. We had a long talk about herself and I gave her some good advice, most of which was, I fear, entirely unacceptable. However, she was by then very happy about the Crown Princess Cecile and herself looked younger and happier than I had ever seen her. She was a very charming, but very unwise lady."

Later, after the war, we find Osbert Sitwell in Monte Carlo, bewailing the absence of all the pre-war Imperials, "Only the Grand Duchess Anastasia, whose behaviour had not long ago shaken whole countries, was still to be seen, wearing a flaxen wig, sitting on a stool at the bar of the Hotel de Paris or in the old Sporting Club." In June, 1934, we find the US Ambassador Dodd visiting Cecilienhof: "We were asked to sit down with the Crown Princess and take tea. She is the sister of the Queen of Denmark and a most sensible and attractive woman, the unhappy wife of the dissipated eldest son of the Kaiser, now in exile in Holland. She was most agreeable." Another quote, this time from Prince von Bulow's Memoirs, confirms the Crown Princess's qualities: "[she] bore misfortune nobly when it fell on her young shoulders."

....and in the 1930s at Cecilienhof

A curious cutting from the Daily Telegraph records that when Togoland celebrated its independence from France in March, 1960, they wished to invite a distinguished outside figure. They settled on the 86-year-old Duke of Mecklenburg, who had governed Togoland on behalf of Imperial Germany from 1907 until 1911. He died, aged 95, in August, 1969.

A typed extract from Princess Marie Radziwill's book This Was Germany appears to indicate that she was inclined to believe the claims of the famous Kaspar Hauser, since she had known the lady who might have been his mother. Recent DNA tests have, of course, proved that Hauser was an imposter. When Everybody's Magazine cast doubt on the matter in July 1951, Miss Gray fired off a letter to them quoting the late Grand Duke Nicholas Michailovitch on the subject. He was said to have documents proving the matter!

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