NZ’s own princess bride
How did an Irish immigrant’s daughter from Wellington end up marrying an Albanian prince? Tina White reports.
In the American summer of 1966, an elderly widow died in San Jose, California. A longtime resident, she might not, in death, have attracted much attention, except for her name – Princess Margaret Ghika – and her previous nationality: New Zealander.
Her story started like a fairytale, but didn’t quite end that way.
Back in April 1905, New Zealand and English newspapers buzzed with the news that a New Zealand girl from an Irish immigrant family had married a dashing nobleman named Prince Albert Ghica, ‘‘the chosen leader of the Independence Party which seeks to free Albania from Turkish claims; it is stated that 150,000 Albanians are ready to follow him’’.
The rather quiet wedding took place on Monday, April 17, at St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Chelsea, West London. Margaret Dowling, the bride, in ivory white satin, was described as ‘‘tall in stature, sweet in expression and bore herself with queenly grace’’.
She was given away by her mother, Margaret; the bridesmaid was her sister
Jose, in white chiffon. The best man was Lieutenant Maican, of the Princess of Roumania’s Cavalry. The officiating priest conducted most of the ceremony in French.
The newspapers said the bridegroom, ‘‘a handsome man of 35 or so’’, came from ‘‘an old Roman Catholic Albanian family associated with the cause of liberty in Albania, whose members had at times held the position of Hospodars (governors) of Wallachia, a title conferred by the Austrian Emperor’’. His great-grandfather Prince Gregory Ghica, of Moldo-Wallachia, was beheaded, it was said, by the Turks in 1777.
By 1905, the modern-day prince, as leader of a party working for Albanian independence, ‘‘was not in high favour with the Turkish authorities’’.
Even his wedding, originally planned for December, had been postponed for several weeks because he hadn’t given ‘‘proper legal notice’’ to those authorities.
At the lavish wedding reception at a London hotel, the new Princess Margaret was given a diadem from Princess Helene Ghica and a diamond ring and brooch from her new husband, before they left for a honeymoon in Rome.
There was a lot of curiosity about the dark-haired princess bride, who had met Albert the year before while on holiday in Paris with her mother and sister.
Her family was said, in The
Dominion, to have emigrated from County Kildare and settled in Hokitika. John Dowling, her father, was described in some newspapers as having ‘‘amassed a fortune’’ and to have ‘‘made a pile’’ in New Zealand – while others described him as a former butcher.
Albert and Margaret settled in Paris. During the 1920s, Albert worked on writing his book: L’Albanie et la question d’Orient, still in print today and regarded as a culturally important work.
Margaret, with the help of wellheeled friends, opened a shop in 1912 to raise funds for the less fortunate. The
Los Angeles Herald of June 6, 1912, declared that ‘‘family pride and position did not prevent her from undertaking this work on behalf of the Roumanian peasants. All the more freely does she embark on this enterprise, because her husband spent her entire fortune in a heroic effort to drive the Turks out of Albania and place her on the throne.’’
The newspaper added: ‘‘The entire work of the new shop will be done by titled people of the old nobility. The opening was a most fashionable event and was attended by many Americans.’’
Maybe because of these connections, Margaret, under the alternatively spelled surname Ghika, filed a declaration of intention for naturalisation as a United States citizen in 1926. Her birthplace was listed as Wellington, New Zealand, her address at time of filing as New York City.
Prince Albert died in 1928; in the same year Margaret, now a brand-new American, was on the Cunard liner Tuscania, bound for the US.
For a while she lived in hotels, in Honolulu, San Francisco and New York among others, with her mail being forwarded to each new address.
But around 1930, she found a permanent home in the Douglas Apartments on First St in San Jose, California.
There, her charm and independence, not to mention the allure of her title, quickly won Princess Margaret Ghika friends and supporters.
In 1933 she was even a lunch guest of US President Herbert Hoover and his wife at the famous Brookdale Lodge of Santa Cruz, along with other celebrities, and a couple described as ‘‘Lord and Lady Morton from Auckland, New Zealand’’.
In 1946 the Albanian monarchy was abolished.
On August 15, 1966, with the old world she had known rapidly vanishing, Princess Margaret Ghika died.
She is buried in Oak Hill Memorial Park, San Jose.
* With thanks for input from the San Jose Public Library.