Helene (1814–1858), daughter of Friedrich, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1778 1819), and his second consort, Carolina of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1786–1816), lost her mother at the age of two and her father soon after. Luckily her stepmother, Princess Augusta of Hesse-Homburg (1776–1871), was devoted to the children and withdrew to the country to devote herself to their upbringing and education. The young duchess impressed all who knew her by her generosity of spirit and tender nature. According to her biographer, Jeanne Paule Beaupoil de Saint-Aulaire, Marquise dHarcourt (1817–1893), the princesss playmates soon learnt that if they were to admire any of her new Christmas toys she would immediately, and joyfully, give them up.
Her marriage to the heir to the French throne, Ferdinand, Duc dOrléans (1810–1842), in 1837 was arranged by the King of Prussia. The betrothed couple had not met before Duchess Helene and her stepmother crossed the frontier on a beautiful spring day under an arch of flowers spelling the wordFrance. The Prince de Joinville wickedly records that his brother rushed forward to greet his fiancée, but embraced the hand of her lady in-waiting by mistake. One wonders how this spiritual, sensitive princess adapted to the worldly and robust nature of her large new family with its constant alarms of assassination and political threats. By all accounts she was devoted to her charming husband and devastated at his sudden death which left her with two small sons. Her bravery during the events of 1848 is well known, and her later years, in exile in England educating her children, were an echo of her own childhood.

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