Queen Victoria's Matchmaking
Page 4
The prince was nonetheless despatched to Cambridge in the autumn of 1883 accompanied by the ever-hopeful Dalton. Eddy reassured his grandmother that he hoped ‘to get on as well as possible’, although he admitted that at first he found university life ‘rather dull’.43 By now Dalton himself was coming in for criticism. Too late, questions were being asked about whether Dalton’s belief that knowledge had to be ‘drilled’ or ‘instilled’ into the young prince was so heavy handed that it had killed off any tender shoots of interest.44 ‘What on earth has stupid Dalton been about all these years,’ protested one courtier, Lady Geraldine Somerset. ‘He has taught him nothing!’45
The twenty-one-year-old prince was at last freed from Dalton’s close scrutiny in 1885 when he embarked on a military career, enrolling for training at Aldershot. Those who hoped that Eddy would come into his own once freed from Dalton’s all-embracing influence were to be disappointed. Once again the prince tried to reassure his grandmother. He was working hard and began ‘to find the life there very pleasant’, although he admitted ‘Aldershot is a very cold and exposed place in winter and especially as our barracks are on the top of a hill.’46 Privately, he considered the general was ‘a lunatic’ and objected strongly to cavalry training regimes that involved jogging around in circles in restrictive clothing until well past the point of discomfort.47 Nonetheless after six months’ training Eddy joined the distinguished cavalry regiment, the 10th Royal Hussars, and was stationed at York.
For so long a disappointment to his own mother, Bertie, too, struggled to conceal his own frustration when his son, in turn, failed to live up to expectations during his first public duties. At one formal ceremony in Dublin the prince forgot his instructions and loud whispers directing him when to stand or kneel were painfully audible to the crowd. Under provocations such as these his father lost patience. ‘Eddy, you are a d------d fool,’ he once snapped.48 Exasperatingly for Bertie there are no indications that Eddy fought back against such fatherly reproaches. Instead Bertie’s anger or frustration is more likely to have been greeted with the vulnerability of a scolded puppy, looking out from beneath heavy-lidded eyes, his soft chin gently sloping, his expression sometimes vacant. Eddy was invariably polite and gentle, his good nature unruffled, his sisters and mother lavish in their encouragement. He was still so coltishly tall and slight that his mother encouraged him to use extended collars and cuffs to help conceal his swan-like neck and delicate wrists, which earned him the nickname ‘Collars-and-Cuffs’. Many who saw him, such as Henry Ponsonby, attested to his pleasing personal attributes. Eddy was sharp enough to put himself out for the queen, delighting her on one occasion by dancing a quadrille that prompted several exclamation marks in her journal. The prince continued to be the tactful recipient of counsel from his grandmamma. ‘Thank you a thousand times for your kind letter full of good advice, which I appreciate so much,’ he wrote to her in 1888 on his twenty-fourth birthday.49
Whether he was actually following the queen’s advice was another matter. The prince found his own way of dealing with the extreme watchfulness of his elders as he endeavoured to make his rite of passage from awkward youth to man of the world and he was less than forthcoming about what he was up to. Most of the records of this period of Prince Eddy’s life were destroyed by Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter and companion, Princess Beatrice, who edited her mother’s papers after her death. As a result it is only possible to get glimpses of the prince’s alleged transgressions and what his family knew of them.
However, two revealing letters have recently surfaced that survived Beatrice’s labours. They are written in Prince Eddy’s hand and addressed to his doctor in the army, known as Roche. Dating from December 1885 these letters reveal that within months of being released from Dalton’s sphere of influence, the overprotected prince had acquired a sexually transmitted disease. ‘I have felt well all the time I have been away from Aldershot,’ he told Roche, after taking his prescribed capsules four times a day. ‘There is still a slight sign of glete [discharge] but so slight that it is hardly perceptive.’ The prince was frustrated to find that it was not so easy to clear up his infection. A year later he asked for more capsules. ‘I still continue to have this tiresome glete . . . It is very annoying,’ he wrote to his doctor on 18 December 1886. The most likely cause of his ‘glete’ or discharge is gonorrhoea, which at the time was difficult to treat.50
Given that these letters were written from Marlborough House and Sandringham, it is possible that the concerned prince had taken his father into his confidence. He could not confide in his beautiful mother; she was an irreproachable figure in his life, a standard-bearer of virtue who was admired across the country for her loyalty to her erring husband. Eddy adored her and to disappoint her would be distressing. Although Eddy found his father intimidating, he may have hoped that Bertie, a man of the world, would be in a position to help him. It was around this time that Bertie appears to have confided concerns about his oldest son to a couple of friends, outlining a matter so secret that years later one would write, ‘I may not even hint at the nature of the advice asked for, given, and acted on . . .’51
Family letters began to refer to Eddy’s ‘gout’, and it is possible that Bertie sought to shield his wife from the shock of knowing about their oldest son’s indiscretions by letting her believe Eddy suffered from no more than this. But if ‘gout’ was the code for Eddy’s sexual infection, his younger brother George sailed provocatively close to giving the game away in one letter to Queen Victoria: ‘Poor Eddy has been laid up with gout in his foot, how very unfortunate, he is really much too young to get that; I never heard of anybody getting it at 24 before,’ he wrote incredulously.52 The symptoms of his ‘tiresome gout’ on this occasion included a painful inflammation of his toe, Eddy told his brother. ‘I could not do anything and could only hobble up and down stairs.’53 This would appear to be a different ailment in addition to his sexual infection, although for both illnesses Eddy was required to pay close attention to his diet as advised by his army doctor, Roche.
Whatever the code word for Eddy’s sexual infection and who was in the know, there remains the question of how he caught it. Despite strenuous efforts to make him as unlike his father as possible, the young prince enjoyed the company of pretty women and his letters to George show he took a keen interest in the opposite sex. ‘There were two or three new girls who have just come out,’ he reported to his brother after one May Ball in London, which was ‘one of the best I have ever been to’. He studied them closely enough to conclude that ‘none of them were strikingly beautiful’, but he did take time to talk to George’s childhood friend, Julie Stonor. Eddy could be charming and flirtatious and on another occasion he told George of ‘some amusing American ladies staying [at Glen Muich] who kept us awake’, including ‘a Miss Colt who is decidedly pretty and very nice’.54 But he had no long-term relationships in his early twenties and it has been argued that Eddy discovered a more exciting side to army life with plenty of diversions in towns near his barracks. The innocent prince could be easily led and might have found his way to the local clubs and brothels. If so, his mother had no idea, assuring the queen that when it came to clubs and races, ‘he really has no inclination that way’.55
Eddy’s biographer, Theo Aronson, has speculated that the young prince was homosexual or bisexual – a theory that would help to explain why Princess Beatrice went to such lengths to destroy his records. At the time society operated under an appalling double standard. Bertie’s numerous affairs with women did not help his reputation, but did not prove disastrous for the monarchy. When it came to homosexuality, however, Victorian sensibilities were shocked. This was seen as an unnatural practice that was against the will of God and judged punitively. As late as 1861 the sentence for buggery could be hanging and long after this punishments involved lengthy prison sentences and fines. Eighteen years after the queen’s Golden Jubilee, Oscar Wilde was imprisoned and ruined socially for ‘the love that dare not speak
its name’. But after examining Eddy’s relationships with his alleged lovers, such as his mentor at Cambridge, James Stephen, and others, Aronson concedes the evidence is ‘circumstantial’.56 The claim remains unproven.
Whatever the truth about how Eddy acquired his sexual infection, one thing was plain: Queen Victoria must not find out. Despite her seclusion, the queen had an uncanny knack of uncovering just what was going on; those who excited the queen’s interest often felt certain that, like the oracle at Delphi, she knew all. Keeping indelicate matters from her was no slight undertaking, but invoking her displeasure was almost unthinkable. She had repeatedly lamented Bertie’s way of life. On no account was Eddy to copy his father. She had constantly advised him to keep his grandfather’s name before him. Her homilies on the ills of society had followed Eddy across the world. She herself had come to encapsulate all the moral virtues of middle-class family life in Great Britain. The very sight of her plump figure swathed in black and her unsmiling face, fleshed out with age, summoned up highly prized Victorian family values: purity, fidelity and avoidance of the sins of the flesh. News that her second heir, like her first, might be corrupted by a playboy world could only make her shudder.
At the time of her jubilee in 1887, even without an intimate acquaintance of her grandson’s private problems, the queen had cause enough for concern about Eddy. His knowledge remained woefully inadequate. He knew little of Europe, spoke no language other than English, and did he not profess a complete ignorance of the Crimean Battle of Alma at a recent dinner? His listlessness and lack of drive were worrying. Rather than dedicating himself to the army he was keeping late hours in London. For a man in the prime of life, he managed to look thin and wan. Ill-discipline, intemperance, over-indulgence, these were words the queen was more used to applying to her son than her grandson. There were formidable duties ahead for the prince as a future heir to the throne. How would he hold his own on a European stage among emperors and kings? They included men like Emperor Franz Joseph, the authoritarian ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that stretched across a swathe of central Europe from northern Italy to the Ukraine. Or Eddy’s ‘Uncle Sasha’, the new emperor of Russia, Alexander III, a giant of a man whose mere physical presence inspired confidence and who had brought order to autocratic Russia after the assassination of Alexander II. The queen knew that Eddy needed taking in hand and that his adoring mother, Alexandra, and wayward father, Bertie, were unequal to the task.
There was for her one very obvious solution. The queen was coming to the view that to help the young prince accomplish his formidable duties he was in need of a suitable consort: a princess of redoubtable qualities like her own, who would be able to bring out the very best in him. Queen Victoria was looking for a very exceptional bride; a consort whose high principles, sound education and shrewd judgement could compensate for Eddy’s deficiencies of character and be the making of him; whose virtue and common sense would triumph over Eddy’s weaknesses. As Europe’s great matriarch she had a bird’s-eye view of the most eligible and blue-blooded brides in Europe.
Traditionally, she had long favoured Germany as a suitable source of royal consorts. The country that had given her the beloved Prince Albert was also a land of rich culture and learning; of Goethe, Bach and Beethoven, and most importantly, when it came to choosing a spouse, the Protestant faith. For the queen, Germany was a natural ally, the place from which the British royal line had deep roots that stretched back to the early eighteenth century and the reign of George I, who was also a ruler of the German House of Hanover.
But at the time of her Golden Jubilee in 1887 the queen was troubled by unexpected news from Vicky of upheavals in the German court. Her sensible oldest daughter appeared to be ‘half distracted’, the intrigues around her were ‘dreadful’, her news ‘distressing and disturbing’.57 Vicky’s letters home bound mother and daughter together in a tragedy that was not just devastating for Vicky but marked a turning point in their long-shared vision for the future of Germany formed thirty years earlier when Prince Albert was alive. Its outcome had the potential to destroy the entire purpose of Vicky’s brilliant dynastic marriage and undermine the Albertine vision of royal alliances; perhaps even to have troubling consequences for the stability of Europe. This made it all the more important to find the perfect consort for Eddy, one whose presence alone could allay any doubts about his credibility as the premier prince of Europe.
2
Vicky and Frederick
‘I wish he could get a good “skelping” [flogging] as the Scotch say . . .’
Queen Victoria on her oldest grandson, the
future Kaiser Wilhelm II, February 1885
The crisis in the German court first surfaced in the weeks before the Golden Jubilee celebrations in London. The ninety-year-old German emperor, Wilhelm I, was in failing health. Queen Victoria’s ‘beloved’ son-in-law, Crown Prince Frederick, was next in line to the German throne, but during the spring of 1887 Vicky became worried that her husband was unable to shake off a seemingly innocuous symptom: a persistent hoarseness in his throat. In May the prince’s German doctors identified a tumour on his vocal cord and fearing it was malignant, recommended an immediate operation to cut out the swelling. This was life-threatening surgery but also his best hope of a cure.
Excruciating possibilities now opened up before Vicky and Frederick. ‘I wish I could fly to you and be with you to cheer you up, darling child, and encourage Fritz,’ the queen wrote from London. But when a British doctor was summoned, Dr Morell Mackenzie, he advised against any surgery unless cancer was confirmed. To Vicky and Frederick’s immense relief the pathological report found no evidence of malignancy. While the German doctors were uneasy that Mackenzie was too optimistic, the Crown Princess was sure the British doctor was right. ‘I am convinced of it!’ she wrote to her mother.1 ‘Darling and Beloved Child, Truly, earnestly and most gratefully do I thank God that the . . . alarm about our precious Fritz has been dispelled,’ the queen replied on 27 May, three weeks before her Golden Jubilee. Queen Victoria was determined that her daughter and son-in-law should now come to England for the celebrations. ‘You both must not be absent on this day which will move me deeply . . .’2
Mother and daughter, always close, were reunited for the great pageant through London, Vicky sharing Queen Victoria’s landau. In middle age, Vicky resembled her mother more closely, the fullness of her face softening her features, her figure filled out with repeated pregnancies. The crowd was especially interested in her husband. Newspapers had warned of a life-threatening illness; but Prince Frederick defied them. Riding ahead with the princes, tall and good-looking, wearing the impressive uniform of the Prussian Cuirassiers, he appeared to have the invincibility of a warrior-king about to claim his inheritance. The American journalist, Ralph Blumenfeld, considered him ‘the most striking figure in the procession’.3
Summer weeks of rest in Scotland and then in Italy raised hopes of recovery, but during the autumn of 1887 the prince’s symptoms returned. Vicky found it hard to hear his voice. In the second week of November the German heir to the throne was examined by six doctors, who were now united in their conclusions. Frederick was suffering from an incurable cancer. The choices before him were stark. His life might be prolonged with surgery to remove his larynx, but this would render him mute as a future emperor – if he survived the hazardous operation. Or he could put the matter in God’s hands.
The news spread alarm across Europe. The old German emperor did not have long to live and his son, Frederick, the heir to the throne, was almost certainly dying too. Queen Victoria and her daughter were consumed by each hope, fear and renewed uncertainty. If Crown Prince Frederick died, the German throne would pass to Vicky’s oldest son, the queen’s oldest grandson: twenty-eight-year-old Prince Wilhelm. For both mother and daughter this would be an unmitigated tragedy that would undermine – perhaps destroy completely – the entire purpose of Vicky’s great marital alliance to the Prussian heir to the throne al
most thirty years earlier.
In those seemingly halcyon days when her husband was still alive, Queen Victoria had supported Prince Albert in his vision for the marriages of their children. His remarkable plan had its roots in Coburg in Germany, birthplace of Queen Victoria’s mother, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and later Duchess of Kent, her uncle Leopold, king of the Belgians, and her beloved husband, Albert. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Germany as a state did not yet exist. Coburg was one of thirty-eight independent German kingdoms, dukedoms and other principalities that became loosely bound together under the leadership of the Austrian Empire as the ‘German Confederation’.
The ‘Coburg vision’, articulated by Albert and his close advisor and friend, Baron Christian von Stockmar, had two political aims: to see the unification of Germany and then to ‘establish unity of purpose between Germany and England’. For Prince Albert and Baron Stockmar this was a ‘noble purpose’ that would bring stability to Europe. They believed ‘the peace of the world, the social, intellectual and political progress of Europe’ depended on a political understanding between Britain and a newly unified Germany. After the trauma of the Napoleonic Wars, Stockmar believed that such an alliance would create a ‘natural equilibrium’ in Europe, making ‘the Teutonic nations strong enough to enforce respect for public law, and to prevent every breach of the peace whether it came from East or West’.4
In September 1855 when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert sought an engagement between their much-loved fourteen-year-old daughter, Vicky, and the second heir to the Prussian throne, Prince Frederick, the romantic feelings of their daughter obligingly developed over a two-week courtship to mirror this political and strategic vision of Europe.5 Vicky’s match was a veritable template of the centuries-old tradition of royal marriages that were a key part of diplomacy and a means of ‘sealing the deal’. Prussia was then the largest and most dynamic of the German states, and by marrying into its royal house, Vicky hoped to fulfil her father’s dream and play her part in shaping the political direction of the continent, inspired by his ideal of a liberal, unified Germany bringing peace to Europe.