Sons, Servants and Statesmen

by John Van der Kiste

  Gladstone braved the wrath of his sovereign by choosing what seemed to him an opportune moment to propose a new role for the Prince. He advised that the heir and his wife ought to reside in Ireland for four or five months of the year, where he could undertake some form of administrative business, to be mutually agreed between the sovereign, her heir and the government. This, he argued, would give the Prince the advantage of some political training which he had not yet had. Moreover, if Her Majesty was to decide that she could no longer perform ‘the social and visible functions of the monarchy’, perhaps she would consider inviting the Prince and Princess to stay at Buckingham Palace in her absence for two or three months annually and perform them on her behalf.

  Needless to say, such proposals were instantly dismissed. Queen Victoria was never likely to entertain such a proposal from Gladstone. Ireland was the least loyal of her dominions, she informed him coldly; it would mean exile for the Prince and do his health much harm; and he was not of sufficiently independent character to stand against the pressures that would be exerted on him to lean towards one political party or the other. The emerald isle, she declared, was ‘in no fit state to be experimented upon’. As for the Buckingham Palace suggestion, the ‘fashionable set’ had already exercised a most harmful influence on her heir and his wife, and it would never do to encourage them still further. Experience was no prerequisite, she went on, for a successful monarch, as she could never take the slightest interest in public affairs before her own accession to the throne.

  She was not alone in her view. Sir Henry Ponsonby, who did not always agree wholeheartedly with the Queen, shared her doubts about the heir to the throne and his readiness to work hard enough in any position of responsibility. He admitted that the Prince was extremely genial and pleasant, but rarely for more than a few minutes at a time, and lacked his father’s sense of application to hard work. ‘But he does not endure. He cannot keep up the interest for any length of time and I don’t think he will ever settle down to business.’4

  By the end of 1872 he had been thrown back onto his old habits, a life devoid of serious responsibility, relieved of necessity by the social round and distractions of his City and society companions. Now back in England after his cruises on Galatea, his brother, the Duke of Edinburgh, was more than happy to become one of this pleasure-loving set. Queen Victoria was determined that her second son – who as a boy had shown such promising signs of taking after his father – should also be married and settle down as soon as possible.

  Fortunately for all, Alfred had already met the woman who was to become his wife on one of his family visits to Germany. Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna of Russia, the only surviving daughter of Tsar Alexander II, had been part of a gathering at Jugenheim with Alice, Louis and several of their relatives in the summer of 1868. After a difficult courtship, and despite the problems of the Queen having a daughter-in-law who belonged to the Greek Orthodox Church, Alfred and Marie were betrothed in July 1873 and married at St Petersburg in January 1874 at a double ceremony, one in the Anglican faith, the other according to the Russian Orthodox Church. This was the only wedding of one of her children which did not take place in England, and which the Queen did not attend in person. She had to content herself with sending Arthur Stanley, Dean of Westminster, to perform the English service.

  In certain aspects, the Duke of Edinburgh was very like his father, but Queen Victoria never really understood this versatile and knowledgeable, yet shy and often morose, second son. Those who did not know him well found him bad-tempered and avaricious. It did not help matters that the Duchess was a haughty woman who never let an opportunity slip of reminding her in-laws that she was a Russian Grand Duchess while they were mere Princesses, and that the jewellery her imperial father had given her as a wedding present was much finer than any of theirs. Beside the more affable, outgoing Prince of Wales and his elegant, if sadly deaf, wife, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh did not make an attractive couple. When Alfred returned to England after his betrothal in the summer of 1873, the Queen looked for a change in his personality for the better, but in vain. It saddened her, she wrote to Vicky in Berlin, to find no improvement in him – only ‘the same ungracious, reserved manner which makes him so little liked’.5

  Though still largely unemployed in an official capacity, the Prince of Wales was given several opportunities to exercise his considerable diplomatic skills at home and abroad. In November 1874 he and the Princess of Wales paid an official visit to Birmingham, a city which had a reputation for radicalism with a staunch republican, Joseph Chamberlain, as Lord Mayor. The tact of his royal visitors soon won Chamberlain over completely, and in years to come he would be a fervent royalist and welcome guest at Marlborough House, along with Charles Dilke, a member of parliament who had been a particularly vociferous spokesman for the republican movement of some four or five years previously.

  In October 1875 the Prince of Wales set out on a seven-month state visit to India. Queen Victoria had initially been against such a long separation from his family, but at length she was persuaded to give her approval, though she supported him in not allowing the indignant Princess to accompany him and the party. Before his departure, she urged him to take care that he did not eat too much, to ensure that he attended divine services every Sunday and to be in bed by 10 p.m. every night. As he was by now in his mid-thirties and had long since paid scant regard to such rules, he probably took little notice.

  On their progress, the heir and his entourage were extravagantly entertained by Indian heads of state and generously showered with jewels and trophies. Yet it was not one great round of merry-making and big-game hunting. Like his mother, the Prince had enlightened views on racial prejudice that were well in advance of their time and at odds with many of their contemporaries’. He was displeased by the arrogance of English civilian and military officers; as a result of what he had seen, he wrote to the Queen deploring the widespread brutality and contempt shown to the Indian population, and the British governors in India were accordingly instructed to put their house in order. During his homeward journey he was irritated to learn not through the Court but from the newspapers that legislation had been passed creating the Queen Empress of India, an oversight for which she and Disraeli gracefully apologised.

  Soon after returning from India, the Prince accepted the presidency of the British section of an international exhibition to be opened in Paris in May 1878. It was no mere honorary position, for he did much to organise Britain’s role in the display. Two days after the opening of the exhibition, he attended a banquet at which he proposed the health of President Marshal MacMahon, after the Queen’s health was toasted. It was the first time he had publicly honoured the head of the republican government, and he declared that the entente cordiale between both countries was unlikely to change. The British ambassador in Paris informed Lord Salisbury, the Foreign Secretary, that the Prince of Wales’s visit and genial behaviour had made England very popular in France. His talents as an ambassador for Britain had already been recognised, and they would have no little effect on his role – indeed, Britain’s role – in Europe over the following thirty years.

  Though the years which followed the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–1 were relatively free of armed conflict in Europe on the scale of that which had divided Queen Victoria’s family during the 1860s, the threat of another major conflict was never far away. France recovered quickly from her defeat at the hands of Germany in 1871, and nobody was willing to underestimate the danger posed by the volatile situation in the Balkan countries, ‘the powder-keg of Europe’. In 1877 Russia declared war on Turkey, and the Duke of Edinburgh was put in command of HMS Sultan, attached to the Mediterranean Fleet, which was required to be close to Constantinople in order to protect the lives and property of British subjects in the area.

  Within a year, the Turks were forced to surrender and sue for peace, and the Treaty of San Stefano, signed in March 1878, justified Europe’s worst fears in seeing substantia
l Russian territorial gains. For weeks the threat of war between Britain and Russia hung in the balance, much to the discomfort of the Duke, Tsar Alexander’s son-in-law. A well-intentioned but tactless act of his underlined the precarious nature of family loyalties.

  One of his officers on board Sultan was Prince Louis of Battenberg, whose younger brother, Alexander (‘Sandro’), was aidede-camp to the Russian Commander-in-Chief, Tsar Alexander II’s brother, Grand Duke Nicholas. When Louis heard from the German ambassador and his wife that Sandro was in Constantinople, he wanted to go and see him, and the Duke granted him permission to go ashore. Having been apart for so long, the brothers were overjoyed to meet again, and Louis invited Sandro on board Sultan. Later they went on board the flagship together, and then to Temeraire, a modern battleship equipped with several new devices. The Commander-in-Chief, Vice-Admiral Phipps-Hornby, was embarrassed that a foreign officer should be present on board one of his ships at such an inopportune time, though he was reluctant to spoil what was really no more than a brotherly reunion. However, as he was an officer, Prince Alexander had to be accorded certain privileges, such as being invited to watch a demonstration of fleet exercises, and then asked if he would like to dine on board the flagship. The brothers later went ashore and visited Russian Army headquarters, where they were received cordially by Grand Duke Nicholas and shown round the camp where Turkish soldiers were imprisoned and captured armaments kept.

  This came at the worst possible time for the British ambassador at Constantinople, who feared that peace negotiations could be jeopardised by the entertaining of a Russian officer on board a British ship who might take advantage of his connections with royalty and be made party to confidential information. In order to prevent his sovereign and the Admiralty from hearing vague and inaccurate rumours from unofficial sources, he cabled to London. The Queen was furious, for the Duke’s behaviour had come perilously close to treason. She wrote to him angrily that he had been ‘most injudicious and imprudent’, and that he had undoubtedly damaged any prospects of naval promotion for Louis and himself. After her temper had subsided, she was persuaded that no harm had actually been done, for Sandro had not been shown any confidential equipment or been granted access to naval secrets. The Duke had been forgiven as well by early summer, but only after he threatened to demand a court of enquiry in order to clear his name.

  Once peace was declared and confirmed by the Congress of Berlin, the Duke, who had spent the summer at Coburg, where he was heir to his uncle Duke Ernest, was keen to return home, especially as there was no prospect of immediate active service to detain him on Malta. The Queen was reluctant to have him back so soon, partly as she thought it too soon after the Sultan affair and partly as she regarded his love of society as a potentially bad influence on the Duke of Connaught. He threatened to resign his commission if he was not allowed back, or given something constructive to do.

  Providentially, his brother-in-law, the Marquess of Lorne, had recently been appointed Governor-General of Canada. Disraeli, who had made the appointment, thought the Canadians would regard it as a great honour if the Queen’s son-in-law and daughter were living among them. In view of his wife’s royal status, Lorne suggested that it would be appropriate for them to land at Halifax from one of Her Majesty’s ships. HMS Black Prince, to which the Duke of Edinburgh had been transferred when Sultan returned to Portsmouth for refitting, was chosen to make the Atlantic crossing which was to take the new Governor-General and his wife to Canada.

  Leopold longed to be given some similarly constructive role in life. He rebelled at his mother’s wish to protect him from any kind of harm, and by the time he became an adult he was openly rebelling against her orders. ‘He is so wanting in all dutiful and respectful forms and seems to delight in showing a childish defiance of my wishes,’6 she complained to his sister Louise when he was aged twenty-two.

  At Balmoral one evening after a game of billiards with the Liberal member of parliament John Bright, Leopold told his equerry that, if not allowed to do something useful, he would stand for parliament as an ‘extreme radical’. Nobody took his threat seriously, as he was known to share the family’s committed Tory politics. All the Queen’s sons were basically, and not surprisingly, Conservatives at heart, if not all the daughters. The Princess Royal was more inclined towards the Liberals and remained something of a Gladstonian supporter to the end of her days, while Louise was likewise of a relatively progressive turn of mind. However, in Leopold’s case it was widely recognised that he was far too intelligent for his talents to be wasted on representative duties and idleness.

  He approached Disraeli, who could see the young man’s resemblance to his late father. Although Leopold clearly had none of the political experience or knowledge that the Prince Consort had assimilated so rapidly during the first few years of his marriage, Disraeli felt that he might be able to take on something of a similar role as the Queen’s confidential assistant. The wily Prime Minister could also see that to adopt such a course of action could reduce the work imposed on him by constant attendance on the sovereign, as well as providing the Prince with suitable employment. The Queen readily agreed with him that Leopold could perhaps be groomed as an unofficial assistant private secretary. Her official secretary, Sir Henry Ponsonby, liked and respected Leopold, though he was concerned lest the Queen might be unduly influenced in issues of the day, such as the Turkish crisis, where her youngest son’s Tory leanings might threaten to bring the impartiality of the crown into question. He also saw dangers in elevating such a young and inexperienced prince into a position for which he was insufficiently qualified.

  In April 1877 the Queen spoke to Disraeli about obtaining a cabinet key for Leopold, which would give him access to official papers, as well as a facility to help the Queen with private correspondence and despatches, with special emphasis on foreign affairs. The Prince of Wales was understandably indignant that his brother should be allowed access to state secrets which had always been denied to him as heir to the throne, though relations between the Princes did not suffer as a result.

  On the contrary, the Prince of Wales had been magnanimous enough to make a recent approach to the Queen regarding a peerage for Leopold, who was now aged twenty-four. Arthur had been granted his at a similar age, and Alfred his when he was two years younger. She refused the request, as a result of which Leopold wrote to her, bitterly complaining that Arthur’s duties in particular were far less arduous than she believed, because he had spent considerable time during the previous few months ‘amusing himself’ or officially on leave. Any reproach of her favourite son was like a red rag to a bull, and the Queen was furious with Leopold for his ingratitude, fiercely defending Arthur, ‘who is a pattern to all young men & whom you always find fault with’.7

  In 1878 Arthur, Duke of Connaught, announced his engagement to Princess Louise of Prussia, daughter of the German Emperor William’s ill-tempered brother Prince Frederick Charles. With some asperity, the Queen wrote to the Crown Princess, Vicky, that there was really no need for Arthur to get married at all, as he was ‘so good’. But she was pleased that he had found such a suitable young woman, and once she had met the prospective bride, any resistance soon evaporated. She welcomed Louise even more on learning that the Princess had led an extremely unhappy life at home in Berlin, as the daughter of estranged parents. Had she seen ‘Louischen’ before Arthur spoke to her of his feelings for the girl, the Queen wrote to Vicky, ‘I should not have grieved him by hesitating for a moment in giving my consent to their union. She is a dear, sweet girl of the most amiable and charming character, and whatever nationality she was, I feel sure dear Arthur could not have chosen more wisely.’8

  On 13 March 1879 the ceremony took place at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Sadly, the wedding had been overshadowed by the death of Alice from diphtheria in December 1878 (see p. 198), though Court mourning was suspended for the occasion. The Queen wore the Koh-I-Noor diamond, the Indian jewel in which she took such pride, and, fo
r the first time since Albert’s death, a Court train. Her favourite son’s wedding was worthy of the best that she could do. Soon after his weding he was promoted to Major-General and placed in command of the 1st Guards Brigade, serving in Egypt under Sir Garnet Wolseley.

  In Canada, the life that Louise and Lorne led free from the Queen’s all-pervading presence was initially quite successful. They had settled at Rideau Hall, Ottawa, overlooking the St Lawrence River. Lorne was flexible and aware of Canadian sensitivities, and it was said that he became perhaps the most Canadian of all British holders of the office. The one minor controversy in which he was involved, regarding the dismissal of Luc Letellier, LieutenantGovernor of Quebec, a move demanded by the Conservative federal government (a dismissal which Lorne opposed, but later approved under instruction from the Colonial Office), did him no damage.

  Leopold joined them briefly at one stage, and all three travelled around Canada before making a short visit to the United States. The Queen was startled to receive an effusive New York newspaper article about their royal guests headed vic’s chicks. Leopold had a terrier bitch called Vic, and when he sent the paper to England for her to read, she commented how odd it was of them to mention his dog.

  Much to his delight, Leopold had managed to gain something of the independence which he had so craved. In May 1878 he had provoked the Queen’s wrath by refusing to join her on a visit to Balmoral, on the grounds that he was so bored there. It was a verdict with which all the family heartily agreed. When a lady-atwaiting there said that when people were temporarily unhappy they sometimes killed themselves, Ponsonby added with tongue in cheek that ‘suicide might be common here’. The Queen told Leopold that if he had such an aversion to her beloved Highland home, then he would have to stay at Buckingham Palace, in his room upstairs. On no account was he to go to Ascot or Epsom, or even join Bertie and Alix at Marlborough House. With great reluctance, she granted him permission to go to Paris for three or four days, but once he was there he coolly informed his mother that he intended to remain there for a fortnight. Initially she was outraged by his defiance, particularly as she objected to his going to the French capital of all places, that ‘sinful city’. But he returned unscathed and had made his point by standing up to her. She had seen that he was capable of travelling abroad without injuring himself, and at last he had won some degree of autonomy.