by John Matson
In her journal the Queen wrote on the same day: ‘How Albert would have doted on her and loved her!’
This visit, which ended at Windsor, was terminated by Princess Christian insisting that her daughter should return home for her eighteenth birthday. Chagrin was evident on both sides; in England there was no wish to relinquish one who had ‘done much to rouse the poor dear Queen who seems dotingly fond of her’,34 and in Denmark Princess Christian was smarting from the treatment both she and her husband had received, which was undeniably shabby. Nevertheless, despite the increasing tension between Denmark and Prussia, the arrangements for the wedding continued. Yet even here a difficulty arose: the Queen wished her son to be married as soon as possible; any unnecessary delay only inflamed her distrust of the Prince, whom she described as ‘a very unpleasant element in the house.’35 Her feelings verged on the pathological: she decided that the Princess’ parents would have to be ‘told all’, and she feared ‘dear Alix is under a complete delusion.’36 But a March wedding would occur in Lent; in April the Queen wished to be on hand for the birth of Princess Alice’s first baby; May was voted ‘unlucky’ by the Royal family and June was too far off. The Queen fell back on March and, when objections to a Lenten wedding were raised by the Church, she brushed them aside in her own inimitable way, replying that she was ready to break a custom ‘only in use among the higher classes’,37 adding that ‘Marriage is a solemn holy act not to be classed with amusements.’ Thus, on 10 March 1863, the marriage took place in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle.
Throughout this period, negotiations had been proceeding for the purchase of the Sandringham estate by the Prince of Wales. The property at this time belonged to Spencer Cowper, Lord Palmerston’s stepson, but he was to all intents and purposes an absentee landlord and the estate had been much neglected. The price, £220,000 for the entire estate of some 7,000 acres, including five farms, was considered by many to be excessive but Palmerston, the former arch-enemy of the Queen and the Prince Consort, was delighted. Knowing Queen Victoria as well as he did, and aware that she was insistent that ‘Albert’s plan for Bertie’ should be carried out to the letter, Palmerston was assured of a sale, and guided her towards a bad buy with great skill.
In truth, Sandringham had possessed only one distinct advantage in Prince Albert’s eyes: it was sufficiently remote from the distractions and temptations of London. He did not live to discover that the delights of both the capital and Newmarket Heath came within increasingly easy reach of his son with the advent of improved rail services and the motor car. With some misgivings he had conceded that his eldest son should set up his own establishments and approved the purchase of Sandringham and the bestowal of Marlborough House on the Prince of Wales as his London home.
The Prince had accumulated during his minority some £600,000 from the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall, and his total income from all sources was little less than £100,000 per annum. Apart from the purchase price, a further £60,000 was released from the Duchy to be spent on improving the property, and a similar sum was withdrawn for ‘outfit’. For the rest of his life the Prince spared no expense so far as Sandringham was concerned, and it was not until the turn of the century that improvements could be made without dipping further into reserves.
On his first visit to Sandringham, in February, 1862, the twenty-year-old Prince must have viewed the property with mixed feelings. The asking price would not have meant much to him: the negotiations were being carried out by Sir Charles Phipps, Keeper of the Privy Purse, and by Mr White, the Queen’s private solicitor who accompanied him. At Lynn, where the line then ended, he was met by Edmund Beck, the agent at Sandringham and a friend from Cambridge named Bagge, who lived in the area. This fact alone must have commended the estate to the Prince, and a further consideration was the relative proximity to Sandringham of Blankney Hall in Lincolnshire, the home of Henry Chaplin, the ‘Magnifico’ who, as undisputed leader of university society at Oxford, had extended his friendship to the somewhat timid Prince. Chaplin, who had inherited great wealth and an estate of 25,000 acres after his father’s death, lived in the grand style as an undergraduate, hunting six days a week during terms and attending Chapel in hunting dress inadequately concealed by his surplice. It was precisely Chaplin’s air of assurance and independence which appealed to the Prince, who was accommodated in his own establishment at Frewin Hall, and supervised by his Governor, who had to approve the Prince’s acquaintances and entertainments. The Prince’s admiration of Chaplin was to develop into a life-long friendship.
An amusing story is related about Chaplin. He was summoned before Dean Liddell, who said: ‘My dear Mr Chaplin, as far as I can gather you seem to regard Christ Church as a hunting box. You are hardly ever in College, and I must request you, unless you change your habits, to vacate your rooms.’
‘But, Mr Dean, what do you expect me to do?’
‘Do?’ replied the Dean, ‘you must go in for an examination.’
‘My dear Mr Dean, if only you had told me before, I should have taken the necessary steps; but when is there one?’
‘In three weeks,’ was the curt reply. He passed Mods with distinction.38
The Prince Consort had investigated over a score of properties for his son, including Newstead Abbey, the former home of Lord Byron – of whom the Queen disapproved – but he had not visited any of them. At Sandringham, the dilapidated appearance of the estate might have encouraged the young Prince to seek elsewhere had there not been a powerful cabal in his entourage ready to exert persuasion. Perhaps none was needed, for he was mindful of his mother’s hostility and would have been reluctant to run counter to her wishes. The Prince’s father had died less than two months previously, and the dreadful scenes in the Blue Room at Windsor Castle still haunted him. There had been his introduction to his prospective bride, Princess Alexandra; and again, the vista of independence was dangled enticingly before his eyes after a boyhood spent for the most part in stultifying seclusion.
The Hall itself had little to recommend it; standing on a wooded escarpment overlooking the Wash and built nearly 100 years previously on the site of a former house, it consisted of two oblong three-storey blocks erected back to back under a slate roof. More recently, a porch on the eastern side and a conservatory at the southern end built of an injudicious mixture of local carstone and brick had been added; both were designed by Samuel Teulon, whose work became notorious for its extreme ugliness. The western side of the house overlooked a lake. Beyond the gardens lay the estate, where the land was poor and the soil utterly exhausted. Only pine trees, bracken and rabbits flourished. It seems that the Prince really had very little choice in the matter; had his wishes been consulted other properties with prospects of better value for his money might have been more seriously considered, but the approval of the Prince Consort had been all that was needed for the exorbitant asking price to be accepted. That the rent-roll represented a mere 3 per cent of the cost mattered not at all, and the Queen was in no mood to recommence the search. In her eyes, Bertie’s matrimonial future was a far more pressing concern.
That negotiations were already in an advanced state is apparent from the fact that the purchase was completed by the end of February 1862, when the Prince was absent on his tour of the Near East. At the beginning of September he was at Sandringham with instructions for the improvement of his property. Park House was built near the little church for Sir William Knollys, the Comptroller of the Prince’s Household in succession to General Bruce, his former Governor, who had died soon after returning from the tour. Later, in 1961, it was the birthplace of Diana, Princess of Wales. A large, rambling house in its own grounds it had been leased to the 4th Baron Fermoy, the Princess’ grandfather, by King George V. There was a further Royal connection: Lord Fermoy’s wife, Ruth, was a Woman of the Bedchamber and one of the inner circle around Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. Later still, the house became a hotel for disabled ex-servicemen.
Additional stabling at
Sandringham was designed by the architect, Mr Humbert, who had previously been approved by the Prince Consort for some of his own schemes, including the rebuilding of Whippingham Church, near Osborne. A week later, the Prince of Wales proposed to Princess Alexandra and soon afterwards he was back at Sandringham directing Mr Humbert with a new intensity, for by now things were falling into place; there was a bride for the home that was to be his personal property, and as such it possessed a charm never attained by Marlborough House.
The wedding duly took place on 10 March at Windsor. The bride was attended by ‘eight as ugly girls as anyone could wish for’ and perhaps the singing so soon after his death of a chorale composed by Prince Albert was unwise, for the Queen and her entire family wept openly. A reception was held at the castle, the Queen, unready to join the large throng, noted, ‘I dined alone’. Arrangements for the return of the guests to London were defective: the trains were overcrowded; Disraeli, the Prime Minister, was glad to sit on his wife’s lap. Afterwards, the Prince and his bride spent a week at Osborne, where they were visited by the Crown Princess of Prussia. She wrote to the Queen:
It does one good to see people so thoroughly happy as this dear young couple are. As for Bertie, he looks blissful. I never saw such a change, his whole face looks beaming and radiant… Darling Alix looks charming and lovely and they both seem so comfortable and at home together.39
Leaving Osborne, the Prince and Princess stopped briefly in London to call on Alix’s parents before moving to Sandringham, the home that they both grew to love and to which Alix was to withdraw for the last years of her life. They found the house habitable, though smelling of plaster and paint, for walls had been knocked out to enlarge some of the rooms. Elsewhere, on the estate, cottages were being improved, farm buildings restored and roads were under construction. Phipps, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, wrote to Knollys complaining of the increasing expense of Sandringham. The Prince, he declared, displayed ‘a Royal impetuosity in expecting improvements to be carried out at once.’40 Though the Princess was delighted with her new home, and might revel with unaffected simplicity in the rural delights of Norfolk, where everything that was their own could only please the eye, others were not so happy. Lady Macclesfield wrote bitterly that there were:
…no fine trees, no water, no hills, in fact no attraction of any sort… It would be difficult to find a more ugly or depressing place… The wind blows keen from the Wash and the Spring is said to be unendurable in that part of Norfolk. It is, of course, a wretched hunting country… As there was all England to choose from I do wish they had had a finer house in a more picturesque and cheerful situation.41
Queen Victoria naturally remained aloof from all opinions but there must be some doubt whether, in the event, Prince Albert would have wished to proceed with the purchase of such a run-down property at such enormous expense. But he had never inspected the estate; Lord Palmerston’s recommendation and its remoteness from the temptations of London had been sufficient to induce him to give instructions for the purchase. The Prince Consort had spent wisely and carefully on the Royal estates at Osborne and Balmoral, and had laboured to invest the income from his eldest son’s Duchy of Cornwall shrewdly, at the same time increasing the income itself from £16,000 to £60,000 per annum. But the Queen was in no fit state to seek further guidance so soon after the Prince Consort’s death: she believed that her brain was being taxed to the limits of endurance. When faced with a difficulty or opposition, she would tap her forehead meaningly, murmuring, ‘My reason, my reason!’42 She was convinced that she was constantly overburdened with work; even twenty years later she was to write: ‘If she had not comparative rest and quiet in the evening she would most likely not be alive.’43 Ironically, having encouraged the purchase of Sandringham, she thought the house ‘unlucky’, and only visited it twice. Guests have from time to time shared Lady Macclesfield’s views: Diana, Princess of Wales, as a child disliked visiting the house, while James Pope-Hennessey thought it ‘exposed, depressing and unrelievedly ugly.’ The first visit of the ‘Waleses’, as they became known, was a distinct success, unmarred by any mishaps, though the previous December, during a rabbit-shoot, a local newspaper reporter, sneaking in disguised as a beater, was nearly shot in the leg by the Prince. The Royal couple were given a warm reception by the local residents, with the Hunt in their scarlet coats and children with flowers and flags. One of the earliest guests was Dean Stanley, who explained the English Communion service to the Princess in the Drawing Room. ‘She was most simple and fascinating,’ he wrote, ‘so winning and graceful, and yet so fresh and free and full of life.’44 A small dance was held, and the custom of the afternoon walk to view improvements and alterations began; there was always something new to be seen, and it became a tradition continued years later by King George V after Sandringham passed into his hands. The Royal couple actively hunted and on occasion the Meet was held at the Hall, with breakfast in the house before drawing the coverts on the estate.
The Prince’s land to the west was unsuitable for hunting, comprising acres of pine trees and bracken hiding a network of rabbit warrens and sloping down to the salt-marshes and tidal creeks beyond Wolferton where it merged almost imperceptibly into the Wash. Here were pheasant, snipe and woodcock, whose erratic flight proved an irresistible attraction for King George V. The marshes and pools were the habitat of the wild duck which became the object of a studied approach by King George VI. The remaining three sides of the estate consisted of flattish, open farmland around Dersingham, Anmer and West Newton, leading to more undulating country before sloping down to the sea at Brancaster, where the dunes reach out towards the sandbanks off the coast. Pheasants lurked in the plantations and coverts, partridges roamed the open ground and hedgerows and, whilst hunting was an attraction, especially in those early days, Sandringham became famous for the shooting: in the season 1899-1900 over 12,000 birds were shot on the estate.
It had early been made public that the Prince had purchased Sandringham for the shooting, and this was to become the focal point of entertainment at Sandringham. Almost every other consideration was subordinated to this: copses, coverts and plantations were cleared and reset for the rearing of game birds: no expense was too great. In other matters the Prince played the part of the benevolent country squire, and improvements to his tenants’ accommodation ran away with vast sums of money. With Marlborough House, the Prince’s London residence, also to be included in the reckoning of his entertainment, it was small wonder that he was reported to be exceeding his income by £20,000 per annum within a few years of taking the estate in hand.
In October 1863, the Prince and Princess held their first large house party. After following the Queen to her customary retreat at Balmoral, they returned to Norfolk to await the arrival of the ‘special’ at Wolferton Station, whither the line from Lynn had only recently been completed. The Princess’s parents and her sister Princess Dagmar were invited with other guests, including Lord Granville and the Duke of St Albans. Another custom was established that year: the celebration of the Prince’s birthday on 9 November. It was to become one of the highlights of the Sandringham year, centred on one of the best shoots – the ‘Horseshoe’. The Queen, who had followed the first year of her son’s marriage with some anxiety, was relieved to hear from Lord Granville that life at Sandringham resembled that at Balmoral in Prince Albert’s time: ‘I naturally rejoice truly to hear this,’ she commented, ‘…and the country has looked and longed to see you both follow that course with great anxiety and how they will rejoice to see that realised! Let us hope that in serious subjects such as reading this will gradually follow. This letter is meant for beloved Alix too naturally.’45 Alas, her hopes in this respect were not to be fulfilled. The Princess had beauty, she had intuition and sympathy and charm, but she was not intellectually gifted. Neither of the young couple ever enjoyed reading as a pastime and it is more likely that Lord Granville’s report was based more on what he knew the Queen would like to read, than on
a strict regard for accuracy. The Queen’s anxiety about them had not been ill-founded; the ceaseless round of engagements during their life in London had attracted her attention, and it was then that she began to discover other defects in her daughter-in-law. ‘She never does anything but write,’ complained the Queen. ‘She never reads’ and ‘I fear the learning has been much neglected and she cannot either write or I fear speak French well.’46 She remarked too on the affliction which was to have so significant an effect on Alix’s later life: ‘Alas, she is deaf and everyone observes it, which is a sad misfortune.’47 So it was to prove; her husband was a natural philanderer with a low boredom threshold and he was powerfully attracted to beautiful, intelligent and amusing women for the entertainment and companionship which his wife, increasingly, was unable to provide. Over the years she was to retreat from the lively and brilliant social scene which she had so much enjoyed and seek a solitary life at Sandringham, where her increasing deafness was less of a handicap, within her own loyal household.
It was not quite a coincidence that the new railway line from Lynn to Hunstanton was opened almost simultaneously with the purchase of Sandringham by the Prince of Wales, but it was none the less an agreeable addition to the amenities of the estate. The great age of steam had become firmly established by the time of the Prince’s birth and, during his early years, a network of railways was spreading out across the quiet English countryside. In 1856, a railway from Lynn to the rapidly developing resort of New Hunstanton was projected: Cromer had been fashionable since the beginning of the century; the land was flat, though subject to tidal inundation, and the work, once started, was completed in a year. The first train ran on 3 October 1862, some seven months after the Prince of Wales had alighted at Lynn to view Sandringham Hall. When he brought his bride to Sandringham in April 1863, the couple were able to travel on to the simple halt at Wolferton, little more than a mile down the hill from the Hall.