by John Matson
There was yet another difficulty for the troubled Princess: her hearing, which had always been defective, deteriorated further as a result of her illness and tended to isolate her from the company which so often surrounded her. The louder people talked to her, the greater their embarrassment, especially in public, so that they tried to avoid such encounters. The Princess, straining to hear, might misunderstand what was being said and, conscious of the difficulties which might ensue, tended more and more to withdraw into her own silent world. She hated using an ear-trumpet, in those days the only aid for the deaf. For the rest of her life she was afflicted by noises in her head, causing additional stress. Princess May of Teck was perceptive enough to understand the consequences of deafness, especially to the First Lady in Society, since the Queen had withdrawn from public life. ‘It makes me quite sad and she looks so pathetic sometimes, trying to hear what we are saying and laughing about,’ she wrote.62 The Princess was quick to appreciate such thoughtfulness: ‘Whenever I am not quite au fait on account of my beastly ears you always by a word or even by a turn towards me make me understand – for which I am most grateful as nobody can know what I have to go through.’63 She developed a trick, when there was a burst of laughter at mealtimes, of waving and smiling to indicate that she had heard and was amused.
The Princess did not greatly value intellectual achievements, as did Princess May, and we know that she did not care for reading. Rather, she retained a childlike simplicity: perhaps her deafness caused her to fall back on that which was familiar and secure. Lord Esher, though, gave her credit for much more: ‘Her cleverness has always been under-rated, partly because of her deafness,’ he wrote; ‘in point of fact she says more original things and has more unexpected ideas than any other member of the family.’64
Gradually, the pleasures of a fashionable, social life began to wear thin as the Princess found herself increasingly unable to play a full part in her husband’s activities. She surrounded herself with her horses and dogs and a strange menagerie of animals at Sandringham. Her devotion to her children was almost suffocatingly affectionate. In the circumstances it was natural that her country home increasingly became the focus for her interests.
The Princess’ illness caused her husband to review the situation at Sandringham. The house had long been thought damp and Norfolk winters can be harsh. Sir James Paget, surgeon to the Princess, had thought the rheumatic fever was caused by dampness, and there was no alternative but to rebuild. Although, as we have seen, £60,000 had been earmarked for alterations and improvements, the entire property had been very much neglected and the money spent on the house had shown little return. After only four years, the Prince decided that the old Hall was to be demolished to make way for an altogether more substantial residence.
The architect he retained was A.J. Humbert, whom he already knew through the work he had carried out on Whippingham Church, on the edge of Queen Victoria’s estate at Osborne. A number of designs for the new house were submitted and the demolition of the old house began early in 1868 after the family had spent Christmas at Park House. The Prince then rented Houghton Hall, a splendid mansion in the district, until the new house was ready for occupation, if not entirely completed, for the Prince’s birthday on 9 November 1870. It was, reported the Duke of Cambridge, a great improvement on the old house; certainly different as it ‘seems quite dry’. If the Victorian, Elizabethan style with a trace of Dutch influence was not wholly successful, it was because Humbert’s original design, broadly a copy of Blickling Hall in Norfolk, was compromised by the Prince’s wish to incorporate the traditional gables and bays of the old house. It was perhaps nobody’s fault that its appearance became inextricably linked with large Victorian hotels and railway stations. Almost inevitably, it proved too small. Such was the Prince’s hospitality that, whenever the family were in residence, the house was nearly always full. Guests usually brought their own personal servants, valet and lady’s maid, with them, and these too had to be accommodated. In an attempt to make room for them all, the Prince built the ‘Bachelors’ Cottage’ a little to the south of the house but, as time went on, this simply would not do. After Sir William Knollys’ death, Park House was used as additional accommodation for guests and the Prince’s household.
Humbert died in 1877, at the age of forty-five, to be succeeded as the Prince’s architect by Colonel R.W. Edis, who designed the ballroom at Sandringham, completed in 1884, and the wings at the south end of the house. The dark-red brickwork contrasts with the lighter tone of Humbert’s design, but the Prince wished the new building to blend with Teulon’s conservatory which forms the dividing line between the two. Perhaps it was not a happy decision; the adjacent structures could never blend in to a single entity. It has been claimed that Edis was not a qualified architect; in fact, he became known as the builder of the Inner Temple Library, was President of the Architects’ Association, knighted and appointed Deputy Lieutenant for Norfolk.
The family of the Prince and Princess of Wales continued to increase with the arrival of Princess Victoria and Princess Maud at intervals of some eighteen months. The youngest child was Prince Alexander John, who lived only one day, to the deep distress of his parents, and was buried in the churchyard at Sandringham.
The upbringing of the Royal children was so markedly different from that of the offspring of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert that it was almost bound to meet with the disapproval of their grandmother. ‘They are such ill-bred, ill-trained children I can’t fancy them at all,’ she wrote indignantly in 1872.65 Guests at Sandringham had mixed views; those who subscribed to the dictum that children should be seen but not heard could only observe with astonishment the freedom with which they mingled with the grown-ups. Whilst Queen Victoria overtly criticised the ‘Wales’ children, and Lady Geraldine Somerset could describe them as ‘wild as hawks’ and ‘rampaging little girls’66, others, who perhaps had the opportunity of becoming more closely acquainted, saw them as devoted to each other and to their parents, and Princess Louise, the eldest, was reported on diversely as ‘very sharp, quick, merry and amusing’ and ‘devoid of looks and charm.’67 The two Princes were fortunate in having a ‘nursery attendant’ who was devoted to their welfare. Charles Fuller accompanied them wherever they went and until his death in 1901 was a faithful correspondent with Prince George.
That they were a closely-knit family cannot be doubted. Their mother adored them almost to suffocation: whilst she never seemed completely to grow up, her children were simple and unaffected, but in some respects appeared to languish in a childhood world. Princess Louise celebrated her nineteenth birthday with a children’s party. Queen Marie of Rumania noted that they seemed to ‘express themselves in a minor key’; one gained the impression from their conversation that ‘Life would have been very wonderful and everything very beautiful if it had not been so bad.’68 All those in the immediate family circle were referred to as ‘dear’; outside it everyone was ‘poor’. Their nicknames were ‘Toots, Gawks and Snipey’. Princess Maud, also known in family circles as ‘Harry’, was something of a tomboy, larding her speech with schoolboy slang culled from an unknown source. High spirits and practical jokes were part and parcel of Sandringham life. Prince George, writing to his mother years after the event, recalled how they squirted each other with soda-water siphons; a visitor at the Sandringham dinner table described how he felt his leg being pinched by a small plump hand and, peering under the table, discovered the laughing face of one of the Princesses. A young midshipman visiting Sandringham was given a mince pie filled with mustard to eat: shrieks of laughter greeted his discomfiture. There was sliding downstairs on teatrays and high jinks in which the Princess of Wales joined as merrily as anyone. After all, just such frivolous amusements had been a matter of course at her home in Denmark.
This freedom and informality, so far from the traditional rules of decorum, was not favoured by the Queen. She deplored the lack of routine and system in the lives of her grandchildren, and some
of her reluctance to let the Princess of Wales travel abroad with her children may be traced to this. On one issue, however, she could agree with her daughter-in-law: ‘that is,’ she wrote, ‘great simplicity and an absence of all pride, and in that respect she has my fullest support.’69
The lifestyles of the Queen and the family of her eldest son were diametrically opposed. The Queen had retired into a seclusion that at times was almost complete: she felt absolutely unable to perform public duties, to the extent that there were calls for her abdication; such was the people’s view of a monarch who was never seen to fulfil her office. Conversely, the Prince and Princess of Wales lived an admittedly hectic social life; though the Prince suffered waves of unpopularity whenever scandals surfaced, they were to some degree mitigated by the simple and unaffected admiration of the general public for the Princess. Her calm, her poise and serenity in the face of adversity in her domestic life excited enormous sympathy. The presence of the heir to the throne on important occasions avoided by the Queen showed the public that the dynasty was very much alive and possessed an unequivocal ability to enjoy itself which warmed their hearts. It was seldom that the Prince remained long in the country’s ‘bad books’. His easy, affable charm and friendly nature, and his constant need for occupation and entertainment ensured continuing public interest. Today, the Press would have described him as ‘colourful’. It was, largely, a happy family; the children adored ‘Motherdear’ and found the comfortable affection of their father irresistible. The Prince was not lightly to be crossed – he had an explosive temper and his angry bellow could be heard through the house – and it is possible to give credence to the apocryphal tale that George V once said: ‘I was afraid of my father.’ It is more likely that the languid, indolent Prince Eddy, in almost every respect the reverse of his restless, energetic father, felt an awe bordering on fear, contributing to a sense of inferiority which time did nothing to diminish.
These children, who were very much part of the family scene, spent much of their time at Sandringham, where the boys’ tutor, the Revd John Dalton, tried to improve their minds. In 1874, when the Princes were nine and ten, he wrote to Queen Victoria:
They are living a very regular and quiet life in the country at Sandringham, and keeping early hours, both as to rising in the morning and retiring to rest at night; they ride on ponies an hour each alternate morning, and take a walk the other three days in the week; in the afternoon they take exercise on foot; while as regards their studies, writing reading and arithmetic are all progressing favourably; music, spelling, English History, Latin, Geography and French all occupy a due share of Their Royal Highness’ attention, progress in English History and Geography being very marked.70
We may well believe that Mr Dalton was writing in his most diplomatic vein, and that probably the parents were not at that time in residence at Sandringham. Had they been, there would almost certainly have been disruptions in their studies at any time when they were needed by their mother, who could be impulsive and capricious in her demands on her children. There was by no means always the regularity in their routine that Mr Dalton described. Contrary to expectations, though, the Princess of Wales took a surprisingly realistic view of her children’s education. Brought up herself in a close, impoverished family in Copenhagen, she took a carefully calculated look at what she wished for her own. Writing to Mr Dalton in April, 1877, she stressed what seemed to her most important, aside from any possible academic considerations, in the boys’ upbringing:
One thing I must ask you, especially now I am away, to pay great attention to their being obedient and obeying the moment they are told. Also let them be civil to everybody, high and low, and not get grand now they are by themselves, and please take particular care they are not toadied by the keepers or any of those around them.71
In November of the same year, she wrote with perceptible self-reproach: ‘I cannot help thinking that under these circumstances it is most inadvisable that they should have all these extra treats and excitements which you always used to tell me at home disturbed their minds for the next day.’72
Mr Dalton was nothing if not a conscientious tutor – mindful of the responsibility attached to his task of educating the sons of the future King, he took his duties seriously. The routine he imposed upon his pupils was not so very far removed from that of Mr Gibbs but its effect on the young Princes differed, in that the parents were good-natured and affectionate; there was less of the anxiety which had informed the decisions of the Queen and Prince Albert and led to such inflexibility. Even so, in Mr Dalton’s Journal of Weekly Work, Prince George, there are echoes of the schoolroom of the previous generation.
Week ending 2 September 1876: ‘Prince G. this week has been much troubled by silly fretfulness of temper and general spirit of contradiction.’
23 September: ‘Prince George has been good this week. He shows however too much disposition to find fault with his brother.’
14 October: ‘Too fretful; and inclined to be lazy and silly this week.’
As the weeks passed, further comments emphasised the ‘self-approbation… which was almost the only motive power in him.’
The timetable itself would seem daunting enough for today’s ten and eleven-year olds. The Princes:
…would rise at seven and prepare their Geography and English before breakfast. At eight came a Bible or History lesson, followed by Algebra or Euclid at nine. There then ensued an hour’s break for games and thereafter a French or Latin lesson until the main meal, which took place at two. The afternoon was occupied by riding or playing cricket and after tea would come English lessons, music and preparation. The two Princes were put to bed at eight.
Happily there were no signs of the nervous and mental exhaustion which had reduced the Prince of Wales to passionate screaming. There is nothing in these reports which might have caused alarm: they read like those of many a spirited schoolboy who is testing his surroundings. Indeed, Mr Dalton, writing some years later, found himself missing the liveliness of his charge and wrote to Prince George, then serving on HMS Canada: ‘We miss your voice so at meals: they all sit round the table and eat and never say a syllable. I never knew such a lot… Oh, dear!’72
The two Princes were remarkably dissimilar: Prince Albert Victor, born in a hurry after that skating party on the ice at Virginia Water, and two months before his time, was a quiet, delicate-looking child. ‘Very backward,’ Queen Victoria commented, ‘though a dear good little thing… I can’t help being anxious about it.’72 He continued to cause a good deal of anxiety in one way or another throughout his life. Prince George, though again a premature baby, seemed cast in a different mould: he was a sturdy, healthy and lively little boy, described as a ‘jolly little pickle’, and was as high-spirited as Prince Eddy, was as apathetic and backward. There was as much quarrelling as might be expected between two brothers born only eighteen months apart, and their mother wrote to Mr Dalton asking him to put a stop to their bickering and strong language, and to their habit of interrupting conversations.
When Prince George was twelve, there arose inevitably the question of the next stage of the Princes’ education. Queen Victoria favoured Wellington College, for the Prince Consort had been deeply involved in this memorial to the late Duke. Mr Dalton had reservations about this plan: Prince Eddy would find himself among boys who were academically ahead of him, and his attention could not be brought to bear sufficiently ever for him to have a chance of catching up, ‘his mind being in an abnormally dormant condition’.73 The Prince of Wales more prudently opted for the Navy, which offered a practical bias to the cadets’ education. For a while it seemed that neither of these alternatives would come into effect, for Prince Eddy caught typhoid; but he recovered and went on to join Prince George on board HMS Britannia, the old wooden training ship, at Dartmouth. There, the Princes found themselves being treated much the same as the other 200-odd cadets, except that they slung their hammocks in a small space some 12ft square behind a bulkhead a
nd were attended by a footman from Sandringham and accompanied by Mr Dalton, who dined with the captain. Where the footman dined is unfortunately not recorded. The cadets’ food was atrocious. The Princess of Wales, unpractical but mindful of domestic happiness, ordered pictures of Sandringham and family photos to be arranged in this limited space. She missed her sons terribly and guessed, with a mother’s sure reasoning at their homesickness. ‘I hate to go past your dear rooms,’ she wrote, ‘where I have so often tucked up my dear boys for the night.’74 Writing to Queen Victoria she lamented: ‘It was a great wrench – but must be got through… poor little boys, they cried so bitterly.’75 His father felt the parting from his younger son no less acutely: ‘On seeing you going off by the train yesterday I felt very sad and you could, I am sure, see that I had a lump in my throat when I wished you goodbye… I shall miss you more than ever, my dear Georgy… Don’t forget your devoted Papa, A.E.’76
The Queen still had her misgivings, but at least she was grateful that they would be removed from the society of the Marlborough House set, those ‘fast and fashionable people’ who lived only for their own pleasure, and whose ways she so openly deplored.
Prince George adapted easily to the ways of the Navy; he was bright, friendly and cheerful, and was healthily involved in the cadets’ normal activities, passing his examinations and pleasing Mr Dalton. He confessed that he missed home desperately, which was understandable, for he had been ill-prepared for the Spartan conditions of life aboard a training ship. The bullying by senior cadets was rife: new arrivals were ordered to smuggle sweets and butterscotch called ‘stodge’ aboard ship, and were punished when caught by the ship’s petty officers. ‘It was our money,’ Prince George complained, ‘and they never paid us back.’77 Teams of younger boys were forced to carry seniors bodily up the long hill from the landing-place to the sports ground ashore.78 These practices were abandoned only when the training hulks were decommissioned and cadets commenced their careers at Osborne. Prince Eddy, though, drifted on with his brother, largely unresponsive to the life around him; and for whom learning was a painfully slow business – there was even talk of withdrawing him from training. They were sent to sea on two cruises in HMS Bacchante and on the conclusion of the second the brothers separated, Prince George continuing with his training, whilst Prince Eddy was to prepare for life at Trinity College, Cambridge. No one expected much to come of this venture, but it was hoped that the experience would be useful. ‘He sits listless and vacant,’ Dalton reported.78 He was prepared at Sandringham for entry by J.K. Stephen, a brilliant young don, but the omens were unpromising: ‘He hardly knows the meaning of the words to read,’ Stephen wrote.79 There were some natural disadvantages; he had inherited something of his mother’s deafness (due to otosclerosis), and he had arrived into the world two months before his time. The problems were identified well before he contracted typhoid, but the fever cannot have improved his constitutional apathy. After Cambridge, Prince Eddy joined the Tenth Hussars. He liked the uniform but evinced not the smallest interest in Army manoeuvres or the complexities of parade-ground drill – though he showed a certain aptitude for whist – and thought his Colonel a fool. His despairing parents could only look around for a suitable wife.