Vanished Kingdoms

by Norman Davies

  Victoria, in short, had much in common with her handsome Saxon cousin; and she determined to resist all alternative suitors. William IV died a year after his visit and she was crowned queen in 1838. Albert was invited back the following year. He meanwhile had been patiently studying at the University of Bonn, staying with Uncle Leopold in Brussels and undertaking a ‘Grand Tour’ of Italy. He arrived in Windsor on 15 October 1839, and the queen proposed marriage on the morning of the fourth day of his return. Her journal overflowed with superlatives:

  Oh! to feel I was, and am loved by such an Angel as Albert was too great a delight to describe! He is perfection; perfection in every way – in beauty – in everything! I told him I was quite unworthy of him and kissed his dear hand – he said he would be very happy ‘das Leben mit dir zu zubringen’ and was so kind… it was the happiest, brightest moment of my life, which made up for all I had suffered and endured. Oh! how I adore and love him, I cannot say!!22

  Albert’s account of the betrothal is contained in a letter which he wrote shortly afterwards to his grandmother, the dowager duchess of Gotha; it was to be translated into English for the authorized description of his early years compiled under Victoria’s supervision:

  Liebe Grossmama…

  The Queen sent for me alone to her room… and declared to me in a genuine outburst of love and affection (in einem wahren Ergusse von Herzlichkeit und Liebe) that I had gained her whole heart (ich habe ihr ganzes Herz gewonnen) and would make her intensely happy (überglücklich) if I would make her the sacrifice of sharing my life with her (wenn ich das Opfer bringen wolle, mit ihr mein Leben zu theilen)… ; the only thing that troubled her was that she did not think herself worthy of me (das sie meiner nicht werth ware)…23

  Both the queen and the prince were native German-speakers; it would have been strange, when pledging their troth, if they had turned to some other language. Certainly, German was the idiom that they would use for personal and domestic purposes for the rest of their life together.

  Prince Albert’s journey to England in anticipation of their wedding occupied two freezing weeks early in 1840. He started on 28 January from his grandmother’s house in Gotha:

  The streets were densely crowded, every window was crammed with heads, every house-top covered with people waving handkerchiefs, and vying with each other in demonstrations of affection… The carriages stopped in passing the Dowager Duchess’s, and Prince Albert got out with his father and brother to bid her a last adieu…

  Having passed in a long procession through the town… the Princes took a final leave at the Last Shilling, and got into one of the Queen’s travelling-carriages. The Duke, attended by Colonel Grey, went another German mile to the frontier, where an arch of green fir-trees had been erected, and a number of young girls dressed in white, with roses and garlands, and a band of musicians and singers… were assembled to bid a final ‘Godspeed’, as he left his native land behind him.

  The travelling-carriages, with the fourgons, were eight in number… The Duke and Princes were attended, in addition to the three English gentlemen (Lord Torrington, Colonel Grey, and Mr. Seymour), by Counts Alvensleben, Kolowrath, Gruben, and Pöllnitz…

  A little before nine [a.m.], the party left Cassel to go seventeen German miles to Arnsberg, where they only arrived as the clock was striking ten in the evening. The following night was passed at Deutz…

  The Rhine… had to be crossed the next morning in boats, a tedious and a cold operation, made more disagreeable by the heavy rain… The party left Cologne about half past nine, dined at Aix-la-Chapelle about three, and arrived at Liège, where they slept, about ten. At Aix-la-Chapelle the Prince heard the news of the rejection of the proposed grant of £50,000… It led him to fear that the people of England were not pleased with the marriage…

  Before leaving Liège, the Duke received all the authorities, civil and military, who were severally introduced… At ten, the whole party was conveyed, in one large omnibus, to the railroad terminus at Ans, where a special train had been provided, by which they were taken in four hours to Brussels…

  On Wednesday the 5th February, at half past seven, the journey to England was resumed, by rail as far as Ostend, and thence posting along the coast by Dunkirk and Gravelines to Calais… At half past eleven the two Princes arrived at Calais, where, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, they found all the officers of the garrison waiting at the hotel to receive them… Lord Clarence Paget, who had been sent in the Firebrand to escort the Prince over, also met the party at the hotel…

  [Early on] Thursday the 6th February, the weather was beautiful, with a light air from the N.W. Unfortunately the tide was too low to admit of sailing before half past eleven; and in the meantime the day changed. A strong breeze freshened up from the S.E., and increased almost to a gale. The Firebrand not being able to get out so soon, the whole party had embarked in the Ariel, one of the Dover packets… But the passage was long (five hours and a half); and the deck of the little steamer was a scene of almost universal misery and seasickness. The Duke had gone below, and on either side of the cabin staircase lay the two Princes, in an almost helpless state. The sea got heavier as the vessel approached the land, and it was by no common effort… that Prince Albert, who had continued to suffer up to the last moment, got up as it entered between the piers to bow to the people by which they were crowded.

  The inhospitable mood of the English Channel could easily have been taken as a bad omen. But as soon as they docked the Prince’s spirits rose rapidly:

  Nothing could exceed the enthusiasm which greeted the Prince when he set his foot on shore as the affianced husband of our Queen… The night was spent at Dover, at the York Hotel, and after a very poor attempt by most of the party at dinner, everyone was glad to get to bed.

  It had been arranged that the Prince should not arrive at Buckingham Palace till Saturday. A short journey was therefore made the next day to Canterbury… The Royal party arrived accompanied by an escort of the 11th Hussars, and having received an address from the city authorities, the Prince, with his brother, attended the service of the Cathedral at three. In the evening the city was illuminated, and a vast crowd assembled before the hotel, cheering for the Prince, who answered their call by appearing, to their great delight, on the balcony.

  From Canterbury the Prince sent on his valet with his favourite greyhound, Eôs, and the Queen speaks in her journal of the pleasure which the sight of ‘dear Eôs’ gave her…

  On Saturday morning, the 8th, after receiving an address from the Dean and Chapter, the Prince left at ten for London, meeting with the same enthusiastic reception along the whole line of route to Buckingham Palace. Here the party arrived at half past four o’clock, and were received at the hall-door by the Queen and the Duchess of Kent, attended by the whole household. At five o’clock the Lord Chancellor administrated the oaths of naturalisation to the Prince, and the day ended by a great dinner, attended by the officers of State, Lord Melbourne, etc., the Queen recording in her journal, in warm terms, the great joy she felt at seeing the Prince again…

  But amidst… all the rejoicings and festivities… the grandmother left behind at Gotha… was not forgotten… And the Prince himself, on the morning of his wedding-day, sent her these few touching lines:

  ‘Dear Grandmama, In less than three hours I shall stand before the altar with my dear bride! In these solemn moments I must once more ask for your blessing, which I am well assured I shall receive, and which will be my safeguard and my future joy! I must end. God help me!

  Ever your faithful Grandson.

  London, Feb. 10, 1840.’24

  The royal wedding took place in the Chapel Royal of St James’s Palace. It gave the bridegroom the title of His Royal Highness, the House of Lords having refused to make him a peer of the realm, and the Commons awarding him only a reduced grant from the Civil List. The prime minister, Lord Melbourne, parried the queen’s request for the elevation of her husband to ‘king-consort’; sevent
een years would pass before the lesser title of ‘prince consort’ would be granted. Albert feigned indifference. ‘It would almost be a step downwards,’ he wrote. ‘As a Duke of Saxony I feel myself much higher than a Duke of York or Kent.’ His consolation was that by marrying Victoria he had given his own name of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the British royal family. He had also the gratification of hearing his bride promise ‘to obey him and serve him’. Five months earlier, the queen’s advisers had insisted that he would not be allowed to propose marriage during their engagement but that the proposal must be made by her. Yet now, when it came to the wedding, they did not interfere with the traditional service. Albert was required ‘to love, comfort, honour and keep’ his wedded wife, but Victoria was further required to proffer both obedience and service to her wedded husband.25 This was no mean concession. And he had entered the Chapel Royal surrounded by the knighthood, chivalry, pomp and insignia of his homeland:

  THE BRIDEGROOM

  HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS, FIELD-MARSHAL PRINCE ALBERT, K.G.

  Wearing the Collar of the Order of the Garter

  Supported by their Serene Highnesses, the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

  And the Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha,

  Each attended by the Officers of their Suite, namely

  Count Kolowrath, Baron Alvensleben and Baron de Lowenfels.26

  His father, the duke, wore the dark-green uniform with red piping of his duchy’s army, thigh-length military boots and the Grand Cross of the highest ducal order. His brother, Prince Ernst, wore a light-blue cavalry uniform, adorned by the Star of Coburg-Gotha and the Collar of the Garter, and carried an officer’s helmet. They had entered their carriages amid the sound of trumpets and ‘all the honours paid to the Queen herself’; and they left the Palace escorted by a squadron of Life Guards.

  Some historians do not accept the conventional picture of an ecstatic, well-matched couple, each content in their complementary roles. They suggest that Albert in particular was unhappy in his subordinate position, presuming that the emotional rigours of his childhood had made him a dissembler. He was never so deeply in love as the besotted Victoria, they say; he plotted his life’s course as he played chess, move by move, and callously exploited his wife’s numerous pregnancies in order to strengthen his hold over her. He was a voracious, obsessive hunter, killing animals en masse for pleasure, and a harsh father to his sons. In the political sphere he did far more than hold the blotter while his wife signed the state papers: he maintained a clandestine correspondence with his kinsmen in Germany, especially in Prussia, using Rothschilds Bank as a conduit for letters. He refused to stay out of controversies, and appeared in the public gallery of the House of Lords, for example, to air his views on the Corn Laws.27

  Nonetheless, Albert’s ascent to the highest level of royal and aristocratic society cannot have failed to arouse some sense of satisfaction, not least because his native duchy was home to the most prestigious of publications on these matters. The Almanach de Gotha was Europe’s most authoritative genealogical guide for nearly 200 years. First issued in 1763, it listed names in three sections: I. Sovereign Houses, II. German Nobility, and III. Selected Nobility of other European countries; each annual edition recorded all relevant births, deaths, marriages and titles. Throughout the nineteenth century, in order to preserve their status, all aristocrats were obliged to marry persons of equivalent rank. The Almanach, therefore, had the last word on who was permitted to marry whom. It is absolutely certain that there would have been a copy on the shelves at Coburg and Rosenau.

  Due to their deference to their local dukes, the Almanach’s editors customarily listed the House of Saxony in pole position among the sovereigns. The Emperor Napoleon had once taken offence at this practice, but in the 1820s, when Albert’s name first appeared, the Ernestine (Lutheran) branch of Saxony again led the field; and Albert’s mother appeared in the same subsection as Victoria’s mother. In accordance with the traditional linguistic practices of the German aristocracy, the information was presented in French:

  GÉNÉALOGIE DES SOUVERAINS DE L’EUROPE

  ET DES MEMBRES VIVANTS DES LEURS FAMILLES

  SAXE

  BRANCHE ERNESTINE (Luth.)

  SAXE-GOTHA

  Duc Frédérick IV, né le 23 Nov 1774, succ. à son frère le Duc Auguste, 17 Mai 1822…

  SAXE-MEININGEN…

  SAXE-HILDBOURGHAUSEN…

  SAXE-SAALFELD-COBURG

  1) Duc Ernest, n. 2 Janv. 1784, succ. à son père le Duc François, le 9 Dec 1806, mar 31 Juill 1817 à la D. Louise, F. d’Auguste, Duc de Saxe-Gotha, n. 21 Déc 1800

  Fils

  2) D. Ernest Auguste Charles Jean Léopold Alexandre Edouard, Pr.Héréd. n.21 Juin 1818

  D. Albert François Auguste Charles Emmanuel, n. 26 Août 1819

  Frères et Sœurs…

  5) D. Marie Louise Victoire, n. 17 Août 1786. v. Grande-Bretagne [Londres]…28

  Great Britain is listed twenty-one pages further on:

  GRANDE BRETAGNE (Engl. Anglic.)

  Roi Georges IV, Frédéric Auguste, né 12 Août 1762… succ. à son père le Roi Georges III 29 Janv. 1820…

  Frères et Sœurs

  4) Venue du Frère le Pr. Eduard, Duc de Kent (quatrième Fils du Roi Georges III), Pr. Marie Louise Victoire, né 17 Août 1786, F. de François Duc de Saxe-Cobourg…

  Enfant

  Pr. Alexandrine Victoire, n. 24 Mai 1819.29

  Four years after Albert married Victoria, the old duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Albert’s father, died, and the ducal title passed to Albert’s elder brother, Ernest II (r. 1844–93). Since his brother had fathered no children (and did not seem about to do so), Albert assumed the position of heir apparent, and Albert’s sons moved up in the duchy’s line of succession. Nothing changed in this regard for the rest of the consort’s life.

  Victoria’s diaries for 1845 gush with enthusiasm during the young couple’s first visit to Germany. They travelled to Coburg, and then to Rosenau: ‘I cannot say how much affected I felt in entering this dear old place and with difficulty I resisted crying; the beautifully ornamented town, all with wreaths and flowers, the numbers of good and affectionate people, the many recollections all connected with this place, all was so affecting.’ Victoria’s delight was unbounded as she toured her husband’s birthplace; he showed her the nursery, the table on which he would stand to be dressed as a small boy, and the cuts in the wallpaper left from his fencing fights with his brother.

  Albert, in contrast, was troubled. On the journey from Cologne on the Prussian royal train, they had been treated to the sight of 4,000 Prussian soldiers lining the banks of the Rhine as they passed, firing thunderous volleys. During a brief reception in the Augustusburg Palace at Brühl, the king of Prussia had delivered an overblown speech on the theme of ‘Waterloo-Victory-Victoria’. And not everything at Coburg was to Albert’s liking:

  Since he had particularly asked that there should be no fuss, Albert was annoyed that Ernest received them… with a guard of honour and his little army on parade. Because it was bound to be an emotional experience to take Victoria to the Rosenau, he arranged for them to be alone when he showed her his old bedroom under the roof… In the Veste [Coburg’s fortress] he took her to see the Cranachs, the new Ernst-Albrecht Museum, the chapel with Luther’s pulpit and the marvellous view from the terrace. Everything was as it had always been, except that he now had a wife by his side.

  Yet he himself had changed… He was amazed that he had never noticed that the peasants lived in hovels, that their wives worked in the fields even in the last stages of pregnancy, and that there were no schools to speak of. It was a shock to find the great contrast between Coburg and Gotha… There was much more evidence of culture in his maternal grandfather’s palace than in all his father’s houses put together… Albert had not realised how many of his interests were inherited from [his maternal great-grandfather]… and how much his four years in England had done to develop them.3
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  The ten years that followed brought the royal pair their longest period of calm and fulfilment. Victoria was a self-assured monarch, surrounded by a fast-growing family. Albert was devoted to his work as chairman of the committee preparing the Great Exhibition, and he adored his daughters, particularly the eldest, ‘Vickie’, who grew up to be his favourite companion. In the census return completed on 30 March 1851 the royal family are recorded as living in Buckingham Palace with only a few servants. ‘Her Majesty Alexandrina Victoria’ is listed first; her ‘Relationship to Head of Household’ was ‘Wife’, her ‘Condition’ ‘Mar[ried]’, her age thirty-one, and her ‘Rank, Profession or Occupation’ ‘The Queen’. ‘HRH Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emmanuel’, also thirty-one and married, was described as ‘Head’ of the household, and ‘Duke of Saxony, Prince of Coburg and Gotha’. He apparently had no British ‘Rank, Profession or Occupation’. One suspects that it was Albert who answered the census official’s questions.31