Queen Victoria was concerned for the future of the monarchy, her grandsons’ safety and very likely for some acknowledgement that she had been right to oppose their going to sea. Most probably in that order. She telegraphed at once to her son. ‘I must earnestly protest against the Princes serving with the Naval Brigade on shore at the Cape. I strongly objected to their both going to sea, but consented on the suggestion that it was necessary for their education. The proposal to send them on active service destroys the cause of my former consent, and there is no reason for and many against their incurring danger in the South African war.’ Prince Edward may have felt that the time had come to put an end to what he had come to see was the boys’ mollycoddling by their mother which, on this occasion at least, was supported by their grandmother. He therefore declared himself pleased with the idea that they might see some action.
Queen Victoria clearly resented her son’s opposition to her views. Two days after the Bacchante’s arrival at the Cape she wrote to her daughter-in-law:
I am very sorry that Bertie [Prince Edward] should have been sore about the Boys … The Bacchante going to the Cape, which was done in a hurry without due consultation with me – I disapproved. And feeling how valuable these 2 young lives are to the whole Nation, I felt bound to protect them against useless and unnecessary exposure in a cruel Civil War, for so it is, the Boers being my subjects, and it being a rule that Princes of the Royal Family ought not to be mixed up in it. In any other war, should in time there be one (when George be older) and his ship be obliged necessarily to take part in it, I would quite agree with Bertie.
It seemed that Queen Victoria considered that for a second son to be involved in war was all right but certainly not for the heir.
Prince George, unaware that his activities were arousing so much family interest, had meanwhile become fascinated by King Ketchewayo, the King of the Zulus, who about eighteen months earlier had been taken prisoner at the battle of Ulundi. The two Princes had been taken to visit him by the Governor of Cape Province, on the farm on which he had been interned. Prince George was riveted by Ketchewayo’s stature and size. Although he himself was slowly growing, he was still well below average height for his age. He wrote admiringly in his diary on 26 February 1881, possibly still smarting from his mother’s comment about his size, that ‘he [Ketchewayo] is 18 stone and is nearly six feet tall, large boned, but heavy in the haunches, with enormous thighs and legs’. The Prince also wrote of Ketchewayo’s four wives, describing them as each ‘weighing between 16 and 17 stone. They were happily squatting on the ground, wrapt in Scotch plaids’ (Dalton, 1886).
The Prince’s sympathies were clearly with the victims of the African conflict, and he was able to empathize with the defeated. A few days after his visit to Ketchewayo he wrote to his mother from Cape Town. ‘This is really a dredful war is it not? All these poor people killed & also poor General Colley.’ This was a reference to Sir George Colley, High Commisioner for South East Africa, killed at the battle for Majuba Hill by the Boers a few days earlier.
The life at sea of the two Princes came to an end on 5 August 1882. The diminutive Prince George had grown into a seventeen-year-old with skills that later would be put to good use in his career in the Royal Navy. He was known for his calmness in an emergency, probably the only situation in which he could be relied on not to lose his temper. Three days later he and his brother were confirmed by the Archbishop of Canterbury who told them that the Christian character was best developed by difficulties and warned them that they must not yield to the enervating influences that must gather round them. Prince George, now fully trained and in full control of his feelings, was ready to take the next step on his journey which would finally end when he became monarch of an Empire on which ‘the sun never set’ but which had reached its territorial peak.
• 5 •
Rum, buggery and the lash
ON 12 AUGUST 1882, having learned a great deal about seamanship during his three cruises aboard the Bacchante, the seventeen-year-old Prince George returned to his family to begin what he must have hoped would be a period of leisure before moving on to the next stage of his career. In the event both he and his brother were given only about two months to accustom themselves to a family life which for the past two years at sea had been unavailable to them. They attended concerts and the theatre with their parents and played tennis with their sisters in the garden at Marlborough House. It was a month later, when he arrived with his family at Abergeldie Castle in Aberdeenshire, that Prince George first became fascinated by an activity that was later to become a passion: shooting birds and animals for sport.
Today we are increasingly concerned about the preservation of animals, many species of which were in the nineteenth century decimated by hunting, the favourite sport of the aristocracy. Private parks of staghounds and other animals were also becoming popular among the nouveaux riches, but hunting remained on the whole an expensive pastime and the preserve of the upper classes. Since big game hunting was physically demanding, time-consuming and extremely expensive, it was less popular even among those who could afford it. The shooting of small game, which in 1831 had ceased to be the legal privilege and monopoly of landed proprietors, was more accessible, less demanding and certainly less dangerous, while big game hunting remained an activity which was not obstructed even by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The RSPCA, which was founded in 1824, acquired the patronage of Queen Victoria in 1840. The Queen had great personal concern for animal welfare, as long as it did not refer to the shooting of grouse or stags. The RSPCA satisfied itself that its duty applied only to domestic animals, such as the dogs and horses belonging mainly to the lower orders, and it did not attack the blood sports which, it argued, involved only wild animals which did not share the feelings or obligations of domestic animals. Since the society relied for its influence and income on the support of the Royal Family and members of the aristocracy, it was not encouraged to consider such sport as cruel.
The shooting of small game continues to be acceptable, on the often specious grounds that some creatures have to be culled in the interests of other creatures. Killing of big game for sport has now been banned, however, and the gun has been replaced by the camera.
At a time when the ecological consequences of hunting and shooting were unknown, and the activities rarely questioned, Prince Eddy and Prince George became addicted to both pastimes. The ‘gun’ and the ‘horse’, both symbols of power, were the sine qua non of a male-dominated sport, and the killing of partridge, grouse, hares and foxes were to keep the Princes fully occupied in the weeks following their graduation from the Bacchante. Within five days Prince George had shot his first partridge and two days later thirteen grouse. By Christmas his score had risen to forty-eight plus one fox. On 30 December he noted in his diary: ‘Eddy got the brush, and I got the head.’
The wildlife in Norfolk enjoyed a brief respite while Prince Edward, Mr Dalton and three other tutors took the boys first to Lausanne and then to Heidelberg to continue their general education and to study French and German. In re-entering society Prince Eddy and Prince George tried – albeit with little success – to make up for the lost years of their adolescence. Their social life was limited to tennis, walking and rowing on the lake, activities hardly destined to improve their interpersonal skills. Neither of them could wait to get back to Sandringham to resume the blood sports that were to excite Prince George, already an enthusiastic and accurate shot, throughout his later life.
Despite the increasing pleasures of life in England and in particular at home, the two brothers, who had been inseparable companions, were saddened to be parted for the first time. Nineteen-year-old Prince Eddy had to be groomed for his future role as King, and tutors were engaged to coach him for further education at Cambridge. He was also to undergo military training and was enrolled in the 10th Hussars, his father’s regiment. Less was expected from Prince George who, having come to love the life that had at fir
st terrified him, continued his career at sea. In all the changes to which the two Princes had been exposed they had always been there for each other and had played an important role in one another’s lives. They may have been separated in age by eighteen months, but other than in appearance they might have been twins. Both had been born prematurely and had developed slowly. They had been tutored together at home and, as naval cadets, aged nineteen and seventeen respectively, they were young for their years. Prince Eddy was passive, dreamy, ungainly and addicted to sexual adventure. Prince George was emotional, vulnerable, self-aware and heavily dependent on the approval of a mother, who had let him down by making implicit promises she had not kept. At the age of twelve, an immature, cosseted boy from a home where he had been led to believe that he was indispensable, he had been cast upon the waters. He and Prince Eddy, two halves of a whole, had clung to one another and survived.
Although Prince Eddy had done his best, he had never been comfortable as a naval cadet. Life at sea was not his métier, and the experience had diminished him. Prince George, psychologically more robust than his brother, had come to look upon his long absence from the home in which he had felt secure and protected as a challenge. Each of them knew that they had either to sink or swim. While Prince Eddy sank, Prince George swam, and now the time had come for them to part. Parting was not easy for either of them. In the absence of their mother they had mothered each other and, for the second time in their lives, a ‘mother’ had ceased to be available to them. Two weeks after Prince George had returned to the Navy to join his new ship HMS Canada his brother wrote him a sad and moving letter which was not dissimilar from the letters they had both received over the years from Princess Alexandra. ‘My dear George, so we are at last separated for the first time and I can’t tell you how strange it seems to be without you and how much I miss you in everything all day long.’
At the age of eighteen Prince George’s formal education with his tutors had come to an end. The sea and the Royal Naval College at Greenwich were to be his university. Although his instructors spoke well of him, his grandmother continued to concern herself with his morals. He had been in the Navy for two years when Queen Victoria wrote to him as she might once have written to his father. She reminded him of the pitfalls that had befallen Prince Edward and which now lay before her grandson:
Avoid the many evil temptations wh. beset all young men especially Princes. Beware of flatterers, too great love of amusement, of races & betting & playing high. I hear on all sides what a good steady boy you are & how you can be trusted. Still you must always be on the watch & must not fear ridicule if you do what is right. Alas! Society is very bad in these days; what is wrong is winked at, allowed even, & as for betting or anything of that kind, no end of young and older men have been ruined, parents hearts broken, & great names and Titles dragged in the dirt. It is in your power to do immense good by setting an example & keeping your dear Grandpapa’s name before you … I am afraid that you will think this a long lecture, but Grandmama loves you so much and is so anxious that you should be a blessing to your Parents, herself and your Country, and she cd. not do otherwise than write to you as she feels.
‘Put not your trust in Princes, nor in the children of man, in whom there is no help …’ Like the psalmist, Queen Victoria was right to be distrustful of Princes. Like many a parent, she had found the task of raising children, and in particular her son and heir, ‘in the way that they should go’ daunting. Like many grandparents, she is likely to have believed that providence had provided her with grandchildren so that she might be given a second chance to exercise the maternalism with which, as a young mother herself, she had failed to be in touch. In her poetic letter she was able to express feelings that she might well have had difficulty in verbalizing even to her grandson.
On 1 June 1883 Prince George was appointed to the corvette HMS Canada. Two months later Midshipman Prince George sailed on her under the command of Captain Francis Durrant, who took the place of Mr Dalton as the Prince’s governor. Prince George looked up to Captain Durrant and admired him and they soon became close friends. Anxious to return to the familiarity of life on board ship, Prince George hoped that this would help him with his distress at being parted from his brother. He was well liked by his shipmates but made only a few close friends. Eddy lived on in his memory, and he saw little reason to ‘replace’ his brother with an unknown shipmate. His solution then, as it would be later, was to find a replacement love for that to which he had been entitled as a child but which had been denied him. He unconsciously attached himself to other ‘carers’. It would have been understandable perhaps had he searched for a ‘father’ (Prince Edward also having been unavailable), as later he searched for a mother (in his wife), to counteract the smothering love of Princess Alexandra.
In addition to Prince George’s parents and brother, one other person was both to have an effect on him and later to influence his attitude to women. In late adolescence Prince George was probably a stranger to any sort of intimacy. He made up for this by the warmth of the many letters written during his years at sea, not only (as ever) to his mother but also to male contemporaries of his parents, whose wisdom he needed and respected. One man to whom he had remained close was Charles Fuller, who as a ‘nursery footman’ had fulfilled the role of father and mother to the two Princes. Engaged about two weeks after the birth of Prince Eddy, Mr Fuller became particularly fond of the boys throughout their childhood. He served them with love and affection and accompanied them as their valet aboard the Bacchante. Although Prince George was now eighteen years old, Mr Fuller continued to show concern for his royal master. While the Prince was growing up it was as if he had two surrogate parents both of whom were constantly at his side; while Canon Dalton concerned himself mainly with his intellectual development, it was Charles Fuller who ‘mothered’ him. Mr Fuller was always available, always loyal, never (unlike Princess Alexandra) made unreasonable demands of him and attended to his physical well-being. In his letters to the Prince he never failed to fuss over him, to remind him to wear clothing appropriate to the weather, to take care of his health and – presciently – to smoke less. Although Charles Fuller was ordered to accompany Prince Eddy when he went to Cambridge, he remained close in spirit to his favourite, Prince George. A few days after the Prince embarked on HMS Canada, Mr Fuller wrote to say how much he missed him.
‘My Dear Prince George, – It is just a week today since you left us and you cannot think how much I miss your dear face, the place don’t look the same. I used to look at the vacant bed in your dear room at M. House. I scarcely knew what I was doing, but am so pleased to hear from Mr Dalton that you are so happy and quite settled down to your new life.’ His brother (Eddy), older men (senior officers) and an ever-present mother (Queen Mary) were all to have a significant effect on Prince George’s later life.
Princess Alexandra, trying desperately to let go of her younger son, wrote a ‘farewell’ letter to Prince George which was less concerned with loosening the bond that tied him to her than with consoling her own anguish at being parted from him. On 12 June, less than two weeks after her son’s naval appointment but some weeks before he actually embarked on HMS Canada, she wrote:
My own darling little Georgie, I have only just left you going to bed, after having given you my last kiss and having heard you saying your prayers. I need hardly say what I feel – and what we both feel at this sad hour of parting – it will be harder for you this time to go quite by yourself – without Eddy, Mr Dalton or Fuller – but remember darling when all others are far away God is always there – and He will never forsake you – but bring you safe back to all of us who love you so.
Having probably made her son feel guilty at leaving her, Princess Alexandra went on:
I need hardly say my darling little Georgie how much I shall always miss you – now we have been so much together and you were such a dear little boy not at all spoilt and so nice and affectionate to old Motherdear – Remain just as
you are – but strive to get on with all that is good – and keep out of temptation as much as you can – don’t let anyone lead you astray – Remember to take the Sacrament about every quarter which will give you fresh strength to do what is right – and also never forget either your morning or evening Prayer – We must all try to console ourselves by thinking how quickly the year will pass and what delight it will be to meet once more … And now darling Georgie I must say Goodnight and Goodbye as I am so sleepy my eyes will hardly keep awake and it is nearly two – So goodbye and God bless you and keep you safe and sound till we meet again and watch over you wherever you are – Goodbye, goodbye Georgie dear
Ever your most loving affectionate old Motherdear.
Princess Alexandra’s six (royal) commandments, as spelled out in her letter to her son, would have reinforced his punitive conscience to the extent that he would have either found it impossible to live with and rebelled (as did Eddy) or have ingested the imperatives of obedience and duty his mother had instilled into him and used them not only to control those under his command in the Navy but also those ‘under his command’ (his children) as a result of his marriage. Continuing to climb the career ladder, Prince George was promoted to Sub-Lieutenant. He obtained a first class in seamanship, left HMS Canada after a year’s service and transferred to the Royal Naval College at Greenwich where he again did well in his examinations and passed well in torpedo, gunnery, navigation and pilotage. While he was at Greenwich Captain Bernard Currey was appointed Deputy-Governor and Captain Durrant wrote to him to inform him of his duties vis-à-vis the Prince:
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