Edward VII: The Last Victorian King

by Christopher Hibbert

  When in Constantinople he had received a letter from his mother and, so General Bruce reported, he ‘was actually beaming with pleasure’ as he read it. ‘He felt that he had really deserved the genuine outpouring of a mother’s tenderness and affection.’ It was, Bruce commented, ‘a hopeful feature in his character that he [had] a strong love of approbation’. Bruce himself had also heard from the Queen, but his letter had been less encouraging. In it the Queen had urged him to warn the Prince against indulging in her presence in any ‘worldly, frivolous, gossiping kind of conversation’; he must remember that he would be returning to a house of mourning where cureless melancholy reigned. The Prince was profoundly relieved when his mother, who appeared to have overcome those feelings of resentment and dislike which had so distressed him at the time of his father’s death, seemed actually glad to have him home again. She confessed that she was at first ‘much upset at seeing him’ because ‘his beloved father was not there to welcome him back’. But he was so much improved, looking ‘so bright and healthy’. He was ‘most affectionate and the tears came into his eyes’ when he saw her. His time away had ‘done him so much good’, she continued a few days later; and he went on ‘being as good, amiable and sensible’ as anyone could have wished. Improved ‘in every respect’, he was ‘so kind and nice to the younger children, more serious in his ways and views’. She was especially pleased to note that he was ‘very distressed about General Bruce’, who, having contracted a fever in the marshes of the Upper Jordan, had died soon after his return to England in his sister’s rooms in St James’s Palace. Bruce’s death was, indeed, a ‘terrible blow’ to him, he confessed to his doctor, Henry Acland. It was really ‘too sad to think his end was caused by catching a fever, on a tour which [they had] all so thoroughly enjoyed’. He had lost, in him, ‘a most useful and valuable friend’. But he was somewhat comforted to know that Bruce was to be replaced by General William Knollys, a fatherly figure whom he liked ‘very much’ and was ultimately to consider one of his ‘most intimate friends’. His mother told him that General Knollys would ‘naturally be a species of Mentor, for no young Prince can be without a person of experience and of a certain age who would keep him from doing what was hurtful to him, or unfit for his position, and who would be responsible to me to a great extent for what took place.’ Knollys, however, was not to be the Prince’s governor but comptroller and treasurer, a title that seemed to promise a degree of independence greater than any he had previously known.

  The Prince was now nearly twenty-one and his mother was anxious that there should be no further delay in his marriage. He, too, she was thankful to say, seemed ‘most anxious’ to make his formal proposal to Princess Alexandra, for whom he had bought a ‘number of pretty things’ on his travels. But he was ‘furious’ to hear that his Uncle Ernest was still determined to prevent the marriage. Not content with spreading stories that ‘Princess Christian had had illegitimate children and Princess Alix had had flirtations with young officers’, he had written to Princess Christian to tell her what had happened on the Curragh and to warn her what an unfortunate choice as a husband for her daughter the Prince would be. The Prince had already been reminded of that embarrassing affair when the Queen had informed him that she was going to tell General Knollys all about it. He had almost lost his temper then, but had written the next day to apologize, saying that on reflection he thought it would certainly be better if Knollys were told, but at the same time hoping that this would be the last conversation he would have with her on this ‘painful subject’. He agreed immediately, however, that it would be wise to let Princess Christian know the full story now that she had heard some no doubt maliciously exaggerated version of it from the Duke of Coburg. So the Queen told her daughter in Germany that ‘it would be well’ if Walburga Paget could let Princess Christian know the truth. ‘Quite in ignorance of the character of Bertie the mother must not be,’ the Queen wrote, ‘for were the poor girl to be very unhappy I could not answer for it before God had she been entrapped into it.’ Princess Christian must therefore be told ‘that wicked wretches had led our poor innocent Boy into a scrape’ which had caused his parents the ‘deepest pain’; but that both of them had forgiven him ‘this (one) sad mistake’; that the Queen was very confident he would make ‘a steady Husband’; and that she ‘looked to his wife as being HIS SALVATION’.

  All this was accordingly passed on to Princess Christian, who was further assured, without too strict a regard for accuracy, that the Prince was ‘very domestic and longed to be at home’.

  Princess Christian had, in fact, already been told of the Prince’s affair by her cousin, the Duke of Cambridge. She had also been informed that the Queen and her son were on extremely bad terms; and this news so distressed her that she burst into tears, feeling sure that the dislike of the son would be extended to include the proposed daughter-in-law. Arrangements for the marriage nevertheless went ahead, and the Queen used a proposed visit to the places where her husband had lived as a child in Coburg as an excuse to meet Princess Alexandra and her parents at King Leopold’s palace at Laeken.

  The Queen was immediately taken with the Princess, who was as lovely as she had been said to be, with ‘such a beautiful refined profile and quiet ladylike manner’. Her parents seemed perfectly happy to accept the Prince of Wales as their son-in-law should he care to propose to Alexandra, who, in turn, was reported to be ‘very much taken’ with him. And the Queen, though she found the parents not nearly so ‘sympathique’ as the daughter, left for Coburg in the contented knowledge that all should now go well.

  A few days later the Queen heard from her son that the ‘all-important event’ had taken place. He had seen Princess Alexandra at Ostend and afterwards at Brussels, where she and her parents had had luncheon together in the hotel where they were all staying. After the meal he had asked Prince Christian to come to his room and had there told him how he loved his daughter and wanted to marry her. ‘I don’t think I ever saw anybody so much pleased as he was,’ the Prince continued. ‘We then went driving.… On our return I saw Princess Christian and told her the same as I had told her husband. She said she was sure I should be kind to her [daughter] and … we then arranged that I should propose to her.’

  The next day they all went over to Laeken, where King Leopold suggested a walk in the garden. The Prince and Princess Alexandra walked one or two paces behind the others, exchanging ‘a few commonplace remarks’ until the Prince asked her how she liked England, and ‘if she would one day come over [there] and how long she would remain. She said she hoped some time’.

  ‘I said that I hoped she would remain always there, and then offered her my hand and my heart,’ the Prince wrote.

  She immediately said yes. But I told her not to answer too quickly but to consider over it. She said she had long ago. I then asked her if she liked me. She said yes. I then kissed her hand and she kissed me. We then talked for some time and I said I was sure you would love her as your own daughter and make her happy in the new home, though she would find it very sad after the terrible loss we had sustained. I told her how very sorry I was that she could never know dear Papa. She said she regretted it deeply and hoped he would have approved of my choice. I told her that it had always been his greatest wish; I only feared I was not worthy of her … I cannot tell you with what feelings my head is filled, and how happy I feel … You must excuse this hurried account as … I really don’t know whether I am on my head or my heels …

  The more he saw of her the more pleased the Prince was with his choice. General Knollys assured Queen Victoria that it ‘was a happy sight to witness the happiness of the young couple in the society of each other’. Knollys sincerely believed that the Prince of Wales was ‘as much attached to the Princess Alexandra as Her Royal Highness [was] to him.’

  ‘I indeed now know what it is to be really happy,’ the Prince himself assured Dr Acland, ‘though I daresay I have never done anything to deserve it.’ He told Mrs Bruce that he really f
elt ‘a new interest in everything’ now that he had found ‘somebody to live for’. And to his mother he wrote, ‘I frankly avow that I did not think it possible to love a person as I do her. She is so kind and good, and I feel sure will make my life a happy one. I only trust that God will give me strength to do the same for her.’

  The Queen hoped so too, but rather doubted it. ‘May he be only worthy of such a jewel!’ she commented. ‘There is the rub!’ Even though they were now engaged there must be no question of their being left alone together, except ‘in a room next to the Princess’s mother’s with the door open, for a short while’. The Queen’s main worry for the moment, however, was that the Prince would be persuaded to adopt an anti-German position on the Schleswig-Holstein question; and she insisted that, before the marriage took place, Princess Alexandra must come over to England by herself so that the Queen might be given an opportunity to give her due warning not to ‘use her influence to make the Prince a partisan … in the political questions now unhappily in dispute [which] would be to irritate all the Queen’s German connections and to create family feuds — destructive of all family comfort and happiness’.

  The Princess was naturally reluctant to come. She did not want it to appear that she had been summoned to England ‘on approval’; and, apart from that, she was ‘terribly frightened’ at the prospect of being left alone with the Queen for so long. Both the Prince of Wales and the King of the Belgians tried rather diffidently and wholly unsuccessfully to persuade the Queen not to subject Alexandra to such embarrassment. The Queen, however, was adamant: trouble enough had already been caused in Germany, where old Baron Stockmar’s ‘rage and fury knew no bounds’. The Princess must come. While she was here, the Prince could go on a cruise aboard the royal yacht in the Mediterranean. General Knollys could go with him. So, too, could the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia, who would find this an excellent excuse for leaving Berlin where their known promotion of the Danish marriage, as well as their disapproval of Bismarck’s recently declared preference of ‘blood and iron’ to ‘parliamentary resolutions’, had rendered advisable a temporary withdrawal from court. At the beginning of October, therefore, the Prince was dispatched abroad once again. He went to Dresden where the King of Saxony placed him in the care of Count Vitzthum, the Saxon Minister at St James’s, who happened to be on leave of absence. Vitzthum found him ‘gay, extremely amiable, well informed … simple and unaffected’. Vitzthum later told Disraeli that after he and the Prince

  had examined the museums, galleries, etc., the Prince said to him: ‘Don’t you think now we might have a little shopping?’ Agreed: and they went to a great jeweller’s, and the Prince bought some bracelets for his future bride; and to some porcelain shops, where he purchased many objects for his brothers and sisters; but he never asked the price of anything, which quite delighted the Saxons, who look upon that as quite grand seigneur.

  Leaving Dresden, and having toured South Germany and Switzerland, he embarked at Marseilles for his first visit to the Riviera. Then, after spending a few days at Hyères, he sailed down to Palermo, across to Tunis, where he inspected the ruins of Carthage and visited the Bey at his castle of Al-Bar, and on to Malta before landing at Naples, from which Garibaldi had recently driven the Bourbon King of the Two Sicilies. General Alfonso La Marmora, representative of Victor Emmanuel, now King of the new united Italy, provided the English travellers with an escort of bersaglieri for the inevitable ascent of Mount Vesuvius and afterwards came aboard the Osborne for dinner. Three evenings later, on 9 November 1862, while the British ships in the Bay fired rockets and showed blue lights, the Prince quietly celebrated his twenty-first birthday, regretting ‘very much not being at home’.

  Meanwhile, Princess Alexandra was listening to the Queen’s lectures with tactful acquiescence. She concealed the resentment which she subsequently admitted to have felt that her father, who had brought her over to England, had — for want of any invitation to stay at Osborne — been obliged to put up at a hotel; and that her mother, from whom she had never been parted before, had not been asked to come to England at all. She was polite, charming, understanding, affectionate; and the Queen was more delighted with her than ever, particularly when, after listening to many stories about the Prince Consort, the Princess burst into tears at an account of his death.

  ‘How beloved Albert would have loved her!’ the Queen wrote. She certainly adored her now herself. ‘I can’t say how I and we all love her!’ she told the Crown Princess. ‘She is so good, so simple, unaffected, frank, bright and cheerful, yet so quiet and gentle that her [companionship] soothes me. Then how lovely! … She is one of those sweet creatures who seem to come from the skies to help and bless poor mortals and lighten for a time their path … She is so pretty to live with.’

  There was no doubt, the Queen thought, that — provided she did not ‘knock under’ — she would make a perfect wife for the Prince of Wales who was given permission to meet her at Calais and to accompany her and her father as far as Harburg-on-Elbe on their way home to Copenhagen. The Prince was, however, on no account to cross the Danish frontier. As the Queen’s acting secretary, General Grey, explained to Augustus Paget, the British Minister in Copenhagen, it was not only the political question ‘and the storm that would be raised among her German connections were any extra civility to be shown towards Denmark’ which weighed on the Queen’s mind, but the fear — Grey felt he ‘might almost say horror’ — the Queen had of the Princess’s mother’s family.

  ‘The Queen’s own expression is, “The Prince of Wales is so weak that he would be sure to get entangled with Princess [Christian’s] relations,” ’ Grey continued, ‘ “and it would be too horrid if he should become one of that family.” These are reasons which cannot be stated; but I cannot tell you how firmly rooted they are in the Queen’s mind.’

  The Prince obeyed his mother’s instructions without complaint and arrived home on 3 December, looking ‘extremely well’. He was also, the Queen decided — as so often she did when she had not seen her son for some time — ‘really very much improved’. It was ‘such a blessing to hear him talk so openly, and sensibly, and nicely … I feel God has been listening to our prayers.’

  The engagement, which had been publicly announced on 16 September, had been widely welcomed in England, where public opinion was wholeheartedly on the side of Denmark in her quarrel with Prussia, and where newspaper readers were constantly assured that Princess Alexandra was the very ideal of youth and beauty. ‘It is impossible to exaggerate how pleased every one in all classes here is with the good news,’ Lord Granville assured the Prince of Wales. ‘All accounts agree as to the beauty, the excellence and charm of the person whom your Royal Highness has secured.’

  Indeed the Morning Post reported that the people were almost as excited as was the Prince himself at the prospect of welcoming Princess Alexandra to England. A.J. Munby recorded in his diary on 3 March:

  The preparations for celebrating the Princess’s arrival go on at a wondrous rate. Every house has its balcony of red baize seats; wedding favours fill the shops, and flags of all sizes; often the banners are already waving, and the devices for illumination fixed. In Pall Mall this evening rows of workmen were supping on the pavement ready to begin again by gaslight, with their work. The town seems as full as in the height of the season: one may say that the carpenters and gasfitters are all working day and night, while the rest of the population spend their time in watching them.

  Princess Alexandra arrived at Gravesend aboard the Victoria and Albert on the morning of 7 March. ‘A deafening cheer’ went up from the crowds along the banks of the river, and from scores of craft bobbing about in the water, as the Prince eagerly hurried up the gangway to kiss the Princess affectionately. He introduced her to various members of his household, then led her to the railway station, where a train was waiting to take them to Southwark.

  Huge crowds of people, wearing wedding favours and waving Danish flags, had gathered at Sou
thwark and all along the lavishly decorated carriage route over London Bridge, across the City, and down the Strand through Pall Mall, St James’s Street, Piccadilly and Hyde Park to Paddington Station, where another train waited to take them on to Slough. So many people, in fact, were crammed between the triumphal arches and the streaming banners that the police lost control of them in the City, and the Life Guards who had escorted the carriages from Southwark had to clear the way with drawn sabres.

  At about a quarter to three A.J. Munby, who had with great difficulty gained a place of vantage in King William Street, heard the bands approaching and ‘the sound of deep hurrahs’ coming nearer and nearer.

  The great crowd surged to and fro with intense expectation. The glowing banners of the City procession reappeared and passed; and the countless carriages full of blue robes and scarlet robes and Lord Lieutenants’ uniforms; and the Volunteer bands and the escort of the Blues; and the first three royal carriages whose occupants … were heartily cheered. But when the last open carriage came in sight, the populace, who had been rapidly warming to tinder point, caught fire all at once. ‘Hats off!’ shouted the men; ‘Here she is’ cried the women; and all those thousands of souls rose at her, as it were, in one blaze of triumphant irrepressible enthusiasm; surging round the carriage, waving hats and kerchiefs, leaping up here and there and again to catch sight of her; and crying Hurrah … She meanwhile, a fair haired graceful girl, in a white bonnet and blush roses, sat by her mother, with ‘Bertie’ and her father opposite, smiling sweetly and bowing on all sides; astounded — as she well might be — but self possessed; until the crowd parted at length.

  Throughout the tedious four-hour-long journey the Princess remained calm and composed, acknowledging the cheers with smiles and nods, waving her gloved hands, ‘bowing so prettily, so gracefully, right and left incessantly’. All the way from Slough to Windsor the Princess retained this remarkable composure, smiling at the cheering Eton boys as though refreshed rather than exhausted by the excitement and strain of the day.