Edward VII: The Last Victorian King

by Christopher Hibbert

  She categorically informed Lord Granville that the Prince should ‘upon no account be put at the head of any of those Societies or Commissions, or preside at any of those scientific proceedings in which his beloved Father took so prominent a part’. And when the Prince was offered the post of President of the Society of Arts, she vetoed the proposal on the grounds that he was too young and inexperienced. Nor would she hear of his being allowed to represent her in public. She was ‘very much opposed’ to the system of putting the Prince of Wales forward as the representative of the sovereign. She told the Home Secretary:

  Properly speaking, no one can represent the Sovereign but Her, or Her Consort. There are certain duties and forms which … as the Queen is unable to perform them she can and does depute someone else to perform … but her Majesty thinks it would be most undesirable to constitute the Heir to the Crown a general representative of Herself, and particularly to bring Him forward too frequently before the people. This would necessarily place the Prince of Wales in a position of competing as it were, for popularity with the Queen. Nothing … should be more carefully avoided.

  On the grounds that he was not as discreet as he ought to have been, the Queen also refused to allow the Prince to receive copies of the Foreign Office dispatches which were sent to her and to members of the Cabinet. He must be content with ‘a précis made of such dispatches’ as she thought it proper for the Prince to see. He protested; and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Russell, supported his protest; but the Queen was adamant, and the Prince had to glean what information he could from unofficial correspondence, newspapers and conversations with ministers and diplomats. Year after year passed; the position was still the same; and the Prince felt obliged to complain to his mother that he was less trusted with official information than were the private secretaries of government ministers. He was not even allowed to know what went on in the Cabinet, and was driven to writing rather apologetic letters to friendly ministers for any information they might feel able to give him. ‘Would you consider it very indiscreet if I asked you to let me know what steps the government are going to take since the meeting of the Cabinet,’ he wrote in one characteristic letter dated 12 March 1873 to his friend Lord Hartington, at that time Chief Secretary for Ireland in Gladstone’s Cabinet.

  The Prime Minister was sympathetic and asked the Queen if he might be allowed to know ‘anything of importance’ that took place in the Cabinet. But no, the Queen decided, he was no less imprudent in his conversation than he had ever been. It would be ‘quite irregular and improper’ for him to have copies of Cabinet reports, which were, by precedent, for her eyes alone.

  The Queen’s determination not to let the Prince have access to confidential papers had been reinforced at the outset of the dispute by his attitude towards the invasion of Denmark by German armies intent on wresting from King Christian IX the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. The Prince’s sympathies were naturally with his father-in-law and he made no secret of them. They were shared by the British people. But the Queen warmly, not to say heatedly, supported the claims of Duke Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg; and she strongly criticized her son for his outspoken comments, his refusal to recognize that there were faults on both sides, his unconcealed championship of the Danes and his denigration of the government’s refusal to help them. ‘This horrible war will be a stain for ever on Prussian history,’ the Prince wrote to Mrs Bruce after listening very attentively, ‘with his hat on all the while’, to a declaration of the government’s neutrality in the House of Lords, ‘and I think it is very wrong of our government not to have interfered before now. As to Lord Russell’s everlasting Notes, nobody cares two-pence about them on the Continent, and the Foreign Ministers to whom they are addressed probably only light their cigars with them.’ The British would have ‘cut a much better figure in Europe’ if instead of sending notes, they had sent their fleet to the Baltic; and then ‘all this bloodshed might possibly have been avoided’.

  ‘This dreadful war in Denmark causes both the Princess and myself great anxiety,’ he told Lord Spencer, ‘and the conduct of the Prussians and the Austrians is really quite scandalous.’ Such remarks were not only addressed to his friends. The Prussian Ambassador, the disagreeable Count Bernstorff, one of the very few foreign diplomats in London whom the Prince did not like, felt constrained to register a formal complaint about the Prince’s behaviour, which was matched by that of the Princess, who pointedly refused to speak to Bernstorff after she had observed him declining to raise his glass in a toast to the King of Denmark. Even the French Ambassador, Prince de la Tour d’Auvergne, whom the Prince did like, disapprovingly reported to Paris that he had been taxed by him at Marlborough House and bluntly asked in a most undiplomatic manner whether or not there was any truth in the reports that the Emperor Napoleon intended to try to bring about a settlement not entirely in Denmark’s favour.

  But the Prince refused to be silenced. Nothing that either the Queen or the King of the Belgians could do prevented him from speaking his mind. So strongly did he feel, in fact, that he even discussed what he considered to be the pusillanimous policies of the government with leading members of the opposition after his offer to act as an intermediary between London and Copenhagen had been treated — as the Queen instructed that it should be treated — ‘with extreme caution’.

  In the Queen’s opinion, the Prince’s irresponsibility had been only too amply demonstrated that same spring when the Italian revolutionary, General Giuseppe Garibaldi, who had fallen out with the Italian government, came to London with the publicly declared intention of ‘obtaining the benefit of medical advice and paying a debt of gratitude to the English people’, but with the privately expressed purpose of securing English help for Denmark. Lord Palmerston had made it clear to Garibaldi’s sponsors that the visit must be a private one and that the General should be discouraged from accepting invitations to public entertainments at which he might be induced to make compromising speeches. But it had not been possible to prevent Garibaldi’s being accorded ‘such demonstrations of affection and respect as are seldom seen in England’. Nor had it proved possible to prevent his referring more than once in a speech delivered to a huge and enthusiastic audience in the Crystal Palace to the plight of ‘poor little Denmark’.

  This speech, like Garibaldi’s every public appearance in England, was greeted with tumultuous cheers. As the Countess Martinengo Cesaresco commented, ‘No sovereign from overseas was ever received by the English people as they received the Italian hero.’ It was estimated that over half a million people turned out in the streets to welcome him; and The Times found it ‘almost impossible to describe’ their enthusiasm. The courtyard of Stafford House, the Duke of Sutherland’s house where he stayed, was continually thronged with people hoping to catch a glimpse of him; and the Duke’s servants found a ready market for bottles of soapsuds from his washbasin. Special performances of a Garibaldi musical play were given; Garibaldi biscuits became more popular than ever; and ‘Garibaldies, in the science of millinery the feminine for the Garibaldi shirt’, became the height of fashion.

  The Queen, who had taken the precaution of leaving for Balmoral a few days before the General was shown over the royal farms at Windsor, was appalled by the people’s behaviour and felt ‘half-ashamed of being the head of a nation capable of such follies’. She wrote crossly to Lord Russell:

  The Queen much regrets the extravagant excitement respecting Garibaldi which shows little dignity and discrimination in the nation, and it is not very flattering to others who are received. The Queen fears that the Government may find Garibaldi’s views and connections no little cause of inconvenience with foreign governments hereafter, and trusts they will be cautious in what they do for him in their official capacity. Brave and honest though he is, he has ever been a revolutionist leader.

  The Queen was, therefore, ‘very much shocked’ to learn that, without her knowledge or permission, the Prince of Wales had been guilty o
f the ‘incredible folly and imprudence’ of going to Stafford House to call upon Garibaldi. She curtly told General Knollys that she held him responsible and that she must in future ‘insist that no step of the slightest political importance’ was ever taken without her being consulted.

  She was not in the least mollified by her son’s explanation that he had gone to Stafford House ‘quite privately’ and that he had been ‘much pleased’ with Garibaldi. The Prince went on conversationally:

  He is not tall, but such a dignified and noble appearance, and such a quiet and gentle way of speaking — especially never of himself — that nobody could fail to be attracted by him … He asked a great deal about you, and … referred to Denmark and said how much he felt for all the brave soldiers who had perished in the war. Though, of course, it would have been very different for you to have seen him, still I think you would have been pleased with him as he is uncharlatanlike … and though his undertakings have been certainly revolutionary, still, he is a patriot, and did not seek for his own aggrandisement.

  There were others, apart from the Queen, who considered the Prince had behaved unwisely. ‘What do you think of the Prince of Wales and Garibaldi?’ Disraeli asked his friend, Lady Dorothy Nevill. ‘For a quasicrowned head to call on a subject is strange, and that subject is a rebel!’ But the Prince himself was unrepentant. His visit had been ‘hailed with joy throughout the country’, he informed his mother. He declined to admit that he had been wrong to make it; he had always believed in the unity of Italy, which was, after all, the ‘avowed policy of the present Government’; and, as for Knollys, the Prince added, ‘he is not, and cannot be, responsible for my actions. I have now been of age for some time and am alone responsible, and am only too happy to bear any blame on my shoulders.’

  There was more blame soon to come.

  6

  A Troubled Family

  She comes completely from the enemy’s camp in every way — Stockmar was right.

  The Christmas of 1863 was unusually cold, and on the following Twelfth Day the lake at Frogmore was still frozen hard. During the afternoon a band came down to play by a charcoal fire on the frosty grass by the water’s edge while children slid about on the ice and skaters played ice hockey. The Princess of Wales loved skating, but since she was seven months pregnant she thought it advisable merely to watch others, though she presided energetically over a children’s party that evening. The next day she again went out to watch the skating, disregarding twinges of pain in her womb. Lady Macclesfield warned against it, but the Princess made light of her fears and had herself pushed out onto the ice at Virginia Water in a sledge-chair. Returning to Frogmore at dusk she realized that the birth was imminent; and, just before nine o’clock, the child was delivered onto a flannel petticoat belonging to Lady Macclesfield, who, in the absence of medical attendants other than the hastily summoned local doctor, had acted as nurse — an office which, as the mother of thirteen children, she was able to perform with reassuring confidence. She allowed Lord Granville — Lord President of the Council and the only minister readily available — to see the baby so that he could give official assurance of the birth of a future heir to the throne. She then ushered him out of the room and asked the Prince, who had been present at the birth, to leave as well so that the mother could go to sleep in peace. A few minutes later she looked round the door to make sure that all was well. She found that the Prince had slipped back into the room and was holding his wife in his arms. They were both in tears.

  The next day the Princess was as happy as ever; and when no less than six famous doctors came into her room, and approached her bed importantly to hold a consultation over her, she burst out laughing. Yet she could not treat so lightheartedly the advent, on the same day, of her mother-in-law. For some time now she had been aware that the Queen, though still extremely fond of her, had been increasingly critical of her behaviour, that she strongly disapproved of the way she and the Prince had spent so much time gadding about when they should have been quietly awaiting the birth of a baby who might have been expected to enter the world weighing more than a puny three and three-quarter pounds and — ‘poor little boy’ — having some proper clothes to wear instead of being ‘just wrapped in cotton wool’.

  The Queen’s letters to the Crown Princess had of late been full of complaints about her daughter-in-law’s lack of intellectual attainments and her son’s thoughtlessness. ‘She never reads,’ the Queen lamented, ‘and I fear Bertie and she will soon be nothing but two puppets running about for show all day and night … I fear the learning has been much neglected and she cannot either write or I fear speak French well.’ Nor did she write English well, though she seemed to spend half her time writing letters. Even worse than this, she was deaf and everyone noticed it, which was a ‘sad misfortune’.

  Then there was Prince Alfred’s unfortunate passion for going to Marlborough House. He was only nineteen and ‘far too épris of Alix to be allowed too much there without possibly ruining the happiness of all three’. It was ‘like playing with fire’, for Affie did not have the ‘strength of mind or rather of principle and character to resist the temptation’.

  Nor did Bertie have the strength of character to resist rushing about with Alix from one entertainment to the next. He had even wanted to interrupt their autumn visit to Abergeldie, the castle near Balmoral which was lent him by the Queen, for a mad dash over to Rumpenheim for a week. She had had to refuse this, of course, since ‘really they ought to be quiet and that Rumpenheim party’ was ‘very mischievous’ for her ‘poor weak boy’s head’.

  Now that the baby was born, there was further trouble over his name. The grandmother insisted that there could be no question of his not being called Albert, with Victor as a second name; and she told her youngest daughter, the six-year-old Princess Beatrice, who in turn told Lady Macclesfield, that this had been decided. When the news reached the father, he was much put out. ‘I felt rather annoyed,’ he complained to the Queen, ‘when … told … that you had settled what our little boy was to be called before I had spoken to you about it.’ Nor did the Prince altogether approve of the Queen’s suggestion that all his descendants must bear the names of either Albert or Victoria, generation after generation for ever, and that when he himself succeeded to the throne he should be known as King Albert Edward. He reluctantly agreed that there was ‘no absolute reason why it should not be so’, but felt constrained to point out that no English sovereign had borne a double name in the past.

  In the end, however, the Queen had her way and the baby’s first two names were Albert Victor, with Christian added in compliment to his maternal grandfather and Edward after his other grandfather, the Duke of Kent. His parents thereafter knew him as Eddy, though the Queen did not. And as if distressed by the disagreements which his christening provoked, the baby ‘roared all through the ceremony’; while the mother, so the Queen noted, ‘looked very ill, thin and unhappy’ and was ‘sadly gone off’.

  The Princess’s ‘altered appearance’ was the ‘observation of every one’, the Queen later informed the King of the Belgians. She was ‘quite worn out by the most unhealthy life they lead’. The Queen wanted King Leopold to speak to his great-nephew about it. ‘You must not mince the matter but speak strongly and frighten Bertie [who must also be made to] understand what a strong right I have to interfere in the management of the child or children, and that he should never do anything about the child without consulting me.’

  Exasperated as she was about the behaviour of the young parents in England, she was even more exasperated when they insisted on visiting Denmark to see Princess Alexandra’s family. She had ‘not felt it safe’ to tell the Prince of the Cabinet’s decision that nothing could be done to help the Danes, who had to give up Schleswig and Holstein to Prussia and Austria; and, now that the war was over, she was ‘extremely reluctant’ to allow him and the Princess to visit Copenhagen where their reception was likely to give great offence to the Germans. Eventually she g
ave way to their insistent entreaties, but on three conditions: they must visit Germany as well as Denmark; they must travel in the strictest incognito; and the baby must be sent home after three weeks with Lord and Lady Spencer, who, with Sir William Knollys and two doctors, were to accompany them.

  Agreeing to these conditions, the second two of which were to be broken, the Prince and Princess set sail from Dundee aboard the Osborne on 3 September 1864, docking at Elsinore four days later. They were given just such a tumultuous welcome in Copenhagen as the Queen had feared. But although the Princess was happy as always to be with her family once again, the Prince was bored with the humdrum routine of the Castle of Fredensborg where the meals were uninspired, the evenings were spent playing tiresome card games like loo, and the only member of his wife’s family whom he found remotely entertaining was the Crown Prince Frederick. His other brother-in-law, Princess Alexandra’s younger and favourite brother, William, had been elected King of Greece; her eldest sister, Dagmar, was completely preoccupied with the forthcoming visit to Copenhagen of Tsar Alexander II’s heir, to whom she was to become engaged; and the two younger children, Thyra and Waldemar, were in the schoolroom.

  So the Prince was thankful when Grand Duke Nicholas arrived and he could escape with his wife from the dreary castle and, as had been arranged in England, pay a visit to King Charles XV of Sweden, grandson of Napoleon I’s marshal, Bernadotte, and a far more lively man than King Christian IX of Denmark. But what had not been arranged in England was that the Prince and Princess should stay in the royal palace at Stockholm rather than at a hotel or the British Legation; that they should attend a public reception; and that there should be an elk hunt, full details of which, and of the Prince of Wales’s presence and deportment, were reported in newspapers all over Europe.