by Roland Perry
17
THE PERFECT BUTLER
Prince Albert’s true nature did not take long to emerge. He became royal ‘house-keeper of the Palaces’, sweeping out corruption (a black market in unused candles); reducing spending at dinner; cutting down on the number of non-working governesses in the nursery; getting rid of promiscuous maids-in-waiting; increasing kitchen hygiene; making heating more efficient in the frigid apartments; and generally improving the palace economies and efficiencies. His fastidiousness knew no bounds. Biographer Lytton Strachey wondered: ‘was he the wife, and she the husband? It almost seemed so.’ Strachey believed that Albert was homosexual, yet it may have been wishful thinking for Strachey was of the same persuasion.The prince consort was, after all, siring the abundant royal children. The biographer and some others at court also seemed to confuse Albert’s lack of engagement with the females in his immediate surrounds with his sexuality. But they were more likely to have been unconnected.
‘From resembling a foreign tenor,’ English author Michael Holroyd noted in the Foreword to a later illustrated edition of Strachey’s biography of the prince, ‘Albert changes during the course of his marriage into an idealised butler.’ Strachey’s ‘code’ for Albert’s sexuality began with him saying he was ‘melancholic and isolated’. He noted also that he was ‘a shy young foreigner, awkward in ladies’ company, unexpansive and self-opinionated . . .it was improbable that, in any circumstances, he would have been a society success.’
Again, these observed traits did not necessarily have any bearing on his sexual inclinations. Strachey further remarked that Albert was ‘utterly’ severed from the ‘support and solace of true companionship’. The prince excited idolatry, starting with his biggest fan, the young Victoria, who was mesmerised by his looks. The other young ladies and ‘maids’ at court agreed that he was handsome. But their infatuation died when he paid them no attention. Mild flirtation at least and something more intense were expected parts of court life, especially with the obsessive attention to dress and appearance in general. But Albert gave them nothing, not even a glance. The women of all ages were disenchanted yet his ignoring of them was more likely to have been because he found them trivial, uninteresting and inconsequential to his drive to expand the role of the monarchy. On top of this, he was unlikely to flirt with others because he was reverential towards his wife, who in any case, as a woman or queen or both, would not have appreciated any such dalliances, however harmless.
Those more remote from palace intrigues remained in star-struck admiration of Albert. But Strachey believed this fickle and unknowing public response did not meet Albert’s emotional needs. According to the biographer, he had no friends to turn to. His German intimates and family were not allowed to join him. Looking for clues to his make-up, Strachey noted that Albert did not take after his womanising father.
‘Owing either to his peculiar upbringing,’ the biographer observed, ‘or to a more fundamental idiosyncrasy, he had a marked distaste for the opposite sex.’ Strachey was persuaded that ‘though later on, he grew more successful in disguising such feelings, the feelings remained.’ Once more, this was a generalisation too far. For one thing, he may well have had revulsion to his father’s philandering with whores, whom a young Albert may well have despised. For another, Albert, had a good relationship with his mother-in-law, the Duchess of Kent, despite his wife’s estrangement, and he would later be close to his daughters, particularly Vicky. And of course, he had an intense relationship with Victoria, regardless of their sex life, which together did not register that he found ‘the opposite sex’ in general as reprehensible.
When commenting on domesticity at Buckingham Palace, Strachey wrote: ‘The husband was not so happy as the wife, in spite of the great improvement in his situation, in spite of a growing family and the adoration of Victoria,Albert was still a stranger in a strange land, and the serenity of spiritual satisfaction was denied him . . .Victoria idolised him, but it was understanding that he craved, not idolatry . . .He was lonely.’
Other observers noted that Albert tried all kinds of ways to avoid intimate contact. But the onslaught of Victoria’s sexual needs, which appeared to him as carnal avarice, may well have had many others ducking for cover.
One night in mid-spring 1842 he ran out of excuses as Victoria knocked on his bedroom door. This was the third year of demands made intermittent by her reluctant acceptance of his explanation that Christians did not have sex with a pregnant woman. Albert’s pious noises left the queen moody and begrudging because of his abstinence.
Albert this night cowered behind the door. She knew he was in his quarters and his silence was an attempt to bluff her into believing he was asleep at 10 p.m. But Victoria knew he worked with papers and books strewn on and around his bed. She knocked louder. Again there was no response.
‘Albert, you can’t be asleep at this hour.’ She paused. ‘Are you ill?’ She hammered the wooden panels now.
‘Open this door!’ she screamed in German.‘I am the queen!’
‘And I can’t take it.’ Albert thought. He waited, sitting on the floor until she sulked off back to her own room. The next morning he did not appear at breakfast and Victoria was genuinely concerned. Clark was sent for. On hearing that the doctor was on his way,Albert emerged looking pale and exhausted. He’d had no sleep.
‘What on earth were you up to last night?’ Victoria demanded. ‘You must have heard my calling and knocking?
‘I had the most terrible headache.’
‘But I am your wife. I can help . . .’
‘I did not wish to burden you,’ he said softly in German.
Clark arrived and insisted on seeing his patient alone in his bedchamber.
‘I believe you have a headache,’ Clark remarked with a sceptical look. There had been no love lost between them since the Lady Flora affair and Albert only used him as his physician because Victoria ordered it.
‘I have a mixed powder for you,’ Clark said sitting on a chair by the patient as he lay on the bed as if ill. Clark rustled in his satchel and handed him a small packet.
‘What is it, Clark?’
‘It is a wonderful Indian-Chinese analgesic combination. Never fails. I am my own experiment with it! Take this every day until it runs out.’ He added with a sly grin, ‘You will not disappoint or indeed be saddened yourself.’ He winked at Albert. ‘Nor will you have one of these miserable headaches.’
Albert managed to avoid Victoria’s advances for a fortnight with her enquiring every night if he had recovered.When Clark pronounced him ‘well’, Victoria pounced. When she pressed him to fulfil her conjugal needs he relied on the ‘medicine’. He wondered if it were a true aphrodisiac or a placebo. Whatever he concluded, he made sure he was never without it. And it worked in a way that answered Albert’s prayers.Victoria was pregnant again.This gave him the excuse he craved and nearly a year’s reprieve from her obsessive pursuit of sexual favours from him.Victoria enjoyed sex far more than its results but nevertheless produced a second daughter, Princess Alice, on 25 April 1843.
Once Elphinstone had attended to his financial affairs in Britain, he took a steamer back to the Bay of Bengal. He had written to Husna, hoping that she might return to India to be with him. She replied, saying that she had finished her para-medical course in Stockholm but this did not allow her to work as a doctor in France. She was now in Paris at Napoleon III’s court looking after the horses at the hippodrome where she had become close to Céleste Vernard, a brilliant rider and courtesan of court, whom she had met through the English woman ‘Lola Mentez’—the theatrical name of the former Mrs James, who had left her Indian Army husband in search of ‘adventure’ as a high-class courtesan. Husna had no plans to return to India at that moment. But the last bit of her letter gave him a sliver of hope about a future with her. Husna had heard he was not attached to Victoria. She wondered how connected he was to England. Most importantly for Elphinstone, she intimated she missed him.
In May 1843 Elphinstone began touring and trekking in regions of India that had taken his interest during his tenure as Madras governor. He had built contacts with scholars, writers, journalists, orators, scientists and even religious and social reformers. All advised him where he should go and what he should see. He would start by hunting wild boar and hyenas in the jungles in Bengal. But he would concentrate on tigers, which were in abundance and often caused havoc among the local people. He had his sights on the biggest of them, after learning that some were nearly three metres in length and weighed more than 150 kilograms. After Bengal he planned to travel through the ‘top’ of India—Kashmir—regarded by many as the most beautiful area in the world. In the mid-nineteenth century it denoted the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range.Elphinstone was one of the very few Europeans,if not the first, to tackle this remote region. He also wished to see the Ganges Plain of North India (Hindustan). Elphinstone—the trekker, mountaineer and hunter—wanted to see for himself if these romantic and remote regions were indeed more enchanting than his home country.
His experience in England had not enticed him to think about returning. Elphinstone decided that if he were going to spend time away from his homeland, he would make the most of the trip both as an adventurer and investor. He believed his return was an opportunity to consolidate his wealth and he purchased sizeable estates in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and India, which were available to members of the Raj at cheap rates. Elphinstone was unsure how long he would be away and did not care if it were a long time.
A fourth royal child, Prince Alfred (‘Alfie’) was born 6 August 1844. Victoria’s euphemism for sex was ‘fun’ and she continued to demand it from her disenchanted husband. But with such rapid human production she was kept, if not barefoot and pregnant, then preoccupied by the increased population of the nursery. Albert, feigning as ever that ‘fun’ during the nine months gestation was a religious ‘taboo’, managed to continue to avoid more regular intimacy.This did not improve Victoria’s moods, or modify their swings. But as long as he did the fatherly and family things with his wife and children, Victoria was mollified and essentially ‘happy’ while remaining unsatisfied. She believed that part of her role was to provide a good Christian family image and example to the nation.
While her desire for satisfaction was undiminished, she remained unimaginative in her attitude to sexual mores, which was typical of the times characterised by repression, strict morality and an indefatigable ignorance. An instance of this was a concerted move in parliament to legislate against lesbianism. She told Prime Minister Peel in her weekly meeting: ‘I don’t want this legislation to go through.’
An astonished Peel gaped.
‘May I ask if your majesty is for such appalling activity?’
‘Of course not,’ she said with a fierce look. ‘I believe the act is impossible!’
‘The act?’
‘Of these, you know, mythical lesbians.’
The prime minister was speechless.Victoria wriggled uncomfortably and filled the conversation’s gap.
‘I have consulted both the royal physician and Prince Albert on the matter,’ she insisted, ‘and they agree with me. And if this alleged vice is not physically possible, it would be absurd to introduce legislation to outlaw it. I and the prince do not wish to see such legislation discussed and aired and perhaps even reported on in the press. Would you not agree?’
Peel left the meeting under strict instructions. When he met with cabinet there was astonishment among its members.
‘I’m afraid her majesty finds the whole business distasteful,’ the prime minister reported.
‘Which?’ one cabinet member chimed in, ‘the proposed legislation or lesbianism?’ ‘They say no Sovereign was more loved than I am,’ Victoria boasted to Leopold after being cheered by big crowds in London streets when she was driven to open the Royal Exchange in late October 1844. But she was grounded in the reason. ‘[Our] happy domestic home. . .gives such a good example.’
Albert was also able to brag in a letter to Stockmar:‘Here, after four years, is the recognition of the position we took up from the first.You always said that if the Monarchy was to rise in popularity, it could only be by the Sovereign leading an exemplary life, and keeping quite aloof from and above party.’
This image-building with the children in public helped Victoria overcome her often manic lust. He busied himself with meetings on the arts and in acquiring a property on the Isle of Wight—Osborne—that was bought for £26,000. The money had come from Albert’s economic drive and parsimony. They were also diverted by holidays in Scotland at Blair Athol, which they enjoyed, and further travels abroad, including to France on board their new yacht, the Victoria and Albert. Albert travelled alone for the first time since his marriage when his father, 59, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg died, leaving his older brother Ernest to rule the little duchy. Albert wept more for nostalgic reasons than over the departure of his father, whose womanising had broken the home and destroyed Albert’s early childhood. The not-so-beloved Papa had used emotional blackmail and bullying in forcing Albert to ask Victoria for a big allowance.The duke was true to his character as a lecherous drunk; he had passed on hereditary syphilis to Ernest, which had left him impotent. Albert had not inherited the condition, which fuelled strong rumours that he was illegitimate. His mother had been dismissed from the Saxe-Coburg court for having an affair with the Jewish chamberlain, the cultivated Baron von Mayern.The incident and his father’s behaviour had left Albert a disturbed five-year-old when his parents went their separate ways. He developed, in his looks and refined intellect, into a character very like von Mayern and at odds with that of the duke.
Albert had already moved on in his mind when he attended the duke’s funeral. Steeped in the obsessive drive to create a royal dynasty, he was thinking about how his new son Prince Alfred would one day rule Coburg. Ernest was never likely to produce a legitimate heir.Albert told him that little Alfie would be trained ‘to love the dear small country to which he belongs, as does his Papa.’ The Prince of Wales, Bertie, would be developed for something less modest: King of the British Empire. The bright princess royal,Vicky, aged four, was already being lined up for the heir to the King of Prussia, who was aged twelve. No likely match for little Alice had been found just yet, but both parents would keep scouring the limited pool for any potential partner.
18
TIME OUT AT OSBORNE
Elphinstone’s adventures in India looked like ending in early 1845 but a flare-up in the country’s north where Sikhs resisted British expansion caused him to stay. By the time he had travelled through the regions south and around the trouble-spots, the British were looking to settle the region down under as much of their imperial control as possible. Soon after the death of the one-eyed emperor, Maharajah Ranjit Singh, in 1839, the East India Company had begun building up its armed forces, mainly in the regions close to the Punjab. In 1844, the British had annexed Sindh, in the Punjab’s south. They then established a military base just south of the Sutlej River at Ferozepur, 120 kilometres south of Lahore. This city marked the frontier between the British-ruled India and the Punjab. Elphinstone visited Ferozepur in February 1845. He was aware from discussions and correspondence with two associates—former Governor-General Lord Ellenborough and his successor, Sir Henry Hardinge—that they were concerned with Sikh power in the Punjab.They directed their military commanders to prepare siege-gun batteries, which could be used for defence or attack.
The British attitudes were influenced by Major George Broadfoot, who sent intelligence reports from the Punjab. His informants recorded the corruption in the Punjab court and the general mayhem in this last independent kingdom, which happened to be the richest with its store of grand diamonds. Many British officials wanted to annex the Punjab, which would give them complete control of India. They were held back by not having the manpower or resources to maintain the territories if they did move on them. But then diplomatic relations
broke down between the Sikhs and the East India Company. The latter’s army, commanded by Sir Hugh Gough, began marching towards Ferozepur.The force consisted of Bengal Army formations; one British unit to every three or four Bengal infantry or cavalry units.
At this point in September 1845, Elphinstone marched with the 14th Light Dragoons, which was commanded by Colonel William Havelock. He had been Elphinstone’s military secretary in Madras. They moved from Bombay through central India to Ferozepur.
The Sikh army began crossing the Sutlej River on 11 December 1845 in response to the British activity and threat. A Sikh force clashed with the British, including the 14th Light Dragoons and Elphinstone, at the Battle of Mudki on 18 December.The British won.They continued to win until the main Sikh bridgehead at Sobraon on 10 February 1846. The Sikh forces fought stubbornly but were eventually surrounded and trapped. They would not surrender. The British showed no mercy in the final attack that broke the Sikh army.
The Treaty of Lahore on 9 March 1846 forced the Sikhs to surrender the valuable region between the Beas and Sutlej rivers. The Lahore Durbar (the court administrating the affairs of state) had to pay an indemnity of 15 million rupees, for which it could not find the funds. This in turn forced it to cede specific areas to the East India Company: Kashmir, Hazarah and all the forts, territories, rights and interests in the hill countries between the rivers Beas and Indus. This allowed Elphinstone to join a British trekking party, which explored the valley of Kashmir. He stayed three months, then set out for Ladakh via the Husora Valley. Elphinstone’s aim was to move onto the Giljit Valley, which had never been explored by foreigners. The British governor-general objected, fearing the expedition would be lost. Elphinstone defied the authorities and crossed the Hurpo Pass to Rondu on the Indus River, 500 kilometres north-east of Lahore. He became the first Britisher to make the journey.