by Gillian Gill
Such grandmotherly protests were in vain. On the longer journeys, in rain, sleet, or snow, the duke and his sons always traveled in an open carriage or sled, an exercise in machismo that raised eyebrows even at the time. Albert, like his uncle Leopold, felt the cold intensely, but there were no fur-lined robes and feather boas for him as a boy. In his memoir, Duke Ernest II recalled how as boys he and his brother were “hardened in every way. I remember that we once rode in the depth of winter over the mountain road from Coburg to Gotha, and suffered fearfully from the intense cold. On such an occasion, our father expected us to show the self-command of grown men.” Florschütz, who also had to endure the hardships the duke imposed, describes the boy Prince Albert as “rather delicate than robust, though already remarkable for his powers of perseverance and endurance.”
To Florschütz’s regret, all the travel and social activity when their father was at home left almost no time for the princes to attend to their studies. Ernest, who closely resembled his father, was probably happy enough with court life. He and Albert were both keen shots, eager to kill a gross of birds sent up by the beaters or put some iron into a corral of deer at a battue. But at the end of a long day outside, Albert, unlike his father and brother, craved privacy, quiet, and sleep. Evening parties were an ordeal. He had no small talk, despised gossip, avoided wine, and found rich foods indigestible. But only by taking part in court life and following the duke in his incessant wanderings, hunts, and parties could Prince Albert be near his father, and, to judge from his boyhood letters, he longed for his father’s attention and approval.
Was Prince Albert happy as a child? This question has been often debated in the biographical literature, and it is impossible to resolve. The letters and journals from the period that have been published since the prince’s death are carefully selected and probably censored. As adults, neither brother cared to find the Proustian madeleine that would unlock the felt experience of the past.
In the few general comments about his childhood that we have on record, Albert contradicted himself. Not long before his death, the prince told the Queen that his childhood had been the happiest time of his life, which cannot have been much comfort to his wife of twenty-one years. In sympathetic response to her mother’s distress after the prince consort’s death, Vicky, the Princess Royal, wrote to Queen Victoria that her father had told her privately “that he could not bear to think about his childhood, he had been so unhappy and miserable, and had many a time wished himself out of this world.”
To Vicky, the child so loved and so like himself, who faced the grim reality of life at a German court, Albert probably told the truth. In youth, he suffered a good deal, the victim of his father’s selfish and autocratic ways, the unwilling witness to the corruption at his father’s court, and never free to express his feelings. “From our earliest years,” wrote Albert’s brother somewhat cryptically to Queen Victoria in December 1839, “we [Albert and I] have been surrounded by difficult circumstances, of which we were perfectly conscious, and perhaps more than most people, we have been accustomed to see men in the most opposite positions that human life can offer.” In a May 1840 private letter to his brother, Prince Albert could be more direct, almost accusing: “You well knew the events and scandals that had always happened in Coburg Castle and the town, and just this knowledge has made you indifferent to morality.”
But apart from such scattered and discreet statements, Ernest and Albert, as boys and adults, kept their thoughts about their father and his court to themselves. Ambitious and proud men, united in their commitment to the Coburg dynasty, they saw no advantage in leaving for posterity a trove of revealing private documents.
In 1857 Albert (by then prince consort) wrote to his brother that he had wished to be in Coburg for the recent visit of his second son, Alfred. “I longed to be with you and to have experienced all the dear memories Alfred’s presence awakened in your soul, when you walked in our beloved quiet, Rosenau park, and when you showed him the paradise of our childhood.” As this quotation makes clear, by “paradise” the prince meant the natural beauty that surrounded him in childhood and gave him so much comfort. Also part of that paradise was the loving and loyal companionship of his constant companions: his brother and his tutor.
THE YEAR 1831 BROUGHT significant changes in the little world of Coburg-Gotha. To the immense excitement of the whole Wettin clan, Prince Leopold was selected by the Great Powers (England, France, Russia, and Austria) as first king of the Belgians. In short order, the new king set about founding a dynasty with Louise of Bourbon, daughter of the French king, Louis Philippe. In August, the boys’ mother, Louise of Saxe-Gotha, Countess Pölzig, former Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, died in Paris, unbeknownst to her two sons in Coburg. In November the lives of Albert and Ernest were touched directly when their paternal grandmother died in Coburg. Dowager Duchess Augusta of Saxe-Coburg was the acknowledged architect of the family’s early successes and officially an object of adoration among her children and grandchildren. Her passing marked the end of an era.
In July 1831, Duke Ernest traveled across to England to visit his youngest sister, Victoire, at Kensington Palace. The Duchess of Kent had received an increase in her parliamentary stipend and could entertain her German relatives in style. As usual, Duke Ernest traveled without his sons. “I wish I was with you, to see all the sights that you will have seen,” wrote Prince Albert to his father with precocious pedantry. “Though I should like to be with you, yet we like being here also, and are very happy at the Rosenau. The quiet of the place, too, is very agreeable, for our time is well regulated and divided.” At five, Prince Albert had dared to write to his father of his unhappiness and to ask for a doll that nodded its head. By eleven he had learned to ask for nothing and express only obedience and contentment.
As soon as he learned of the death of his wife, Duchess Louise, Duke Ernest went a-courting again, fantasizing perhaps of a rich and nubile bride like brother Leopold’s. But the Duke of Coburg’s eligibility had only declined with age, and the best wife he could find was Princess Marie of Württemberg. She was a notable connection, since Württemberg (along with Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Hanover) was in the first rank of German states, allied by marriage with the royal families of England and Russia. On the other hand, Princess Marie was already thirty-three years old, and she was also her husband’s niece, the daughter of his sister Antoinette. Even among European aristocracy, marriage between uncle and niece was increasingly discouraged, and in England it was against the law. It says something of the unhappy condition of unmarried German princesses that Marie was prepared to marry her dissolute and debt-ridden old uncle.
Duke Ernest’s second marriage was an extreme case of the Coburg tendency to practice endogamy and keep money in the family. It was a qualified success at best and, given the clout wielded by the Württembergs, getting first the money and then a divorce was not an option for the duke this time. A severe and melancholy lady, Duchess Marie was tempted by invalidism, not adultery, and, if she put up with her husband’s infidelities, she gave him as little as possible in return. She bore him no children and led an increasingly separate life over which, it seems, the duke had no control. With her stepsons Ernest and Albert, first cousins she had known all her life, she remained on friendly terms until her death.
What the princes thought of their father’s choice of a bride we do not know, but on the surface, as usual all was filial obedience. From this point on, when Prince Albert went traveling, he wrote to his “dear mamma,” describing his activities with rather more than his usual animation. History has been grateful for this. Only when he had become semi-independent in his nineteenth year did Prince Albert venture a comment on the peculiarities in the relationship between his father and stepmother. Duke Ernest and Duchess Marie were invited to attend the coronation of Queen Victoria. The duke accepted the invitation, but his wife declined to accompany him. “So you go to England to the coronation,” Albert wrote to his father in May 1838
. “It is really a pity that mamma should not be going also; it would have been more natural, and I am sure the Queen will be very sorry not to see her. At the same time, I must say that I never thought dear mamma would make up her mind to accept such an invitation.”
IN APRIL 1835, by special arrangement and at their urgent request, both Prince Ernest, aged seventeen, and Prince Albert, aged sixteen, were confirmed at the same time. The lengthy and solemn Lutheran confirmation ceremony, which included a public doctrinal examination, was held in the Hall of Giants at the Ehrenburg before a host of relatives and local dignitaries. Queen Victoria’s half brother and half sister, the Prince of Leiningen and the Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg (Feodora) were present to hear the princes give their affirmation of faith. Duchess Marie, their stepmother, was conspicuous by her absence. The confirmation marked the end of childhood for both princes, and the time had now come for Duke Ernest to take his sons abroad for the first time.
On this introductory tour, the princes still traveled very much on the cheap. They went first to Mecklenburg to attend the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the accession of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, their dead mother’s grandfather. They then stayed briefly in Berlin, where they were presented at the Prussian court, and went on to visit family members in Dresden, Prague, and Vienna. The two princes were well received, but travel and court life proved not to Albert’s taste. To his stepmother/cousin Duchess Marie he wrote stiffly: “I can assure you, dear Mamma, that we are quite well and that we have enjoyed ourselves in Mecklenburg as well as in Berlin. It requires, however, a giant’s strength to bear all the fatigues we have had to undergo. Visits, parades, rides, déjeuners, dinners, suppers, balls, and concerts follow each other in rapid succession, and we have not been allowed to miss any of the festivities.” Albert was still very much the little boy who crawled into a corner to sleep at evening parties and who cried when forced to attend a dance.
Now that both Ernest and Albert were officially “out,” it was time for the family to decide on their futures. Ernest was heir to a duchy increasingly troubled by democratic protests and possessed of more pretensions than revenues. Albert had a title and a small legacy from his mother, if his father could be persuaded to give up the money. The single career option open to a German prince was the army, but Europe was at peace, and the promotion possibilities for the aristocratic officer caste were correspondingly poor. Duke Ernest could afford for only one of his sons to go into the army, and since Prince Ernest was well disposed to the military life, he was the obvious choice.
Both princes would eventually have to marry for money the Coburg clan’s favorite road to riches. They were intent on keeping the newly acquired wealth and prestige in the family. If an attractive young Coburg could not marry up the social hierarchy he or she must at least marry a rich cousin. Each new Coburg child who reached adulthood, whether male or female, was scrutinized carefully for marital and reproductive potential. Nothing was left to chance, or inclination.
By the standards of his caste, Albert’s key asset in life was not his intellect, integrity, or love of study but his striking good looks. He was a promising stud horse with good bloodlines, expected to sire a set of young colts that would take the racing world by storm. Any personal ambitions and youthful dreams the prince might have must wait until the reproductive duties had been attended to. As his adult life would prove, Albert could have succeeded as a professor, geologist, botanist, statistician, musician, engineer, or bureaucrat, and probably found satisfaction in his work. But the one thing that the younger son of a German prince could not do in the early nineteenth century was train, take up a profession, and earn money.
Traditionally, aristocratic young blades were encouraged to get lots of reproductive practice in before marriage, but here Prince Albert’s position was anomalous. From early childhood, his name was linked to his cousin Victoria, and by the time both were young adolescents, their families were dead set on the marriage. Victoria, as heir presumptive to the throne of England, was uniquely empowered to dictate the terms of her marriage, and her mother, under Conroy’s influence, had trained her to prize moral purity. Victoria dreamed of a partner as chaste as herself, a man who had never loved a woman, and who would be hers alone. Given the sexual mores of early nineteenth-century royalty, finding such a man was about as easy as finding a unicorn. Fortunately Victoria’s uncle Leopold and Baron Stock-mar anticipated her wishes and were busy breeding the mythical creature in their own paddock.
Leopold and Stockmar had seen the ravages wrought by venereal disease on the noble houses of Europe. They saw the value of a virgin and therefore untainted prince in the next round of the fabulous dynastic game they had been playing in England for decades. In his pretty, fragile, precocious, docile nephew Albert, Leopold saw possibilities from an early age. Stockmar was much less sure.
Training for the Big Race
…
HE PRINCESS VICTORIA OF KENT WAS THE GREATEST HEIRESS IN EUROPE. She was also half-Coburg, so the whole Coburg clan was focused on finding her a Coburg husband with whom she could found an English dynasty that would be three-quarters Coburg.
Albert Coburg was the sentimental favorite. Dowager Duchess Augusta, the family matriarch, had picked him out in his cradle as the ideal mate for her granddaughter, the little English mayflower, as she referred to Victoria in an early letter. However, by 1835, Albert faced some rivals in the family. His older brother, Ernest, as well as Duke Ernest of Württemberg (Duchess Marie’s brother and thus the Coburg princes’ first cousin/stepuncle) were pushed by different factions in the Coburg family.
In some ways Ernest Coburg, stronger, taller, and more mature, was more suitable than Albert, and Duke Ernest of Coburg pressed his elder son’s candidacy with vigor. Feodora of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Victoria’s half sister, who lived in Germany, also warmly recommended their cousin Ernest to Victoria in a letter. Prince Ernest himself was eager to try for Victoria’s hand. However, he and his father were unable to make any headway against King Leopold and Stockmar. Those two gentlemen refused to countenance a marriage between Victoria Kent and Ernest Coburg. Ernest had not inherited the fabled Coburg looks, but he had inherited the notorious Coburg libido.
In May 1836, much to the wrath of King William IV, who was busy fielding his own contenders for Victoria’s hand, Duke Ernest brought his sons to Kensington Palace for their first visit to England. The real purpose of the visit was to arrange a secret engagement between Victoria and Albert, but Stockmar had insisted that the young people should be kept in the dark about their elders’ plans. Victoria was an experienced player of the courting game and did not need to be told what was afoot. Albert, it seems possible, did not understand what his mission in England was. Certainly he failed to play the part expected of him, and there was no engagement.
The elders who carefully observed the two young people together were in no doubt as to what had gone wrong. There was nothing of Cherubino in the makeup of Prince Albert at sixteen. The art of sweeping a damsel off her feet had not been part of the curriculum at the Rosenau. Rather the contrary. In the family circle, allowed to express himself in his native language, encouraged to play the piano and sing duets, permitted to shine, Albert could be interesting and “merry”—a key attribute for Victoria. But he showed not a flicker of interest in the opposite sex, and in his letters home, the best thing he could say about Victoria was that she was “agreeable.”
Duke Ernest and his sons traveled directly from England to Belgium to report back to Uncle Leopold. Their colt had been entered in a race before he was ready to run, but he still had excellent potential. Neither the Princess Victoria nor her mother seemed inclined to accept any of the suitors proposed by the ailing King of England. The Coburg family still had a few years to train Albert and bring him to physical maturity. King Leopold, who saw a lot of his own looks and intellect in Albert, now resolved to get his nephew away from his father’s court and small-town life in Coburg-Go
tha. Leopold would organize his nephew’s education and invest in his future. Since kings are very busy men, especially when their thrones are new and tottery, Leopold instructed Stockmar to take Albert in hand. More remarkably, given his reputation for parsimony, he opened the royal checkbook.
Stockmar was persona much more grata at the Court of St. James’s than at the court of Coburg. Thus he knew Princess Victoria quite well but Prince Albert hardly at all. When he did have a chance to study Albert, he wondered whether the boy could succeed as Victoria’s husband and consort. Victoria was smaller and looked meeker than her ill-fated cousin Charlotte, but she had as much will and as much pride, and her husband would have no easy time of mastering her. Did Albert have any sense of what he was taking on, wrote Stockmar to Leopold, not only with Victoria but with England, which had no love of foreign princes, especially German ones called Coburg? Was Albert ready of his own accord “to sacrifice mere plea sure to real usefulness?” Was he just filled with boyish pride and naive ambition? “If simply to fill one of the most influential positions in Europe does not satisfy him,” Stockmar went on, “how often will he feel tempted to regret what he has undertaken. If he does not, right from the start, regard it as a serious and responsible task upon the fulfillment of which his honour and happiness depend, he is not likely to succeed.” Poor Albert, just seventeen!