We Two: Victoria and Albert

by Gillian Gill

  140 In Florence at a ball “Voilà un prince don’t nous pouvons être fiers. La belle danseuse l’attend—le savant l’occupe.” Early Years, p. 120

  141 “[Prince Albert] had been accustomed Early Years, pp 164–165.

  141 Albert himself paints Early Years, pp. 166–167.

  141 In the same bitter vein Cecil Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, p. 186.

  141 He opined that the prince would Memoirs of Baron Stockmar, vol. ii, p. 7. It was presumably the publication of comments like this about the young Albert that led Queen Victoria to deplore the publication of the baron’s memoirs.

  141 “Then I must go Early Years, p. 326.

  142 The visit may have been Harald Sandner reports a fascinating rumor that Albert in Carlsbad had an affair with a certain Countess Resterlitz, but he offers no supporting evidence (see Sander, p. 70).

  142 This fact is established conclusively Guardians of the reputation of the English royal family, notably Hector Bolitho, editor of the brothers’ correspondence, successfully kept this incriminating letter out of print. The quoted passage was published only in 1959 by Frank Eyck, one of the rare British historians capable of reading nineteenth-century German handwriting.

  142 I am deeply distressed and grieved The Prince Consort: A Political Biography, Frank Eyck, p. 19.

  143 In 1844 Alexandrine officially adopted Sandner, p. 106.

  143 He had a succession of According to Harald Sandner, these illegitimate children were Helene von Sternheim, born around 1839, of Fräulein Steinpflug; Karl Raymond, Freiherr von Ketschendorff, born of the opera singer Victorine Noel; and Graf Razumofsky von Wigstein, born 1852 of Baroness Rosa Löwenstein (Sander, p. 103).

  143 Either Albert’s purity or his authority Even the most loyalist of English royal biographers have been obliged to admit, when pressed, that Duke Ernest II of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert’s brother, had a scandalous private life, but it was a subject they preferred to avoid. Facts were hard to come by until the German scholars Harald Sandner, Harald Bachmann, and Gertraude Bachmann explored the Coburg state archives in the late 1990s. Anecdotal attacks on Duke Ernest II are found scattered in various English memoirs. Lt. Col. Arthur Haig, in a letter written in the early 1880s to Henry Ponsonby, one of Queen Victoria’s most trusted aides, was scathing: “Ernest the Great, the Good, the Chaste, the Second, the Father, the Grandfather now of many of his subjects, will appear in state. His Consort and all his other Consorts will be there—all those that have been—that are—and that are going to be—all … Send out a Hogarth quick to paint the picture of ‘La Famille ducale et demi-ducale.’” Haig then goes on to say that the duke had found a bourgeois husband for his most recent maitresse en titre at the lady’s own request. She had decided that she needed a respectable exit from Coburg, since her lover the duke seemed likely to die soon and his heir, Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria’s second son, was sure to send her packing (Arthur Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby, London: Macmillan, 1942, p. 350). Dean Stanley, an intimate of Queen Victoria accompanying the Prince of Wales on a tour of the Near East following the death of the prince consort, met the Duke of Saxe-Coburg in Egypt in 1862 and confided to his diary: “If anything could increase the respect for Prince Albert and the thankfulness for what he has been to England, it may be the reflection of what would have been the difference had the Queen married the older brother. He [Ernest II] is going to hunt in Abyssinia and I trust I may never set eyes on him again” (Bolitho, Albert—Prince Consort, p. xi). Lady Marie Mallet wrote around 1890: “The old Duke of Saxe-Coburg has been here [Balmoral] today with his wife. He is the Prince Consort’s only brother and an awful-looking man, the Queen dislikes him particularly. He is always writing anonymous pamphlets against the Queen and the Empress Frederick [Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter] which naturally cause a great deal of annoyance in the family” (Life With Queen Victoria: Letters from Court, ed. Victor Mallet, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968, p. 52).

  PART TWO: TOGETHER

  Chapter 12: VICTORIA PLANS HER MARRIAGE

  147 He called her Vortrefflichste This may have been less extravagant a compliment than it seems. Extracts from the correspondence and journals of members of the Coburg family show that vortrefflich was a favorite adjective rather like the English “delightful,” used to describe almost anything enjoyable.

  148 “An experienced man John Plunkett, Queen Victoria, First Media Monarch, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 213.

  149 These were the facts After his marriage, Albert received tuition in the English constitution from Mr. William Selwyn, an acknowledged English legal expert. See Martin, vol. i, p. 87. This older gentleman shocked the prince by daring to sit down in “the presence” without authorization and delivering long, rather meandering and haphazard lectures, sadly lacking in the kind of abstract political principles the prince admired. See Fulford, The Prince Consort, p. 65. Also in 1842, the Queen and the prince together read Hallam, a standard authority on the English constitution.

  150 He would leave her queen A good example of the advice given to the prince is the following remark by King Leopold recorded by Prince Albert’s private secretary George Anson at Windsor in August 1840: “The Prince ought in business as in everything to be necessary to the Queen, he should be to her a walking dictionary for reference on any point which her own knowledge or education have not enabled her to answer. There should be no concealment from him on any subject” (quoted by Frank Eyck, p. 22, from a memorandum by Anson, Royal Archives Y.54.8).

  151 There, according to Stockmar’s memoirs Stockmar, Memoirs, vol. ii, p. 18.

  152 The Coburg party, which comprised For a brief summary of these events (which are covered in detail in all biographies of Queen Victoria), see chapter 7, p. 87.

  153 It was a point of honor In the fifteenth century, Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, one of Prince Albert’s ancestors, took up the cause of Martin Luther, and suffered a permanent loss of land, wealth, and status as a result. See the opening section of Early Years.

  154 She duly issued letters patent This is the version I have found in standard biographies, but Stockmar in his memoirs claims to have advised the Queen to issue the letters patent establishing Albert’s precedence.

  154 As a loyal wife-to-be She raised the issue on at least three separate occasions: with her Whig prime minister Melbourne before her marriage and with her Tory prime minister Peel in late 1841 and again in 1845. Though Peel was a close ally of the prince’s, he saw quite as clearly as Melbourne that a motion to make Albert king consort was doomed to fail in parliament and risked bringing down the monarchy if it were made public.

  154 “For God’s sake, say no more Jerrold, The Married Life of Queen Victoria, p. 43.

  155 The Tories unearthed their social conscience A general dislike of the Coburg family among the British ruling classes was more probably the reason for the cut in Prince Albert’s appanage than the poverty of the masses. Leopold, by clinging to his parliamentary income even after he was given the Belgian throne, had queered the pitch for his nephew, and both knew it.

  155 They laid the blame squarely Stockmar, who was in London as the Coburg family’s agent during the time of the engagement, blamed Melbourne’s careless handling of the negotiations with parliament for the slights suffered by Prince Albert. He also believed that the opposition to the prince expressed by the High Tory faction had been fomented by Victoria’s senior uncle, Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, king of Hanover. Whether or not this allegation was true, Albert believed it, and his relations with Cumberland were always extremely hostile.

  155 In fact, the Tories could afford As Prince Albert recalled to Baron Stockmar in 1854: “When I first came [to England], I was met by this want of knowledge and unwillingness to give a thought to the position of this luckless personage [the husband of a queen regnant]. Peel cut down my income, Wellington refused me my rank, the Royal family cried out against the foreign interloper, the Whigs in office were only inclined
to concede to me just as much space as I could stand upon” (Jagow, Letters of the Prince Consort, p. 205).

  156 Determined that this money at least David Duff gives a detailed analysis of the correspondence between Victoria and Albert during the engagement period. He quotes the following unpublished letter from Albert: “As the Queen’s husband, I shall be in a dependent position, more dependent than any other husband in my circumstances. My private fortune is all that is left to me to dispose of. I am therefore not unfair in requesting that that which has belonged to me since I came of age a year ago shall be left under my control” (Duff, Victoria and Albert, p. 182). Duff says that Albert gave Ernest the money he had inherited from their mother. My reading of the published letters between the two brothers leads me to believe that Albert merely designated Ernest to act for him in the matter of the property.

  157 Charles Greville, a cynical man See Fulford, p. 81, citing Greville, vol. v, p. 229.

  157 No Tories, not even the Duke Hibbert, Queen Victoria: A Personal Biography, p. 116. Lord Ashley was the husband of Minnie Cowper, the elder daughter of Lady Emily Cowper, Lord Melbourne’s sister. Ashley succeeded to his father’s title and became the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, the name by which he is known to history.

  159 Thereupon, as she recorded later One of Queen Victoria’s bridesmaids remembered Albert’s look of panic when, after the wedding ceremony, the bridesmaids went away, leaving him in charge of getting his wife and her long train into the carriage for the ride back to the palace.

  160 Bride and groom did not get All this we know because, day by day, Victoria recorded the events of her betrothal and marriage at length in her journal. Frank yet maidenly, factual yet superficial, fascinating yet free of literary artifice, these pages of Queen Victoria’s journal form a key document in Victorian social history. After February 1840, a veil is drawn over the intimate side of the royal marriage. We hear no more from Queen Victoria about the delights of watching Albert bare that beautiful white neck to shave or letting him help her put on her stockings. As a token of love and trust in the early days of the marriage, Victoria allowed Albert to read the entries she had written at the time of their engagement and wedding. She does not say how he reacted, but it seems likely that he was horrified by his wife’s frankness and begged her to be more discreet in the future. It is possible that the Queen continued to be frank in her journal but that, after her death and on her instructions, all the intimate passages were cut by her daughter Princess Beatrice.

  160 The experienced men of her court There are comments to this effect by Greville, Wellington, Stockmar, and King Leopold. Lord Melbourne, who saw the Queen every day, was obviously aware of her emotional state.

  160 None of this bodes well John Ruskin married late in life and on his wedding night was overcome by the sight of his wife Effie’s naked body. The two were finally divorced, on the grounds of nonconsummation. The Ruskin divorce case was one of the most sensational of the Victorian era.

  161 Now, as if by a miracle I seem to be the only biographer who finds it remarkable that the self-professed sexual neophyte Prince Albert performed so superbly on his wedding night. This to me is prima facie evidence that, in fact, he had explored his sexuality before marriage with consenting partners, probably males.

  161 However, from the beginning, erotic passion As Hector Bolitho, perhaps the most pampered and prolific of twentieth-century royal biographers tactfully puts it: “Love, in the terms that appealed to [the Queen,] was alien to [the prince’s] almost celibate nature” (Hector Bolitho, Albert-Prince Consort, p. viii). This book is a revised version of the 1932 Albert the Good. Bolitho, a New Zealander of Jewish background, managed in the 1920s to establish a close relationship with the descendents of Queen Victoria and was given extraordinary access to archival sources and to personal reminiscences in Germany as well as Great Britain. His most interesting and enlightened source was Queen Marie of Romania, daughter of Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria’s second son. 161 As Victoria wrote in heartbroken fragments Queen Victoria to her daughter Vicky, then Crown Princess of Prussia, letter of December 18, 1861 (Dearest Mama, ed. Roger Fulford, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969, p. 23).

  Chapter 13: BEARING THE FRUITS OF DESIRE

  163 In a letter to his university To Prince William of Löwenstein, Albert wrote in May 1840: “In my home life, I am very happy and contented; but the difficulty in filling my place with the proper dignity is, that I am only the husband, and not the master in the house” (Jagow, Letters of the Prince Consort, p. 69).

  164 As one of Queen Victoria’s ladies Charlot, Victoria—The Young Queen, p. 188.

  164 She wrote forthrightly Charlot, p. 191.

  165 To Uncle Leopold she was Charlot, p.192.

  165 Albert wrote to Stockmar Charlot, p. 193.

  166 This birth was too important In 1838 it was Clark, examining Lady Flora through her clothes, as was usual at the time, who made the disastrous diagnosis that she was pregnant (she was, in fact, in the final stages of liver cancer), informed the Queen of this, and provoked a huge scandal.

  166 Albert wrote enigmatically Bolitho, The Prince Consort and His Brother, p. 34.

  167 Lord Clarendon, writing to Lord Granville Woodham-Smith, p. 217.

  167 The Queen was sharply taken aback Hibbert, Queen Victoria, p. 133.

  167 “My sufferings were really Charlot, p. 207.

  169 When she was carrying Leopold She was able to admit this to her daughter after Vicky had undergone her first pregnancy.

  169 “Now to reply to your observation Dearest Child pp. 77–78.

  170 Virtuous husbands like Albert The Calvinist divine Lyman Beecher lost two young wives, worn out by childbearing, and married a third who survived him. Beecher had some eleven children in all. A generation later, Lord Shaftesbury and Patrick Bronte, to take only two famous examples, were deeply in love with their wives and felt fully entitled to the pleasures of the marital bed. When their wives died after bearing many children in quick succession, the husbands suffered but accepted the deaths as God’s will. Traditionally, a husband’s right to virtuous (that is, vaginal) sex trumped a wife’s right to life.

  Chapter 14: WHIGS AND TORIES

  172 And whereas Albert, a married man The scandal in the divorce courts over Melbourne’s relationship with Lady Caroline Norton occurred in 1835, only two years before Queen Victoria’s accession.

  173 But under Albert’s influence On October 1, 1842, just after Lehzen’s departure, Queen Victoria reread the diary entries for the first years of her reign when she and Lord Melbourne had been so close. She wrote: “Wrote & looked over & corrected one of my old journals, which do not now awake very pleasant feelings. The life I led then was so artificial & superficial & yet I thought I was happy. Thank God! I know now what real happiness means” (Longford, Victoria R.I. p. 207).

  173 “A worse school for a young Quoted from Early Years, p. 220, in Stockmar’s Memoirs, vol. ii, p. 4.

  174 Albert had become so identified Greville, vol. III, p. 129.

  175 In token of his regard When Wellington died in 1852, he was given a state funeral that cost the Treasury 29,968 pounds eighteen shillings and ninepence. Such an immense expenditure aroused no protests in press or parliament, and the whole country, including the Queen and the prince, engaged in a long period of extravagant mourning for the duke. At the Queen’s command, the court went into full black, and when the duke’s body was lying in state at Chelsea Hospital, she herself went to pay her respects. Rarely, if ever, had royalty paid such homage to a commoner. See Vera Watson, A Queen at Home, pp. 118–120.

  175 The consort to the Queen of England Jagow, Letters of the Prince Consort, pp. 156–157. The expression “peculiar and delicate role” is Prince Albert’s own from this letter.

  Chapter 15: DEAREST DAISY

  179 He convinced himself Charlot, pp. 208–209.

  181 This process would shape the young Stockmar’s influence on the parenting o
f Queen Victoria and Prince Albert is laid out in detail in his Memoirs, vol. ii, p. 48. Stockmar claimed that the organization of the royal nursery occupied a great deal of his time and “gives me more trouble than the government of a kingdom.”

  181 The prince had no use Quoted from Melbourne’s correspondence with Queen Victoria by Giles St. Aubyn (Edward VII, Prince and King, New York: Athenaeum, 1979, p. 17).

  181 Far more fatefully This incident is reported, I believe for the first time, by Daphne Bennett, who was given full access to the Windsor Archives and has interesting new information about life in the royal nurseries. See Queen Victoria’s Children, New York: St. Martins, 1980, p. 34.

  183 The note read: “Dr. Clark Charlot, p. 209.

  184 On one occasion, Victoria reportedly Strachey, Queen Victoria, p. 93, citing Jerrold. Strachey comments that the story “survives, ill authenticated, and perhaps mythical, yet summing up …, the central facts of the case.”

  185 When apart, the two men corresponded Prince Albert probably confided more in Stock-mar than anyone else, and our understanding of the prince is due in no small part to the parts of that correspondence that have been published. Neither Windsor nor Coburg was able to censor the Stockmar-Prince Albert letters directly, which is an advantage. Nonetheless, as is the case with all the prince consort’s papers, we have only a tiny, heavily edited, and quite possibly misleading selection. When Stockmar’s son Ernest prepared his father’s papers for publication, he was extremely careful to protect the baron’s reputation and avoid the wrath of the Saxe-Coburgs. Ernest Stockmar ends his biographical sketch of his father with these enigmatic words: “[Baron Christian Stockmar] was content to remain always half hidden before the eyes of posterity. Faithful to his spirit, this book also lifts the veil but a little” (vol. 1, p. cx). All the same, when Memoirs was published in 1873, it caused quite a sensation, and Queen Victoria was very displeased at what she regarded as a betrayal of confidence.