The Heir Apparent

by Jane Ridley

  Lady Lyttelton perceived something of this. “Princey,” as she called Bertie, was her favorite. She wrote encouraging reports about his “kindness and nobleness of mind.”26 But to Bertie she seems to have been little more than an affectionate presence.

  Bertie unquestioningly deferred to Vicky’s superiority. When he was four, he was overheard having a heated argument with her as to which of them owned the Scilly Islands. “Princess Royal said they were hers, and the Prince of Wales was equally sure they belonged to him; and another day the Princess was heard telling her brother all the things she would do when she was Queen, and he quite acquiesced in it, and it never seemed to strike either of them that it would be otherwise.”27 The nursery dynamic shifted with the arrival of a third child: Alice, born on 25 April 1843, eighteen months younger than Bertie. Vicky, as the eldest sibling, protected and mothered Alice, who was the prettiest daughter, neither as clever nor as rebellious as Vicky but more manipulative. But the tightest bond was between Bertie and Alice. “Bertie and Alice are the greatest friends and always playing together,” wrote Victoria when Bertie was three.28 The pattern of Bertie and Vicky competing for the affections of Alice endured into adulthood. In the nursery, she was Bertie’s devoted slave and loyal friend. Fourteen months after Alice, on 6 August 1844, a second boy, Alfred (Affie) was born. Because of his physical resemblance to Albert and his cleverness at lessons, he became (briefly) Victoria’s favorite, which did not endear him to Bertie.‡

  Vicky made Bertie feel inadequate. How could he compete with a precocious six-year-old who could declare, when her governess momentarily forgot the name of some minor poet: “Oh yes, I dare say you did know all about him, only you have forgotten it. Réfléchissez. [Think.] Go back to your youngness, and you will soon remember.”29 Little wonder that, at age eight, Bertie was firmly convinced that the monarchy was a matriarchy. “You see,” he explained, “Vicky will be Mama’s successor. Mama is now the Queen, and Vicky will have her crown, and you see Vicky will be Victoria the second.”30

  Even Queen Victoria perceived that Bertie had been “injured” by being with the clever Vicky, who “put him down by a look—or a word—and their natural affection had been … impaired by this state of things.”31 Because Bertie could not possibly do better than Vicky, his reaction was to rebel and refuse to do anything at all.

  The education of their children was a matter of great concern to Victoria and Albert. Because Bertie was the eldest prince, his education was especially important. Ever since the Renaissance, Protestant tradition had taught that little princes must be protected from flattery by early training in moral toughness, hard work, and strict duty. (Catholic rulers, by contrast, were said to spoil their heirs from early childhood, hoping by overindulgence to make them immune to temptation.)32 Months after Bertie’s birth, Stockmar addressed a memorandum to Victoria and Albert. “The first truth by which the Queen and the Prince ought to be thoroughly penetrated is, that their position is a much more difficult one, than that of any other parents in the kingdom.” The bad education provided by George III, warned Stockmar, had caused the errors of the Queen’s wicked uncles, whose conduct had “contributed more than any other circumstance to weaken the respect and influence of Royalty in this country.”33 The very survival of the monarchy depended upon the education of the Prince of Wales.

  The system devised by Stockmar followed the typical German model of princely education in the generation after 1815.34 This was the method that had succeeded so brilliantly with Albert. As was the custom with princes, Bertie was to be educated in seclusion. His days were to be organized like formal schooling and strictly time-tabled.

  In Bertie’s case, education was also meant to be a form of treatment. He had special needs. When he was two and a half, an expert was summoned. Dr. Andrew Combe was a leading practitioner of the fashionable quack science of phrenology, the Victorian answer to a child psychiatrist. He calibrated the bumps on Bertie’s head and reported that “the development of the brain was in some respects defective.” When Bertie was four, Dr. Combe reported improvement, but Stockmar still judged him “essentially a nervous and excitable child with little power of endurance or sustained action in any direction.”35 The therapy prescribed by Stockmar in consequence was regular, systematic exercise of the brain. A detailed timetable was drawn up for Bertie’s lessons under the direction of the governess, Miss Hildyard. From eight a.m. until six p.m., every half hour of the six-year-old prince’s day was time-tabled, parceled into lessons in French, German, geography, reading, and writing on the slate and also dancing, history, and poetry.36

  It soon became apparent that Stockmar’s system was a failure. Bertie’s French teacher expressed “the greatest concern” at his want of progress. When he was six, he was reading the same French book as Alice, who was neither studious nor as clever as Vicky. Lady Lyttelton, who had up till now staunchly defended Bertie’s “quickness and power of learning,” was compelled to report that he was “a very difficult pupil in some respects, besides his being not at all in advance of his age.”37 By the time Bertie was seven, Lady Lyttelton could no longer control the Prince of Wales.

  Bertie’s first language was English, and his early words, as recorded by his governess Lady Lyttelton (“Dear Mama gone! Flag should be taken away!”), were all in English.38 He learned German in the nursery, where at an early age the children “spoke German like their native tongue, even to one another.”39 At three, he had lessons with a German governess, and by the age of five he could read German books.40 His fluency in German interfered with his speaking of English. An actor, George Bartley, was employed to teach him elocution.41 At sixteen, his “foreign mode of pronunciation” was very noticeable.42 Some thought that he never lost the traces of a German accent, rolling his r’s in a manner that was unmistakably Teutonic. Others claimed that he spoke English in a beautifully modulated voice—no doubt the legacy of those early elocution lessons.§

  Bertie was promoted from the nursery to a tutor when he was seven and a half. This was the age when Victorian boys were considered ready to be removed from the care of women and given over to men for their education. Victoria was more than happy to opt out. When he was two and a half she had declared: “I wish that he should grow up entirely under his Father’s eye, and every step be guided by him, so that when he has attained the age of 16 or 17 he may be a real companion to his Father.”43 From now on, Bertie’s education was directed by Albert.

  On the recommendation of Sir James Clark, the royal physician, Albert engaged a tutor named Henry Birch.44 A good-looking thirty-year-old bachelor, he was an Eton master with a string of Cambridge prizes and no experience of teaching small boys. He was installed next door to Bertie’s room at Buckingham Palace, and Albert drew up a syllabus and timetable. The first few weeks were disastrous. Bertie was rude, disobedient, and rebellious. He refused to take his hat off when people bowed. He stayed in bed until late in the morning; he lost his temper whenever he attempted anything difficult. He was excitable and tyrannical when other little boys came to play, and unkind to his brothers and sisters. “There was at first the very greatest difficulty in fixing his attention,” wrote Birch. “He had more than usual difficulty in writing, spelling, calculating and composing sentences, or doing grammatical exercises.”45

  Birch thought that Bertie was too young to leave the nursery. Some biographers have suggested that he was dyslexic, but there is little evidence for this. Certainly he found writing difficult, and it is possible that he was mildly dyspraxic. Albert thought Bertie’s handwriting at age seven was “very feeble and unsteady.”46 In Bertie’s teens, his tutors noticed that “his slowness of manipulation makes writing laborious to him.”47 The careful copperplate he inscribed in youth ballooned in careless middle age into a paleographic nightmare, suggesting that the fault lay with his motor skills rather than his unwillingness to learn.‖

  Victoria kept a disgusted distance from her son. The waspish diarist Charles Greville picked up ru
mors that “the hereditary and unfailing antipathy of our sovereigns to their Heir Apparent seems … early to be taking root, and the Queen does not much like the child.”48 No one wondered whether the mother’s dislike was cause, as well as consequence, of Bertie’s bad behavior. But then Victoria was herself a patient, undergoing a course of moral improvement under Albert’s supervision. It was as if poor, bad Bertie was a lightning conductor, articulating buried family tensions.

  Birch, by now desperate, consulted the royal parents. What a comfort it was, he reflected, to be able to “open one’s mind fully both to the Queen and Prince, on any subject connected with the management of their child.”49 He decided to take a stand; the prince’s naughtiness must be met with “severity.”50 Precisely what he meant by the word was not spelled out, but the answer is to be found in the diary of the royal physician, Sir James Clark. He records that in May 1849 the prince’s “perverseness was such that the father decided on whipping him. The effect was excellent.”51

  Albert’s whipping did not cure Bertie’s naughtiness for long. That summer he was spotted by a dancing teacher standing on a chair in the corner of the billiard room as a punishment for writing badly. “I’m in disgrace,” he wailed.52

  Bertie took his lessons all alone. He saw no one except his tutors, apart from fifteen minutes with his parents at nine a.m. and again before bed. Birch found the isolation oppressive, and in his “Private Thoughts,” written for Stockmar’s eyes only (and which Stockmar, of course, promptly passed on to Albert), he complained that being confined day and night at Buckingham Palace was injurious to his own health and spirits.53 It was worse for his pupil, in whom “symptoms of evil” had once again “assumed an alarming appearance.” Birch decided that obedience must be enforced, however “painful” the task—Bertie must again be whipped.54

  Birch was a grumbler. He babbled on about taking religious orders, encouraged by an offer of a fat living. This annoyed Albert, as one of the conditions of Birch’s appointment was that he should be a layman. To make matters worse, Birch was a High Church Puseyite and ostentatiously refused to obey Albert’s orders to attend the Presbyterian kirk while staying at Balmoral. Albert’s sympathy with the Church of Scotland made him unpopular, as it raised suspicion of his German Lutheran links; Birch’s scruples must have looked very much like disloyalty. Albert became convinced that the choice of Birch had been a mistake—he lacked judgment and thought too much of himself and too little of his pupil.

  After about a year, though, Bertie began to improve. He kept a diary, which he dictated to Mr. Birch. On the birth of Prince Arthur in May 1850, he reflected: “I have long wished to have another brother, and at last I have got my wish. I mean to try to set a good example to him.” After a summer spent on the Isle of Wight, recommended by the doctors on account of the sea air, he claimed: “At Osborne this time I think that I have learned more than when I was in Scotland, and I hope that I have done better also.” As a reward, his brother Alfred (Affie), eighteen months younger, was allowed to share a bedroom with him. “I think that Affie likes being with me and I like having him too, because it is a much better match for me than older persons.” At Christmas, Mr. Birch wrote a good report for Papa, which “pleased him very much,” and gave Bertie a history of Greece for good behavior. “He promised me a prize a long time ago if I was good up to Christmas.” Bertie was allowed to start Latin. Mr. Birch taught him some useful phrases: “sum bonus puer, non ero malus puer, amo magistrum” (I am a good boy, I will not be a bad boy, I love my tutor).55

  These virtuous sentiments were no doubt dictated by Birch, not Bertie, but Birch believed that he had found the key to Bertie’s heart, and in November 1850 he implored Stockmar to let him stay.56 It was too late. By now, Prince Albert had lost faith in Birch. He called in the phrenologist George Combe.a The brain of the Prince of Wales, reported Combe, was feeble and abnormal. The anterior lobe, devoted to intellect, was deficient in size, while the organs of “combativeness, destructiveness and self-esteem” were overdeveloped. This made him highly excitable and “liable to vehement fits of passion, opposition, self-will and obstinacy,” which were not acts of “voluntary disobedience” but the result of the physiology of the brain. The treatment was not punishment but a “soothing system” of kindness, avoiding all irritation as every fit of anger made the brain more feeble.57

  “I wonder whence that Anglo-Saxon brain of his has come,” mused Albert. “It must have descended from the Stuarts, for the family have been purely German since their day.” Combe, however, was of the opinion that Bertie had inherited the brain of George III—and by implication his madness. “It will be vain to treat the Prince as a normal child,” he wrote.58 This sent a shiver down Albert’s spine. The Prince of Wales, he minuted, was not an ordinary boy but “a patient, who ought to be treated physiologically on principles arising out of a thorough knowledge of the faculties of the human mind.”59 By punishing him and speaking harshly to him, Mr. Birch was exacerbating his condition. Combe then inspected Birch’s head and found the cerebral development to be inadequate. There was no doubt about it; Birch must go.

  Unfortunately, Albert failed to realize that by now Birch was giving his son precisely what he craved—affection—and Bertie was thriving on it.

  The Times worried that Albert was tinkering with the religious education of the Prince of Wales. Little did they know. By today’s standards at least, Albert’s interference was truly damaging. The public could on no account suspect that the heir to the throne was abnormal, so Albert, persuaded by Combe, arranged for surveillance of Bertie’s schoolroom by phrenological spies. He appointed a librarian named Dr. Becker, who also acted as Bertie’s German tutor. Becker was sent under an assumed name to Edinburgh, where he trained undercover in phrenology with Combe.60

  That summer, the nine-year-old Bertie at last discovered that he was heir to the throne, after examining a genealogical table in his room. Becker reported that the prince’s self-esteem had swollen, his intellectual organs had shrunk, and his combativeness had become un-controllable.61 With Birch, however, Bertie continued to be good. It was 1851, the summer of the Great Exhibition, and Bertie visited almost daily with Birch, writing notes on the exhibits. When Affie fell on his head running downstairs, Bertie noted primly in his diary: “He is so disobedient and heedless that I should not be surprised if he kills himself one of these days.” On Christmas Eve at Windsor, Albert led Bertie into a room where, on a table, stood a tree surrounded by presents. Bertie oozed virtue from every pore. “Mr. Birch tells me that I am quite an altered boy in all of my dealing with him and this makes me happy.”62

  Albert must have read this, but to no avail; he was determined to sack the tutor. On 7 January 1852, Bertie wrote sadly in his private diary in his spiky handwriting: “A very unhappy day because Papa had told me that Mr. Birch must soon go away.” Next day, “I was still very unhappy. Mr. Birch was so very kind as to console me and give me good advice which made me a little happier.” On 20 January: “The last evening and day that I passed with dear Mr. Birch.”63

  Albert’s brutal dismissal of Birch echoes his sacking of Victoria’s governess Lehzen ten years before. In both cases he convinced himself that a devoted servant and confidant was a malign influence who must be removed in the interest of the “patient,” his wife or son. He shut his eyes to the unhappiness this caused. He believed that both Victoria and Bertie had to be treated on moral and scientific principles for their own good. It was as if the intimacy of his wife or his son with anyone but himself represented a threat to his control over them.

  Birch left a verdict on his pupil. Progress in writing and spelling was slow, he conceded, but few English boys knew so much French and German. As for Bertie’s character, Birch reported: “He has a very keen perception of right and wrong, a very good memory, very singular powers of observation, and for the last year and a half I saw numerous traits of a very amiable and affectionate disposition.” Bertie’s problems, thought Birch, were d
ue to lack of contact with boys of his own age, and “from himself being the centre round which everything seems to move.… He has no standard by which to measure his own powers.” The tutor’s prognosis was optimistic: “There is every reason to hope that the Prince of Wales will eventually turn out a good, and in my humble opinion a great man.”b64

  Bertie’s new tutor was named Frederick Gibbs. He came on the recommendation of Sir James Stephen, the professor of modern history at Cambridge, where Albert was chancellor. Gibbs was a barrister and a fellow of Trinity College, and Stephen tried to impress Albert by describing him as a typical member of the middle class; this was hardly true, as Gibbs had been brought up by Stephen.c Dry, humorless, and lacking in both imagination and experience, he was a strange choice of tutor for the difficult Bertie.

  Gibbs started badly. On his first day, he went for a walk with the two morose little boys, Bertie and Affie. “You can’t wonder if we are rather dull today,” Bertie told Gibbs. “We are very sorry Mr. Birch is gone. It is very natural is it not?”65 Acting on instructions from Prince Albert, Gibbs increased Bertie’s schooling to six hourly lesson periods a day, time-tabled from eight a.m. to seven p.m., six days a week. In the intervals between lessons, he was ordered to make the princes do riding, drill, and gymnastics, ensuring that they were tired out by the end of each day. Exactly why Albert decided to reject the “soothing system” of light work recommended by George Combe in favor of a program of intensive study is not clear, but it rapidly undid all the good that Birch had achieved.

  Some of the more distressing papers relating to Bertie’s education were destroyed on his instructions when he became king, but Gibbs kept a diary that survived.66 He recorded little about the content of Bertie’s lessons but, worried perhaps that he might be held to account, wrote detailed notes of Bertie’s bad behavior. Day after day, Bertie was rude, had fits of ungovernable temper, and refused to fix his attention on lessons. He fought with Affie and pulled his hair. One day in February 1852, Gibbs wrote: