by Jane Ridley
He has a good heart and is very affte [sic], and at bottom very truthful, but his intellect alas! is weak which is not his fault but, what is his fault is his shocking laziness, which I fear has been far too much indulged, and which goes so far that he listens to nothing you tell him or teach him or what is said before him, but seems in a sort of dreaminess, which alarms us for his brain. He profits by nothing he learns, gives way to temper, very bad manners and great insubordination, all most dangerous qualities for his position. And poor Mr. Gibbs … has been far too indulgent and I fear has no authority over him, which is very sad … From his idleness, which extends to his thinking as well as acting, he leans entirely upon others and therefore will always be led more or less, the danger of which is enormous.34
Victoria thought the answer was to tighten the discipline, but Albert disagreed. By now he had begun to doubt the wisdom of what he called the “aggressive system” that the Queen followed toward her children. But he was powerless to stop her. Stockmar found him “completely cowed” by Victoria, who was “so excitable that the Prince lived in perpetual terror of bringing on the hereditary malady.” When Lord Clarendon ventured to advise Albert to treat his children more kindly, Albert replied that he dare not confront Victoria for fear of exciting her mind, adding that “the disagreeable office of punishment had always fallen upon him.” Clarendon thought that in spite of his natural good sense, Albert had been “very injudicious” in the way he treated his children, “and that the Prince of Wales resented very much the severity which he had experienced.”35
Shortly after his confirmation, Bertie was given an establishment of his own at White Lodge, a Palladian villa built by George II in Richmond Park. Sending his teenage sons away to grace-and-favor houses to be force-fed knowledge by their tutors in seclusion formed the next stage of Albert’s curriculum. At White Lodge, Bertie was accompanied by Gibbs; the Rev. Charles Tarver, his Latin tutor and chaplain; and three equerries, carefully picked young men in their twenties of the “very highest character,” who were charged with giving him a good example. They received strict instructions from the Queen not to “indulge in careless self-indulgent lounging ways” such as slouching with their hands in their pockets. “Anything approaching a practical joke … should never be permitted.”36
White Lodge was a dismal failure. Bertie continued to be addicted to practical jokes. On a trip to Ireland, he fired a rifle loaded with blanks at a group of boatmen and accidentally cut a man in the cheek. Victoria noted that “he was dreadfully frightened and distressed at the time—but when his father spoke to him he did not take it in that contrite spirit which one would have wished.”37 Sir James Clark, the Queen’s doctor, was consulted, and prescribed a lowering diet. Luncheon: meat and vegetables, pudding best avoided, seltzer water to drink. Dinner: as light as possible, but a little heavier than luncheon, claret and seltzer in hot weather, sherry and water in cold.38
Lonely and bored by the reading he was made to do, Bertie made no progress. One of Bertie’s gentlemen thought the problem was Gibbs, who had no influence over him. “Mr. Gibbs has devoted himself to the boy, but no affection is given him in return, nor do I wonder at it, for they are by nature thoroughly unsuited.… I confess I quite understand the Prince’s feelings towards Mr. Gibbs.”39
Bertie got on far better with Mr. Tarver. Shortly before he turned seventeen, he asked Tarver to explain some words “which it was impossible to make clear to him without entering somewhat fully on the subject of the purpose and the abuse of the union of the sexes.”40 Tarver did his best, and then made a hurried and embarrassed confession to Albert, whose fatherly duty he worried that he had usurped.
On Bertie’s seventeenth birthday, Albert penned him a memorandum. Gibbs was to leave. (“He has failed completely over the last year and a half,” said the Queen, “and Bertie did what he liked!”)41 Instead, Bertie was to have a governor. He must now embark on a study more important than any he had undertaken so far: “How to become a good man and a thorough gentleman.”42 He was to receive the Order of the Garter and the rank of colonel. So overcome was Bertie at the prospect of liberation from Gibbs that he brought the letter to the Dean of Windsor, Gerald Wellesley, in floods of tears.
The governor was Colonel (later General) Robert Bruce, the son of Lord Elgin of the Elgin Marbles; his sister, Lady Augusta Bruce, was a close friend of the Queen, and he was in almost daily contact with Prince Albert. Bruce was a strict disciplinarian, who ruled the prince as if he were an unruly colony. Bertie was held under virtual house arrest, and it was Bruce who settled the plans for each day.
Bertie was thrilled with his new uniform, but he later recalled that he detested being made a lieutenant colonel straight away, rather than beginning at the bottom of the ladder as he had hoped. It meant that his army career was aborted.43 He was to be a mere play soldier; a tailor’s dummy in uniforms with no real military experience. Instead, he was to study at Oxford. Meanwhile, rather than stay in London (“It would not be good for him,” said Albert), he was to spend his gap year in foreign travel.44
Bertie arrived in Rome in January 1859. Colonel Bruce’s reports to Prince Albert make depressing reading. Bertie frittered away his time, showed no interest in art or classical history and, in spite of the little dinners that Bruce arranged for him to meet distinguished men, he seemed only interested in gossip, dress, and society.45 This was not how the outside world saw him, however. One of Bertie’s guests was the poet Robert Browning. To his surprise, Browning was impressed. “The prince did not talk much, but listened intelligently and asked several questions on Italian politics.”46
From England, Albert exercised strict supervision, returning Bertie’s letters with corrections to the English and grammar.47 Bertie was made to keep a journal, which was sent back to Albert and later bound. It is a bald account of his doings—“I went with Colonel Bruce here and there”—and Albert rightly complained that it was disappointing.
Bertie was granted an audience with Pope Pius IX—the first member of the English royal family to meet the pontiff since Henry VIII broke with Rome. When Albert met Pope Gregory XVI twenty years before as a young German prince, he had conversed in Italian on the influence of the Egyptians on Greek and Roman art.48 Bertie, by contrast, described his encounter thus:
The staircase was lined by the Swiss Guards, who looked very picturesque in their peculiar and handsome dress; we had to pass through many rooms, before we reached that in which the Pope was; he came to his door and received me very kindly, I remained about ten minutes conversing with him, and then took my departure.49
In light of his later openness toward Roman Catholicism, it is possible that Bertie was more affected by the meeting than he admitted to his Lutheran father. “I was sorry that you were not pleased with my journal,” he told Albert, “as I took pains about it, but I see the justice of your remarks and will try to profit by them.”50 His tutors dictated a new version: “Whilst standing before the Pope many thoughts crowded into my mind.…” Tarver was stung to defend himself. The prince could hardly be expected to do better, he wrote, considering how small were his “reflective and inductive powers”; he never asked questions or read books.51
The tutors’ failure to spark any interest whatsoever in classical history or art reflects as badly on them as it does on Bertie. His intellect, as Albert remarked, was lively and sharp, but “of no more use than a pistol packed in a trunk.”52 Perhaps the most valuable lesson that Bertie learned was how to deceive his keepers. He was caught writing letters from Rome to lady-in-waiting Jane Churchill, a court beauty who was married and nearly thirty but looked ten years younger. Years later, Bertie told Vicky that he had been “much in love with her.”53
When the War of Italian Unification broke out and Rome was threatened with hostilities, Bertie was forced to cut short his stay, but Albert refused to allow him to return home. As he explained to Bruce, “it would be very objectionable for him to be at Buckingham Palace during a succession of g
aieties,” which would prevent him from applying himself to the study that was “absolutely necessary.” But Albert was anxious to avoid “the appearance of unkindness if not of injustice” by banishing Bertie from home. “Nothing could be so dangerous to … the welfare of the young Prince, and to the future influence of his royal parents over him, as any opinion upon the part … of the public that he was treated with unkindness.… There could but be two reasons for such a want of natural feeling—either unjust caprice on the part of the parents or unworthiness on the part of the son. It would be difficult to say which judgement on the part of the public would be more disastrous.”54 Albert’s frankness is as chilling as his calculation is devastating—a reminder that this was the man who had “sold” the monarchy through spin, reinventing it as “the royal family” (this was Albert’s phrase) and repackaging it as a middle-class domestic idyll.
Bertie was packed off to Edinburgh. Here he would be safely out of harm’s way and, Albert calculated, his stay could be advertised as a bid to please the Scots. The Palace of Holyroodhouse was dull, but Bertie applied himself dutifully to lectures on science and Roman history. Albert descended and held an “educational conference” with Bertie’s tutors. Bertie was allowed to join his family afterward at Balmoral, but his father insisted on two hours’ study daily; when his tutors suggested that he might read a novel by Walter Scott, Albert snapped: “I should be very sorry that he should look upon the reading of a novel (even by Sir Walter Scott) as a day’s work.”55
Victoria conceded that, somewhat to her surprise, Bertie had worked better at Edinburgh than ever before, but she disliked his looks. “The nose,” wrote the doting mother, “is becoming the true Coburg nose, and begins to hang a little, but there remains unfortunately the want of chin which with that very large nose and very large lips is not so well in profile.”56 Bertie was rebuked for wearing long coats and large shoes out shooting, and his hairstyle enraged the Queen: “Do not divide your hair so nearly in front and paste it down at the sides. It looks so effeminate and girlish and makes the head look so small.”57
In October 1859, Bertie arrived at Oxford. Albert browbeat the reluctant Dean Liddell of Christ Church to agree that the prince should not have rooms in college like other students, but live in isolation with his governor, now promoted to Major-General Bruce. Private lodgings were rented at Frewin Hall in the Cornmarket, where he was strictly supervised. “The only use of Oxford,” wrote Albert, “is that it is a place for study, a refuge from the world.”58 Bertie must become acquainted with Oxford’s distinguished men, but avoid the contamination of his fellow undergraduates. Under the supervision of tutor Herbert Fisher a special course of lectures was delivered to Bertie and six carefully picked Christ Church undergraduates at Frewin Hall. Whenever Bertie walked into a lecture or attended a cathedral service, everyone rose and remained standing until he was seated.
Bertie resented his isolation, later claiming that it damaged his education, as no doubt it did, given his gregarious nature. His “rigidly virtuous” system and the omnipresence of General Bruce was “a good deal laughed at.”59
In December, Dean Liddell gave Bertie an oral examination on English history from the Anglo-Saxons to Henry III. How this specially designed course would prepare him for his future role is hard to see, but his answers were “ready, clear and for the most part right.” His written examinations were less good. “His pen is not so ready as his tongue,” commented the dean.60
Victoria made a practice of sending Bertie a report on his behavior at the end of each holiday, and the letter she addressed to him after that Christmas at Windsor was particularly stinging. He had dawdled and wasted his time—the Queen had noticed “a growing listlessness and inattention and … self-indulgence” that was most dangerous. “Let me never hear of your lying on a sofa or an armchair except you are ill or returned from a long fatiguing day’s hunting or shooting.”61
Back at Oxford, General Bruce complained to Albert about Bertie’s lack of respect for his tutor Herbert Fisher. “After severely censoring the intemperate tone and manner in which he not infrequently addresses those about him, I stated that such displays to a gentleman in Mr Fisher’s position were intolerable.”62 In spite of this, Dean Liddell reported an improvement on the previous term. Bertie had worked harder on more difficult subjects, and his oral answers were good. The written answers still showed constraint. “They might be fuller and might be expressed in freer and more idiomatic language.” Privately, the dean considered Bertie to be “the nicest fellow possible, so simple, naïve, ingenuous and modest, and moreover with extremely good wits; possessing also the Royal faculty of never forgetting a face.”63
In spite of General Bruce’s surveillance, Bertie managed to make one extremely unsuitable friend at Christ Church: Sir Frederick Johnstone. Johnstone was exactly the type of “fast” young man Albert was anxious that Bertie should avoid—a heavy-drinking member of the Bullingdon Club, devoted to gambling, horse racing, and womanizing. It was he who first led Bertie astray, opened his eyes to the possibilities of his position, and perhaps helped to rub off his harsh German accent.64 Soon the Prince of Wales’s name was to be found inscribed in the ledger of the fashionable Savile Row tailor Henry Poole, along with his measurements—chest: 33¾ inches; waist: 29¼ inches.65 So much for the view that he was already overweight. At Frewin Hall, Bertie engaged a first-rate chef. He took up fox hunting. He was becoming a swell.
Victoria watched with dismay. She urged Bertie to refrain, as she and Albert did, from eating rich and unwholesome dishes. She implored him to be careful out hunting, a sport that she abhorred—“that horrid hunting from which it is a mercy anyone returns alive.… You all of you belong to the country and must not be foolhardy or imprudent. Of course this applies a thousand times more to dear Papa, who is all and all to me, without whom I shd be utterly powerless, consequently whose life is of national and European importance.”66
Bertie’s replies to his mother’s letters were pathetically meek and submissive. “I am afraid that I have very little news to tell you, as every day is much the same.”67 One senses the irritation behind the Queen’s complaint: “It is very discouraging when I write to you dear Child, full of anxiety for your welfare and receive nothing but an indifferent answer.… Try in future dear and enter a little into what Mama in the fullness of her heart writes to you.”68 Bertie’s response was hardly encouraging. “I am afraid that my letters are very dull and stupid as there is very little to say, but I try to enter into the feelings you express in your letters as much as I can.”69 Little wonder the royal parents worried sometimes that their son was a half-wit.
Queen Victoria considered that one of the problems about being royal was that “we cannot form intimate friendships except among our nearest relations.”70 The eighteen-year-old Bertie’s most intimate friends were his sisters, and his response to his mother’s bullying was to appeal for their support. He wrote to Vicky in Berlin, complaining about his parents’ constantly finding fault. Her response was affectionate but patronizing. “Don’t be cast down my darling old Bertie,” she urged, “only try and do what dear Papa wishes and you will see all will go right and dear Mama will be pleased and satisfied.”71 Homesick and lonely in her barracks-like palace in Berlin, reading and nursing her new baby, Vicky had forgotten how wounding Victoria’s criticisms could be.
Alice was different. Her sharp, waiflike profile contrasted starkly with the rich, rustling satins of her wide hooped dresses. At sixteen she was intensely religious, with a directness and spontaneity that was perhaps the result of childhood illness; it made her strangely attractive. Lord Clarendon described her as a bird in a cage, beating her wings against her prison bars.72
This was an age of intense, romanticized brother-sister relationships, but few sisters wrote such emotional letters as Alice did to Bertie. “I am so happy when I have you dear darling, though it is but for a short time.” Again: “My good love I miss you so though we are so constantly sep
arated, I cannot get accustomed to it, and it makes me quite sad to think that I must once more make my pen the interpreter of all my feelings and thoughts.” It was as if Bertie was her fantasy lover, but she worshipped Albert, too, declaring, as Vicky had done before her, that “there never was such a perfect man as Papa before, everything that is good is united in him, everything that is great, that is noble, that is clever, that is true, he really is almost an angel upon earth!”73
Instead of lecturing Bertie, as Vicky did, Alice joined him in conspiring against the Queen. “Thank you very much for both your letters,” Alice wrote in December 1859; “the first I burned after reading it, as I do not wish to risk any false excuse for not showing it; for though you were quite excusable in your annoyance, yet the way you expressed yourself against Her was not quite respectful. Please burn the letter I sent you.”74 Bertie forwarded Victoria’s letters to Alice, who replied carefully. “I think it would be better dear Bertie if, when she makes such remarks, gives you such advice, that you should not only thank her for it, but tell her you will follow it.” She counseled caution: “You must remember, she is your Mother and is privileged to say such things; and though, as Vicky and I have often and long known, they are not said in the pleasantest way and often exaggerated, yet out of filial duty they must be borne and taken in the right way.”75
Alice, now seventeen, was impatient to be married off to the inevitable German prince, and suitable candidates were invited for inspection. Prince Louis of Hesse arrived at Windsor to stay for Royal Ascot week in June, and Bertie joined the party from Oxford. The romantic Alice fell desperately in love with the red-faced, doltish Louis. The couple exchanged tear-sodden handkerchiefs when they parted, and very soon they became engaged. Clarendon, who thought Alice the brightest and most attractive of her family, regretted her engagement to a “dull boy” with a “dull family in a dull country.”76 The news was a wrench for Bertie, who wrote unhappily to Alice: “It will be a bitter pang for me to separate from you, as it will not be the same place without you, nobody will be able to supply your place, as Lenchen [Bertie and Alice’s younger sister Helena] is so much younger and still so childish.”77