by Jane Ridley
Back in Oxford after Ascot, Bertie wrote Victoria a letter that could hardly fail to annoy her: “I hope that you will excuse that I have not written before, but as I had no news of any sort to give you, my letter would have been very dull, and I am afraid that it will be so now, as I have nothing of any interest to communicate to you.”78 The Oxford term ended with a Christ Church ball. Albert warned Bertie strictly that Oxford balls “are not visited by you for your amusement, but to give pleasure to others by your presence.”79 The next morning, when the doors of the Sheldonian Theatre were flung open for Commemoration, Bertie headed the procession of dons, taking precedence over the vice chancellor on account of his rank. An audience of rowdy undergraduates gave three hearty cheers for the prince, who “graciously acknowledged them.”80 Fame, it seemed, was not something that Bertie needed to earn by reading and applying himself to his lectures as his father had done. He was famous just because of who he was, and the discovery was intoxicating.
In the summer of 1860, the eighteen-year-old Bertie made his first royal tour, to Canada and the United States.
Bertie’s grandfather, the Duke of Kent, had served with his regiment in Canada in the 1790s, and Prince Edward Island was named after him; but the idea of sending the heir to the throne on a ceremonial tour of the new world was an innovation. Like most ideas at court, it originated with Albert, who choreographed the entire visit, even composing memoranda supplying responses for Bertie to read to all the addresses he received on his tour.81
Bertie’s minder was the Duke of Newcastle, known to his friends as Barbarossa on account of his red beard. A crony of Gladstone, the hapless but humorless duke had lived down the disgrace of his wife’s adultery and divorce; he was now fleeing the scandal caused by the elopement of his daughter Lady Susan Clinton with Lord Adolphus Vane-Tempest, the son of the Marquess of Londonderry, who was alcoholic, violent, and insane.
Bertie and his retinue landed at the remote fishing village of St. John’s, Newfoundland, on 23 July 1860. He dutifully read aloud the wooden speeches written for him by Newcastle, who had drafted them from Albert’s memoranda; but the journalists found the copy they needed at the dance that evening, when the prince whirled and twirled until two a.m. and was spotted calling the dances, correcting the backwoods folk of this unfashionable spot. A news report appeared in the New York press, which earned Bertie a reproof from Albert: “You always liked to order people about at dances but I trust you will keep that longing in check.” Never forget, he warned his son, “how much and how constantly you are watched, observed and described.”82 “I am quite aware that I am closely watched and must be careful in what I do,” responded Bertie, denying that he had ordered the dancers about; but “besides if I did it would have been not to be wondered at, as I never saw so many people who knew so little about dancing.”83 A few days later, however, The New York Herald reported that the prince “whispered sweet nothings” to the ladies as he directed them in the dance. “His Royal Highness looks as if he might have a very susceptible nature and has already yielded to several twinges in the region of his midriff.”84 This was not what Albert wanted to hear.
When he crossed the border from Canada into the United States, Bertie traveled as Baron Renfrew. Some commented on his unimpressive looks and unfashionable clothes, but he was recognized and welcomed everywhere. At Washington he was received at the White House by President James Buchanan, and Harriet Lane, the bachelor president’s thirty-year-old niece, played hostess. “I thought Miss Lane a particularly nice person and very pretty,” Bertie told Victoria.85 The royal tour climaxed with Bertie’s arrival at New York on 11 October. A crowd of three hundred thousand (allegedly) showered him with flowers—which shows, Bertie modestly reported, “that the feeling between the two countries could not be better.” At the Grand Ball next day, three thousand were invited but five thousand squeezed into the Opera House, causing the floor to give way. It took two hours of banging for the carpenters to put it right, and dancing did not begin until midnight.†86
No one had expected such overwhelming enthusiasm. Even Victoria went out of her way to give credit to her son. She insisted, however, that Bertie’s reception by the Americans was due principally to “the (to me incredible) liking they have for my unworthy self.”87 Bertie returned home to Windsor in November looking extremely well. Victoria commented in her journal that he had become “very talkative,” and the courtiers were amused to see him conversing in an independent sort of way with his father.88
* * *
* Gladstone’s son seems a strange companion to choose, given Victoria’s later dislike of the father, but Lady Lyttelton, Bertie’s former governess, was a relative of the Gladstones.
† The ball made a lasting impression. When Bertie’s grandson Edward VIII as Prince of Wales visited New York in 1919, a reception was given for all the survivors of Bertie’s ball nearly sixty years before.
CHAPTER 4
Bertie’s Fall
1861
After America, Bertie was sent straight back to Oxford. Even the martinet General Bruce questioned the wisdom of resuming the schoolboy discipline, but Albert insisted on the same strict rules as before. Bertie left Oxford in December with good reports. According to the dean of Christ Church, “[He] has expressed himself with increasing freedom and written at greater length than he has ever done before.”1
Next on Albert’s program for his son came a year at Cambridge. In January 1861, Bertie enrolled at Trinity College. As before, he was installed under General Bruce’s supervision in a residence of his own: Madingley Hall, a large, comfortable house about four miles outside Cambridge. Bertie found it old-fashioned and very cold. For his lectures he drove in to Cambridge, where Dr. Whewell, the master of Trinity, lent him rooms in the Lodge. Here Charles Kingsley, the regius professor, came to lecture him on history. Kingsley was nervous as to whether the interpretation that he gave of the Glorious Revolution of 1689 accorded with the royal parents’ historical views. “The responsibility terrifies me,” he wrote. He needn’t have worried. Bertie thought Kingsley one of the best lecturers he had ever heard—“though of course my experience is not very great”—and had nothing to say about the content.2 Albert forbade him from taking notes, insisting that he write the lectures out from memory when he returned home to Madingley.3
On his nineteenth birthday, Bertie was given leave by Albert to smoke. Victoria told him that she hoped he would give it up, as smoking set a bad example in society and encouraged idleness, a particular danger in his case: “Your natural difficulty in applying and exerting your mind would be greatly increased & you would often think you were occupied … when you are puffing away in a state of dreamy idleness.” Bertie’s reply was diplomatic: “I should not like to make you [a] promise that I will entirely give it up, because I don’t think I could keep it; at the same time I will do it as little [as] I can & I dare say that before long I shall give it up altogether.”4 These were the words of a lifelong smoker. Victoria, who detested the habit, banned him from smoking in her houses or in public, and when Bertie was at Buckingham Palace, she ordered the conservatory to be locked to prevent him sneaking out for a cigar.5
At Cambridge, Bertie sucked strong cigars and hunted with the drag hounds.* Bruce forbade him from asking anyone back to Madingley, but he was uneasily aware that Bertie’s “love of excitement and constitutional disinclination to all serious pursuits” tended to carry him “almost unconsciously into the company of the idle and the frivolous.”6 For the first time in his life, Bertie made real friends—Charles Carrington, the boy he had played with at Buckingham Palace, and Nathaniel (Natty) Rothschild and his brother Alfred. For the Rothschilds, this was a social breakthrough, bringing access to court; for Bertie it was the beginning of a lifelong friendship that was to define his style of royalty.7
The drag hunt was paid for largely by the Rothschilds, and Natty noted that Bertie was not allowed expensive horses, owing to his parents’ disapproval of hunting. “No
wonder that he gets so many falls,” commented Natty. “I fancy the little spirit he has is quite broken, as his remarks are commonplace and very slow. He will I suppose eventually settle down into a well-disciplined German prince with all the narrow views of his father’s family.”8
In March, Bertie was summoned home unexpectedly to Windsor to the deathbed of his grandmother, the Duchess of Kent. Victoria abandoned herself to an orgy of grief and self-pity. She had never liked her mother, but now she felt (as Albert wrote) “her whole childhood rush back once more upon her memory.”9
No doubt Victoria was overcome by guilt and remorse at reading her mother’s papers, which made her realize how much her despised parent had loved her. But even in a culture that institutionalized mourning, as the court did, the Queen’s reaction seems excessive. Her mother was seventy-five, which was old by the standards of the day, and though the two women had quarreled when Victoria became queen, they had been reconciled for many years. Albert worried that the duchess’s death had unhinged Victoria, and that her obsessive grief signaled a descent into madness.
“She remains almost entirely alone,” he noted. “It is no easy task for me to comfort and support her and to keep others at a distance, and yet at the same time not to throw away the opportunity, which a time like the present affords, of binding the family together in a closer bond of unity.”10 The grief-stricken Queen refused to see anyone except Albert, and Albert encouraged her to give herself up to mourning, even though he knew that her seclusion was causing gossip about her mental state. He now did all her work to save her trouble, laboring at the papers on his desk like a donkey on a treadmill.11
Victoria refused to see her children. Bertie annoyed her the most. She made terrible scenes when he shed no tears at his grandmother’s funeral at Frogmore, accusing him of lacking feelings.† As Clarendon remarked, Bertie could do no right; if he had cried, he would no doubt have been rebuked for increasing her grief.12 Vicky wrote to her mother begging her to avoid an estrangement. Victoria’s reply was stubbornly unforgiving. “I quite agree with you, dear child—that he must be a little more tender and affectionate in his manner—if he is to expect it from me.” Bertie irritated her with silly remarks. “His voice makes me so nervous I could hardly bear it.”13 To Bertie himself, however, Victoria was less angry than hurt. “Open your heart freely to your Mother,” she implored him, “for she too, yearns to show you the love she feels but she must meet with warmth & tenderness! I alas! in gone by & days, was not as tender and affectionate to dearest Grandmama as I ought to have been (much as I loved her) & bitterly do I lament it now.”14
“I can assure you,” replied Bertie, “that I did not try to check my feelings”; he was “stunned” by the suddenness of his grandmother’s death, and unable to realize it until some time later. “I did not like to intrude myself upon you, when dear Vicky & Alice were sympathizing with you so warmly & affectionately not because I had not the same feelings as they had, but because I thought I should be in your way.”15 As a token of his grief, he ordered writing paper with even thicker black edges.
Around this time, Prince Albert began a new file of papers, which he labeled “Bertie’s Marriage Prospects.” He collected letters from Vicky and from old Baron Stockmar, which he annotated in red ink. Victoria entered a note later: “Up to this place all the papers in this book were arranged by the beloved Prince Himself.”16
Bertie was not yet twenty, but already Albert was plotting a dynastic alliance. He must marry before he was old enough to choose for himself, or, which was more likely, before he disgraced himself. That the next English queen should be a German princess was unquestioned, essential both to Albert’s plans for shaping Germany’s future and to his own control over the English throne. The royal family of England must continue to be German.
Albert’s agent in picking a bride was Vicky. Albert had complete confidence in the judgment of his twenty-year-old daughter. For months now, Vicky had been scouring the pages of the Almanac de Gotha, the stud book of European royalty, and sending back reports on the available princesses. It was she who had found Louis of Hesse for Alice, and that had succeeded delightfully; but suitable princesses were in short supply.17 Two possible candidates were Elizabeth of Wied and Anna of Hesse, the sister of Alice’s fiancé Louis. Elizabeth, according to Vicky, was good-tempered and clever but boisterous and talked too much.‡ Anna spoke in a deep, gruff voice, her eyes twitched incessantly, and her teeth were bad.18 The only princess who seemed at all possible was the least eligible on political grounds: Princess Alexandra of Denmark. Denmark was on unfriendly terms with Prussia, locked into a quarrel over the disputed territories of Schleswig and Holstein. Alexandra’s mother’s family was reputed to be bad, her father’s foolish. But Vicky received glowing reports from Wally Hohenthal, now married to Augustus Paget, the English minister in Copenhagen.
At length, in June 1861, Vicky arranged to meet Alexandra. To the relief of Wally Paget, who was by now feeling somewhat responsible, she was captivated. Never had she set eyes on a sweeter creature. Alexandra was everything that Vicky was not—beautiful, tall (taller at least than the five-foot-two Vicky), slender, and gentle. She spoke English and German, but whether she was clever or not, Vicky could not tell—“though I could not perceive the slightest thing to make me think the contrary.” “She has been very strictly kept for she has not read a novel of any kind.”19
When Albert saw a photograph of Alexandra, he declared, “From that photograph I would marry her at once.”20 She was evidently “a pearl not to be lost,” and the royal parents now became desperate to bag this treasure for their son. “May he only be worthy of such a jewel!” exclaimed the Queen. A Russian prince was also in the market, and Victoria worried that her “sallow, dull, blasé” son would lose the Danish pearl.21
Bertie himself was the last to hear of these negotiations. Not until the end of May did Albert forward Alexandra’s photograph: “It would be a thousand pities if you were to lose her!” he wrote.22 Victoria thought Bertie was “evidently much pleased and interested,” but Bertie wrote guardedly to Albert: “The accounts of the P[rince]ss are so very good, that it leaves me really nothing to say; but of course how to find a way of securing her, is a very difficult matter.” He refused to be rushed: “You must excuse my giving you now my opinions on the subject, as I should like some time to think it over.”23
Bertie’s role in Albert’s matchmaking was simple: He must fall in love with the Danish pearl. But the fact was that it was Vicky, not Bertie, who had fallen in love with Alexandra. Bertie’s romantic feelings were altogether more problematic.
As a special concession, Albert agreed to General Bruce’s request that Bertie should be allowed to attend a military camp at the Curragh in the summer of 1861. Bruce permitted him to mix with other officers, but only in public. “Private intercourse” with his companions was strictly policed. Two stern Grenadier officers acted as his mentors: General Ridley, “an excellent soldier and high-minded gentleman,” and Colonel Henry Percy, a Crimean War hero awarded the Victoria Cross and a favorite of the Queen, who made no concessions to the prince’s rank.24
At the Curragh, Bertie lived in general’s quarters. His so-called hut consisted of a sitting room, drawing room, and dining room. The soldier’s life agreed with him, and he wrote to his mother: “I will … do my best now to make the best use of the short time I now have before me for acquiring knowledge & instruction.”25 What sort of instruction he had in mind was left unclear. The day before, Victoria had written to her uncle Leopold in one of her flashes of self-knowledge: “Alas! Sons are like their mothers—at least the eldest are supposed to be—& so I think Bertie has avoided all likeness to his beloved father.”26
Victoria and Albert visited the Curragh at the end of August. Bertie’s hopes of commanding a company in front of his parents were dashed by Colonel Percy, who told him: “You are too imperfect in your drill, and your word of command is not sufficiently loud and distinct.”27
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Bertie had other distractions. His engagement diary contains the following entries:
6 Sept Curragh N. C. 1st time
9 Sept Curragh N. C. 2nd time
10 Sept Curragh N. C. 3rd time28
The discovery of these cryptic notes allows us to pinpoint exactly the date of Bertie’s “fall.” “N.C.” was Nellie Clifden, a lady of easy virtue who had followed the brigade from London. Urged on by his fellow officers, Bertie escaped at night through the windows of his quarters, and made love to her in another officer’s hut. As his diary reveals, this took place not once but on three occasions.29
Four days after the “third time,” Bertie crossed to Coblenz, where he attended the maneuvers of the Prussian army.
From Coblenz, Bertie traveled through the Rhineland with Vicky and Fritz. He journeyed incognito, again using the title of Baron Renfrew. Incognito was not meant to conceal his true identity; it was a convention that excused him from ceremonial duties and meant that he was not expected to be formally received by the rulers through whose lands he traveled.30 Bertie and his party visited Speyer Cathedral, a jewel of Romanesque architecture that had been recently restored. In the Chapel of St. Bernard, above the crypt crammed with the coffins of medieval emperors, he and Vicky happened to encounter Prince Christian of Denmark and his wife, Princess Louise, traveling with their daughter Alexandra.
This meeting, seemingly a chance encounter, had, in fact, been carefully choreographed by Vicky at Bertie’s request. Alexandra, however, knew nothing. When she left the family house party at Rumpenheim Castle on the banks of the Main that morning, she was surprised at her mother telling her to wear her best dress; being a thrifty princess, she usually wore old clothes for grimy train journeys. Bertie attempted to make conversation with Princess Louise, Alexandra’s mother, but this was difficult as his hushed voice was barely audible to the princess, who was almost completely deaf.