The Heir Apparent

by Jane Ridley

  1. RA VIC/Add A36/405, Henry Ponsonby to Mary Ponsonby, 16 December 1871.

  2. RA VIC/T5/80, Francis Knollys to Henry Ponsonby, 19 December 1871.

  3. Ibid.

  4. RA VIC/Add A36/371, Henry Ponsonby to Mary Ponsonby, 7 October 1871.

  5. QVJ, 21 December 1871, in Buckle, Letters (2nd series), vol. 2, p. 181.

  6. Gladstone’s Memorandum, 21 December 1871, in The Gladstone Diaries, vol. 8, ed. H. C. G. Matthew (Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 81.

  7. Wellcome Library, Gull Papers, MS 5873, A/84, Gull’s Bulletin, 27 December 1871; B/46, Gull’s notes, 22 December 1871. RA VIC/Add A36/410, Henry Ponsonby to Mary Ponsonby, 31 December 1871.

  8. QV to Vicky, 30 December 1871, in Fulford, Darling Child, p. 21.

  9. RA VIC/Z450/41, James Paget to QV, 5 June 1872.

  10. RA VIC/Add A17/531, QV to Princess Louise, 16 February 1872. RA QVJ, 12 February 1872. RA VIC/Z450/11, William Gull to QV, 25 February 1872.

  11. RA VIC/Add A17/532, Leopold to Louise, 21 February 1872.

  12. Alix to Louise, 7 February 1872, in Longford, Darling Loosy, p. 164.

  13. Copenhagen Letters, Box 103, Alix to Minnie, 8 January 1873.

  14. QV to Vicky, 14 February 1872, in Fulford, Darling Child, p. 28.

  15. See RA Photograph Collection, Wales Family Photographs, RCINs 2108424–428, February 1872; RCIN 2108454, April 1872.

  16. RA VIC/Add A17/532, Leopold to Louise, 21 February 1872.

  17. Wellcome, Gull Papers, MS 5873, F/S/1–2, Alix to William Gull, 16 January 1872.

  18. The Economist, 24 February 1874, in St. John Stevas, Collected Works, vol. 5, p. 439.

  19. David Cannadine, “The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the ‘Invention of Tradition,’ ” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 118. William M. Kuhn, Democratic Royalism (Macmillan, 1996), pp. 43–44.

  20. Kuhn, Democratic Royalism, pp. 43–44.

  21. RA VIC/Z450/2, Alix to QV, 30 January 1872.

  22. QV to Vicky, 28 February 1872, in Fulford, Darling Child, p. 32.

  23. QVJ, 27 February 1872, in Buckle, Letters (2nd series), vol. 2, p. 194.

  24. QV to Vicky, 28 February 1872, in Fulford, Darling Child, p. 31.

  25. QVJ, 27 February 1872, in Buckle, Letters (2nd series), vol. 2, p. 195.

  26. B to QV, 27 February 1872, in Buckle, Letters (2nd series), vol. 2, p. 196.

  27. Alix to QV, n.d. [December 1871], in Lee, Edward VII, vol. 1, p. 323.

  28. William Gladstone to Henry Ponsonby, 22 December 1871, in Philip Guedella, The Queen and Mr. Gladstone (Hodder and Stoughton, 1933), vol. 1, p. 321.

  29. Matthew, Gladstone Diaries, vol. 8, p. 173, 2 July 1872.

  30. William Gladstone to QV, 5 July 1872, in Guedella, Queen and Mr. Gladstone, vol. 1, pp. 351–8.

  31. RA VIC/Z459/35, QV’s memo dictated to Henry Ponsonby, 9 July 1872.

  32. Guedella, Queen and Mr. Gladstone, vol. 1, pp. 359–61.

  33. William Gladstone to QV, 5 July 1872, in ibid., vol. 1, p. 358.

  34. Matthew, Gladstone Diaries, vol. 8, p. 173, 4 July 1873; William Gladstone to Lord Granville, 18 January 1872, in Ramm, Political Correspondence, vol. 2, p. 300.

  35. QV to Vicky, 5 June 1872, in Fulford, Darling Child, p. 47.

  36. William Gladstone to Lord Halifax, 28 August 1872, in Matthew, Gladstone Diaries, vol. 8, p. 202.

  37. Lord Granville to William Gladstone, 4 September 1872, in Ramm, Political Correspondence, vol. 2, pp. 342–43.

  38. William Gladstone to QV, 28 August 1872: QV to William Gladstone, 2 September 1872, in Guedella, Queen and Mr. Gladstone, vol. 2, pp. 376–79.

  39. QV to William Gladstone, 18 November 1872, in ibid., vol. 2, p. 385.

  40. Matthew, Gladstone Diaries, vol. 8, p. 251, 30 November, 1 December 1872.

  41. Francis Knollys to Henry Ponsonby, 8 December 1872, in Magnus, Edward VII, pp. 123–24.

  42. Lord Granville to Henry Ponsonby, 26 December 1871, in Arthur Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby (Macmillan, 1943), p. 102.

  43. RA VIC/Add A36/640, Henry Ponsonby to Mary Ponsonby, 17 September 1873.

  44. William Gladstone to Lord Granville, 15 January 1873, in Ramm, Political Correspondence, vol. 2, p. 375.

  45. QV to Vicky, 20 December 1871, in Fulford, Darling Child, p. 20.

  46. Magnus, Edward VII, p. 125.

  47. QV to Vicky, 3 April 1875, in Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary, p. 74n.

  48. Vincent, Derby Diaries, 1869–78, pp. 178–79 (2 September 1874), recording Disraeli’s conversation with QV.

  49. Diary of Lady Frederick Cavendish, 20 December 1872, in Battiscombe, Queen Alexandra, p. 127.

  50. Tosh, Man’s Place, ch. 4. Nancy Ellenberger, “George Wyndham,” Journal of British Studies, vol. 39 (2000), pp. 493–94.

  51. Rohl, Young Wilhelm, p. 117.

  52. Vicky to QV, 6 June 1874, in Fulford, Darling Child, p. 141.

  53. QV to Vicky, 16 June 1874, in Fulford, Darling Child, p. 143. Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary, pp. 56–57.

  54. QV to Vicky, 30 April 1870, in Fulford, Your Dear Letter, p. 277.

  55. Letter from QV, 17 March 1872, in Battiscombe, Queen Alexandra, pp. 122–23.

  56. Benjamin Disraeli to Lady Chesterfield, 15 December 1873, in Letters of Disraeli to Lady Bradford and Lady Chesterfield, ed. Marquis of Zetland (Ernest Benn, 1929), vol. 1, pp. 291–93.

  57. RA VIC/Add A36/959, Henry Ponsonby to Mary Ponsonby, 12 September 1875.

  58. See Richard Davenport-Hines, “John Dalton,” ODNB.

  59. RA VIC/Add A36/776, Henry Ponsonby to QV, 9 August 1874.

  60. RA VIC/Add A36/474, Henry Ponsonby to Mary Ponsonby, 20 December 1872.

  61. [A. A. Doughty and S. O. Beeton], Beeton’s Christmas Annual: The Coming K— (Ward, Lock and Tyler, 1872), pp. 39–40.

  62. Fitzwilliam, Wilfrid Blunt Papers, MS 398–1975, Diary, 5 March 1909. See Vane, Affair of State, pp. 49–69.

  63. Fitzwilliam, Blunt Papers, MS 398–1975, Diary, 5 March 1909.

  64. Ibid.

  65. Stocker, Royalist and Realist, pp. 283–84.

  66. Fitzwilliam, Blunt Papers, MS 7–1975, Diary, 15 April 1906.

  67. Leo McKinstry, Rosebery (John Murray, 2005), pp. 43–44.

  68. RA VIC/Add A36/588, Henry Ponsonby to Mary Ponsonby, 18 July 1873.

  69. RA VIC/Add A36/623, Henry Ponsonby to Mary Ponsonby, 3 September 1873. For Mrs. Sloane-Stanley see Mrs. Hywfa Willliams, It Was Such Fun (Hutchinson, 1935), p. 23.

  70. Lord Rossmore, Things I Can Tell (Eveleigh Nash, 1912). Leslie, Edwardians in Love, pp. 104–5. Camp, Royal Mistresses, pp. 362–63. Tim Coates claims that Patsy began an affair with Bertie in 1870, when she was sixteen, and repeats a story that “one, two or even three” of her children were Bertie’s. (Patsy, Bloomsbury, 2004, p. 7.)

  71. Copenhagen Letters, Box 103, Alix to Minnie, 2 May 1873.

  72. Author email from Anna Kirk, 23 May 2011.

  73. Freeman’s Journal, 28 June 1873.

  74. Copenhagen Letters, Box 103, Alix to Minnie, 16 September 1872. Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary, p. 53.

  75. Copenhagen Letters, Box 103, Alix to Minnie, n.d. [August 1873].

  76. Copenhagen Letters, Box 103, Alix to Minnie, 10 September 1873.

  77. Copenhagen Letters, Box 103, Alix to Minnie, 24 December 1872: “I must to bed as my Bertie, I think, will be coming immediately”; Alix to Minnie, 19 March 1874: “I now only hope that we are not, both of us, in a certain blessed condition.”

  78. RA VIC/Add C07/1/Cornwallis-West, Francis Knollys to Henry Ponsonby, 29 December 1873. See Ramm, Political Correspondence, vol. 2, p. 442.

  79. Copenhagen Letters, Box 103, Alix to Minnie, 24 March 1874.

  80. Copenhagen Letters, Box 103, Alix to Minnie, 22 November 1874.

  81. RA VIC/Add A36/801, Henry Ponsonby to Mary Ponsonby, 1 September 1874.

  82. The Times,
1 October 1874.

  83. QV to Vicky, 20 October 1874, in Fulford, Darling Child, p. 158.

  84. RA VIC/Add C07/1/0889, Henry Ponsonby to Francis Knollys, 15 October 1874.

  85. RA VIC/T5/131, Benjamin Disraeli to B, 9 October 1874.

  86. RA VIC/T5/133, B to Benjamin Disraeli, 7 October 1874. Marquis of Zetland, Letters of Disraeli, vol. 1, p. 160.

  87. The Times, 19 October 1874. RA VIC/Add A36/826, Henry Ponsonby to Mary Ponsonby, 19 October 1874.

  88. RA VIC/Z450/124, William Knollys to QV, 14 September 1874.

  89. Hertford Record Office, Lytton Papers, DE/K/C40/41, Robert Lytton to John Forster, 29 October 1874.

  90. Copenhagen Letters, Box 103, Alix to Minnie, 3 September–20 October 1874.

  91. The Times, 19 October 1874, gives the list of names. See Richard Davenport-Hines, A Night at the Majestic: Proust and the Great Modernist Dinner Party of 1922 (Faber, 2006), p. 111; Philippe Jullian, Edward and the Edwardians (Sidgwick and Jackson, 1967), pp. 98–99.

  92. The Times, 10 October 1874, quoting Le Figaro.

  93. Marquis of Zetland, Letters of Disraeli, vol. 1, pp. 166–67.

  94. Quoted in George D. Painter, Marcel Proust, vol. 1 (Chatto and Windus, 1959), p. 162. See Camp, Royal Mistresses, pp. 361–62.

  95. Hertford Record Office, Lytton Papers, DE/K/C40/41, Robert Lytton to John Forster, 29 October 1874.

  96. Paris Police archives, cited in Hibbert, Edward VII, p. 122.

  97. Painter, Proust, vol. 1, p. 162.

  98. The Daily News (UK), 24 October 1874. Author email from Anthony Camp, 18 November 2009.

  99. Hertford Record Office, Lytton Papers, DE/K/C40/41, Robert Lytton to John Forster, 29 October 1874.

  100. Leslie, Edwardians in Love, pp. 70–72. Painter, Proust, vol. 1, pp. 154–55.

  101. The Times, 23 March 1874.

  102. RA VIC/T6/27, Benjamin Disraeli to Henry Ponsonby, 1 July 1875.

  103. RA VIC/Add A36/960, Henry Ponsonby to Mary Ponsonby, 13 September 1875.

  104. RA VIC/Add A36/921, Henry Ponsonby to Mary Ponsonby, 5 June 1875.

  105. Vincent, Derby Diaries 1869–78, p. 221 (5 June 1875).

  106. RA VIC/T6/22, Note by Henry Ponsonby, [7] June 1875.

  107. RA VIC/T6/18, Francis Knollys to Henry Ponsonby, 4 June 1875.

  108. RA VIC/T6/22, Note by Henry Ponsonby, June 1875.

  109. Vincent, Derby Diaries 1869–78, p. 229 (14 July 1875).

  110. Ibid., pp. 223, 227–28, 229–50 (9, 12 June, 3 July 1875).

  111. Marquis of Zetland, Letters of Disraeli, vol. 1, p. 227.

  112. Vincent, Derby Diaries 1869–78, pp. 203–4 (31 March 1875).

  113. Copenhagen Letters, Box 103, Alix to Minnie, 5 April–8 May 1875; Marquis of Zetland, Letters of Disraeli, vol. 1, p. 224.

  114. RA VIC/T6/48, B to Benjamin Disraeli, 13 September 1875.

  115. RA VIC/Z468/46, Benjamin Disraeli to QV, n.d.

  116. Benjamin Disraeli to Lady Chesterfield, 4 October 1875, in Marquis of Zetland, Letters of Disraeli, vol. 1, p. 224.

  117. RA VIC/Z468/56, Helena to QV, 11 October 1875.

  118. Copenhagen Letters, Box 103, Alix to Minnie, 26 October 1875.

  119. RA VIC/Z468/67, Alix to QV, 14 October 1875.

  CHAPTER 11: INDIA 1875–76

  1. Bodleian Library, Lincolnshire Papers, MS Film 1120, Charles Carrington to his mother, 22 October 1875.

  2. Copenhagen Letters, Box 103, Alix to Minnie, 26 October 1875.

  3. B to Lord Granville, 29 October 1875, in Lee, Edward VII, vol. 1, p. 379.

  4. QV to Vicky, 4 August 1875, in Fulford, Darling Child, p. 187.

  5. RA VIC/T6/56, Sir Thomas Biddulph to Bartle Frere, 6 October 1875. RA VIC/Add A36/959, Henry Ponsonby to Mary Ponsonby, 12 September 1875.

  6. RA VIC/Add A36/964, Henry Ponsonby to Mary Ponsonby, 17 September 1875. Turner, Court of St. James’s, pp. 294–95.

  7. RA VIC/Add A36/959, Henry Ponsonby to Mary Ponsonby, 12 September 1875.

  8. Bodleian Library, Lincolnshire Papers, MS Film 1120, Charles Carrington to his mother, 5 November 1875.

  9. BL, India Office Collections, Bourne and Shepherd’s Royal Photographic Album, HRH’s Tour in India (1876).

  10. Bodleian Library, Lincolnshire Papers, MS Film 1120, Charles Carrington to his mother, 22 October 1875. RA VIC/Z468/87, Francis Knollys to Henry Ponsonby, 7 November 1875.

  11. BL, India Office, MSS Eur C144/12, Arthur Ellis to Lord Salisbury, 31 August 1875; Salisbury to Northbrook, 1 September 1875. The Times, 19 November 1875.

  12. The Times, 19 November 1875. W. H. Russell, The Prince of Wales’s Tour (Sampson Low, 1877), p. 7.

  13. Bodleian Library, Lincolnshire Papers, MS Film 1120, Charles Carrington to his mother, 5 November 1875.

  14. Lord Suffield, My Memories (Herbert Jenkins, 1913), p. 160. See Katherine Prior, “Edward Bradford,” ODNB.

  15. RA VIC/Add A2/6, QV to B, 26 November 1875. RA VIC/Add A2/11, QV to B, 31 December 1875.

  16. Lord Northbrook to QV, 13 November 1875, in Buckle, Letters (2nd series), vol. 2, p. 431.

  17. The Times, 6 December 1875.

  18. Ibid., 7 December 1875.

  19. Bodleian Library, Lincolnshire Papers, MS Film 1120, Charles Carrington to his mother, 22 November 1875. See David Gilmour, The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj (John Murray, 2005), pp. 196–97.

  20. The Times, 20 December 1875.

  21. BL, India Office, MSS Eur C144/12/64, Lord Salisbury to Lord Northbrook, 22 July 1875.

  22. Bodleian Library, Lincolnshire Papers, MS Film 1120, Charles Carrington to his mother, 14 November 1875.

  23. Russell, Prince of Wales’s Tour, pp. 276–84. The Times, 13 December 1875.

  24. Antony Taylor, “ ‘Pig-Sticking Princes’: Royal Hunting, Moral Outrage, and the Republican Opposition to Animal Abuse in 19th and early 20th c Britain,” History, vol. 89 (2004), p. 44.

  25. Reynolds’s Newspaper, 19 December 1875.

  26. Ibid., 16 January 1876.

  27. QV to Vicky, 2 February 1876, in Fulford, Darling Child, p. 204.

  28. Bartle Frere to QV, 10 February 1876, in Lee, Edward VII, vol. 1, p. 385.

  29. Russell, Prince of Wales’s Tour, p. 461.

  30. RA VIC/Z469/29, Extract from Daly’s Report, n.d.

  31. The Times, 31 January 1876. Suffield, Memories, p. 215.

  32. Barbara Strachey, The Strachey Line (Gollancz, 1985), p. 159.

  33. The Times, 31 January, 6 March 1876.

  34. B to Lord Granville, 30 November 1875, in Lee, Edward VII, vol. 1, p. 399.

  35. Quoted in ibid., vol. 1, p. 399.

  36. B to QV, 14 November 1875, in ibid. RA VIC/Add A2/8, QV to B, 9 December 1875.

  37. BL, India Office, MSS Eur C144/12, Lord Salisbury to Lord Northbrook, 17 December 1875.

  38. Lady Strachey’s Diary, November 1875, in Diana Souhami, The Trials of Radclyffe Hall (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998), p. 37.

  39. Strachey, Strachey Line, p. 159.

  40. Cara Lancaster Papers, B to Mabel Batten, 11 March 1876.

  41. Cara Lancaster Papers, Running Order for Radio 4 Programme on Mabel Batten, 3 March 1999. Souhami, Trials of Radclyffe Hall, pp. 35–39. Camp, Royal Mistresses, pp. 363–64.

  42. Battiscombe, Queen Alexandra, pp. 130–31.

  43. RA VIC/Add A2/19, QV to B, 19 February 1876.

  44. Reynolds’s Newspaper, 13 February 1876.

  45. The Times, 9 February 1876.

  46. Walter L. Arnstein, “Queen Victoria Opens Parliament,” Historical Research, vol. 63 (1990), pp. 185–87.

  47. RA VIC/Add A2/18, QV to B, 18 February 1876.

  48. RA VIC/Add A2/23, QV to B, 17 March 1876. Miles Taylor, “Queen Victoria and India, 1837–61,” Victorian Studies, vol. 46 (2004), pp. 264–66.

  49. RA VIC/Add C07/1/Ponsonby, Francis Knollys to Henry Ponsonby, 7 April 1876, “Confidential.”

  50. RA VIC/Add C07/1/0992, B to B
enjamin Disraeli, 22 April 1876, copy.

  51. Francis Knollys to Benjamin Disraeli, 22 April 1876, in Lee, Edward VII, vol. 1, p. 403.

  52. Russell, Prince of Wales’s Tour, pp. 469, 471–72, 476, 492.

  53. RA VIC/Add A2/24, QV to B, 23 March 1876.

  54. Reynolds’s Newspaper, 5 March 1876.

  55. RA VIC/EVIID/20 February 1876.

  56. RA GV/AA13/14, B to George, 23 February 1876.

  CHAPTER 12: THE AYLESFORD SCANDAL 1876

  1. Edward Marjoribanks to the Duke of Marlborough, 1 March 1876, in Randolph Churchill, Winston S. Churchill: Companion, vol. 1 (Heinemann, 1967), part 1, p. 29.

  2. QV to Ponsonby, [?11 May 1876], in ibid., part 1, p. 41.

  3. Aylesford Papers, Packington Hall, Album on Royal Visit, 1874. Lord Aylesford letters to author, 30 October 2006, 3 December 2006. Copenhagen Letters, Box 103, Alix to Minnie, 22 November 1874.

  4. Aylesford Papers, Packington Hall, Album on Royal Visit, 1874.

  5. See B to Harriett Mordaunt, 30 November and 5 December 1867, in The Times, 21 February 1870.

  6. Sir William Dugdale, author interview, 10 February 2007.

  7. Statement by Lord Blandford, 27 July 1876, in Randolph Churchill, Churchill: Companion, vol. 1, part 1, p. 49.

  8. Edith Aylesford to Jane, Countess of Aylesford, ?25 February 1876, in Randolph Churchill, Churchill: Companion, vol. 1, part 1, p. 27.

  9. The Times, 4 July 1878.

  10. Author interview with Lord Aylesford, November 2006. Randolph Churchill, Churchill: Companion, vol. 1, part 1, pp. 26ff. The Times, 4 July 1878.

  11. Joe Aylesford to Edith Aylesford, 15 February 1876, in Randolph Churchill, Churchill: Companion, vol. 1, part 1, p. 26.

  12. RA VIC/Add C07/1/1071, Joe Aylesford to Edith Aylesford, telegram (copy), 22 February 1876.

  13. RA VIC/Add C07/1/1072, Joe Aylesford to Jane, Countess of Aylesford, telegram (copy), 22 February 1876.

  14. Bodleian Libray, Lincolnshire Papers, MS Film 1120, Charles Carrington to his mother, 1 March 1876.

  15. RA VIC/Add C07/1/1073, Alix to B, telegram, 23 February 1876.

  16. RA VIC/Add C07/1/1075, Alix to B, telegram, 27 February 1876.

  17. RA VIC/Add C07/1/1076, B to Alix, telegram, 29 February 1876.

  18. RA VIC/Add C07/1/1078, Duchess of Manchester to B, telegram, 27 February 1876.