QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History

by Christopher Hibbert

  She ate all her meals alone; she sat by herself in her mother's 'dear room', despite the awful stillness of the house. Going through the Duchess's papers, she was 'wretched to think how, for a time two people [Conroy and Lehzen] wickedly estranged us', and she was deeply moved to read how her mother and her 'beloved Father loved each other' and how much she herself was loved: it was 'too touching'.13

  She took the Prince of Wales, who had arrived at Windsor, to see the 'beautiful peaceful remains' of his grandmother. But, embarrassed by his mother's excessive lamentations, he could not bring himself to behave as she wished; and she accused him of being heartless and selfish. Writing on paper with black edges which she considered insufficiently broad, her son replied that, 'since [his] sisters were sympathizing with her so warmly and affectionately', he had not liked to intrude, fearing that he would be in the way and believing that they would be 'a greater support' to her than he could possibly be.14

  Prince Albert, who had himself been in tears on leaving the Duchess's room shortly before she died, could not comfort the Queen either. Having her work to do as well as his own, he was, as he said, 'well nigh overwhelmed' by business. He took the Queen to Osborne in the hope that she would recover there more quickly than at Windsor; but she was so nervous there that she could not bear to be with the children whose talk disturbed her so, none more so than the voice of the Prince of Wales.

  Chapter 35

  THE DISAPPOINTING HEIR

  'The systematic idleness, laziness - disregard of everything is enough to break one's heart, and fills me with indignation.'

  'Bertie continues such an anxiety,' the Queen had written to the Crown Princess Frederick in April 1859 when the Prince of Wales was seventeen years old.

  I tremble at the thought of only three years and a half before us - when he will be of age and we can't hold him except by moral power! I try to shut my eyes to that terrible moment! He is improving very decidedly - but Oh! it is the improvement of such a poor or still more idle intellect. Oh! dear, what would happen if I were to die next winter. It is too awful a contemplation. His journal is worse a great deal than Affie's [Prince Alfred's] letters. And all from laziness! Still we must hope for improvement in essentials; but the greatest improvement I fear, will never make him fit for his position. His only safety - and the country's - is his implicit reliance in everything, on dearest Papa, that perfection of human beings.1

  'I feel very sad about him,' she told her daughter on another occasion, 'he is so idle and so weak. God grant that he may take things more to heart and be more serious for the future.' He was such 'a very dull companion' compared with his brothers, who were 'all so amusing and communicative'. 'When I see [Affie] and Arthur and look at... ! (You know what I mean!) I am in utter despair! The systematic idleness, laziness - disregard of everything is enough to break one's heart, and fills me with indignation.'2 Even his physique depressed her. She complained of his small head, his big Coburg nose, his protuberant Hanoverian eyes, his shortness, his receding chin, his tendency to fat, 'the effeminate and girlish' way he wore his hair.3

  When he was created a Knight of the Garter in November 1858 she noticed how knock-kneed his legs appeared in court dress. Later she commented disapprovingly upon his 'pallor, dull, heavy, blase look'. His heart was warm and affectionate, she had to admit; but 'O, dear ... Oh Bertie alas! alas!'4

  Part of the trouble was that she considered him to be a 'caricature' of herself; she saw her own failings magnified in him.5 So, in fact, had Baron Stockmar, who considered that the boy was 'an exaggerated copy of his mother'. But whereas she had tried to improve herself, he appeared incapable of the effort.

  The Prince Consort expressed quite as deep a concern, particularly after receiving far from encouraging reports from Colonel Robert Bruce, the Prince's Governor, who had to admit that, while his charge could undoubtedly be charming, he was still far too prone to outbursts of temper, to egotism and to the adoption of domineering attitudes. He exaggerated the importance of etiquette and dress; had little or no respect for learning; possessed small powers of reflection and was 'prone to listlessness and frivolous disputes'. He took no interest in anything but clothes, his father lamented, 'and again clothes'. Even when out shooting 'he [was] more occupied with his trousers than with the game'.6

  He was certainly 'lively, quick and sharp when his mind [was] set on anything, which [was] seldom ... But usually his intellect [was] of no more use than a pistol packed in the bottom of a trunk if one were attacked in the robber-infested Apennines.'7

  The Queen was equally exasperated. 'Poor Bertie! He vexes us much.' 'There is not a particle of reflection, or even attention to anything but dress! Not the slightest interest to learn, on the contrary, il se bonche les oreilles, the moment anything of interest is being talked of.'8

  To encourage his appreciation of art and to acquire 'knowledge and information', the Prince was sent to Rome immediately on his return from a visit to his sister in Berlin. Colonel Bruce was once more in charge of the party and was provided by the Prince Consort with a detailed itinerary together with the most exact instructions as to the Prince's behaviour and course of study. At the same time Bruce was instructed by the Queen to be present whenever the Prince talked to any 'foreigner or stranger'. It was 'indispensable that His Royal Highness should receive no foreigner or stranger alone, so that no report of pretended conversations with such persons could be circulated without immediate refutation.'

  Having failed to derive much profit from his tour of Italy, the Prince was sent to Edinburgh for three months' intensive work before embarking on the next stage of his education, a period of study first at Oxford, then at Cambridge. The reports from none of these seats of learning did much to comfort the Prince's parents.

  'Bertie's propensity is indescribable laziness,' the Prince Consort wrote to his daughter in Germany. 'I never in my life met such a thorough and cunning lazybones ... It does grieve me when it is my own son, and when one considers that he might be called upon at any moment to take over the reins of government in a country where the sun never sets.'9

  Having so much to condemn and criticize, the Queen and Prince Consort were all the more surprised to learn that their son had done quite well in the first of the examinations which he was required to undergo at the end of each term. The Dean of Christ Church, who thought the Prince 'the nicest fellow possible, so simple, naif, ingenuous and modest', was 'quite satisfied' with the results.

  The Prince Consort received further favourable reports about his son from Germany, where he was sent for part of his Easter holidays in 1860 and where the ageing Baron Stockmar was much impressed by the great improvement he detected in him. 'That you see so many signs of improvement in the young gentleman is a great joy to us,' his father replied to Stockmar's letter of commendation. 'For parents who watch their son with anxiety, and set their hopes for him high, are in some measure incapable of forming a clear estimate, and are apt at the same time to be impatient if their wishes are not fulfilled. '10

  In the summer of that year the Prince of Wales was sent out to represent his parents in Canada and on that occasion they acknowledged the compliments paid to him with less grudging satisfaction, as they did the good reports they received of his behaviour and reception in the United States where, so Bruce said, he 'created everywhere a most favourable impression'.

  His mother was delighted with these reports and, for once, gave him credit unreservedly. 'He was immensely popular everywhere,' she told Princess Frederick as the Prince was on his way home, 'and he really deserves the highest praise, which should be given him all the more as he was never spared any reproof.' The Prince Consort, too, was prepared to recognize that much of the credit for the resounding success of what King Leopold called this 'tremendous tour' must rest with his son,11 though the Queen chose to suppose that 'when Bertie was received in the United States as no one ever has been received', this was 'principally owing to the (to me incredible) liking they have for my unworthy
self'.'12 The young hero arrived home and was welcomed at Windsor with warm congratulations. Although he was 'a little yellow and sallow' and his hair looked so fair when he stood next to Affie (who was 'very dark and very handsome'), the Queen thought that he looked well, had grown a little taller and was 'decidedly improved'. Yet she felt constrained to add, with more than a hint of disapproval, that he had become 'extremely talkative'. He had also taken, she later noticed, to lounging about with a cigar stuck in his mouth.

  Soon after his return from the United States, the Prince was sent to the Curragh military camp near Dublin to gain some experience of army life. The experiment was not a success: he found it impossible to keep pace with the demanding programme his father had drawn up for him; and when his parents came to watch a review on the Curragh, all that the Queen could find to say of Bertie's part in it was that he did not look 'so very small'.13

  For the Prince, however, his time on the Curragh had its compensations. There were several convivial and congenial young Guards officers at the camp; and one evening, after a noisy and rather drunken party in the mess, some of these persuaded a young actress to creep into his quarters and wait for the Prince in his bed. This was Nellie Clifden, a vivacious, cheerfully promiscuous and amusing girl who was also unfortunately most indiscreet. The Prince was much taken with her. On his return to England, he continued seeing her when he could, and, on one occasion at least, she seems to have gone to Windsor. Delighting in her company, the Prince felt more than ever disinclined to concentrate upon a subject to which his parents had urged him to lend his mind - his marriage.

  * * *

  The subject had first been broached soon after the Prince's return from America. But he had not been in the least responsive, maintaining that he was determined to marry only for love. When the Queen wrote to him about his duty to get married to a suitable bride, he replied to her, so she complained to Bruce, 'in a confused way'. Eventually, however, he agreed to consider marrying Princess Alexandra of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, the daughter of Prince Christian of Denmark, a distant relative of the drunken, divorced King Frederick VII and recognized as his heir. Her mother was Princess Louise, daughter of the Landgrave William of Hesse-Cassel. There were thus two strong objections to this match which the Queen and Prince Consort had initially dismissed out of hand. In the first place, they much disapproved of the Hesse-Cassel family, whose castle at Rumpenheim near Frankfurt was said to be the scene of the wildest and most indecorous parties; and in the second place they were most reluctant to become entangled in the complicated question of the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, which had been ruled for years by the Kings of Denmark but which the Germans considered they had a good right to annex.

  As opposed to these objections, however, Princess Alexandra herself was wholly unexceptionable. The reports of her from Copenhagen were enthusiastic. She was only just seventeen and still at school; but, though so young, she displayed a remarkable grace of movement and manner. And when the Queen saw the photograph sent to her by Walburga Paget, the German wife of the British Minister in Copenhagen, who had once been Princess Frederick's lady-in-waiting, she had to admit that Alexandra was, indeed,' unverschamt hubsch', 'outrageously pretty'. The Princess was not in the least intellectual and had rather a quick temper, but few other faults could be found in her. If she occasionally displayed a lamentable ignorance, she was never tactless; and if she was sometimes a little stubborn, she was never unkind. 'She is a good deal taller than I am,' the Crown Princess told her parents, 'has a lovely figure but very thin, a complexion beautiful as possible ... You may go far before you find another Princess like Princess Alix ... Oh, if only she was not a Dane ... I should say yes - she is the one a thousand times over.'14 So the Queen allowed herself to be convinced that Princess Alexandra must 'be charming in every sense of the word'. She seemed all the more desirable because not only was the Russian court also interested in her as a bride for Tsar Alexander's heir, but so was the Queen of Holland on behalf of the Prince of Orange. Evidently she was a 'pearl not to be lost'. 'May he be only worthy of such a jewel,' the Queen wrote to the Crown Princess, 'there is the rub. '15

  The Prince Consort shared the Queen's high opinion of Princess Alexandra and when he heard that his brother, Ernest, Duke of Coburg, was raising objections to the match on the grounds that it would not be in the best interests of Germany, he wrote him a furious letter: 'What has that got to do with you? ... Vicky has racked her brains to help us to find someone, but in vain ... We have no choice. '16 To his son, the Prince Consort wrote, 'It would be a thousand pities if you were to lose her.'

  So, in September, without marked enthusiasm, the Prince of Wales embarked for the Continent with General Bruce to see the girl whom his sister, having contrived a meeting with her at Strelitz, now described as 'the most fascinating creature in the world'. When the Prince met her at Speyer he gave his parents a report as flat and unrevealing as they had come to expect.

  We met Prince and Princess Christian, and the young lady of whom I had heard so much ... I must ask you to wait till I see you, and then I will give you my impression about her. Princess Christian seems a very nice person, but is, unfortunately, very deaf. The Prince is a most gentlemanlike, agreeable person. After having thoroughly seen over the cathedral we lunched at the hotel and then proceeded here [Heidelberg].17

  The Prince of Wales was little more forthcoming when he arrived home and reported in person to his parents at Balmoral. The Queen gathered that he was 'decidedly pleased with Pcss. Alix' and thought her face and figure pretty, but he 'seemed nervous about deciding anything yet'.18 'As for being in love,' she added in a letter to her daughter, 'I don't think he can be, or that he is capable of enthusiasm about anything in the world ... Poor boy - he does mean well - but he is so different to darling Affie! '19 The Crown Princess had rallied to the Prince of Wales's defence when their mother had been particularly critical of him before the meeting with Princess Alexandra. She had been brave enough to write then: 'One thing pains me, and that is the relation between you and Bertie! ... His heart is very capable of affection, of warmth of feeling and I am sure that it will come out with time and by degrees. He loves his home and feels happy there and those feelings must be nurtured.'20

  The Prince Consort considered the whole situation thoroughly unsatisfactory; and he decided to put the whole problem down on paper in an effort to bring some clarity into his son's mind which, at the moment, appeared to be 'a little confused'. If the Princess and her parents were to be invited to England before the Prince made up his mind, he must 'thoroughly understand' that this would be in order that he might propose to the young lady if she pleased him on further acquaintance, and if she did not please him he must say at once that the matter was at an end.21

  The Prince assured his father that he understood the position perfectly well, and agreed to do as he suggested. But he remained as unenthusiastic as ever; and the Prince Consort was quite baffled by the 'unsolved riddle' of his son's reluctance to marry since his time on the Curragh, as he had earlier expressed a 'desire to contract an early marriage' as soon as he was of age. The next month, however, the Prince Consort did solve the riddle at last; and he sat down to write to his son 'with a heavy heart upon a subject which [had] caused him the greatest pain' he had ever felt in his life, and which, so the Queen afterwards decided, proved too much for him to bear.22

  He had been forced to recognize that there could be no doubt of the appalling fact that the Prince of Wales had had sexual experience with a woman who was a known habituee of the most vulgar dance halls in London. Sparing her the 'disgusting details', the Prince Consort broke the news to the Queen, then wrote an enormously long and anguished letter to his son in which he elaborated the likely consequences of his terrible sin, the possibility that the woman might have a child by him or get hold of a child and pretend that it was his.

  He was too heartbroken to see his son at present, he said, but he 'assured him that he would do
his best to protect him from the full consequences of his evil deed'. The Prince must, therefore, confess everything.

  The Prince did confess everything in the most abjectly apologetic and contrite manner. He declined to name the officers responsible for his degradation; and his father accepted his refusal as right and proper, telling him that it would have been cowardly for him to have done so. But everything else was admitted and regretted.23 The Prince Consort was thankful to recognize that the letter displayed a sincere repentance, and he was prepared to forgive his son for 'the terrible pain' which he had caused his parents. But forgiveness could not restore him to the state of innocence and purity which he had lost for ever, having 'sunk into vice and debauchery'. An early marriage was now essential.

  Two days after writing this letter of forgiveness and exhortation, on 22 November 1861, the Prince Consort went to Sandhurst to inspect the buildings for the new Staff College and the Royal Military Academy. It was a cold wet day and he returned to Windsor tired out and racked by rheumatic pains. The next day he caught a cold and this, combined with his continuing anxiety over his son, aggravated his insomnia. 'Albert has such nights since that great worry,' the Queen wrote anxiously. 'It makes him weak and tired.'