Prince Albert
Page 1
Title
Robert Rhodes James
PRINCE ALBERT
A BIOGRAPHY
Contents
Contents
Preface
chapter one
Prologue
chapter two
‘A Good and Useful Man’
chapter three
Betrothal
chapter four
‘Only the Husband’
chapter five
The Turning-Point
chapter six
Crisis and triumph
chapter seven
The Unblessed Peacemaker
chapter eight
Husband and Father
chapter nine
‘Something Great and Good’
References to Documents Quoted from the Royal Archives
About the Author
Epigraph
For Kate from Papa
If ladies be but young and fair,
They have the gift to know it.
(As You Like It)
Preface
It is sometimes difficult for a biographer to convey adequately, even to himself, why it is that a particular individual attracts him so powerfully that the idea of writing a biography gradually germinates and then moves from the stage of general interest to actual endeavour and then to final accomplishment. My political involvements and concerns at least partly explain my biographies of Lord Randolph Churchill, Lord Rosebery, and Victor Cazalet, and my study of Sir Winston Churchill’s career between 1900 and 1939, but this new biography of Prince Albert essentially stems from many years of growing interest in a man comparable to Thomas Jefferson in the extraordinary variety and depth of his interests, who died so young and who achieved so much, but who has consistently failed to attract the serious attention of most political historians. This is all the more curious because he has received some admirable biographies, of which the first, by Sir Theodore Martin, is the most underestimated of all, but in spite of the endeavours of Sir Roger Fulford and Mr. Reginald Pound – to each of whom my debt is especially great – and my constituent and friend Mrs. Daphne Bennett, he is still inexplicably widely regarded as an enigmatic, somewhat cold, and not very significant participant in the life and reign of Queen Victoria, some of whose biographers have given him a rather minor role.
He is a man from whom contemporaries and subsequent commentators have seemed to derive much pleasure in calculatingly denigrating, and, it must be admitted, with considerable effect. The grotesque portrait presented by Lytton Strachey, with its sneers and false innuendoes – ‘owing either to his peculiar upbringing or to a more fundamental idiosyncrasy he had a marked distaste for the opposite sex’ is a notably unpleasant example – has left its mark. So, also, have the strictures of Arthur Ponsonby, who wrote in his essay on Queen Victoria in 1933 that Prince Albert ‘was not an English gentleman, he was unmistakably a German, rather professorial, shy, cold, and formal. He lacked the warmth and geniality which may often overcome adverse prejudices . . . he was a foreigner and a pedant’. While it was perhaps inevitable that there should be a reaction against the somewhat overdone memorials to ‘Albert The Good’ it is entirely wrong that such crude and inaccurate portraits of a remarkably complex character should remain unchallenged.
Indeed, so wide, and so many, were Prince Albert’s interests and abilities, packed into a very short life, that the real difficulty confronting his biographer is that of giving a fair balance to each of them. As with Jefferson, he merits a volume as architect, designer, farmer, and naturalist. His influence on English music and art appreciation is only now being fully recognised – not by the few, who have long realised it, but by a much larger audience as the result of Sir John Plumb’s and Sir Huw Wheldon’s superb Royal Heritage television programmes and book. Very few men in modern times have made such a lasting and permanent mark in such an astonishing variety of fields, from the popularisation of the Christmas Tree to the saving of Cleopatra’s Needle and its placing on the Thames Embankment; the spectacular revival of Cambridge University from medieval slumber to a world eminence it has never surrendered; the foundations of Imperial College London were his work, as are the museums in South Kensington, the carved lions at the base of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, the extension to the National Gallery and its glorious early Renaissance paintings whose purchase he inspired and of which twenty-two are his personal gift, the idea of the Royal Balcony on the facade of Buckingham Palace, the concept of the Model Village, and the inspiration for the Victoria Cross as the highest award for gallantry in battle, to be awarded regardless of rank. It is to him that we owe the tragically destroyed Crystal Palace, the great frescoes in the Royal Gallery in the Palace of Westminster, the exact manner in which the Koh-i-Noor diamond was cut, the abolition of duelling and the final defeat of slavery. And this is not the complete list of what he did for his adopted country. Si monumentum requiris, circumspice has an absolutely literal meaning in his case. Osborne and Balmoral are better known, but represent only a small part of his artistic contribution.
Nonetheless, I have found that I cannot accept the judgement of my mentor and inspirer, Sir Roger Fulford, who, in 1947, at Barbon Manor, first introduced this then schoolboy to the wonders of Prince Albert, when he wrote of him that ‘in politics and affairs of state he did his best, but . . . not readily, and largely from a sense of duty’. Although the sense of duty, as the husband of the Queen, was indeed important, I believe that there was much more to it than that. Thus, it is the politician, whose influence upon the history of his time and on the development of the British Constitutional Monarchy is often misunderstood, and to which role he devoted by far the greatest amount of his intellect and energies, who should command the larger attention. As I have emphasised in my account, he early sought, and eventually achieved, political position of major importance – and this was not accidental. His other activities – which included the organisation of Queen Victoria’s papers in the Royal Archives, to the gratitude of the researcher – must be regarded as peripheral to his essential achievements, which were political and constitutional.
As my interest in this remarkable individual grew over the past twenty years it became obvious to me that no serious new assessment could be attempted without access to the Prince Consort’s formidably substantial archives in Queen Victoria’s papers. Although other biographers and historians since Martin have discovered and used new and important material from the Royal Archives and other sources I felt that there could be no real justification for a new venture without such access. I am profoundly grateful to Her Majesty the Queen for graciously giving me her permission to inspect and use documents in the Royal Archives at Windsor.
Inevitably, my interpretation corrects or modifies some of the judgements of my predecessors, but this study represents my honest endeavour to fulfil Edmund Gosse’s classic definition of biography as ‘the portrait of a soul in his adventures through life’.
Shortly after this project began in 1976 I was elected to Parliament for Cambridge, and it has accordingly been very formidably delayed by the substantial burdens of political life, and has often had to be set aside for the paramount concerns of my generous and staunch constituents and the work of the House of Commons. It has, therefore, taken infinitely longer to research and write than anyone had expected, and I am deeply grateful to Her Majesty the Queen, the ever-helpful Royal Librarian Sir Robin Mackworth-Young and his colleagues at Windsor, and my British and American publishers, for their patience and understanding.
The list of those to whom I am indebted for much kind assistance is very substantial, but I am especially grateful
to Sir Oliver and Lady Millar, Miss Jane Langton, Mr and Mrs de Bellaigue, Miss Dimond, and Miss Cuthbert who have been unvaryingly helpful.
When I contemplate the evidence of my intense activity as a Member of Parliament for a particularly demanding marginal constituency I marvel that this biography has been written at all, but it has been a solace at times of disappointment and frustration, a source of refreshment and exhilaration when current problems have borne down heavily, and a too-often neglected companion that I shall miss.
To all who have given me so much assistance and encouragement in this lengthy enterprise, and especially to my wife and daughters, I pay my sincere thanks.
The Stone House
Great Gransden
Sandy, Bedfordshire
chapter one
Prologue
The sagas of dynasties, of the rise and fall of families and confederations, remain one of the most fascinating, and yet the most perplexing, of historical phenomena. Out of apparent total obscurity there emerges an individual, or a generation linked by blood and descent, of outstanding capacity and achievement, but the light they shed is often limited to that generation and thereafter to fade, although sometimes to have a magnificent and surprising recrudescence much later. An English family such as the Cecils, with lustre in virtually every generation for three centuries, is rare; but also uncommon is the Churchill family, alternating dizzily between brilliance and obscurity. But what of a Napoleon or a Metternich? – a blaze confined exclusively to one individual, there-after to vanish for ever, leaving the chronicler of their fortunes baffled by the mystery of the sources of their genius, and seeking in their parents and ancestors some clue to its resolution, and finding none. And yet, a clue there must be in their heredity to explain the presence of intellect and confidence which can be shaped, but not completely formed, by the physical experience of childhood and life.
In this quest the historian is too often confronted only with a procession of names. Fragments may come to him of their personalities and achievements; there may be some physical likenesses, of whose fidelity he cannot be certain; but usually there are only the simple factual records of birth, marriage, and death – tantalising shadows haunting the historian in his search, but shadows remaining.
The struggles for land, possessions and titles throughout Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries afford relish and pleasure to a limited number of students of those remote controversies. Most of the boundaries which the participants contested so fiercely have themselves vanished, as have so many of the buildings and palaces they constructed and the wealth that some acquired. The tramp of armies, the vagaries of circumstance, the frowns of fortune, new attitudes to religious passions, and the attrition of Time have, either singly or collectively, swept away those Duchies, Palatinates, Princedoms and Principalities that men sought to acquire, did acquire, and ruled after their fashion. Some titles have survived, but in a void. Out of the disparate, competitive, and sometimes warring factions in Northern Europe there were to emerge single confederated nations, of which Germany was to become the most substantial and by far the most formidable. And yet, even at the height of that sombre unity at the end of the nineteenth century, the old territorial and tribal differences remained, and defiantly remain to this day. The harsh twentieth century’s terrible ravages of war, defeat, foreign occupation and division have literally transformed the physical structure of that part of Northern Europe, although thankfully not totally, but have not conquered that long-established sense of difference, of a separate local identity and loyalty, which goes back down the years and the centuries to those times when their forebears were gathering themselves under separate and competing banners, intent upon aggrandisement or simple preservation of their hard-won possessions.
In these contests the sword was less employed than the hallowed political artifices of guile, negotiation, territorial barter, and the potent weapon of dynastically and politically inspired marriage. By such methods and stratagems, skilfully deployed, did some Houses rise, and by their ineptitude at these subtle and crucial crafts of constructive statesmanship did others fade or fall. With success went reputation, influence, and loyal support. Rarely did the Princes of Germany resort to oppression or tyranny over their fiefdoms; the true measure of success was contentment and prosperity, the effective cultivation of the soil, and the profitable expansion of business and commerce.
The Napoleonic government of Germany – which constituted over a hundred small states and principalities when that ferocious Corsican carved his imperious swathe – was one important factor that made the concept of German federation conceivable. Another was Goethe, who had welcomed the advent of Napoleon, but whose entire life and endeavour was dedicated to the belief that it was through the truly artistic qualities, and which included the pursuit of scientific truth, that mankind could discover its true destiny. In one of those mysteries of history which the historian can catalogue, but cannot adequately explain, the quality of German literature, science, scholarship, and music was dominant in the first two decades of the nineteenth century.
It was one of those glittering periods that nations experience, in which there is that magical combination of circumstances, personalities, and ideas which occur so seldom, and which is impossible to recapture. The fragmented States of Germany sensed in themselves, for all their differences, something of that unity and excitement that had inspired and enthralled the English at the end of the sixteenth century. There was a new confidence, there was happiness, and there was the love of learning for its own sake. Prince Albert was the child of this amazing and wonderful surge of endeavour.
The House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was, by the end of the exhausting Napoleonic Wars in 1815, one of the conspicuous, if minor, survivors of those centuries of endeavour and varied fortunes. It was one of the numerous branches into which the ancient House of Wettin had been divided, and it had ruled over Meissen and the adjoining districts since the eleventh century, to which had been added Upper Saxony and Thuringia. In the sixteenth century Frederic The Wise, Elector of Saxony, was the heroic protector of Martin Luther. Of this remarkable man – described by his descendent Prince Albert as ‘the first Protestant’ – it has been written that he was ‘one of those men who, without being either powerful or in any way brilliant, influence history from the respect which they inspire, and by the opportune exercise of a kindly and paternal moderation. A mild, prudent, peace-loving ruler, proud of his chapel choir, his pictures and his castles, and of the University of Wittenberg, of which he was the founder, and much occupied with pious Biblical exercises, Frederic gave to the new movement (the Lutheran Church) just that encouragement which was most necessary to carry it through the critical early stages of its growth’.1
The House subsequently divided into the senior, Ernestine, and junior, Albertine, branches. The victor of this division was the junior one. The Ernestine branch surrendered the Electorate of Saxony, and after the Battle of Muhlberg in 1547 the Kingdom itself. It retained several Duchies, under complex circumstances of intermarriages and agreements and divisions and sub-divisions, which labyrinthine bargaining demonstrated by their results that these shadowy Saxe-Coburgs did not lack patience, resource, or the acquisitive urge. On the death, in 1679, of Duke Ernest The Pious, the Duchies were further divided, and the modest one of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld fell to the youngest son, John Ernest. It was to be patiently preserved until 1825, when Saalfeld was surrendered for the Principality of Gotha. Of his sons, Ernest succeeded him as Duke in 1764, and the youngest, Frederic, was an eminent soldier who commanded the Allied armies in the Netherlands at the beginning of the French Revolutionary War – a contest which was to last far longer, and to be infinitely more bloody, than any had anticipated at its beginning. The Coburgs’ success was, however, very limited, and was not to be remotely compared with that of the House of Hanover, which became linked to the British monarchy on the death of Queen Anne in 1714; henceforth �
� until, indeed, the accession of Queen Victoria (the Hanovarian monarchy limited to the male line) – the English sovereign and the Electorate of Hanover were closely joined, to the greater advantage of the latter.
Out of the shadows the Coburg family begins to emerge in clearer delineaments. Ernest Frederic died in 1800, and his son – Francis Frederic – only lived six years to enjoy his title and his possessions in Coburg and the surrounding territories. But he left behind him seven remarkable children – Ernest, born in 1784, who became Duke of Coburg in 1806 and was to be the father of Prince Albert; Ferdinand, who was to marry the heiress of the Hungarian possessions of the Kohary family, and whose son was to become King Consort of Portugal; Leopold; Sophia, who married Count Mensdorff-Pouilly; Antoinette, who married Duke Alexander of Wurtemberg; Julie, who contracted – at fifteen – an unhappy marriage to the Grand Duke Constantine of Russia; and Victoire Marie Louise, who was married first, and not happily, to the Prince of Leiningen, and who was widowed with a daughter and son in 1814.
Of the sons, the most notably handsome and able was Leopold, the eighth child, born in Coburg on December 16th 1790, and a particular favourite of his strikingly beautiful and talented mother, Augusta. Ernest, although a greatly loved and affectionate heir, was unsophisticated and somewhat narrow, and was to prove a disappointment. In marked contrast, Leopold was not only highly capable and intelligent, and received an enlightened education of remarkable scope, but he also possessed a drive and ambition that were to take him to the verge of the throne of England, to the offer of the Kingdom of Greece, and to the possession of the Kingdom of the Belgians. In the process of his advancement he served as a fighting soldier, negotiated in 1807 with Napoleon, and made a considerable impression at the post-war Congress of Vienna, where the Ernestine princes received full recognition of their status as sovereign entities of the Germanic Confederation.