Indeed, the visit had confirmed Stockmar’s doubts about the maturity of Prince Albert, and his inability to withstand the physical pressures of the entertainment and difficulty in casual social intercourse had been very marked. Thus, while it can hardly be regarded as a total failure, the meeting between the two cousins had fallen very far short of the most hopeful expectations.
It must be emphasised again that Princess Victoria’s life was at this time tedious and strained. Her half-sister, Feodora, later wrote: ‘When I look back upon those years, which ought to have been the happiest of my life, from fourteen to twenty, I cannot help pitying myself. Not to have enjoyed the pleasures of youth is nothing, but to have been deprived of all intercourse, and not one cheerful thought in that dismal existence of ours, was very hard’. It was an exaggerated portrait, but not one devoid of truth, and it made Princess Victoria especially receptive to the occasional exposure to pleasure and the company of young people, and particularly young men. The visit of her other Coburg cousins, Ferdinand and Augustus, in March 1836, had been equally welcome to her, and their departure – and particularly that of Ferdinand – had evoked much sadness. Nonetheless, Albert and Ernest had made a considerable impression. ‘Dearly as I love Ferdinand and also good Augustus’, Victoria wrote in her Journal, ‘I love Ernest and Albert more than them, oh, yes, MUCH more . . . Though I wrote more when Uncle Ferdinand and Augustus went, in my Journal . . . I feel this separation more deeply, though I do not lament as much as I did then, which came from my nerves not being strong then. I can bear more now’.
But while she wrote dutifully to Leopold thanking him for ‘the prospect of great happiness you have given me in the person of dear Albert’ the memory of his visit quickly faded. He occasionally wrote to her; she very rarely to him. There was no question even of an ‘understanding’ between the young couple, and certainly none whatever of an engagement.
Her interest in him was reduced even further when she became Queen on the death of William IV on June 20th 1837. The King’s last satisfaction was that Princess Victoria had come of age on May 24th, and the dreaded fear of a Conroy-dominated Regency had been averted. But he had achieved much more. When George IV had died in June 1830 The Times had commented that ‘no monarch will be less generally mourned’. The brief reign of William IV had been one of tempestuous political activity and tension, which had included his dismissal of two Administrations – one Whig, one Tory – and the passage of the 1832 Reform Bill, and yet when Alexis de Tocqueville came to England a year later he was struck by the absence of revolutionary feeling. William IV was no radical, but he had shrewd political sense, always sought sensible compromise, and in the public view was certainly not an enemy of Reform. His popularity had varied greatly, but at crucial moments he had actually been popular, which was in itself a striking novelty for the Hanoverians. ‘He inherited a monarchy in tatters, he bequeathed to his heir the securest throne in Europe’ is a fair assessment of his notable contribution.15
The new Queen was unaware of what had been done. ‘She is surrounded with the most exciting and interesting enjoyments’, Greville noted with truth; ‘her occupations, her pleasure, her business, her Court, all present an unceasing round of gratifications. With all her prudence and discretion she has great animal spirits, and enters into the magnificent novelties of her position with the zest and curiosity of a child’. Bewitched by her Whig Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, who disliked change and Germans and saw no need for an early marriage, Albert appears to have virtually vanished from her thoughts. In her own words, ‘the freedom, the gaiety and the excitements of becoming Queen at eighteen’ drove all thoughts of marriage away.
Three years were to elapse before the cousins were to meet again. Prince Albert’s education was resumed.
The next stage of that education was a period of ten months in Brussels, being prepared for entry to the University of Bonn by a Baron von Wiechmann, a retired German officer, to the dismay of Grandmother Gotha, who wrote to Duke Ernest to lament that ‘it makes me sad to think that you are coming back without them, and I cannot reconcile myself to this long separation from them’. This decision was not at all to the liking of the other German noble families, and represented a considerable triumph for Leopold and Stockmar. Prince Albert now came under the tutelage of the very eminent mathematician Quetelet, who subsequently shrewdly remarked that Prince Albert did not think enough of his own talents whereas Leopold never forgot his. There was also the influence of the Reverend William Drury, who had conducted a lengthy correspondence with Byron, but most subtle of all was the liberal atmosphere of Brussels itself and the close proximity of Leopold and Stockmar, with Florschütz still in close attendance. To his father, Albert wrote that ‘we live in a small but very pretty house, with a little garden in front, and though in the middle of a large town, we are perfectly shut out from the noise of the streets. The masters selected for us are said to be excellent, so that everything is favourable to our studies, and I trust there will be no lack of application on our part’. Their period with Baron von Wiechmann included visiting manoeuvres with Leopold and to Waterloo, where their tutor had fought, and a warm invitation by his father to spend Christmas at Coburg was politely declined by Albert on the grounds that ‘our course of study would be quite disturbed by such an interruption’.
Von Wiechmann was of a stiff and restricted personality, whose relationship with his young charges was not smooth. Albert’s gift for mimicking and his acute sense of the ridiculous evidently did not assist this relationship. In April 1837 the Princes entered Bonn University – ‘in search of more wisdom’, as Albert wrote – staying in a house specially rented for them under the approving eye of Florschütz, who reported that Albert ‘maintained the early promise of his youth by the eagerness with which he applied himself to his work, and by the rapid progress which he made, especially in the natural sciences, in political economy, and in philosophy . . . Music also, of which he was passionately fond, was not neglected, and he had already shown considerable talent as a composer’. He became consumed by what his brother later described as a ‘reading rage’. He also demonstrated great talent as a fencer, winning a University competition, and developed a close and enduring friendship with Prince William of Löwenstein, who was particularly delighted by Albert’s mimicry of the professors, his irreverent caricatures and bubbling humour. ‘Music was also a favourite pursuit of the students’, Prince William later recorded. ‘To the despair of Colonel von Wiechmann, we hummed several students’ songs, and even practised the “Glocke” of Romberg for four voices. In spite of many false notes, we went resolutely on and passed many an evening in song. Prince Albert was looked upon amongst us as a master of the art’, as he was in improvised amateur dramatics, in which ‘Prince Albert was always the life and soul’.
This was one of the most supremely happy periods of Prince Albert’s life. The University of Bonn was perhaps the most advanced and enlightened in Europe, matched only by Edinburgh in its standards and spirit of liberal scholarship. He had his studies, which absorbed him, his music, his new student friends, and, followed by his beloved greyhound Eôs, went on walking expeditions with his friends. ‘He liked above all things to discuss questions of public law and metaphysics’, Prince William wrote, ‘and constantly, during our many walks, juridical principles or philosophical doctrines were thoroughly discussed’. But Prince William’s abiding memory was of Albert’s merriment and the excellence of his company. ‘The Prince’s humour and sense of the ludicrous, found a natural counterpoise in his other great and sterling qualities; and the great business of his later life, the many important duties he had to fulfil, soon drove into the background the humorous part of his character, which had been so prominent at the University’. Another contemporary wrote shortly afterwards that ‘Prince Albert is kind, affable, and gay; joining freely in the mirth of those about him; sensible to any committed absurdity, but showing in his laughter that it proceeds from a re
ally good-humoured temper’. It should not be forgotten that Princess Victoria had been particularly attracted by Prince Albert’s sense of humour, cheerfulness and merriment when they had first met.
When King William died Prince Albert wrote a courteous letter to his cousin, now Queen of England, in English.
My dearest cousin,
I must write you a few lines to present you my sincerest felicitations on that great change which has taken place in your life.
Now you are Queen of the mightiest land of Europe, in your hands lie the happiness of millions. May Heaven assist you and strengthen you with its strength in that high but difficult task.
I hope that your reign may be long, happy, and glorious, and that your efforts may be rewarded by the thankfulness and love of your subjects.
May I pray you to think likewise sometimes of your cousins in Bonn, and to continue to them that kindness you favoured them with till now. Be assured that our minds are always with you.
I will not be indiscreet and abuse your time. Believe me always, your Majesty’s most obedient and faithful servant,
Albert.
In Queen Victoria’s and Prince Albert’s voluminous and meticulously maintained papers there is no record of any acknowledgement or reply to this letter.
The persistent but wholly unfounded rumours that Prince Albert and Queen Victoria were in effect engaged were a source of real embarrassment to them both, and even to Leopold, who advised Albert to undertake a long tour through Switzerland and Northern Italy to divert speculation and attention that were not only undesirable and unwelcome but also could have been deeply injurious to Leopold’s own plans and ambitions. As Queen Victoria herself subsequently noted with severity of these rumours, ‘nothing was then settled’. At the time, her emotions were considerably more vehement. She had just become, at the age of eighteen, Queen of England. She had not been greatly impressed by her wan cousin at the occasion of their only meeting. She did not particularly wish to be married. Of her cousin Albert she wrote bleakly to her uncle Leopold in July 1839 that ‘one can never answer beforehand for feelings, and I may not have the feeling for him which is requisite to ensure happiness. I may like him as a friend, and as a cousin, and as a brother, but not more; and should this be the case (which is not likely) I am very anxious that it should be understood that I am not guilty of any breach of promise, for I never gave any’. Also, all that Albert heard about England from Leopold displeased him. ‘United as all parties are in high praise of the young Queen’, he wrote to his father, ‘the more do they seem to manoeuvre and intrigue with and against each other. On every side there is nothing but a network of cabals and intrigues, and parties are arranged against each other in the most inexplicable manner’. Prince Albert accepted Leopold’s advice that he should temporarily ‘disappear’ on a lengthy and unpublicised journey, and found his reasons ‘imperative and conclusive’.
The journey through the Alps and into Northern Italy with Ernest and Florschütz was in itself a great and enjoyable success. Albert carefully kept a small album, which in fact was a scrapbook of his journey, which he sent to Victoria, who was both surprised and touched. ‘Nothing had at this time passed between the Queen and the Prince’, she later wrote about what she described as ‘one of her great treasures’, ‘but this gift shows that the latter, in the midst of his travels, often thought of his young cousin’. There is little evidence of this, beyond the gift of the scrapbook.
The Princes returned to Bonn in November 1838. ‘How tall and handsome Albert is grown’, Grandmother Gotha noted, but he was already concerned and saddened by the prospect of his inevitable separation from his brother, and the extreme uncertainty about his own future after he left Bonn in the summer of 1838. For the first time the real possibility of marriage with Victoria had been brought home to him as a result of a conversation with Leopold in March, but the report from London was, Albert wrote to his father, that ‘the Queen had in no way altered her mind, but did not wish to marry for some time yet’. Leopold wrote to Stockmar of Albert’s reaction that: ‘He looks at the question from its most elevated and honourable point of view. He considers that troubles are inseparable from all human positions, and that therefore if one must be subjected to plagues and annoyances, it is better to be so for some great or worthy object than for trifles and miseries. I have told him that his great youth would make it necessary to postpone the marriage for a few years . . . I found him very sensible on all these points. But one thing he observed with truth. “I am ready,” he said, “to submit to this delay, if I have only some certain assurance to go upon. But if, after waiting, perhaps, for three years, I should find that the Queen no longer desired the marriage, it would place me in a very ridiculous position, and would, to a certain extent, ruin all the prospects of my future life” ’.
From Leopold’s point of view the reality was even less promising. The young Queen, riding high, had grown cold towards him; ‘dear Uncle is given to believe that he must rule the roast (sic) everywhere’, she tartly noted. Leopold, clearly sensing the tone of Queen Victoria’s letters, wrote cautiously to her (April 13th 1838) ‘concerning the education of our friend Albert’ and assuring her that ‘on one thing you can rely, that it is my great anxiety, to see Albert a very good and distinguished young man, and no pains will be thought too much on my part if this end can be attained’. Victoria’s letters to Leopold over the following months are notable in their absence of reference to Albert, and Leopold responded by never referring to him. In a somewhat voluminous correspondence, replete with family references, these omissions are noteworthy.
In London, Stockmar was concerned by her unexpected arrogance, her refusal to accept any advice ‘which does not agree with her opinion’, and a temperament ‘as passionate as a spoilt child’. But matters were in fact even worse than they realised. The Queen had become deeply suspicious of Leopold’s ambitions for her, ‘so as to be able to rule the niece through the husband’. She sent to Stockmar a letter from Albert ‘to show how badly he writes’, which Stockmar admitted. Before she became Queen she and Albert had maintained a very intermittent correspondence, which now virtually ceased. She was absorbed by her new position, by the persuasive Melbourne, by her enthralling independence – all of which, as she later wrote, ‘put all ideas of marriage out of her mind, which she now most bitterly repents’. Victoria thought Albert too young, and her heart had not been captured. Nor had Albert’s. His father attended Queen Victoria’s Coronation in June 1838 by himself, when he was made a Knight of the Garter; there was no invitation to the two Coburg Princes – nor to King Leopold.
In October, while they were staying at the Coburg Palace after leaving Bonn, the Princes were involved in a fire when a stove ignited material left on it, and which was eventually suppressed by them and Albert’s devoted valet, Cart, who had been in his service since 1830.
There were other indications of the end of childhood and adolescence. Albert was keenly and genuinely disturbed by the separation from Ernest, now destined for military training. ‘The separation will be frightfully painful to us’, he wrote to Löwenstein. ‘Up to this moment we have never, as long as we can recollect, been a single day away from each other. I cannot bear to think of that moment’. To Ernest he wrote immediately after the separation: ‘You cannot imagine how empty it seems to me since you left. I felt a lump in my throat and it was only with difficulty that I could hide my tears. It is the first separation; and it will not be the last. But I console myself with the old saying, “There must be a valley between two hills” ’. ‘The thought of the separation of such fondly attached brothers quite breaks my heart’, Grandmother Gotha wrote, while Albert lamented to her after Ernest had left for Dresden:
Now I am quite alone. Ernest is far off, and I am left behind, still surrounded by so many things which keep up the constant illusion that he is in the next room. To whom could I turn, to whom could I pour out my heart, better than to you,
dear Grandmama, who always takes such interest in everything that happens to us; who also know and understand us so well? . . . I must now give up the custom of saying we and use the I, which sounds so egotistical and cold. In we everything sounded much softer, for the we expresses the harmony between different souls, the I rather the insistence of the individual against outward forces, though also confidence in its own strength.
The departure of Ernest also brought to an end the role of Florschütz in their upbringing. Since the boys were five and four respectively he had been their tutor, guide, constant companion, and eventually their close friend. Their gratitude and affection for him were strong and enduring, and it was to him even more than to his beloved father and grandmother that Prince Albert was subsequently to ascribe the true happiness of his childhood and youth.
After Ernest’s departure ‘in order to sacrifice himself to Mars’, as Albert wrote to Löwenstein, Albert travelled to Italy in the sombre and significant company of Stockmar at the end of 1838. Stockmar’s presence was far from coincidental, as his scepticism about Albert – not yet eradicated – remained. Leopold, however, was by now convinced. ‘If I am not very much mistaken’, he had written to Stockmar in March 1838, ‘he possesses all the qualities required to fit him completely for the position he will occupy in England. His understanding is sound, his apprehension clear and rapid, and his feelings in all matters appertaining to personal appearance are quite right. He has great powers of observation and possesses much prudence, without anything about him that could be called cold or morose’. Stockmar also accompanied Albert at the specific request of Queen Victoria, conveyed in a letter to Leopold on April 4th 1838, as ‘he knows best my feelings and wishes on that subject’. Stockmar had become one of Queen Victoria’s most respected counsellors. Invited by King William to deal with a possible Regency coup by the Duchess and Conroy he had acted swiftly and successfully, and had earned her profound gratitude. When she did become Queen he was in almost constant attendance with calm and sensible advice. Her impatience with Leopold’s attempts to interfere did not extend to Stockmar, on whom she had leaned at a very difficult time and in which he had not failed her.
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