Prince Albert

by Robert Rhodes James

  Less serious, but considerably more significant, were the difficulties over the Prince’s Household, a matter on which he and Stockmar felt strongly. Melbourne undertook the detailed negotiations with Prince Albert under the evident impression that he, the experienced Prime Minister, was dealing with a young German Prince with little understanding of English politics and customs, who would be deeply grateful for the Prime Minister’s thinly veiled orders, courteously conveyed as advice. By the conclusion of their correspondence Melbourne had learned rather more about the future consort of the Queen than he had expected, and perhaps particularly cared for.

  Albert made his position clear to Victoria (December 10th):

  . . . The maxim, ‘Tell me whom he associates with and I will tell you who he is’ must here be especially not lost sight of. These appointments should not be mere ‘party rewards’. Let them be either of very high rank, or very rich, or very clever, or persons who have performed important services for England. It is very necessary that they should be chosen from both sides – the same number of Whigs as of Tories; and above all I do wish that they should be well-educated men and of high character. I know you will agree with my views . . .

  The Queen certainly did not, and on December 20th Prince Albert opened his assault on Melbourne:

  My dear Lord Melbourne,

  Since my return from England I have repeatedly and most seriously reflected on the new state into which I am about to enter, and in many respect my future position will appear to me very difficult. I am so full of it, that I am sorry that the space of a Letter forbids me to expound to you completely all I have thought and felt on the subject. Don’t think however that the serious examination I have put frequently to my new State and myself have had the effect of rendering me diffident for at the end of all my meditations one conviction of a comforting nature presents itself invariably to my mind, viz. that if earnest and honest intentions have something to do with Success, I may almost feel assured of a happy result.

  Before I finish, I take the liberty of recommending one point in particular to your mature consideration, I mean the composition of my future Establishment or Household. In the very just demand upon me, that I shall carefully abstain from Party Politics on one hand, and in the possible appointment of gentlemen, who from their actual position in Life must necessarily belong to a party on the other hand, I see a glaring contradiction which I cannot reconcile to my Logick. In consequence I have proposed to the Queen that in my absence the most necessary appointments should be made only, and that the rest should be put off till my presence in England.

  Pray, my dear Lord, assist me in this proposition and believe me to be, with the truest and greatest regard,

  Your Lordship’s Sincere and obliged friend,

  Albert

  As Melbourne and the Queen had already prepared the names for Albert’s Household, including Melbourne’s private secretary, George Anson, this declaration of independence was not welcome. Melbourne wrote warningly to King Leopold on December 23rd:

  . . . I have every expectation that everything connected with this affair will pass off here well and easily and in good humour. But I may venture to say, that I think your Majesty would do well to prepare both the Duke [of Coburg] and the Prince [Albert] for the possible admixture of something of a contrary nature and character.

  This match does not come off at quite a good moment. The times are somewhat unpropitious. Party spirit runs high, commerce suffers, the working classes are much distressed, and your Majesty well knows how the feelings of nations, which have the power of manifesting public opinion, are affected by these circumstances.

  If upon the score of the public accounts there is a surplus of 3 or 400,000 pounds, there is nothing Parliament will not vote and the people applaud the voting of it. – If, on the contrary, there is a similar apparent deficiency everybody thinks himself ruined and is unwilling to give a farthing . . .

  In the meanwhile Albert had written to Victoria about Anson:

  . . . As for your proposition concerning Mr. Anson, I confess to have my doubts. I am quite sure that he must be an intelligent and a strictly honest man, else he would not be Secretary to Lord Melbourne, but to take a man for a confidential Servant is another thing. This requires confidence, and confidence grows only out of time, self observation, and trial.

  It is my nature, dearest beloved V, to trust only upon a thorough knowledge and self conviction of a person’s worthi-ness, and I must acknowledge that I feel unwilling to deviate in an important point from a maxim congenial with my character. Besides that, I know nothing personally of Mr. Anson, except that I have seen him dance a Quadrille.

  I give you to consider, dearest love, if my having the Secretary of the Prime Minister as Treasurer would not make me from the beginning a partisan in the eyes of many? . . .

  I hope you will, dearest Victoria, agree with me that all these appointments are in no way so urgent, and that it will be in every way more safe for You and Myself not to make more than absolutely necessary, and rather to put off the rest, till I am on the spot.

  This would not do, as the Queen and Melbourne emphatically agreed. They had decided that Anson would be his secretary, and Victoria had already written to her fiancé to inform him of this fact, adding that she ‘was very much in favour of it, because he is an excellent young man, very modest, very steady, very well informed and will be of much use to you’. Albert was also informed that Anson’s uncle, Sir George Anson, a very prominent Whig, would be Groom of the Bedchamber. Now, faced by his rebellion, she wrote with some tartness:

  . . . as to your wish about your gentlemen, my dear Albert, I must tell you quite honestly that it will not do. You may entirely rely upon me that the people who will be round you will be absolutely pleasant people of high standing and good character . . . You may rely upon my care that you shall have proper people and not idle and not too young, and Lord Melbourne has already mentioned several to me who would be very suitable . . .

  Leopold, who was not ill-informed about this sharp difference of opinion, wrote with some feeling to Melbourne:

  . . . The position of a husband of a Queen, who reigns in her own right, is a position of the greatest difficulty for any person and at any time; and if you recollect what my position in England was from the year 1816 to that of 1831, you will at once admit that I ought to know something about it.

  Albert, altho’ young, is steady much beyond his years, has very good common sense and an equally good judgement. He is pure minded and well behaved, has a decided turn for scientific occupations, and from a natural gay, candid and amiable disposition, he seems very little inclined to forget himself and to meddle with affairs which are neither not his own, or of which he understands nothing. From this, it might appear that there is a good deal of that in him which will enable him to manage the task which has fallen to his lot.

  But the success we all desire will depend on the good sense and right feeling not of one alone, but of both parties. It is my most intimate conviction that a really sensible husband may be the most useful, the safest and the best friend a Sovereign Queen can have.

  To enable any man to become this, it seems however necessary that the Queen herself do take from the very beginning a correct view of her married position. She ought to see clearly that from the moment of her marriage even her political success will greatly depend upon her domestic happiness, and that by endeavouring to ensure the latter she increases herself by her own power and arguments the chances of a prosperous and honourable reign. She ought then to be imbued with a strong and deep conviction that it is as well her own as the Prince’s interest to make common cause and to live well together.

  That on a matter of such vital importance truth may as soon as possible arrive at the Queen’s ears I take to be of the highest consequence, not only for the sake of my Niece, but also for the sake and honor of Old England itself.

 
; You, my dear Lord, in whose honor, loyalty, and devotion my Niece very justly places unbounded Confidence, you are now the only man who can fully speak out to her, and by doing so, establish in time in her young mind a, proper and correct view of the true sense and high importance of the union she is about to form – for I verily believe that any mistake committed by her in this respect would be more seriously visited [on her] by the Nation than any error the Prince might have the misfortune to fall into.

  Let her then, before everything, be just to Albert’s difficult position, and by being so, give him a fair chance to fulfil his chief and paramount duty, viz: to cultivate the Queen’s love, esteem, and confidence, by all possible manly and proper means . . .

  This was an admirable, sensible, and sensitive letter, but on the matter of the Prince’s Establishment the Queen and Melbourne were adamant. On December 29th Melbourne wrote to Prince Albert a letter in which condescension and cynicism struggled for predominance and which, although Melbourne did not appreciate until too late, helped to seal his fate in the eyes of the recipient. But it did set out the views of himself and the Queen in such clarity that it should be recorded at length:

  Your Serene Highness is entering no doubt upon a state & situation of some difficulty, inasmuch as it is one of a peculiar and extraordinary character, and of which there has been little experience and but few precedents; but depend upon it, Sir, the difficulties are not as great nor so formidable as they appear, nor are there any which, as Your Royal Highness well expresses it, ‘earnest and honest intentions’ joined with prudence and courage will not surmount and overcome.

  The means of preventing embarrassment are in my opinion very short, very clear, very easy and very simple. The main and principal object is to avoid the reality, the appearance, and the suspicion of anything like division or difference of opinion between Your Serene Highness and Her Majesty. Public differences in the Royal Family are always pro tanto a weakening and diminution of the authority of the Crown. How much more must this be the case if any discrepancy should exist or be thought to exist between Your Serene Highness and Her Majesty.

  Your Serene Highness says truly that it will be demanded of you that ‘you should carefully abstain from Party Politics’. It will be certainly prudent that Your Serene Highness should not take an active part in those political questions which divide Parties in this Country, but it will be absolutely necessary that Your Highness should be considered as sanctioning and countenancing the policy pursued by the actual Government of the Queen, however that Government may be constructed. I earnestly counsel Your Serene Highness to take your stand from the beginning on this principle and never to depart from it.

  Your Highness will not suspect me of giving this advice because I am at present the Minister. I should urge the same, if those who may be considered to be my political opponents, were at this moment in possession of the chief offices of the State.

  I should apply this principle, which in my opinion ought to be the general guide of Your Serene Highness’s whole conduct, to the formation of your Establishment. To compose your Household of Persons, who are neither themselves nor by their relations connected with political Parties, is impossible. So many neutral persons fit for the purpose do not exist, and would form a strange assemblage if they could be found.

  Your Serene Highness’s Household should in my opinion be constituted of Persons of rank and Character, as many of them as possible Members of neither House of Parliament in order to avoid the[m] being pressed to change upon the change of Administration, but still with a decided leaning to the opinions of the present Government, otherwise the conclusion will at once irresistibly prevail that Your Serene Highness is adverse to Her Majesty’s Ministers and you will find yourself in spite of yourself taken up by the party in Opposition and elevated to the Post of the Leader of the Tories.

  I should also think it better that the appointments should be generally known, if not actually made, previous to your arrival or at the moment of it. If so, they will be considered as having been recommended to you; if otherwise you will be held responsible for them, and every sort of conclusion as to Your Serene Highness’s views and opinions will be drawn from those of the Persons selected. The inconvenience of this I have already pointed out . . .

  The Prince was deeply hurt by her sharp rejection of his arguments – ‘I am distressed to be obliged to tell you what I fear you do not like, but it is necessary’, she had written to him on December 23rd – but recognised he was powerless against the combined strength of the Queen and her Prime Minister. But he did not surrender without spirit, as his letter in response to Melbourne’s unyielding lecture revealed, and it is crucial to any understanding of what subsequently occurred.

  My dear Lord Melbourne,

  Accept my best thanks for your kind letter of the 29th of Dcr. I am very glad that you have explained to me your opinions concerning my future position in England and you may be sure that I feel most grateful for them. I am in consequence induced to enter more closely upon the subject, & more particularly in reference to the latter part of your letter, namely the estab-lishment of my Household. I must at the same time confess that I can not agree with you in this last matter – indeed I see in the affair two & two ways only of considering the question.

  Either the establishment is formed according to my views & wishes and then I have a mixed household of whigs and tories, who remain with me during every administration, in order to prove therby [sic] to the nation that I will belong to no party. As I form it, so I will be responsible, it stands and falls with me.

  Or, the establishment is formed according to the views and wishes of the ministry. In this case my household will be composed to persons wearing the ministerial color in order to advertise to the nation that I will always support the Government of the Queen for [the] time-being. This household then of course cannot be a permanent one, it stands and falls with the ministry who are responsible for it.

  A combination of both these systems, as your Lordship argues, is in my opinion impossible (which indeed I could never consent to) as it is putting forward the two above mentioned principles (one of always supporting the government of the day, and the other of showing myself of no party) and drawing but half the consequences of it, & if realized, would throw the benefit on one party and all the onus on the other.

  I hope your Lordship will not misunderstand me and pardon me if I have spoken quite without reserve, but in so serious a matter I consider a frank statement as the safest.

  Pray, my dear Lord, to be with the truest and greatest regard,

  Your Lordship’s sincere and obliged friend

  Albert.

  There was no possibility of misunderstanding this letter, but Prince Albert was defeated, only gaining the limited concession of obtaining a lowly post for his personal secretary, Doctor Schenck. To Queen Victoria he wrote with evident pain:

  . . . I am very sorry that you have not been able to grant my first request, the one about the gentlemen of my household, for I know it was not an unfair one . . .

  Think of my position, dear Victoria; I am leaving my home with all its old associations, all my bosom friends, and going to a country in which everything is new and strange to me – men, language, customs, modes of life, position. Except yourself I have no one to confide in. And is it not even to be conceded to me that the two or three persons who are to have the charge of my private affairs should be persons who already command my confidence? . . .

  But even this appeal was unavailing, and there is a certain triumph in Victoria’s report to Leopold that her fiancé ‘I am glad to say, consents to my choosing his People’.

  This was an uncomfortable prelude to a marriage in which it was already obvious that Albert’s position was certain to be very difficult, and it left its mark on him. Unquestionably he was right, and the Queen and Melbourne were wholly in the wrong, but the fact – ironically – that Anson tu
rned out to be an admirable, devoted, and trusted assistant was not only largely fortuitous but did not undermine the essential validity of Prince Albert’s arguments. He lost on this occasion; he was rarely to lose again.

  Thus, in the aftermath of these unhappy episodes, and with deep melancholy at leaving his country and family, Prince Albert departed from Gotha for England and his marriage. His sombre mood cannot have been lightened by his fiancée’s bleak and somewhat irritated response to his suggestion for a honeymoon at Windsor. ‘You forget, my dearest Love’, she wrote on January 21st, ‘that I am the Sovereign, and that business can stop and wait for nothing. Parliament is sitting, and something occurs almost every day, for which I may be required, and it is quite impossible for me to be absent from London. I am never easy a moment, if I am not on the spot’. Leopold found him ‘rather exasperated about various things, and pretty full of grievances’ when Albert and his party stayed briefly at Brussels on their way to Calais, adding that ‘He is not inclined to be sulky, but I think he may be rendered a little melancholy if he thinks himself unfairly or unjustly treated’; but he added that ‘he looks well and handsome, though rather inclined to surrender himself to Morpheus’ (Leopold to Victoria, January 21st 1840).

  He had been invested with the Garter at Gotha on January 23rd by his father, on the orders of the Queen, and reached Dover on February 7th after another ‘terrible’ Channel crossing arriving, in his own words, ‘with the color of a wax candle’, with deep forebodings about his welcome, and still under the sadness that afflicted him in his last days in Coburg and Gotha. Colonel Charles Grey, who had travelled with Lord Torrington with the Patent for investing Albert with the Garter, described the departure from Gotha on January 28th 1840:

  The streets were densely crowded; every window was crammed with heads, every housetop covered with people, waving handkerchiefs, and vying with each other in demonstrations of affection that could not be mistaken. The carriages stopped in passing the Dowager Duchess’s, and Prince Albert got out with his father and brother to bid her a last adieu.