Prince Albert

by Robert Rhodes James

  Cole became deeply involved in this project which, like the Exhibition itself, caused immense difficulties and frustrations. In 1852 Cole became General Superintendent of the School of Design, whose collection, now augmented with substantial additions from the Great Exhibition, was housed in conditions of considerable chaos at Somerset House. Prince Albert offered the loan of Marlborough House to accommodate ‘the Museum of Manufactures’ until the Prince of Wales reached his eighteenth birthday, when Marlborough House would become his official London residence. The offer was gratefully accepted, and Cole began his work of creating the internationally famous collection that was to become the Victoria and Albert Museum. In the process, there were many difficulties and controversies, but Cole – with the Prince’s strong support and encouragement – persevered, and between 1856 and 1861 the first permanent buildings arose. But Prince Albert’s dream was far from being fulfilled in his lifetime.

  Perhaps the most lasting and significant results of the Great Exhibition were the new scholarships that were endowed, and the new and exciting encouragement to scientists, scholars, and designers. The great Palace, the South Kensington complex, and the special model dwellings, in which the Prince took a particular interest51 were among the most important tangible results. But it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the most important aspect of all was the vision that had inspired ‘The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, 1851’ – that it be truly international, and that it be for the enjoyment as well as the edification of the people. Wellington may have been right in being cautiously sceptical of its long-term importance, and while Roger Fulford is right to call it ‘a festival of peace – a proof of international friendship’ which proved to have little effect on international amity, its history is crucial in any understanding of Prince Albert’s per-sonality, application, internationalism, and vision. In contemporary importance, his popularity, in spite of the sneers of the Upper Ten Thousand, rose to an unprecedented height. He was swiftly to learn again the fickleness of that mood, but when crisis came this triumph was remembered.

  Whatever reservations remained about the Exhibition, there were none concerning the Crystal Palace itself, later described with truth as ‘an architectural triumph so overwhelming as to entitle the Palace to a place among the great epoch-inaugurating buildings of history’.52 Paxton proposed that it remain where it was, as a permanent garden under glass, with tropical plants and birds – a kind of gigantic conservatory. In spite of public criticism, the Commissioners decided to sell it to a commercial company, which re-erected it at Sydenham, with some alterations. It became, Lady Eastlake wrote in 1854, ‘a paradise of flowers and works of art’. It is one of the major tragedies of modern architecture that it was totally destroyed by fire in 1936, but the impact of Paxton’s genius has survived its destruction.

  It had been a gruelling year, but when Prince Albert reached Osborne at the end of July he plunged into more work and reading, and Queen Victoria wrote to Stockmar on August 17th, in a letter full of love and admiration for her husband – ‘I must always stand amazed at his wonderful mind. Such large views of everything, and such extreme lucidity in working all these views out. He is very, very great’. ‘He is,’ she added, ‘as usual, full of occupation’. Stockmar had detected the signs of extreme exhaustion in Albert, and urged rest. Prince Albert assured him that he had resolved ‘to retreat into my shell as quickly as possible’. The fact was that it was not possible. Other crises were upon him, and the glory and happiness of the triumph of the Great Exhibition were to be of brief duration.

  * * *

  44 Anson was Treasurer and Private Secretary to the Prince until 1847, when he became Keeper of the Privy Purse to the Queen, while remaining Prince Albert’s Treasurer, Phipps becoming the Prince’s secretary. On Anson’s death in 1849 Phipps succeeded him in both positions, and was succeeded by Grey as the Prince’s secretary.

  45 1797–1875, Knighted, on Prince Albert’s personal recommendation, in 1848.

  46 T. J. N. Hilken: Engineering at Cambridge University, 1783–1965 (Cambridge, 1967), p. 17.

  47 Longford, op. cit., p. 333.

  48 The Royal Family had returned from Osborne on May 2nd.

  49 I am indebted to Mr. Reginald Pound for giving prominence to these lines from Punch:

  Albert! Spare those trees,

  Mind where you fix your show;

  For mercy’s sake, don’t please,

  Go spoiling Rotten Row.

  50 First in Martin, ii, 360, undated and not in full.

  51 These were designed by Henry Roberts as ‘A Model Lodging House’ and were originally built on the Cavalry Barracks, at the request of Prince Albert and with the permission and approval of Wellington, so as to be close to the Exhibition but not on what Punch described as ‘Hyde Park’s hallowed ground’. After the Exhibition they were re-erected at Kennington.

  52 John Steegman: Consort of Taste, p. 228.

  chapter seven

  The Unblessed Peacemaker

  The creation, and eventual fulfillment, of the Great Exhibition had been achieved in the midst of domestic political crises and seriously deteriorating relations between Prince Albert and Palmerston. The Prince had had to move rapidly from the complex problems of the Exhibition to advising the Queen on how to handle an explosive religious crisis that arose at the end of 1850 when the Pope issued a Brief re-establishing the hierarchy of Roman Catholic Bishops in Britain, and the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill aroused Protestant passions which the Queen and Prince Albert deplored, but which indirectly brought down the Russell Government in February 1851; a coalition of Whigs and Peelites was attempted, but proved impossible, and Russell returned to office after a brief but fierce political crisis. So, to the deep regret of Albert, did Palmerston. ‘One conviction grows stronger and stronger with the Queen and myself (if it is possible), viz. that Lord Palmerston is bringing the whole of the hatred which is borne to him – I don’t mean here to investigate whether justly or unjustly – by all the Governments of Europe upon England, and that the country runs serious danger of having to pay for the consequences’, was one typical letter from the Prince to Russell (May 18th 1850); ‘. . . for the sake of one man the welfare of the country must not be exposed’.

  Accordingly, the triumph of the Exhibition afforded only limited solace in the autumn of 1851 as Prince Albert gloomily contemplated the national and international political scenes. Relations with Palmerston had so remorselessly declined since 1847, to the point that the Queen was frequently informing Russell that she ‘is highly indignant at Lord Palmerston’s behaviour’ and seeking his removal. Palmerston’s conduct in the torrid summer of 1848 had opened a wide gulf of attitude between himself and the Queen and Prince Albert. The Schleswig-Holstein dispute, which continued until 1852, was a particular source of friction and disagreement, but it was the spread of unrest to Italy that had caused the real rift.

  The correspondence and memoranda on this matter are characterised by increasing alarm from the Queen and the Prince at the successes of the Italians against the Austrians and ill-concealed satisfaction by Palmerston, who then attempted to improve the internal condition of Spain, with the result that the British Ambassador was thrown out. From the Royal couple had come this unmistakeably Albertian comment:

  When the Queen considers the position that we had in Spain and what it ought to have been after the constitution of the French Republic, when we had no rival to fight and ought to have enjoyed the entire confidence and friendship of Spain, and compares this to the state into which our relations with that country have been brought, she cannot help being struck how much matters must have been mismanaged.

  Russell, caught in the middle, temporised, apologised, occasionally rebuked Palmerston mildly, and hoped for happier days. But on almost every issue, important or small, Prince Albert an
d the Foreign Secretary were in dispute. On Italy the Queen wrote to Palmerston a letter drafted entirely by her husband, stating that ‘She cannot conceal from him that she is ashamed of the policy we are pursuing in the Italian controversy, in abetting wrong, and this for the object of gaining influence in Italy’. There were frequent complaints that the Queen was not being adequately informed, that Palmerston lacked courtesy and consideration, that ‘vindictiveness is one of the main features in Lord Palmerston’s character’, and that ‘The Queen must say she is afraid that she will have no peace of mind and there will be no end of troubles as long as Lord Palmerston is at the head of the Foreign Office’. For his part, Palmerston increasingly resented this interference and the tone of the Royal letters to him and the Prime Minister. The Queen told Russell bluntly that she wanted Palmerston – now called ‘Pilgerstein’ by Albert – to leave the Foreign Office in as early as September 1848; the unhappy Prime Minister said that he sympathised deeply, but it could not be done. When the Austrians triumphed in Italy, and Palmerston’s letters to the Queen became notably evasive, there were further protests. Palmerston’s strong sympathy with the Hungarian revolution – again, not shared by the Queen and the Prince – could not prevent its overthrow, but when the Russians demanded from Turkey the refugees that had fled there, he backed the Turks not only with words but with an Anglo-French fleet to the Dardanelles. ‘With a little manly firmness we shall successfully get through this matter’, Palmerston wrote to Russell, and so it proved, but the venture was not approved of by Albert, who regarded it as another example of the recklessness of the Foreign Secretary. Meanwhile, exchanges continued on a consistently acrimonious level on trivial issues.53

  The difference of attitude towards Europe by Palmerston and Albert was, as has already been emphasised, absolutely fundamental. The Prince, although himself in many respects far more liberal than the Foreign Secretary, was horrified by the prospect of widespread violent revolution and anarchy across the Continent, while Palmerston saw considerable advantage in seizing opportunities to strengthen Britain’s interests and concerns. Palmerston had wanted a swift resumption of diplomatic relations with the new French Republic; he supported the Danes over Schleswig-Holstein, the Italians against the Austrians, and the Hungarians against the Russians, in total contradiction to Albert’s views. His policy had a real pattern, but it contained considerable dangers. Prince Albert saw too much of the dangers, Palmerston minimised them excessively. If their personal relationship had been better, each might have realised that the other did have valid arguments. As it was, they moved from coldness to hostility and suspicion, and then – certainly on Prince Albert’s side – to real and deep enmity.

  Palmerston did not comprehend the traumatic effect upon Albert of the Year of Revolution in Europe. In most English eyes – and certainly in Palmerston’s – the collapse of despotism and the advance of liberal reform in Europe, especially as England had remained splendidly free from such difficulties and dangers, were both to be welcomed – within certain limits. To a German Prince and a fervent European the proximity of anarchy, violence, civil wars, and the destruction of the status quo through bloody revolution was a nightmare. Palmerston considered the events of 1848–9 as having been, in the main, satisfactory; to the Prince, they had been deeply frightening.

  There were also physical factors. The Prince was grossly overworking and unwell, and the fact that the crisis with Palmerston coincided with the intense strain involved in the preparation of the Great Exhibition was of real significance. He was oppressed with worries at home and in Europe, worked very long hours on official papers, and seemed incapable of relaxation, even at Osborne. ‘It is anxiety that wears out the man’, Sir James Clark wrote with concern. ‘Anxiety is the waster of life’. He was only thirty-two, yet looked far older, and the graceful figure and luxuriant hair had disappeared. Peel was the only politician of substance with whom he had a complete understanding and trust; Gladstone might well have taken his place in Albert’s estimation, but he was not yet able to do so. He admired Aberdeen and liked the young Granville, but he saw no one in public life comparable to Peel, and never again had such a close relationship with any other politician.

  Albert’s temperament was not nearly as placid as most believed, and his self-control and patience were formidably tested over the birth of the Exhibition. Thus, a political relationship with Palmerston that might have been possible, despite deep differences of perception of the European situation, was at least partly destroyed by Prince Albert’s chronic exhaustion and worry on other matters. He did far too much, was excessively conscientious on quite minor matters, had – apart from Phipps and Gray – no personal assistance, and never delegated any matter of substance. The loss of Anson was especially grievous, for he had lost his daily and wise confidant who had been with him from the very beginning. The Queen wrote to Leopold in February 1852 a particularly sad letter:

  Albert becomes really a terrible man of business; I think it takes a little off from the gentleness of his character, and makes him so preoccupied. I grieve over all this, as I cannot enjoy these things much as I interest myself in general European politics; but I am every day more convinced that we women, if we are to be good women, feminine and amiable and domestic, are not fitted to reign; at least it is contre gré that they drive themselves to the work which it entails.

  Palmerston should have realised, because the signs were quite unmistakable, that the Prince was under intolerable strain, but he did not. What he saw was his own immense and rising popularity in the country, his command over the House of Commons, the apprehensions and excitement his name aroused throughout the European Powers, and the sheer enjoyment of being Foreign Secretary of a very powerful nation with a strong and feared Navy. He considered himself indispensable to the weak Russell Administration. He was not proposing to surrender his freedom of action and real power to a young Prince of so little comparable political and international experience. In short, each misunderstood and underestimated the other.

  The Don Pacifico crisis in the early summer of 1850 marked another major advance towards the complete rift. The Foreign Secretary supported the claim of the Gibraltar-born Portuguese Jew Don Pacifico against the Greek Government for very consider-able compensation for alleged losses when his house in Athens was pillaged. To the general astonishment, Palmerston ordered the Fleet from the Dardanelles to the Piraeus and blockaded Athens. Greece appealed for support from France and Russia, Palmerston insisted on full reparation for Don Pacifico, the Russian note of protest was in very strong terms, and the French Ambassador to London was abruptly recalled. For a few weeks it seemed that Europe was on the brink of war over this absurd episode, and Queen and Prince again pressed Russell hard for Palmerston’s removal from the Foreign Office. When Russell suggested the Leadership of the Commons for him Albert responded that this might give Palmerston even greater political influence, and Russell’s suggestion of his father-in-law, Lord Minto, as Foreign Secretary was dismissed as impossible by the Prince and the Queen.

  A more unnecessary European crisis could hardly have been imagined, and the Prince wrote tartly to Russell on May 15th that ‘We are not surprised, however, that Lord Palmerston’s mode of doing business should not be borne by the susceptible French Government with the same good humour and forbearance as by his colleagues’. The Don Pacifico issue was viewed by him as an intolerable example of Palmerston’s belligerent and irresponsible conduct of his office. He had written to Russell on April 2nd with cold anger that ‘at a moment and in a conjuncture in which England ought to stand highest in the esteem of the world, and to possess the confidence of all Powers, she is generally detested, mistrusted, and treated with indignity by even the smallest Powers’.

  It seemed that this time Palmerston had gone too far, even for his most fervent supporters and popularity. On June 18th, after a debate of rare quality, the Lords passed a motion that in effect condemned the Government’s policy, but t
he Commons debate that began on June 25th was even more remarkable, in which Gladstone, Disraeli, Cobden and Peel took part. Palmerston seemed doomed – describing the debate ‘as a shot fired by a foreign conspiracy, aided and abetted by a domestic intrigue’ in a letter to his brother – but in an amazing speech of four and a half hours described by Gladstone as a ‘gigantic intellectual and physical effort’, he routed his critics and caused a national and international sensation with the declaration that ‘as the Roman in days of old held himself free from indignity when he could say Civis Romanus Sum, so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong’.

  To the deep regret of the Queen and the Prince this saved the day for Palmerston and the Whigs. ‘The Queen has no more confidence in Lord P. now than she had before’, Prince Albert wrote in a lengthy memorandum of which he sent a copy to Russell; ‘the debate has not shown her anything that she did not know before, though it was silent on many things that she did know . . . Foreign governments distrust and foreign nations hate Lord P. now as much as before – Lord P. himself is not likely to change his nature in his sixty-seventh year on account of a vote, which is calculated to gratify his vanity and self esteem’.

  But worse was to follow. On June 27th the Queen was attacked and badly bruised by one Robert Pate who hit her repeatedly with a cane when she was leaving Cambridge House, and then came the news that Peel had had a grievous riding accident the day after the Don Pacifico debate, and sustained injuries from which he never recovered.

  The Queen and Prince Albert had been severely shaken by Pate’s assault, were unhappy at Palmerston’s reprieve, and now had lost in Peel a staunch supporter and friend, and one to whom they had looked upon as certain to return to the Premiership when the unhappy Whig interlude ended. Also, Albert had lost a valued champion of the Exhibition, now being vehemently abused, and was in such despair at Peel’s death that he recorded on July 3rd that ‘we are on the point of having to abandon the Exhibition’. In fact, so strong was the impact of Peel’s death and his known advocacy, that on the next day the Commons overwhelmingly defeated the Exhibition’s critics and endorsed its purposes. This was some, although little, consolation for a loss that Prince Albert felt very deeply. Peel had been the one English politician whom he regarded as being of real moral and intellectual stature; he felt himself beholden to him as his ‘benefactor’; and he had lost his friend and close adviser. In these melancholy circumstances his attitude to Palmerston hardened further.