By this time all the major newspapers – The Times, Manchester Guardian, and Globe – had changed their previous pacific approach, and anti-Russian fervour in their columns was reflected in Parliament. The Morning Post, carefully informed by Palmerston, announced that his resignation was not concerned with Reform at all, and charged that his removal was the result of ‘a rapprochement between the Courts of Vienna and England’. The Daily News referred to ‘Courtly distastes and Coburg intrigues’, and Reynold’s Weekly – which had a circulation of some 50,000 – attacked ‘the Prince Prime Minister’. Palmerston was back in triumph, and an extraordinary storm of abuse fell upon Prince Albert.
Palmerston, having initiated his campaign, tried to check it when it went far beyond anything he had anticipated, but for a while Albert was denounced in vicious broadsheets, in newspapers, and at public meetings with a ferocity that would be unimaginable for a modern member of the Royal Family. He was described as the chief agent of ‘the Austrian-Belgian-Coburg-Orleans clique, the avowed enemies of England, and the subservient tools of Russian ambition’. Wild rumours that he had been impeached for treason and sent to the Tower of London circulated. It was a terrible period.55
Albert, although astonished, angered, and deeply upset, outwardly maintained a calm attitude. ‘The Government is a popular Government’, he wrote, ‘and the masses upon which it rests only feel, and do not think. In the present instance their feeling is something of this sort: “The Emperor of Russia is a tyrant, and the enemy of all liberty on the Continent, the oppressor of Poland. He wanted to coerce the poor Turk. The Turk is a fine fellow; he has braved the rascal, let us rush to his assistance” ’. To Stockmar he wrote that ‘The public here is furiously Turkish and anti-Russian’, and to Ernest that ‘I am not giving up hope that we may be able to enforce peace, and yet the folly of both Russians and Turks is unbelievable’; this was written immediately after Palmerston’s resignation, when he rejoiced at the departure of ‘One warlike element’ and ‘The great Liberal bully’, but that had been shortlived. ‘The state of politics here is quite insane’, he wrote to Stockmar on December 23rd, warning him that he also – although in Coburg for over six months – was part of the ‘Coburg plot’, being ‘in assiduous attendance on the Prince Consort’; ‘one almost fancies oneself in a lunatic asylum’.
The reality was that he and the Queen were outraged, and deeply wounded. On this occasion the remarkable efficiency of his Press and broadsheet collection organisation was rather too efficient, as he and Victoria read daily, with mounting anger and incomprehension, the torrent of abuse and vilification directed at them personally. Stockmar shared their anger totally, describing hostile Tories as ‘simply degenerate bastards’ while the Whigs ‘stand in the same relation to the Throne as the wolf does to the lamb’. ‘If our courage and cheerfulness have not suffered’, Albert wrote, ‘our stomachs and digestions have, as they commonly do when feelings are kept long upon the stretch’.
Victoria’s feelings were even more intense than those of Albert, who wrote to Stockmar on December 27th that ‘the stupidest trash is babbled to the public, so stupid that (as they say in Coburg) you would not give it to the pigs to litter in’. Indeed, his correspondence at this time contains the strongest language he committed to paper. He had considered the Cabinet’s dispatch of the Fleet as ‘morally and constitutionally wrong,’ as it had been done without the Queen’s approval, and now he judged that Britain had been perilously committed as ‘auxiliaries to the Turks’. His warnings and protests had been unheeded, now he was the object of intense attack. ‘The nonsense and lies which the public have had to swallow with respect to my humble person within these last three weeks have really exceeded anything I could have imagined’, he wrote to Lord Hardinge.
A foolish proposal to erect a statue to him in honour of the Exhibition could not have been more ill-timed, and produced another outpouring of patriotic denigration. In fact, he had deplored the well-intentioned suggestion of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London, and wrote to Granville (November 3rd) that:
. . . I can say, with perfect absence of humbug, that I would much rather not be made the prominent feature of such a monument, as it would both disturb my quiet rides in Rotten Row to see my own face staring at me, and if (as is very likely) it became an artistic monstrosity, like most of our monuments, it would upset my equanimity to be permanently ridiculed and laughed at in effigy . . .
This characteristic good humour was sorely tested by the ordeal he now had to endure. The Queen was enraged, and wrote to Aberdeen on January 4th 1854 that she intended to make her husband Prince Consort – the title he had not formally received, but by which he was now generally known – and that if she thought that the attacks on him represented the real views of her people ‘she would leave a position which nothing but her domestic happiness could make her endure, and retire to private life – leaving the country to choose another ruler after their own heart’s content. But she does not think so ill of her country, though she must say that these disgraceful exhibitions will leave behind them very bitter feelings in her breast, which time alone can eradicate’.
The Queen had written to Aberdeen as early as October 11th 1853 – the warning drafted by her husband – that ‘we have taken on ourselves, in conjunction with the French, all the risks of a European war, without having bound Turkey to any conditions with respect to provoking it’. This was exactly true, but in the war-fever, and with a Prime Minister who was equally helpless in the storm, wisdom and caution of this nature were profoundly unpopular. Bulwer Lytton was right when he wrote that ‘Palmerston is Mamma England’s spoilt child, and the more mischief he does the more she admires him. What a spirit he has! cries Mamma, and smash goes the crockery!’ Albert considered the prospects of a European war as ‘a terrible calamity’, and had little faith in ‘the ignorant, barbarian, and despotic Mussulman’ (Memorandum to Aberdeen, October 21st 1853). The gulf was total.
The storm, although fierce, was brief. The Queen threatened not to open Parliament in person to demonstrate her anger, but there had been a reaction against the abuse. Aberdeen wrote apologetically to Albert that it had been ‘a signal example of popular delusion, and, although we consider ourselves to be an enlightened people, I know of no greater instance of stupid credulity than has been exhibited in the disgraceful proceedings of the last few weeks’. Palmerston, having achieved his object and his revenge, hastened to make some amends. Ministers and Members of Parliament were ardent in their eulogies of the Prince; the Press clamour faded as quickly as it had begun; when he inspected the Guards on February 22nd 1854 he was ‘much cheered’.
But this episode had left deep, and ineradicable, wounds. He was not prone to self-pity, and although he often looked nostalgically to his childhood and to Germany, he was happy in his marriage, for all its occasional tempestuous storms – ‘What are you really afraid of in me?’ he wrote to her in one especially sad moment shortly after this episode – and he had rendered extraordinary service already to his adopted country. He loved Cambridge, and was proud of its rapid revival; his work for art and music was admired by those whose admiration he appreciated; the Exhibition and its aftermath gave him pleasure; he had created Osborne; Balmoral was rising rapidly; the Royal estates were being managed with unprecedented efficiency; he was greatly respected as an exceptionally qualified expert in agriculture by people not ready to bestow their respect; he loved his growing family. In twelve years of endeavour he had established himself in England in every area in which he had involved himself. And now, after all this endeavour, he was being widely portrayed not only as an interfering foreigner, but an enemy of England.
The Queen had been totally staunch during this crisis, and supported him vehemently. Of her husband she wrote to Stockmar on January 19th 1854, that he ‘treats it with contempt, but with his keen and very high feeling of honour he is wounded, hurt, and enraged by the attack on his honour, and is lo
oking very ill, though his spirits do not fail him’.
Stockmar, although distressed and angry, characteristically argued that there was a good side to this experience. ‘I cannot wish, hard as you may have been hit by them, that you should have been spared this experience. It is only in war, under its threatened or real wounds and bruises, that a real soldier is formed’. Stockmar’s relish that his protégé had thus been tested was not echoed by Albert, whose reply (January 24th 1854) is deeply significant. He was no longer looking forward.
A very considerable section of the nation had never given itself the trouble to consider what really is the position of the husband of a Queen Regnant. When I first came over here I was met by this want of knowledge and unwillingness to give a thought to the position of this luckless personage. Peel cut down my income, Wellington refused me my rank, the Royal family cried out against the Foreign interloper, the Whigs in office were only inclined to concede to me just as much space as I could stand upon.
The Crimean War broke out in March 1854. It was as the Queen wrote to Leopold, ‘popular beyond belief’. The series of disasters that overtook the Allied forces gave Palmerston his ultimate, and total, political triumph. What the Queen described as ‘our eternal government hunting errand’ resulted in Palmerston as Prime Minister. After much unnecessary tragedy, the war was technically ‘won’, its only genuine and enduring triumph achieved by Florence Nightingale in nursing the wounded and by The Times’ correspondent W. H. Russell in bringing to the British public the full horror of the adventure on which they had so enthusiastically and casually embarked. By one of the supreme ironies of Prince Albert’s life, the one result of the war was the breaking of the links between Austria and Russia which led to the unification of Germany and the liberation of Italy. Otherwise, in the words of H. A. L. Fisher, it was ‘a contest entered into without necessity, conducted without foresight, and deserving to be reckoned from its archaic arrangements and tragic mismanagement rather among medieval than modern campaigns’.
Once the war was begun, the Prince immersed himself totally in its prosecution, often reflecting with some anger on politicians who neglected the armed forces in peace and then embarked upon wars in which their deficiencies were blamed upon others. His activity, not always appreciated by Ministers, was intense, and it was entirely due to him that they accepted his proposal for a new medal to be awarded for acts of supreme valour in the face of the enemy, to be open to men of all ranks. This, in itself, was a striking novelty, and the genesis of the Victoria Cross is to be found in this memorandum by the Prince:
1. That a small cross of merit for personal deeds of valour be established.
2. That it be open to all ranks.
3. That it be unlimited in number.
4. That an annuity (say of £5) be attached to each cross.
5. That it be claimable by an individual on establishing before a jury of his peers, subject to confirmation at home, his right to the distinction.
He not only instituted, but designed, the Cross – from that day to this the highest decoration for valour in the British armed forces.56
He and the Queen followed the war anxiously, and often with anguish. ‘You can form no conception of the fatigue which just at this moment this treadmill causes me’, he wrote to Stockmar. His personal views were not dissimilar to those of Carlyle, who wrote ‘Never such enthusiasm among the people; seems to me privately that I have hardly seen a madder business’. Of the war, Prince Albert recorded: ‘Ich mag ihn nicht’ – ‘I do not like it myself’.
* * *
53 It is an immensely large correspondence, of which a substantial proportion was used in Brian Connell’s Regina v. Palmerston (1962).
54 This had been in 1837, and the lady involved was Mrs. Brand, later Lady Dacre. Fortunately, Stockmar was also staying in the Castle, and was able to impress upon the enraged husband the absolute necessity of avoiding a major scandal. The Queen was not told, but a memorandum by Anson on December 13th 1841 after a description by Stockmar of what had occurred reveals that even by then the Queen had not been told, whereas Prince Albert had been. The Prince, therefore, kept this information to himself for ten years before using it, in very strong terms, as an additional reason for Palmerston’s dismissal.
55 Kingsley Martin: The Triumph of Lord Palmerston (1924) and revised edition in 1953, remains the best analysis of Press opinion and influence.
56 See also M. J. Crook: The Evolution of the Victoria Cross (1975).
chapter eight
Husband and Father
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had known little of each other when they became engaged, and although their love was intense and profound it developed through shared experience and difficulties into a marriage in which they attempted to balance the heavy responsibilities of Sovereign and Consort with those of parents of a rapidly growing young family. Almost, although not entirely, by chance they created a pattern of living that embraced the formalities of Buckingham Palace, the more relaxed atmosphere of Windsor, the peacefulness of Osborne – ‘the children catch butterflies, Victoria sits under the trees’ he wrote of one day – and the more bracing environment of Balmoral, but where they felt particularly happy, remote from the political and official world, and with their children. Above all, Osborne and Balmoral were their creations, not only physically but in atmosphere.
Prince Albert was a devoted, loving, and amusing husband and father, and although his patience was tried on several occasions by his wife’s variable temperament they were deeply happy together. In Gladstone’s noble phrase, ‘He was to her, in deed and truth, a second self’.
Victoria and Albert had nine children in seventeen years, and the regular arrivals of Royal babies were the topic of a certain popular ribaldry and political criticism, and it was a long time before the Queen’s intense dislike at ‘this occupation’, became known. Many years later she wrote to her eldest daughter:
What you say of the pride of giving life to an immortal soul is very fine, dear, but I own I cannot enter into that; I think much more of us being like a cow or a dog at such moments; when our poor nature becomes so very animal & unecstatic.
But these events gave immense pleasure to Albert, who doted on his children – and none more than the firstborn, Victoria (‘Vicky’). The others were Albert Edward (‘Bertie’) (born 1841), Alice (1843), Alfred (‘Affie’) (1844), Helena (‘Lenchen’) (1846), Louise (1848), Arthur (1850), Leopold (1853), and Beatrice (1857). To their parents’ dismay and distress Leopold was a haemophiliac, the Queen being the ‘carrier’ of this grievous affliction, but the others were healthy and lively children. Albert greatly enjoyed their company, ordered the special cottage for them at Osborne, and made Christmas – as he always did – a particular time of family enjoyment and happiness, his purpose being to provide, as far is was possible in their circumstances, a happy, well-ordered, and normal childhood. ‘The greatest maxim of all’, Queen Victoria wrote, ‘is that the Children should be brought up as simply and in as domestic a way as possible; that (not interfering with their lessons) they should be as much as possible with their Parents, share and place their greatest confidence in them in all things’. This memorandum, probably drafted by Albert, remained their policy.
The exception was, and perhaps had to be, the Prince of Wales, the Heir to the Throne, the future King, and the repository of Albert’s ambitions for the future of the Monarchy. The assassination attempts on them both gave to the task of raising and educating the future Sovereign an additional urgency, and one to which he applied himself with characteristic thought, resolution, and care. So much misunderstanding has arisen about what then happened that it is important to relate the story in considerable detail, as it throws much further light on the character of Prince Albert.
The genius of Stockmar and Prince Albert lay in their clear understanding not only of the political limitations, bu
t the considerable political potentialities, of the British Monarchy. As Albert wrote to Stockmar in January 1846, ‘the exaltation of Royalty is possible only through the personal character of the Sovereign. When a person enjoys complete confidence, we desire for him more power and influence in the conduct of affairs. But confidence is of slow growth’. Stockmar had now played a brilliantly successful role twice – in the tragically ended education of Leopold, and in the development of Prince Albert into a cautious, serious, but intuitively skilful Consort and man of influence. In spite of the storms that often swirled about the Prince, and the continuing denigration of his alleged dullness, stiffness, and admitted German-ness, he had gradually established himself not only in the heart of his highly intelligent and volatile wife, but in the respect, however grudging, of most senior politicians. By them, he was becoming recognised as being himself a politician of the first rank, and most of them detected, as only politicians can, the ambition and sense of power that lurked under the courteous façade.
It is against this background of political success already achieved, and ambition for the future, that the eventually futile endeavour to mould the eldest son into the perfectly equipped heir to the Throne must be seen – a fundamental point which has eluded several biographers and historians.
Albert Edward – always called ‘Bertie’ in the family – had been born on November 9th 1841 after a particularly difficult con-finement; he was created Prince of Wales on December 4th, and christened amid great pomp in St. George’s Chapel on January 25th 1842, the Duke of Wellington carrying the Sword of State, and the service meticulously planned and organised by Albert. The event was not without its practical difficulties. Melbourne was anxious to avoid ‘the risk of cavil or motions of enquiry’ into the cost, and found that the resources of the department of the Lord Steward could assist with £2,500 or even £3,000, to which Albert wrote in reply that ‘even £2,000 will be very gratefully accepted’. In the event, the final bill was £4,991 16s. 5d., charged to the Lord Chamberlain’s department. Then, the Duke of Coburg was angry that the name Ernest did not find favour with the couple, and even angrier when the King of Prussia was invited to be a godfather. ‘He has reproached me severely’, Albert wrote to his brother, but on both points he and the Queen successfully resisted his father’s pressures, and the new Prince of Wales was christened in appropriate style. The young parents then took counsel about the upbringing of the future King.
Prince Albert Page 32