Prince Albert

by Robert Rhodes James

One becomes very conscious of the fact that by the time he was in his early teens his father’s concern for him had developed into impatience and disappointment, although love – deeply reciprocated – never faded. All the early plans that he and the Queen had discussed for giving her heir a significant role in government and giving him their confidence had long been abandoned. Victoria did have her doubts. ‘You say no one is perfect but Papa’, she wrote to Vicky in 1861, ‘but he has his faults, too. He is often very trying in his hastiness and over-love of business, and I think you would find it trying if Fritz [Vicky’s husband] was as hasty and harsh (momentarily and unintentionally as it is) as he can be!’ One of his few permitted companions – the future Marquess of Lincolnshire – wrote that ‘he was afraid of his father, who seemed a proud, shy, stand-offish man, not calculated to make friends easily with children. I was frightened to death of him’. And Queen Victoria did not exactly help with her repeated admonitions to her son to live up to the standards of a father ‘so great, so good, so faultless’.

  But in spite of all disappointments and frustrations, the father never stopped trying. He took his son to important occasions, introduced him to eminent men, taught him to shoot and fish, instilled in him Bertie’s lifelong love of the Turf, and took him frequently to the theatre. Science, literature, music and art were drawn to the boy’s attention and interest, and with permanent good effects. On this aspect, Albert’s consideration and concern for his son were seen at their very best, and although they were deliberately undertaken to broaden the Prince’s knowledge and understanding as part of the great programme, they were by far the most successful, and explain why the son, although often unhappy and resentful of his father’s severity of standards, so revered and loved him. If there had been more emphasis on attracting the boy’s interests and genuine talents, and less on subjecting him to relentless intellectual pressure that was far beyond his capacities, the results must have been very different.

  In this sad story Prince Albert must bear the principal respon-sibility, but not the only one. Queen Victoria, although a totally adoring wife, was basically uninterested in her children until they became adults, whereas her husband, despite his attitude to his two elder sons, was genuinely devoted and sympathetic to all his children, and especially to Vicky. It is not without significance that the most intense strains in their marriage involved, either directly or indirectly, the health and problems of their children. ‘It is indeed a pity’, Albert wrote to her on October 1st 1856, ‘that you find no consolation in the company of your children. The root of the trouble lies in the mistaken notion that the function of a mother is to be always correcting, scolding, ordering them about and organising their activities. It is not possible to be on happy friendly terms with people you have just been scolding’.

  It is not at all unusual for a parent to have favourites among children, just as it is not at all uncommon for children to have a particular favourite in their parents, and the fact that Albert failed to understand his elder son and became progressively exasperated by him is quite understandable. It was the son’s deep misfortune that, being the Heir, he was to be systematically moulded into near-perfection by methods that were wholly inappropriate to his essentially warm, relaxed, and affectionate personality. In retrospect, and not only in retrospect when one reads his tutors’ daily reports, it is evident that even as a child there was no hope of bringing him remotely to the intellectual level that his father desired. His mind, although good, lacked any spark of that urgent thirst for knowledge and understanding of its practical applications that made Albert such an extraordinary man. Indeed, it is clear that Stockmar was absolutely right when he described Bertie as ‘an exaggerated copy of his mother’, but she, besotted by Albert, despite their frequent and sometimes violent, differences, had at this stage little real interest in her children, as she frankly recognised with characteristic honesty in a letter she wrote to the Queen of Prussia on October 6th 1856:

  Even here, when Albert is often away all day long, I find no especial pleasure or compensation in the company of the elder children . . . and only very occasionally do I find the rather intimate intercourse with them either easy or agreeable. You will not understand this, but it is caused by various factors.

  Firstly, I only feel properly à mon aise and quite happy when Albert is with me; secondly, I am used to carrying on my many affairs quite alone; and then I have grown up all alone, accustomed to the society of adult (and never with younger) people – lastly I cannot get used to the fact that Vicky is almost grown up. To me she still seems the same child, who had to be kept in order and therefore must not become too intimate. Here are my sincere feelings in contrast to yours.

  Here was the real problem. As Sir Philip Magnus has shrewdly, and rightly, observed: ‘Unlike the Queen, the Prince Consort tried to treat his children as equals; and they were able to penetrate his stiffness and reserve because they realised instinctively not only that he loved them but that he enjoyed and needed their company. All, except the Princess Royal, were afraid of him, but in a very interesting conversation with Lord Clarendon in December 1858, Prince Albert expressed “something like regret or doubt” at what he termed the “aggressive” system that the Queen had followed. He explained that “he had always been embarrassed by the alarm which he felt lest the Q’s mind should be excited by any opposition to her will; and that, in regard to the children, the disagreeable office of punishment had always fallen on him”.’58

  The more one examines the correspondence, the detailed reports, and the stern admonitions, the more one realises how deeply Prince Albert cared for his children.

  So far as his relationship with Bertie is concerned, the more one is struck by the remarkable similarities between that relationship and that which subsequently existed between Lord Randolph Churchill and his son, Winston, who only subsequently appreciated how deeply his father had cared for him, and how remote and selfish had his mother been. Churchill’s poignant remark, ‘I loved her dearly – but at a distance’, could have been uttered with equal fervour by the Prince of Wales about his mother. There is a certain significant coldness in her Journal comment on August 27th 1856:

  We took leave of poor Bertie, who was pale and trembling for some time before, and much affected, poor dear child, at the prospect of this first long separation, for he feels very deeply. Though it is sad, I am sure it will be for his own good.

  Prince Albert’s mounting uneasiness about the effects on his son of the regime which he had so enthusiastically endorsed, and had planned so carefully, now became gradually apparent. There was a marked relaxation, manifested in approval for a European tour – admittedly carefully controlled and monitored – and also in matters such as his personal allowance and freedom to buy his own clothes, a privilege marred for him by his mother’s admonition not to ‘wear anything extravagant or slang, not because we don’t like it, but because it would prove a want of self-respect and be an offence against decency, leading – as it has often done in others – to an indifference to what is morally wrong’. The more one reads Queen Victoria’s letters to her son the more does one appreciate why his reverence for her was never really translated into love. ‘I feel very sad about him’, she wrote bluntly and coldly in March 1858. ‘He is so idle and weak. God grant that he may take things more to heart and be more serious for the future and get more power. The heart is good, warm and affectionate’.

  But his backwardness emerges very clearly from his letters to his parents, although there is a particularly sad one written on August 25th 1859:

  My dear Papa,

  I hope you will accept my best wishes for many happy returns of your birthday. May you live to see me grow up a good son, and very grateful for all your kindness. I will try to be a better boy, and not to give Mama and you so much trouble. Very many happy returns of the day.

  I am, my dear Papa,

  Your most affectionate son,

  Albert.<
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  When he went on an unofficial, and largely incognito, tour of the country in 1857, his reports were noticeably superficial (thus, on Leeds: ‘it is a very dirty town, & the inhabitants are very low people’), and those he sent to his father on trips to Europe in 1858 and 1859 drew pained and rather scathing letters and comments from his father. When Bertie met Metternich his report was simply that he was ‘a very nice old gentleman and very like the late Duke of Wellington’ (Metternich wrote of Bertie: ‘Il avait l’air embarrassé et très triste’). Albert wrote that he was ‘not pleased’ with his son’s letters, nor with the standard of the Journal that he instructed his son to keep. On reading them, one appreciates his concern. Thus, a letter from Nuremburg, January 15th 1859:

  My dear Papa,

  The ball at Brussells went off very well & was very pretty, I enjoyed it very much. Uncle Leopold spoke a great deal about the affairs in Italy, & the probability of a war, he was very much alarmed about it. We left Brussells last Thursday at 9.30 & arrived at Cologne after a prosperous journey at 4 o’clock . . .

  Concerned by what to him appeared the extraordinary political naïveté of his son, Albert wrote to him at length an analysis of the European situation, and with particular reference to the crisis in Italy. All he received in return was a letter from Rome, on March 14th 1859, in which Bertie simply remarked: ‘Many thanks for your long & interesting letter which I received this morning by Post. It is very kind of you to explain to me the politics of the different nations, which certainly seem very complicated’.

  Meanwhile, Albert, having vetoed Bertie’s desire to join the Army, agreed that he should sit for the military examination, and organised his preparation under Gibbs at White Lodge, in Richmond Park. A trio of supervisors – two of whom had won the Victoria Cross in the Crimea – was appointed after careful vetting, and given detailed instructions about how he was to be brought into manhood. The care and detail of Prince Albert’s advice, covering ‘Appearance, Deportment and Dress’, ‘Manners of Conduct towards Others’, and ‘The Power to Acquit Himself Creditably in Conversation, or whatever May Be the Occupation of Society’ appear at first glance to be insufferably earnest and glum, but bear a second look. Admonitions about dress (‘he will borrow nothing from the fashions of the groom or the gamekeeper, and whilst avoiding the frivolity and foolish vanity of dandyism, will take care that his clothes are of the best quality’) are balanced by the recognition of the fact that whereas trivia such as gossip, cards, and billiards are deplorable ‘some knowledge of those studies and pursuits which adorn society and make it interesting’ was essential. Furthermore, ‘The manners and conduct of a gentleman towards others are founded on the basis of kindness, consideration, and the absence of selfishness’ has an authentic ring, and certainly left its mark. Albert’s chronic shyness, nervousness, and sense of duty often effectively concealed – but not to his family and closest associates – a genuine kindness and gentleness. Throughout this apparently tedious memorandum there shines a deep concern for his son, and an absolutely sincere desire to help him.

  To the immense relief of Bertie, Gibbs was removed from his arduous and singularly ill-conducted responsibilities in November 1858. The mother took comfort in ‘his implicit reliance in everything on dearest Papa, that perfection of human beings!’ while the father, although considering ‘Bertie grown up and improved’, was troubled by his increasing fascination with clothes, and his lack of ‘mental occupation’. Thus, while the Queen continued to lament his deficiencies and his inability to match up to the qualities of his father, Albert was becoming more realistic. ‘His manners have improved very much and the best school for him is the external stress of life’, he wrote to his beloved elder daughter, while expressing dismay at his son’s continued erratic behaviour – at one moment charming and impressive, and yet treating his servants so badly. Unconsciously echoing Stockmar’s comment, the Queen wrote to Vicky that ‘Bertie . . . is my caricature. That is the misfortune, and, in a man, this is so much worse. You are quite your dear, beloved Papa’s child’.

  These events have immense significance in comprehending the complex characters both of Albert and Victoria, and their marriage. As the sad saga of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, gradually unfolds the observer is struck less by the imperfections of the father than by the inadequacies of the mother. One can easily lament, and criticise, what he and Stockmar tried to accomplish, but one can understand why they attempted it just as easily as it is easy, with all the benefits of hindsight, to realise why they failed. But it is remarkable that a mother could have remained so indifferent to the obvious distress of a child, and could have so freely accepted, over many years, a regime that was obviously so unsuited to him. Her adoration of her husband cannot be regarded as an adequate explanation, nor her reverence for Stockmar. Thus, while she condemned her son as ‘a thorough and cunning lazybones’ (January 1860), the Prince was delighted when Stockmar or anyone else reported favourably upon him, and there is a certain humour when he wrote of his son that ‘usually his intellect is of no more use than a pistol packed at the bottom of a trunk if one were attacked in the robber-infested Appennines.

  One is reminded again of Winston Churchill’s relations with his father, and his account of how that relationship ended:

  To me he seemed to own the key to everything or almost everything worth having. But if ever I began to show the slightest idea of comradeship, he was immediately offended . . . Just as friendly relations were ripening into an Entente, and an alliance or least a military agreement seemed to my mind not beyond the realms of reasonable endeavour, he vanished for ever.59

  The removal of Gibbs was long overdue, and this delay may be regarded as a major error. Major Robert Lindsay, equerry to the Prince of Wales, wrote to Phipps that he considered that ‘a continuance of the present system will not be beneficial to the Prince . . . Mr. Gibbs has no influence. He and the Prince are so much out of sympathy with one another that a wish expressed by Mr. Gibbs is sure to meet with opposition on the part of the Prince . . . Mr. Gibbs has devoted himself to the boy, but no affection is given him in return, nor do I wonder at it, for they are by nature thoroughly unsuited to one another. I confess I quite understand the Prince’s feelings towards Mr. Gibbs, for tho’ I respect his uprightness and devotion, I could not give him sympathy, confidence or friendship’ (July 27th 1858). Action was taken, belatedly, and Gibbs was retired. ‘Mr. Gibbs certainly failed during the last 2 years entirely, incredibly’, the Queen wrote to the Princess Royal. But although the Prince of Wales had proved a terrible disappointment to his mother, Prince Albert emphasised that ‘Bertie has remarkable social talent’, which he demonstrated in Berlin and on a highly successful and greatly praised official visit to Canada and the United States in 1859. Gibbs was replaced by Colonel Robert Bruce, brother of Lord Elgin, who received the formal title of ‘Governor’ to the Prince of Wales.

  Meanwhile, however, the Prince of Wales’s desire to enter the Army and make a career had been frustrated, he had been ‘bored to death’ at White Lodge, and his brief periods at Edinburgh, Oxford, and Cambridge Universities, where he was strictly segregated, were not happy. This segregation from his contemporaries was made even worse by his father’s insistence that his son gave select dinner parties for eminent senior members of the Universities, and on being given the lists of guests. Not surprisingly, these were sombre and worthy, and one’s heart aches for a young man presiding over dinners such as one he gave at Madingley Hall, where the guests were the Vice Chancellor, ‘the aged Prof. Sedgwick’, the Senior Tutor of Trinity, the Masters of two colleges, and the Public Orator, and one is not surprised to read Bruce writing of ‘the poignant contrast between the portly grey-haired guests and the faintly epicene beauty of their adolescent host’. Even as a child, Bertie had given clear evidence of what proved to be a lifelong facility to become quickly bored, and his heroism, both at Oxford and Cambridge, in presiding over such glum and intellectu
al feasts to please his father deserved more praise than it received. His father greatly enjoyed the company of such men, and it was one of the reasons for his success at Cambridge as Chancellor. He found it impossible to comprehend that his son did not, and the latter’s enduring distaste for intellectuals was perhaps the only real result of his brief and unhappy sojourns at these ancient Universities.

  Bruce, having noted his success and social talent, counselled the parents that an early marriage was highly desirable. It was evident that the Prince, in spite of his closetted and unhappy education, had a natural and infectious charm, and as he emerged from his isolation and boredom into young manhood was increasingly – and understandably – attracted by the many pleasures which suddenly opened before him. While Albert lamented his son’s fascination for clothes and taste, Bruce was more worried about other aspects of Bertie’s developing hedonism. The only contemporaries he had truly appreciated at Oxford were a notably hard-drinking, hard-living, and hard-riding group of flamboyantly rich young aristocrats, and there had been an incident on the European tour when Bertie had much too much to drink and had embraced a lady (an event sonorously described by Gladstone as ‘a squalid little debauch’). Prince Albert had detected the good side, that his son had ‘remarkable social talent’ and could be ‘lively, quick and sharp when his mind is set on anything, which is seldom’, but he returned from one visit to Oxford ‘terribly anxious for the future’. Meanwhile, the subject of these earnest conclaves was in miserable isolation at Madingley Hall, five miles out of Cambridge, gloomy and frustrated, still appealing to his parents to be allowed to have a military career, and at least a period of service with the Guards.

  But the sudden and unexpected flowering of their difficult, volatile, and temperamental son into a young man of great popularity and with a real personal style considerably disconcerted his parents, and made them very receptive to Bruce’s arguments. Thus, the hurried search for a suitable bride began.