by A. N. Wilson
Gladstone’s idea for the future of the monarchy was that it should radiate moral influence. The Prince of Wales, instead of mixing with a raffish world of adultery and champagne, should espouse good causes, and his mother’s Court, rather than being a small table of semi-silent courtiers, suppressing their fury at Brown’s latest impertinence, should become a Camelot of high thinking. Disraeli was a cannier man than Gladstone. He had seen the popularity of Palmerston, totally undiminished by the old man’s lack of sexual continency. He was cynical enough to divine that no British army could withstand the well-trained Prussians in the field, though the Royal Navy was still supreme in the world. The power of the new Toryism was based on the Empire, and on the Tories’ belief that the Empire was making Britain richer (which, for a few decades more, it would). With a flourish which combined his political flair and his fantastical inventiveness as a writer of fiction, Benjamin Disraeli came up with the idea that Victoria should become the Empress of India. It is a title which many people would consider more appropriate for a railway engine, or possibly a pig, but it was the consummate cupola on the Victorian political endeavour. The Victorians were now an Empire. And the extremely eccentric, reclusive figure who had shrunk not merely from the public gaze, but from the whole political drift of Gladstonian politics in the previous years, could now come out into the sunlight in a state coach as the figurehead of their military and economic world domination.
Rather than sending Bertie to Ireland – which had been Gladstone’s much-derided idea – Disraeli had the inspired notion of colluding in the prince’s wish to visit India. The Prince of Wales had squared the idea with Disraeli before asking the Queen’s permission. It was undoubtedly Disraeli’s influence which made her give it, though she immediately began to question the wisdom of her choice. Could his health stand it? And, if it were a success, would she not feel the most intolerable envy?
She objected to his choice of travelling companions – Lord Carrington and Lord Charles Beresford – and she wrote an angry letter to Disraeli upon the subject to be read out in Cabinet. There was sniggering as the Prime Minister read the epistle, since it was written, said the Foreign Secretary, Lord Derby, ‘with so much violence and so little dignity that to hear it read with gravity was impossible’.33
He went with an all-male entourage – many of them louche members of the Marlborough House set, such as ‘Sporting’ Joe Aylesford, but led by the distinguished old India hand Bartle Frere, Lord Alfred Paget and W. H. Russell of The Times, showing that this was a stage-managed piece of political theatre. Lord Northbrook (the viceroy, who had been Sir Francis Baring) gave a positive account to the Queen of the prince’s arrival in Bombay.
Bertie had many of the monarchical qualities which his mother lacked. He loved public ceremonies, and he was easy with people, he was sexy and the Indians liked him. Queen Victoria had worried visions of Bertie escalading ‘zenanas [harems] on ladders of ropes’,34 but no one would have batted an eyelid had he done so. Russell believed that Bertie had elevated a royal visit into an historic event.35 As so often, a journalistic cliché was true. The chiefs and princes and maharajahs who lined up to clasp the royal hand were colluding in an extraordinary phenomenon. From the foundation of the East India Company until the events known as the Indian Mutiny in 1857–9, the British commercial relationship with India, enforced by military might, had been a confused mixture of mutual admiration, resentment, love and exploitation. Once the government of India itself had become officially a matter for the viceroy, under the British Crown, it was obvious that the relationship had differed. India was in many senses debased by the arrangement. But only in some senses. The Indians maintained their own religious traditions, their own local rulers and their own languages, though English, since Macaulay in Calcutta in the 1830s, was the lingua franca for administration throughout the subcontinent. But Bertie’s visit reminded the British of how much they themselves had to gain by their association with India. The sheer size of the subcontinent, its wealth, not only of substances but of history and culture, all added supremely to the status of the small North European trading archipelago known as Britain. Bertie was paraded through six miles of illuminated streets in Bombay. Although on his arrival he had been received by silent crowds, by the evening of the illuminations, the crowds were cheering. Northbrook wrote to the Queen:
There is certainly a greater appearance of cordiality towards British rule among the people of Bombay than Lord Northbrook has seen in other parts of India, and these processions were more remarkable than the former ones which Lord Northbrook saw in Bombay three years ago. There were, as was to be expected, more people in the streets, and the cheering was more general.
Among the devices at the illuminations there were many expressive of loyalty to your Majesty, and occasionally there was one which was somewhat quaint; for instance, Lord Northbrook noticed one, ‘How is your Royal Mother?’ and another purely native in one of the picturesque narrow streets of the Fort, ‘Tell Mama we’re happy’.36
Victoria could not but be pleased that those who made these banners had the sense that Bertie was only there as her representative. She soon wearied, however, of reading about her hated son’s triumphs – ‘Bertie’s progresses lose a little interest and are very wearing – as there is such a constant repetition of elephants – trappings – jewels – illuminations – and fireworks’.37 Disraeli moved quickly to capitalize on the success of the Prince of Wales’s Indian visit. If the Public Worship Regulation Act of 1874 was in effect like something out of Gulliver’s Travels, the Royal Titles Act of 1876 had something of the quality of Alice in Wonderland. Long ago, in 1830, The Times had carried a flattering review of one of Disraeli’s outrageous jeux d’esprit. ‘Mr D’Israeli’s chapters on Royal Titles supply some amusing extracts,’ it said, citing the Court of the Great Mogul, where courtiers lifted up their hands, crying, ‘Wonder! Wonder! Wonder!’ whenever their sovereign appeared. He noted that ‘in England, Henry VIII had been the first royal personage to assume the title of “Highness”, and at length “Majesty”’. But he reserved his most satirical observations for the sovereign of Arracan, who ‘assumes the title of “Emperor of Arracan, possessor of the white elephant and the two earrings, and in virtue of this possession, legitimate heir of Pegu and Brama: lord of the twelve portions of Bengal, and the twelve kings who place their heads under his feet”’.38 Perhaps some dim memory of this early joke lingered in the wise old head of the Prime Minister when he proposed her Indian title. Disraeli was ill towards the end of 1875, and, with much else happening at home and abroad, there were those who thought it in an inopportune moment for this gesture. But, ‘The Empress-Queen demands her Imperial Crown’, said Disraeli. And he instructed Salisbury, the Secretary of State for India, to put the announcement in the Queen’s Speech after the paragraph referring to the prince’s visit: ‘What might have been looked upon as an ebullition of individual vanity may bear the semblance of deep and organised policy.’39
The late lamented Louis Napoleon had declared himself an emperor. So had Vicky’s father-in-law the King of Prussia. Russia was ruled over by an emperor. It was surely only fitting that Victoria should place herself on the same footing as they. Vicky, herself destined for imperial greatness when her husband Fritz became the Emperor of Germany, wondered whether the other colonies ought to be named in the title.40 Apart from the preposterousness of this idea (where would it stop? Empress of Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands, Canada, New Zealand, St Helena . . . ) it lacked the poetic simplicity of ‘Empress of India’. By claiming this title, Victoria and the Victorians, like the possessor of the white elephant and the two earrings, were making not merely an extra-territorial statement, but almost a metaphysical one. The Tsar was Emperor merely of Russia, as Louis Napoleon had merely laid claim to imperial France. India, in all its exotic, multicultural size and splendour, now came under the royal dominion of Windsor Castle, and by extension and metaphor, the British laid claim to
the whole earth. Of course there were howls of derision in the Liberal press. Disraeli, moreover, made an extraordinary blunder in failing to inform either the Prince of Wales or the Opposition that the Queen was to take this title.41 Robert Lowe, 1st Viscount Sherbrooke, one of Disraeli’s most implacable enemies, made a public speech at East Retford, claiming that the previous two Prime Ministers had been less ‘pliant’ than Disraeli, and resisted the Queen’s vanity in wishing for such a title. (Gladstone gallantly and instantly denied that this was the case.) But by introducing the measure so casually, Disraeli risked his royal mistress being ridiculed in Parliament, and abroad. (The Russian Ambassador in London, Shuvalov, opined that the discussion of the new title ‘has given the Queen’s prestige a blow from which it will not recover’.42) Had the resistance been much stronger, it would have been damaging to Victoria, but she was able to ignore the objections, and tell her journal that ‘there is no feeling whatever in the country against it, but the press took it up’.43 Not for the first, or last, time, royalty blamed the press for having the temerity to disapprove of its own bizarre behaviour.
As she well knew, and as Disraeli knew, there were many much closer to home than the journalists, who took a quizzical view of ‘the Empress’. A diplomat dining at Windsor attended a reception before the meal, and met Disraeli there. He was surprised to see the Prime Minister cowering and looking about him anxiously. When the Queen Empress entered the Long Gallery, Disraeli, far from rushing forward to greet her, shrank behind his acquaintance. But there was no escape. In high dudgeon, Victoria advanced on Disraeli and denounced the Duke of Argyll – Princess Louise’s father-in-law no less – for mocking her new title, and for his gross disloyalty. It was not an occasion for soft soap, and those who overheard the conversation were struck by Disraeli laying aside his usually courtly manner. He let the Queen have it. He told her that she was entirely mistaken in believing this story, and that she had no more loyal subject than the duke. ‘Nor did he cease,’ said the onlooker, ‘till he had quite silenced Her Majesty.’44
Whereas educated, or enlightened, opinion, might have flinched at Victoria’s new title, just as they might wince at the imperialistic pretension which it enshrined, Disraeli and Victoria were in tune with the feelings of a large proportion of the British people. For the next fifty to eighty years, the British Empire was the pride of British conservatives, and the envy of many beyond its borders.
Disraeli’s great triumph in his relationship with the Queen was to harness royalty with British foreign policy. He wanted – and so did she – to return Britain to a position of dominance in European politics; and he wanted to strengthen India and the Empire. The overwhelming matter which dominated his premiership was the so-called Eastern Question. The Question was the future of the apparently moribund Ottoman Empire, the ‘Sick Man of Europe’. What was going to happen to the Turkish Empire which, since the time of the Renaissance, had dominated so much of Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, and the Eastern Mediterranean, and North Africa? What would happen if it actually unravelled as the Greek, Persian and Roman Empires had done in history? Who would dominate Constantinople? Who would control Egypt? Would the Balkans come under a Russian umbrella or would some of its nations, such as Bulgaria, become independent countries? All these questions were knotted together into the Eastern Question.
The future of Egypt and North Africa was vitally connected with this. Turkey had conquered Egypt in the sixteenth century and incorporated it into its Empire. Since the 1840s, however, Egypt had been in the control of the Albanian dynasty of Mehemet Ali, who ruled the country as a sort of Ottoman Protectorate. In 1856 Mehemet Ali’s son Said Pasha, the then Khedive of Egypt, granted a concession to the French to construct the Suez Canal – against the furious opposition of Lord Palmerston and the British, for this was a shortcut to India and, if the French controlled it, who knew what would happen? The canal opened in 1869. By now the khedive was Ismail, and he owned controlling shares in the canal. Partly because he waged constant, and expensive, war in the Sudan, partly because he was extravagant and incompetent, Ismail was seriously in debt. Disraeli saw his chance: to buy the khedive’s share in the canal, and thereby ensure that the British had control of the short cut to India, and dominated Egypt into the bargain.
As Disraeli’s great biographer Robert Blake reminded us, Disraeli and his friend Monty Corry both loved a good story. Their version of events has the excitement of a novel, but it must in substance be true, even if they embellished the details. The khedive owned 176,602 ordinary shares – out of a total of 400,000 – in the Suez Canal Company. Disraeli needed to persuade the Cabinet to buy the shares for £4 million. There was no time to lose since the French dearly longed to buy the shares.
Here is where the novelist Disraeli and his friend Corry perhaps improved the story. Corry was supposedly standing at the door of the Cabinet room. The Prime Minister simply came to him and said the word, ‘Yes’. Corry then sped to New Court in the Temple and told Baron Lionel de Rothschild, who had been primed by Disraeli, that they needed the money fast. The Rothschilds had agreed to lend the money at two and a half per cent, that is, for some £100,000. ‘When?’ asked Rothschild. ‘Tomorrow,’ said Corry. ‘What is your security?’ ‘The British Government.’ ‘You shall have it.’ On 26 November 1875, the shares were deposited in the British Consulate at Cairo. Two days before, the Prime Minister had written, with the brio of a character in one of his own fictions, ‘It is just settled; you have it, Madam. The French Government has been out-generaled. They tried too much, offering loans at an usurious rate, and with conditions which would have virtually given them the government of Egypt. The Khedive, in despair and disgust, offered Your Majesty’s Government to purchase the shares outright . . . The entire interest of the Khedive is now yours, Madam.’45
The triumph abroad did something to mitigate the terrible ‘own goal’ which the Royal Family had perpetrated at home that year. On a clear, bright August afternoon at the Isle of Wight, the Queen embarked on the Alberta, the 350-ton steamer which was being captained by her nephew Prince Victor of Leiningen, with Prince Leopold and Princess Beatrice as passengers. The Royal Yacht Victoria and Albert was following them into the Solent. The waters were crowded with boats and they were doing 14 knots. An Admiralty Board inquest decided that Staff Captain Welch, who was in charge of the vessel, was not showing enough ‘care and attention’. Beatrice said calmly to the Queen, ‘Mama, there is a yacht coming against us.’ ‘And,’ recalled Victoria, ‘I saw the tall masts and large sails of a schooner looming over us. In an instant came an awful, very terrifying crash, accompanied by a very severe shake and reel.’46
The Alberta had chugged across the path of a large yacht called the Mistletoe. ‘In great distress, I said, “Take everyone, take everyone on board.”’ As the Queen ordered, it did seem at first as if the injured crew and passengers of the Mistletoe could be rescued, but within seconds, the yacht had sunk. The captain or master of the Mistletoe, ‘a big man of at least seventy’, was one of those lost. Another seaman drowned, as did the sister-in-law of the vessel’s owner.
The public inquest took a more charitable view than the Admiralty Board and exonerated the prince. Nevertheless, the Queen did not help matters by publicly praising his seamanship,47 and Prince Victor was hissed in the streets of Portsmouth. While Victoria satisfied herself that this was the fault of the ‘low Portsmouth people’,48 there were others who felt that the Royal Family could have demonstrated at least more embarrassment, if not penitence, at the unfortunate accident. You did not have to be a communist or a republican to consider it tactless, a mere six years later, to promote Prince Victor to vice admiral.
Meanwhile, it was another royal sailor, our young friend Affie, Duke of Edinburgh, who found himself at the centre of the latest episode of the Eastern Question.
Throughout 1875 and 1876, the eyes of Europe were on the Balkans. The harvests of 1874 had been poor, and by 1875 t
he Serbs were hungry. When their Turkish masters tried to impose taxes upon them, they rose in revolt, and there was a big summit meeting of the Dreikaiserbund – Austria, Germany and Russia – held in Berlin. Very conspicuously, the British were not asked to this meeting. As a result of the conference, the sultan in Constantinople promised ‘reforms’, but for the Russians this was not good enough. On one level they were playing politics, but on another they were in deadly earnest about their feeling that the Russian Tsar was the defender of the Orthodox faith. Ever since Napoleon III had preposterously claimed the Holy Places in Palestine as his Protectorate, and ever since the humiliations of the Crimean War, the Russians had wanted to establish what was a deeply held belief by many Russian conservatives, that Christian Orthodoxy should be the ideology governing world realpolitik. The Muslim Caliphate was in decay. The rise of the Communist International was apparent in Italy, Germany and Russia. It was conservative Orthodoxy which could put a halt to all this. And the Russian tsars felt that they should be allowed into Turkey to protect the often-persecuted Christian minority. For the Christians of the Orthodox East, Constantinople, and not Rome, was the spiritual capital. There, living as a virtual hostage, was their Ecumenical Patriarch. The first truly grand church of Christendom, the Church of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) had been, since 1453, converted into a mosque. It was the dream of many Christians that all this could be reversed if only the Russians could conquer Turkey.
Clearly, it would be diplomatically impossible for a Russian simply to take over Constantinople. But what if it were to become an international zone, with a Christian, European figure at its head, to keep the peace and ensure fair play between the Orthodox Christians and the Muslims? Who, wondered King Leopold II of the Belgians, could be more suitable than the English prince who had married the Russian princess – Affie, Duke of Edinburgh?
