Sandringham Days

by John Matson

  The shoots on the estate provided the focus for the house-parties in the autumn and winter months. The Prince continued to spend heavily on the establishment of coverts for the birds and in employing a posse of keepers to ensure that nothing was allowed to interfere with the rearing of game on an impressive scale. The rights of tenants were too often disregarded and his ‘perfect passion’ for the sport clouded his judgment. ‘Nothing made him more angry than the slightest opposition to it.’86 The feud between the Prince and a widow who was also a tenant farmer at Sandringham has been recorded in great detail, and the facts remind one forcibly of William the Conqueror’s destruction of whole villages in the New Forest for the improvement of his hunting – such is the misuse of power.

  Louise Cresswell, with her husband Gerard, took up the tenancy of Appleton Farm on the estate, just when it was passing into the Prince of Wales’ hands, and together they had great hopes for their new landlord. He arrived at the farm, inspected the rat-ridden premises energetically, and built them a new house. The situation promised well; the Prince was gracious to his new tenants, receiving them at Sandringham and greeting them affably. But Gerard died within three years. He had been depressed by his inability to improve a run-down and neglected holding, and in part, at least, his failure can be attributed to the interference of the Prince’s keepers. These men patrolled the fields, forbidding the clearing away of weeds and planting trees and shrubs, their aim being to rear as many birds as the land would hold. Hares were imported and wrought havoc among the crops. The Cresswells were in despair. Protest would have incurred the Prince’s displeasure. Eventually, goaded beyond endurance, Mrs Cresswell submitted an account of £575 for damages, of which less than half was paid; she was never to see the balance. Afterwards, there was more trouble; the widow had already displeased the Prince, but this was as nothing to the fury with which he greeted a report that seventy-one pheasants had been killed by her. After a close enquiry, the losses were attributed to a fox, but Louise had felt the force of Royal anger at close quarters. There were times, however, when the Prince exerted all his charm: Louise was invited to a ball at Sandringham; she became a frequent though somewhat reluctant guest at the house, but troubles were never far away. Damage to land and crops by rabbits and hares continued, and swathes were cut across her land by the keepers. The Prince’s agent was the root cause of the troubles. In his efforts to please his master, he treated the tenant farmers with scant respect and went to some trouble to avoid interviews with Louise, who once appeared brandishing a bunch of ruined mangolds, as evidence of the depredations of the animals.

  Partridge driving created the greatest havoc on tenants’ land. Secure in the knowledge that they were working for the Prince, the village boys rampaged across the fields, breaking fences and gates and damaging crops: for the Cresswells it was heart-breaking. After Louise left Appleton*, she wrote:

  I would have stayed and fought through everything if the money losses that were forced upon me had not brought me to a standstill… An old friend offered me enough capital… to start afresh, concluding, of course, that arrangements would be made at Sandringham which would give me a fair chance of success. Not one concession would they make in game, rent, labour or anything that would enable me to accept this offer… I was leaving because I could not remain unless I killed down the Prince’s game from Monday morning till Saturday night, and reserved Sunday for lecturing the Agent.

  As agriculture in general was moving towards a depression, Louise Cresswell found herself bankrupt, and in 1880 she emigrated to America.

  The Prince of Wales unfortunately inherited the sporting traditions of his father and the Coburgs. Prince Albert had been criticised in the Press for holding ‘battues’, in which animals were forced into an enclosure and shot at close range. The practice deeply offended the English sporting instinct, being considered a barbarous affair. For Albert Edward the concept of number was paramount; though a good shot himself his passion for large bags enabled him to leave the difficult birds for others; besides, shooting never held quite the same fascination for him as racing. The coverts were designed so that birds would be driven out by the beaters in great numbers to fly low over the ground. On one occasion in Wolferton Wood, after a hare drive, the animals were lying thickly on the ground, some wounded and screaming. A visitor, Charles Kingsley, who had been the Prince’s Tutor at Cambridge, walked up to the guns and denounced their lack of feeling. The Prince was, for once, much abashed. It was for the future King George V to learn the satisfaction of achieving the ‘difficult killing of a high-flying bird.’

  To be fair to the young Prince, he lacked guidance in these matters; enjoying the lavish entertainment by some of the wealthiest in the land; he and his lovely Princess were the most sought-after guests in the world of fashionable Society, which set examples which Albert Edward could only attempt to emulate. At Holkham, for instance, in his own county of Norfolk, the game room was the largest in the country: the Prince at once had one built at Sandringham on the same scale. ‘Bags’ of two thousand birds were not uncommon, and the Prince felt that his own guests should have the same opportunities as they would find on neighbouring estates. In November 1872, the Duke of Cambridge spent some days at Sandringham and recorded: ‘In spite of much rain had one of the finest days’ sport I ever saw, killing 1,766 head of game, of which 1,083 were pheasants and 68 partridges, besides hares and rabbits.’87 As late as 1913 King George V and his eldest son were present at Hall Barn, owned by Lord Burnham, when over 4,000 birds were killed in a single day. Even the King, who was no less an enthusiast than his father, having himself shot over a thousand head, was moved to say to the Prince, ‘Perhaps we went a little too far today, David.’88

  On 28 November, he wrote:

  My dear Macduff,

  I hope it will suit you to pay us a visit from the 14th to the 19th of next month – & I trust that your plans for leaving England may not prevent us from having the pleasure of seeing you – I propose having three day’s (sic) shooting and one day’s hunting during that week. Hoping that you have had good sport in Scotland with the smaller game.

  I remain,

  Yours very sincerely,

  Albert Edward

  It was within this tradition that the Prince of Wales conducted the shooting at Sandringham. The arrangements were elaborate, the entertainment lavish:

  A complete silence having been secured for miles around, the day was ushered in by a procession of boys with blue and pink flags… a band of gamekeepers in green and gold, with the head man on horseback, an army of beaters in smocks and hats bound with Royal red, a caravan for the reception of the game and a tailing off of loafers to see the fun, for H.R.H. is very good-natured in allowing people to look on at his amusements, provided they do not interfere with them…89

  At about eleven o’clock the Royal party arrives in a string of wagonettes, and range themselves in a long line under the fences or behind the shelters put up for that purpose, each sportsman having loaders in attendance with an extra gun or guns to hand backwards and forwards, to load and re-load. The boys and beaters are stationed in a semi-circle some distance off, and it is their place to beat up the birds and drive them to the fences, the waving flags frightening them from flying back. On they come in ever increasing numbers, until they burst in a cloud over the fence where the guns are concealed. This is the exciting moment, a terrific fusillade ensues, birds dropping down in all directions, wheeling about in confusion between the flags and the guns, the survivors gathering themselves together and escaping into the fields beyond. The shooters then retire to another line of fencing, making themselves comfortable with campstools and cigars until the birds are driven up as before, and so on through the day…90

  After Mrs Cresswell had returned to visit Sandringham once more, in 1886, she settled down in the United States and wrote an account of her life entitled Eighteen Years on the Sandringham Estate. Appleton was given to Princess Maud, the youngest daughter of the Wales�
�, on her marriage to Prince Charles of Denmark. The house held many happy associations for her, and even when she and her husband succeeded to the Danish throne as King Haakon and Queen Maud, she continued to make frequent visits. ‘She was a lovely woman,’ said Hubbard, the gardener who had worked for her for forty years. ‘This was her real home, she loved this place.’91

  There was nothing static about Sandringham; there was always something new to be seen. As the years passed, one novelty was succeeded by another: an aviary replaced a monkey house; a pit containing Charlie and Polly, two black bears (one of which was once released, to everyone’s consternation, by a house-party guest) was filled in after its inhabitants had been disposed of in 1889. Kennels were built to house the Princess’ motley collection of dogs, sometimes as many as sixty, which she and her guests visited and fed. Beyond Appleton a water tower had been erected; later the electricity generating plant could be inspected; walled gardens appeared, together with the enormous range of glasshouses built with the winnings and stud fees of Persimmon. The Princess took her guests to see the Craft Schools for boys and girls to learn trades on the estate. There was the black ram to visit: this fortunate animal had been rescued from ritual slaughter by the Princess during her visit to Egypt in 1869. It was sent on to Sandringham where it enjoyed a bachelor existence to a ripe old age. In the course of the Egyptian tour the Princess also acquired, in a similarly impulsive gesture, a ten-year old Nubian boy named Ali Achmet, who had loosely attached himself to the Royal camp at Wadi Halfa. The child was engaging but amoral: at Sandringham, where his duties included serving coffee, he stole guests’ property and alienated himself from the servants. The end came when he was discovered to have borrowed one of the Prince’s guns, which was bad, and had broken it, which was far worse, and was sent away into the service of the Rector of Sandringham. As an experiment, this venture was a failure; even its value as an act of charity is debatable.

  During the re-building of the house the lake on the western side was filled in, to be replaced by flower gardens. New lakes were created further to the south, the larger with magnificent rock features. Improvements were made to the estate: in 1884 the Sandringham Club at West Newton was built as a recreation centre for men and the older boys in the village, many of whom were already working on the estate by the time they were allowed to use the Club at the age of fourteen. Beer-drinking was limited to a daily pint. Soon afterwards, another such Club was opened at Wolferton.

  The Prince’s hospitality was legendary: not only did he lavishly entertain the nobility in the district, but his guests included diplomats and foreigners whom he had met during his frequent journeys abroad. At his house-parties the Prince required only that his guests should be entertaining and entertained. His tastes were, however, expensive; a number of his friends, including Christopher Sykes, heir to Sledmere, a large estate in Yorkshire, were brought to the verge of ruin in their efforts to match his pace. His restlessness was remarkable; perhaps it was the product of an active mind too little employed: ‘a perpetual search in the daytime of hours he had lost the night before.’92

  The vicissitudes of betting whetted the Prince’s appetite for racing which, in later life, was to become a passion. In his first year of marriage he paid a visit to Epsom to watch the Derby. He was accompanied by Sir Frederick Johnstone, an established owner, and Henry Chaplin. Almost from the moment he entered the grandstand to the enthusiastic cheers of the huge crowd, the excitement of the turf possessed him and Sandringham, managed by Lord Marcus Beresford, and his string of racehorses brought him some major successes: three times winner of the Derby, in 1896 with Persimmon, in 1900 with Diamond Jubilee and, in 1909, with Minoru. In 1900 – a great year – he won the Grand National with Ambush II. His racing interests brought him into contact with the leading figures of the turf; he had his own quarters in the Jockey Club at Newmarket and he was always to be seen in the Paddock, the Grandstand or the Royal Box, portly in frock coat and top hat, cigar or cigarette in hand, often accompanied by Chaplin, whose air of nonchalant authority never deserted him, even when, ruined by gambling, he was forced to sell Blankney Hall, the family home. Sir Frederick Johnstone also dissipated his large fortune and was forced to sell up. Another victim of his own colossal extravagance was the Marquis of Hastings, who died at the age of twenty-six, having squandered two large estates on the turf. He could scarcely be said, however, to have been within the Prince’s circle, for his wife, Lady Florence Paget, the tiny, exquisite ‘Pocket Venus’, had eloped with him, leaving her fiancé, Henry Chaplin, outside a shop waiting for her to appear. Such duplicity could only exile the pair from the Prince’s favour.

  Ascot Week was to become the highlight of the Royal racing calendar, with the Prince driving up the course followed by his guests at Windsor Castle. The reception accorded him varied – after the Mordaunt case, he was greeted with hisses and boos. Queen Victoria, perhaps misunderstanding the nature of the week’s races, begged him to forego his attendance on two of the days, lest he gave the appearance of being unduly attracted to the sport. The Prince replied tersely that he could not well leave his friends to look after themselves. ‘Allow me to use my discretion in these matters,’ he wrote.

  It was this search for excitement that led him to indulge in gambling. ‘Games of chance appealed to his love of adventure.’ Whilst at times he risked heavy stakes at cards, he protested that he seldom played high: he played whist with Mr Gladstone for ‘shillings and half-a-crown on the rubber’93. It seems he never lost much above £100 pounds in an evening’s play, but one of his debtors took four years to amass a sum in settlement of £1,025. It was unfortunate that the Prince was addicted to baccarat, at that time illegal. He took his own set of counters with him on his travels, and the exposure of this practice during the Tranby Croft affair gave the Press an excuse to accuse him of setting a bad example to the nation.

  Queen Victoria’s dislike of Society was no mere prejudice: it was grounded on an accumulation of evidence that it was selfish, idle and promiscuous. Her fears that her eldest son and daughter-in-law would fall into the numerous pitfalls that awaited them were fully justified. They were young enough to be led so that, although they were the acknowledged leaders of Society, they were influenced by those who were used to its ways. Infidelity was rife; within this charmed circle there were few secrets, but waywardness must never be allowed to become a scandal. Diana Cooper remembered her mother allotting the guests-rooms at Belvoir Castle for a large house party: ‘Lord Kitchener must have this room and then, of course, Lady Salisbury must be here;’ and then later in the evening: ‘If you are frightened in the night, Lord Kitchener, dear Lady Salisbury is just next door.’94 Within its closed ranks, gentlemen’s mistresses were known and admitted: maisons à trois were commonplace and accepted; a convention that the Prince found wholly agreeable. He himself not only enjoyed an affair with Alice Keppel towards the end of his life, with the compliance of her husband, George, but he also favoured many other women during his travels on the continent. In the Mordaunt case, he was cited by Harriet Mordaunt herself as one of the young men of the ‘fast set’ who might have fathered her child. Harriet’s father declared her insane; certainly her behaviour became increasingly irrational.

  In the divorce case which followed, the Prince was subpoenaed and a number of his letters were read in court, though they contained nothing of an improper nature. There was a good deal of sympathy for Harriet Mordaunt and the Prince did not come out of it well. The Queen accepted that her son was innocent but had always deprecated his involvement with these ‘idle, highborn beings’ and hoped that the trial would teach him a lesson. She wrote that the affair was ‘painful & lowering’ and felt that it had done nothing to diminish her worries about the Prince’s propensity for indiscretion which, some twenty years later, prompted a sporting paper to state that ‘there was nothing whatever between the Prince of Wales and Lily Langtry’, followed the next week by an apparently unrelated remark: ‘Not even a sheet’
. Whilst it was generally considered that the Royal family were not ‘fair game’, the Prince’s infidelities brought unwelcome publicity upon himself. It was doubly unfortunate that, just at this time, the Queen, through her retirement from public life, had left the Monarchy open to charges of neglect of duty, while there was also a wave of anti-Prussian feeling resulting from that war with France.

  It goes without saying that the chief activities of the House Party were male-orientated. They centred on sport, of course – racing, hunting, shooting, fishing; moving about the country to follow whatever game was in season. Their womenfolk followed dutifully, accompanied by their personal servants, but few occupations were provided specifically for them. Outdoors, they played croquet and tennis and, later, golf. The Princess of Wales often took her guests to the dairy at Sandringham to help make Devonshire cream and butter – echoes of Marie Antoinette of France and her circle. Escape to the ‘simple life’ had its attractions but it was small wonder that gossip and promiscuity flourished in such an uncreative environment. Sundays were spent in comparative tranquillity, everyone attending morning service in the church, the Prince arriving just before the sermon and scrutinising the crowded pews to ensure that the local tenants were present. He made it known that ‘he liked his people to attend, just as he himself did.’ There was the compulsory tour of ‘new works’ and improvements during the afternoons to rouse the torpid and fill the long hours between luncheon and tea. Towards midnight, the Prince always brightened visibly and, as the clock struck, hurried off to impel his guests into renewed activity.