Edward VII_The Last Victorian King

by Christopher Hibbert

  Their mother adored them, though even she had occasion to complain to the boys’ tutor of their ‘using strong language to each other’ and of their habit of ‘breaking into everybody’s conversation’ so that it became ‘impossible to speak to anyone before them’. She took the greatest delight in giving them their baths — and inviting favoured guests at Sandringham to watch her doing so — reading undemanding books to them, saying their prayers with them, then tucking them up and kissing them goodnight. She hated to be parted from them as much as they disliked leaving her, treating them as children, and writing childish letters to them, long after they had become adult.

  Apart from insisting that they did not quarrel with each other or assume attitudes of superiority with anyone else, Princess Alexandra paid little attention to the way her daughters were educated. They were taught music; but those who knew them well in later years could find little evidence of their having been given any other formal instruction or even of their having many other interests, apart from the various country pursuits in which most of their leisure hours were spent. They were all rather shy and gave the impression, despite their high spirits when young, of being rather apathetic and unimaginative women. None of them was good looking, although they all had pleasant features and did not deserve the nickname by which they were widely known, ‘The Hags’. Their mother, who did not want to lose them, gave them no encouragement to marry and, of course, actively discouraged all possible suitors from Germany. Her selfish possessiveness worried Queen Victoria, who spoke to her son about it; but the Prince of Wales explained that he was ‘powerless’ in the matter, that ‘Alix found them such companions that she would not encourage their marrying, and that they themselves had no inclination for it’. When she was twenty-two the eldest, shyest and most uncommunicative of them all, Princess Louise, did, however, get married. The husband selected was the sixth Earl of Fife, a Scottish landowner and businessman, eighteen years older than herself, one of those few of her father’s friends of whom her grandmother approved, though the Queen — who needed some persuasion when it was proposed to create Fife a Duke — would have been more severe had she known that, amongst the Parisian demimonde, he was known as ‘le petit Écossais roux qui a toujours la queue en l’air.’ After her marriage, Princess Louise retired to the fastness of her husband’s estates where she indulged a passion for salmon-fishing, at which she was said to have developed exceptional skill.

  It was not until seven years after Princess Louise’s marriage that a husband was found for her sister Maud, whom Queen Victoria had long supposed would have liked one much earlier. Princess Maud was then in her late twenties; and, although she had been the most lively and venturesome of the Prince’s daughters as a child — when she had been nicknamed ‘Harry’ after her father’s friend, Admiral Harry Keppel, whose courageous conduct in the Crimean War was legendary — she had become rather gloomy and disgruntled. Marriage made her more so. Her husband, a first cousin, Prince Charles of Denmark, who was crowned King Haakon VII of Norway in 1905, was ‘a very nice young fellow’, in Lord Esher’s opinion; but Princess Maud did not like living abroad and strongly resented being left alone when her husband, who was a naval officer, had to go to sea. Making no secret of her grievances, she returned to England every year to stay near Sandringham at Appleton House which her father gave to her. Then, after this annual visit, she would return reluctantly to Bygdo Kongsgaard where she laid out an English garden which, apart from her horses, dogs and only son, was one of her few real interests.

  Princess Victoria, the middle daughter, never married. There were two men she would have liked but both, being commoners, were forbidden her. Lord Rosebery, broken by the death of his wife, also intimated in a rather uncertain way that he and Princess Victoria might find happiness together. But this proposal was not to be considered either, to the infinite regret of Victoria, who, years later, lamented, ‘We could have been so happy.’ So Victoria was kept at home, following her parents about from one country house to the next, at the beck and call of a far less intelligent mother who, as a Russian cousin, the Grand Duchess Olga, said, treated her just like ‘a glorified maid’, ringing a bell to summon her and then, as her daughter ran to her side, forgetting what it was she had wanted. Often unwell and constantly concerned about her health, she grew increasingly resentful of her lot and prone to making waspish comments about her dull relatives and those friends of her parents in whose restricting society she felt herself confined.

  The Prince had left his daughters’ upbringing entirely to their governesses and their mother, maintaining that a child was ‘always best looked after under its mother’s eye’ and that if children were too severely treated they became shy and fearful of those whom they ought to love. And though he was extremely fond of his three girls, as he was fond of children generally, taking them on his ample knee and allowing them to pull at his beard and play with his watch-chain and cigar-case, he never formed with any of them the kind of emotional attachment that his father had formed with the Empress Frederick. In many ways he was closer to his sons.

  The elder of the two, Prince Albert Victor, known as Prince Eddy, was rather a worrying child, amiable, slow, lethargic and dull, or, as his loving mother put it, well-disposed but ‘dawdly’. His kindness and good nature seemed due not so much to positive virtue as to a lazy rejection of vice. The Prince had hoped to send him to Wellington College, which, opened in 1853, had been founded as a memorial to the great Duke for the sons of officers and for boys who, it was hoped, would become officers themselves. But, as the boys’ tutor, the Revd John Neale Dalton, soon observed, Prince Eddy was not at all suited for such an education and could never have kept up with the other boys. He could never ‘fix his attention to any given subject for more than a few minutes consecutively’, his mind being at all times in an ‘abnormally dormant condition’. Prince Eddy was therefore sent, together with his younger brother, George, as a naval cadet to the training-ship Britannia.

  The two boys left for Dartmouth in 1877, Eddy being thirteen and George twelve, both of them crying bitterly as they said good-bye to their mother, who was quite as unhappy as they were themselves. Queen Victoria was not at all sure that a training-ship would provide an adequate curriculum for her grandsons, particularly with regard to foreign languages which were of the ‘greatest importance’ and in which they were both ‘sadly deficient’. She had favoured the idea of a public school. But she was at least thankful that the two boys would be far removed from possible contamination by contact with the Marlborough House set, a danger which she mentioned to their father several times, warning him of the ‘vital importance’ of the ‘dear Boys being kept … above all apart, from the society of fashionable and fast people’, and not being completely convinced when her son assured her that he entirely agreed with her, that his ‘greatest wish’ was to keep the boys ‘simple, pure and childlike as long as possible’.

  Prince George got on well in the Britannia. He was a bright, affectionate child, high-spirited but obedient, adored by his ‘Motherdear’ who wrote him deeply affectionate letters to which ‘little George dear’ responded in the same loving, childish tone. He passed his examinations and pleased his tutors, whereas poor Prince Eddy was so utterly incapable of mastering a single subject that the desirability of removing him from the ship had to be discussed. Dalton considered that the only answer was to separate the two brothers after two years aboard the Britannia and to send the elder on a cruise round the world attended by various tutors specially trained to deal with backward children. Their father did not agree. The two boys were devoted to each other; if they were kept apart he feared that Prince Eddy would lapse permanently into that slough of lethargy from which his brother seemed alone sometimes capable of arousing him. So in September 1879 both boys sailed for the West Indies aboard the Bacchante — with a carefully selected complement of officers and a staff of tutors under Dalton’s direction — leaving their mother so unhappy at parting with them for so long
that her husband kindly gave up his holiday at Homburg that year and went with her to Denmark. Seven months later the boys returned but only to sail away again shortly afterwards, once more in tears, for an even longer period.

  Their father was almost as miserable at having to part with them, particularly with the younger boy, as was their mother. He wrote to Prince George after one parting:

  On seeing you going off by the train yesterday I felt very sad and you could, I am sure, see that I had a lump in my throat when I wished you good-bye … I shall miss you more than ever, my dear Georgy … Now God bless you, my dear boy, and may He guard you against all harm and evil, and bless and protect you. Don’t forget your devoted Papa, A.E.

  ‘When I wished you good-bye on Thursday in your cabin I had a lump in my throat which I am sure you saw,’ the Prince wrote after yet another parting a year later. ‘It is the greatest bane in one’s life saying good-bye, especially to one’s children, relations and friends …’

  Although he was often homesick — writing home to his ‘dearest Papa’

  to tell him that he missed him ‘every minute of the day’ and confessing to his mother that he sometimes almost cried when he thought of Sandringham — Prince George assured his parents that he liked the navy and was perfectly happy to make it his profession. He was progressing well, and it was expected of him that were he free to continue in the service he might achieve high rank. It was all the more galling to him, therefore, that he just failed to obtain the marks necessary for a first-class pilot’s certificate. But his father wrote to comfort him: ‘You have, I hope, got over your disappointment about a First. It would of course have been better if you had obtained it; but being only within twenty marks is very satisfactory, and shows that there is no favoritism in your case.’

  Prince Eddy afforded his father no such satisfaction. He ‘sits listless and vacant,’ Dalton reported, ‘and … wastes as much time in doing nothing, as he ever wasted. This weakness of brain, this feebleness and lack of power to grasp almost anything put before him, is manifested … also in his hours of recreation and social intercourse.’ After disembarking from the Bacchante for the last time the boy, then aged eighteen, was sent to Lausanne to learn French, an undertaking totally beyond his powers. He was then entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, although in the opinion of J.K. Stephen, who had gone to Sandringham to help to cram him for the ordeal, he could not ‘possibly derive much benefit’ from attending university lectures, since he hardly knew ‘the meaning of the words to read’. However, as a tribute to his birth rather than his intellect — which was not in the least stimulated by university studies and no doubt hampered by his being rather deaf — he was granted an honorary LL.D. in 1888.

  He was not an unattractive young man. Edward Hamilton, who played bowls and billiards with him at Sandringham when he was twenty, described him as ‘a pleasing young fellow, natural and un-stuck-up’. Sir Lionel Cust thought that he had inherited much from his mother, to whom he was devoted, and that he might one day win the nation’s heart as she had done. Prince Eddy confessed, however, to being rather afraid of his father, and aware that he was not quite up to what his father expected of him. He was extremely polite in his manner, modest, equable and deferential to his elders, particularly to his grandmother. In her turn, Queen Victoria regarded him with affection: he was a ‘dear good simple boy’, dutiful and even ‘steadily inclined’; she loved him ‘so dearly’, she told Lady Downe, ‘an affection he returned so warmly’. The Queen’s secretary, Sir Henry Ponsonby, thought that, although his sentences were inclined to ‘tail off’ as though he had forgotten what he was going to say, Prince Eddy could talk quite sensibly when he chose and would be popular when he got ‘more at his ease’. But he was certainly incapable of applying himself to anything for ‘a length of time’, and when he was bored his perpetual fidgeting seemed like a nervous tic. He was, in fact, constitutionally incapable of concentration, except on whist, which he played quite well, and on polo, at which he was adept. As he grew older, he appeared only to be fully alive when indulging his strongly developed sensuality. Despite a somewhat droopy cast of countenance, he was quite good looking and was undoubtedly attractive to women.

  Since he had evinced not the least enthusiasm for either the navy or for Cambridge, it was now decided that Prince Eddy should go into the army. But at first he showed no aptitude for that either. His instructor at Aldershot was ‘quite astounded at his utter ignorance’. When the Commander-in-Chief came down on a tour of inspection he expressed the hope of seeing him perform ‘some most elementary movement’; but the Colonel ‘begged him not to attempt it as the Prince had not an idea how to do it! And the [Commander-in-Chief] not wishing to expose him let it alone!’ His slowness was overlooked, however, and in time he did become moderately efficient. When he was twenty-two he was given a commission in the Tenth Hussars. He did at least like the uniform, since he had always taken a great interest in clothes and, despite his lackadaisical demeanour, dressed himself with the utmost care. Always smart to the point of dandification, he was nicknamed ‘Collar and Cuffs’.

  Prince Eddy returned from a trip to India in 1890 worn out and ‘really quite ill’ from the dissipated life he had been leading. Then, to compound his folly, he fell in love with Princess Hélène d’Orléans, who was not only a Roman Catholic but daughter of the Comte de Paris, a pretender to the French throne. Before falling in love with her, Prince Eddy — or the Duke of Clarence and Avondale as he became in May 1890 — had wanted to marry Princess Alix of Hesse, but she would not consider him. He had then been asked to think about another cousin, Princess Margaret of Prussia, but he declined to consider her.

  Princess Alexandra was naturally not disappointed that neither of these German marriages materialized. On the other hand she liked Princess Hélène, who was, indeed, a most pleasant, warm-hearted and entirely unexceptionable girl, and she undertook to help her son overcome the difficulties which Princess Hélène’s birth and religion placed in the way of the match. As soon as she heard that they had become engaged while staying with her daughter, the Duchess of Fife, at Mar Lodge, she encouraged them to go immediately to Balmoral, rightly supposing that, as Princess Hélène was prepared to renounce her religion, Queen Victoria’s affection for Prince Eddy and the romantic appeal of young lovers in distress would lead her to support a marriage which prudence frowned upon. Princess Alexandra was right: the Queen did give the young couple her blessing. But the Comte de Paris was aghast to learn that his daughter had even considered the possibility of becoming a Protestant in order to marry such a dissolute young man; while the Pope, to whom Princess Hélène ill-advisedly appealed, refused to entertain the already doomed proposal. So, as Princess Alexandra resignedly admitted, there was nothing for it but to ‘wait and see what time [could] do’.

  It was not, however, in Prince Eddy’s nature to wait and see. Obliged to separate from Princess Hélène, he found that, although ‘quite wretched’ for a time, absence did not make his heart grow fonder and that he was, after all, in love with Lady Sybil St Clair Erskine. But this was not an acceptable match either; so the search continued for a suitable bride who might help to keep the dissipated bachelor out of further trouble. Where, though, his father asked, was ‘a good sensible wife’ with the necessary strength of character to be found?

  Despite the formidable objections, the Prince of Wales had favoured the possibility of his son’s marrying the French princess. He liked her; and he liked her mother, too, despite the Comtesse de Paris’s distressing habit of smoking a pipe and helping herself to his cigars. So, in the hope of reaching a settlement on the religious issue, he had approached the Prime Minister to ask if the problem might be resolved by Princess Hélène’s giving an undertaking that any children there would all be brought up in the Church of England while the mother remained a Roman Catholic in accordance with her father’s wishes. Informed by the Prime Minister that this would be quite out of the question, the Prince had decided tha
t, since no other suitable candidate presented herself, Prince Eddy would, as a punishment for his ever more disconcertingly scandalous behaviour, have to be sent on a tour which would take him as far away from England as South Africa, New Zealand and Canada.

  But Queen Victoria, only partially aware of the reasons why a foreign tour was considered desirable, thought that Prince Eddy would benefit more from travelling about the cultivated European courts; and she reminded her son that there were as many ‘designing pretty women in the Colonies’ as anywhere else. To add to the Prince of Wales’s troubles his wife, who had of late been much upset by her husband’s affection for Lady Brooke, considered that their son ought not to be sent abroad at all, but ought to remain with his regiment so that she could keep an eye on his behaviour. Rather than discuss the problem with his wife in her present disapproving mood, the Prince sailed for Homburg, instructing Knollys to deal with Princess Alexandra, who was to be left to decide what was to be done with their erring son. Fortunately by this time another possible bride had entered the lists, Princess May of Teck, a sensible, dutiful young woman whose virtues were held to outweigh the disadvantages of having a mother who was excessively slapdash and a bad-tempered father whose mind had been unbalanced by a stroke. So Princess Alexandra decided that Prince Eddy should marry Princess May and, in the meantime, remain with his regiment as she had wanted. The next day she sailed for Denmark. Then, rather than return home to England where the Lady Brooke affair was becoming common gossip, she went on to Russia for the silver wedding of her sister, the Tsarina, leaving her husband to celebrate his fiftieth birthday by himself.