by Jane Ridley
Security in India was tight. One of the suite sat up all night outside the prince’s door, while another slept in his room.13 Lord Suffield, who acted as chief of the household, went everywhere with Bertie, ready to leap in front of him should an attack be made on his life.14 More effective perhaps was Colonel Edward Bradford, the stern head of the Indian secret police, who had lost an arm after being mauled by a tiger.‡ Victoria worried about her son’s health and bombarded him with anxious letters and telegrams warning him not to do too much.15 To please his mother, Bertie wore a white pith helmet.
The Serapis reached Bombay on 8 November 1875. The Prince of Wales drove through six miles of streets lined with silent crowds. Lord Northbrook, the viceroy, hastened to assure the Queen that cheering was not the Indian way.16 The following day, his birthday, Bertie held his first royal audience. One by one the chiefs and princes were taken firmly by the hand and led, as if in custody, to meet the Prince of Wales, who advanced from his silver chair to an appointed spot on the carpet, took each Indian’s hand, and conducted him back to the chair. Bertie wore a field marshal’s uniform, which contrasted with the bejeweled magnificence of the turbaned rajas, and played his part to perfection, listening to the princes, looking them in the eye, and treating them as royal equals.17 Instinctively he grasped the essence of the Raj; he himself was the embodiment of the alliance between the Queen and the native princes that had been forged after the Mutiny of 1857. As W. H. Russell wrote in The Times, Bertie had grown with the greatness of the occasion and elevated a royal visit into a historic event.18 This was royalty as theater, and he excelled in his role. His passion for uniforms and dressing up coupled with his addiction to the London stage meant that he knew his lines perfectly and understood instinctively how the role of prince-emperor should be played.
At Baroda, Bertie paid a state visit to the thirteen-year-old ruler, known as the Gaekwar. The boy Gaekwar had recently been adopted heir to Baroda, and the prince’s visit helped legitimize a new regime.19 Russell’s account in The Times reads like an Eastern fable:
There was an elephant of extraordinary size, on which there was a howdah which shone like burnished gold.… It was covered with a golden canopy, and it was shining in the morning sun with surpassing splendour. This exquisitely burnished carriage was placed on cushions covered with cloth of gold and velvet, which were fastened upon the embroidered tissue which almost concealed the outline of the beast which stood swaying his painted proboscis to and fro as if he kept time to the music of the bands outside.…
The golden ladder was placed against the howdah step, the Guikwar [sic] stepped up, helped carefully, and the Prince followed and sat by his side.… Then as the elephant made its first stride on-wards, the clamour of voices and of sound deepened and grew and spread.20
Queen Victoria (according to the Indian secretary Lord Salisbury) had visions of Bertie escalading “zenanas [harems] on ladders of ropes,” and to avoid scandal Salisbury arranged for the party to be kept constantly on the move.21 Bertie was indefatigable. Carrington thought the viceroy’s staff asked far too much of him, especially as he was more than willing to oblige.22 His reward was an elephant shoot in Ceylon.
The elephant shoot was organized like a military campaign. Fifteen hundred men labored for two weeks in the Ceylonese jungle to prepare a stockade and nets for the royal party. Wearing his solar topee and special gaiters to protect his legs from bloodsucking leeches, Bertie set off in torrential rain at six a.m. for his high stand, where he waited for five hours without firing a shot. Eventually the beaters lit a forest fire, and the terrified elephants came crashing out of the jungle. Bertie wounded one and shot another, which fell as if it were dead, but when his artist Sidney Hall tried to sketch it, the beast struggled to its feet and lumbered off. Crawling through the jungle, streaming with sweat and tearing his clothes, Bertie eventually crept close enough to kill an elephant, which toppled over and dammed a stream. Surrounded by a cheering crowd of natives, he jumped on top of the mountain of inert flesh and cut off the tail, as was the custom. Sidney Hall sketched the primitive scene, as the elephant’s blood oozed into the swamp.23
The image of the prince standing victorious on the dead beast seemed to radicals and republicans back home morally repulsive; it epitomized in a disgusting way the rule of the white conqueror over the subject Indians. Shooting an elephant was an affirmation of man’s dominance over the animal kingdom, which to radicals was as offensive as the British subjugation of the Indian peasant.24 Elephant hunting, however, was part of the feudal, traditional India, and it legitimized the prince’s status as greatest prince of all. Shooting an elephant was a public act, a performance where the prince was the principal actor: He must be seen to kill the great beast.§
From Ceylon, Bertie steamed in the Serapis north to Calcutta, where he began a ceremonial progress to Delhi. Sport was an essential part of the program. Radicals back home dubbed him the pigsticking prince, and complained that he was wasting public money making brutal war against animals.25 “It were best had the Prince of Wales stopped at home,” wrote Reynolds’s Newspaper.26 Pigsticking, which involved galloping after ferocious wild boar with a spear, Bertie, in fact, declined, perhaps sensibly, as four members of his suite were injured.‖ Tiger shooting, however, was mandatory. Staying with the Maharaja of Jaipur, Bertie shot his first tiger—a pregnant female with three cubs. It took four shots to kill her.
The Queen confessed herself bored with Bertie’s progresses, which she dismissed as a wearying repetition of “elephants—trappings—jewels—illuminations and fireworks,” but Bertie was in his element.27 As Bartle Frere told Victoria, he outworked everyone on his staff, and “showed less susceptibility to heat and exposure to the sun than any of us.”28 He could remember every name, every firework display and every banquet; as Russell put it, his memory “holds every fact in a vice.”29 He knew more chiefs than all the viceroys and governors put together. His ability to connect with the rulers of the princely states helped to legitimize the Raj as a neo-feudal alliance between the Indian princes and the English Queen. Indian Civil Service officer Sir Henry Daly commented, “The effect of the Prince on the Chiefs is miraculous. There is a sentiment in their feudalism which has been touched.… His manner and air to them is perfect.”30
At Benares, Sir John Strachey, governor of the North-West Provinces, received Bertie in a camp that resembled a dream city in canvas, luxuriously fitted out with double-lined tents furnished with fire-places.31 Bertie and his suite drank almost eighty dozen bottles of Strachey’s champagne in a fortnight and fourteen dozen bottles of soda a day.32 After visiting Delhi, Bertie was entertained again by Strachey at Agra. Watched by a crowd of seven thousand people, and serenaded by a band playing music from Don Giovanni, he paid a visit by moonlight to the Taj Mahal, which had been recently restored by the energetic Strachey. As Bertie left, he observed a European official, wearing a white hat and morning dress, rudely push an Indian raja to clear the way. He at once dispatched Knollys to express his displeasure, and when the European failed to get the point, sent the Duke of Sutherland, who made it still more forcefully.33
Reported in the English press, the incident dramatized Bertie’s disapproval of the bullying racism of the British rulers. “Because a man has a black face and a different religion from our own, there is no reason why he should be treated as a brute,” he told Lord Granville.34 To Salisbury he grumbled about British officers speaking of Indians, “many of them sprung from the great races,” as “niggers.”35 When he complained to Queen Victoria about the brutality and contempt with which English political officers treated the native chiefs, she entirely agreed with him. “I believe it is dreadful how they treat these poor creatures,” she wrote, and forwarded his letter to Salisbury.36 Mr. Saunders, the resident in Hyderabad, was dismissed in consequence.37
Among the Stracheys’ party at Agra was the nineteen-year-old Mabel Batten. She had auburn hair and a mezzo-soprano voice, and she was used to being admired.
Her father was the judge advocate general of North-West India, George Hatch. A few months before, she had married George Batten, a forty-three-year-old Indian officer, who was the brother of Lady Strachey.
Lady Strachey was not impressed by Bertie. “The Prince’s tastes are low and childish,” she wrote. “He has a perfect mania on the subject of dress … fresh orders come nearly every hour about what the suite are to wear and if a button is wrong it is noticed at once and remarked upon. His other tastes are for eating and drinking. He is at times thoroughly selfish and inconsiderate.… As for his moral character, it is as bad as possible and the respectable part of his suite are always in agony lest he misbehave.”38
On closer acquaintance, Lady Strachey changed her mind. “He is so goodnatured and polite and likeable that one can’t help liking him,” she wrote.39 She could hardly have guessed that the person with whom Bertie would misbehave would be her own sister-in-law. In the camp at Agra, Bertie saw a great deal of Mabel Batten. He arranged to meet her a few weeks later, when he reached Allahabad, but Mabel did not appear. Bertie wrote her a letter, enclosing photographs that had been taken at Agra: “I was very much disappointed not to meet you last Tuesday [7 March] as I had hoped, ‘mais l’homme propose et la femme dispose.’ ” He ended: “Hoping that you may soon come to England and will let me know of your arrival.”40
What happened at Agra can never be known, but it was probably no more than a flirtation. Bertie remained loyal to Mabel, however. Two decades later, when she returned to England, she resumed contact. Illegible letters from “AE,” written on tiny cards and stuffed into even smaller envelopes, proposing himself for a cup of tea at five o’clock or a chat between twelve and one, began to plop fatly through the letter box of her Chelsea home.41
Back in London, on 8 February 1876, in bleak, wintry sleet and snow, a truculent Alix sat with the Queen in the semi-state carriage as they processed in slow time from Buckingham Palace to Westminster for the state opening of Parliament. Alix had been furious when Victoria insisted that she should cut short her visit to her family to attend the ceremony, provoking the “biggest and the best” of the rows over the princess’s trips to Denmark.42 “Her not returning and being with me on these occasions when you were absent,” the Queen told Bertie, “would have been misunderstood and have done her harm.”43 The coach windows were closed, but the crowd outside hissed until they reached Westminster, where the schoolboys raised a loud cheer.44 The House of Lords was packed with scarlet-robed peers sitting in deep gloom, until promptly at two p.m. the gaslights flared, a low hum of voices broke out, and the whole house rose as the Queen entered. She took her place on the throne with Alix sitting opposite on the woolsack, and her speech was read by the Lord Chamberlain.45
This was only the fourth time the Queen had opened Parliament in person since Albert’s death fourteen years before. She stubbornly refused to go through with this part of her duty unless she wanted something out of her ministers. Usually it was money for her children: She attended in 1866 in order to persuade Parliament to grant annuities for Alfred’s coming of age and Helena’s marriage, and her appearance in 1871 was prompted by the need for a dowry for Louise and an annuity for the twenty-one-year-old Arthur.a46 Now she needed Parliament’s support for something different: the Royal Titles Bill, creating her new title of Empress of India.
Victoria had persuaded Disraeli to capitalize on the goodwill sparked by Bertie’s visit and rebrand her Queen Empress as she had long wished to do. On 18 February she told Bertie: “The title of Empress of India is now to be really and legally adopted, which I am sure you will be pleased with.”47 She was annoyed by the Liberals’ opposition to the bill. “Considering that I was always called [Empress] in India and by many people here, it seems very extraordinary that they should have got up a cry as though I was going to change my English name.”48
Bertie had not been consulted, and the English mail took a month to reach him, but when he heard about the Royal Titles Bill, he was furious. He wrote a stinging letter to Disraeli, complaining that he had only learned of the Queen’s plan from the newspapers, having received no intimation from the prime minister.49 He was right to object that he hadn’t been formally consulted, and he worried that his own title was to be changed to a foreign-sounding “Imperial Highness.”
“I must frankly tell you,” he informed Disraeli, “that I could never consent to the word ‘Imperial’ being added to my name.”b50 The open criticism of the bill in Parliament was bound to damage British authority in India, he thought, and if the news leaked out that he opposed the change of title, it would “through increasing his popularity, damage that of the Queen.”51 Disraeli had indeed handled the bill badly by failing to bargain for opposition support beforehand, and Bertie had good reason to feel ill-used by the Queen. Victoria had strenuously opposed his plan to travel to India, but when the trip succeeded, she executed a spectacular U-turn and, without consulting him, stole his glory by upstaging him with this coup de théâtre. The Queen, who took a close interest in India, which she saw as her special fief, had no intention of leaving all the kudos to her son.
By now, Bertie and his party had reached the foothills of the Himalayas. The uniforms, the gold lace, and the cocked hats were packed away, and Bertie enjoyed an orgy of sport, organized by the cheroot-smoking Sir Henry Ramsay, the King of Kumaon. Never had tiger shooting been more luxurious. Bertie’s camp consisted of 2,500 men, 119 elephants, and 500 camels. Lunch was cooked by French chefs, brought out on elephants, and served by German waiters. In the evenings, as they sat around campfires burning logs as big as tree trunks, Gurkha military bands played Mozart and Offenbach. The prince notched up a total of twenty-eight tigers. His sporting exploits were reported not only by Russell in The Times but also by Mr. Simpson of The Illustrated London News and Mr. Johnson of The Graphic, who shared an elephant, lurching and bumping along behind the shooters.52 The Queen was not amused. “I am compelled to mention to you that there is a very strong feeling amongst all classes.… The minute description of the unavoidable sport in India has not made a good impression.”53 Reynolds’s deplored the “sickening and disgusting, nay, barbarous and sanguinary account of the special correspondents.”54
Bertie’s diary for 20 February 1876 contains the cryptic entry: “Letters!!!”55 Next day, he went out and shot six tigers—and, he told the nine-year-old Georgie, “some were very savage—two were ‘man eaters.’ ”56
* * *
* Russell had accompanied the prince on his visit to the Middle East, and he published the story of HRH’s journey to Egypt and the Crimea in 1869. Sidney Hall was the official artist. As well as Francis Knollys and the equerries Dighton Probyn and Arthur Ellis, the suite included Prince Louis of Battenberg as aide-de-camp and Canon Duckworth as chaplain. Russell’s reports to The Times were published in 1877 as The Prince of Wales’s Tour, with engravings by Sidney Hall.
† Or so they said. A report reached the London press of two members of the suite playing a practical joke on W. H. Russell and emptying everything out of his cabin. Russell demanded an apology, and Bertie forced them to comply; the captain was furious and threatened to drop them at the nearest port. (Reynolds’s Newspaper, 26 December 1875.)
‡ Bradford served as chief commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, 1890–1903.
§ Sixty years later, George Orwell wrote an essay about shooting an elephant that was on the rampage in Burma. Orwell had all sorts of doubts about killing the beast, but when he stood in front of an expectant crowd of natives, he realized that he had no choice but to shoot. This to him exposed the hollowness of imperial dominion in the East: The white man with his gun, seemingly the lead actor in the piece, was, in reality, “an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind.” (George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant” [1936], in Inside the Whale [Penguin, 1962], p. 95.)
‖ Prince Louis of Battenberg broke a collarbone and so did Carrington; Lord Charles Beresford broke his teeth,
and Lord Suffield was injured by his own spear.
a In 1867 she had opened Parliament as a gesture of support for the Conservative government. She favored Disraeli by opening Parliament three times during his second ministry, in 1876, 1877, and 1880.
b In fact, he succeeded his mother as Emperor of India. But unlike Victoria, who now began to sign herself “VR&I” (Victoria Regina et Imperatrix), Bertie as king usually used the two initials “ER.”
CHAPTER 12
The Aylesford Scandal
1876
One of the letters that reached the prince’s camp in Nepal on 20 February 1876 was from Edith Aylesford to her husband Sporting Joe, Earl of Aylesford, Bertie’s friend who had accompanied him to India. She announced that she had been unfaithful with Lord Blandford. Would Joe prefer her to leave home at once, she asked, or should she wait until he returned, as “she was willing to live as his wife before the world but no more”?1
In Bertie’s circle, adultery was a sport that had to be played according to strict rules. The first of these was Never Divorce. Not only did divorce bring social disgrace, but court cases risked public exposure, which could be horribly damaging, as Bertie had discovered during the Mordaunt case.
Edith Aylesford’s defection did more than humiliate her husband. She triggered a social scandal that tore apart the Marlborough House set. Coming as it did when Bertie had at last justified his existence by touring India, the timing could hardly have been more unfortunate.
