They live here without any state whatever [Greville continued]. They live not merely like gentlefolks, but like very small gentlefolks, small house, small rooms, small establishment. There are no Soldiers, and the whole guard of the Sovereign and the whole Royal Family is a single Policeman, who walks about the grounds to keep off impertinent intruders or improper characters. They live with the greatest simplicity and ease. He shoots every morning, returns to luncheon, and then they walk and drive. She is running in and out of the house all day long, and often goes about alone, walks into the cottages, and sits down and chats with the old women. I never before was in society with the Prince, or had any conversation with him. On Thursday morning John Russell and I were sitting together after breakfast, when he came in and sat down with us, and we conversed for about three-quarters of an hour. I was greatly struck with him. I saw at once (what I had always heard) that he is very intelligent and highly cultivated, and moreover that he has a thoughtful mind, and thinks of subjects worth thinking about. He seemed very much at ease, very gay, pleasant, and without the least stiffness or air of dignity. After luncheon we went to the Highland gathering at Braemar ... We returned as we came, and then everybody strolled about till dinner. We were only nine people, and it was all very easy and really agreeable, the Queen in very good humour and talkative; he still more, and talking very well; no form, and everybody seemed at their ease. In the evening we withdrew to the only room there is besides the dining-room, which serves for billiards, library (hardly any books in it), and drawing-room. The Queen and Prince and her Ladies and Gordon [the Prince's equerry, Alexander Hamilton Gordon] soon went back to the dining-room, where they had a Highland dancing-master, who gave them lessons in reels. We (J. R. [Lord John Russell] and I) were not admitted to this exercise, so we played at billiards. In process of time they came back, when there was a little talk, and soon after they went to bed.6
Everyone agreed with Greville that the Queen was in exceptionally good humour when she was in Scotland, a country superior to all others, in her opinion, there being, as a rather exasperated Lady Lyttelton said, nothing to compare with 'Scotch air, Scotch people, Scotch hills, Scotch rivers, Scotch words'. Lady Lyttelton added that she herself could 'never see, hear or witness these various charms'.7
Mary Ponsonby described the Queen as being 'so easy to satisfy' when she was in this country so beloved by her, 'so warmly genial', 'so completely charming'.8 Indeed, according to Lord Clarendon, the Queen was 'quite a different person' when in Scotland. She was always loath to leave it and its 'wild, simple and peculiar charms' in order to go back to Windsor, to return to the formal life she was required to live there. 'Altogether I feel so sad ... at the bitter thought of going from this blessed place,' she wrote to the Princess Royal, 'leaving these hills - this enchanting life of liberty - these dear people - and returning to tame, dull, formal England and the prison life of Windsor!'9
She relished her days out with Albert, setting off on ponies with the ghillies through the 'wildest and finest scenery', past burns with water 'as clear as glass', taking out her sketch book while Albert crept off to stalk stags or shoot ptarmigan, fishing for trout with him on the loch, entering the cottages on the estate with little presents for the women who spoke to her in their 'curious Highland English' which she liked so much, sitting down with them to share a simple meal and making purchases in the shape of butter and eggs, going up to the granite hut at Allt-na-Guibhsaich for a picnic above Loch Muich, attended by a lady-in-waiting, servants and ghillies, meeting women who did not know who she was, one who presented her with a bunch of flowers, another who offered her milk and a bit of bread.10
To their great pleasure the Queen and Prince were eventually able to buy the freehold of Balmoral with its 17,400 acres for £31,500 from the trustees of the Earl of Fife in 1848 and afterwards to extend the property by acquiring the adjacent 6,000 acres of the Birkhall estate, which was bought by the Duchy of Cornwall for the Prince of Wales, as well as by taking a lease of another neighbouring estate, Abergeldie. Then in 1852 they fulfilled their plans to build a completely new house, as they had done at Osborne.
The following year the Queen laid the foundation stone of the new Scottish baronial Balmoral Castle which Prince Albert had himself designed with the help of William Smith, an architect and builder from Aberdeen. It was, the Queen said, 'a beautiful' building, her 'dearest Albert's own creation', his 'own work, own building, own laying out as at Osborne'. His 'great taste' and the 'impress of his dear hand' was 'stamped everywhere'.
It was certainly eclectic in style, incorporating ideas gleaned in Germany and Bruges as well as from the turreted style of his Scottish baronial neighbours. In its design there was, as Lady Augusta Bruce, the Duchess of Kent's lady-in-waiting, observed with reticence, 'a certain absence of harmony of the whole'.
Since it was Albert's creation the Queen, of course, would have nothing said against either its architecture or its interior decoration. The whole place was 'charming', the rooms were 'delightful, the furniture, papers, everything perfection'.
The rooms admittedly were bright and cheerful, the large windows commanding lovely views; but many visitors were by no means favourably impressed by the general ambience of the place, the tartan curtains and tartan chair coverings, the tartan wallpaper and tartan carpets, the thistle motifs which were in such abundance that Lord Clarendon thought they would 'rejoice the heart of a donkey if they happened to look like his favourite repast, which they don't'.11 Lord Rosebery was to say that he thought the drawing room at Osborne was the ugliest in the world until he saw the one at Balmoral. 'The ornaments are strictly Scotch,' Rosebery wrote, 'and the curtains and the covers are of "dress Stuart" tartan. The effect is not very pretty.'[xxviii]12
The owners of the place were as 'Scotchined' as their habitat: the Queen even came to adopt a kind of Scottish accent to suit her surroundings, once saying, as she sat down to dinner, what one of her ladies Queen Mary did, indeed, in the words of her biographer, 'make radical changes' at Balmoral, 'for she had inherited all her father's [Francis, Duke of Teck's] passion for re-hanging pictures and re-arranging rooms. One of her first steps was to have the panelling stripped and lightened, and it is now only in the back passages that one can find traces of the dark marmalade-coloured paint' (James Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary, 1867-1953, 205). transcribed as 'I a doant know why the candles give noa light now, it is so daark."3 Her family had taken to wearing kilts; and Prince Albert, who had bought a huge Gaelic dictionary, had designed their own tartans, a white 'Victoria tartan' and a red 'Balmoral tartan'. The food served in the dining room had a distinctive Scottish bias: oatmeal porridge and smoked haddock were served at breakfast; and around the table during dinner marched Highlanders playing bagpipes, the loud skirls of which, so a maid-of-honour said, were enough to blow your head off. In time the place acquired its own distinctive, somehow Scottish smell, a 'special smell', described by one of the Queen's granddaughters as of a combination of 'wood fire, stags' heads, rugs and leather'.14
Lord Clarendon also complained that the house was so fearfully cold that his toes were frost-bitten as he was having dinner, while in the drawing room the two little sticks in the fireplace hissed at the man who was trying to light them and the Queen, thinking, Clarendon supposed, that they were in danger of catching fire, had a large screen placed between the royal nose and the unignited wood.
Tsar Nicholas II expressed the opinion that Balmoral was colder than the Siberian wastes; while Mary Ponsonby, like the Duke of Wellington at Windsor, was never warm there except in bed. Other guests were distressed to observe that the Queen, being notoriously impervious to cold herself, had the big windows opened on all but the iciest days and, here as elsewhere, had thermometers placed in all the principal rooms so that she could ensure that they never became what she herself considered overheated by the reluctantly permitted fires of beechwood, almost always beechwood since the Queen had 'the same rooted objection to coal as to gas'[xxix].15
The Marchioness of Dalhousie, who had become accustomed to the heat of India while her husband was serving as Governor-General there, 'never saw anything more uncomfortable' than Balmoral Castle, nor anything she coveted less. 'The Queen in her own house is far from a Constitutional Sovereign,' commented Lord Rosebery. 'She allows her family (at least, and I think the whole household) no fires at this time of year [September]."6
Ministers abhorred the place, not only because they wasted so much of their time travelling there when they were required to attend upon the Queen, but also because they were so uncomfortable when they did get there. 'Carrying on the Government of a country six hundred miles from the Metropolis' doubled the labour involved in being Prime Minister, Disraeli was later to complain, though not, of course, to the Queen herself who was deaf to all appeals not to spend so much of her time in Scotland.17
Lord Salisbury, who made 'no attempt to conceal his disgust with the place', was always 'heartily glad' to get away from it. Both he and Disraeli had to obtain doctors' orders to have their rooms heated to a reasonable temperature - while the Queen's Private Secretary, Sir Henry Ponsonby, was to lament, 'Every private house strikes me as comfortable, after the severe dreariness of our palatial rooms here.'[xxx]18
Chapter 23
THE PRINCE OF WALES
'He was afraid of his father.'
When the Queen laid the foundation stone of the new Balmoral Castle on 28 September 1853, her heir was eleven years old. The placid equanimity he had displayed in the earliest years of his infancy had not survived his fifth birthday. Lady Lyttelton, now known as 'Laddie', had had cause to complain of his being 'uncommonly averse to learning' and requiring 'much patience from wilful inattention and constant interruptions, getting under the table, upsetting the books and sundry other anti-studious practices'.1
His father, neither then nor later, did not try to conceal the fact that Victoria, the Princess Royal, was his favourite child. When he came into the nursery, as he often did - once, to the Princess Royal's indignation, sitting in 'Laddie's' chair - his eye alighted upon her with pleasure; but in the contemplation of her brother his countenance became troubled and apprehensive. Edward's mother also seemed to prefer her sharp and quick-witted daughter to her difficult son and spent far more time with her. It was already rumoured in society that the Queen did not much care for her eldest son, that, as Charles Greville put it, 'the hereditary and unfailing antipathy of our Sovereigns to their Heirs Apparent [was] already taking root'.2 Lady Beauvale was quoted as saying that the Queen had observed that the Prince was 'a stupid boy'. He began to stammer; and his sister teased him for it, imitating him, driving him to fury. One afternoon the two children had 'a tremendous fight' when brought down to their parents' room; so the next day they were brought down separately but, the one being taken into the room before the other was taken away, they fell to quarrelling again.
It was worse when other children were born and they, too, proved to be brighter than the Prince of Wales. By the time he was six he had already been overtaken by Princess Alice, who was not only more than eighteen months younger than himself but who was 'neither so studious nor so clever as the Princess Royal'.
The Queen could but hope that in time the boy would improve; and in the meantime she was not a neglectful mother, although, as Lady Lyttelton said, she was certainly a strict one, more ready to find fault than to praise. She was also determined to ensure that the children were never indulged and were given object lessons in the virtues of thrift and simplicity, that they were brought up 'as simply and in as domestic a way as possible' and that they grew to be 'fit for whatever station they might 'be placed in, high or low', since the 'bane of the present day was pride, vulgar, unchristian pride'. They had to make do with simple fare such as the boiled beef and semolina pudding which a member of the household once saw being carried up to the nursery; and the younger ones had to be content with clothes handed down to them from their older siblings who had grown out of them.
Strict though she was, she sometimes played games with the children, rowdy games like blind man's buff and fox-and-geese, and quieter ones like beggar-my-neighbour. She danced quadrilles with the Prince of Wales as her partner, and on summer evenings she went for little walks with him and helped him to catch moths. She watched him rehearse plays with his brothers and sisters under the direction of their conscientious father who made them 'say their parts over and over again'. Occasionally she would announce a special day's holiday and they would all go sailing or have a picnic. 'Children,' the Queen decided, 'though often a source of anxiety and difficulty are a great blessing and cheer and brighten up life.' She had to admit, however, that she found 'no special pleasure' in the company of her own children 'and only very exceptionally' did she find 'intimate intercourse with them either agreeable or easy'. On occasions she would play with them out of a sense of duty rather than inclination. When her husband was away 'ALL the children' [were] as nothing to her. It 'seemed as if the whole life of the house and home were gone'.
The two elder children were at first taught separately from the others, particular attention being paid to English, arithmetic, history, writing and geography, and an hour a day being devoted to both German and French. The Queen undertook to give religious instruction to her daughter, though not to her son, and to supervise her prayers. But she found it difficult to spare the time to do so, delegating this task to others who were told to ensure that the child had 'great reverence for God' but that she should be encouraged to feel 'devotion and love' for Him rather than 'fear and trembling'. As to whether or not the children should say their prayers kneeling or in bed, she consulted Princess Feodora, who considered it 'absurd that kneeling could have anything to do with making prayers acceptable to the Almighty'. So did Prince Albert, who considered kneeling to be a 'peculiar feature of English religiosity'. Lady Lyttelton, however, thought it was 'highly irreverent' not to kneel. So Prince Albert gave way since the children were to be brought up as Anglicans and therefore 'their prejudices must be those of the English Church'.3
If any alterations in the syllabus were considered necessary, or if any exceptional awards or punishments were proposed, the parents had to be consulted. Lady Lyttelton herself did not believe in the severe punishment of young children; but Prince Albert considered that physical chastisement was occasionally necessary to secure obedience. Even his daughters were whipped on his instructions and were subjected to lengthy admonitions with their hands tied together. At the age of four Princess Alice received 'a real punishment by whipping' for telling a lie. The Prince of Wales and his brothers received even harsher treatment.4
Doubts were expressed about the efficacy of this harsh treatment, not, however, by Lord Melbourne, who was deeply interested in flagellation, showed his mistresses pictures of women being beaten and seems to have given Caroline Lamb 'practical lessons upon whipping'. He himself had been flogged at Eton and thought he had not been flogged enough: it 'would have been better' if he had been 'flogged more', since the floggings had 'an amazing effect on him' and had been 'of no inconsiderable service'. But he advised the Queen not to set too much store by the whole process of education: it might 'mould and direct the character' but rarely altered it.5
Neither the Queen nor Prince Albert subscribed to this view; nor did Baron Stockmar, who, needless to say, provided them with long memoranda on the subject and gave them the alarming warning that the parents 'ought to be thoroughly permeated' with the truth that 'their position is a more difficult one than that of any other parent in the kingdom'.6
Insisting that discipline must continue to be strict, the parents believed that the children's syllabuses must remain exacting, particularly that of the Prince of Wales, so that 'the grand object' of his education might be fulfilled. This object, declared the Bishop of Oxford, one of those numerous experts consulted by the parents, must be none other than to turn the Prince into 'the most perfect man'.7
In furtherance of this ambitiou
s scheme, it was decided that the Prince should be 'taken entirely away from the women', provided with a valet and handed over to a male tutor, Henry Birch - who was employed for this purpose in April 1849 at a salary of £800 a year - while still, in the Queen's words, growing 'truly under his father's eye and guided by him so that when he has reached the age of sixteen or seventeen he may be a real companion to his father'.
Birch found his charge extremely disobedient, impertinent to his masters and unwilling to submit to discipline. He was also exceedingly selfish and unable even 'to play at any game for five minutes, or attempt anything new or difficult without losing his temper'; and when he did lose his temper his rage was uncontrollable.8
He could not bear to be teased or criticized; and though he flew into a tantrum or sulked whenever he was teased, Birch thought it best, 'notwithstanding his sensitiveness, to laugh at him ... to ignore his dislike of chaff' and to treat him as boys would have treated him in an English public school. His parents thought so, too; and they caused him anguish by mocking him when he had done something wrong or stupid. 'Poor Prince,' commented Lady Lyttelton one day when he was derided for asking, 'Mama, is not a pink the female of a carnation?'9
Mr Birch did not disguise his belief that the policy of keeping the Prince so strictly isolated from other boys was one of the reasons for his tiresome behaviour. It was Birch's 'deliberate opinion' that many of his pupil's 'peculiarities' arose from the effects of this policy, 'from his being continually in the society of older persons, and from his finding himself the centre round which everything seems to move'.
But his father did not agree, considering it advisable to safeguard him as far as possible from the company of boys of his own age who might well corrupt him. It would be far better, Prince Albert thought, to concen- trate upon his son's education rather than upon his need for companionship. There were lessons to be learned every weekday, including Saturday. Holidays, except on family birthdays, were rare, though the Queen did insist that Sundays should, as Prince Albert put it, be treated as 'days of recreation and amusement'; and when Birch protested to Stockmar that he had never heard of a family in which games like cricket were allowed on a Sunday, the Queen, who had strong views on the question, protested that Sundays had 'always been treated as a holiday': she was set against 'the extreme severity of the Sunday in this country when carried to excess'. A tutor who took her third son, Prince Arthur, who had been born in 1850, to two church services on a Sunday was reprimanded for his zealotry. Similarly the Prince of Wales was enjoined to take Holy Communion only twice a year, even though the Prayer Book specified a minimum of three attendances.
QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History Page 21
