Prince Albert

by Robert Rhodes James

  With singular heartlessness, Duke Ernest left Coburg immediately after his wife’s departure for a shooting holiday with Leopold and remained away for his birthday (January 6th), to the dismay and sadness of his sons. So powerful was Prince Albert’s desolation at this double separation that it remained vivid to Florschütz forty-five years later.

  Grandmother Gotha wrote to Duke Ernest on July 27th 1831:

  The sad state of my poor Louise bows me to the earth . . . The thought that her children had quite forgotten her distressed her very much. She wished to know if they even spoke of her. I answered her that they were far too good to forget her; that they did not know of her sufferings as it would grieve the good children too much.

  When Louise died of cancer, Grandmother Gotha wrote to the Duke:

  This also I have to endure, that that child whom I watched over with much love should go before me. May God soon allow me to be reunited to all my loved ones . . . It is a most bitter feeling that that dear house [of Gotha] is now quite extinct.

  Thus the brothers, deprived of their mother, grew up at The Rosenau. Florschütz later recollected the great affection between them – which was to endure despite many vicissitudes – but also recorded:

  Even in infancy, however, a marked difference was observable in their characters and dispositions. This difference naturally became more apparent as years went on, and their separate paths in life were definitively marked out for them; yet far from leading at any time to any, even momentary, estrangement, it seems rather to have afforded a closer bond of union between them.

  Florschütz found Albert an eager pupil – ‘to do something was with him a necessity’ – and an enthusiastic athlete, although at this time ‘he was rather delicate than robust, though already remarkable for his powers of perseverance and endurance’.

  All accounts of Albert’s early life, contemporary and subsequent, speak glowingly of Florschütz. He was only twenty-five when he assumed his responsibilities, but had already established himself in the family and thereby had come to the attention of Stockmar. He spoke English fluently, so that his charges became familiar with it from a very early age. An admirable teacher, exceptionally well read, and with a deep interest in science as well as literature and languages, he encouraged the boys to widen their own interests. Both were fascinated by natural history, and Florschütz arranged for regular instruction by an expert; their collection of rock specimens was later established as the Ernst-Albrecht Museum, and is maintained to this day. Albert’s love of music was also encouraged, and Florschütz became a guide, mentor, and companion as well as tutor, and his influence upon Albert was immense and beneficial.

  Albert’s Journal in 1825 recorded his daily life with considerable vivacity and warmth (he was not yet six). There are frequent references to tears: ‘When I awoke this morning I was ill. My cough was worse. I was so frightened that I cried’ (January 23rd 1825); ‘we recited, and I cried because I could not say my repetition, for I had not paid attention . . . I was not allowed to play after dinner, because I had cried whilst repeating’ (January 26th); ‘During our walk I told the Rath [Florschütz] a story. When I came home I played with my companions. But I had left all my lesson-books lying about in the room, and I had to put them away: then I cried, but afterwards I played again’ (February 20th); ‘I cried at my lesson today, because I could not find a verb: and the Rath pinched me, to show me what a verb was. And I cried about it’ (February 28th); ‘I wrote a letter at home. But because I had made so many mistakes in it, the Rath tore it up, and threw it into the fire. I cried about it’ (March 26th). But there are happy references to expeditions and walks, and trips with ‘dear Papa’, including a visit to Ketschendorf where ‘I drank beer, and ate bread and butter and cheese’. On April 10th he recorded: ‘I had another fight with my brother: that was not right’.

  His tutor later wrote that ‘In his early youth [childhood] Prince Albert was very shy, and he had long to struggle against this feeling. He disliked visits from strangers, and at their approach would run to the furthest corner of the room, and cover his face with his hands; nor was it possible to make him look up, or speak a word. If his doing so was insisted upon, he resisted to the utmost, screaming violently’. At a children’s fancy dress party, when he was five, Albert was dressed ‘as a little Cupid’ and urged to dance, but adamantly refused, ‘and his loud screams were heard echoing through the rooms’. What was regarded by others as obstinacy and aloofness was rightly discerned by Florschütz as a profound shyness and unease with strangers, while with those he knew and trusted ‘the distinguishing characteristics of the Prince’s disposition were his winning cheerfulness and his endearing amiability. His disposition was always to take a cheerful view of life, and to see its best side. He was fond of fun and practical jokes’.

  Grandmother Gotha visited Coburg in June 1824, and recorded:

  The dear children are, thank God, perfectly well, and as happy and merry as one could wish. They delight so much in driving and walking about that, if one were to ask them, they would say they never wished to go home.

  In July 1825, when the boys were staying with her:

  They had a very simple and regular life, and are out in the open air as much as possible. They are so good and gentle, and give me great pleasure . . . The ‘Rath’ really does all he can for them, and you have a real treasure in him.

  She wrote to the Duchess of Kent, on August 17th 1826, that she had noted a report in the papers that King George IV had seen Princess Victoria at Virginia Water: ‘The little monkey must have pleased and amused him. She is such a pretty, clever child . . . Alberinchen looks rather pale this summer. He is delicate; the heat tries him, and he grows fast’.

  After the extension of the Duchy, the pattern of the boys’ lives – centred in Coburg in the winter and The Rosenau in the summer – was changed in that Gotha and Reinhardsbrunn were added to their regular homes. But The Rosenau was their true home, ‘the place he most loves’, as his future wife subsequently wrote in her Journal. She also described the frugal circumstance of their childhoods: ‘It is quite up in the roof, with a tiny little bedroom on each side, in one of which they both used to sleep with Florschütz their tutor. The view is beautiful, and the paper is still full of holes from their fencing; and the very same table is there on which they were dressed when little’.

  Grandmother Gotha wrote to the Duke, after a visit by the children, on January 30th 1828: ‘I cannot say enough in praise of their good behaviour, and I shall feel the separation from them very much . . . Do not let them take much medicine, nor hear much about their health; it only makes them nervous. A well-regulated diet and mode of life is much better than medicine, and as much air as possible’.

  Arthur Mensdorff wrote in 1863 that: ‘Albert, as a child, was of a mild, benevolent disposition. It was only what he thought unjust or dishonest that could make him angry . . . Albert thoroughly understood the naïveté of the Coburg national character, and he had the art of turning people’s peculiarities into a source of fun. He had a natural talent for imitation, and a great sense of the ludicrous, either in persons or things; but he was never severe or ill-natured . . .’

  The portrait that we receive from all quarters – and including Albert’s own notes, letters, and fragmentary Journal – is that of a happy and privileged childhood. It is, accordingly, strange to find his eldest daughter, Princess Victoria, writing many years later that ‘Papa always said that he could not bear to think of his childhood, he had been so unhappy and miserable, and had many a time wished himself out of this world’, as this is in complete contrast with all contemporary evidence, and Prince Albert himself later told his wife – perhaps somewhat tactlessly – that his childhood was the happiest period of his existence.

  No doubt there was some loneliness, and periods of unhappiness that seem inseparable from all childhoods, and particularly one in a broken home. But the brothers were devoted
to each other, the grandmothers were close and dedicated to them, and Duke Ernest emerges from all contemporary accounts as a genial, affectionate and indulgent father, whose enjoyment of his sons’ company severely interrupted Florschütz’s careful plans for their education. Neither the Gotha nor the Coburg grandmothers found fault with Albert, and this biographer is baffled by references in biographies of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert’s ‘stressful and unhappy childhood’ and ‘the traumatic experiences of his youth’, which ‘left him permanently wounded’. The loss of a mother under particularly sad circumstances obviously left its mark, and the gap could not be filled wholly by the delightful and loving grandmothers, but the gaiety and cheerfulness of the boy – to which so many contemporary accounts refer – belie these portraits of misery.

  Grandmother Coburg wrote to the Duchess of Kent, on March 23rd 1829, that ‘Ernest is beginning to grow handsome . . . Albert is very good-looking, very clever, but is not so strong as his brother’. Again, after the death of George IV in 1830, and very shortly before her own death:

  God bless Old England, where my beloved children live, and where the sweet blossom of May may one day reign! May God yet for many years keep the weight of a crown from her young head! and let the intelligent clever child grow up to girlhood before this dangerous grandeur devolves upon her!’

  Leopold became King of the Belgians in 1831. Leopold owed his success as the British candidate for the throne of the somewhat artificial and highly divided nation principally to British dislike of the King of Holland, coupled with the realisation that the failure of the concept of a United Netherlands under the King’s sovereignty was a definitive political reality. When a French candidate – the Due de Nemours – entered the lists the British went firmly for Leopold’s candidature, and King William IV’s doubts about Leopold were far less powerful than his detestation and profound suspicion of the French. An acute European crisis passed, and by the spring of 1833 the independence of the new state of Belgium was assured by the major Powers. It was not a particularly glittering position to have achieved in some respects, but a significant advancement for a younger son of the small House of Coburg. In the summer of 1832 Ernest and Albert visited him at Brussels, which, according to Florschütz, made a great impression upon them. In the autumn of that year their father remarried, to Princess Mary of Würtemburg, but not happily, and her relations with her stepsons were distant.

  Prince Albert was now marked by his tutor and his uncle Leopold as an exceptionally advanced, serious, and capable boy, with a remarkable range of interests and formidable self-discipline. He demonstrated, Florschütz noted, ‘rather too strong a will of his own, and this disposition came out at times even in later years. Surpassing his brother in thoughtful earnestness, in calm reflection and self-command, and evincing, at the same time, more prudence in action; it was only natural that his will should prevail’. Albert wrote in his Journal when he was eleven that ‘I intend to train myself to be a good and useful man’.

  At the age of fourteen he drew up his own work programme. One day’s regime was as follows:

  6 –7Translations from the French

  7 –8Repetition and Preparation in History

  8 –9Modern History

  10 –11Ovid

  11 –12English

  12 –1Mathematics

  6 –7French

  7 –8Latin Composition

  The Prince’s education was particularly strong in languages, history, the natural sciences, and music, with rather less attention to the classics and mathematics. It was also significant that the programme included five hours specifically set aside for outdoor activities and recreation.

  The reality, however, was not as Prince Albert or his tutor had wished, and the principal difficulties were caused by Duke Ernest, now ‘much occupied with his new and splendid possession of Gotha’ in the words of Leopold, but also delighting in the company of his sons. The trouble was that he insisted on their company for breakfast – and later for lunch – when he was staying in Coburg, and the boys were at The Rosenau. As Roger Fulford has written so succinctly about Duke Ernest, he ‘was not a pleasant character, for he was fired with political ambition which he lacked the capacity to realise and in personal habits he was selfish and extravagant’.10

  As he grew older Albert began to realise more clearly the deficiencies of his father, which were to be inherited to the full by Ernest, but his devotion to both of them was total and unwavering, even when they strained his patience greatly in later life. But Duke Ernest’s devotion to his sons meant that breakfast was taken between nine and ten with the Duke whenever he was at home, and the travelling involved often meant that, as Florschütz complained, ‘the greater part of the forenoon was inevitably wasted, to the interruption of useful studies and occupations. The Duke, however, was indifferent to this, and we can only wonder that the Princes, notwithstanding, retained their love for study’. Albert, also, was highly impatient at these interruptions in spite of his affection for his father, and Queen Victoria later wrote that he had often referred to this dislocation of his studies. Some of Prince Albert’s biographers have taken his plans and Florschütz’s schedule rather too literally, describing it as ‘relentless’, ‘unvarying’, and ‘inhumanly severe’, when in fact it was not excessive in terms of hours, and was varied with other activities, holidays, and companionship with other boys of the area. Furthermore, Albert loved Coburg, but particularly The Rosenau, and the glorious countryside around it, which he subsequently called ‘the paradise of our childhood’. That countryside has now become somewhat ravaged, but it is not difficult to recreate in one’s mind how beautiful it must have been. On The Rosenau itself, judgement may be more critical. ‘A lovely spot’, as one English visitor recorded, ‘– but the house, oh, so dreary and uncomfortable!’

  Albert, who rose very early, also always retired early. In Florschütz’s words: ‘An irresistible feeling of sleepiness would come over him in the evening, which he found difficult to resist even in after life; and even his most cherished occupations, or the liveliest games, were at such times ineffectual to keep him awake. If prevented from going to bed, he would suddenly disappear, and was generally found sleeping quietly in the recess of the window – for repose of some kind, though but for a quarter of an hour, was then indispensable’.

  After he was eleven the programme became even more difficult to maintain as the brothers regularly lunched with their father at three in the afternoon (‘the place of dinner being as uncertain as that of the breakfast’, as Florschütz sourly commented), and the time for regular lessons seldom exceeded five hours a day for six days a week, hardly an exceptionally severe regime, but interesting in its careful planning, balance, and Florschütz’s insistence on time set aside for ‘bodily exercises, also regulated at fixed hours, and amusement’. Although a carefully trained and excellent shot, Albert demonstrated little real interest in the great shooting expeditions so beloved by his father and the German gentry. The exercise, fresh air, and company appealed to him far more than the actual sport, and Florschütz was pleased that ‘The active life which the Prince thus led in the open air strengthened alike the mind and the body. His thirst for knowledge was kept alive and indulged, while under the influence of his bodily exercises he grew up into an active and healthy boy’. In fact his looks rather belied the reality; although never seriously unwell, his constitution was not a strong one, and his surviving grandmother was constantly concerned about the effects of fatigue upon him, as, subsequently, was his wife.

  Florschütz also believed very much in what he called ‘self-imposed’ studies, at which Albert was particularly assiduous. The total of five hours a day formal learning was, accordingly, only a part of the whole.

  Albert was devoted, and deeply beholden, to the kind and critical Florschütz, who was the dominating and beneficent influence of his childhood and early youth. These emotions were warml
y returned. Many years later Florschütz wrote that Albert’s outstanding qualities were ‘his eager desire to do good and to assist others; the other, the grateful feeling which never allowed him to forget an act of kindness, however trifling, to himself. Stockmar, character-istically, was much more critical of the boy and doubted the reality of his application and constancy: ‘He has the same mobility and readiness of mind [of his mother]’, he severely noted, ‘and the same intelligence, the same over-ruling desire and talent for appearing kind and amiable to others, the same tendency to espiéglerie, to treat things and people in the same amusing fashion, the same habit of not dwelling long on a subject’.

  It was at Albert’s specific request that he and Ernest were confirmed together on Palm Sunday (April 12th) 1835. It was an elaborate event, in which the two brothers had their public examination in the Giants’ Hall of the castle in Coburg on the 11th, in the presence of their father, Grandmother Gotha, relations, ministers, officials, and invited members of the public – but in the conspicuous absence of their step-mother. ‘The dignified and decorous bearing of the Princes’, it was recorded, ‘their strict attention to the questions, the frankness, decision, and correctness of their answers, produced a deep impression on the numerous assembly’. The actual ceremony was conducted by Pastor Genzler, and was followed by a special service in Coburg Cathedral, and on April 13th there was a grand banquet of celebration in the Giants’ Hall, when Florschütz was presented with a diamond ring in tribute to his devotion to the Coburg sons.