It was a terrible trial to the poor Duchess, who was inconsolable for the loss of her beloved grandson. She came to the window as the carriages drove off, and threw her arms out, calling out ‘Albert, Albert!’ in tones that went to every one’s heart, when she was carried away, almost in a fainting state, by her attendants.
At the frontier they found that ‘an arch of green fir-trees had been erected, and a number of young girls dressed in white, with roses and garlands, and a band of musicians and singers who sung a very pretty hymn, were assembled to bid a final “God Speed”, as he left his native land behind him, to the young Prince. It was a pretty sight, but bitterly cold. A hard frost and the ground covered with snow, with a bitter north-east wind, were scarcely in keeping with white muslin gowns and wreaths of flowers’.
Albert and his party arrived at Dover on February 7th, and he wrote at once to her:
Now I am in the same country with you. What a delightful thought for me! It will be hard for me to have to wait till tomorrow evening. Still, our long parting has flown by so quickly, and to-morrow’s Dawn will soon be here. Our reception has been most satisfactory. There were thousands of people on the quay, and they saluted us with loud and uninterrupted cheers.
The reception had indeed been tumultuous, but the passage from Calais had taken over five hours in the kind of weather that he had now gloomily come to accept as normal for the Channel. In spite of his sea-sickness the large and friendly crowds were a considerable relief to Prince Albert as he progressed to London, although the route was so curiously arranged that large crowds that had gathered at the expected vantage points never saw him. He arrived at Buckingham Palace at half-past four on the afternoon of February 8th. Queen Victoria admitted to feeling agitated, but the sight of her fiancé’s ‘dear dear face again put me at rest about everything’. They exchanged presents, and then the Lord Chancellor administered the oaths of naturalisation. Some observers considered that Albert was uneasy at this ceremony, and this is unquestionably true; his assurance to his grandmother that he would ‘never cease to be a true German’ was sincere, and this particular price for his marriage and his new eminence was a heavy one. Walter Bagehot, who was present, doubted whether Prince Albert’s heart was ‘in the matter’, naturalisation, and his observation was right.
The wedding was to be on February 10th, and Albert stayed at Buckingham Palace, an alleged impropriety that dismayed the Duchess of Kent and even surprised Melbourne, but Victoria dismissed ‘that nonsense’ with fierce scorn.
On his wedding morning Albert received a gentle note:
Dearest, how are you today, and have you slept well? I have rested very well, and feel very comfortable today. What weather! I believe, however, the rain will cease. Send one word when you, my most dearly loved bridegroom, will be ready. Thy ever-faithful VICTORIA R.
To his grandmother, he wrote:
In less than three hours I shall stand before the altar with my dear bride! In those solemn moments I must once more ask your blessing, which I am well assured I shall receive, and which will be my safeguard and my future joy! I must end. May God help me!
There is no doubt that each approached the marriage with apprehension, which was perfectly natural, but with confidence in their love. Lady Lyttelton remarked that Queen Victoria’s eyes ‘were much swollen with tears, but great happiness in her countenance’, while Lady Wilhemina Stanhope commented that Prince Albert – now with the title of Royal Highness – ‘appeared awkward from embarrassment and was a good deal perplexed and agitated in his responses’, but this was not the opinion of others present at the Chapel Royal in St. James’s Palace, and certainly not that of Queen Victoria. There was one particularly jarring note at the ceremony – the almost total absence of Tories, at the Queen’s insistence. Indeed, it had been difficult for Melbourne to persuade her to invite the Duke of Wellington, so intense were her feelings. ‘She had been as wilful, obstinate and wrong-headed as usual about her invitations’, Greville wrote, ‘and some of her foolish and mischievous Courtiers were boasting that out of above 300 people in the Chapel there would only be five Tories’. A bride is indeed entitled to invite whom she wishes to her wedding, but a Queen should be more careful, and the adverse comments on the invitation lists – which were not confined to Greville – were not unmerited. She did at least have the advantage of knowing most of the guests, whereas Albert was surrounded by complete strangers, knowing only his bride, his father and brother, the Duchess of Kent, and Melbourne, who could hardly be described as an intimate friend. The ceremony over, the couple left in pouring rain for Windsor, in what Greville caustically described as ‘one of the old travelling coaches, the postillions in undress liveries, in a very poor and shabby style’.
After Victoria had changed she joined Albert in his room. He embraced her and ‘was so dear and kind. We had our dinner in our sitting room, but I had such a sick headache that I could eat nothing, and was obliged to lie down . . . but ill or not I never, never spent such an evening!! My dearest dearest dear Albert sat on a footstool by my side, and his excessive love and affection gave me feelings of heavenly love and happiness I could never have hoped to have felt before! He clasped me in his arms, and we kissed each other again and again! His beauty, his sweetness and gentleness – really how can I ever be thankful enough to have such a Husband! . . . to be called by names of tenderness, I have never yet heard used to me before – was bliss beyond belief! Oh! this was the happiest day of my life! – May God help me to do my duty as I ought and be worthy of such blessings!’
Thus began one of the most remarkable of all marriages. Victoria’s pre-marital nervousness was replaced with total happiness, to which she added an acute sensitivity to her husband’s loneliness in a strange country and surrounded by new faces which he found difficult to remember in the first days.
She was astonished to find her husband in tears after he had said farewell to his father after the wedding, and the episode left a deep and abiding impression upon her. She wrote in her Journal: ‘Oh, how I did feel for my dearest, precious husband at this moment! Father, brother, friends, country – all he has left, and all for me. What is in my power to make him happy I will do’. Prince Albert found it difficult to acclimatize himself, and disliked the constant entertainment and late hours. He hated London and ‘Society’, and yearned for the country. Soon after his wedding he had to listen to twenty-seven addresses of congratulation from civic leaders and other notables and to make a suitable response. He found himself a husband with only limited formal public duties, no political position, and with only the faithful Stockmar to hand – at Albert’s direct request – as a confidant and adviser. His dislike of Lehzen was early, and strong, and he was firmly barred by Queen Victoria from audiences with her Ministers. His request to know ‘everything connected with public affairs’ was ignored. ‘What is to become of Prince Albert!’ Princess Lieven enquired of Lady Palmerston. ‘Will he always remain at his wife’s side? It will be a dreary situation’.
One of Prince Albert’s first, and most acute, difficulties was to learn whom to trust, a dilemma with which anyone who has been in public life will at once sympathise. Apart from Stockmar, whose presence in England became increasingly intermittent, he was surrounded by complete strangers, some of whom were obvious sycophants and Court careerists, others politicians with whose names he was familiar but whom he did not know, and other individuals who moved in Court circles but whose allegiance and reliability – especially to him – were doubtful. The Paget family, thanks to Melbourne and Lehzen, seemed everywhere, and the head of what Roger Fulford has rightly called ‘the Paget faction’ was Lord Uxbridge, who installed his mistress at the Palace, and had become Lord Chamberlain in 1839. Lehzen even attempted to prevent Prince Albert riding with the Queen in the State Carriage to Parliament and questioned his right to sit in the House of Lords with her; his confidence in Anson’s complete fidelity and reliability only grew gradually thr
ough experience.
The Queen had never thought of him becoming involved in her official political duties, which she continued to conduct in long conversations with Melbourne, Prince Albert not being invited. ‘Rested and read Dispatches – some of which I read to Albert’, is a particularly significant Journal entry shortly after their marriage, as is ‘Albert helped me with the blotting paper when I signed’. Anson commented on his ‘constitutional timidity’, which was wholly understandable. ‘I know it is wrong’, Victoria said to Melbourne in this difficult early period, ‘but when I am with the Prince I prefer talking on other subjects’. Not until November did Victoria arrange for him to have his own key for ‘the Secret Boxes’; Anson considered this ‘an important advance’, but in reality it was only a modest one, so long as Melbourne was Prime Minister and Lehzen held sway.
By nature shy, these restrictions made Prince Albert more cautious and taciturn than ever in company he did not know, giving an impression of cold hauteur and even dim-wittedness which was eagerly spread abroad by those who hated the Coburgs, or disliked the Queen’s politics, or who despised foreigners, or who simply wished to cause trouble. Some years later a chance remark in what he thought was a private conversation that ‘the Poles are as little deserving of sympathy as the Irish’ was repeated and published, to no little embarrassment to Albert and Ministers. Episodes such as this only served to increase his caution, nervousness in unfamiliar company, and suspicion of all whom he did not know or trust. None of this increased his popularity, and gave a gloomy Teutonic impression. More importantly, it greatly increased his own sense of insecurity and deep loneliness.
His frustration and unease were at least partially compensated by the profound happiness in his relations with his wife, whom he described as ‘the most delightful companion a man can wish for’. Malicious gossip alleged that the joy was confined to the Queen, but Lady Palmerston was right when she wrote that ‘it is quite impossible for any two people to be more happy’. The only shadow for the Queen – and a considerable one – was when she realised she was pregnant; she had written in her Journal that having babies was ‘the ONLY thing I dread’, and the realisation made her unhappy and morbid, with the fate of Princess Charlotte heavily in her mind. Albert and Victoria were passionate in all their relations, and Victoria’s intense dislike of pregnancy and child-bearing – ‘the shadow side of marriage’ – should not mislead either her biographers or Albert’s. They conceived nine children, and after his death she wrote to her eldest daughter ‘Oh! it is too, too weary! The day – the night (above all the night) is too sad and weary’. Albert’s attempts to lift her from her pregnancy depression were only partly successful, although he gradually brought her into a more hopeful mood. But it was clearly a most difficult time for them both.
The principal strain was upon the Prince. Stockmar was deeply critical of him, accusing him of intellectual laziness and political apathy, while making insufficient allowances for his caution and insecurity in a new environment and the difficulties of the early months of his marriage. The charge was, moreover, peculiarly unfair, for, as early as May, Albert was complaining to Victoria of her lack of confidence in him ‘on all matters connected with the politics of this country’, but Stockmar told Anson that Prince Albert was being unnecessarily impatient: ‘The Queen has not started upon a right principle. She should by degrees impart everything to him, but there is danger in his wishing it all at once . . . The Queen is influenced more than she is aware of by the Baroness [Lehzen]’. Of this last fact Albert was only too conscious. Stockmar bombarded him with earnest memoranda and long discussions of his inadequacies, which Albert bore with estimable equanimity and patience. Stockmar’s son later wrote that it had been his father’s task to ‘arouse and strengthen in the Prince ideal aspirations and the sense of duty’, while at the same time – with some inconsistency – urging him not to press the Queen too hard for political influence. ‘In my home life I am very happy and contented’, Albert wrote to Löwenstein; ‘but the difficulty in filling my place with the proper dignity is that I am only the husband, not the master, in the house’.
The relationship between Prince Albert and his appointed secretary, George Anson, had not opened propitiously, and promised to be very uncomfortable. Anson recorded in February that Albert had said to him:
Wished to have an opportunity of telling you that I was determined not to appoint you. I felt that it was committing myself by taking one who was confidentially placed about the Prime M. The Q. insisted upon your app. – & resented my opposition.
Baron S. had heard a good deal of you, & after my arrival persuaded me to confirm the appointment which had been promised [to you].
Although this was honest, it was highly unpromising, as were Albert’s admonitions to him shortly afterwards, again carefully noted by the secretary.
Necessity of caution in the extreme & discretion in the Society of a Court.
Constantly subject to the influence of petty intrigue & jealousy. The less the intercourse with all save with your Principal the better your chance of escaping difficulty & of producing mischief. Avoid all in a general way as much as possible. Always [be] an attentive listener, but avoid giving an opinion as much as possible, & never volunteer it.
But by April 15th the Prince had clearly developed enough trust in Anson to expound to him his somewhat superficial understanding of British politics:
I do not think it is necessary to belong to any Party. Composed as Party is here of two extremes, both must be wrong. The exercise of an unbiassed judgement may form a better & wiser creed by extracting the good from each.
The Whigs want to change before change is required. The love of change is their great failing. The Tories on the other hand resist change long after the feeling & temper of the Times has loudly demanded it, & at least make a virtue of necessity by an ungracious concession. My endeavour will be to form my opinions quite apart from politics & party, & I believe such an attempt may succeed.
This was a remarkably crude, and in fact seriously inaccurate, judgement, and an Administration more hostile to social change of any kind than the Melbourne Government would be difficult to imagine, while Peel’s Conservative federation was already demon-strating signs of pragmatic radical thinking that was anathema to the Whig Party. The new English Prince had much to learn.
From the beginning he was working out in his own mind, and in his talks with Anson, how his personal position was to develop. Anson wrote after one such discussion:
Uncertainty of Position
Under all natural probability must exercise great influence on all State affairs, tho’ that influence ought never to appear –in cases of difficulty, who so fit to advise as the Husband – often in Illness the only person who can or ought to approach.
These assumptions were, also, naïve. So long as Melbourne was Prime Minister and Lehzen was close to the Queen, the position which he regarded as his by right was strongly challenged, and it was only gradually that he realised it had to be fought for. In this contest Anson became his strong personal, and trusted, adherent and guide. Stockmar’s letters of advice – always long, often very perceptive, sometimes portentous – came from a distance; Anson was the daily companion and strategist.
The more Anson worked with the Prince the more baffled he became by the extraordinary difference in his character when compared with those of his father and brother, something that had also aroused Stockmar’s great interest when it became clear that his earlier fears that he might also have inherited some of his mother’s passionate ways were clearly unfounded. Stockmar realised, as Queen Victoria had found to her delight, that Albert was indeed a passionate man, but with the strong self-control that was so conspicuously absent in his father and brother Ernest. In discussion with Anson ‘S. put it down to his fundamental purity of mind, but it was well that he had been removed from the Coburg influence’.
This was not the only puzz
le in this extraordinary young man for whom Anson not only worked but felt an affinity that took their relationship to an unusual one for men in their positions. This puzzle has best been expressed by Albert’s brother:
His mild amiability went hand in hand with a critical severity. The greatest warmth and self-sacrificing love would sometimes change to painful coldness. His constant thought was how to make people happy, and he could [also] be as hard as possible to those same people.
It was indeed these contrasts that gave the majority of people an impression of humourless earnestness which made him the mockery of London Society, and the ‘Upper Ten Thousand’, to whom he was an insufferable German Puritan on the make, another Coburg adventurer like Leopold, and a boring adventurer at that. And yet to his step-sister in law, Feodora, he was the provider of family fun and laughter, and she took particular joy in the family breakfasts, when Albert’s gift of mimicry, on which all his friends and family placed great emphasis, was used to make mock of pompous Court officials, politicians, and guests. ‘Albert always so merry’, Victoria wrote happily, and one of the Ladies, the Hon. Georgiana Liddell, later Lady Bloomfield, wrote of a dinner of much talk and laughter when she and the Duchess of Kent joined Victoria and Albert. Observers from afar often found – particularly if they were writers, artists, musicians, scientists, or other kindred souls – a jolly, friendly, and humorous young man, in complete contrast with what they had expected. But in uncongenial company, or even on occasion with family and friends, there would be a sudden and unexpected switch to an intimidating sternness. All who really knew him liked as well as respected him, and found real pleasure in his company. He was a thoroughly nice and manifestly kind young man, with great consideration and generosity, even to his father and brother, however sorely they tried him. His fear of scandal was partly based on the clear calculation that if it came near the Throne it would do immense harm to his ambition to strengthen its position, but it was not based, as has so often been assumed, on prudery or what one biographer of Queen Victoria has called his ‘horror of sex’. He was in fact very tolerant of frailties of the flesh, including drinking; when Home Secretary Sir James Graham expressed criticism of a tipsy courtier Albert dismissed the matter as one of no importance. Years later the annual Ghillies’ Ball at Balmoral was not noted for its complete sobriety. But he was determined to keep the Court as morally pure as was humanly possible, and here the bad reputation of the Coburg Court – as well as that of George IV – had a strong and ineradicable influence on him.
Prince Albert Page 15
