Prince Albert

by Robert Rhodes James

  Albert had been contemplating a high salary for the Prince’s tutor, which was a very handsome emolument, but Birch proved a hard bargainer. The moment it was clear to him that he would receive the appointment he informed Prince Albert that his fees at Eton were substantially greater, and Albert hastily revised the proposed fee to equal this very considerable amount. In the event, Birch received even more than this and it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Prince had taken Stockmar’s strictures about excessive economy rather too much to heart, and that Birch was selling his services at a singularly high level.

  But this was not all. Birch’s personal ambitions went beyond money. On April 12th 1849 Albert set out the Prince’s programme of tuition and added that ‘Sunday is to be kept as a day of recreation & amusement in which the Prince will be glad to see a little more of his brother & sisters than the occupation of the week will allow’, but Birch saw his role as something more than a temporal tutor. He was courteously indignant about Royal comment on his attendance at services and obvious indications of his remorseless movement towards Holy Orders. He demanded an assistant ‘taken from a comparatively humble station in life’ and enquired of Stockmar (December 13th 1849) ‘If the Prince of Wales is to become eventually the Head of the English Church, how is he to be trained, but in the plain unadulterated scriptural teaching of that Church?’

  Birch’s letters to Stockmar and Albert obviously gave them concern, and Queen Victoria became so worried that she set out a detailed memorandum about the Prince’s education to Birch, which included the point that ‘no corporal punishment without report to the decision of the Prince Albert’ would be permitted, and eventually a formal ‘Final Agreement’ between the Royal parents and Birch was prepared by them and revised by Stockmar on the issue of religious instruction and influence.

  From this voluminous correspondence it is clear that the parents felt that they had little choice but to accept the recommendations concerning Birch, but that they were increasingly perturbed by Birch’s evident ambition and religiosity. These concerns did not go as far as challenging the universal recommendation, and the couple were loyal to Birch, in spite of their added dismay when he insisted upon his intention of eventually taking Holy Orders.

  Birch instituted a firm regime of six day a week tutoring, with limited holidays, and a daily report to the parents. He found Bertie ‘extremely disobedient, impertinent to his masters, and unwilling to submit to discipline’, selfish, short-tempered, and extremely sensitive. He considered that the boy’s temperament was uneven, that he was naturally rebellious, and often refused to answer questions which he knew perfectly well. Some indication of Birch’s character can be gleaned from a note to himself in April 1849 in his papers about the Prince of Wales:

  He must obey – I must command – His temper must yield – His affection must be won. How one and the same hand is to effect this, I know not. I must see Baron Stockmar.

  In an undated letter, but probably of the same time, he wrote to Prince Albert:

  Sir,

  The conduct of the Prince of Wales begins to frighten me. I begin to search myself and see if my ingenuity can devise any other mode of dealing with him, but I seem to have tried every expedient, and I do hope that no feeling of delicacy towards myself will prevent Her Majesty and Your Royal Highness from asking me to resign my charge into other hands, if you think that a change would produce any better result at any time.

  The moment that one attempts to teach anything arises the difficulty – an unwillingness to give himself the slightest trouble or exertion . . .

  I will continue to do my best, but it seems of little avail.

  Albert hastened to write to say that Birch had the full confidence of himself and the Queen, but whether it was the result of the advice of Stockmar or Birch, or, more probably, Clark, the parents resorted to the extraordinary measure of asking the very fashionable phrenologist Dr. George Combe to whom reference has already been made, to examine the unruly and difficult patient. On June 22nd 1850 he submitted his report on the boy, not yet nine years old:

  . . . The Prince of Wales appears to me to have improved very considerably since I saw him three years ago. He is in better health, his head has grown in all the regions, and the indications of excitability, through feebleness in the nervous constitution, generally have diminished. The intellectual organs have become larger absolutely, although perhaps not relatively to those situated in the posterior region of the brain. There are still, however, signs of a delicate constitution of the brain, the effects of which will probably be a degree of inaptitude for mental labour, and an aversion to it at particular times; and, on other occasions, an excess of activity, especially in the emotional faculties . . .

  It is a fundamental principle in Phrenology that no organs are in themselves bad. God, who instituted the brain and organised to every part of it certain functions, provided a legitimate sphere of action for each. It is, therefore, only activity in excess, or ill-directed, that leads to evil.

  In the Prince of Wales, the organs of Combativeness, Destructiveness, Self-Esteem, Concentrativeness and Firmness are all large. The intellectual organs are only moderately developed; and in a child, one of the effects of this combination will be a strong self-will, amounting at times to obstinacy; a tendency to anger and opposition, and a temporary apparent insensibility to the influence of reason and the requirements of duty . . .

  The dismayed parents, reading this appalling analysis, could at least console themselves that, in the judgement of Dr. Combe, the Organs of Conscientiousness, Benevolence, and Veneration were impressively large, although that of Cautiousness was ‘only moderately developed’. It was also open to question whether Dr. Combe was being particularly helpful when he observed that ‘Every fit of obstinacy or passion should be viewed not as an act of voluntary disobedience, but as a physiological manifestation or indication of a certain cerebral condition’. Moreover, Dr. Combe recommended the appointment of a tutor whose own cranium had been exposed to the same ruthless examination, and who would be prepared ‘to study Phrenology and to submit to be trained to apply it . . . The public sentiment in favour of Phrenology is advanc-ing: In twenty or thirty years hence, a new generation may ask why was the Prince of Wales denied the advantages of its application? And it may be difficult to find a satisfactory answer . . .’ One would like to think that the parents saw through this pseudo-scientific nonsense; in any event, the prattlings of Dr. Combe blessedly and abruptly disappear from the voluminous archives on the Prince of Wales’ upbringing that Albert meticulously filed and preserved.

  To Stockmar he confided his concerns, who replied on August 4th 1849:

  A letter received yesterday from the Queen again depresses my hopes in reference to the progress of the Prince of Wales. I therefore beg you will from time to time let me hear from you with the results of your own observation on the state of things. There can be no theorising as to what it may be necessary, possible, and therefore judicious, to do in this business. Nothing but experience, acquired by close observation of actual facts, can give us indications how to proceed, and form a sure guide to the course to be persevered in . . .

  Albert’s observations were, simply, that the Prince of Wales remained highly strung, emotional, warm-hearted and devoted to his parents, and – to modern eyes strangely – fond of the tedious and sanctimonious Birch, but also rebellious, irritable, and clearly very unhappy. His parents were baffled and troubled, particularly when Bertie was compared with the adored Vicky, but they faithfully followed Stockmar’s instructions of not interfering with Birch and his tutors, while hovering very uneasily around what was clearly a major breakdown of the grandiose Plan. Birch had the great quality that Bertie deeply liked him, and the feeling was wholly returned. The Queen wrote that ‘I never felt at my ease with Birch. There always seemed to be something between us’, and one difference may be seen in Birch’s final report, which condemne
d the boy’s enforced segregation from his contemporaries, blamed his ‘peculiarities’ on this fact, and concluded that Bertie ‘will eventually turn out a good and, in my humble opinion, a great man’.

  Unhappily, matters deteriorated when Birch was replaced in 1852 by Frederick Gibbs, a lawyer and former Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Birch’s schedule of work had been formidable enough, but Gibbs immediately increased it, and added lessons in riding, drill, and gymnastics. Not altogether surprisingly, the condition of the subject did not improve.

  By this stage Albert and Victoria were becoming seriously troubled by the evident failure of the Plan. Their affection for Bertie was considerable, and he was to them a delightful, amusing, and charming son. In other circumstances they might have realised that his particular quality – and one not to be under-estimated – was a remarkable ability to get on with people, and a questing intelligence and understanding of humanity that marked him out as a truly precocious and exceptionally sensitive boy. But they could never forget that he was the future King of England, and while Prince Albert was tolerant and patient, the Queen kept comparing her young son unfavourably with her husband. And, in the Coburg background, there was the constant drum-beat of Stockmar’s high-flown estimates of what a Prince and future King should be. And thus, with the very best of intentions, and with an earnestness and love that is usually underestimated, the young parents laid the foundations of a grievous tragedy for themselves and their son.

  The greatest problem of all was Victoria’s ardent desire to see Bertie develop as a second Albert, and the realisation that the boy’s personality and intelligence were very different from those of his father was the principal cause of her acute disappointment. Immediately after his birth she had written to Leopold that ‘I hope and pray he may be like his dearest Papa’, and her impatience with him, which developed early and which was to endure throughout her life, were in contrast to Albert’s immense patience and care for his son. She never really deviated from the ambition expressed at Bertie’s birth that ‘You will understand how fervent my prayers and I am sure everybody’s must be, to see him resemble his angelic father in every, every respect, both in body and mind. Oh! my dearest Uncle, I am sure if you knew how happy, how blessed I feel, and how proud I feel in possessing such a perfect being as my husband, as he is, and if you think that you have been instrumental in bringing about this union, it must gladden your heart! How happy should I be to see our child grow up like him!’

  The father, despite many disappointments, became more realistic, and was evidently very pleased by a favourable report from Stockmar in 1860:

  That you see so many signs of improvement in the young gentleman is a great joy and comfort to us; for parents who watch their son with anxiety and set their hopes for him high are in some measure incapable of forming a clear estimate, and are at the same time apt to be impatient if their hopes are not fulfilled.

  Greville came to the view that the Queen ‘does not much like the child’, and there is strong supporting evidence for this view from other observers. Of Prince Albert’s devotion and determination to fulfil his view that education was the finest legacy a father could bequeath to his children – a remark which explains his devotion to his wayward father – there is no doubt, and throughout his life his son spoke of him with a love and respect that is evidence in itself. But Albert never wrote to his son as he did to Vicky when she married:

  I am not of a demonstrative nature and therefore you can hardly know how dear you have always been to me, and what a void you have left behind in my heart: yet not in my heart for there assuredly you will abide henceforth, as till now you have done, but in my daily life, which is evermore reminding my heart of your absence.

  By now the Prince of Wales had been joined in his education by Alfred, and Victoria noticed with concern that there were clear signs of exhaustion in her sons as a result of Gibbs’ regime. Dr. Becker, who taught the Princes German, was so worried that he sent Albert a long memorandum in January 1852, pointing out that Bertie’s fits of rage and surliness were a perfectly natural reaction to such a regime. ‘To anyone who knows the functions performed by the nerves in the human body’, he wrote, ‘it is quite superflous to demonstrate that these outbreaks of passion, especially with so tender a child as the Prince of Wales in his moments of greatest mental exhaustion, must be destructive to the child’. Unfortunately, Becker then, no doubt remembering the stern work ethic of his master, somewhat qualified his strictures, but added that what the Prince needed most of all was encouragement, and certainly not irony or mockery from his parents when he failed to meet their impossibly high standards. Thus, Gibbs, whom the Princes keenly hated, was permitted to continue on his course, and the wise warnings of Becker went wholly unheeded.

  That Prince Albert loved his son deeply is absolutely without question, as is his concern for his welfare and future. But there is also no doubt that Bertie had become a severe disappointment, and it is very significant that Becker protested at Albert’s use of irony or mockery in reprimanding him. Victoria wrote in her Journal that her son ‘had been injured by being with the Princess Royal, who was very clever and a child far above her age. She puts him down by a word or a look, and their mutual affection had been, she feared, impaired by this state of things’. Many years later she took up this matter again with Vicky, when she wrote (April 10th 1861) that ‘you did not quite set about making matters better, for you kept telling me all his most stupid and silly remarks (said as he too often does – without thinking – partly to tease you and partly to give vent to his temper) and enraged me, low and wretched as I was – greatly. If one wishes to pour oil and not to “keep the kettle boiling” one must not repeat everything another who irritates has said – else it of course makes matters much worse. He left on Monday. His voice made me so nervous I could hardly bear it’.

  The fact that his elder sister was clearly his father’s favourite, and that he was often the victim of his rebukes and sarcasm, clearly left its mark on his already faltering self-confidence.

  There was also the fact that the children could not fail to notice the occasional – but violent – explosions of anger between their parents, all the more frightening because they occurred so seldom but were so intense. Indeed, by selection of their sparse correspondence when in anger the wholly false portrait would be conveyed of an unhappy and indeed embittered marriage in which harsh accusations of selfishness and worse were exchanged with an alarming vehemence and passion. The reality was that they loved each other deeply – ‘My love and sympathy are limitless and inexhaustible’ Albert wrote to her after a particularly fierce difference in 1857 – but there were storms in which Victoria seemed to lose all self-control and would turn on Albert with a ferocity which made him write on one occasion to her that ‘Neither will I play the part of Greatheart and forgive, that is not at all how I feel, but I am ready to ignore all that has happened and take a new departure’ after another unhappy episode, and, after another, undated, but probably in 1861:

  You have again lost your self-control quite unnecessarily. I did not say a word which could wound you, and I did not begin the conversation, but you have followed me about and continued it from room to room. There is no need for me to promise to trust you, for it was not a question of trust, but of your fidgety nature, which makes you insist on entering, with feverish eagerness, into details about orders and wishes which, in the case of a Queen, are commands, to whomever they may be given. This is your nature; it is not against Vicky, but is the same with everyone and has been the cause of much unpleasant-ness for you. It is the dearest wish of my heart to save you from these and worse consequences, but the only result of my efforts is that I am accused of want of feeling, hard heartedness, injustice, hatred, jealousy, distrust, etc. etc. I do my duty towards you even though it means that life is embittered by ‘scenes’ when it should be governed by love and harmony. I look upon this with patience as a test which has to be u
ndergone, but you hurt me desperately and at the same time do not help yourself.

  The Prince brought to his task of Bertie’s education a remarkable enthusiasm and dedication. Throughout his eldest son’s childhood he was himself immensely busy, impressing everyone by his prodigious appetite for work and the extraordinary width of his interests and knowledge. And yet, every day, he would carefully study the daily report from Gibbs on his sons’ progress – or notable lack thereof – and discuss the problems earnestly with his wife. At no point that I can discover did he entertain serious doubts about his methods, although Stockmar did. In a fascinating comment to Gibbs, Stockmar described the Prince of Wales as ‘an exaggerated copy of his mother’, but that ‘you must make it the business of your life to do the best you can. And if you cannot make anything of the eldest you must try with the younger one’. In the event, Alfred was to prove an even worse candidate for the Stockmar-Albert experiment. Stockmar, indeed, began to harbour suspicions that the bad blood on the mother’s side was coming out in the sons, and particularly noted how the bad Dukes had taken ‘the greatest pleasure in making mischief – in giving pain to people and in setting them one against the other’. An effort to acquaint the boys with contemporaries at Eton was a dismal failure. Starved of companionship all their young lives, with virtually no friends, their bewildered shyness and lack of confidence manifested itself in such rudeness that the Provost of Eton complained strongly to Gibbs about their conduct. In later life the Prince of Wales admitted that he had been intolerant and suspicious in his youth, and too willing to make use of his position.