Prince Albert

by Robert Rhodes James

  On one matter he had to concede to defeat, although not without a spirited battle.

  Prince Albert’s loathing of the English Sunday had not diminished, and he and the Queen strongly supported a proposal for military bands to play on Sunday afternoons in Kensington Gardens. The opposition by what the Queen angrily depicted as ‘the incomprehensible blindness and mistaken piety of the so-called “Evangelical Saints” ’ made Ministers abandon the plan, fearful of defeat in Parliament, to the deep dismay of the Prince, whose hand is clearly seen in this letter from the Queen to Palmerston:

  She really thought that the disgraceful scenes in Hyde Park last year would have opened the eyes of those who act most injudiciously in thinking, by depriving the poor people from intellectual and innocent amusement on Sunday, they make them religious! It is very well for those people who have no hard work during the week to go two or three times to church on Sunday and to remain quiet for the rest of the day, but as regards the working classes the practice is a perfect cruelty.

  Throughout the detailed record of his activities, which remained awesome, his concentration upon the arts, the National Gallery, and the new scientific site at Kensington figure conspicuously, and especially his delight at the new appreciation of the popular importance of art in the great Provincial cities. But the condition of education continued to appall him, as did the continuance of child labour. Of the nearly five million children between the ages of three and fifteen in England and Wales, he pointed out in a speech to a national conference on education, nearly three million received no schooling or instruction whatever, and child labour was ‘an evil which lies at the root of the whole question’.

  Military affairs then supervened again, with the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny. His marriage had coincided with a war in Afghanistan and a great British disaster – redeemed the following year – he had had to endure the strains and abuse during the Crimean War, and now this most pacific and so well informed of men had his attention abruptly drawn to a quite unexpected, and particularly grim, war. ‘India’, he wrote, ‘is a torture to us both’. ‘The position of the Queen’s army is a pitiable one’, the Queen wrote to Palmerston, and she and Albert – principally the latter – returned constantly to the theme of naval and military weakness: ‘The Queen is relieved at seeing the Government now becoming anxious’, runs one letter to Palmerston. The successful ending of the Mutiny, after much bloodshed and misery, and which opened the way for the complete absorption of India to British rule, increased rather than diminished the Prince’s concern for the condition of the armed forces, and especially the lower ranks, still abominably treated in the eyes of himself and the Queen.

  At a time of passionate denunciations of Indian barbarism and calls for savage revenge uttered, as Lord Canning the Governor-General wrote to the Queen, ‘loudest by those who have been sitting quietly in their homes from the beginning, and have suffered little from the convulsions around them, unless it be in pocket’, he and the Queen strongly supported Canning’s policy of conciliation, for which he was much excoriated as ‘Clemency’ Canning. The hand of Prince Albert was very strong in the Royal Proclamation establishing the new administration of India, he and the Queen rejecting the Government’s draft and proposing another so that it ‘should breathe feelings of generosity, benevolence, and religious feeling, pointing out the privileges which the Indians will receive in being placed on an equality with the subjects of the British Crown, and the prosperity following in the train of civilisation’. And thus it was done, the Proclamation declaring that ‘we disclaim alike the right and desire to impose our [religious] convictions on any of our subjects’. The Queen wrote to Canning – now the first Viceroy of India – on December 2nd 1858 that ‘It is a source of great satisfaction and pride to her to feel herself in direct communication with that enormous Empire which is so bright a jewel in her Crown, and which she would wish to see happy, contented, and peaceful’.

  As has been emphasised, the Queen and the Prince were a team, and it is wrong to apportion credit or blame to either individually for their political actions unless there is clear evidence – as there often is – of the principal author. In this case they were both emphatically on the side of tolerance, justice, and forgiveness in India, and wholeheartedly in support of Canning’s generous instincts and policies while others were literally calling for blood. It was to their immense credit.

  The marriage of the Princess Royal depressed Prince Albert, parting from her ‘in tears and snowdrift’, and the references to tiredness, ill-health, and indisposition become regular in his own papers and those of the Queen. He escaped a typhoid epidemic at Windsor, but was plunged into gloom at its ravages, having, as the Queen noted, ‘a horror of fever’. ‘We are over head and ears in work, all kinds of business which is peculiar in that it never brings anything agreeable’, runs one letter in February 1859. ‘I am tired and dull’. states another. The birth of their first grandson – the future Kaiser Wilhelm – was a pleasure, and so were the visits to Balmoral. Osborne had become more formal and Court-like than he had intended, but Balmoral became a place of freedom and happiness.

  European politics continued both to fascinate and perplex him, and he was now immersed in plans for a repeat of the 1851 Exhibition, to be held in 1861, but then postponed to the following year. The dream of a united and liberal Germany never faded, in spite of all vexations and disappointments. His opening speech to the British Association for the Advancement of Science was widely regarded as a triumph. But the burdens remained intense, the programme of work immense and increasing, and he seemed unable to emerge from a mood of almost perpetual melancholy; the Queen considered that he took things ‘too much to heart’, and this was true. There was a visit to Coburg in the summer of 1860, when he was injured in a serious accident, and, on visiting The Rosenau with Ernest, suddenly wept, and told his brother that he would never see the scenes of his childhood again.

  He returned to England bitterly to ponder the duplicity of Napoleon, and the significance of reports of a large French naval building programme, urging upon Ministers a British programme of ironclads to ensure parity at sea. Of Napoleon he wrote that ‘he has been born and bred a conspirator’, and to Ernest that ‘May God forgive the man who wantonly between sleep and waking is bringing so much unhappiness into the world’.

  He had wisely noted in 1854 on the Emperor that ‘He is bound to keep the spectacle, and, as at fireworks whenever a pause takes place between the different displays, the public immediately grows impatient’. As Napoleon flirted with a Franco-Russian rapprochement against Austria, espoused Italian aspirations against Austria, advocating revision of the 1815 border treaties, and, while professing undying devotion to Britain, built up the French Navy and the Cherbourg fortifications, Prince Albert’s hostility grew more marked. To a courteous warning (April 28th 1857) about the effect on public opinion in France and England of a possible Franco-Russian pact, the Emperor replied ‘why disquiet oneself about the mistakes of public opinion?’

  He found serious difficulties in accepting the arguments of Palmerston and Russell that Britain should actively support Napoleon against Austria over the issue of Italian independence, once again a major European issue, and one that aroused much passion in England. Fearful of another unnecessary war, or at least responsibility for starting one, Prince Albert urged restraint, but although he complained of Palmerston that ‘He has taken towards the Crown quite his old position of 1851 before he was dismissed by Lord John, has again written pamphlets against me and the Coburg influence in order to bear down all opposition’, there was no serious rupture.

  Oppressed as he was by evidence of his continued unpopularity in certain circles, the paradox was that he was in fact generally now more highly regarded than ever. The Spectator, not a notably friendly journal, described him with admiration in 1857 as ‘the first gentleman in our commonwealth’. Alexis de Tocqueville, whose L’Ancien Regime et la Révolution
the Prince greatly admired, wrote after he had met the Prince Consort that ‘I have seldom met a man as distinguished’.

  In his speeches and memoranda on social questions he had to be careful not to cross the very thin line between expressing his genuine outrage and appearing to be condemning the Government of the day. But his outspokenness whenever he did speak on these matters was remarkable, and his obvious sincerity was beginning to give to the Monarchy that true populism which was to make it so trusted and even loved by people who were the victims of the worst effects of the British industrial and commercial revolution. Even in Ireland, the crowds were large and enthusiastic. Palmerston had become a complete convert, loud in his praises. The regular gunfire from The Times and Punch was now becoming more sporadic. In the small but increasingly influential world of the arts, architecture, literature and education he now had no critics of any consequence. He had reached, after so many tribulations, an extraordinary pinnacle of achievement and, for the first time since the brief interlude of 1851, real popularity as well as respect; as Leopold later wrote, ‘he had reached the difficult point of being fully acknowledged [for] what he was – the superior man of all’. It was true that there were many who still regarded him as dull and cold, and Walter Bagehot, a warm admirer, made a fair point when he wrote of Prince Albert that ‘he had not the knack of dropping seed without appearing to sow it’. There were also many who believed – and with strong justification – that his heart remained in Germany.

  But a remarkable change had occurred in perceptions of his real personality. This was partly the result of Palmerston, who now spoke of the Prince to his friends in politics and the Press with admiration and warmth, and as Palmerston had now reached a position of adulation unparallelled since the death of the Duke of Wellington, this was more important than it might otherwise appear. ‘His knowledge and information are astonishing’, Granville remarked, and Lady Ponsonby subsequently wrote that ‘The qualities of the Prince’s character would place him, I think, on a far higher level than those of his mind. Unselfish, patient, kind-hearted, truthful and just, one felt it was possible to rely upon him as upon a strong rock’. In a strange manner that defies historical analysis, this had become widely recognised and understood.

  There is, in reality, no mystery in this transformation. It often happens in modern politics that a man is characterised falsely, and it is when people actually meet him that a more true assessment is reached. Indeed, when that characterisation is inaccurately hostile, the counter-reaction is exceptionally strong. Not only artists and musicians found Albert an amusing and stimulating person, but the people who met him in the Isle of Wight and in the Highlands, on his walks and ‘expeditions’. His love of children, and his happiness in their company, was genuine and obvious. His wit tended to the sardonic, and his devastating mimicry was confined to the family circle; and although his regrettable enjoyment of puns (‘Richard Coeur de Cotton’ on Cobden was one example) was not universal, the remark of Lord Malmesbury that Prince Albert had ‘a great fund of humour quand il se déboutonne’ was well known in his ever-widening circle of acquaintances.

  This was the point. For twenty years he had travelled to most parts of the country, and the sneers had gradually faded when people actually met him. The British do not object to decency and ability, even though these qualities may make them uneasy. They certainly do not object at all to genuine achievement and courage, and after the assassination attempts the fact that the Queen and Prince went through the country, and in Ireland, virtually un-protected was not unnoticed. His wife was not an impartial commentator, but when she wrote that ‘my perfect and beloved Albert’ had ‘raised monarchy to the highest pinnacle of respect, and rendered it popular beyond what it ever was in the country’ her opinion was generally endorsed by the crowds and enthusiasm they experienced not only wherever they went together, but also when he went alone.

  But only he seemed unaware of this subtle but crucial change in his public fortunes. He found the spring of 1860, as he wrote to Vicky, tarnished and blemished by ‘some many things that remind me of the world of miserable men’, and went on:

  The donkey in Carisbrooke, which you will remember, is my true counterpart. He, too, would rather munch thistles in the Castle Moat than turn round the wheel at the Castle Well; and small are the thanks he gets for his labour.

  Prince Albert’s physical constitution had never been strong, and although weakness in childhood often proves a surprisingly poor guide to future health, in his case he was often unwell and never enjoyed the robust and remarkable constitution of his wife. Increasingly, he worked obsessively long hours, was impatient of meals, tired easily, took too much trouble over details, and cared too deeply over vexations, frustrations, and criticisms. Indeed, there is a clear connection between his severe stomach disorders and sleeplessness and moments of particular strain, of which that between the attacks on the Queen and himself over the prelude to the Crimean War and his physical illness at the time was only one example. In addition he had attacks of severe rheumatism which he described to Stockmar as ‘the long nights of sleeplessness and pain’. The Queen, who had been warned by the faithful and concerned Anson as early as in 1844 of the, even then, severe burdens upon his master, was sympathetic, and noted how he was ‘torn to pieces with business of every kind’, but like most people with excellent health she was often somewhat impatient with her husband’s weakness, as she had been as a girl at his habit of falling asleep after dinner and disliking late functions. She wrote to Vicky on February 13th 1861 when Albert was suffering from a raging toothache that ‘dear Papa never allows he is any better or will try to get over it, but makes such a miserable face that people always think he’s very ill. It’s quite the contrary with me always . . . His nervous system is easily excited and irritated, and he’s so completely overpowered by everything’.

  Now, private sadnesses such as the death of his devoted valet, Cart, affected him deeply. The international scene constantly depressed him, and with good reason. The immense work involved in the preparation of the Great Exhibition and its 1862 successor had taken a far greater toll than anyone fully appreciated. Stockmar was in Coburg, an old man. Albert’s narrow escape during the ill-fated Coburg visit had upset him very badly. His brother wrote that it was ‘only too evident on this occasion how greatly the Prince’s nervous system is shaken. When Stockmar . . . observed his deep despondency and melancholy, he said to me “God have mercy on us! If anything serious should ever happen to him, he will die” ’.

  This may have been the turning point. From this moment the references to his poor health and spirits in the Queen’s journals and the writings of himself and his staff are constant. In December 1860 he suffered from violent sickness, shiverings, and vomiting, an attack so serious that it caused his doctors considerable anxiety, and which may well have been – as he believed it to be – a mild attack of cholera. The death in a railway accident of his friend and doctor William Baly was a particular shock; his successor as Royal Physician was Dr. William Jenner, a very skilled doctor, but a stranger.

  The winter of 1860–61 was of exceptional severity, and Christmas Day recorded the lowest temperatures for fifty years throughout the country, and this followed a year of uniformly cold and bad weather. The Prince’s recovery from his illness was very slow, and was not hastened by the death of the Duchess of Kent in March 1861. Albert’s devotion to her, and the total reconciliation he had achieved between mother and daughter, in some respects one of his most remarkable achievements, made the event especially melancholy. The Queen recorded that ‘Albert lifted me up and took me into the next room, himself entirely melted into tears, which is unusual for him, deep as his feelings are, and clasped me in his arms. I asked if all was over; he said, Yes!’

  Victoria herself, overwhelmed by her loss, wrote with truth to Leopold that ‘Dearest Albert is dreadfully overcome – and well he may, for she adored him!’ Furthermore, as the Duchess’s sk
illed and loyal Secretary and Comptroller had died two weeks before her – an event that might well have hastened her own death – Albert became her sole executor. Thus was added another burden to many others, and Queen Victoria’s prolonged and intense grief meant even more attention to public affairs and papers. Little Prince Leopold caused his parents great and constant concern. Thus, it was a bleak, sad period, which must have seemed to the tired and unwell Albert a succession of misfortunes and tragedies. At what was to be his last official public appearance, the opening of the Royal Horticultural Show in London on June 5th – ‘this accursed thing’, the Queen called it – it was widely commented upon that he looked wan and exhausted. ‘Am ill, feverish, with pains in my limbs, and feel very miserable’, he commented. To Ernest he wrote in the summer that ‘I know that I dare not stop for a moment to relax. Like the hawk, I must not sleep, but be for ever on the watch’.