Prince Albert

by Robert Rhodes James

  Victoria wrote in her Journal on Albert’s birthday on August 26th that ‘Alas! so much is different this year, nothing festive; we on a journey & separated from many of our children. I am still in such low spirits’.

  The traditional autumn holiday at Balmoral was, as always, recorded by Queen Victoria in considerable detail, but in 1861 their anonymous and rather arduous expeditions were undertaken mainly in very wet and cold weather. ‘We had travelled sixty-nine miles today, and sixty yesterday’, the Queen wrote on October 9th. ‘This was the pleasantest and most enjoyable expedition I ever made; and the recollection of it will always be most agreeable to me, and increase my wish to make more!’ On the 16th, at the end of their travels, ‘which delighted dear Albert’, she wrote:

  The moon rose and shone most beautifully, and we returned at twenty minutes to seven o’clock, much pleased and interested with this delightful expedition. Alas! I fear our last great one!

  Normally, the Prince arrived at Balmoral tired and pale, yet recovered quickly and was enormously refreshed by the great ‘expeditions’ by day, the pleasure of staying at modest inns, the blessed anonymity, the deer stalking, the days of shooting, the meetings with the Balmoral tenants and farmers, and the careful examination of progress and change in the estate and in the Castle gardens. But for once the combination did not have its usual restorative effect. It was noticed that he had a poor colour and tired easily, while the Queen certainly did not. She commented rather briskly that her husband was ‘as usual desponding, as men really only are when unwell – not inclined himself ever to admit he is better’. On October 8th she wrote that ‘With the help of an umbrella, and waterproofs and a plaid, I kept quite dry. Dearest Albert, who walked from the time the ground became boggy, got very wet, but was none the worse for it’. This was doubtful. As they prepared to leave, John Brown wished them well, and expressed the hope that ‘above all, you may have no deaths in the family’. The Queen took this as a reference to her still-lamented loss of her mother, but subsequently regarded it as evidence of Brown’s gift of second sight.

  The Prince was also becoming very concerned about Bertie, who spent the Cambridge Long Vacation on a training course at the Curragh, near Dublin. His father had not been at all enthusiastic, but had reluctantly agreed. When he and the Queen went to Ireland on an arduous official visit in August and early September the Prince of Wales was marching in the review, but the reports on his progress by his commanding officers were unflattering, and indeed severe. But worse was to come. At the end of a riotous evening some friends smuggled a young actress called Nellie Clifden into his room. This incident could be regarded as harmless, had not Miss Clifden boasted of her conquest, flaunted it, and the rumours began to circulate. Stockmar heard of them, and Lord Torrington brought them to Prince Albert’s attention. They turned out to be only too true.

  The vehemence of Albert’s reaction has been ascribed too much by some biographers entirely to the state of his health. It was, admittedly, very poor. He was clearly also suffering from depression, increased by the sudden death from typhoid of the twenty-five-year-old King Pedro V of Portugal on November 8th. He had been particularly close to Prince Albert, who regarded him as a son; Albert was shocked and distressed. The distress cannot be underestimated. He wrote to Vicky on November 13th that Pedro ‘was qualified to effect infinite good for a degraded country and people, and also to uphold with integrity the monarchical principle and to strengthen the faith in its blessings, which unhappily is so frequently shaken to its foundation by those who are its representatives’. The Queen, probably rightly, discerned another factor when she wrote to Vicky (November 16th) that ‘It has been a terrible blow to us – and to dearest Papa, who found in him one entirely worthy of himself – which he, alas! does not find in those where it was most expected and wanted’.

  Nonetheless, Prince Albert’s reaction to his eldest son’s escapade was not entirely the result of these additional misfortunes.

  His son was the Heir to the Throne, and virtually engaged to be married. The fact that the story of Nellie Clifden was all over London and had even reached Coburg made it more than possible that it would become a public scandal which was bound to damage the Monarchy, and this was a poor return for the care and endeavour which his parents had devoted to him. Also, the achievement of making the Royal Family morally respectable and admired was now at hazard, and Albert was haunted by the perils of heredity – on his wife’s side by the amorality of her family, and on his own by the example of his father and brother, whose premarital sexual excesses and consequent venereal disease had made him impotent and his marriage childless, yet another frightening example very much in his mind. The precedents were, in brief, not heartening. And one should never forget his letter to Stockmar of January 6th 1846: ‘. . . the exaltation of Royalty is possible only through the personal character of the Sovereign. When a person enjoys complete confidence, we desire for him more power and influence in the conduct of affairs. But confidence is of slow growth’.

  Thus, he envisaged Nellie Clifden becoming pregnant, and, if his son denied paternity, seeing him taken to Court where ‘she will be able to give before a greedy Multitude disgusting details of your profligacy for the sake of convincing the Jury, yourself cross-examined by a railing indecent attorney and hooted and yelled at by a Lawless Mob! Oh horrible prospect, which this person has in her power, any day to realise! and to break your poor parents’ hearts!’

  This was a terrible letter of denunciation, written ‘with a heavy heart upon a subject which has caused me the greatest pain I have yet felt in this life’. That the letter is absolutely sincere is unquestionable, and he was right to be deeply worried by the public implications. It is much too severe to say that ‘on the subject of sex, the Prince Consort was unbalanced’,61 but the extent of his genuine horror was clearly at least partly the result of his ill-health, depression, over-work, and unhappiness. But the Queen’s reaction was even more intense: ‘Oh! that boy – much as I pity him I never can or shall look at him without a shudder’. It is significant that Bertie’s abject and heartfelt contrition made amends so far as Albert was concerned, but his mother was not to be so forgiving.

  Prince Albert was now in a condition of utter, and alarming, dejection, ‘low and sad’, as the Queen noted on November 14th. He had told Ernest in tears at Coburg that he would never see the countryside of their childhood again. Now he alarmed his wife by telling her that ‘I do not cling to life. You do, but I set no store by it . . . I am sure that if I had a severe illness I should give up at once, I should not struggle for life. I have no tenacity for life’.

  That this was the case is obviously true. Stockmar and Ernest had noted it with concern the previous year.

  As every doctor knows, there is such a thing as the will to live, which is medically unquantifiable but does exist and which does enable people to conquer illness which might otherwise be fatal. But its absence puts even the best physician at a severe disadvantage, and there is no question that by November 1861 Albert had lost the will to live. Perhaps it might have been but a phase which afflicts most people of sensitivity at some stage of their lives. It had been, after all, a terrible year, and constant ill-health, overwork, disappointment, difficulty in sleeping, and nervous strain would have brought low even the most optimistic of spirits. But Prince Albert’s personality at this time could not be described in this term, and one notices the absence of references in the Queen’s journals to the cheerfulness and enjoyment he had previously brought to their marriage and children. Vicky’s absence was certainly a major contributor to his melancholy, and his wife’s almost unnaturally lengthy period of grief and virtual retirement after her mother’s death cannot have helped. He became increasingly concerned by her constant dwelling upon what she called ‘a life sorrow’, which even the traditional Balmoral holiday failed to remove entirely. ‘For your Mama’, he wrote to Vicky, ‘who lives much in the past and future, perhaps m
ore than in the present, it is a spiritual necessity to cling to moments that are flown and to recollections, and to form plans for the future’. To her she wrote mournfully on August 26th that ‘I think so much of dearest mamma, and miss her love and interest and solicitude dreadfully; I feel as if we were no longer cared for’. Lord Clarendon commented to the Duchess of Manchester on the Queen’s ‘morbid melancholy’, and there are several indications of Albert’s impatience. Their love was not affected at all. ‘How many a storm has swept over our marriage’, he wrote to Stockmar, ‘and still it continues green and fresh and throws out vigorous shoots’.

  In this low condition of mind and body he went to Sandhurst on November 22nd to inspect the buildings for the new Staff College and Royal Military Academy. This was another product of his imagination and zeal, and another monument to the extraordinary width of his interests and concerns. But it was a day of pouring rain and cold – ‘entsetzlicher Regen’ (‘terrific rain’) he wrote in his diary; he returned to Windsor wet, cold, and complaining of rheumatic pains. He contracted a severe feverish cold, and found great difficulty in sleeping at all. On November 24th he wrote in his diary: ‘Am full of rheumatic pains, and feel thoroughly unwell. Have scarcely closed my eyes at night for the last fortnight’. Nonetheless he journeyed to Madingley on November 25th for what he regarded as an essential, if painful, meeting with Bertie. On a bitterly cold day he walked for a long time with his son. He returned again utterly exhausted and ‘greatly out of sorts’. ‘Bin recht elend’ (‘Am very wretched’) his diary records. The Queen wrote to Vicky on the 27th that ‘I never saw him so low’.

  But his last meeting with his son had given pleasure to both. Albert was impressed by Bertie’s genuine contrition and his refusal to name the officers who had been responsible for his disgrace. ‘It would have been cowardly to sacrifice those who have risked them-selves for you, even in an evil deed’, his father wrote approvingly. ‘We did not intend to prosecute the inquiry into their detection . . . The past is past. You have to deal now with the future’. In this loving letter, the last he wrote to Bertie, he said:

  You must not, you dare not, be lost. The consequences for this country, and for the world, would be too dreadful!

  Jenner became seriously concerned, but at this point the trouble seemed to be a classic combination of a feverish cold, utter exhaustion, and nervous strain.

  But the burdens of State remained as onerous as ever, and the width of his interests and concerns still remained remarkable, the Horticultural Society, the plans for the 1862 Great Exhibition, the merits of the breech-loading rifle – ‘As for Prince Albert’s rifle mania’, Cobden declared, ‘that is pure Germanism in the disguise of British patriotism’ – the future of the Volunteers, the condition of the Government, his profound worries over another wave of intense anti-German feeling in the English Press – notably The Times – the problems of Prussia, and the American Civil War that had opened in January and now threatened to involve England. In his last letter to Stockmar he wrote: ‘How are you? It is useless to ask, for you will not answer, yet an answer I should very much like to have. To be forced to be so wholly without interchange of thought with you is to me a great privation’.

  The American Civil War had brought considerable public and political support for the Confederacy in England, and in November the British Government, informed that there was a possibility of the British ship Trent being boarded by a Federal warship to remove representatives of the Confederacy voyaging to England, warned the American Minister – Charles Francis Adams – of the serious implications of such an action. Nonetheless, the action was taken, and when the Trent arrived at Southampton and the story became known the public and Parliamentary reaction was of an intensity only too reminiscent of the mood just before the Crimean War.

  Palmerston and Russell62 responded to this mood by preparing a memorandum listing a series of demands of the Northern Government, which if not acceded to in full would result in the severing of diplomatic relations within seven days. Furthermore, the Admiralty issued instructions to the Navy which could only be interpreted as preparations for war.

  Ill though he was, the Prince saw the incendiary nature of the Trent memorandum, but he also saw a possible escape. Two of the passengers on the Trent averred that the boarding officer had said he was doing so on his own initiative, without instructions from Washington. Using this, Prince Albert prepared for the Queen a masterpiece of diplomatic and political sense. The main point of the British protest – which was quite justifiable – was not abandoned, but the Americans were given the opportunity of expressing their regrets and freeing the four passengers ‘with suitable apology’. Palmerston and Russell at once agreed to the vital changes in language and tone, and the Americans gladly seized the compromise. It is hardly to exaggerate that a totally unnecessary major crisis was thereby averted, which could easily – indeed, almost certainly – have resulted in conflict.

  The episode was instructive and important for other reasons. The first was that the Queen had been as vehemently outraged by the American action as had her Ministers, and had no disagreement at all with the belligerent memorandum, whose theme she warmly endorsed. The Prince Consort was swiftly able to persuade her that she was wrong, and that the policy must be changed. Then, the Government, so fiercely warlike, succumbed to his reason with immediate agreement. Never was Russell’s tribute to Albert – ‘an informal but potent member of all Cabinets’ – so totally justified. It was an extraordinary example of the extent to which the reality of his influence and power had expanded since the Crimean War, to the point when he could now overturn the policy of Ministers, the attitude of the Queen, and the surge of Press opinion. It was to be his last, but one of his greatest, services to his adopted country.

  Prince Albert had been so unwell when he prepared the Queen’s proposals on the Trent memorandum that he could hardly hold his pen. His illness now gathered, and now the Queen became seriously worried for the first time, although, on December 4th she wrote to Leopold that his ailment was only ‘a regular influenza, which has pulled and lowered him very much . . . you know how he is always so depressed when anything is the matter with him’. The doctors were not alarmed, but when he calmly told her that he would not recover a knell sounded. To Princess Alice he simply said that he was dying. On December 9th Sir Henry Holland and Dr. Thomas Watson joined the team. Palmerston, who was very worried indeed, urged additional medical advice, and although the Queen curtly dismissed the suggestion she wrote in her Journal that she was in ‘an agony of despair about my dearest Albert and crying much, for saw no improvement & my dearest Albert was so listless and took so little notice’. On December 5th she wrote that ‘he did not smile, or take much notice of me, but complained of his wretched condition, and asked what it could be, and how long this state of things might last . . . His manner all along was so unlike himself, and he had sometimes such a strange wild look’.

  Two bad days and nights followed, and Phipps reported to Palmerston on December 7th that his situation had deteriorated and ‘that it requires no little management to prevent her from breaking down altogether’. Palmerston, who had considerable regard for Watson, urged Phipps on December 10th to seek additional advice at Watson’s discretion: ‘This is a matter of the most momentous national importance, and all considerations of personal feeling and susceptibilities must absolutely give way to the public interest’.

  The decline now became remorseless. There seemed to be a slight improvement on the 10th and 11th, but on the 12th Phipps warned Palmerston by telegram and letter by special messenger that the situation was now grave; they came upon Palmerston, in his own words, ‘like a thunderbolt’.

  After wandering around the Windsor corridors in his thick quilted dressing gown, Albert had now settled into the Blue Room, an ominous choice, as it was in this room that both George IV and William IV had died. The doctors told the Queen that the cause of the illness was ‘great
worry and far too hard work for long’, and that ‘the fever must run its course’. The patient was restless, feverish, and irritable. His mind was now fitfully wandering, and he believed that he was back at The Rosenau. The Queen wrote: ‘I went to my room & cried dreadfully & felt oh! as if my heart must break – oh! such agony as exceeded all my grief this year. Oh God! help me to protect him!’

  Dr. Watson had at once realised that Albert was very ill indeed, and the first public bulletin was issued to state that the illness was ‘of a more serious nature than was at first anticipated’. It is not clear whether Watson, who enjoyed a deservedly high reputation, had yet diagnosed that he had typhoid fever, although a reference to the fact that ‘the malady is very grave and serious in itself’ points to the possibility that he suspected.

  After what appeared to be a slight improvement, the patient’s condition abruptly declined. The Queen became distraught outside his room, but calm and loving inside it. Bertie was summoned – not by his mother but by his sister Alice – and the family gathered.63