ON THE NURSERY LANDING at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight hangs a collection of portraits of the Coburg uncles and aunts of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. In contrast to the massive, door-sized portraits of her father’s family still on view in the Waterloo Room at Windsor Castle, these are smaller and more domestic in character, hung at child’s eye-level. They fit the space perfectly and are displayed in matching frames. One might assume they were painted specifically for the spot, which was Victoria and Albert’s first family home. There is no equivalent display of Victoria’s paternal ancestors, the Hanovers, in Osborne House. It was important to Victoria, as a young mother, that her children know their Coburg relatives and respect the heritage of their father. Victoria wrote to her Uncle Leopold following the birth of her first son: ‘I hope and pray he may be like his dearest Papa. He is to be called Albert and Edward is to be his second name.’ He must not be like her ‘wicked’ Hanoverian uncles.
King Leopold I of Belgium was the strongest influence on both Victoria and Albert for the whole of their lives. He was the younger brother of Victoria’s mother and Albert’s father (the Duchess of Kent and the Duke of Saxe-Coburg), both of whom encouraged and even depended upon Leopold’s influence on their children.
The youngest child of his generation, Leopold was a champion of the family’s influence, reputation and wealth. Using the skills imparted to him by his mother, he negotiated many of the marriages of his nephews and nieces into the major royal houses of Europe and beyond. He maintained a home in England and extensive British contacts. He corresponded with many foreign ministers. Belgium was ideally suited for stopovers and Leopold encouraged visitors. Even within the French royal family of his wife, Leopold saw himself as a leader, describing himself, curiously, as ce qu’on appelle la loi et les prophètes [One who calls himself the law and the prophets]. He saw himself as the peacemaker of Europe, something after Metternich, and maintained a huge correspondence in order to keep up with dynastic gossip and political events. Much of this information he passed on to Victoria and Albert.
In order to temper any perception of excessive Germanic or ‘foreign’ influences upon the Queen, Benson and Esher wrote in their introductory chapter that the Queen ‘instinctively formed an independent judgment on any questions that concerned her … [Her advisers’] opinions were in no case allowed to do more than modify her own penetrating and clear-sighted judgment’. They emphasised this point throughout the book. The picture that emerges from the letters themselves, however, is not so clear-cut. Time and again it is evident that Leopold, Albert, Lord Melbourne and various ministers sought to influence her decisions and direct her responses.
The correspondence between Leopold and Victoria was among the first that Benson read. He immediately recognised its richness and suggested that it could have been published on its own. Leopold and Victoria corresponded weekly, using both official and private messengers. They alerted each other when they were able to use private letter carriers, as this enabled them to write more candidly, and they often requested replies by the return of the same messenger. Other letters went through the Foreign Office mail systems of their respective countries, and privacy was not assured. They wrote even more frequently after Victoria became Queen.
Although the published letters give a very strong sense of Leopold’s influence, less than one tenth of the available correspondence was published, and the full character of their relationship was obscured. Throughout Victoria’s childhood, as it became more likely that she would become Queen, Leopold tutored her in the arts of sovereignty. He preceded Lord Melbourne in this role. During the first year of her reign, he advised her on the procedure to be followed immediately after the death of the King, and sent his old adviser and mentor, Baron Stockmar, to be on hand to guide her. He exhorted her to heed all of Lord Melbourne’s advice, which she dutifully did. He also facilitated close contacts between Victoria and her Coburg relations.
One of these was Ferdinand, a cousin of Victoria and Albert who had married the Portuguese queen, Dona Maria da Gloria II, in 1836. All four of these young people were students of Leopold’s ‘school’ of constitutional monarchy, and they corresponded with one another frequently. To Dona Maria, Leopold wrote:
It will do well, my dear Niece, to permit me from time to time to offer You services for which my sufficiently long experience in political affairs qualifies me perhaps more than anyone else.
Your Government will have a very difficult task, the unfortunate position of Spain complicates it moreover in a rather annoying way. The first and most urgent need [Your] State has is a capable ministry which can gain not only the confidence of Portugal but also [that of] the rest of Europe; public prestige rests on this confidence. The finances of the kingdom require quite particular care to be taken by the Government, the welfare of the monarchy may depend on it at some time. If the army and public service are not paid regularly, it will be difficult to count on their loyalty, and this loyalty is put in doubt, especially the army, the whole/overall security of the government ceases, and from one moment to the next may be overthrown.
Leopold, who prided himself on his scientific and pragmatic understanding of government (and of matters of the heart), also wrote a three-part treatise for Ferdinand on constitutional monarchy. On his way to marry Dona Maria in Lisbon, Ferdinand had stopovers in both Brussels and London. The then sixteen-year-old Victoria mentioned in her journal that Ferdinand had brought her a copy of a document that Uncle Leopold had prepared especially for him. Victoria referred to several sections of this treatise; one was ‘divided in headings of all the departments of Government’, while another was titled ‘Observations Générales’. The document, a fragment of which I found in Lisbon, is filled with frank advice. For example:
In days of old there existed a quite strict formality in Lisbon resembling to a great extent that of the Spanish Court. Modern customs have brought about some modifications in it but I believe that where a well established etiquette conforms to the country’s habits and customs, it is indispensable. It can become a means for the government of a country where, according to ancient traditions, one fiercely holds on to status and court favours. A rank quite clearly defined has the happy result of avoiding confusion of position in society which more or less dissatisfies everybody. In England where everybody’s status is fixed, this never raises these disagreeable disputes which often are the cause of lively hostilities, and I advise that the same system be followed in Portugal. That can be a little tiresome and even embarrassing sometimes: but these barriers are indispensable in a country where they have always existed and where informality could well lead to a lack of respect.
During Ferdinand’s visit to England, the young Princess Victoria was not thinking only about governance. She was very impressed by him and wrote long accounts in her journal of each of the days of his visit, from 17 March to 1 April 1836: ‘I think Ferdinand handsomer than [his younger brother] Augustus, his eyes are so beautiful, and he has such a lively, clever expression … when he speaks and when he smiles …’ He seemed so grown-up and knowledgable to the young Victoria, who had been starved of the company of people her own age. The correspondence between Victoria and Ferdinand began during this time but its frequency varied over the years. Benson and Esher included none of Ferdinand’s letters in the published volumes, in keeping with a more general decision to limit the Coburg correspondence.
The editors wanted the young Queen to seem naive and they may have believed her to be so. The intricacies of marriage negotiations were well known to Victoria, however, and love and romance of absorbing interest. Following her accession, King Leopold kept her up-to-date about marriages that were being brokered between the various European families: between Princess Clementine of France and various suitors; between Leopold’s niece, Victoire, sister of Ferdinand, and the Duke of Nemours; even between Augusta Cambridge and Albert’s brother, Ernest. The letters dealing with these negotiations, however, were not included. Such knowledge wou
ld affect the dramatics of the book; it was not consistent with the image of a sheltered young girl-queen. It would also highlight the foreign influences on Victoria, when the editors preferred to focus on her relationship with Lord Melbourne.
Benson and Esher did include many letters expressing the love and affection between Victoria and Leopold: ‘I was much moved with the expressions of truly felt affection which it [your last letter] contains …’; ‘We were so happy [being] with you, and the stay was so delightful, but so painfully short! It was such a joy for me to be once again under the roof of one who has ever been a father to me! I was very sad when you left us …’; ‘I have ever had the care and affection of a real father for you.’ Leopold frequently reminded Victoria that he had come to her mother’s aid when her father died suddenly in 1820. In 1853, when Victoria named her fourth son Leopold, she wrote touchingly to her uncle:
It is a mark of love and affection which I hope you will not disapprove. It is the name which is dearest to me after Albert, and one which recalls the almost only happy days of my sad childhood; to hear ‘Prince Leopold’ again, will make me think of all those days.
Leopold may well have wondered why he had to wait so long to be so honoured.
Benson and Esher subtly used Victoria’s correspondence with Leopold to illustrate that she was capable of warding off his influence. His advice to her sometimes bordered on the intrusive. For example, on 2 June 1838, Leopold complained that England had not supported Belgium in its recent struggle against Holland. Benson and Esher followed this with Victoria’s reply, in which she quoted the opinions of Lord Melbourne and Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston, setting out the reasons why England could not support Leopold. She softened the refusal by assuring him that England was always going to be a strong supporter of Belgian independence. But in this case, she explained, he should be using his influence to reconcile his people to the treaty with Holland, not to seek its constant revision.
The editors sought to show that Victoria embodied the British political position of the 1840s and 1850s – its strength, its fairness and its honour – in a way that would appeal to their 1907 readers. Although the letter was full of affirmations of Victoria’s affection for Leopold, the Queen asserted her right and responsibility to put British interests first. Their discussion of the issue continued into the following year, with Leopold quipping that he was pleased to have ‘extracted some spark of politics from your dear Majesty’. Victoria curtly advised him not to persist, as her ‘political sparks … might finally take fire … as this is one subject on which they cannot agree’. To emphasise the importance of the exchange, Benson and Esher also included a letter from Leopold written several years later, in which he reminded Victoria about their ‘row’ in 1838.
By omitting Leopold’s early letters and highlighting Victoria’s firmness over this issue, Benson and Esher downplayed the influence of this foreign king. In 1907, the true extent of Leopold’s involvement, and his role in her political education, was deemed too potentially sensitive for publication. The same did not hold true when it came to the other foreign man in Victoria’s life – Albert of Saxe-Coburg, her husband and Prince Consort.
Chapter 8
THE WELCOME FOREIGNER: PRINCE ALBERT
TIME AND AGAIN, IT has been observed by biographers how unlike his father Albert was. Born in 1819, Albert was the second son of his unhappily married parents, Ernest (Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld) and Louise. He was, as his biographer Hector Bolitho put it, ‘a stranger within a family where his father was repulsively dissolute, his mother sadly unfaithful and banished, and his brother destined to be heir to all their follies’. In many ways Albert was more like his Uncle Leopold.
The possibility that Albert was not the son of Duke Ernest was not mentioned by Benson and Esher, but David Duff has made a persuasive argument that Albert was conceived during Leopold’s sad visit to Coburg in December 1818. Leopold’s first wife, Charlotte, Princess of Wales, had died following the stillbirth of her first child, a son, in November 1817. Leopold was devastated. By Christmas the following year, Leopold was in Coburg visiting the already unhappy menage of Ernest, Louise and their firstborn son: it hurt him ‘almost beyond endurance’. Louise wrote home about Leopold, describing his kindliness to her and his handsome appearance. Cognisant of both his sadness and his sensibilities, she wrote, ‘He still feels with fervour what it means to be happy and loved.’ Albert was born in August 1819, nine months after Leopold’s visit. Theodore Martin, in his official biography of Prince Albert, quoted Duchess Louise on the special connection she perceived between Albert and Leopold on Leopold’s subsequent visits: ‘Albert adores his Uncle Leopold, and doesn’t leave him for a moment, he looks at him lovingly, kisses him all the time and is only happy when he is near him.’ ‘The attraction was reciprocal, and deepened with advancing years,’ observed Martin.
The Duke and Duchess divorced when Albert was five years old and the Duke remarried, to his much younger niece. This marriage ‘soon broke under the shadows of spite and infidelity. Nor did the stepmother bring any strength or happiness to the young princes …’ according to Hector Bolitho. The only women with whom Albert had any significant contact were his paternal grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Coburg, who died in 1831, and his maternal step-grandmother. From the age of four Albert saw his father only occasionally. He came to depend on his brother, Ernest, and on three male mentors: his tutor, Herr Florschütz; King Leopold; and Leopold’s adviser, Baron Stockmar. Florschütz continued to tutor Albert during his studies at Bonn University. Both Florschütz and Stockmar accompanied Albert on his travels to Brussels and Italy, and Stockmar joined him on his visit to England to meet Princess Victoria and, later, to marry her.
At the time of his marriage to Victoria, Albert’s foreignness had roused some suspicions, but Benson and Esher revealed no such qualms. In selecting and editing correspondence relating to the marriage and to Albert’s increasing influence, they created a relatively conventional narrative, in which the husband naturally asserted himself as head of his household. What they missed was the complexity of this transformation, and the extent to which both Victoria and Albert struggled to reconcile the roles of sovereign and spouse.
The ‘natural’ state of conjugal life, ‘be one Queen or not’, was that the husband must be head of the family. Hence an unresolvable dilemma – how could a young man of foreign birth, without rank or wealth, achieve his rightful place as husband when he was always to be a subject of his wife, the Queen? Victoria and Albert’s cousin Ferdinand, married to the Queen of Portugal, faced the same question, as Victoria wrote to Ferdinand in 1847: ‘Our positions, yours and Albert’s, and Maria’s and mine, are so similar, that we understand each other thoroughly.’ Ferdinand’s title of King, conferred upon him upon the birth of a male heir, overcame some of these problems. The title ‘Prince Consort’ was only conferred upon Albert seventeen years after his marriage, a delay which rankled both Victoria and Albert.
Although Victoria was Queen, she took her marriage vows to Albert very seriously, insisting that the word ‘obey’ be retained. This raised many questions, including political ones: as a wife, she was subject to her husband’s control – but Albert was legally her subject. Lord Palmerston recognised the dilemma of the young couple. He wrote to Lord Melbourne about it: ‘It seems impossible that [in this case] the husband can have over his wife those common and ordinary rights of authority.’
In the domestic sphere, Victoria attempted to establish Albert unequivocally as the head of the household, and Albert and his family expected this. In the week following their marriage Albert’s brother, Ernest, reported to their uncle Leopold on Albert’s ‘progress’. Albert had done the ‘correct thing’, Ernest wrote proudly, by not hesitating to speak his opinion. All orders about the household and stables were being directed through him and thus he had become ‘the great channel through whom the Queen’s will’ was expressed. And yet the household’s status, wealth and property, t
he defining elements of nineteenth-century masculinity, belonged to the Queen rather than to her husband.
The tensions between being womanly and being a reigning monarch had to be constantly renegotiated by Victoria herself. She wondered in January 1840: ‘What was a Queen anyway, if she had to reverse the laws of nature and put her husband below herself?’ Even after reigning for fifteen years, she still sought, unsuccessfully, to reconcile the role of Queen with her perception of womanliness:
We women are not made for governing – and if we are good women, we must dislike these masculine occupations; but there are times which force one to take interest in them mal gré bon gré [‘whether one likes it or not’] and I do, of course, intensely.
If we read ‘women’ as ‘wives’, that is: ‘We wives are not made for governing – and if we are good wives, we must dislike these masculine occupations,’ one aspect of her meaning becomes clearer. Although Victoria worried about this conflict, she also affirmed her strong inclination to do this unfeminine work. In response to Albert’s suggestion that their honeymoon should be longer than three days, Victoria reminded him: ‘You forget, my dearest Love, that I am the Sovereign and that business can stop and wait for nothing …’ Although Benson and Esher included these letters, there is no suggestion that they perceived Victoria’s dilemma. They included the letters and memoranda of Albert in order to illustrate the natural progression of a man and his wife; the husband assumed more and more of the public role, as his wife’s interests and energies necessarily devolved to the maternal and domestic.
What was a consort to a Queen? In formulating a role for himself, in some respects Albert had a tabula rasa; there had been no recent precedent, or at least no acceptable one. Both Albert and Victoria agreed that Queen Anne’s husband, that ‘stupid Prince George of Denmark’, could hardly serve as a model. Lord Melbourne wryly observed to Victoria that the consort of a queen was ‘an anomalous animal’, neatly encapsulating both the social irregularity of the position and its breeding aspect. As a man of his era, Albert would be much more than a male version of a queen consort. By 1850 he was able to explain to the Duke of Wellington (by then an elderly statesman) that to be the consort of the Queen
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