Childhood at Court, 1819-1914 (12 page)

Almost as spectacular as these performances was a
tableau vivant
performed in February 1854 on their parents’ fourteenth wedding anniversary, based on James Thomson’s nineteenth-century blank verse epic
The Seasons
. Alice was Spring, scattering flowers as she delivered her speech. The Princess Royal was Summer with Arthur asleep among the cornsheaves, Alfred was Autumn, dressed as Bacchus in a leopard skin and crowned with grapes, and the Prince of Wales represented Winter, as an old man with a long white beard, his cloak covered with snow and icicles hanging from his hat, while Louise accompanied him in a Russian costume, sitting before a fire. At the closing scene, they gathered in a group with Helena appearing in clouds in a white robe, holding a cross. She delivered a speech in verse composed for the occasion, in which she proclaimed herself as Christ-loving Helena who had come to bless ‘this auspicious day and tender their homage to their parents’.

After it was over, Prince Albert called to them to come out and jump down from the stage. The curtain was drawn up, but one of them remarked sadly, ‘We can’t get through the atmosphere’, the gauze behind which they were acting. The gauze was pushed aside, and the Queen was so shocked at Arthur’s scanty clothing that she sent him away to be dressed, despite an assurance by the nurse that he was wearing ‘flesh-coloured decencies’. He was brought back a few moments later, the only apparent difference being a pair of socks that hardly came above his ankles.
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In this aspect, at least, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were indeed typical Victorians. They might have been at pains to ensure that their children were well versed in language and literature, but where sex was concerned they took the customary nineteenth-century view. There was time enough for the children to find out when they were married – but not before.

Though the Queen found the stares of her elder children at her expanding figure disconcerting during her last two pregnancies, neither she nor Prince Albert were in a hurry to take the bull by the horns and explain to them exactly why. His insistence that their two elder sons should be physically and mentally exhausted after a day with their tutors, and his close supervision of the mixing with boys at Eton, were probably a consequence of his vain intention to keep impure thoughts at bay. That he himself was the one paragon of sexual virtue in a family of rakes, and that Queen Victoria’s uncles and aunts had hardly set an example of saintly living to the nation, apparently eluded him.

The human body was a fit subject to be idealized in art, and art alone. For his thirty-first birthday, Queen Victoria presented her husband with a large painting by Winterhalter,
Florinda
, based on a scene from medieval Spanish literature in which a girl and her maidens in a palace garden, removing their clothes to bathe, were watched by Rodrigo, King of the Spanish Visigoths. With its generous portrayal of voluptuous nudes, Queen Victoria recorded in her journal (3 April 1852) that it was ‘a most lovely picture containing a group of beautiful women’.
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Naked flesh in the canvases of Winterhalter and William Dyce (whose large fresco of
Neptune resigning the Empire of the Seas to Britannia
, commissioned by Prince Albert, displayed several naked allegorical figures on the walls at Osborne), and statues in the classical tradition, were permitted, but that was all. The Princes and Princesses were not allowed to stay in the same room as each other without an adult being present, presumably in case they discovered anything unseemly. Once they had outgrown infancy, none of them ever saw their mother in bed until her last few months, when she was too elderly and infirm to care.

Some of her daughters, if not her sons, apparently inherited this prudery. As a young adult Vicky, three times a mother, could write modestly to her own mother (30 October 1862) that at Palermo she and her husband had seen children and young men who ‘seem to dispense with clothing as much as possible. I saw some approaching a state of nature which made one rather shy to look at.’
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Nevertheless, she and Alice were less squeamish than their mother, particularly when the ravages of war in Germany during the 1860s called on them to help nurse the wounded. Alice’s keen interest in human anatomy, albeit for medical reasons, revolted the Queen, who declared firmly that such matters were far too indelicate for the female mind and eye.

Most of the children had been too young to appreciate the significance of the year of revolutions. The first public event which really made an impact on them was the death of the Duke of Wellington in September 1852. Though he was aged eighty-three, his demise was scarcely unexpected, but the Queen, her family and the nation were likewise plunged into deepest mourning for their national hero. Two-year-old Arthur wandered around sadly for weeks, talking about ‘The Duke of Wellikon, little Arta’s godpapa’, while according to the Duchess of Kent’s lady-in-waiting, Lady Augusta Bruce, ‘The Queen has felt it
deeply
, and all the dear children enter into it with the heart and comprehension they have, the darlings.’
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Eighteen months later, Britain and France were at war with Russia. The Crimean War lasted two years, and for the children it was their first experience of what war meant to a belligerent nation. Vicky and Alice accompanied the Queen on hospital visits, and were moved by the physical suffering and mutilation they witnessed. When Lord Raglan paid a brief visit to Buckingham Palace, Vicky seized his arm, entreating him to ‘hurry back to Sebastopol and take it or else you will kill Mama’. Lord Cardigan was invited by the Queen to Windsor Castle on his return from the Crimea after the charge of the Light Brigade. All the children (except Leopold, not yet aged two) were enthralled when he showed them a watercolour of the event, and related his experiences at first hand.*

The Patriotic Fund for the dependants of soldiers fighting in the Crimea, set up soon after the outbreak of war, also provided the children with a practical means of helping the war effort. In April 1855 an exhibition of paintings by amateur artists was staged at the Bond Street premises of the picture dealer Ernest Gambart. An instant success, it was transferred to Burlington House, Piccadilly, the following month, where it remained until July.

The Queen had given permission for her children to contribute work, and pride of place went to the Princess Royal’s striking watercolour,
The Field of Battle
. She had originally intended to show a wounded Greek warrior attended by a maiden, but on the suggestion of Edward Corbould, official instructor in drawing and watercolour painting to the royal children, she substituted a British grenadier for the warrior. The
Illustrated London News
art critic described it as ‘by far the best drawing in the room. . . . The composition is artistic, the sentiment poetic, and the execution spirited.’
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It sold for 250 guineas at an auction in aid of the fund, and prints in chromolithography were sold for one guinea each. The Prince of Wales contributed a drawing of a knight in armour, which realized 55 guineas, while pictures by Alfred of
The Prince of Wales, afterwards Henry V
, Alice of
Prayer
, and Helena of
Girl asleep
, went for 30 guineas each.

Much of the credit for their drawing went to Edward Henry Corbould, who had been appointed their instructor in drawing and painting in watercolours in 1852. His skill in drawing, and inspiration for the children to copy his work before they were ready to produce their own original compositions, was not to be underestimated.

In April 1855 Napoleon III and Eugenie, Emperor and Empress of the French, paid a state visit to England. The children were unaccustomed to such ‘bustle, excitement and expectation’. Bertie in Highland dress was not intimidated, but ‘Vicky with very alarmed eyes making very low curtsies’.
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Although there were several private discussions about state business and the progress of the war, the Emperor and Empress had been thoughtful enough to bring a generous collection of presents for the children, as Affie recorded in his journal:

. . . to Vicky the Emperor gave a picture of a dog in tapestry – to Alice a peepshow which had some views of Paris in it, besides some very pretty landscapes. To Lenchen and Louise a large doll nearly as large as themselves, and a large box of games. To Arthur two tables full of soldiers – to Leopold two figures – a lady playing on a guitar – a doll which is wound up and moves its hands, and a Hussar and Vivandiere of his own regiments, which waltz and both run round the table and play; and to Bertie and me each a small cannon in imitation of the one which he invented himself.
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When the family found out – almost by accident – that the Emperor’s birthday fell a day or two later, he was particularly touched when Arthur presented him with two violets, the flower of the Bonapartes.

In August 1855 the Queen, Prince Albert and the two eldest children accompanied their parents on a visit to Napoleon III’s court at Paris. Vicky found the palace of Versailles breathtaking in its luxury, particularly as she had her own bedroom, from which a little door with white satin curtains opened on to a miniature garden scented with orange trees, and a splendid panoramic view of Paris greeted her gaze. At home, she always had to share a room with Alice.

Bertie, in a kilt, took the French by storm. His early experience of the French court was nothing short of a revelation, and he returned to England with his head full of the glittering imperial court, which made the entertainments at Buckingham Palace drab by comparison. He begged to be allowed to stay in Paris a little longer, asserting that he and his sister would not be missed, as ‘there are six more of us at home’.

They were at Balmoral in September 1855 when they received the eagerly awaited news that Sebastopol was in the hands of the Allies, and there were celebrations, with the lighting of a bonfire, dancing to music provided by Her Majesty’s piper, a veteran Highland soldier, and naturally several toasts in whisky. The children were allowed to share in the excitement, as the Queen recorded in her journal: ‘The whole house seemed in a wonderful state of excitement. The boys were with difficulty awakened, and when at last this was the case, they begged leave to go up to the top of the cairn.’
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Four months later, Florence Nightingale was invited to Balmoral. Vicky had been allowed to read the newspapers, and studied the war reports eagerly. She asked about the fever, the cholera, cold and conditions generally, questions which Miss Nightingale answered plainly and directly. Prince Albert was much impressed with the interest his daughter was showing, way beyond her tender years.

In Victorian times, confirmation generally marked the end of childhood. Queen Victoria recorded the Princess Royal’s confirmation on 20 March 1856, telling King Frederick William of Prussia that ‘She has made her vow before the altar to follow the difficult road of life as a believing Christian.’
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In a sense, Vicky’s childhood had come to an end some six months earlier. She was still only fourteen on 29 September 1855, when she became betrothed to the handsome Prince Frederick William of Prussia, ‘Fritz’ to the family. Her parents had not meant to announce the news until the time of her confirmation, though it leaked out almost at once, mainly through the indiscretion of her uncle Ernest, Duke of Coburg. In spite of this, the other children were not told until the following spring. Alice, ‘who had no suspicion of such a thing, was told first,’ the Queen wrote to Princess Augusta of Prussia, Fritz’s mother (8 April 1856). ‘She shows a touching love for her sister and tears come into her eyes when she speaks of it. Then the two boys and Lenchen were told. Bertie was particularly pleased about it and wrote to Fritz immediately. Alice will write to him today.
The missing Louise
and Arthur are to know nothing about it at present as they would not understand.’
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One thing leads to another, and it was evident that the Queen did not wish natural curiosity to lead to uncomfortable questions too soon.

In the younger generation, there would be betrothal and marriage; in the older generation, death. The first family bereavement which affected the children at all was the passing of Queen Victoria’s half-brother, Prince Charles of Leiningen. Though they hardly knew him, the elder ones were expected to take their part in the due solemnity of mourning. He was incapacitated after a severe stroke, news of which overshadowed Bertie’s fifteenth birthday, as he recorded in a letter to Miss Hildyard (12 November 1856):

I thank you very much for the kind letter I received from you yesterday which I could not answer till today, I spent a very happy birthday, but unfortunately on account of dear Uncle Charles’ illness nothing could be done, there was no ‘feu-de-joie’, no shooting or hunting, no dancing, or even musick [sic].

I fear every day we get worse news, and dear Mama has given up all hope for his recovery, it is very sad is it not, and just at this time for our two birthdays.
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Prince Charles died the following day, and court mourning doubtless made Vicky’s birthday almost as gloomy as that of her brother.

On 14 April 1857 the Queen went into labour for the ninth and last time. A fifth daughter, christened Beatrice Mary Victoria Feodore, was born at 1.45 p.m.

‘Mother and baby are well,’ Prince Albert wrote to Princess Augusta of Prussia the following day. ‘Baby practises her scales like a good prima-donna before a performance, and has a good voice! Victoria counts the hours and minutes like a prisoner. The children want to know what their sister is to be called, and dispute which names will sound best, and Vicky says with a sad sigh, “The little sister will never have known me in the house.”’
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* Restoration work carried out in 1990 showed that the wood used was Pinus strobus, a long-leafed pine found in North America. One of the European pines would have been more usual in a native Swiss or German building.

*A group portrait of Lord Cardigan, the Queen, Prince Albert and their children at Windsor, was painted by James Sant. So persistent were the growing scandals and controversy surrounding Cardigan that the Queen commanded that her portrait should be painted out.
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