Childhood at Court, 1819-1914 (15 page)

The Queen confessed that she was almost totally dependent on Beatrice. When Vicky wrote to send her good wishes for her youngest sister’s fifth birthday, the Queen referred to her as ‘the only thing that keeps me alive, for she alone wants me really’.
²³

The artistic Louise, only thirteen years old, produced a series of haunting tributes in watercolour to her father. The first, painted for the Queen’s wedding anniversary in February, portrayed a sleeping figure in bed – presumably the Queen herself – and, in an ethereal haze above, a vision of her reunion with the Prince Consort. Three months later, she presented the Queen on her birthday with another bedside scene in which she was accompanied by two of her daughters, while a group of three angels looked down on them. The whole was inscribed ‘Blessed are they that mourn, For they shall be comforted.’ For the first anniversary of her father’s death, Louise painted a picture of Mary Magdalen and an angel outside the open tomb. Such pictures, which were presumably in the nature of set pieces suggested by Corbould, helped to soothe the Queen in the first months of her overwhelming grief.

Princess Alice’s wedding on 1 July was held in the dining-room at Osborne, converted into a temporary chapel for the purpose. Helena, Louise and Beatrice were among the bridesmaids at the little ceremony which, the Queen admitted, was more like a funeral than a wedding. Affie sobbed bitterly throughout the service, and after the bride and groom left, Arthur solemnly announced that when he married, ‘I shall bring my wife home to live with us all, and we shall eat our own cake.’
²⁴
Maybe he had taken the Queen’s mournful words about Alice going to make her home in Germany to heart; at any rate, he must have deplored the absence of wedding cake.

A
new generation of royal children was growing up at court, overlapping with the old. Princess Beatrice was twenty-one months old when she became an aunt in January 1859 with the birth of Prince William of Prussia. On one of his early visits to England, the boy was most amused to find that his little aunt was called ‘baby’ by the family. Affronted at his copying them, she told him firmly that he must call her aunt. Time after time he refused, before giving in with bad grace. ‘Aunt
Baby
then!’

When he attended the wedding of his uncle Bertie to Princess Alexandra (‘Alix’) of Denmark, on 10 March 1863, he soon became bored. His uncles Arthur and Leopold, like him clad in Highland dress, had been put in charge of him. When he got the cairngorm out of the head of his dirk and threw it across the floor, his small uncles remonstrated, whereupon he bit them in the legs. In view of Leopold’s haemophilia, such behaviour could have been dangerous, but as Leopold showed no ill-effects the ‘bite’ was obviously not very deep.

At the same time Beatrice made an interesting, if slightly alarming discovery while being taken for a ride round Windsor. Turning to Lady Augusta Bruce, she exclaimed in a shocked tone of voice, ‘Guska, I never thought there was
stays
in shops.’
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On the subject of her brother’s wedding, she had evidently learnt from her mother that such occasions were not to be regarded as a subject for rejoicing. She did not like weddings, she said, and would never get married herself. She would stay with Mama.

At the time of her brother’s wedding, Alice was eight months pregnant. Denied the chance to be with Vicky at any of her confinements or even christenings, Queen Victoria was determined that with her second daughter it should be different. On 5 April Alice gave birth to a daughter, appropriately named Victoria. Their sister’s ‘interesting’ condition was a source of wonder to Helena and Louise who were still considered not old enough to know, although they may have guessed something of the sort when their mother was growing large before the appearance of Beatrice. It has been suggested that they were vaguely aware of their mother’s jealousy of Alice’s condition, that she could not have another child herself, and that to some extent this new grandchild was a child-substitute.

Princess Victoria of Hesse and Prince William of Prussia were always among the Queen’s favourite grandchildren, although the latter – in childhood as well as in imperial splendour, thirty years hence – was notorious for his mischievous behaviour. When William Powell Frith was painting his officially commissioned portrait of the Prince and Princess of Wales’s wedding later that year at Windsor Castle, the four-year-old Prince gave him endless trouble. ‘Mr Fiff,’ he told the artist, ‘you are a nice man, but your whiskers –’. Helena immediately came and put a firm hand over his mouth. Struggling free, he repeated himself more loudly, ‘Your whiskers –’. His aunt stopped him again, blushing but unable to stop herself laughing. She led him to the other side of the studio and gave him a gentle lecture on good manners.

‘The little imp’, as Frith called him, was fascinated by watching the picture of ‘Uncle Wales’s wedding’ gradually taking shape. In an attempt to keep him quiet Frith allowed him to paint a small picture on one corner of the canvas, about a foot square. All was peaceful for some time, until the nurse came in and caught sight of the boy. ‘Look at his face!’ she exclaimed in horror. ‘What has he been doing to it?’ He had been wiping his brushes on it, richly decorating himself with uneven streaks of bright colour. Assuring her that he could easily remedy the situation, Frith grabbed him with one hand and rubbed turpentine into his face with the other. A small amount got into a scratch on the Prince’s skin, and he screamed as he struck the artist as hard as his fist would allow. Bellowing ‘You nasty Mr Fiff!’, he hid under the table and shrieked until he was exhausted. For the rest of his stay at Windsor that month, he took his revenge on Frith by sitting so badly that the latter failed to produce anything more than a vague likeness.
²

By this time Prince Arthur was living at the Ranger’s House, Blackheath. The idea had evidently been either that of the Prince Consort, or had received his sanction, otherwise Elphinstone would have almost certainly found it impossible to put into effect in the face of the Queen’s somewhat grudging assent. The governor had seen with concern not only the harmful effect that isolated life at court would have on the boy’s character, but also how wrong it was for the child to remain in such an atmosphere of gloom. In the autumn of 1862, with Elphinstone as comptroller, Mr Jolley as tutor, and Mr Collins as valet, Arthur settled into his new home just inside Greenwich Park. This remained the Prince’s headquarters for nearly nine years, until the summer of 1871, when he was twenty-one. Apart from a year’s military service in Canada at the age of nineteen, and occasional visits elsewhere in England and to Europe, he stayed mainly at Blackheath. There were regular breaks at Balmoral, Osborne and Windsor at birthdays and Christmas, but in view of the Queen’s prolonged mourning, these must have been duty visits rather than occasions of great enjoyment.

One of the first letters written by Elphinstone after their arrival assured Her Majesty that every room had a thermometer, and he would personally see that a temperature of 60°F was never exceeded; and he would report on his charge’s progress every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
³

Elphinstone took his duties conscientiously, as indeed he needed to. In theory it was his duty to write three times a week to the Queen, reporting in detail on Prince Arthur’s doings. In practice he wrote far more often than this. If they were travelling, or if the Prince was ill, letters might be sent to the Queen twice a day, often written long after midnight.

The Queen stressed that her son’s natural kindliness must not be spoiled by selfishness or cynicism; he must always put the welfare of others before his own, and realize that as a prince his life would not be one of mere pleasure but of service to his country. She was afraid that, living so much away from home, ‘he should become a
stranger
to that sad and fatherless home and be as
reserved
as alas, for the last 6 or 7 years our elder sons have been and still are’.
⁴

Elphinstone was quick to reassure her that this would not be the case, and that being at Greenwich would not increase the boy’s self-importance as much as being at court, where deference and admiration were shown to him daily if not hourly: ‘Here on the contrary he walks about without being taken notice of, frequently jostled by workmen returning to their work.’
⁵

Pocket money was not unlimited. One Christmas he wanted to give Louise a rather special present. Two teeth of a stag he had shot were sent to Garrard the jewellers, to be mounted into a butterfly-shaped brooch. ‘He had been told at Balmoral that the expense of so doing would not exceed what he could afford out of his very small allowance of pocket money. It is unnecessary to state that the allowance is not sufficient to cover the expense, although very little in itself.’
⁶

Living in London meant it was possible for Prince Arthur and Elphinstone to visit museums and exhibitions on a regular basis. The Crystal Palace had just been removed from its original home in Hyde Park to Sydenham, not far from Greenwich, and many afternoons were spent there.

It was not a case of ‘all work and no play’. The Prince found a merry-go-round and begged his comptroller to be allowed to try it. After hesitating, and deciding that nobody would recognize the Prince, Elphinstone reluctantly gave his approval. In telling the Queen, he remarked a little cravenly that ‘he thought Your Majesty would not object, the circumstance not being likely to occur again’. He worried too much, for the Queen assured him she was ‘much rejoiced that our dear little Darling was so
much
amused at the Crystal Palace, as she knows how much the beloved Prince would rejoice at his dear children being happy’.
⁷

This was the age of the London fair with, in the words of Arthur Bryant, ‘its rows of booths hung with dolls, gilt gingerbreads and brandy balls, its raree-shows and performing pigs, its giants and its dwarfs,’ where apprentices and boys ‘pushed about with whistles, penny trumpets, false noses and rolled twopenny scrapers . . . down the backs of their elders’;
⁸
while the park was filled with youngsters playing traditional games like kiss-in-the-ring, riding donkeys, or turning somersaults down the hill. Prince Arthur, it may be assumed, would have been ‘much amused’ at these sights, even if Queen Victoria might have frowned on him doing much more than observing them at a safe distance.

As in the case of his two elder brothers, Arthur suffered from the lack of suitable companions. Elphinstone was concerned that acquaintance with a small number of boys would ‘create a closer intimacy than might be advisable at Prince Arthur’s present age unless one is
perfectly
acquainted with the character of the boys’.
⁹
Nevertheless there were games of football with Mr Jolley and some of the servants, ‘most respectable men from whom . . . no harm could be learnt’. Instructors from Woolwich taught him fencing and gymnastics, riding and jumping over fences in the park, and in winter, games of hockey on the ice.

Reading did not apparently play a major part in this active Prince’s upbringing, but he seems to have enjoyed travel books. Religion was an important element, but not merely a question of Sunday observance. When the Queen heard that he was being given religious lessons on a Sunday, she objected; once the children were old enough to go to church, she stipulated, religious lessons on the same day should be avoided. Perhaps once a week (on weekdays), the ancient history lesson could be devoted to religion instead. Sunday morning service was always attended, prayers being read at home if illness prevented him from going.

In July 1866, at the age of sixteen, he was sent to Woolwich to begin his military training. The Queen insisted that he should still live at the Ranger’s House, and not in the barracks. In every other way, she maintained, he was to be treated like an ordinary officer. His ‘purity’, she was convinced, would protect him from sin; but she did not wish to take the risk of giving him too much freedom, as she had his elder brothers – who had wasted little time in succumbing to the pleasures of the flesh which had come their (not unwilling) way.

By midsummer 1863 the Princess of Wales was expecting a child. Bertie and Alix had thrown themselves into the round of social life in London with a readiness that led Queen Victoria to criticize their going out every night ‘till she will become a skeleton, and hopes there cannot be!’ Yet hopes there were before long, and the child was expected in March or April 1864.

As there was still much decorating to be done at Sandringham, the estate purchased for them in Norfolk, the Prince and Princess of Wales spent Christmas at Frogmore House, the former home of the Duchess of Kent. A severe frost made conditions ideal for skating on Frogmore Lake. As Alix’s condition made participation in the sport inadvisable, she had to content herself with watching her husband and friends from the comfort of a sledge-chair on the ice. Though she had been suffering some twinges of pain on the afternoon of 8 January 1864, she was determined not to be left indoors. Only after they returned to the house at dusk did Lady Macclesfield, her lady-in-waiting and the mother of thirteen children, realize that the birth was imminent. At nine o’clock that evening she gave birth to a son weighing three and three-quarter pounds. Although small, he appeared to be well.

Second in line to the throne, he was named Albert Victor, after the Queen and the Prince Consort. The parents were obliged to accept the Queen’s decision, though the Prince made plain his annoyance to her when Beatrice told Lady Macclesfield that Mama had settled what the names were to be before he had had a chance to speak to her about it. In order that they should have some choice themselves, the supplementary names Christian Edward, after the baby’s maternal grandfather and father, were added. Grandpapa’s presence was also felt at the baptism on 10 March. A chorale by the Prince Consort, ‘Praise the Lord with heart and voice’, with words by Thomas Oliphant, was sung at the Queen’s request.