Childhood at Court, 1819-1914 (18 page)

Queen Victoria was passionate in her condemnation of cruelty to animals, though she was a lover of dogs rather than cats. Canines were more favoured by the British royal family, although Beatrice regularly had a cat. The feline appears less frequently in family photographs than dogs, one must assume, because of the difficulty in persuading one to remain still (unless asleep) long enough for the exposure needed by a camera in the nineteenth century. A theory that the Queen and her young children could not have cats because of the risk to Leopold being scratched by one does not hold water; cat scratches could easily be bound, and unlike internal bleeding or bruising, caused no serious risk to haemophiliacs. That the most tragic sufferer from the ‘bleeding disease’, the Queen’s great-grandson Grand Duke Alexis, Tsarevich of Russia, adored (and was allowed to have) cats speaks for itself.

In the autumn of 1876 the Prince of Wales decided it was time to consider the next stage of his sons’ education. Even their indulgent mother was becoming concerned at their perpetual quarrelling, ‘using strong language to each other’, presumably picked up in the stables, their tiresome inquisitiveness, regularly interrupting adults in their conversation, and playing havoc with games of croquet. The solution was for the boys to leave home. At length he made up his mind to send them both to the training ship
Britannia
for two years, leaving George with the option of choosing the Royal Navy as a career.

Mr Dalton felt that neither of the Princes, in his judgement, had reached the educational standard of the average private schoolboy of their age. Queen Victoria wanted Eddy to attend Wellington College. Dalton’s misgivings were based on the inadvisability of separating the boys, as he wrote in a memorandum dated 11 February 1877:

Prince Albert Victor requires the stimulus of Prince George’s company to induce him to work at all. . . . The mutual influence of their characters on one another (totally different as they are in many ways) is very beneficial. . . . Difficult as the education of Prince Albert Victor is now, it would be doubly or trebly so if Prince George were to leave him. Prince George’s lively presence is his mainstay and chief incentive to exertion; and to Prince George again, the presence of his elder brother is most wholesome as a check against that tendency to self-conceit which is apt at times to show itself in him. Away from his brother, there would be a great risk of his being made too much of and treated as a general favourite.
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Both Princes, he urged, should be entered as naval cadets on board
Britannia
at Dartmouth. The Queen objected, on the grounds that the very rough sort of life to which boys were exposed on board ship was not calculated ‘to make a refined and amiable Prince, who in after years (if God spares him) is to ascend the throne. It would give him a very one-sided view of life which is not desirable.’
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Despite these objections, the Prince of Wales persuaded his mother to approve of both his sons going to sea as ‘an experiment’. She assented, on condition that Dalton would continue to supervise them, and in September 1877 they joined the ship. They had their own cabin, but otherwise they were treated just as their fellow two hundred-odd cadets.

As expected, George made friends more easily with the other cadets than the more reserved, diffident Eddy. He also took more of the knocks; the other boys made a point of ‘taking it out’ on them on the grounds that it would be their only chance. There was an unwritten rule than any cadet challenged by another to fight had to accept, and as Eddy was small for his age he was often made to challenge the larger ones. After coming off second best on several occasions, he suffered a heavy blow on the nose which made it bleed profusely. As a result the doctor forbade him to fight again.

The boys could buy sweets at the tuck shop at Dartmouth, as long as none were brought back on board ship. The bigger ones regularly asked George to bring them back something, but in this respect as in other things, he was allowed no privileges. All cadets were searched on returning to ship, and he was always punished if caught out as well as having his sweets confiscated. One shilling a week pocket money never went far enough, especially as the other cadets readily assumed that where royalty was involved there was plenty more where that came from, and never dreamed of paying him back.

Nevertheless, Prince George, or ‘Sprat’, a nickname derived from the diminutive of W(h)ales, made excellent progress in mathematics, and showed particular promise in the practical aspects of sailing and handling of boats. Dalton’s first report to Queen Victoria from on board
Britannia
(14 November 1877), reassured her that the boys were in good health and very happy. Prince Albert Victor, he added with restraint, was not pulling his weight; there was no danger of ‘the elder Prince working too hard, or overtaxing his powers, as Your Majesty seems to fear; in fact he might work harder than he does without any risk of detriment’.
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Holidays were spent at Sandringham, with occasional visits to Osborne and Abergeldie. At Osborne Prince George began to keep a diary, the first entry being made on 30 July 1878, recording a game of croquet with his Aunt Beatrice and then watching a cricket match between members of the household and the royal yacht. The diary ended on 12 August, a fortnight later, but he began a new one on 3 May 1880, which he continued until three days before his death fifty-five years later.

In the meantime, another royal family was growing up at Clarence House. In January 1874 Prince Alfred, created Duke of Edinburgh in 1866, had married Grand Duchess Marie, only surviving daughter of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. Their only son, named Alfred after his father, was born on 15 October that year, followed by five daughters: Marie (1875), Victoria Melita (1876), Alexandra (1878), and after a stillborn daughter in 1881, Beatrice (1884). Clarence House was their London home, but in their affections it came a poor second to their country
pied-à-terre
, Eastwell Park, near Ashford in Kent. Like their grandmother, the young Edinburghs disliked London, ‘and each time it was a grief when the season came for leaving Eastwell and the joys of the country for Clarence House, for smuts and smoke and gloomy walks in the Green Park’.
⁹

Eastwell was full of delights for the children, inside and out. To them the vast house was a positive treasure-trove of unexplored rooms and passages. The back staircase was declared out-of-bounds to them by the governess, who said it was ‘no place for little girls’, probably as she feared they would fall through the railings. Thus was a challenge issued to them to go exploring; peeping through the rails made them feel giddy, but ‘something stronger than fear’ impelled them to persevere. Halfway down the stairs was a mysterious corner which the servants called the ‘Glory Hole’, another place ‘not for little girls’. They never succeeded in exploring it, though they imagined it was probably a private pantry. Whenever they were seen looking down the banisters, they were quickly sent back upstairs.

Outside, few other attractions could compare with a vast tree, which had such a large hole that young Alfred and his three eldest sisters could all sit in it at once. It was the centre of their outdoor games for a long time, where they could play at being Robinson Crusoe, Robin Hood and his merry men, Red Indians, pirates, or whatever else took their fancy. In the middle of this sylvan retreat was an intrusive branch which they decided would have to be removed with a saw or an axe. They begged their father to let them have the tools, but he would only allow them a saw. ‘An axe would take off a finger at one blow,’ he pointed out, ‘whilst you would soon enough stop sawing if you began sawing your finger!’
¹⁰

Their mother played a greater part in their lives than their father, recalled Marie (‘Missy’) in her memoirs: ‘he, being a sailor, was often away from home; he was even a little bit of a stranger to us’.
¹¹
Basically a shy man, the Duke was more at ease with his contemporaries and the role of playful father did not come easily to him. He had a habit of looking through the children sometimes as if they were not there. This was a curious characteristic of all Queen Victoria’s children as adults at one time or other, and the Edinburghs found their uncles and aunts oddly absent-minded. They would occasionally become aware of a youngster in their presence, start a conversation with him or her and then wander off, leaving the child feeling rather hurt and dismayed.

Nevertheless, Affie loved to join in with his children’s games. A particular favourite, kept for long winter evenings, involved putting the lamps out, while he would hide in a dark corner pretending to be an ogre. They had no idea which room he was in as, trembling with excitement, they crawled through the darkness. When they were on the point of giving up, he would catch them off their guard and spring out, his growls and their hysterical shrieks and laughter ringing through the passages. To Marie, ‘it was a gruesome game and gave us the real thrill that danger gives to adventurers’.
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Snow was rare at Eastwell, but one winter it fell thickly, and he took the children out tobogganing down a hill near the dairy. Skating was another winter activity they enjoyed eagerly, father and youngsters wearing their best black velvet caps trimmed with Russian sable, as much a part of the skating expeditions as the hot cinnamon-flavoured red wine with which they refreshed themselves afterwards.

At Christmas a tree was set up in the big library, while presents were laid out on white-covered tables all round the walls of the room. Affie became as eager as a child himself, planning everything meticulously, and could get very angry if the smallest detail was overlooked. The children found it particularly thrilling to stir the servants’ plum pudding. It took place in the stewards’ room, and in the official part of the stables, as ‘house and stables were two separate realms and one never dared overlap the other’. An enormous bowl was set upon the table and each child had to take turns with the stirring. At last Christmas Eve came, and the library doors, which had been closed for several days, were thrown open. There stood the tree, a blaze of light, and all around upon the white-decked tables, one mass of gifts for everybody, nobody ever being forgotten. The children stepped forward, holding hands, spellbound at the scene as presents were distributed in a blaze of candlelight, ‘accompanied by that delicious fragrance of singed fir-branches so inseparable from Christmas’.
¹³

Living at Green Park was not without its compensations. Outside, almost opposite the entrance to Buckingham Palace, stood a balloon man. It was a treat for the Edinburgh princesses when their governess produced a few pennies from her pocket and they were allowed to buy themselves a few balloons, or airballs as Marie sometimes called them. She found the smell ‘irresistibly nasty, so that we were forever rubbing our noses against them.’ They were not slow to discover the piercing noise – half squeak, half groan – that could be made when drawing their fingers across the taut surfaces of these brightly-coloured ‘bubbles of enchantment’.
¹⁴

As a mother, the Duchess of Edinburgh tempered kindness with severity. In an undemonstrative way, she adored her children and encouraged them in their carefree garden activities, letting them run around, skate, climb trees, and enjoy a healthy outdoor life. But she attached great importance to a strict upbringing. They must always be ready to talk and entertain people; nothing, she told them, was more hopeless or rude than a prince or princess who never opened his or her mouth. When invited out for meals, they must never insult their hosts by refusing what was put in front of them, or even leaving the slightest scrap. If the food made them feel sick, they would have to wait until they got home. Every food, she impressed on them, was digestible for a good stomach, but the English spoilt their digestion from earliest childhood by imagining that they could not eat ‘this or that’. ‘Digestions’ were ‘a most unpleasant subject and not drawing-room conversation.’

The Duchess enjoyed robust health, and never allowed her children to complain about minor ailments like colds or headaches. Fevers did not send them to bed. In this she resembled Queen Victoria, of whom it was said that the only excuse for not attending dinner was sudden death. Yet the smallest indisposition never went unnoticed, and she was always ready with discreetly administered pills or medicines. English doses, to her, were much stronger than Continental doses and she would call them ‘
des remèdes de cheval
’.

In 1882 the artist John Everett Millais was commissioned by the Queen to paint a portrait of Princess Marie of Edinburgh to be exhibited at the Royal Academy that summer. In the biography by his son, Millais ‘thought it would be well to show the multitude that, though of high degree, the little Princess was by no means brought up to lead an idle and useless life, but was taught to work for others, if not for herself; so he designedly presented her holding her knitting in her hands.’ The Duke of Edinburgh was guest of honour at a banquet in May given to mark the opening of the exhibition, and in his speech he paid special thanks to Millais ‘for the admirable way in which he has perpetuated, and the charming manner in which he has drawn the features of my little girl’.
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In personal and political terms, the Edinburghs’ marriage was not a success. It went against the grain for a senior officer in the British Navy to be married to a Russian Grand Duchess, at a time when Anglo-Russian tensions were never far below the surface. Memories of the Crimean War, during which Russian imperial pride had suffered a severe blow to her prestige after defeat by the combined British and French forces, were still within living memory of most people. Britain still distrusted Russian designs on the Balkans and Middle East, and war between Britain and Russia was only narrowly averted during the first four years of their marriage. The Duchess of Edinburgh made no secret of her dislike for her in-laws or her contempt for Britain, and despite a shared love of music, the Duke and Duchess had little in common. Perhaps it was as well for the children that their father’s naval duties kept him away from home so much.