Childhood at Court, 1819-1914 (26 page)

His father was often away on active service, and he spent much of his time with his mother, accompanying her on many of her journeys. As the child of a naval officer, it was inevitable that travel would be a major part of his life; as one who had cousins in Germany and Russia, he enjoyed many holidays abroad as a small child. At Wolfsgarten, the country retreat of Uncle Ernie, was a miniature playhouse that he and the Grand Duchess had built for their daughter Elizabeth.* All the young cousins who came to stay enjoyed a rough-and-tumble within its walls. Even if they could crouch down and make themselves small enough, adults were expressly forbidden to enter the little house. Many a royal nurse or tutor would pace up and down impatiently outside, waiting for their high-spirited young charges to stop their games out of sheer exhaustion and emerge for more mundane tasks.

The Grand Duke of Hesse was keenly interested in aviation, and provided Dickie with his first experience of flying. In 1906 he arranged for an airship to come to his country seat, Wolfsgarten, and take the family for a ride. At six, Dickie was considered too young to fly, but at the last moment more ballast was needed; Uncle Ernie reached out of the gondola and, much to his delight, dragged Dickie aboard by his collar.

With its rapid advances in scientific discovery and technological change, the first decade of the twentieth century was an exciting time for any child fascinated by new inventions and gadgets. He was only three when his father told them that he had bought a car; they were the first of any branch of their family, he proudly recalled, to own one. Two years later, he was allowed to record his voice on a wax cylinder and hear it played back through a phonograph. The experience thrilled him, even if he was probably unable to recognize his own voice in the distorted sound.

Pets played an important part in his childhood. One of his earliest memories was being given a canary for his third birthday. It was so tame that it was allowed to be left outside its cage. Unhappily he tried to pick it up, lost his balance, and ended up crushing it. Later on there was Scamp, a black rough haired mongrel, a procession of white rabbits, and on his seventh birthday a lamb named Millie. As she was not always obedient, he put a running noose around her neck, so she would choke if she refused to follow him. When told that this was unkind, he tied the cord to one her legs instead. She followed him under protest, still making choking noises.

In January 1905 he went to school for the first time, attending classes at Macpherson’s Gymnasium. At the end of each class the boys would assemble for a patriotic sing-song. Not being wholly confident of the words, he would sing, ‘Rue Britannia, Britannia rue the waves!’ Four years later he attended a more formal establishment, Mr Gladstone’s School, Cliveden Place. In his first termly order he came bottom of the class in arithmetic. Never very academic, in most other subjects he came about two-thirds of the way down the class. Yet the teachers gave him credit for his excellent conduct and persistent efforts to improve his performance.

*Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, had succeeded his uncle Ernest as Duke of Saxe-Coburg Gotha in 1893 and died in July 1900, predeceasing his mother by nearly six months.

*The Grand Duke of Hesse had married his cousin Princess Victoria Melita of Edinburgh in 1894, but their relationship was stormy, and they divorced in 1901. Elizabeth, their only child, died of typhoid in November 1903, aged eight.

A
s a third son, Prince Henry was fortunate enough to escape the pressures to which his elder brothers were subjected. There was little chance of him ascending the throne, and persistent ill-health in infancy gave him some advantage. Sickly and undersized (although he grew up to be taller than his brothers), he suffered from weakness in the legs as well as knock-knees, and perpetual colds. After a bout of influenza in February 1909, Hansell was reprimanded by his father for having taken him out that week in the bitter cold at Sandringham; the tutor must ‘remember that he is rather fragile & must be treated differently to his two elder brothers who are more robust’.
¹

Like them, he was to go to Royal Naval College, remaining in Hansell’s schoolroom at York Cottage until the age of twelve or so. However, influenza affected the base of one lung, and it was decided that he would be unable to face the rigours of college. Dr Laking offered his premises at Broadstairs as a suitable place for the boy to convalesce, and he was sent there with the Prince of Wales’s nurse, Sister Edith Ward, to look after him and continue his education.

They arrived there in February 1910. As part of his education, Henry wrote to his parents regularly, and kept a daily diary as a spelling and writing exercise. He dutifully recorded such activities as the pleasures of the sands, fossil and shell hunting, the electric tram to Ramsgate, walks on the eastern esplanade and the pier at Margate, and French lessons taken by Mlle de Lisle, from Folkestone. On his fossil hunts he was accompanied by Mr A.J. Richardson, headmaster of St Peter’s Court, and a friend of Hansell. The latter had already been in touch with him, with a view to enrolling the Prince at his school. Having failed to persuade the Prince and Princess of Wales to send the two elder boys to school, he hoped to convince them that the third might go instead. The father’s letters to his son were full of admonitions that he must behave like a boy and not like a little child, and Hansell recognized that this was more likely to be achieved if the boy went to school instead of remaining under the care of a nurse. On 2 May 1910 Richardson was invited to Marlborough House by Hansell for a long talk. Sister Edith had agreed that the boy should be given a ‘careful trial’ of school life as a day pupil, while continuing to live under her supervision at York Gate House.

That same week, the Prince of Wales’s two eldest sons were at Marlborough House, preparing to return to Osborne and Dartmouth for the summer term. On 5 May, the day before they were due to go back, their father sent for them. Anxiously, he warned them that ‘Grandpapa’ was very ill, ‘and the end may not be far off’.
²

Two days later Edward was woken in the morning by a cry from his brother Bertie, who had looked out of the window and seen the standard at half-mast. ‘Across the Mall, Buckingham Palace stood grey and silent.’
³
King Edward VII had died, aged sixty-eight. Although he had a long history of bronchial trouble, neither the family nor the British public had realized quite how suddenly the end had come. Queen Alexandra and her unmarried daughter Victoria had been summoned back from a Mediterranean holiday on 5 May, and sat with the King at Buckingham Palace until he drew his last breath a few minutes before midnight the following day.

Henry’s response was uncomplicated and sincere. ‘I am so awfuly [sic] sorry that dear Grandpapa is dead, and that you, Mama, Grannie and Aunt Toria are in such trouble,’ he wrote to his father, now King George V, from York Gate House (8 May). ‘I shall try to help you by being a good boy.’
⁴

Soon after being told of his grandfather’s death, four-year-old John made a pile of leaves in the garden. He had been told that the spirits of dead people leave their bodies to inhabit the wind, and when asked what he was doing, he replied mournfully, ‘sweeping up Grandpa’s bits’.
⁵

Various poetic euphemisms were used to try to cushion younger royal children from the full horrors of death. Alice of Albany, who had married Queen Mary’s youngest brother Alexander, was visiting her brother Charles, now Duke of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. With them went their three children. The youngest, Maurice, aged less than six months, died in September, a tragedy ascribed by his mother to a change from English to German diet. His sister Mary, then aged four, was puzzled when one day he was not to be seen anywhere, and all the family around her wore the deepest black without explaining to her what had happened. A room to which she had previously been admitted was locked, and she was forbidden to go near. Only the day after his funeral was she taken to his tiny grave and told that Maurice had ‘gone to the angels’.
⁶

For Prince Edward in particular, the death of his grandfather meant considerable changes. He automatically became Duke of Cornwall, inheriting large estates in the West Country and at Kennington in London. Heir to the throne, he was created Prince of Wales on his birthday on 23 June, six weeks later. His childhood was over. The next day, he was confirmed by Dr Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the private chapel of Windsor Castle.

Though his childhood was over, his formal education was not. He had gone back to Dartmouth after King Edward VII’s funeral on 20 May, having missed three weeks of the summer term. The other cadets, he noted, welcomed him back ‘with appropriate condolences’, but he could not help noticing a subtle, even fawning, respect for his new position. While the cadets continued to call him Prince Edward, on parade and in the classroom he was Duke of Cornwall and Heir Apparent. Later that year, while convalescing at Newquay from mumps and measles, the King told him that he would have to leave Dartmouth, in order to play a prominent role in the Coronation in June 1911.

That summer the King and his family headed north for Balmoral. One of their guests that September was David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lloyd George was no respecter of the institution of monarchy, and for much of his career regarded King George V with less than total tolerance, but he left a surprisingly relaxed portrayal of the family at lunch one day. Though the King was something of a tyrant to his children, in front of a senior minister he was careful to give a better impression. After lunch when the cigars were brought around, Lloyd George recalled, the Queen stayed to smoke a cigarette, and the boys began to blow out the cigar lights as a game. Mary wanted to join in and got very excited, ‘then the Queen and the rest of us joined in and the noise was deafening until the little Princess set her lamp on fire. We thought then it was time to stop.’
⁷

The other Princes were still being educated. ‘Cadet Prince Albert’ was also due to go from Osborne to Dartmouth in due course, if he could achieve the right academic grade. Like his father and grandfather, he was not a natural student. At the end of each term he was rarely far from bottom of his class. Nevertheless, he joined Edward (in his final term) at Dartmouth in January 1911.

Henry became the first son of a British monarch to go to school. After his first three days as a day boy at St Peters Court, he told his father that he liked it, and on Hansell’s advice he was enrolled as an ordinary boarder, so that he would be subject to proper discipline like any other boy of his age. Naturally it turned out not to be quite as simple as that; for the school authorities and the other boys, it was quite a novelty to have a Prince in their midst. They did not know how to address him; ‘Prince Henry’ seemed rather cumbersome, Christian names were not then in common usage at prep schools, and although the reigning house was then the house of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, it was debatable as to whether members of the royal family should use that as a surname.

His academic progress was slow, but he had started late in the term. He had also pleased his father and tutor by his good behaviour; their greatest fear had been that he would lose his temper if provoked by the other boys, but this was never to be a problem. Academically he was not very bright, though unlike his elder brothers he was good at mathematics. There was an outbreak of mumps at school in the spring, but though Henry was confined to bed in the third week of May, he recovered in time for the Coronation on 22 June.

All the younger children, except John, sat watching from the royal gallery in Westminster Abbey. John was considered too young and too mischievous to sit through the ceremony, but he was allowed to watch the processions from a window in the state apartments of Buckingham Palace. (Edward, wearing the robes of the Order of the Garter, had taken his place below with the other peers of the realm). Albert was in naval dress uniform, Mary in a robe of state, Henry and George in Highland dress. On their way to the Abbey, riding in a coach in the Prince of Wales’s procession, they behaved impeccably. On the way back they became bored. The two youngest boys had a fight in full view of the amused spectators, and in trying to stop them Mary’s coronet was almost knocked off.

One of the children’s playmates was their cousin Crown Prince Olav of Norway, son of King George’s youngest sister Maud, who had married Prince Charles of Denmark in 1896. Though she had never harboured regal aspirations on her marriage, in 1905 Norway proclaimed its independence from Sweden, her husband was elected King, taking the title of Haakon VII, and with some reluctance she found herself Queen Consort. Her only child was born in July 1903 at Appleton, Sandringham.* He was a ready playmate for his cousins, and the four of them would join in games at Sandringham with miniature forts, cannon and lead soldiers.

King George V took a keen interest in these games, but imposed one rule of his own: the ‘armies’ were not to be named after any existing countries, so the battles had to be between different planets, such as Earth and Mars. The boys also dressed up in cocked hats, made wooden swords, and drilled each other. After visiting a military tournament, George introduced some variations of his own and made them ‘break step’ when crossing a bridge. Afterwards he explained that this was in case the masonry should become dislodged by the rhythm of their marching feet. At other times they played cowboys and Indians, a traditional version with Buffalo Bill as the hero.

The English royal family’s children were allowed to play with their toys and indulge in games lightheartedly enough, a privilege denied their German cousins. When the court photographer Richard Speaight visited Berlin in 1908 to take photographs of the Crown Princess and her two samll sons, he took with him a collection of mechanical toys to amuse them. Though they understood English, they were not interested in such objects. Keen to elicit some response from the children, he crawled on the floor on all fours and threw a rug over his back, pretending to be an elephant. They continued to stare at him, stony-faced and silent. Taking pity on him, the Crown Princess told him that he would never get her boys to obey him until he treated them as soldiers. As they were being brought up in an entirely military environment, they only thought in terms of drilling and war.
⁸