Darling Georgie (5 page)

The Prince’s upbringing was constantly disapproved of by their grandmother. Queen Victoria disliked in particular the freedom given to them by their mother to express their feelings. Being seen and not heard may have been a feature of her own son’s childhood but it was certainly not a feature of her grandchildren’s. She wrote: ‘they are such ill bred, ill trained children. I don’t fancy them at all. [The boys] are past all management.’ They, however, appeared quite satisfied with the free and easy lifestyle their parents thought appropriate. There seemed to be little danger at the time that either Eddy or George would end up being both bullied and ignored like their father.

Until Eddy was eight years old, and George six, they were treated in much the same way as their father had been until he was their age. While Prince Edward had had his loving governess, Lady Lyttleton, to fuss over him, Eddy and George had their mother who fulfilled almost the same role. The only difference at this pre-tutoring stage, was that while Prince Edward had had uninterrupted ‘mothering’ from Lady Lyttleton, Eddy
and George were to find that their mother’s loving attention was, puzzlingly, intermittent.

Prince Edward and Princess Alexandra were tolerant in the extreme to their boys, but they behaved differently towards their three daughters, Princess Maude, Princess Louise and Princess Victoria. It was not that they did not love the girls; they simply ignored them. While the heir and the ‘spare’ were important, the girls were left to their own devices. It seemed that Prince Edward’s ambivalent feelings for his mother were spilling over on to his daughters.

It might be asked why the Prince and Princess had so many children. Could it be that Prince Edward, presumably unconsciously, was determined to go one better than his father, Prince Albert? Had he seen the Prince Consort as a powerful rival for his mother’s love? By attempting to become a father more often than his father was Prince Edward trying to demonstrate his superiority? If so, he was to be disappointed. Princess Alexandra produced six, not nine children and, following the death of Prince John, her last child, about twenty-four hours after his premature birth (attended only by the local doctor) she was left with two boys and three girls.

Having been snubbed by Queen Victoria throughout his childhood and attracted to his wife because she seemed to be the antithesis of his mother, Prince Edward now found that the frequently pregnant Princess Alexandra was becoming more and more like her mother-in-law. When she was advised by her gynaecologist not to have any more children, Prince Edward’s hopes of successfully competing with his father were dashed, and it was at this moment that he turned away from his wife/mother not only physically but emotionally. Prince Edward saw little point in encouraging his daughters, who were not particularly attractive and were unkindly known as ‘the Hags’, to find husbands and to become mothers themselves. One of them, Princess Louise, did in fact marry at the age of twenty-two, possibly to escape from a home life that was becoming increasingly miserable. Princess Maude had to wait until she was twenty-eight and was then married off to her cousin, Prince
Charles of Denmark, later King Haakon VII, whom she disliked. Princess Victoria, the third daughter, was kept at home to look after her mother. Queen Victoria spoke to Prince Edward about this because she thought it unjust, but her son replied that he was ‘powerless’ to do anything about it. Perhaps it relieved him of the responsibility of having to look after Princess Alexandra himself. Women born into the Royal Family, like those of other upper-middle-class families in Britain, were yet to be emancipated. As the historian F.M.L. Thompson claims, they were the ‘unrebellious believers in the dutiful and subordinate role to which their upbringing had conditioned them’. Despite the rumblings of the early feminist movement, despite the support of philosophers such as John Stuart Mill, marriage was still the only way for most women to gain some freedom from the authority of their parents, only to find themselves similarly fettered by the wills of their husbands.

The two young Princes, who were now approaching the age at which a formal education was becoming necessary, were inexorably being cast into a mould similar to the one their father had found so onerous. Prince George reacted to his carefree childhood as if he could not bear to leave it, and his attachment to his mother was so loving, and so refreshingly naïve, that all who knew him remarked upon his happy disposition. Princess Alexandra was anxious to keep her son that way. She saw the social excesses of the Marlborough House set as contaminating and disagreeable but, unlike most doting mothers, made no objection when the time came for Prince George to leave home at the age of twelve, with the educationally subnormal Eddy, for the rigours of the training ship
Britannia.
All this, however, was in the future.

When Prince George was six a tutor had to be found to initiate him and his brother into the disciplines of formal education. This time there was no Baron Stockmar to insist on the most humourless and authoritarian tutor possible, one who could be instantly dismissed if he did not live up to the Baron’s sadistic expectations. A benevolent and kindly Reverend J.N. Dalton (father of Hugh Dalton, the Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1945) took on the task of introducing the two boys to the
‘joys of education’. Until the arrival of Mr Dalton the life-style of the two Princes was a relatively unstructured one. Their lives were carefree and happy and, apart from the routine of regular mealtimes, they were more or less free to do as they pleased. The vast estate of Sandringham was their home and their playground. The changes introduced by their tutor came as a shock to both boys. Their day started at 7 a.m., with English and Geography, continued with Bible Studies, History, Latin and Algebra and, after a short afternoon break for sporting activities, the day finally ended with homework followed by bedtime at 8 p.m. Such relentless pressure on two small boys would hardly have been likely to impress them with the ‘joys of education’.

Despite Prince Edward’s unhappy scholastic experiences, particularly with Mr Gibbs, he in no way discouraged the Reverend Dalton from pressurizing his two sons to strive for what he regarded, with undeniable cynicism, as ‘moral excellence’. In the case of Eddy this was a forlorn hope. He was backward in learning, slow, apathetic and indifferent to what was being taught. Prince Edward was irritated with his older son’s lack of progress, but his mother and sisters thought Eddy gentle and kind and compensated for his father’s anger by loving him dearly. Prince George, although younger, was in fact the more lively and he was certainly easier to teach. Learning, however, had to proceed at his brother’s pace and he was held back by his less intelligent sibling. If King George V’s parents believed that in their concern for the well-being of their children they were righting the wrongs done by their parents to them as children, they were deluded. No matter how much Princess Alexandra might have wanted a ‘liberal’ rather than a rigid upbringing for Eddy and Georgie, in their unique circumstances it would not have been possible. Queen Victoria’s claim that Princess Alexandra spoiled her children by being too indulgent was perhaps just. The Princess was so involved with trying to keep up with her husband socially that it would not have been possible for her to pay anything but spasmodic attention to her sons. She was either entertaining at Marlborough House or Sandringham or being entertained at the
country houses belonging to the Waleses’ many friends. She raced, hunted and sailed. At the times when she was with her children she smothered them with love, and when she was not with them she saw to it that their needs were gratified by ‘sensible’ nurses and nursery maids.

Prince George was no more than two years old when his mother began to experience the deafness that not only effectively destroyed her social life but was powerfully to influence her relationship with her children. While Prince George could see and hear his mother, his mother was unable to hear him. The frustration experienced by a young child would have been intense. It could not have been long before Georgie took the view that exchanging letters with his mother was the best form of communication. If his words could not be heard, at least they could be read. As a very young child he might have wondered whether his mother, rather than not hearing him, was in fact not listening to him. A ‘mother’ who was near, but too distant for the exchange of intimate confidences, became the prototype for the distant love of Prince George’s adult life; the ‘marriage of convenience’ which was arranged between himself and Princess May of Teck.

K
ING
G
EORGE
V was six years old when his formal tutelage began, one year after the 1870 Education Act made school attendance compulsory for all British children up to the age of thirteen. Concern for education came to Britain later than to other European countries. It was to be another twenty-one years before schooling was to be made free for all. This was a far cry from the type of education that the royal children were about to receive. They would not be competing in overcrowded classes, nor would they be attending preparatory schools as did some children of the aristocracy. Like many others in their position they were to be privately taught.

Prince George’s only classmate was his brother Eddy, and his tutor was the Reverend John Neale Dalton, the 32-year-old son of a vicar, a curate in Holy Orders and a Cambridge graduate. John Dalton was a deeply religious man and his powerful pastoral intonation particularly impressed their parents, who were as much concerned with his manner, his strength of character, his industriousness and his assertiveness as they were with his scholastic credentials, which in fact were excellent.

Bearing in mind his own childhood experience with the zealous Frederick Waymouth Gibbs, and later with the fearsome General Bruce, Prince Edward might have kept well away from the aristocratic and autocratic products of Eton and Cambridge, or from officers in Guards regiments, when it came to educating his children. That he chose to follow the example set by his own parents says more about the unconscious repetition of patterns of behaviour in families than it does for his prescience as a father. Nevertheless Prince Eddy and Prince George got on well with their new tutor, who stayed with his charges and supervised their education
both at home and when they became naval cadets six years later.

The disadvantages of educating two children at the pace of the one less well endowed intellectually became immediately apparent. Despite the interest taken by Prince Edward in the education of his sons and the contentment felt by both boys with their tutor, every time Mr Dalton stopped to make a point clear to Prince Eddy Prince George’s progress was delayed. Mr Dalton, officially
in loco parentis,
soon became not so much a father as a mother to Prince George, and the boy’s feelings for his real – but frequently absent – mother gradually became transferred on to his tutor. Unable to express the anger that he felt towards his elusive mother, he let his feelings out on to his brother or on to Mr Dalton, both of whom became scapegoats for Princess Alexandra.

Mr Dalton kept a personal weekly journal in which he noted comments about his charges which might have offended Prince Edward. It was clear that he was concerned about his pupils. On 2 September 1876 he wrote: ‘Prince G. this week has been much troubled by silly fretfulness of temper and general spirit of contradiction.’ And on 23 September: ‘Prince George has been good this week. He shows however too much disposition to find fault with his brother.’ October 14: ‘Too fretful; and inclined to be lazy and silly this week.’ A few weeks later Mr Dalton pleaded for Prince George to ‘show application’. Mr Dalton took his job very seriously. Naturally orderly and conscientious, and echoing what he knew the boys’ parents wanted, he did his best to instil in them some of his own self-discipline. It seemed from his journal, however, that as time passed he became increasingly unsuccessful.

Prince Eddy gave Mr Dalton very little trouble. By nature the more placid child, he was probably less sensitive than his brother to the minor injustices they both faced. For Mr Dalton time was of the essence. He held punctuality sacred and in Prince George to his surprise he found a willing collaborator. Since Queen Victoria had given her grandson a watch for his eighth birthday and in a letter to him dated 1 June 1873 expressed the hope that it would remind him ‘to be very punctual in everything and very exact in all your duties’, Prince George had become as obsessed with time
as his tutor. As King George V he insisted that all the clocks at Sandringham be kept thirty minutes fast. They remained so until he lay dying, when his son David, who was about to succeed him as King Edward VIII, gave orders for them to be put back. If no one had enough time for Prince George as a child, he intended to ensure that he had plenty of time for himself as an adult.

With his father as his role model, Prince George emulated Prince Edward’s behaviour as much as possible. He became known for his energy and boisterousness, his high spirits, his outbursts of temper and his ‘naughtiness’, characteristics that endeared him more to his friends than to those responsible for his day-to-day management. The servants at Sandringham nicknamed him ‘the right Royal pickle’ and at about the same time the Right Reverend Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, described Prince George – perhaps with his tongue in his cheek – as ‘full of fun and spirits and life’ (Smith, 1910).

While the young Prince George was staying with his grandmother at Osborne, he lived up to his spirited reputation by behaving particularly badly at luncheon. Intolerant of ‘bad’ behaviour in her son, Queen Victoria was unwilling to countenance it in her grandson. She told Prince George that he would have to remain under the table until he agreed to behave. After a while she asked him if he was ready to accept her conditions and, when he said he was, the Queen told him to come out. He did so in what he later described as ‘all the majesty of nature’. Nothing could have been designed to shock and humiliate his grandmother more than seeing her grandson demonstrating his contempt for her authority before her luncheon guests by appearing naked. Unable to express anger towards his mother, because of her constant affirmations of love for him and his fear of losing her approval, Prince George took his frustrations out on his grandmother instead. His identification with his sexually exhibitionistic father amused no one and he was suitably punished.