Childhood at Court, 1819-1914 (23 page)

Being practical by nature, and like most Victorian parents keen to discourage idleness among her children, the Duchess taught them how to make woollen comforters for one of her charities. Each child was handed a wooden ring fitted with upright brass pegs. While she read, they looped the wool yarn around each peg, eventually forming a five-foot long scarf. She was not a particularly maternal woman, finding the whole progress of pregnancy and childbearing distasteful and embarrassing. She did not enjoy bathing them like their grandmothers did. Uninterested in babies, like her husband she had no automatic or spontaneous understanding of a child’s mind, and expected them to behave like miniature adults. She spoke of finding Prince Edward ‘jumpy’ at the age of two, or ‘in a delicious frame of mind . . . I really believe he begins to like me at last, he is most civil to me’.
²⁴
Such terms seem distinctly distant about one’s own child.

Nevertheless, Edward recalled, she was very proud of her children: ‘everything that happened to each one was of the utmost importance to her’.
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With the birth of each baby, she followed the contemporary custom of starting an album in which she carefully recorded each progressive stage of childhood, including the dates on which a first tooth was cut, or first step was taken, and a lock of hair inserted on the day of the first haircut.

The children’s happiest childhood memories were of the times when they were alone with their mother at Frogmore or Abergeldie, while their father was away shooting in the Midlands or yachting at Cowes. Her husband was nevertheless a repressive influence on her, and she backed him up in all matters of discipline relating to the children. All the same, her eldest son recalled, ‘she never failed to take our side whenever in her judgement he was being too harsh with us’.
²⁶

One more occupant of the Yorks’ nursery was born during Queen Victoria’s lifetime, a third son, who was named Henry. He arrived on 31 March 1900. One of the last photographs of Queen Victoria, taken in the summer of 1900, showed her sitting on the lawn at Osborne House apparently holding Henry on her lap, and surrounded by his brothers and sister. Discreetly hidden from the camera lens was Mrs Bill, crouching behind to support the baby with her own arm, as the Queen was so frail that she was afraid of dropping him. The great-grandchildren were terrified by the elderly little lady in a black bombazine dress or, possibly, her Indian servants (or maybe a combination of both). In particular the two elder boys used to cry from nerves whenever they were taken to Windsor or Osborne to see her, and she would ask the Duchess of York with some irritation ‘what she had done now’, or scold Mrs Bill. ‘You had to mind your step with Queen Victoria,’ the latter recalled. Perhaps she was almost as much in awe of her sovereign as the infants themselves.

At this time the British Empire was locked in a struggle with the Boers in South Africa. Edward’s first clear memories of world events were of the war, as for a time after the outbreak of hostilities in October 1899, little else was talked about in the family. His three uncles on his mother’s side were all on active service with their regiments; their letters from the front were read aloud to the children, and in the more sensational newspapers favoured by the nurses to which they had access (without full parental approval, it may be supposed), they would pore over artists’ sketches of battles which showed Highlanders dying on the barbed wire in front of Magersfontein, or the capture of Royal Horse Artillery guns. When they were taken for walks in Hyde Park, they would stop to watch troops drilling on the grass, and a drive through the city streets often brought them within view of columns of khaki-clad troops with wide-brimmed hats on their way to the front, swinging along behind brass bands playing patriotic songs of the day such as ‘Soldiers of the Queen’ or ‘Tommy Atkins’. One spring evening when they were staying at Balmoral, a great bonfire was lit by the Queen’s Highland retainers on top of the hill above the castle, in celebration of one of the British victories in South Africa.

Meanwhile, growing up as an almost exact contemporary of the Prince of Wales’s children was another Prince destined to have a considerable influence on public life during the century: His Serene Highness Prince Louis Francis of Battenberg. Born at Frogmore House on 25 June 1900, the fourth child and second son of Prince Louis and the former Princess Victoria of Hesse, he was the last of Queen Victoria’s great-grandchildren to be born during her lifetime. He was christened Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas, in the drawing-room at Frogmore on 17 July.

Though the Queen was increasingly frail and almost blind by now, she insisted on holding the baby throughout the ceremony evidently with help. She was his godmother and, although he knocked her spectacles off with one hand and pulled at her veil with the other, she noted afterwards that the ‘beautiful large child . . . behaved very well’. It was a very hot day, and to try to bring down the temperature of the room, a bucket of ice was put under one of the chairs. The unfortunate Dean of Windsor sat on the chair, chilled his legs, and the result for him was a serious sciatic inflammation. Afterwards he could only walk with the aid of a stick.

In January 1901 the York children were at York Cottage, quarantined in the nursery for German measles. The Duke and Duchess of York had gone to London for a reception for Lord Roberts, Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in South Africa, when they were informed by the Prince of Wales that Queen Victoria had had a slight stroke at Osborne. Her condition was not considered dangerous at first, and the Duke and Duchess returned to Sandringham for the last days of the shooting season. The children were not allowed to see them as they were still in quarantine. A day or two later they were told that their parents had gone to Osborne, as ‘Gangan’ was dying.

Surrounded by most of her surviving children and many of her grandchildren, she passed away on 22 January. The Duke of York, now heir to the throne, promptly went down with German measles, and the Duchess remained behind to nurse him. She asked her mother-in-law, now Queen Alexandra, to arrange for the three elder children to see the funeral service in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, and her interment at Frogmore. They were, however, spared a last sight of their great-grandmother’s body laid out at Osborne before being placed in the coffin. Their five-year-old cousin, Princess Elizabeth of Hesse, was brought in to see her. Peering solemnly, she whispered, ‘But I don’t see the wings.’
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On the bitterly cold afternoon of 2 February, the three small Yorks stood among the sorrowful company of kings, princes and dignitaries for the obsequies. Prince Edward’s memories were of ‘the piercing cold, the interminable waits, and of feeling very lost among scores of sorrowing grown up relatives, solemn Princes in varied uniforms, and Princesses sobbing behind heavy crêpe veils.’
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He must have looked ‘very lost’, for his aunt Princess Charles of Denmark noticed Princess Elizabeth, ‘who took him under her protection and held him most of the time round his neck. They looked such a delightful little couple!’
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*Canon John Dalton died in 1931 and his wife in 1944. By this time, Hugh was a Labour Member of Parliament and senior minister in the wartime government, while Georgie, a lifelong Conservative, was married to Sir John Forbes Watson, Director of the Confederation of British Employers. The jewellery and ornaments were left to her, and private papers to Hugh, but both had an equal claim to their mother’s possessions. They quarrelled in the arbitrating presence of a representative of the Public Trustees, and Hugh suggested that royal items of obvious financial value could be sold as long as they lacked the royal cipher. He then waved a contemptuous hand over the rest and boomed at his sister: ‘You can have the bloody lot!’
¹⁰

King George VI was so angry at hearing that Hugh Dalton had sold gifts originally presented by members of his family, that he asked for any royal gifts still in the possession of the Forbes Watson family to be returned forthwith. Such was the evidence of Georgie’s daughter Heather, who was at boarding school. (She presumably heard about the matter from her mother, whose fury doubtless coloured her retelling of events). As a minister, Hugh was no more popular with his sovereign than he had been with his sovereign’s father. King George VI once told the Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell that he was ‘the only one of your people’ he could not abide.

*He was christened Albert Frederick Arthur George, but known by family and public alike as Prince Albert (and from 1920, Duke of York) until his accession to the throne as King George VI in 1936.

K
ing Edward VII had been on the throne for barely two months when, on 16 March 1901, the Duke and Duchess of York sailed from Portsmouth for a visit to Australia. For almost eight blissful months, the young Yorks were allowed a respite from their parents’ strict regime. King Edward and Queen Alexandra had never been strict parents as Prince and Princess of Wales, and with the cares of sovereignty weighing heavily on them, they found light relief in looking after and spoiling the youngsters whom the Queen called ‘the Georgiepets’. She would let her grandsons pour salt and pepper into her glass, and to their delight drink the result, pretending to be unaware of what they had done. One day the King told Edward to stop interrupting him, then asked what he wanted to say. The boy gleefully pointed out that he had wished to warn him of a slug on his lettuce, but it was too late as he had eaten it now.

If the superimposition of four noisy children upon the Royal Household during their parents’ absence was ever a nuisance, their grandparents never let them know it, Edward recalled. ‘On the contrary, they encouraged our innate boisterousness to such an extent that the quiet routine of York Cottage suffered a brief but harmless setback.’
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For about a year, their lessons had been supervised by a lady from Alsace, Mlle Helen Bricka, who had taught the adolescent Duchess of York. In those days, she had been a satisfactory governess for a girl of finishing-school age. However, now plump and elderly, she found her old pupil’s restless little boys more than a handful. Their grandfather, now their King, remembered his schoolroom days with a shudder, and their grandmother never thought that lessons were more important than a happy childhood. If there were no dignitaries guesting at lunch, they liked to have the children romping around in the dining-room at Buckingham Palace, regardless of the fact that Mlle Bricka was waiting upstairs impatiently, French and German primers at the ready. If she entered the dining-room timidly to warn the children that they were a little late for their afternoon lesson, Queen Alexandra would gently wave her away, while King Edward would ask for them to stay a little longer, and they would be sent upstairs presently. One could hardly argue with the King. When the family went on a two-week stay to Sandringham, Mlle Bricka was left behind in London ‘lest she should spoil the fun’.

The Duchess of York wrote to express her irritation, but the Queen defended their decision on the grounds that Dr Laking had particularly asked that Edward should be left more with his brothers and sister for a while, ‘as we
all
noticed
how
precautious [sic] &
old-fashioned
he was getting – & quite the
ways
of
a “single child”!
which wld make him ultimately a “tiresome child” – laying down the law & thinking himself far superior to the younger ones.’
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His education, she assured her daughter-in-law, had not been neglected.

The parents might be out of sight, but they were not out of mind. The Duke of York had left strict instructions that the two elder sons must write regularly to their parents. In addition to his own replies, long and instructive letters were written to the Princes from various ports of call by Walter Jones, the village schoolmaster of Sandringham, an old friend of the Duke from younger days, whom he had attached to his suite.

On 1 November the Duke and Duchess returned to Portsmouth. Before taking the children to meet their parents, King Edward warned them gravely that they had been exposed for a time to the fierce tropical sun, and their skins would have probably turned black. They were horrified, until a glance at their parents in the distance proved that Grandpa had been teasing them.

The cheerful, undisciplined children who greeted the Duke and Duchess – created Prince and Princess of Wales eight days later, on the King’s sixtieth birthday – now needed a course of ‘character moulding’. To their parents it was evident that Princes Edward and Albert could no longer stay in the nursery under feminine supervision.

On New Year’s Day 1902 they were told that Frederick Finch would wake them up the following morning, and thenceforth they would be under his care. Mr Finch had entered the family’s service three years earlier as nursery footman. He had brought the children their meals, carried the bathwater, and performed all the other heavy chores of the nursery. Now he performed the duties of a nanny: he polished his young charges’ shoes, nursed them, made sure they scrubbed their hands and faces properly, and heard their prayers every morning and evening.

Finch was a firm but not unreasonable disciplinarian. One afternoon when the young Mary was meant to be taking a nap, Edward went into the nursery and started fooling around. A harassed Mrs Bill, unable to control him, eventually went into Finch’s room to tell him bluntly that ‘that boy’ was impossible, and if he did not give him a thrashing she would. Finch promptly fetched the Prince and spanked him soundly, to the accompaniment of yells more out of hurt pride than physical pain. As Finch left, Edward shouted that he would ‘get even’ with him and tell his father. In the end, the Princess of Wales was told. She scolded her son for his misbehaviour, and also for being so foolish as to suppose that a servant had no right to punish him. Penitently, he was sent to apologize to Finch for being such a nuisance.

1902 was a busy year for the family, for they spent most of the spring preparing for King Edward VII’s Coronation, which was to take place on 26 June. Henry Hansell, a former master from Eton and one-time tutor to Prince Arthur of Connaught, had recently been appointed to supervise the boys’ education. He took advantage of impending events to try to bring their history lessons to life. After explaining to them the symbolism of the Coronation service and the meaning of all the pageantry, he took them around the city and showed them round Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, St Paul’s Cathedral and other famous landmarks. If his painstaking expositions of ceremony and pageantry rather went over their heads, they never tired of seeing colourfully decorated stands in the streets, and large contingents of troops in the main parks.