The Heir Apparent (10 page)

The tutors’ failure to spark any interest whatsoever in classical history or art reflects as badly on them as it does on Bertie. His intellect, as Albert remarked, was lively and sharp, but “of no more use than a pistol packed in a trunk.”
⁵²
Perhaps the most valuable lesson that Bertie learned was how to deceive his keepers. He was caught writing letters from Rome to lady-in-waiting Jane Churchill, a court beauty who was married and nearly thirty but looked ten years younger. Years later, Bertie told Vicky that he had been “much in love with her.”
⁵³

When the War of Italian Unification broke out and Rome was threatened with hostilities, Bertie was forced to cut short his stay, but Albert refused to allow him to return home. As he explained to Bruce, “it would be very objectionable for him to be at Buckingham Palace during a succession of gaieties,” which would prevent him from applying himself to the study that was “
absolutely necessary
.” But Albert was anxious to avoid “the appearance of unkindness if not of injustice”
by banishing Bertie from home. “Nothing could be so dangerous to … the welfare of the young Prince, and to the future influence of his royal parents over him, as any opinion upon the part … of the public that he was treated with unkindness.… There could but be two reasons for such a want of natural feeling—either unjust caprice on the part of the parents or unworthiness on the part of the son. It would be difficult to say which judgement on the part of the public would be more disastrous.”
⁵⁴
Albert’s frankness is as chilling as his calculation is devastating—a reminder that this was the man who had “sold” the monarchy through spin, reinventing it as “the royal family” (this was Albert’s phrase) and repackaging it as a middle-class domestic idyll.

Bertie was packed off to Edinburgh. Here he would be safely out of harm’s way and, Albert calculated, his stay could be advertised as a bid to please the Scots. The Palace of Holyroodhouse was dull, but Bertie applied himself dutifully to lectures on science and Roman history. Albert descended and held an “educational conference” with Bertie’s tutors. Bertie was allowed to join his family afterward at Balmoral, but his father insisted on two hours’ study daily; when his tutors suggested that he might read a novel by Walter Scott, Albert snapped: “I should be very sorry that he should look upon the reading of a novel (even by Sir Walter Scott) as a day’s
work
.”
⁵⁵

Victoria conceded that, somewhat to her surprise, Bertie had worked better at Edinburgh than ever before, but she disliked his looks. “The nose,” wrote the doting mother, “is becoming the true Coburg nose, and begins to hang a little, but there remains unfortunately the want of chin which with that very large nose and very large lips is not so well in profile.”
⁵⁶
Bertie was rebuked for wearing long coats and large shoes out shooting, and his hairstyle enraged the Queen: “Do
not
divide your hair so nearly in front and paste it down at the sides. It looks so effeminate and girlish and makes the head look so small.”
⁵⁷

In October 1859, Bertie arrived at Oxford. Albert browbeat the reluctant Dean Liddell of Christ Church to agree that the prince should not have rooms in college like other students, but live in isolation with his
governor, now promoted to Major-General Bruce. Private lodgings were rented at Frewin Hall in the Cornmarket, where he was strictly supervised. “The only use of Oxford,” wrote Albert, “is that it is a place
for study
, a refuge from the world.”
⁵⁸
Bertie must become acquainted with Oxford’s distinguished men, but avoid the contamination of his fellow undergraduates. Under the supervision of tutor Herbert Fisher a special course of lectures was delivered to Bertie and six carefully picked Christ Church undergraduates at Frewin Hall. Whenever Bertie walked into a lecture or attended a cathedral service, everyone rose and remained standing until he was seated.

Bertie resented his isolation, later claiming that it damaged his education, as no doubt it did, given his gregarious nature. His “rigidly virtuous” system and the omnipresence of General Bruce was “a good deal laughed at.”
⁵⁹

In December, Dean Liddell gave Bertie an oral examination on English history from the Anglo-Saxons to Henry III. How this specially designed course would prepare him for his future role is hard to see, but his answers were “ready, clear and for the most part right.” His written examinations were less good. “His pen is not so ready as his tongue,” commented the dean.
⁶⁰

Victoria made a practice of sending Bertie a report on his behavior at the end of each holiday, and the letter she addressed to him after that Christmas at Windsor was particularly stinging. He had dawdled and wasted his time—the Queen had noticed “a growing listlessness and inattention and … self-indulgence” that was most dangerous. “Let me
never
hear of your lying on a sofa or an armchair
except
you are ill or
returned
from a long
fatiguing
day’s
hunting or shooting
.”
⁶¹

Back at Oxford, General Bruce complained to Albert about Bertie’s lack of respect for his tutor Herbert Fisher. “After severely censoring the intemperate tone and manner in which he not infrequently addresses those about him, I stated that such displays to a gentleman in Mr Fisher’s position were intolerable.”
⁶²
In spite of this, Dean Liddell reported an improvement on the previous term. Bertie had worked harder on more difficult subjects, and his oral answers were good. The
written answers still showed constraint. “They might be fuller and might be expressed in freer and more idiomatic language.” Privately, the dean considered Bertie to be “the nicest fellow possible, so simple, naïve, ingenuous and modest, and moreover with extremely good wits; possessing also the Royal faculty of never forgetting a face.”
⁶³

In spite of General Bruce’s surveillance, Bertie managed to make one extremely unsuitable friend at Christ Church: Sir Frederick Johnstone. Johnstone was exactly the type of “fast” young man Albert was anxious that Bertie should avoid—a heavy-drinking member of the Bullingdon Club, devoted to gambling, horse racing, and womanizing. It was he who first led Bertie astray, opened his eyes to the possibilities of his position, and perhaps helped to rub off his harsh German accent.
⁶⁴
Soon the Prince of Wales’s name was to be found inscribed in the ledger of the fashionable Savile Row tailor Henry Poole, along with his measurements—chest: 33¾ inches; waist: 29¼ inches.
⁶⁵
So much for the view that he was already overweight. At Frewin Hall, Bertie engaged a first-rate chef. He took up fox hunting. He was becoming a swell.

Victoria watched with dismay. She urged Bertie to refrain, as she and Albert did, from eating rich and unwholesome dishes. She implored him to be careful out hunting, a sport that she abhorred—“that
horrid
hunting from which it is a mercy anyone returns alive.… You all of you belong to the country and must not be foolhardy or imprudent. Of course this applies a thousand times more to dear Papa, who is
all
and
all
to me, without whom I shd be
utterly
powerless, consequently whose life is of
national
and
European
importance.”
⁶⁶

Bertie’s replies to his mother’s letters were pathetically meek and submissive. “I am afraid that I have very little news to tell you, as every day is much the same.”
⁶⁷
One senses the irritation behind the Queen’s complaint: “It is very discouraging when I write to you dear Child, full of anxiety for your welfare and receive nothing but an indifferent answer.… Try in future dear and enter a little into what Mama in the fullness of her heart writes to you.”
⁶⁸
Bertie’s response was hardly encouraging. “I am afraid that my letters are very dull and stupid as there
is very little to say, but I try to enter into the feelings you express in your letters as much as I can.”
⁶⁹
Little wonder the royal parents worried sometimes that their son was a half-wit.

Queen Victoria considered that one of the problems about being royal was that “we
cannot form
intimate friendships
except
among our
nearest relations
.”
⁷⁰
The eighteen-year-old Bertie’s most intimate friends were his sisters, and his response to his mother’s bullying was to appeal for their support. He wrote to Vicky in Berlin, complaining about his parents’ constantly finding fault. Her response was affectionate but patronizing. “Don’t be cast down my darling old Bertie,” she urged, “only try and do what dear Papa wishes and you will see all will go right and dear Mama will be pleased and satisfied.”
⁷¹
Homesick and lonely in her barracks-like palace in Berlin, reading and nursing her new baby, Vicky had forgotten how wounding Victoria’s criticisms could be.

Alice was different. Her sharp, waiflike profile contrasted starkly with the rich, rustling satins of her wide hooped dresses. At sixteen she was intensely religious, with a directness and spontaneity that was perhaps the result of childhood illness; it made her strangely attractive. Lord Clarendon described her as a bird in a cage, beating her wings against her prison bars.
⁷²

This was an age of intense, romanticized brother-sister relationships, but few sisters wrote such emotional letters as Alice did to Bertie. “I am so happy when I have you dear darling, though it is but for a short time.” Again: “My good love I miss you so though we are so constantly separated, I cannot get accustomed to it, and it makes me quite sad to think that I must once more make my pen the interpreter of all my feelings and thoughts.” It was as if Bertie was her fantasy lover, but she worshipped Albert, too, declaring, as Vicky had done before her, that “there never was such a
perfect man
as Papa before, everything that is good is united in him, everything that is great, that is noble, that is clever, that is true, he really is almost an angel upon earth!”
⁷³

Instead of lecturing Bertie, as Vicky did, Alice joined him in conspiring against the Queen. “Thank you very much for both your letters,”
Alice wrote in December 1859; “the first I burned after reading it, as I do not wish to risk any false excuse for not showing it; for though you were quite excusable in your annoyance, yet the way you expressed yourself against Her was not quite respectful. Please burn the letter I sent you.”
⁷⁴
Bertie forwarded Victoria’s letters to Alice, who replied carefully. “I think it would be better dear Bertie if, when she makes such remarks, gives you such advice, that you should not only thank her for it, but tell her you will follow it.” She counseled caution: “You must remember, she is your Mother and is privileged to say such things; and though, as Vicky and I have often and long known, they are not said in the pleasantest way and often exaggerated, yet out of filial duty they must be borne and taken in the right way.”
⁷⁵

Alice, now seventeen, was impatient to be married off to the inevitable German prince, and suitable candidates were invited for inspection. Prince Louis of Hesse arrived at Windsor to stay for Royal Ascot week in June, and Bertie joined the party from Oxford. The romantic Alice fell desperately in love with the red-faced, doltish Louis. The couple exchanged tear-sodden handkerchiefs when they parted, and very soon they became engaged. Clarendon, who thought Alice the brightest and most attractive of her family, regretted her engagement to a “dull boy” with a “dull family in a dull country.”
⁷⁶
The news was a wrench for Bertie, who wrote unhappily to Alice: “It will be a bitter pang for me to separate from you, as it will not be the same place without you, nobody will be able to supply your place, as Lenchen [Bertie and Alice’s younger sister Helena] is so much younger and still so childish.”
⁷⁷

Back in Oxford after Ascot, Bertie wrote Victoria a letter that could hardly fail to annoy her: “I hope that you will excuse that I have not written before, but as I had no news of any sort to give you, my letter would have been very dull, and I am afraid that it will be so now, as I have nothing of any interest to communicate to you.”
⁷⁸
The Oxford term ended with a Christ Church ball. Albert warned Bertie strictly that Oxford balls “are not visited by you for your amusement, but to give pleasure to others by your presence.”
⁷⁹
The next morning, when the doors of the Sheldonian Theatre were flung open for Commemoration, Bertie headed the procession of dons, taking precedence over
the vice chancellor on account of his rank. An audience of rowdy undergraduates gave three hearty cheers for the prince, who “graciously acknowledged them.”
⁸⁰
Fame, it seemed, was not something that Bertie needed to earn by reading and applying himself to his lectures as his father had done. He was famous just because of who he was, and the discovery was intoxicating.

In the summer of 1860, the eighteen-year-old Bertie made his first royal tour, to Canada and the United States.

Bertie’s grandfather, the Duke of Kent, had served with his regiment in Canada in the 1790s, and Prince Edward Island was named after him; but the idea of sending the heir to the throne on a ceremonial tour of the new world was an innovation. Like most ideas at court, it originated with Albert, who choreographed the entire visit, even composing memoranda supplying responses for Bertie to read to all the addresses he received on his tour.
⁸¹

Bertie’s minder was the Duke of Newcastle, known to his friends as Barbarossa on account of his red beard. A crony of Gladstone, the hapless but humorless duke had lived down the disgrace of his wife’s adultery and divorce; he was now fleeing the scandal caused by the elopement of his daughter Lady Susan Clinton with Lord Adolphus Vane-Tempest, the son of the Marquess of Londonderry, who was alcoholic, violent, and insane.