Christopher Hibbert - Edward VII - The Last Victorian King

The Prince did not go to any lectures, preferring dinners and balls. But he did sit patiently while his sister, in obedience to her father’s injunction, read aloud to him from improving books; and his visit was an undoubted success. The Germans found him charming and tactful, most bezaubernd; and he and his brother-in-law, who was ten years older than himself, got on together extremely well. Even the Prince Consort had to agree that Bertie had shown a ‘remarkable social talent’, and that ‘his manners [had] improved very much’. He was certainly

lively, quick and sharp when his mind [was] set on anything, which [was] seldom … But usually his intellect [was] of no more use than a pistol packed in the bottom of a trunk if one were attacked in the robber-infested Apennines… You would hardly believe it, but whilst he behaved so well and showed such tact under the restraint imposed by society, he tormented his new valet more than ever in every possible way, pouring wax on his livery, throwing water on his linen, rapping him on the nose, tearing his ties, and other gentilesses.

The Queen was equally exasperated. ‘Poor Bertie! He vexes us much,’ she had written to her daughter before the visit. ‘There is not a particle of reflection, or even attention to anything but dress! Not the slightest interest to learn, on the contrary, il se bouche les oreilles, the moment anything of interest is being talked of.’ Now that he had arrived home he spoke endlessly about his visit, but it was all about parties and theatres and ‘what people said etc. Of the finer works of art etc., he [said] nothing, unless asked.’

To encourage his appreciation of art and to acquire ‘knowledge and information’, the Prince was sent to Rome immediately on his return from Berlin. Colonel Bruce was once more in charge of the party and was provided by the Prince Consort with a detailed itinerary together with the most exact instructions as to the Prince’s behaviour and course of study. At the same time Bruce was instructed by the Queen to be present whenever the Prince talked to any ‘foreigner or stranger’. It was ‘indispensable that His Royal Highness should receive no foreigner or stranger alone, so that no report of pretended conversations with such persons could be circulated without immediate refutation.’

Colonel Bruce’s duties were to be made less onerous by the presence in the party of his wife as well as Mr and Mrs Tarver, an equerry and a doctor; and in Rome he was also to be provided with the services of an Italian tutor, of Joseph Barclay Pentland as archaeological guide, and, as artistic adviser, John Gibson, the sculptor, who had lived in the city for several years and whose statue of Queen Victoria had recently been completed for the Palace of Westminster.

The travellers sailed from Dover to Ostend on 10 January 1859 and, after a visit to King Leopold at Laeken, made a sightseeing tour of various German cities before crossing the Brenner Pass on their way to Verona and thence to Rome where, on 4 February, their luggage was unpacked in the Hôtel d’Angleterre. Here, early every morning, the Prince was set to work at his lessons. Before breakfast, so Bruce reported to his father, ‘he learns by heart and prepares for his Italian master who comes from 10 to 11 a.m. He reads with Mr Tarver from eleven to twelve, and translates French from 5 to 6 p.m., and has the next hour in the evening for private reading or music. He has a piano in his room.’ The afternoons were spent inspecting ancient remains and the contents of art galleries, none of which the Prince appeared to find as intriguing as the portraits of a lovely Italian woman in John Gibson’s studio. Sometimes in the evening he was taken to the opera; often he was required to give dinner parties at which Odo Russell, the diplomat, Frederic Leighton, the artist, the Duke of St Albans, Robert Browning, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, the French writer Jean Jacques Ampère, and the American historian J.L. Motley were all occasional guests. Once he was allowed to watch the spring carnival and to join in the confetti-throwing in the Corso.

Within a week of his arrival, the Prince was taken for an audience with the Pope by Colonel Bruce, who, remembering the Queen’s earnest injunction, sought and obtained permission to be present. The Pope spoke in French which the Prince appeared to understand quite well; and the audience progressed smoothly enough, despite Bruce’s nervous coughs, until His Holiness raised the delicate subject of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England, which so alarmed Bruce that, in defiance of curial protocol, he hastily removed his charge from the papal presence and left the Vatican without calling upon the Secretary of State, Cardinal Antonelli, as customary etiquette required.

The English travellers had already given offence to the Pope’s enemies in the north, to King Victor Emmanuel, and his minister, Count Cavour, by declining to visit them in Turin lest the Prince became involved in Italian politics or was corrupted by the vulgar King, who had behaved badly enough at Windsor and could be expected to be even more uncouth in his own palace. Undeterred by this rebuff, however, the King offered to confer upon the Prince the Order of the Annunciation; and this, it was decided after some hesitation, the Prince might accept, particularly as the investiture was to be performed by Massimo Taparelli, Marchese d’Azeglio, the much respected statesman and author who had once been Victor Emmanuel’s Prime Minister.

The Prince’s gratification at receiving so imposing an order from ‘so distinguished a personage’ was expressed in an unusually long entry in his diary. This, for the most part, unfortunately continued to distress his father, who, reading the extracts regularly posted home to him, noted with regret that there was as little improvement in the style of the jejune entries as evidence of a mature mind at work in their composition. Nor was the Prince Consort comforted by the reports he received from Colonel Bruce, who was unable to record any improvement in the Prince’s ‘learning and mental qualities’ and had cause to complain of his continued outbursts of temper. ‘His thoughts are centred on matters of ceremony, on physical qualities, manners, social standing, and dress,’ Bruce wrote. ‘And these are the distinctions which command his esteem.’

Other reports were more favourable. Robert Browning, who had been told by Bruce to ‘eschew compliments and keep to Italian politics’, found the Prince ‘a gentle refined boy’ who listened politely even if he did not say much. And J.L. Motley was much taken with him. ‘His smile is very ready and genuine,’ Motley wrote, ‘his manners are extremely good … His eyes are bluish-grey, rather large and very frank in expression … I have not had much to do with royal personages, but of those I have known I know none whose address is more winning, and with whom one feels more at one’s ease.’

‘Nobody could have nicer and better manners,’ wrote Edward Lear, to whose lodgings the Prince was taken by Colonel Bruce.

I was afraid of telling or shewing him too much, but I soon found he was interested in what he saw, both by his attention and by his intelligent few remarks. Yet I shewed him the Greek pictures, and all the Palestine oils, and the whole of the sketches, and when I said, — ‘please tell me to stop, Sir, if you are tired by so many’ — he said — ‘O dear no!’ in the naturalest way.

Indeed, it was generally admitted that the Prince was an attractive boy. Disraeli, who had sat next to him at dinner the evening before he went to see his sister in Berlin, found him ‘intelligent, informed and with a singularly sweet manner’. And even his father had to admit that he showed quite a ‘turn’ for social functions. Yet the prince Consort could not find much else to be said in his favour. Certainly he had displayed markedly little enthusiasm for the wonders of Rome. And when his intended tour of northern Italy was cut short by the outbreak of war, he seemed happy enough to sail to Gibraltar, where there was ‘plenty of larking’, and to travel from there to Lisbon to see his cousin, King Pedro V, son of the late Queen Maria da Gloria, who had married Prince Ferdinand of SaxeCoburg. It had also to be regretted that the journal entries he sent home to his father from Italy were as flat, brief and unilluminating as all the others he had written. His father begged him to write in a less stilted, more reflective, manner; but the reply was not very encouraging: ‘I am sorry you were not pleased with my Journal as I took pains with it, but I see the justice of your remarks and will try to profit by them.’