Christopher Hibbert - Edward VII - The Last Victorian King

Apart from a quiet expression of regret that he was expected to dance all the time with middle-aged ladies instead of young girls, a muttered protest about being hurried about from one place to the next was his only complaint during the whole of this American tour. He had found some of the long railroad journeys exceedingly tedious, and at both New York and Chicago, exhausted by the rush and commotion, he had had to go to bed with a fearful headache. Still, he afterwards agreed that he had enjoyed himself enormously; and the Americans had clearly enjoyed him. General Winfield Scott described him as ‘enchanting’; and the roar of cheering voices that greeted him as he drove down Broadway in a barouche with the Mayor, Fernando Wood, persuaded his suite that most Americans were prepared to agree.

General Bruce told Sir Charles Phipps, Keeper of the Queen’s Privy Purse, that it was quite impossible to exaggerate the enthusiasm of the Prince’s reception in New York; he despaired of its ‘ever being understood in England’. He went on:

This is the culminating point of our expedition and … with the exception of the Orange difficulty, the affair has been one continual triumph. No doubt the primary cause has been the veneration in which the Queen is held … but it is also true that, finding that sentiment in operation, the Prince of Wales has so comported himself as to turn it to the fullest account and to gain for himself no small share of interest and attraction. He has undergone no slight trial, and his patience, temper and good breeding have been severely taxed. There is no doubt that he has created everywhere a most favourable impression.

His mother was delighted with these reports and, for once, gave him credit unreservedly. ‘He was immensely popular everywhere,’ she told Princess Frederick William as the Prince was on his way home through stormy seas, ‘and he really deserves the highest praise, which should be given him all the more as he was never spared any reproof.’ The Prince Consort, too, was prepared to recognize that much of the credit for the resounding success of what King Leopold called this ‘tremendous tour’ must rest with his son, though he had been more than usually pained by the letters addressed to him from North America which — containing such passages as ‘St John’s is a very picturesque seaport town, and its cod fisheries are its staple produce’ — might well have been copied out of some peculiarly boring guidebook. The Prince Consort was also sorry to note that Bruce’s praise was tempered by criticism of the Prince’s poor showing in conversation, his ‘growing sense of his own importance’ which was ‘stimulating a longing for independence of control’. But these reservations were exceptional. President Buchanan reported:

In our domestic circle he won all hearts. His free and ingenuous intercourse with myself evinced both a kind heart and a good understanding … He has passed through a trying ordeal for a person of his years, and his conduct throughout has been such as becomes his age and station. Dignified, frank and affable, he has conciliated, wherever he has been, the kindness and respect of a sensitive and discriminating people.

Lord Lyons, the British Minister in Washington, praised his ‘patience and good humour … his judgement … and tact’. Sir John Rose, the Canadian Minister, spoke warmly of his ‘kind and gentle demeanour’. All in all, the Prince Consort was driven, albeit ironically, to conclude, his son had been ‘generally pronounced “the most perfect production of nature”’.

The young hero arrived home and was welcomed at Windsor with warm congratulations. Although he was ‘a little yellow and sallow’ and his hair looked so fair when he stood next to Affie (who was ‘very dark and very handsome’), the Queen thought that he looked well, had grown a little taller and was ‘decidedly improved’. Yet she felt constrained to add, with more than a hint of disapproval, that he had become ‘extremely talkative’. He had also taken, she later noticed, to lounging about with a cigar stuck in his mouth. There were soon to be complaints far more severe than these.

After the excitement of the American tour, the Prince found it more difficult than ever to settle down to study. He renewed persistently his pleas to be allowed to join the army, to go on a military course to Aldershot. But General Bruce warned his parents of the dangers of such a plan, of ‘the temptation and unprofitable companionship of military life’. He was still too immature to resist temptation. He had been almost seventeen before he had made enquiries about the meaning of certain words and had revealed his ignorance about the facts of life which — no one having spoken to him of such matters before — one of his tutors had discreetly explained in a lecture on the ‘purpose and the abuse of the union of the sexes’. The Prince had ‘never experienced to their full extent those checks and restraints, and those practical lessons in what is due to others, and ourselves, which belong to the ordinary social intercourse of equals’. He was still inclined to be intolerant, to form ‘hasty and mistaken judgements’; while his love of excitement carried him ‘almost unconsciously into the company of the idle and the frivolous’. It would be far better, Bruce concluded, if he returned to university.

So it was decided that the Prince’s initiation into military life would be postponed and that, having completed his courses at Oxford, he should go to Cambridge, where he was to be entered on the books of Trinity College. He was not, however, to be allowed any more intimate acquaintance with undergraduate life there than he had been permitted at Frewin Hall. A set of rooms at Trinity was to be allocated to him for his occasional use, but he was never to be allowed to sleep there or to join in any of the social activities of the College without supervision. Much against his wishes, he was to be installed, with General and Mrs Bruce and various other custodians and attendants, in a big country house, Madingley Hall, four miles outside Cambridge. There were, he was assured, ‘capital stables’ there, and he would be able to ride or drive in his phaeton to the university every morning.

On the last day of 1860 the Prince Consort went over to inspect Madingley Hall and, as General Bruce informed the owner, Lady King, ‘his Royal Highness, on the whole, was much pleased with the place’, though it was considered that she had not cleared enough space in the library for the Prince’s books and that a larger fireplace would have to be installed in the drawing-room. Money would also have to be spent on the stables; but, on the whole, the £1,200 asked for a year’s tenancy was considered ‘a fair demand’.

The Prince of Wales arrived at Madingley Hall on 18 January 1861, and the next morning presented himself at Trinity College, where he was formally welcomed to Cambridge by the Vice-Chancellor and by other senior members of the University, as well as by the Mayor and representatives of the town. He was then escorted to Magdalene College, where the Registrar made a short speech and he was handed a copy of the University statutes. The Registrar, Joseph Romilly, thought that the Prince behaved well, ‘graciously’ acknowledging the complimentary remarks that were addressed to him, though making no reply, and penning ‘a good, clear signature’ in the admission book. One of Romilly’s more critical colleagues, however, dismissed the Prince slightingly as ‘an effeminate youth with no colour in his cheeks’.

The Prince admitted afterwards to having felt rather nervous and apprehensive that first day. Despite the unwelcome restrictions imposed upon him, however, he settled down after a few weeks and even began to enjoy himself. His American tour had increased his self-confidence and he made friends much more easily, growing especially attached to Charles Wynn-Carrington, whom he had met briefly in his Eton days and who was now a fellow-undergraduate at Trinity.