Christopher Hibbert - Edward VII - The Last Victorian King

The Prince became a familiar figure in the streets of the town, where he was pointed out as ‘one of the principal sights’. He was often cheered by the crowd when he went to watch a game of football or a review of the University Corps on Parker’s Piece.

A.J. Munby, the poet, who had himself been an undergraduate at Trinity some years before, went to dine in the College Hall one evening in May 1861 when, while waiting for grace to be said, he suddenly realized that the ‘manly sunburnt face of the youth in [a nobleman’s full dress gown of] purple and gold’ standing next to him belonged to the Prince of Wales. Munby, an ardent royalist, recorded in his diary:

He stands apparently about five feet seven, is manly and well made; and his frank intelligent face (with a good deal of fun and animal vigour in it too) has a pure rich sunbrown tint, which his soft gold hair and large blue eyes make all the more artistic. The full underlip, receding chin and prominent eyes are Brunswick all over. His hands, I observed, are square and strong, and neither white nor delicate; but suggestive of healthy outdoor use … He spoke to the dons he knew and shook hands; and was treated with respect, but no ceremonial whatever … Presently the Master [William Whewell] came up, his bearish old face warped into a courtly grin; and shook hands with the Prince, and led him to his own right hand.

The Prince’s neighbours at dinner usually found him a pleasant companion, though his conversation, in the opinion of one of them, was limited to ‘subjects of amusement’ and he was prone to ask rather thoughtless questions — as, for instance, of the Master of St John’s, a learned mathematician whose friends doubted that he had ever so much as been astride a horse, if he was fond of hunting. ‘The Prince talks agreeably,’ the Vice-Chancellor told Romilly, the Registrar, who suspected that by this was meant ‘he listens agreeably’. And Romilly himself, having been to dinner at Madingley Hall, could afterwards think of no more than one small scrap of conversation worth recording in his journal: ‘I ventured to talk to the Prince about his gigantic black Newfoundland dog [Cabot] (which he brought from Canada), saying that I had heard of his upsetting a railway porter. The Prince said that he was, indeed, most powerful: this grand dog on first landing was bitten by another dog, but he “killed his assailant off hand”.’

But if the Prince was not a gifted conversationalist, his various tutors found him well-mannered and attentive. Charles Kingsley, the newly appointed Regius Professor of Modern History, gave him lectures in company with eleven other undergraduates at the Kingsleys’ house in Fitzwilliam Street and once a week went over the work with him on his own. The professor, ‘the ugliest man’ Romilly had ever seen in his life, seemed ‘rather nervous and uncomfortable at having to see the Prince by himself ’. He had already confessed to a friend that he had been reduced to ‘fear and trembling’ by a letter from the Prince Consort which stated the exact way in which the Prince of Wales was to be taught and the period of history which was to be covered, ‘a totally different period’ from that which Kingsley had intended to deal with in his lectures. But after some experience of teaching the Prince, Kingsley told Romilly that he was ‘much pleased with his attention to his lectures’ and that he asked ‘very intelligent questions’. ‘The Prince is very interesting, putting me in mind of his mother in voice, manner, face and everything,’ Kingsley later decided. ‘I had him in private today, and we had a very interesting talk on politics, old and new, a free press, and so forth. I confess I tremble at my responsibility: but I have made up my mind to speak plain truth as far as I know it.’

Other tutors, while acknowledging that their pupil was amiable, that he was, in Kingsley’s phrase, a ‘jolly boy’, had to admit, however, that he would never make a scholar; and certainly his mind turned constantly from his studies to the army. The dinner parties he gave at Madingley Hall — at which the frivolous Duke of St Albans and Lord Pollington, both undergraduates at Trinity, were amongst the very few guests prepared to have with him the sort of gossipy conversation he most enjoyed — seemed to the Prince very boring affairs compared to what he supposed to be the merry dinners in a Guards officers’ mess.

At length, in the middle of March 1861, when his son was nineteen, the Prince Consort decided, on one of those regular visits he made to Madingley Hall to ensure that his rules and memoranda were being observed, that his son might profit after all from a break in his studies. General Bruce had changed his mind about the possible effects of the army on the Prince’s character and had now decided that he might well find camp life ‘a good field for social instruction’. It was accordingly settled that during the summer vacation he should spend ten weeks attached to the Grenadier Guards at the Curragh military camp near Dublin.

The Prince’s excitement at the prospect of this escape into military life was somewhat dampened when he learned of the severe restrictions which were to be imposed upon him in Ireland. For, from a memorandum which was drawn up with meticulous care by his father — and which the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge, as commander-in-chief, and General Sir George Brown, as general officer commanding in Ireland, were all required to sign — he learned that, while he was to wear the uniform of a staff colonel, he was to undergo a most exacting training in the duties of every rank from ensign upwards. As soon as he had thoroughly mastered the duties of one grade he was to proceed to master those of the next, until by the end of the ten weeks’ course he might, ‘with some exertion, arrive … at the command of a Battalion … and [be rendered competent] to manoeuvre a Brigade in the Field’.

While undergoing this rigorous cramming course, the Prince was also to acquire the social graces of an officer and a gentleman. He would dine twice a week in the Grenadier Guards’ mess; once a week in the messes of other regiments; twice a week he would give a dinner party himself to senior officers; and on the two remaining evenings he would dine quietly in his own quarters — which were to be close to General Brown’s — and afterwards devote himself to reading and writing. It was considered indispensably necessary that his relations with other officers would have to be placed on ‘a becoming and satisfactory footing, having regard to his position both as a Prince of the Blood and Heir to the throne, as well as a Field Officer in the Army’.

It was naturally all too much for him. The most dedicated and proficient recruit would have found it extremely difficult to keep pace with the Prince Consort’s programme of training; the Prince of Wales found it impossible. After seven weeks’ training, the commanding officer of the battalion to which he was attached considered him totally inadequate to perform the duties of the rank to which his father had decided he ought by then to have risen. And during the visit that his parents and his ‘Uncle George’, the Duke of Cambridge, made to the camp on 23

August he was humiliated by having to perform, while wearing his colonel’s uniform, the duties of a subaltern. He begged to be allowed to command, if not a battalion, at least a company; but his commanding officer would not hear of it. ‘You are imperfect in your drill, Sir. Your word of command is indistinct. I will not try to make the Duke of Cambridge think that you are more advanced than you are.’

In fact, the Duke of Cambridge had already decided that the Prince was not likely to make a very good soldier; he had neither the will nor the energy. The Prince Consort was compelled to agree. After witnessing the review on the Curragh, he confessed to his host, the Lord-Lieutenant, that the Prince was not taking his duties seriously enough — not that many young gentlemen did, he added, lamenting the ‘idle tendencies of English youth’ and the disinclination of English army officers to discuss their profession on the grounds that it was ‘talking shop’. The Queen was almost equally discouraged. All she could find to record of Bertie’s part in the review was that when he marched past he did not look ‘so very small’.