Christopher Hibbert - Edward VII - The Last Victorian King

But the Prince refused to be silenced. Nothing that either the Queen or the King of the Belgians could do prevented him from speaking his mind. So strongly did he feel, in fact, that he even discussed what he considered to be the pusillanimous policies of the government with leading members of the opposition after his offer to act as an intermediary between London and Copenhagen had been treated — as the Queen instructed that it should be treated — ‘with extreme caution’.

In the Queen’s opinion, the Prince’s irresponsibility had been only too amply demonstrated that same spring when the Italian revolutionary, General Giuseppe Garibaldi, who had fallen out with the Italian government, came to London with the publicly declared intention of ‘obtaining the benefit of medical advice and paying a debt of gratitude to the English people’, but with the privately expressed purpose of securing English help for Denmark. Lord Palmerston had made it clear to Garibaldi’s sponsors that the visit must be a private one and that the General should be discouraged from accepting invitations to public entertainments at which he might be induced to make compromising speeches. But it had not been possible to prevent Garibaldi’s being accorded ‘such demonstrations of affection and respect as are seldom seen in England’. Nor had it proved possible to prevent his referring more than once in a speech delivered to a huge and enthusiastic audience in the Crystal Palace to the plight of ‘poor little Denmark’.

This speech, like Garibaldi’s every public appearance in England, was greeted with tumultuous cheers. As the Countess Martinengo Cesaresco commented, ‘No sovereign from overseas was ever received by the English people as they received the Italian hero.’ It was estimated that over half a million people turned out in the streets to welcome him; and The Times found it ‘almost impossible to describe’ their enthusiasm. The courtyard of Stafford House, the Duke of Sutherland’s house where he stayed, was continually thronged with people hoping to catch a glimpse of him; and the Duke’s servants found a ready market for bottles of soapsuds from his washbasin. Special performances of a Garibaldi musical play were given; Garibaldi biscuits became more popular than ever; and ‘Garibaldies, in the science of millinery the feminine for the Garibaldi shirt’, became the height of fashion.

The Queen, who had taken the precaution of leaving for Balmoral a few days before the General was shown over the royal farms at Windsor, was appalled by the people’s behaviour and felt ‘half-ashamed of being the head of a nation capable of such follies’. She wrote crossly to Lord Russell:

The Queen much regrets the extravagant excitement respecting Garibaldi which shows little dignity and discrimination in the nation, and it is not very flattering to others who are received. The Queen fears that the Government may find Garibaldi’s views and connections no little cause of inconvenience with foreign governments hereafter, and trusts they will be cautious in what they do for him in their official capacity. Brave and honest though he is, he has ever been a revolutionist leader.

The Queen was, therefore, ‘very much shocked’ to learn that, without her knowledge or permission, the Prince of Wales had been guilty of the ‘incredible folly and imprudence’ of going to Stafford House to call upon Garibaldi. She curtly told General Knollys that she held him responsible and that she must in future ‘insist that no step of the slightest political importance’ was ever taken without her being consulted.

She was not in the least mollified by her son’s explanation that he had gone to Stafford House ‘quite privately’ and that he had been ‘much pleased’ with Garibaldi. The Prince went on conversationally:

He is not tall, but such a dignified and noble appearance, and such a quiet and gentle way of speaking — especially never of himself — that nobody could fail to be attracted by him … He asked a great deal about you, and … referred to Denmark and said how much he felt for all the brave soldiers who had perished in the war. Though, of course, it would have been very different for you to have seen him, still I think you would have been pleased with him as he is uncharlatanlike … and though his undertakings have been certainly revolutionary, still, he is a patriot, and did not seek for his own aggrandisement.

There were others, apart from the Queen, who considered the Prince had behaved unwisely. ‘What do you think of the Prince of Wales and Garibaldi?’ Disraeli asked his friend, Lady Dorothy Nevill. ‘For a quasicrowned head to call on a subject is strange, and that subject is a rebel!’ But the Prince himself was unrepentant. His visit had been ‘hailed with joy throughout the country’, he informed his mother. He declined to admit that he had been wrong to make it; he had always believed in the unity of Italy, which was, after all, the ‘avowed policy of the present Government’; and, as for Knollys, the Prince added, ‘he is not, and cannot be, responsible for my actions. I have now been of age for some time and am alone responsible, and am only too happy to bear any blame on my shoulders.’

There was more blame soon to come.

The Christmas of 1863 was unusually cold, and on the following Twelfth Day the lake at Frogmore was still frozen hard. During the afternoon a band came down to play by a charcoal fire on the frosty grass by the water’s edge while children slid about on the ice and skaters played ice hockey. The Princess of Wales loved skating, but since she was seven months pregnant she thought it advisable merely to watch others, though she presided energetically over a children’s party that evening. The next day she again went out to watch the skating, disregarding twinges of pain in her womb. Lady Macclesfield warned against it, but the Princess made light of her fears and had herself pushed out onto the ice at Virginia Water in a sledge-chair. Returning to Frogmore at dusk she realized that the birth was imminent; and, just before nine o’clock, the child was delivered onto a flannel petticoat belonging to Lady Macclesfield, who, in the absence of medical attendants other than the hastily summoned local doctor, had acted as nurse — an office which, as the mother of thirteen children, she was able to perform with reassuring confidence. She allowed Lord Granville — Lord President of the Council and the only minister readily available — to see the baby so that he could give official assurance of the birth of a future heir to the throne. She then ushered him out of the room and asked the Prince, who had been present at the birth, to leave as well so that the mother could go to sleep in peace. A few minutes later she looked round the door to make sure that all was well. She found that the Prince had slipped back into the room and was holding his wife in his arms. They were both in tears.

The next day the Princess was as happy as ever; and when no less than six famous doctors came into her room, and approached her bed importantly to hold a consultation over her, she burst out laughing. Yet she could not treat so lightheartedly the advent, on the same day, of her mother-in-law. For some time now she had been aware that the Queen, though still extremely fond of her, had been increasingly critical of her behaviour, that she strongly disapproved of the way she and the Prince had spent so much time gadding about when they should have been quietly awaiting the birth of a baby who might have been expected to enter the world weighing more than a puny three and three-quarter pounds and — ‘poor little boy’ — having some proper clothes to wear instead of being ‘just wrapped in cotton wool’.