Christopher Hibbert - Edward VII - The Last Victorian King

‘I was, however, overruled,’ Knollys recorded. ‘I consoled myself in trusting that the Princess only half-heard the song and only half-understood its meaning, but the Princess seemed seriously annoyed with me for trying to get her away before this objectionable song was sung.’

She was even more annoyed when her chair was wheeled off the Osborne and carried aboard a river steamer which, to her utter indignation, was flying the Prussian flag at the stern. She demanded that it be taken down; and it was pointed out to her in vain that it was the universal custom to fly such a flag in those waters, that the Union Jack was flying at the mizzen and the Danish flag at the fore.

It was possible to make light of this particular display of the Princess’s obsessional abhorrence of all things Prussian; but when the party arrived at the house which had been rented for them at Wiesbaden and their behaviour was open to public inspection it was more difficult to conceal the Princess’s embarrassing sentiments. For at Wiesbaden a telegram arrived from the King of Prussia offering to call upon the Princess at a time convenient to her that evening or the next day. The Prince of Wales being away at the time, the telegram was handed to her by an apprehensive Sir William Knollys. He had already had a foretaste of the troubles to come at the Castle of Rumpenheim where he had found ‘a most rabid anti-Prussian feeling, where everyone seemed to have been bit by some Prussian mad dog, and the slightest allusion set the whole party — … thirty-six at dinner — into agitation’. The Princess glanced at the telegram and dictated so rude a reply that Knollys declined to write it down.

On his return to Wiesbaden the Prince of Wales failed to persuade his wife to see the King; so he sent a telegram regretting that she was not yet well enough to receive visitors but that he himself would pay his Majesty a visit at any time convenient to him. This excuse having been provided for her, the Princess then insisted on demonstrating that she was not really as ill as all that by travelling to Rumpenheim for her grandfather’s funeral.

Deeply resentful of the insult offered to her husband, Queen Augusta complained to Queen Victoria, whose doubts as to the propriety of her daughter-in-law’s conduct in Germany — not to mention her son’s — were only too amply confirmed. She was already annoyed with the Prince of Wales for having disobeyed her instructions by attending the races at Baden, a most notorious town, a ‘little Paris’, whose society was such — so she had been informed by the Queen of Prussia — that ‘no one [could] mix in it without loss of character’. Yet not only had the Prince gone there and spent a great deal of money on betting and jewellery, he had protested against its being considered necessary to give him such advice on the subject at his age: one might imagine that he were ‘ten or twelve years old, and not nearly twenty-six’. The Prince’s protest had been followed by a letter of apology and explanation from Sir William Knollys; he lamented the failure of his efforts to prevent the Prince’s going to the races, but thought he owed it to himself to add that ‘in no points [would] his Royal Highness brook Sir William’s interference less than in any matter connected with his plans and intentions’.

Now there was all this trouble over Princess Alexandra and the Prussians. The Prince wrote in attempted exculpation of his wife’s conduct:

I myself should have been glad if she had seen the King, but a lady may have feelings which she cannot repress, while a man must overcome them. If Coburg had been taken away as [other territories have been by the Prussians] I don’t think you would much care to see the King either. You will not, I hope, be angry, dear Mama, at my last sentence; but it is the only way that I can express what dear Alix really feels.

The Queen, however, was not prepared to be so tolerant of the Princess’s personal feelings. Nor were her daughters. The Crown Princess stigmatized her sister-in-law’s behaviour as ‘neither wise nor kind’, and Princess Alice of Hesse tried to persuade her brother to order his wife to see the King. The Prince of Wales enlisted the help of Queen Louise of Denmark, who came over to the house at Wiesbaden to say that she herself would see the King but that she was not prepared to distress her daughter by trying to persuade her to do so. So it was left to the Prince, who had by now seen both the King and Queen of Prussia on his own, to talk to her again himself. He ‘used every argument, but in vain, to persuade the Princess … She would not listen to reason of any kind. After a long discussion the Princess ended it by getting up and walking out of the room by the aid of her stick.’

The Prince then decided that he would precipitate a meeting whether or not the Princess agreed. So he wrote a telegram inviting the King of Prussia to breakfast the next morning, took it to his wife’s room and then handed it to Knollys and asked him to send it off. Eventually, after the Princess had done her utmost to prevent the threatened meeting and further telegrams had been dispatched and received, the King of Prussia accepted an invitation to breakfast at Wiesbaden on 11 October.

Anxiously waiting his arrival in the drawing-room, Knollys stood up as the Princess came into the room, leaning on her stick and looking very pale. Knollys, who had done his best to avoid her during the past few days, was rather embarrassed and made some tactless remark about her pallor, expressing the fear that ‘she had caught cold’. ‘Maybe I am pale,’ she replied sharply, ‘but it is not from cold but from anger at being obliged to see the King of Prussia.’ And what she minded most, she added, was that she would not have been obliged to do so had it not been for the interference of ‘those two old women, the Prince of Wales’s sisters’ — the Crown Princess, who was twenty-six, and Princess Alice, who was twenty-four.

Princess Alexandra was still talking to Knollys when the King of Prussia was shown into the room. To everyone’s relief she controlled her feelings and greeted him much more gracefully than anyone had dared to hope. He, in turn, was almost effusively friendly, remaining at Wiesbaden for luncheon and, so Knollys heard subsequently, expressing himself as being ‘quite satisfied with his reception’.

The whole episode, however, had made Queen Victoria ‘extremely angry’. If only Princess Alexandra ‘understood her duties better’, she complained to the Crown Princess. ‘That makes me terribly anxious.’ She asked the Prime Minister to take an opportunity ‘of expressing both to the Prince and Princess of Wales the importance of not letting any private feelings interfere with what are their public duties. Unfortunately the Princess of Wales has never understood her duties of this nature … It is a great source of grief and anxiety to the Queen for the future.’

The Queen not only criticized her daughter-in-law for not understanding her duties better, she also complained of her not even making her husband’s home life comfortable. She was notoriously unpunctual for one thing, never being ‘ready for breakfast, not being out of her room till eleven; and often Bertie [had his breakfast] alone, and then she alone’. Of course their whole way of life was ‘unsatisfactory’.

The Prince hated the sight of a blank page in his engagement book as much as he hated being kept waiting before he could fulfil any engagement that had been made. Needing little sleep, he got up early and went to bed late, and spent most days energetically hurrying about from house to house, club to theatre, hunting field to card table, spa to yacht, grouse-moor to race-course, persuading friends to drop anything else they might have arranged to do, and to join him at some impromptu party whenever any of his engagements had been cancelled. The letters of Lady Carrington, whose son Charles was frequently called for by the Prince to dine with him or to stay with him when he had arranged to go to his parents, are full of complaints about the ‘great disappointments’ caused by the Prince’s urgent summonses. ‘Oh dear!’ Lady Carrington lamented on hearing that her son had received yet another of these summonses. ‘What a bore the Prince is!’