CHAPTER XVI

THE DUKE OF CLARENCE AND AVONDALE

The year 1892 opened auspiciously both for the Royal family and the nation, inasmuch as, immediately on the convalescence of Prince George, the engagement of his elder brother, the Duke of Clarence and Avondale, to Princess Victoria Mary of Teck was announced. The projected alliance was received with every possible expression of popular approval. The public career of the Duke of Clarence, short as it had been, had already confirmed him in the public estimation as a worthy son of his father, who was known to have actively superintended the whole course of his education. A significant proof of the young Prince’s amiability and unpretending modesty was to be found in the large number of personal friends whom he attached to himself, both at Cambridge and among his comrades of the 10th Hussars, by ties of sincere esteem. Moreover, it was generally known that between the Duke of Clarence and his mother there existed the strongest possible link of filial and maternal love, and so the Prince came to share in a measure the high place which Queen Alexandra has always held in the hearts of the British people.

The circumstances of the mournful event which threw a gloom over the whole winter of 1892 are still fresh in the memory of the nation. On 9th January the Duke of Clarence, who was spending the Christmas holidays with his parents at Sandringham, was attacked with influenza, having caught cold at the funeral of Prince Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg.

Two days later the late Duchess of Teck wrote to Lady Salisbury a letter which pathetically reflects the anxiety prevailing at Sandringham:--

“SANDRINGHAM, _January 11, 1892_.

“… After Sir Francis Knollys’s letter and the anxious tidings in this morning’s papers you will not be surprised to hear from me that we feel we must ask you and dear Lord Salisbury to let us postpone the so-looked-forward-to visit until we can really enjoy it; for although I hope and believe dear Eddy is doing as well as can be expected at this stage of this fearful illness, I cannot conceal from you that we are very anxious, and must continue so until the crisis is over and the inflammation has begun to subside. His strength is very fairly maintained; the night was a tolerable one; he has two admirable nurses, and both Doctors Broadbent and Laking [now Sir William Broadbent and Sir Francis Laking] are attending him; so that Eddy has every care, and with youth on his side and God’s blessing, I trust we may soon see him on the road to recovery, and who knows?--perhaps even our visit to Hatfield may yet come off before you move to London. As at present arranged we stay on here until Wednesday or so; but, of course, everything depends on the progress the dear patient (a _most exemplary one_, the Doctors say) makes. May is wonderfully good and calm, but it is terribly trying for her.…”

Notwithstanding the most devoted care and the most skilful nursing, the Prince passed away on the 14th, within a week of the day on which the tidings of his illness had first gone forth. Then, if ever, King Edward and Queen Alexandra must have realised the respect and affection with which they are regarded by the British people. Their Majesties received the most touching letters from all over the world. One of those they most valued was from the Zulu chiefs at St. Helena. This was conveyed to the Prince through Miss Colenso, and ran as follows:--

“We have heard of the death of Prince Edward, the son of the Prince of Wales. We lament sincerely. Pray you present our lamentation to them all--to his grandmother, to his father and his mother, and his brother.”

Their Majesties showed how deeply they appreciated the sympathy so spontaneously offered to them on every side by publishing the following Message:--

“WINDSOR CASTLE, _20th January 1892_.

“The Prince and Princess of Wales are anxious to express to Her Majesty’s subjects, whether in the United Kingdom, in the Colonies, or in India, the sense of their deep gratitude for the universal feeling of sympathy manifested towards them at a time when they are overwhelmed by the terrible calamity which they have sustained in the loss of their beloved eldest son. If sympathy at such a moment is of any avail, the remembrance that their grief has been shared by all classes will be a lasting consolation to their sorrowing hearts, and if possible will make them more than ever attached to their dear country.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Benson) was at Biskra when he heard of the lamentable death of the Duke of Clarence. The Archbishop wished to return home at once, and in sending a telegram of condolence to the bereaved father he stated his intention of so doing, but King Edward, with his usual kindly consideration, telegraphed to him that he was on no account to curtail his holiday. The telegram was followed by this letter, which is given in the Archbishop’s Life:--

“SANDRINGHAM, NORFOLK, _27th January 1892_.

“MY DEAR ARCHBISHOP--Only a short time ago I received such a kind letter from you, in which you agreed to perform the marriage ceremony at St. George’s for our eldest son. Since then I have received another letter from you containing such kind and sympathetic words, in which you expressed a desire to return home to take part in his Funeral Service.

“It was like yourself, kind and thoughtful as you always are, but I could not allow you to undertake that long journey and return to our cold climate and to an atmosphere still impregnated with that dire disease when your absence abroad in a warmer climate is so essential for your health and strength.

“It has pleased God to inflict a heavy, crushing blow upon us--that we can hardly realise the terrible loss we have sustained. We have had the good fortune of receiving you here in our country home on more than one occasion, and you know what a happy family party we have always been, so that the wrenching away of our first-born son under such peculiarly sad circumstances is a sorrow, the shadow of which can never leave us during the rest of our lives.

“He was just twenty-eight; on this day month he was to have married a charming and gifted young lady, so that the prospect of a life of happiness and usefulness lay before him. Alas! that is all over. His bride has become his widow without ever having been his wife.

“The ways of the Almighty are inscrutable, and it is not for us to murmur, as He does all for the best, and our beloved son is happier now than if he were exposed to the miseries and temptations of this world. We have also a consolation in the sympathy not only of our kind friends but of all classes.

“_God’s will be done!_

“Again thanking you, my dear and kind Archbishop, for your soothing letter, which has been such a solace to us in our grief, I remain, yours very sincerely, ALBERT EDWARD.”

On the Sunday following the death of the Duke a private service was held in Sandringham Church, attended by King Edward and Queen Alexandra, their daughters, Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, and Prince George. By the King’s special wish his elder son was given the simplest of military funerals, and the coffin was removed from Sandringham to Windsor on a gun-carriage, escorted by a number of the Prince’s old comrades in arms. On the coffin lay the Prince’s busby and a silken Union Jack, and even at Windsor, where among the impressive mass of mourners every Royal House was represented, everything was severely simple, and the pall-bearers were officers of the 10th Hussars.

The career of the Prince, so suddenly cut off ere he had well reached his prime, in addition to its historical interest, throws an instructive light on the pains which King Edward has always expended on the education and training of his children. On none of his children did the King bestow more loving thought and care than on his eldest son, who was destined, as it then seemed, one day to bear all the anxieties and responsibilities of the British Crown.

Prince Albert Victor was popularly, but quite erroneously, supposed to be a weakly, delicate child. The two nurses who successively had the principal charge of him--Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Blackburn--agreed in repudiating this idea, and their testimony is certainly supported by the photographs which were taken of the Prince in babyhood. His early death is to be attributed, not to any original delicacy of constitution, but to the weakness following a severe attack of typhoid, which delayed by two months his joining the _Britannia_.

Once out of the nursery, the brothers were committed to the charge of a tutor selected for them by Queen Victoria--the Rev. John Neale Dalton--an admirable choice as events proved. From childhood Prince Albert Victor was devotedly attached to his younger brother, Prince George, who warmly reciprocated his affection, and their father wisely determined that the two boys should not be separated, but should enter the Royal Navy together as cadets. This was done in June 1877, Prince Albert Victor being then thirteen and a half and Prince George being some seventeen months younger. From the very first King Edward caused it to be understood that his sons were to enjoy no privileges on account of their rank, but were to be treated exactly like their fellow-cadets on board the _Britannia_, and made to learn their profession just as if they had been the sons of an ordinary private gentleman. The only exceptions were that Mr. Dalton attended the Princes as governor, and that, by special request of the Admiralty, their hammocks were slung behind a separate bulkhead in a space about 12 feet square. The young Princes spent two years in the _Britannia_, and both obtained a first-class in seamanship, entitling them to three months’ sea-time, and for general good conduct they obtained another three months.

The King thoroughly realised the benefit he had himself derived from the travels which he had undertaken as a youth, and therefore he arranged that his sons should spend three years in making a tour round the world, that their minds might be equipped by experience of men and cities, and that they might acquire an abiding impression of the extent and resources of the British Empire. Accordingly, the young Princes started in the _Bacchante_ cruiser, Captain Lord Charles Scott, being again entrusted to the care of Mr. Dalton, who was afterwards made a Canon of Windsor. Canon Dalton, it is interesting to note, attended Prince George when, as Duke of Cornwall and York, and accompanied by the Duchess of Cornwall and York, he visited Australia to inaugurate the Federal Parliament, coming home by New Zealand and Canada.

The Princes kept careful diaries, and on their return they published a detailed account of their experiences. In the _Bacchante_, just as in the _Britannia_, they were treated exactly like other officers of their age and standing, except that they had a private cabin under the poop. They joined the gun-room mess, the members of which were granted a special allowance--an arrangement which had before been made when the Duke of Edinburgh began his naval career.

The _Bacchante_ cruised to Gibraltar, Messina, Gibraltar again, Madeira, the West Indies, and home to Spithead on 3rd May. Then, on 19th July, the Princes rejoined the _Bacchante_ for another cruise, first with the combined Channel and Reserve Squadrons to Bantry Bay and Vigo, and afterwards to Monte Video. The ship arrived off the Falkland Islands, but the Princes never landed, as had been arranged, for the troubles in South Africa had come to a head and the squadron was suddenly ordered to the Cape. The _Bacchante_ reached Simons Bay on 16th February, and not many days later came the news of Majuba Hill and Laing’s Nek.

Early in April the Princes left for Australia, a voyage which was destined to be not without danger, for the _Bacchante_ broke a portion of her steering-gear in a heavy gale. Temporary repairs were effected, and the vessel’s course was altered for Albany, in Western Australia. While the _Bacchante_ was refitting, their Royal Highnesses visited the chief Australian ports in a passenger steamer called the _Cathay_, being everywhere received with enthusiastic loyalty. At last, rejoining the _Bacchante_, they said good-bye with regret to Australia, and on the voyage home they visited Fiji, Japan (where they were received with great ceremony by the Mikado), Shanghai, Hong-Kong, Singapore, and Colombo. Thence they proceeded to Suez, where they had the pleasure of meeting the great de Lesseps, and went in the Khedive’s yacht on a trip up to the First Cataract, as their parents had done in 1869.

A somewhat prolonged tour in the Holy Land followed, their Royal Highnesses visiting those sacred scenes which their father had visited before they were born. The Princes left Beirut for Athens on 7th May, and there they had the pleasure of meeting their uncle, the King of the Hellenes, and thence they went to Suda Bay to take part in a naval regatta, in which the _Bacchante’s_ boats covered themselves with glory. By way of Sicily and Sardinia, the Princes passed on to Gibraltar, there renewing their old acquaintance with the famous Lord Napier of Magdala. It is a pathetic circumstance that both Lord Napier and, but two years afterwards, the Duke of Clarence and Avondale, were borne to the grave on the same gun-carriage.

At length the long voyage came to an end. Off Swanage the _Osborne_, with King Edward, Queen Alexandra, and the three young Princesses, met the _Bacchante_ early in August. A visit to Queen Victoria at Osborne followed, and the two Princes were shortly afterwards confirmed in Whippingham Church by Archbishop Tait, who said to them in his address:--

“From this time forward your course of life, which has been hitherto unusually alike, must, in many respects, diverge. You will have different occupations and different training for an expected difference of position.”

The Archbishop was a true prophet. It was indeed necessary now to separate the brothers. Prince George, as the younger son, might be left to continue his career in the noble service to which he had become devoted, but his elder brother, being in the immediate succession to the Throne, must, it was felt, be associated, as his father had been before him, with other walks of national life as well. First of all, it was decided, must come some terms at Cambridge University, and to prepare Prince Albert Victor in the particular kind of knowledge required Mr. J. K. Stephen was associated with Mr. Dalton in the summer of 1883. Mr. Stephen, the son of one of the greatest Judges who ever adorned the English Bench--Sir James Fitz-James Stephen--was not merely a most lovable man, possessed of extraordinary intellectual powers, but his total personality was of so rare a kind as to be indescribable to those who never came under its conquering influence. Probably from no human being were all things mean and paltry so utterly alien. Large in heart and mind as he was large in bodily frame, he left, when an untimely death snatched him away, not only a bitter personal grief among his friends, but a conviction that the nation’s loss was even greater than theirs.

Prince Albert Victor became warmly attached to Mr. Stephen, who gives in some private letters, quoted in Mr. J. E. Vincent’s memoir of the Duke of Clarence and Avondale, a characteristic picture of the life led by the Royal pupil and his tutors in a little house in the park at Sandringham.

“He is a good-natured, unaffected youth,” writes Mr. Stephen, “and disposed to exert himself to learn some history.… We are six in this little house, a sort of adjunct to the big one in whose grounds it stands, and we lead a quiet and happy reading-party sort of life with all the ordinary rustic pursuits.” The other four members of the party were Mr. Dalton, “a lively little Frenchman,” “a young aristocrat, whose father is the Earl of Strathmore, and a naval lieutenant, kept on shore by a bad knee, both of whom are very pleasant, and have more brains than they take credit for.”

In October 1883 the King accompanied Prince Albert Victor to Cambridge, and saw him matriculated as an undergraduate member of Trinity College, that ancient and splendid foundation to which he himself belonged. Two sets of rooms, one for the Prince and one for Mr. Dalton, were prepared on the top floor of a staircase in Nevile’s Court, the quietest court in Trinity.

It was at Cambridge that certain sterling qualities possessed by Prince Albert Victor first became manifest to any considerable circle, and through them to the public at large. His life at the University was simple and well ordered. He had not--nor was it desirable that he should have--the specialised intellect which wins University prizes and scholarships, but he displayed in a marked degree that peculiarly Royal quality of recognising intellect in others. Of those whom he admitted to his friendship while at Cambridge nearly all have become, or are becoming, distinguished in various walks of life. He was not distinguished from his undergraduate contemporaries except by the silk gown of the fellow-commoner--the Prince never wore the gold tassel to which he was entitled--and by immunity from University examinations.

It must not, however, be supposed that the Prince was idle at the University. On the contrary, he read for six or seven hours a day regularly--a good deal more than the average undergraduate can be persuaded to do; and he was in another respect intellectually ahead of most of his contemporaries, namely, in his familiar knowledge of modern languages. He had read German at Heidelberg with Professor Ihne, and he kept it up while at Cambridge with a German tutor. He spoke French easily and well, and he had also a literary knowledge of that language, having spent some time in Switzerland with a French tutor. His college tutor was Mr. Joseph Prior. Mr. Stephen exercised a general supervision over his reading, and he attended the late Professor Seeley’s History Lectures and Mr. Gosse’s Lectures on English Literature.

Prince Albert Victor strongly resembled his father in many respects, notably in his habits of order and method, and in his complete freedom from affectation or assumption. He was, indeed, if anything, almost too modest and retiring, but those who knew him bore witness to his real geniality and thoughtful consideration for others. At Cambridge he attended his College chapel twice on Sundays, and once or twice during the week. He generally dined in the College hall, when he would be assigned a place at the Fellows’ table. He was fond, however, of giving little dinner-parties of six or eight in his own rooms in College, usually on Thursdays, his guests on these occasions often including some of the senior members of the University.

After dinner, the Royal host would generally arrange a rubber or two of whist. He did not play cricket or football, but was fond of polo and hockey, and he occasionally hunted. He might often have been met in the neighbourhood of Cambridge riding in the company of a few of his undergraduate friends, to whom he liked to offer a mount, especially in cases where he knew it was needed. The Prince had an inherited love of music, and he attended pretty regularly some weekly concerts of chamber music given at the Cambridge Town Hall. He was also a member of the Cambridge A.D.C., and patronised its performances, and he occasionally attended the debates at the Union, though he did not speak himself. He joined the University Volunteer Corps, and was photographed in his uniform.

One traditionally Royal quality the Prince possessed in an extraordinary degree, namely, a perfectly marvellous memory for names and faces. Indeed, his memory in general was singularly tenacious, and in his historical studies he exhibited a wonderful power of quickly mastering the most intricate genealogical tables.

The Prince went for the Long Vacation on a reading party to Heidelberg, and while there he received an amusing poem from Mr. H. F. Wilson, one of his Cambridge friends, which is printed in Mr. Vincent’s memoir. The following may be quoted as perhaps the most characteristic lines:--

Your kitten broadens to a cat, And wonders what her master’s at; Is she to wait your Highness’ will, And stay with Mrs. Jiggins still? Or shall we pack her in a box, And send her off from London Docks? Meanwhile she slays the casual mouse, And dreams at night of Marlborough House. … And finally a word we send To our Philosopher and Friend; They say he’s coming in July-- We hope ’tis true, for, verily, We miss our mine of curious knowledge, And, when we get him back in College, We mean to drop a pinch of salt on The tail of Mr. J. N. Dalton.

The Prince came of age in 1885, and the house-party at Sandringham given to celebrate the occasion was one of the largest gatherings ever held there. The company included a considerable number of Prince Albert Victor’s Cambridge friends.

On the conclusion of Prince Albert Victor’s residence at Cambridge, the honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him, and then his father decided that it was time for him to enter the army. He was gazetted a lieutenant in the 10th Hussars, of which the King is now colonel-in-chief, and while he was quartered at Aldershot the father and son saw a great deal of each other. In the army, as in the navy, Prince Albert Victor was treated as far as possible exactly like his brother officers; and indeed it is highly probable that, had he been offered any exceptional privileges, he would have steadily refused to take advantage of them. The Prince became a captain in the 9th Lancers and in the 3rd King’s Royal Rifles and aide-de-camp to the Queen in 1887, and two years later attained the rank of major, returning to his old regiment, the 10th Hussars.

Prince Albert Victor’s training as a soldier was real and thorough. He was not spared the drudgery of drill and the riding school through which the ordinary subaltern has to pass, and yet at the same time his work was frequently interrupted by the duty of attending various ceremonial functions. This life was but sparingly varied with days with the hounds and shooting, to which the Prince eagerly looked forward. It is generally agreed by his contemporaries that he became an excellent officer, and his private letters to his friends prove how absorbed he was in his military career.

King Edward had retained such pleasant recollections of his own visit to India, that he determined that his elder son should at an early date make a tour in the great Eastern dependency. The tour was arranged, and proved extremely successful from every point of view, the Prince particularly enjoying the excellent and varied sport shown him by his keen Indian hosts. His Royal Highness was gazetted honorary colonel of the 4th Bengal Infantry, the 1st Punjab Cavalry (Prince Albert Victor’s Own), and the 4th Bombay Cavalry.

Soon after his return from India, Prince Albert Victor was created Duke of Clarence and Avondale, and Earl of Athlone, in the peerage of the United Kingdom. He was formally introduced to the House of Lords by his father on 23rd January 1890, the ceremony being watched by Queen Alexandra from a gallery. This was an event unique in English history. The Duke of Clarence was the only eldest son of a Prince of Wales who attained his majority, to say nothing of taking his seat in the House of Lords, while his father was still Heir-Apparent to the Crown.

During the year which followed, the King gave up regularly a certain portion of his time to initiating his elder son in all the varied, if monotonous, duties which were likely to fall to his lot, a task which was really in no wise irksome, for those who knew the Duke of Clarence best were well aware that his father had ever been his best friend, and that he himself was never so happy as when he was allowed to share in any sense his father’s life and interests.

After the death of the Duke of Clarence, the King and his family naturally retired into the deepest privacy, and it was many months before His Majesty had sufficiently recovered from the blow to be able to take up again the thread of his public duties.