Queen Victoria by Lytton Strachey (sites to read books for free TXT) 📕

politics, and was ready enough to agree to a proposal which was warmly supported by both the Prince and the Queen⁠—that the royal Houses of England and Prussia should be united by the marriage of the Princess Royal with the Prussian Crown Prince. Accordingly, when the Princess was not yet fifteen, the Prince, a young man of twenty-four, came over on a visit to Balmoral, and the betrothal took place. Two years later, in 1857, the marriage was celebrated. At the last moment, however, it seemed that there might be a hitch. It was pointed out in Prussia that it was customary for Princes of the blood royal to be married in Berlin, and it was suggested that there was no reason why the present case should be treated as an exception. When this reached the ears of Victoria, she was speechless with indignation. In a note, emphatic even for Her Majesty, she instructed the Foreign Secretary to tell the Prussian Ambassador “not to entertain the possibility of such a question⁠ ⁠… The Queen never could consent to it, both for public and for private reasons, and the assumption of its being too much for a Prince Royal of Prussia to come over to marry the Princess Royal of Great Britain in England is too absurd to say the least⁠ ⁠… Whatever may be the usual practice of Prussian princes, it is not every day that one marries the eldest daughter of the Queen of England. The question must therefore be considered as settled and closed.”284 It was, and the wedding took place in St. James’s Chapel. There were great festivities⁠—illuminations, state concerts, immense crowds, and general rejoicings. At Windsor a magnificent banquet was given to the bride and bridegroom in the Waterloo room, at which, Victoria noted in her diary, “everybody was most friendly and kind about Vicky and full of the universal enthusiasm, of which the Duke of Buccleuch gave us most pleasing instances, he having been in the very thick of the crowd and among the lowest of the low.” Her feelings during several days had been growing more and more emotional, and when the time came for the young couple to depart she very nearly broke down⁠—but not quite. “Poor dear child!” she wrote afterwards. “I clasped her in my arms and blessed her, and knew not what to say. I kissed good Fritz and pressed his hand again and again. He was unable to speak and the tears were in his eyes. I embraced them both again at the carriage door, and Albert got into the carriage, an open one, with them and Bertie⁠ ⁠… The band struck up. I wished goodbye to the good Perponchers. General Schreckenstein was much affected. I pressed his hand, and the good Dean’s, and then went quickly upstairs.”285

Albert, as well as General Schreckenstein, was much affected. He was losing his favourite child, whose opening intelligence had already begun to display a marked resemblance to his own⁠—an adoring pupil, who, in a few years, might have become an almost adequate companion. An ironic fate had determined that the daughter who was taken from him should be sympathetic, clever, interested in the arts and sciences, and endowed with a strong taste for memoranda, while not a single one of these qualities could be discovered in the son who remained. For certainly the Prince of Wales did not take after his father. Victoria’s prayer had been unanswered, and with each succeeding year it became more obvious that Bertie was a true scion of the House of Brunswick. But these evidences of innate characteristics only served to redouble the efforts of his parents; it still might not be too late to incline the young branch, by ceaseless pressure and careful fastenings, to grow in the proper direction. Everything was tried. The boy was sent on a continental tour with a picked body of tutors, but the results were unsatisfactory. At his father’s request he kept a diary which, on his return, was inspected by the Prince. It was found to be distressingly meagre: what a multitude of highly interesting reflections might have been arranged under the heading: “The First Prince of Wales visiting the Pope!” But there was not a single one. “Le jeune prince plaisit a tout le monde,” old Metternich reported to Guizot, “mais avait l’air embarrasse et tres triste.” On his seventeenth birthday a memorandum was drawn up over the names of the Queen and the Prince informing their eldest son that he was now entering upon the period of manhood, and directing him henceforward to perform the duties of a Christian gentleman. “Life is composed of duties,” said the memorandum, “and in the due, punctual and cheerful performance of them the true Christian, true soldier, and true gentleman is recognised⁠ ⁠… A new sphere of life will open for you in which you will have to be taught what to do and what not to do, a subject requiring study more important than any in which you have hitherto been engaged.” On receipt of the memorandum Bertie burst into tears. At the same time another memorandum was drawn up, headed “confidential: for the guidance of the gentlemen appointed to attend on the Prince of Wales.” This long and elaborate document laid down “certain principles” by which the “conduct and demeanour” of the gentlemen were to be regulated “and which it is thought may conduce to the benefit of the Prince of Wales.” “The qualities which distinguish a gentleman in society,” continued this remarkable paper, “are:⁠—

“His appearance, his deportment and dress.

“The character of his relations with, and treatment of, others.

“His desire and power to acquit himself creditably in conversation or whatever is the occupation of the society with which he mixes.”

A minute and detailed analysis of these subheadings followed, filling several pages, and the memorandum ended with a final exhortation to the gentlemen: “If they will duly appreciate the responsibility of their position, and