The Heir Apparent (27 page)

For the widow Queen to have a sexual relationship with anyone—let alone a servant—was almost, but not quite, unthinkable, and the stories still persist today. The tales of Victoria’s secret marriage to
Brown are hard to credit, unwitnessed as they are. No marriage certificate for Queen Victoria and John Brown has ever been found. Victoria’s attachment to Brown was strongly emotional, nonetheless. Throughout her life she depended upon the support of dominant men, and the rough, plain-speaking Brown, who addressed her as “wumman” at a time when she craved intimacy and no one called her Victoria anymore, went some way to filling the gap in her life left by Albert.

Brown was a drunkard and a bully, and he terrorized the household, who nicknamed him the Queen’s Stallion. Victoria’s children hated him. His cruelty toward the hemophiliac Prince Leopold is documented; he hit Leopold, scolded him from morning till night, and kept him in isolation, banishing his favorite dog.
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The children came to dread holidays at Balmoral, where Brown reigned supreme.
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Among the guests at Balmoral in September 1869 was the Austrian sculptor Edgar Boehm, who had been commissioned by the Queen to model John Brown, as well as to teach sculpture to Victoria’s fourth daughter, the artistically talented Princess Louise. At twenty-one, Louise was pretty, flirtatious, and rebellious. As Bertie diplomatically told his mother: “I must candidly confess that [from] what I know of her character she would not be happy if she remained too long unmarried.”
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She soon became intimate with the blue-eyed, long-legged Boehm.

John Brown complained about Boehm to the Queen, claiming that the sculptor was overfamiliar with Princess Louise. Brown and Victoria burst into Boehm’s studio and found Louise there. “The Queen asked her what she was doing, and the girl got angry and said if she was to be chased about and spied on she would leave home. The Queen ordered her to her room but as she (the Princess) was going out she took John Brown by the shoulders and said, ‘Look here, John Brown, this is your doing. Either you or I leave this house.’ She then shut herself up in her room.”
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The Prince of Wales was summoned, as he “was very fond of his sister and had most influence over her,” and they set about finding a husband for Louise.
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Louise was Bertie’s ally among his sisters, and he sympathized with her over John Brown. “I am sorry to hear that that brute JB made himself disagreeable during your stay at B[almoral]. I wish you would tell me what he did,” he wrote in 1871.
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Bertie also supported Louise in the negotiations over her marriage, asserting his position as eldest brother and challenging Victoria’s control over her daughters. “You know dearest Louise,” he wrote, “how fond I am of you, & would do anything to serve you—& can have but
one
wish & that is
y[ou]r
happiness but I trust I shall be informed
before
it is
actually
settled what future Mama intends f[o]r you—& not like Lenchen’s marriage, when
everything
was settled before I had even a suspicion. That is all I ask.”
¹³

The first candidate for Louise’s hand was a Prussian prince, whom no one much liked, least of all Louise, so he was dropped. The next suitor found by Victoria was Lord Lorne, eldest son of the Duke of Argyll. Though Louise preferred the blond-haired Highland chief to the Prussian, she told the Queen that she “did not like Lorne enough.”
¹⁴

Finding a mate for the strong-willed princess was becoming a matter of urgency. In 1870, the Reverend Robinson Duckworth, a handsome, dark-eyed man with a soft voice, was dismissed from his post as governor to Prince Leopold. He was suspected of flirting with Louise, and she had become overfond of him.
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At Balmoral that summer, the matchmaking was resumed in earnest. Two more German princes were summoned and, to the “utter astonishment” of the Queen, Louise also insisted on inviting Lorne, her spurned suitor of the previous summer.
¹⁶
In October, she became engaged to him. Louise later bitterly regretted her marriage, and she blamed Victoria for forcing her into it, writing in 1884: “It was y[ou]r wish for two years, that I sh[oul]d marry Lorne, & because I saw how much it bothered & worried you, that I said I w[oul]d see him again. You asked me to choose between him & another, all I answered was that I thought Lorne was the best of those two, if you remember.”
¹⁷

Bertie opposed the marriage. “I always liked Lorne,” he told Louise,
“but his position will require tact & discretion, which cleverer men than him would find difficult to maintain.”
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To Victoria he wrote more bluntly. “I decidedly maintain that a marriage with a subject is lowering the position of the Royal Family, & in the instance of Lorne—he is excessively poor, & Louise’s position will naturally be less good.”
¹⁹
Louise was the first member of Victoria’s family to marry a commoner, and this set a historic precedent. But the real reason why Lorne was a bad choice was that Louise was not in love with him. Alexandra, who was close to Louise, wrote, “She resents him like the devil, the poor man, I am sorry for both of them, and he is going to suffer for that! He is in love with her
voilà tout.
”
²⁰

Relations between Bertie and Victoria were made worse by the war of 1870 between France and Germany. Once again, mother and son were divided. The Queen sympathized with Germany, claiming that this was a war of aggression by France. Bertie shared none of her pro-German feeling. Vicky addressed emotional appeals to the Queen—“Oh that England could help us!”—but Bertie refused to forget the past, commenting tartly, “Nobody could express feelings more touchingly or simply than dear Vicky—I only wish to call to her recollection what the feelings of unfortunate little Denmark must have been when they heard that the Armies of Prussia and Austria were ag[ain]st them. Everybody must confess that that campaign was a war of aggression.”
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When the German armies with Fritz at their head smashed the French at Sedan (1 September 1870) and the Emperor Napoléon III surrendered, Bertie made no attempt to disguise his sympathies. He predicted “fearful carnage” in Paris, with “revolution the final and inevitable result. It is a sad business and so unnecessary. France will not recover from this shock and humiliation for years to come.”
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The Queen’s loyalty to her German relations made her unpopular at home when the victorious Prussian armies laid siege to defenseless Paris. But, on the other hand, Bertie’s French sympathies did him little good. The fall of the French monarchy boosted English republicanism,
and Bertie’s identification with the decadent French court exposed him to criticism. When the Empress Eugénie fled to exile in England, Bertie impulsively dispatched a letter offering her the loan of Chiswick, the house he rented from the Duke of Devonshire. But his failure to consult either the Queen or the government beforehand meant that his generous offer was a political embarrassment, and gave yet another example of his lack of judgment.
²³
Bertie lent a horse to the Prince Imperial, the son of Louis-Napoléon, who had joined his parents in exile. Out hunting, the Prince Imperial had a fall trying to jump some iron railings. As “the hope of Imperial France lay on the ground with all the wind knocked out of him,” all the Prince of Wales could say was, “Oh my poor horse, what has happened to my poor horse!”
²⁴

Exiles from the imperial court were royally entertained at Marlborough House. Among them was Blanche, the half-American Duchess of Caracciolo, who scandalized London society that winter, going out shooting in a kilt and smoking cigarettes. Her ailing husband was cruelly teased by a prankster who dressed up as a doctor and told him he was dying, while his valet disguised himself as a priest and heard his last confession.
²⁵
Soon the duchess was pregnant, and she gave birth to a daughter named Alberta Olga, in honor of Bertie, who was the baby’s godfather and rumored—probably falsely—to be her father, too.
^‡
26

For three years Bertie and Alix had spent little time at Sandringham while the house was being rebuilt. Alix worked hard to arrange “everything” herself, and the house reflected her idiosyncratic taste.
²⁷
There were no ancestral portraits or old masters and no antiques. The furniture came from Maples store on Tottenham Court Road. Visitors walked straight into the hall, where Alix presided at tea over a narrow
oblong table. Upstairs was a “truly sinister warren” of small rooms and narrow passages—children’s bedrooms, guest rooms, rooms for ladies-in-waiting and equerries.
²⁸

The new house was ready in time for Alix’s twenty-sixth birthday on 1 December 1870. One of the guests was Oliver Montagu, whom Bertie had appointed equerry. Alix described him to Minnie as “my good friend O.”
²⁹
She was still endearingly loyal to “my Bertie,” but she had come to depend on Montagu’s companionship. Outwardly loud and bumptious, Montagu had a softer, religious side, and he became Alix’s devoted admirer. To conduct a platonic flirtation with a gallant officer, a cavalier with whom she always danced the first after-dinner waltz, made her feel adored without being threatened.

Alix’s sixth pregnancy was different from the others. She was always tired. She suffered irregular bleeding, so she was unsure whether she was pregnant or not.
³⁰
At six months she felt depressed and listless, but “still not showing it much, and still dancing.”
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She fell heavily out skating on the ice, crashing down on her bad knee, and her mouth filled with blood.
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At seven months she fell again, tumbling out of her carriage at the wedding of Princess Louise to Lord Lorne.
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Back at Sandringham for Easter 1871, Alix woke early on 6 April with pains. At twenty minutes to seven Bertie knocked on the door of the lady-in-waiting Mrs. Stonor. She realized at once that the princess was going into premature labor, and telegraphed the royal obstetrician, Arthur Farre, and monthly nurse, Mrs. Clarke. Bertie stayed with Alix as the pains grew more severe until the baby was born at half past two. Only the local doctor was present—Dr. Farre arrived from London almost an hour later.
³⁴
The six-weeks-premature baby was very small—even smaller than Eddy had been—but beautifully formed, with fingernails. His head was “quite black” and Bertie thought him “very ugly”; Farre assured them that this was because he was born facing downward, and was of no consequence.
³⁵
The baby’s hands and feet were cold and his circulation was feeble.
³⁶

Mrs. Clarke rubbed the infant with brandy, but by eight p.m. he was sinking fast and the clergyman was hastily summoned to perform the baptism.
³⁷
Alix asked for this to take place at her bedside, but when she
saw her son for the first time, she broke down and pressed him to her. She was (said Mrs. Stonor) “dreadfully affected and the Prince was so overcome that he cried most bitterly.”
³⁸
Bertie held a small Russian cup containing holy water, and as the sick baby was baptized with the names “Alexander John Charles Albert,” it gave such signs of life that “we all hoped there was still a faint hope.”
³⁹

The next morning, Good Friday, the baby was a blue-livid color and Dr. Farre said it couldn’t live.
⁴⁰
Alix insisted on having him with her in bed. Prince John died after twenty-four hours, and “so calmly that we never knew the exact moment when it drew its last breath.”
⁴¹
Alix lay next to the dead child until eight in the evening, sobbing as she held his hand, which was warm though his head was cold and his limbs were stiffening.
⁴²

The next day, Bertie placed his baby son, dressed in a frock tied with white satin bows and a cross of bog oak round his neck, in a little wooden shell. While Alix wept in her bedroom next door, the prince and Mrs. Clarke snipped tiny wisps of baby hair and screwed down the wooden lid.
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The day before the funeral, Bertie placed the little shell in a lead and mahogany coffin, which he covered with white satin and arranged with white flowers, camellias, and banksia roses. Mrs. Stonor found him “so much affected, the tears were rolling down his cheeks.”
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On Easter Tuesday (11 April) Bertie walked hand in hand with Eddy and Georgie, both wearing kilts and black gloves, behind the tiny coffin, which was carried by three grooms and the coachman, across the park to the church. From her bedroom upstairs, Alix called to Mrs. Clarke to draw the curtain so she could watch the procession. Sobbing bitterly, she took her prayer book and asked to be left alone.

Inside the church, the Dean of Windsor, Gerald Wellesley, intoned the service inaudibly, croaking with a hoarse voice, and Bertie wept throughout. Afterward, he and the young princes laid white wreaths on the coffin, and when it was lowered into the ground, the children threw primroses and anemones into the grave.
⁴⁵

Infant mortality was a fact of Victorian life, and Bertie’s grief seems perhaps excessive, but he had good reason to weep. The death of
Prince John marked a watershed in his marriage. The day before the funeral, Dr. Farre had had a “very long and serious” talk with him about “the
Future
and
perfect
rest.” Mrs. Stonor reported to the Queen that Dr. Farre “says the Prince quite agreed with him in all he said,” and it was “a most satisfactory conversation.”
⁴⁶
Farre seems to have warned Bertie to desist from conjugal relations as Alix’s health was in danger. A letter from the Dean of Windsor to Victoria suggests that the doctor had not summoned up the courage to speak as plainly as the Queen had hoped. Wellesley urged her to speak to her son herself, as “many who might speak to him with authority, with respect to the health and moral welfare, both of the Princess and himself, shrink from doing so directly, so that he loses hearing the truth, which might perhaps be a little disagreeable to him.”
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