# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Edward VII

​EDWARD VII (1841–1910), King of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions Beyond the Seas, Emperor of India, was eldest son and second child of Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert. Their first-born child, Victoria, Princess Royal [q. v. Suppl. II], was born on 21 Nov. 1840.
I
The prince was born at Buckingham Palace at 10.48 a.m. on Tuesday 9 Nov. 1841, and the birth was duly recorded in the parish register of St. George's, Hanover Square. The conservative prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, who had just Birth 9 Nov. 1841. come into office, with the duke of Wellington, the archbishop of Canterbury (William Howley), and other high officers of state, attended the palace to attest the birth. No heir had been born to the reigning sovereign since the birth of George IV in 1762, and the event was the signal for immense national rejoicings. The annual feast of the lord mayor of London took place the same evening, and the infant's health was drunk with abundant enthusiasm. A special thanksgiving service was arranged for the churches by the archbishop of Canterbury, and the birth was set as the theme of the English poem at Cambridge University for the next year, when the successful competitor was Sir Henry Maine. The child was named Albert Edward Albert after his father, and Edward after his mother's father, the duke of Kent. In the family circle he was always called 'Bertie,' and until his accession his signature was invariably 'Albert Edward.' He inherited according to precedent the titles of Duke of Cornwall and Rothsay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, and Great Steward of Scotland, but by his parents' wish he was gazetted in addition as Duke of Saxony, his father's German title. The innovation was adversely criticised by Lord Palmerston and his friends, who disliked the German leanings of the court. On 4 Dec. 1841 he was further created, in accordance with precedent, by patent under the great seal, Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester.
From the outset it was his mother's earnest hope that in career and character her son should be a copy of his father. On 29 Nov. 1841 she wrote to her uncle, King Leopold of Belgium, 'Our little boy is a wonderfully strong and large child. I hope and pray he may be like his dearest papa' (Letters, i. 456). A week later she repeated her aspirations to her kinsman : 'You will understand how fervent are my prayers, and I am sure everybody's must be, to see him resemble his father in every, every respect both in body and mind' (Martin, Life of Prince Consort). From the boy's infancy to his manhood Queen Victoria clung tenaciously to this wifely wish.
The prince was baptised by the arch-bishop of Canterbury on 25 Jan. 1842 at St. George's Chapel, Windsor. Baptism and sponsors. The boy's grand-uncle, the duke 25 Jan. 1842. of Cambridge, seventh son of George III, and his great-aunt, Princess Sophia, daughter of George III, were the English sponsors. The princess's place was filled through her illness by the duke of Cambridge's daughter Augusta, afterwards grand duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. The other sponsors were members of German reigning families. At their head came Frederick William IV, king of Prussia, who was present in person with Baron Alexander von Humboldt, the naturalist, in attendance upon him. The king much appreciated the office of god-father. He was chosen instead of the queen's beloved counsellor and maternal uncle, King Leopold of Belgium, for fear of giving offence to her difficult-tempered uncle, King Ernest of Hanover, but the plan hardly produced the desired effect of conciliation. The other German sponsors were absent. They were Prince Albert's stepmother, the duchess of Saxe-Coburg, who was represented by Queen Victoria's mother, the duchess of Kent; Prince Albert's widowed kinswoman, the duchess of Saxe-Gotha, who was represented by the duchess of Cambridge ; and Prince Albert's uncle, Duke Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, who was represented by Princess Augusta of Cambridge. The Queen specially asked the duke of Wellington to bear at the ceremony the sword of state.
Gifts and orders, which were always congenial to the prince, were showered on his cradle by foreign royalty. The king of Prussia, whose baptismal offering was an elaborate gold shield adorned with figures cut in onyx, conferred on him the Order of the Black Eagle. The Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria, Emperor Francis Joseph's uncle, made the infant 'quite proud' with his present of the Grand Cross of St. Andrew on 18 June 1844. Louis Philippe sent him a little gun on his third birthday.
The lines which the education of the heir-apparent should follow became his parents' ​ anxious concern very soon after he was born. Baron Stockmar, Prince Albert's mentor, Views of heis education. whose somewhat pedantic counsel carried great weight in the royal circle, was from the first persistent in advice. Before the boy was six months old, the baron in detailed memoranda defined his parents' heavy responsibilities. He warned them of the need of imbuing the child with a 'truly moral and truly English sentiment,' and of entrusting him to the care of 'persons morally good, intelligent, well-informed, and experienced, who fully enjoyed the parental confidence' (6 March 1842). After due consultation and deliberation Lady Lyttelton was installed as head of Queen Victoria's nursery establishment in April 1842. Her responsibilities grew with the rapid increase of the queen's family. She held the post till 1851, and inspired the prince with the warmest affection. In 1843 an anonymous pamphlet 'Who shall educate the Prince of Wales?' which was dedicated to Queen Victoria, bore witness to the importance generally attached to the character of the prince's training. The anonymous counsellor restated Stockmar's unexceptionable principles, and Prince Albert sent a copy to the sententious baron. An opinion was also invited from Lord Melbourne, Melbourne's advice the late prime minister, in whom the queen placed the fullest confidence (19 Feb. 1843). He laid stress on the 'real position' and 'duties' which attached to the rank of heir-apparent and on 'the political temptations and seductions' to which previous heirs-apparent, notably George Ill's eldest son, the prince regent (afterwards George IV), had succumbed. Melbourne recalled the tendency of English heirs-apparent to incur the jealousy of the reigning sovereign and to favour the party in opposition to the sovereign's ministers. Without Lord Melbourne's reminder Queen Victoria was well aware that her uncle George IV was a signal object-lesson of the evil propensities to which heirs-apparent were liable. Nor did she forget that she herself, while heir-presumptive to the crown, had suffered from the jealous ill-will of King William IV (Queen's Letters, i. 580).
In the result Lord Melbourne's hints and Stockmar's admonitions decided Queen Victoria and her consort's educational policy. Stockmar, tackling the question afresh, on 28 July 1846 deduced from the spirit of revolution abroad the imperative need of endowing the child with a sense of the sacred character of all existing institutions, a sound faith in the Church of England, a capacity to hold the balance true between conservative and progressive forces, and a sympathy with healthful social movements. With the utmost earnestness the boy's parents thereupon addressed themselves in Stockmar's spirit to the task of making their son a model of morality, of piety, of deportment, and of intellectual accomplishment, at the same tune as they secluded him from any active political interest. Their effort was not wholly beneficial to his development. Yet, whether or no the result were due to his parents' precautions, the country was spared in his case, despite occasional private threatenings, any scandalous manifestation of the traditional rivalry between the sovereign and the next heir to the throne.
English, French, and German governesses soon joined the royal household. German the prince spoke from infancy with his father and mother, and he habitually Early familliarity with German. conversed in it with his brothers and sisters (Bunsen's Memoirs, ii. 120). He always retained through life a full mastery of all the complexities of the language. To his many German relations he spoke in no other tongue, and to his grand-uncle, King Leopold I of Belgium, and to that monarch's son and successor, King Leopold II, with both of whom he was through youth and manhood in constant intercourse, he talked in German preferably to French. Yet French, too, he learned easily, and acquired in due time an excellence of accent and a width of vocabulary which very few Englishmen have equalled.
Childhood and boyhood were wholly passed with his parents, sisters, and brothers in an atmosphere of strong family affection. His eldest sister, Victoria, whose intellectual alertness was in childhood greatly in excess of his own, was his inseparable companion, and his devotion to her was lifelong. His next sister, Alice (b. 25 April 1845), and next brother, Alfred (b. 6 Aug. 1844), soon joined in the pursuits of the two elder children, but the tie between the prince and Princess Victoria was closer than that between him and any of his juniors. Episodes of childhood. The children's time was chiefly spent at Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle, but there were frequent sojourns at Claremont, Esher, the residence of King Leopold, and at seaside resorts. The prince stayed as a baby with the duke of Wellington at ​ Walmer Castle (Nov. 1842), and several times in infancy at the Brighton Pavilion, the royal residence which was abandoned by the queen in 1845, owing to the pertinacity of sight-seers. In the same year Osborne House in the Isle of Wight became the regular seaside home of the royal family, and was thenceforth constantly visited by the prince.
In 1846 he and the rest of the family made a first yachting excursion from Osborne, paying a first visit to Cornwall, which was his own appanage. Next year he made a tour through Wales, the principality which gave him his chief title. In the autumn of 1848 he paid his first visit to Scotland, staying at Balmoral House, then a hired shooting lodge. The Scottish visit was thenceforth an annual experience. The future Archbishop Benson saw the royal party at their first Braemar gathering (15 Sept. 1848), and described the little prince as 'a fair little lad of rather a slender make with an intelligent expression.' A like impression was made on all observers. 'Pretty but delicate looking' was Macaulay's description of him when the child caught the historian's eye as he stood shyly holding the middle finger of his father's hand at the christening of his third sister, Princess Helena, at Windsor on 26 July 1846 ({{sc|Lord Broughton's Recollections, vi. 181).
In 1849 he made his first acquaintance with another part of his future dominions. He accompanied his parents on their first visit to Ireland. Queen Victoria on her return commemorated the Irish people's First visits to Ireland, 1849-53. friendly reception of her and her family by creating her eldest son by letters patent under the great seal, Earl of Dublin (10 Sept. 1849). Her father had borne the same title, and its revival in the person of the heir-apparent was a politic compliment to the Irish capital. The visit to Ireland was repeated four years later, when the royal family went to Dublin to inspect an exhibition of Irish industries (Aug. 1853). In later life no member of the royal family crossed St. George's Channel more frequently than the prince.
Meanwhile his education was progressing on strict lines. In the spring of A tutor appointed, 1849. 1849 Henry Birch, an under-master of Eton, 'a young, good-looking, amiable man,' according to Prince Albert, was after careful inquiry appointed his first tutor. Birch held office for two years, and was succeeded by Frederick W. Gibbs, a barrister, who was recommended to Prince Albert by Sir James Stephen, then professor of history at Cambridge. Gibbs filled his post till 1858. Other instructors taught special subjects, and with M. Brasseur, his French teacher, the prince long maintained a cordial intimacy.
Endowed with an affectionate disposition, which was readily moved by those about him, he formed with most of his associates in youth of whatever age or position attachments which lasted for life. Very typical of his fidelity to his earliest acquaintances in all ranks was his lifelong relation with (Sir) David Welch (1820-1912), captain of the Fairy and Alberta, Queen Victoria's earliest royal yachts. The prince made his first sea voyage in Welch's charge when little more than seven, and thenceforth until the prince's death Welch belonged to his inner circle of friends. They constantly exchanged hospitalities until the last year of the prince's life, nearly sixty years after their first meeting.
The prince's chief tutors performed their functions under the close surveillance Prince Albert's vigilance. of Prince Albert, who not only drafted elaborate regulations for glance and made almost daily comments on their action, but in the name of the queen and himself directly addressed to his son long written exhortations on minutest matters of conduct. To his religious training especial care was attached, and a sense of religion, if of a rather formal strain, soon developed in permanence. But to his father's disappointment, it was early apparent that the prince was not studious, that books Impatience of study bored him, and that, apart from progress in speaking French and German, he was slow to learn. It was difficult to interest him in his lessons. The narrow range of books at his disposal may partly explain the defect. History, the chief subject of study, was carefully confined to bare facts and dates. Fiction was withheld as demoralising, and even Sir Walter Scott came under the parental ban. In the result the prince never acquired a habit of reading. Apart from the newspapers he practically read nothing in mature years. He wrote with facility and soon corresponded voluminously in a simple style. By his parents' orders he kept a diary from an early age, and maintained the habit till his death, but the entries were invariably brief and bald. At the same time he was as a boy observant, was quick at gathering information from talk, and developed a retentive memory for facts outside school study. ​ His parents meanwhile regarded the drama, art, and music as legitimate amusements for their children. The prince showed some liking for drawing, elocution, and music, and was soon introduced to the theatre, visiting Astley's pantomime as early as 24 March 1846. Youthful amusements. From 1848 to 1858 he attended all the annual winter performances at Windsor, where Charles Kean and his company provided the chief items of the performance. As a boy he saw at Windsor, too, the younger Charles Mathews in 'Used up' and the farce of 'Box and Cox' (4 Jan. 1849). To the London theatres he paid frequent visits. In 1852 he heard Meyerbeer's 'Huguenots' at the Opera House in Covent Garden. In the spring of 1853 he witnessed more than once Charles Kean's revival of 'Macbeth' at the Princess's Theatre. In 1855 he witnessed at Drury Lane a pantomime acted by amateurs for the benefit of Wellington College, in which his father was deeply interested, and he showed the utmost appreciation of the fun. In 1856 he saw Mme. Celeste in pantomime at the Adelphi, and was a delighted spectator of some old farces at the same house. The early taste for drama and opera never left him.
The royal children were encouraged by their father to act and recite, and George Bartley the actor was engaged to Amateur acting prince lessons in elocution. He made sufficient progress to take part in dramatic entertainments for his parents' amusement. In Jan. 1853 he played the part of Abner to the Princess Royal's Athalie in some scenes from Racine's tragedy. Next month he played Max in a German piece, 'Die Tafelbirnen,' his sisters and brother supporting him, and on 10 Feb. 1854 he in the costume of 'Winter' recited lines from Thomson's 'Seasons.'
As a draughtsman he showed for a time some skill. Edward Henry Corbould [q. v. Suppl. II] gave him instruction. Progress in drawing. For an art exhibition in the spring of 1855 in aid of the Patriotic Fund for the benefit of soldiers' families during the Crimean war, he prepared a drawing called 'The Knight,' which sold for fifty-five guineas. Opportunities for experiment in other mechanical arts were provided at Osborne. There a Swiss cottage was erected in 1854 as a workshop for the prince and his brothers. The prince and his brother Alfred during the Crimean war were busy over miniature fortifications in the grounds.
The gravest defect in Prince Albert's deliberate scheme of education was the practical isolation which it imposed on the prince from boys of his own age. Prince Albert to a greater extent than the queen held that members of the royal family and especially the heir-apparent should keep aloof from their subjects, and deprecated intercourse save in ceremonial fashion. He had a nervous fear of the contaminating influence of boys less carefully trained than his own sons. There were always advisers who questioned the wisdom of the royal policy of exclusiveness, and Prince Albert so far relented, when his eldest son was a child of six or seven, as to invite a few boys whose parents were of high character and good position to play with the prince in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. Among these child associates were Charles Carington (afterwards first Earl Carrington and Marquis of Lincolnshire) and Charles Lindley Wood (afterwards second Viscount Halifax). Some seven years later the practice was continued at Windsor, whither a few carefully chosen Eton boys were summoned to spend an occasional afternoon. Besides Charles Wood, there now came among others George Cadogan (afterwards fifth Earl Cadogan) and Lord Hinchingbrooke (afterwards eighth earl of Sandwich); but the opportunities of intercourse were restricted. Prince Albert, who was often present, inspired the boy-visitors with a feeling of dread. Companions of youth. The young prince's good-humour and charm of manner endeared him to them and made most of them his friends for life, but owing to his seclusion from boys' society he was ignorant of ordinary outdoor games, and showed small anxiety to attempt them. This want was never supplied. Subsequently he showed some interest in croquet, but ordinary games made no appeal to him, and he betrayed no aptitude for them. The only outdoor recreation which his parents urged on him was riding. He was taught to ride as a boy, and as a young man rode well and hard, possessing *good hands' and an admirable nerve, while at the same time he developed a genuine love of horses and dogs.
Meanwhile the prince's presence at public ceremonies brought him into prominent notice. On 30 Oct. 1849 he attended for the first time a public function. Early public functions. He then accompanied Prince Albert to the City to open the Coal Exchange. His sister, princess royal, accompanied him, but the queen was absent ​ through illness. The royal party travelled in the royal barge from Westminster to London Bridge. On 1 May 1851 he was at the opening of the Great Exhibition, and was much impressed by the stateliness of the scene. With his tutor and his brother Alfred he frequently visited the place in the next few months, and in June 1854 he attended the inauguration at Sydenham of the Crystal Palace, into which the exhibition building was con- verted. He accompanied his parents to the art treasures exhibition at Man- chester, staying at Worsley Hall with Lord Ellesmere (29 June-2 July 1857). He was twice at Eton (4 June 1853 and 1855) and once at Harrow (29 June 1854) for the speech days, but solely as an onlooker. More important was his first visit to the opening, on 12 Dec. 1854, of a new session of parliament, which was called in view of public anxiety over the Crimean war. That anxiety was fully alive in the royal circle. With his parents the prince visited the wounded soldiers in Brompton Hospital, and was at his mother's side when she first presented the V.C. decoration in Hyde Park (July 1857).
To the Crimean war, which brought his mother into alliance with Napoleon III, emperor of the French, the youth owed a new and more interesting experience than any that had yet befallen him. In August 1855 he and his eldest sister accompanied their parents on their First visit to Paris. glorious visit to Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie at the Tuileries. It was the boy's first arrival on foreign soil. At once he won the hearts of the French people. His amiability and his delight in the attentions paid him captivated everybody. Prince Albert wrote to Stockmar with unusual lightness of heart how his son, 'qui est si gentil,' had made himself a general favourite. The impression proved imperishable. Frenchmen of every class and political creed acknowledged his boyish fascination. 'Le petit bonhomme est vraiment charmant,' wrote Louis Blanc, a French exile in England, who as he wandered about London caught frequent sight of the boy ; 'il a je ne sais quoi qui plait et, aux cotes de ses parents, il apparait comme un vrai personnage de f eerie.' This early friendship between the prince and France lasted through his life, and defied all vicissitudes of his own or of French fortunes.
While the prince's general demeanour gratified his parents, they were not well satisfied with his progress. He was reported to be wanting in enthusiasm and imagination, and to be subject to fits of ill-temper, which although brief were easily provoked. Prince Albert earnestly sought new means of quickening his intelligence. The curriculum was widened. In January 1856 Faraday's lectures, 1856. the prince and his brother attended Faraday's lectures on metals at the Royal Institution ; and William Ellis was summoned to the palace to teach the prince and his eldest sister political economy. Ellis, like all the royal tutors, noted the superior quickness of the girl, and failed to move much interest in the boy. At the end of August 1856, a fortnight's walking tour was made with his tutor Gibbs and Col. William Henry Cavendish, groom-in-waiting to Queen Victoria and a first cousin of the duke of Devonshire. Starting from Osborne, the party slowly travelled incognito through Dorset, for the most part on foot, putting up at inns without ceremony. But the secret of the prince's identity leaked out, and the experiment was spoilt by public curiosity.
Prince Albert did not conceal his anxiety over his son's backwardness. He invited the counsel of Lord Granville (22 Jan. 1857). Granville frankly advised 'his being mixed up with others Lord Granville's protest against mode of education. of his own age away from home.' He ridiculed as futile 'the visits of Eton boys to the Castle for a couple of hours. Never out of the sight of tutors or elderly attendants, he was not likely to develop the best boyish characteristics. A foreign tour with boys of his own age was suggested, and at some future date a voyage through the colonies and even to India.
In a modified fashion the advice was at once taken. In the spring of 1857 a second tour was made to the English lakes in the company of certain of the Eton boys who had been already occasional visitors to Windsor. Among them were Charles Wood, Mr. Gladstone's son, W. H. Gladstone, and Frederick Stanley, afterwards earl of Derby, Dr. Alexander Armstrong went as medical attendant and Col. Cavendish and Gibbs were in general charge. Lancaster, Bowness, Grasmere, and Helvellyn were all visited. But on the prince's return Prince Albert examined his son's diary and was distressed by its scantiness. A foreign tour followed in the summer. It was designed to combine study, especially of German, with the pleasures of sightseeing. On 26 July 1857 the prince left England to spend a month at ​ Königswinter near Bonn on the Rhine. The same company of boys At Königswinter, 1857.. went with him and the 8uite was joined by Prince Albert's equerries, Col. Grey and Col. Ponsonby, as well as Charles Tarver, afterwards canon of Chester, who was appointed to act as classical tutor. No very serious study was pursued, but the experiences were varied. On the journey down the Rhine, the party met the ill-fated Archduke and Archduchess Maximilian of Austria, who were on their honeymoon. From Germany the prince and his companions went on to Switzerland. At Chamonix Albert Smith acted as guide. The prince walked over the Great Scheidegg, and Roundell Palmer (afterwards Earl Selborne), who was traversing the same pass, wrote with enthusiasm in his diary of 'the slender fair boy' and of his 'frank open countenance,' judging him to be 'everything which we could have wished the heir to the British throne at that age to be' (Selbourne, Memorials, ii. 327). The prince also visited at the castle of Johannisburg the old statesman Prince Metternich, who reported to Guizot that 'le jeune prince plaisait a tout le monde, mais avait l'air embarrasse et très triste' (Reid, Life of Lord Houghton).
Home again at the end of October, he enjoyed in the winter his first experience of hunting, going out with the royal buckhounds near Windsor. He found the sport exhilarating, and soon afterwards tried his hand at deer-stalking in Scotland. In January 1858 the festivities in honour of his elder sister's marriage with Prince Frederick of Prussia absorbed The Princess Royal's marriage, 25 Jan. 1858. the attention of his family. The marriage, prince attended the ceremony at St. James Palace dressed in highland costume (25 Jan.). He felt the parting with the chief companion of his childhood, but corresponded incessantly with his sister and paid her repeated visits in her new home. The close relations with the Prussian royal family which had begun with his baptism were thus greatly strengthened. On 1 April 1858 he was confirmed at Windsor by the archbishop of Canterbury, John Bird Sumner. 'Bertie,' wrote Confirmation, 1 April 1858. his father, 'acquitted himself extremely well,' in the preliminary examination by Gerald Wellesley, dean of Windsor. His mother described 'his whole manner' as 'gentle, good and proper,' epithets which well expressed his attitude towards religion through life. A few days later he made a short pleasure tour with his tutor to Ireland. It was his third visit to that country. He now extended his knowledge of it by going south to Killarney and leaving by way of Cork.
A further trial of the effect of absence from home was made in May. It was decided that he should join the army, and on 5 May 1858, with a view to preparing him for military service, he was sent to stay at in residence White Lodge in Richmond Park, the unoccupied residence of In residence at White Lodge, 1858. Lodge, 1858. the ranger, duke of Cambridge. A sort of independent household was there first provided for him. In view of the approach of manhood, his parents redoubled their precautions against undesirable acquaintances, but after careful investigation three young officers, Lord Valletort (the earl of Mount Edgcumbe's son), Major Christopher Teesdale [q. v.], and Major Lindsay, afterwards Lord Wantage [q. v. Suppl. II], were appointed to be the prince's first equerries. For their confidential instruction, Prince Albert elaborated rules whereby they might encourage in the prince minute care of his 'appearance, deportment, and dress,' and foster in him good 'manners and conduct towards others' and the 'power to acquit himself creditably in conversation or whatever may be the occupation of society.'
Already at fifteen he had been given a small allowance for the purchase of hats and ties, for which he carefully accounted to his mother. Now he was advanced to the privilege of choosing his own dress, and the queen sent him a formal minute on the sober principles which should govern his choice of material. To neatness of dress he always attached importance, and he insisted on a reasonable adherence to laws of fashion on the part of those about him. To the formalities of official costume he paid through life an almost ex-exaggerated attention. This quality was partly inherited from his grandfather, the duke of Kent, but was greatly stimulated by his parents' counsel. Gibbs was in chief charge at White Lodge, and intellectual society was encouraged. Richard Owen the naturalist was several times invited to dine, and Lord John Russell, who was residing at Pembroke Lodge, was an occasional guest. The talk ranged over many topics, but was hardly calculated to interest very deeply a boy under seventeen (Life of R. Owen). He spent some time rowing on the river, and attended his first ​dinner-party at Cambridge Cottage, Kew, the residence of his great-aunt, the duchess of Cambridge, but all was too strictly regulated to give a youth much satisfaction. His sojourn at White Lodge was interrupted in August, when he went with his parents to Cherbourg, and renewed his acquaintance with the emperor and empress of the French. On 9 Nov. 1858, his seventeenth birthday, one purpose of his retirement to Richmond was fulfilled. He was made a colonel in the army unattached and at the same time Parental admonition on seventeenth birthday, 9 Nov. 1858. was nominated K.G., though the installation was postponed. The date was regarded by his parents as marking his entry on manhood. Among their gifts was a memorandum signed by themselves solemnly warning him of his duties as a Christian gentleman. Gibbs, too, retired from the prince's service, and his precise post was allowed to lapse.
But there was no real change in the situation. His parents relaxed none of their vigilance, and a more complete control of the prince's affairs and conduct than Gibbs had exercised was now entrusted to a governor, Col. Bruce governor, 10 Nov. 1858. Colonel Robert Bruce. The colonel fully enjoyed Prince Albert's confidence; his sister, Lady Augusta, was a close friend of the queen and was lady-in-waiting of his grandmother, the duchess of Kent. At the same time Charles Tarver was formally installed as instructor in classics.
For the next four years the prince and Col. Bruce were rarely parted, and Col. Bruce's wife, Catherine Mary, daughter of Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, usually assisted her husband in the strict discharge of his tutorial functions. The first incident in the new regime was a second foreign expedition of more imposing extent than the first. Travel was proving attractive, and his parents wisely encouraged his taste for it. During December a short visit, the first of many, was paid to his married sister at Potsdam (December 1858). Next month he with Colonel and Mrs. Bruce started from Dover on an Italian tour. Stringent injunctions were laid on Bruce by his parents to protect the prince from any chance intercourse with strangers and to anticipate any unprincipled attempt of journalists to get into conversation with him. The prince was to encounter much that was new. He travelled for the first time under a formal incognito, and took the title of Baron of Renfrew. On leaving England he presented colours to the Prince of Wales's royal (100th) Canadian Visit to Rome Jan.-April 1859. regiment, which was in camp at Shorncliffe (10 Jan. 1859), and delivered to the soldiers his first speech in public. The duke of Cambridge was present and pronounced it excellent. From Dover he crossed to Ostend to pay at the palace of Laeken, near Brussels, a first visit to his grand-uncle, King Leopold I. The king's influence over him was hardly less than that which he exerted on the boy's mother and father. Passing through Germany, the party made a short stay at Berlin, where Lord Bloomfield gave a ball in his honour. It was the first entertainment of the kind he had attended, and he was 'very much amused' with his first cotillon. He reached Rome near the end of January and settled down for a long stay. King Victor Emanuel was anxious to offer him hospitality at Turin. But Queen Victoria deemed King Victor's rough habit of speech, of which she had some experience at Windsor in 1855, an example to be avoided, and the invitation, somewhat to Cavour's embarrassment, was declined. At Rome the prince was soon busily engaged in seeing places and persons of interest. Attended by Bruce, he called on the Pope, Pius IX, and talked with him in French. The interview 'went off extremely well,' Queen Victoria wrote to King Leopold (15 Feb. 1859), and the pope interested himself in the endeavour to make the visit to Rome 'useful and pleasant' (Queen's Letters, iii. 411). Of duly approved English sojourners the prince saw many. He impressed Robert Browning as 'a gentle, refined boy' ; he was often in the studio of the sculptor John Gibson, and an introduction there to Frederic Leighton led to a lifelong intimacy.
The outbreak of war between Italy and Austria in April hastened the prince's departure at the end of three months. H.M.S. Scourge carried him from Civita Vecchia to Gibraltar, where he was met by the royal yacht Osborne. From Gibraltar he passed to Lisbon, where he was entertained by Pedro V, king of Portugal. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were attached to the Portuguese royal house by lineal ties and sentiments of affection. King Pedro's mother, Queen Maria, had been a playmate of Queen Victoria, and his father, Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, was a first cousin of both Queen Victoria and her consort. With Portugal's successive monarchs the Prince ​on friendliest terms. The prince only reached home in June, after six months' absence, and was then formally invested K.G. with full ceremony. On 26 June Prince Hohenlohe, the future chancellor of Germany, dined at Buckingham Palace, and learned from the prince's lips something of his travels. The young man gave the German visitor an impression of good breeding, short stature, and nervous awe of his father.
Prince Albert was not willing to allow his son's educational course to end prematurely. An academic training was at once devised on comprehensive lines, which included attendance at three universities in succession. At Edinburgh, 1859. A beginning was made at Edinburgh in the summer of 1859. Holyrood Palace was prepared for his residence. His chief instruction was in science under the guidance of Lyon Playfair, whose lectures at the university on the composition and working of iron-ore the prince attended regularly. He showed interest in Playfair's teaching, visiting with him many factories to inspect chemical processes, and proved his courage and obedient temper by dipping at Playfair's bidding in one of the workshops his bare arm into a hissing cauldron of molten iron by way of illustrating that the experiment could be made with impunity (Grant Duff, Notes from a Diary, 1877–86, ii. 27). At the same time Leonhard Schmitz taught him Roman history, Italian, German, and French. For exercise he paraded with the 16th lancers, who were stationed in the city, and made excursions to the Trossachs and the Scottish lakes. But the stay in Edinburgh was brief.
On 3 Sept. the prince consort held a conference there with the youth's professors and tutors to decide on his future curriculum. The Edinburgh experience was proving tedious and cheerless. The prince mixed with none but serious men advanced in years. The public at large was inclined to protest that now when it seemed time to terminate the state of pupilage, there were visible signs of an almost indefinite extension. ‘Punch’ voiced the general sentiment in a poem entitled ‘A Prince at High Pressure’ (24 Sept. 1859). But Prince Albert was relentless, and inAt Oxford, Oct 1859. October the prince migrated to Oxford on conditions as restrictive as any that went before. The prince matriculated as a nobleman from Christ Church, of which Dr. Liddell was dean, on 17 Oct.
It was the first recorded occasion on which a Prince of Wales had become an undergraduate of the University of Oxford. Tradition alone vouches for the story of the matriculation in 1398 of Prince Henry, afterwards Henry V—Prince Hal, with whom the new undergraduate was occasionally to be linked in satire hereafter. No other preceding Prince of Wales was in any way associated with Oxford. But Prince Albert's son was not to enjoy any of an undergraduate's liberty. A special residence, Frewen Hall, a house in the town, was taken for him. Col. Bruce accompanied him and rarely left him. Prince Albert impressed on Bruce the boy's need of close application to study, and of resistance to social calls, as well as the undesirability of any free mingling with undergraduates. Herbert Fisher, a student of Christ Church, was on the recommendation of Dean Liddell appointed his tutor in law and constitutional history. He did not attend the college lectures, but Goldwin Smith, professor of modern history, with three or four chosen undergraduates, waited on him at his residence and gave him a private course in history. The text-book was the ‘Annals of England,’ by W. E. Flaherty (1855), and the professor only partially compensated by epigram for the dryness of the work. By Prince Albert's wish, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, then professor of ecclesiastical history, gave him some religious instruction, while Dr. Henry Acland, his medical attendant, occasionally invited him to social gatherings at his house. With both Stanley and Acland the prince formed very friendly relations. He saw comparatively little of the undergraduates. He confirmed his acquaintance with Mr. Charles Wood. At the same time fox-hunting was one of his permitted indulgences, and the recreation brought him into touch with some young men of sporting tastes, to a few of whom, like Mr. Henry Chaplin and Sir Frederick Johnstone, he formed a lifelong attachment. He hunted with the South Oxfordshire hounds, of which Lord Macclesfield was master, and he saw his first fox killed near Garsington on 27 Feb. 1860, when he was presented with the brush. Hunting was his favourite sport till middle age. The discipline which Col. Bruce enforced prohibited smoking. But the prince made surreptitious experiments with tobacco, which soon induced a fixed habit.
The prince remained in residence at Oxford with few interruptions during term time until the end of the summer term 1860. He was summoned to Windsor on ​9 Nov. 1859 for the celebration of his eighteenth birthday, which was reckoned in royal circles a virtual coming of age. His parents again presented him with a carefully penned exhortation in which they warned him that he would henceforth be exempted from parental authority, but that they would always be ready with their counsel at his request. As he read the document the sense of his parents' solicitude for his welfare and his new responsibilities moved him to tears. But the assurance of personal independence lacked genuine significance. In the Easter vacation of 1860 he paid a first visit to his father's home at Coburg, and made 'a very good impression.' He pleased his parents by the good account he brought them of 'dear' Stockmar's state of health (Letters of Queen Victoria, iii. 5; 25 April 1860). On his return home he found (Sir) Richard Owen lecturing his brothers and sisters on natural history, and he attended once (23 April 1860). In London at the opening of the long vacation he enjoyed the first of his many experiences of laying foundation stones. He performed the ceremony for the School of Art at Lambeth.
A formidable journey was to interrupt his Oxford undergraduate career. In July 1860 he carried out a scheme long in his parents' In Canada, July-Sept. 1860. minds, which exerted on his development a far more beneficial effect than any likely to come of his academic training. During the Crimean war the Canadian government, which had equipped a regiment of infantry for active service, had requested the queen to visit Canada. She declined the invitation, but promised that the Prince of Wales should go there as soon as he was old enough. When that decision was announced, the president of the United States, James Buchanan, and the corporation of New York, both sent the queen requests that he should visit America. The queen very gradually overcame maternal misgivings of the safety of an English prince among American republicans. The American invitations were at length accepted, with the proviso that the American visit was to be treated as a private one. In any case the projected tour acquired something more than a merely colonial interest. An impressive introduction to public life was thus designed for the heir to the English throne. A large and dignified suite was collected. The prince was accompanied by the duke of Newcastle, secretary of state for the colonies, by the earl of St. Germans, lord steward of the royal household, and by Col. Bruce, his governor. Major Teesdale and Capt. Grey (d. 1874), son of Sir George Grey, went as equerries, and Dr. Acland as physician. Young Lord Hinchingbrooke, one of the Eton associates, was to join the party in America.
Leaving Southampton on 9 July 1860 in H.M.S. Hero, with H.M.S. Ariadne in attendance, the prince reached Newfoundland on the 23rd. The colonial progress opened at St. John's with processions, presentations of addresses, reviews of volunteers, levees, and banquets, which were constant features of the tour. Thence they passed to Halifax and Nova Scotia (30 July). On 9 Aug. he landed on Prince Edward Island, and on the 12th, near the mouth of the St. Lawrence, the governor-general of the Canadas, Sir Edmund Head, boarded the royal vessel. On the 20th the prince made a state entry into Quebec, the capital of French Canada. He stayed at Parliament House, which had been elaborately fitted up for his residence, and a guard of honour of 100 men was appointed to form his escort through the colony. At Montreal on 1 Sept. he opened the great railway bridge across the St. Lawrence ; and passing thence to Ottawa, he there laid the foundation stone of the Parliament building. On the way to Toronto, the capital of upper Canada, the only untoward incident took place. Strong protestant feeling in the upper colony resented the enthusiasm with which the French Roman catholics of lower Canada had welcomed the prince, and the Orange lodges resolved to emphasise their principles by forcing on the prince's notice in their street decorations the emblems of their faith. At Kingston on Lake Ontario the townsfolk refused to obey the duke of Newcastle's direction to remove the orange colours and portraits of William III from the triumphal arches before the royal party entered the town. Consequently the royal party struck the place out of their itinerary and proceeded to Toronto, where a like difficulty threatened. Happily the Orangemen there yielded to persuasion, and the reception at Toronto proved as hearty as could be wished.
Leaving Canada for the United States, the prince made an excursion to Niagara Falls (17 Sept.), where, somewhat to his alarm, he saw Blondin perform on the tight rope, and at the neighbouring village of Queenstown (18 Sept.) he laid the crowning stone on the great monument erected to the memory of Major-general Sir Isaac Brock [q. v.], who was slain in the American war ​of 1812. Crossing lake Michigan, he touched United States soil at Detroit on 19 Sept.; there he was met by Lord Lyons, minister at Washington. At once scenes of extravagant enthusiasm belied all fears of a cool reception. Short stays in Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Pittsburg preceded his arrival at Washington (3 Oct.), where President Buchanan (an old man of seventy- seven) received him at the White House with friendliest cordiality. A crowded levee at White House was given in his honour. At Washington, 5 Oct. 1860. With the president he visited on 5 Oct. Mount Vernon, Washington's home and burial place, and planted a chestnut by the side of the tomb. Such a tribute from the great-grandson of George III was greeted by the American people with loud acclamations of joy, and England was hardly less impressed. 'The Prince of Wales at the Tomb of Washington' was the subject set for the English poem at Cambridge University in 1861, and the prize was won by Frederic W. H. Myers. Going northwards, the prince stayed at Philadelphia (7 Oct.), where he heard Madame Patti sing for the first time. At New York (11 Oct.) he remained three days. A visit was paid later to the military school at West Point, and proceeding to Boston he went over to Cambridge to inspect Harvard University. At Boston he met Longfellow, Emerson, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. He embarked for home in H.M.S. Hero from Portland in Maine on 20 Oct. and arrived after a bad passage at Plymouth on 15 Nov., six days after completing his nineteenth year.
Everywhere the prince's good-humour, courteous bearing, and simple delight in novel experiences won the hearts of his hosts. Effect of the American tour. 'Dignified, frank, and affable,' wrote the president to Queen Victoria (6 Oct. 1860), 'he has conciliated, wherever he has been, the kindness and respect of a sensitive and discriminating people.' The tour differed in every regard from his previous trips abroad. It was originally planned as a ceremonial compliment to the oldest and most important of English colonies on the part of the heir to the throne travelling as the reigning sovereign's official representative. No British colony had previously received a like attention. Canada accorded the prince all the honours due to his royal station. In the United States, too, where it was stipulated by Queen Victoria that he should travel as a private person under his incognito of Baron of Renfrew, the fiction went for nothing, and he was greeted as England's heir-apparent no less emphatically than in British North America. The result satisfied every sanguine hope. It tightened the bond of affection between Canada and the mother country at the moment when a tide of public sentiment seemed setting in another direction, and it reinforced the sense of unity among the British American colonies, which found expression in their internal union of 1867. On the relations of the United States and England the effect was of the happiest. On 29 Nov. 1860 Sir Charles Phipps, who was high in the confidence of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, gave expression to the general verdict in a letter to Dr. Acland. 'The success of the expedition has been beyond The general verdict. all expectation; it may be reckoned as one of the most important and valuable state measures of the present age, and whether we look to the excitement and encouragement of loyalty and affection to the mother country in Canada, or to the soothing of prejudice and the increase of good feeling between the United States and Great Britain, it seems to me impossible to overrate the importance of the good results which the visit promises for the future.'
On the youth himself the tour exerted a wholly beneficial influence. The duke of Newcastle noticed in the prince a perceptible intellectual development. The journey left a lasting impression on his mind. If at times in later reminiscence he associated Canadian life with some want of material comfort, he always cherished gratitude for the colonial hospitality, and never lost a sense of attachment to the American people. His parents felt pride in the American welcome, and a year later, when Motley, then American minister at Vienna, was passing through England, he was invited to Balmoral, to receive from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert expressions of their satisfaction. Some American publicists were inclined to attribute to the heartiness of the prince's reception Prince Albert's momentous diplomatic intervention in behalf of the north over the affair of the Trent. When the American civil war broke out next year, Prince Albert on the eve of his death powerfully discouraged English sympathy with the revolt against the authority of the government at Washington, which had given his son an ovation.
The prince's career in England pursued its normal course. He returned to Oxford ​in November for the rest of the Michaelmas term, and in December the queen paid him a visit there. At the end of the year he left Oxford for good. Next month his protracted education was At Cambridge, Jan. 1861. continued at Cambridge. As at Oxford, a private residence, Madingley Hall, was hired for him. The Cambridge house was of more inspiring character then Frewen Hall ; it was an old and spacious country mansion, four miles from the town, 'with large grounds and capital stables.' Col. Bruce and his wife took domestic control, and under their eyes the prince was free to entertain his friends. He entered Trinity College, while Dr. Whewell was Master, on 18 Jan. 1861. A set of rooms in the college was placed at his disposal, but he did not regularly occupy them. Joseph Barber Lightfoot [q. v.] was his college tutor, and when in 1897 the prince visited Durham, of which Lightfoot was then bishop, he recalled the admiration and regard with which Lightfoot inspired him. History remained his main study and was directed by the professor of history, Charles Kingsley. The prince attended Kingsley's lectures at the professor's own house, together with some half-dozen carefully selected undergraduates, who included the present Viscount Cobham, and George Howard, ninth earl of Carlisle [q. v. Suppl. II]. The prince rode over thrice a week to the professor's house and each Saturday Kingsley recapitulated the week's work with the prince alone. He was examined at Kingsley's lectures. the end of each term ; the course finally brought English history ; up to the reign of George IV. Kingsley was impressed by his pupil's attention and courtesy, and like all who came into contact with him, bore him thenceforth deep affection.
In 1861 there began for the court a period of gloom, which long oppressed it. On 16 March the prince's grandmother, the duchess of Kent, died ; and he met his first experience of death at close quarters. He first attended a drawing-room on 24 June 1861 in the sombre conditions of official mourning. But more joyful experience intervened, before there fell on him the great blow of his father's premature death. In the summer vacation he went for a fourth time to Ireland, at first as the guest of the lord-lieutenant ; but his chief purpose was to join in camp at the Curragh the regiment, the 10th hussars, to which he was just gazetted. For the first time in his life he was freed from the strict and punctilious supervision of his veteran guardians and At the Curragh, Aug. 1861. mentors. The pleasures of liberty which he tasted were new to him. A breach of discipline exposed him to punishment, and he grew impatient of the severe restrictions of his previous career. His mother and father came over in August to a review of the troops in which he took part. 'Bertie,' she wrote, 'marched past with his company, 'and did not look at all so very small' (Letters, 26 Aug. 1861). With his parents he spent a short holiday in Killarney, and then for a second time he crossed the Channel to visit his sister, the Princess Royal, at Berlin (Sept. 1861). After accompanying her and her husband on a tour through the Rhenish provinces, he witnessed at Coblenz the military manœuvres of the German army of the Rhine.
This German tour had been designed with an object of greater importance than mere pleasure or change. The prince was reaching a marriageable age, and the Prospects of marriage. choice of a wife was in the eyes of King Leopold, of Stockmar, and of the youth's parents a matter of momentous concern. It was inevitable that selection should be made from among princely families of Germany. Seven young German princesses were reported to be under the English court's consideration as early as the summer of 1858 (The Times, 5 July 1858). Fifth on this list was Princess Alexandra, eldest daughter of Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, next heir to the throne of Denmark, which he ascended on 15 Nov. 1863 as Christian IX. She was barely seventeen, nearly three years the prince's junior. Her mother, Louise of Hesse-Cassel, was sole heiress of the old Danish royal family, and the princess was born and brought up at Copenhagen. Though her kinship was with Germany, her life was identified with Denmark. King Leopold, who discussed the choice of a bride with Queen Victoria, reported favourably of her beauty and character. But the prince's parents acknowledged his right of First meeting with Princess Alexandra at Spier, 21 Sept. 1861. selection, and a meeting between him and Princess Alexandra was arranged, while he was in Germany in the summer of 1861. The princess was staying near at hand with her mother's father, the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, at the castle of Rumpenheim. The prince saw her for the first time in the cathedral at Speier (24 Sept. 1861). Next day they met again at Heidelberg. ​Each made a favourable impression on the other. On 4 Oct. Prince Albert writes ; 'We hear nothing but excellent accounts of the Princess Alexandra; the young people seem to have taken a warm liking to one another.' Again, when the Prince of Wales returned to England a few days later, his father writes to Stockmar: 'He has come back greatly pleased with his interview with the princess at Speier.'
For the present nothing further followed. The prince resumed his residence at Cambridge. He was in London on 31 Oct., when he was called to the bar at the Middle Temple, was elected a bencher, and opened the new library at the Inn. But his studies at Cambridge went forward during the Michaelmas term. The stringent discipline was proving irksome, and he was involuntarily coming to the conclusion, which future experience confirmed, that his sojourns at the two English universities were mistakes. On 25 Nov. Prince Albert arrived to offer him good counsel. He stayed the night at Madingley Hall. A chill caught on the Prince Albert's death, 14 Dec. 1861. journey developed into what unhappily proved to be a fatal illness. On 13 Dec. the prince was summoned from Cambridge to Windsor to attend his father's deathbed. Prince Albert died next day.
At his father's funeral in St. George's Chapel on 23 Dec. the prince was chief mourner, in his mother's absence. He joined her the same day at Osborne. At the queen's request he wrote a day or two later a letter publicly identifying himself with her overwhelming anxiety to pay her husband's memory all public honour. On the 28th he offered to place, at his own expense, in the gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society, a statue of the prince instead of one of the queen which had already been cast for erection there, by way of memorial of the Great Exhibition of 1851.
II
The sudden death of his father, when the prince was just turned twenty years of Queen Victoria's parental control. age, was a momentous incident in his career. The strict discipline, to which his father had subjected him, had restrained in him every sense of independence and had fostered a sentiment of filial awe. He wholly shared his mother's faith in the character and attainments of the dead prince. In her husband's lifetime the queen had acknowledged his superior right to control her sons. But after his death she regarded herself to be under a solemn obligation to fill his place in the family circle and to regulate all her household precisely on the lines which he had followed. To all arrangements which the prince consort had made for her sons and daughters she resolved loyally to give effect and to devise others in the like spirit. The notion of consulting their views or wishes was foreign to her conception of duty. Abounding in maternal solicitude, she never ceased to think of the Prince of Wales as a boy to whom she owed parental guidance, the more so because he was fatherless. A main effect of his father's death was consequently to place him, in his mother's view, almost in permanence 'in statu pupillari.' She claimed to regulate his actions in almost all relations of life.
Earlier signs were apparent, even in Prince Albert's lifetime, of an uneasy fear on the queen's part that her eldest son might, on reaching manhood, check the predominance which it was her wish that her husband should enjoy as her chief counsellor. In 1857 she had urged on ministers a parliamentary enactment for securing Prince Albert's formal precedence in the state next to herself. Stockmar was asked to press upon her the imprudence of her proposal, and it was with reluctance dropped (Fitzmaurice, Lord Oranville). But the episode suggests the limitations which threatened the Prince of Wales's adult public activity. In his mother's sight he was disqualified by his filial relation from filling the place which her husband had held in affairs of state or from relieving her of any political duties. His mother accurately described her lasting attitude alike to her husband's memory and to her children in a letter to King Leopold (24 Dec. 1861) : 'And no human power will make me swerve from what he decided and wished. I apply this particularly as regards our children Bertie, &c. for whose future he had traced everything so carefully. I am also determined that no one person, may he be ever so good, ever so devoted among my servants is to lead or guide or dictate tome' (Letters, iii. 606).
The Prince of Wales always treated his mother with affectionate deference and considerate courtesy. Naturally docile, he in his frequent letters to her addressed her up to her death in simple filial style, beginning 'Dear Mama' and ending 'Your affectionate and dutiful son.' To the queen the formula had a literal significance. But on reaching man's estate the prince's views of life broadened. He travelled far from the rigid traditions in which he had been ​brought up. Difference of view regarding his official privileges became with the prolongation of his mother's reign inevitable. The queen was very ready to delegate to him formal and ceremonial labours which were distasteful to her, but she never ceased to ignore his title to any function of government. His place in the royal succession soon seemed to him inconsistent with that perpetual tutelage, from which Queen Victoria deemed it wrong for him to escape in her lifetime. Open conflict was averted mainly by the prince's placable temper, which made ebullitions of anger of brief duration; but it was a serious disadvantage for him to be denied by the queen any acknowledged responsibility in public affairs for the long period of nearly forty years, which intervened between his father's death and his own accession to the throne.
As soon as the first shock of bereavement passed, Queen Victoria set herself to carry out with scrupulous fidelity two plans which her husband devised for his eldest son's welfare, another foreign tour and his marriage.
The tour to the Holy Land which was to conclude his educational travel had Tour in the Holy Land, Feb.-May 1862. been arranged by Prince Albert in consultation with Arthur Penrhyn Stanley. The suite included Gen. Bruce, Major Teesdale, Col. Keppel, Robert Meade, who had been associated with Lord Dufferin on his mission to Syria in 1860, and Dr. Minter as physician. The queen's confidence in Stanley was a legacy from her husband, and at her persuasion he somewhat reluctantly agreed to join the party. The prince travelled incognito, and owing to the family mourning it was the queen's wish that ceremonial receptions should as far as possible be dispensed with. Leaving Osborne on 6 Feb. 1862, the prince and his companions journeyed through Germany and Austria. At Darmstadt he was welcomed by the Grand Duke, whose son was to marry his second sister, Alice ; thence he passed to Munich, where he inspected the museums and the galleries and saw the king of Bavaria, At Vienna he met for the first time the Emperor Francis Joseph, who formed a favourable impression of him, and thenceforth cherished a genuine affection for him. At Vienna he was introduced to Laurence Oliphant [q. v.], who was well acquainted with the Adriatic coast of the Mediterranean. Oliphant readily agreed to act as guide for that part of the expedition. From Trieste, where In Egypt.
Stanley joined the party, the royal yacht Osborne brought the prince to Venice, to Corfu, and other places of interest on the passage to Egypt. Oliphant, who served as cicerone for ten days, wrote that the prince was not studious nor highly intellectual, but up to the average and beyond it in so far as quickness of observation and general intelligence go.' He recognised the charm of us 'temper and disposition' and deemed travelling the best sort of education for His defects he ascribed to a 'position which never allows him responsibility or forces him into action' (Mrs. Oliphant's Life of L. Oliphant, i. 269). The prince was on his side attracted by Oliphant, and many years later not only entertained him at Abergeldie but took him to dine at Balmoral with Queen Victoria, who shared her son's appreciation of his exhilarating talk.
The prince disembarked at Alexandria on 24 Feb. Passing to Cairo, he lodged In Egypt. in the palace of Kasr-en-nil, and every attention was paid turn by the viceroy Said. A three weeks' tour was made through upper Egypt. He climbed the summit of the Great Pyramid without assistance and with exceptional alacrity ; he voyaged up the Nile to Assouan (12 March), and explored the temple of Carnac at Luxor. At length on 31 March he arrived in the Holy Land, where no English prince had set foot since Edward I, more than six hundred years before.
Jerusalem was thoroughly explored, and the diplomacy of General Bruce gained At Jerusalem. admission to the mosque of em 'Hebron, into which no European was known to have penetrated since 1187. 'High station,' remarked the prince, 'has after all some merits, some advantages.' Easter Sunday (20 April 1862) was spent on the shores of Lake Tiberias and at Galilee. Through Damascus the party reached Beyrout and thence went by sea to Tyre, Sidon, and Tripoli (in Syria). During the tour Stanley succeeded in interesting the prince in the historic traditions of Palestine. While he was easily amused, he was amenable to good advice, and readily agreed that sporting should be suspended on Sundays. 'It is impossible not to like him,' Stanley wrote. 'His astonishing memory of names and persona a and his 'amiable and endearing qualities' impressed all the party.
On 15 May the Osborne anchored at the isle of Rhodes. Thence the prince passed to Constantinople, where he stayed at the embassy with Sir Henry Bulwer, ambassa​dor, and was formally entertained in his rank of Prince of Wales by the sultan. He saw the sights of the city. His host At Constantinople. reported favourably of his tact and manner, and while he did not anticipate that he would learn much from books, he discerned powers of observation which would well supply the place of study. But he detected a certain danger in an ease of demeanour which at times challenged his dignity and in the desire for amusement. A first sojourn in Athens, where he was to be a frequent visitor, and a landing at Cephallonia brought him to Marseilles. At Fontainebleau he was welcomed hospitably by the Emperor Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie, and on 13 June he rejoined his mother at Windsor. One unhappy incident of the highly interesting journey was the serious illness contracted by General Bruce in the marshes of the upper Jordan. He managed with difficulty to reach London, but there he died on 27 June 1862. The prince was thus deprived finally of the close surveillance which his father had deemed needful to his welfare.
While the court was still in deep mourning the marriage of his second sister, Princess Alice, to Prince Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt took place at Windsor on 1 July 1862.
The International Exhibition of 1862, which the prince consort had designed, had been duly opened in May by the duke of Cambridge, to whom much court ceremonial was for the time delegated by Queen Victoria. The prince inspected the exhibition in the summer and received with charming grace the foreign visitors to one of whom, General do Galliffet, he formed a lifelong attachment. But the queen's chief pre-occupation was the scheme for the prince's The coming marriage. marriage which King Leopold and the prince consort had inaugurated the previous year. In the summer the queen wrote to Prince Christian, formally soliciting the hand of his daughter, Princess^Alexandra, for her eldest son. Assent was readily given. At the end of August Queen Victoria left England to revisit Coburg, her late husband's home. On the journey she stayed with her uncle Leopold at his palace of Laeken, near Brussels. Her future daughter-in-law was with her father on a visit to Ostend, and Princess Alexandra came over to Laeken to meet Queen Victoria for the first time. The queen left for Coburg on 4 Sept. On the same date the prince set out to meet his mother and to begin what proved another long continental tour. On the 7th he arrived at Brussels, and paid his respects to Princess Alexandra at Ostend. Both were summoned by King Leopold to the palace The betrothal 9 Sept 1862. of Laeken, and there on 9 Sept. 1862 they were formally betrothed. Next day they went over the battlefield of Waterloo together, and in the evening they attended a court banquet which King Leopold gave in their honour. They travelled together to Cologne, where they parted, and the prince joined his mother at Coburg.
The engagement was made public on 16 Sept. in a communication to the press drafted by Queen Victoria. It was stated that the marriage 'privately settled at Brussels' was 'based entirely upon mutual affection and the personal merits of the princess,' and was 'in no way connected with political considerations,' 'The revered Prince Consort, whose sole object was the education and welfare of his children, had,' the message continued, 'been long convinced that this was a most desirable marriage.' On 1 Nov. 1862 the queen gave her formal assent to the union at a meeting of the privy council. The announcement was received in England with enthusiasm. The youth and beauty of the princess and her association with Denmark appealed to popular sympathies. 'I like the idea of the Danish connection ; we have had too much of Germany and Berlin and Coburgs,' wrote Lady Palmerston (Reid, Lord Houghton, ii. 83). In spite of the queen's warning, a political colour was given to the match in diplomatic circles. Prussia and Austria were steadily pushing forward their designs on the Schleswig-Holstein provinces which Denmark claimed. Public feeling in England, which favoured the Danish pretensions, was stimulated. In Germany it was openly argued that the queen and prince consort had betrayed the German cause.
Although the match was wholly arranged by their kindred, it roused a mutual affection in the prince and princess. But they saw little of each other before their marriage. On 8 Nov. Princess Alexandra Princess Alexandra in England, Nov. 1862. paid her first visit to England, coming with her father to Osborne as the guest of the queen. There and at Windsor she remained three weeks, spending much of her time alone with the queen.
By Queen Victoria's wish the prince was out of the country during his bride's stay. On leaving Coburg he had invited his sister and her husband, the crown prince and princess of Prussia, to ​ accompany him on a Mediterranean tour on the yacht Osborne. They embarked at Marseilles on 22 Oct. 1862. A most interesting itinerary was followed. A first experience of the Riviera was obtained by a The prince's foreign tour, Nov. 1862. landing at Hyeres. Palermo, the capital of Sicily, was visited, and thence a passage was made to Tunis, where the ruins of Carthage were explored. Owing to an accident to the paddle-wheel of the royal yacht, the vessel was towed by the frigate Doris from the African coast to Malta. On 5 Nov. the party reached Naples, and there the prince's twenty-first birthday was passed without ceremony. There was some incongruity in celebrating so interesting an anniversary in a foreign country. Yet the experience was not out of harmony with the zest for travel and for foreign society which was born of the extended and varied wanderings of his youth. Before leaving southern Italy he ascended Vesuvius, and on the return journey to England he revisited Rome. From Florence he made his way through Germany by slow stages. At Lille on 3 Dec. he met Princess Alexandra on her way from England. He reached home on 13 Dec. By far the greater part of the year had been spent abroad on three continents America, Asia, and Europe. Although he was barely turned one and twenty, the prince was probably the best travelled man in the world. There was small chance that he should cultivate in adult life any narrow insularity.
A separate establishment was already in course of formation at home. On reaching The prince's income. his majority he had come into a substantial fortune. The duchy of Cornwall was his appanage, and provided a large revenue. Owing to the careful administration of the prince consort the income of the duchy had risen from 16,000l. a year at the time of his son's birth to 60,000l. hi 1862. The receipts had been allowed to accumulate during his minority, and these were now reckoned to amount to 700,000l. Out of these savings, the sum of 220,000l. was bestowed with the prince consort's approval on the purchase for his son from Spencer Cowper of the country residence and estate of Sandringham in Norfolk. The transaction was carried out in 1861. The estate covered 7000 acres, which the prince subsequently extended to 11,000 ; and the rental was estimated at 7000l. a year. The existing house proved unsuitable and was soon rebuilt. A London house was provided officially. Marlborough House had reverted to the crown in 1817 on the lapse of the great duke of Marlborough's long lease. It had since been lent to the Dowager Queen Adelaide, widow of William IV, on whose death in 1849 it was employed as a government art school and picture gallery. In 1859 it was decided to fit it up as a residence for the Prince of Wales. During 1861 it was thoroughly remodelled, and in 1862 was ready for his occupation.
For the next three months preparations for his marriage absorbed his own and the country's attention. Simultaneously with The first household. his return to England the 'London Gazette' published an official list of his first household. General Sir William Knollys, the prince consort's close friend, became comptroller and treasurer and practically chief of the establishment ; Earl Spencer was made groom of the stole ; the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe and Lord Alfred Hervey lords of the bedchamber ; Robert Henry Meade and Charles Wood, afterwards Lord Halifax, grooms of the bedchamber; and Major Teesdale, Captain G. H. Grey, and Lieut.-colonel Keppel equerries. Herbert Fisher, his Oxford tutor, who had resumed his work at the bar, was recalled to act as private secretary, and he held the office till 1870. Mr. Wood was a very early companion, and all save Earl Spencer, General Knollys, and Lord Alfred Hervey had been closely associated with the prince already.
On 14 Dec. 1862 the prince was at Windsor, celebrating with his mother the first anniversary of his father's death. The queen refused to relax her habit of seclusion, and on 25 Feb. 1863 the prince took her place for the first time at a ceremonial function. He held a levee in her behalf at St. James's Palace. The presentations exceeded 1000, and severely tested his capacity for the fatigue of court routine. At a drawing-room which followed at Buckingham Palace (28 Feb.) the prince was again present ; but his sister, the crown princess of Prussia, represented the sovereign.
Parliament opened on 5 Feb. 1863, and the prince took his seat for the first time In the House of Lords, 5 Feb. 1863. in the House of Lords with of Lords, due formality as a peer of the reamlm. He was introduced by the dukes of Cambridge and Newcastle. He showed his interest in the proceedings by staying till half-past nine at night to listen to the debate, which chiefly dealt with the cession of the Ionian islands to Greece, ​The queen was absent. Her speech from the throne, which had been read by the lord chancellor at the opening of the session, announced the conclusion of her son's marriage treaty, which had been signed at Copenhagen on 10 Jan. 1863, and ratified in London the day before. The prime minister, Lord Palmerston, informed the House of Commons that the marriage might 'in the fullest sense of the word be called a love match' and was free of any political intention (Hansard, Commons Report, 5 Feb. 1863). A few days later a message from the queen invited the House of Commons to make pecuniary provision for the bridegroom. Pecuniary provision. Parliament on the motion of Palmerston granted him an annuity of 40,000l., which with the revenues of the duchy of Cornwall brought his annual income up to 100,000l. At the same time an annuity of 10.000l. was bestowed on Princess Alexandra, with a prospective annuity of 30,OOOZ. in case of widowhood. Advanced liberals raised the issue that the revenues of the duchy of Cornwall supplied the prince with an adequate income, and that parliament was under no obligation to make addition to it. It was complained, too, that public money had been voted to the prince on his creation as K.G. and for the expenses of his American tour. But Gladstone defended the government's proposal, and the resolutions giving it effect were carried nem. con. The grant finally passed the House of Commons without a division. No other of Queen Victoria's appeals to parliament for pecuniary grants to her children enjoyed the same good fortune.
The marriage was fixed for 10 March. The princess left Copenhagen on 26 Feb. and spent three days (2-5 March) on the journey in Brussels as the The Princess's entry into London, 7 March. guest of King Leopold, who was a chief sponsor of the union. On 7 March the prince met his bride on her arrival at Gravesend. Travelling by railway to the Bricklayers' Arms, Southwark, they made a triumphal progress through the City of London to Paddington. The six carriages, headed by a detachment of life-guards, seemed to many onlookers a mean pageant, but a surging mass of people greeted the couple with boundless delight (cf. Louis Blanc's Lettres sur l'Angleterre, 2nd ser. i. 13 seq.). At times the pressure of the enthusiastic mob caused the princess alarm. From Paddington they went by railway to Slough, and drove thence to Windsor. The poet laureate, Tennyson, summed up the national exultation in a Danish alliance when in his poetic 'Welcome,' 7 March 1863, he greeted the princess, with some poetic licence, as
'Sea-kings' daughter as happy as fair,
Blissful bride of a blissful heir,
Bride of the heir of the kings of the sea.'
The wedding took place on 10 March in St. George's Chapel, Windsor. The The wedding, 10 March. prince was in the uniform of a general and wore the robes of the Garter. Queen Victoria in widow's weeds overlooked the proceedings from a gallery. 'A fine affair, a thing to remember,' wrote Disraeli of the ceremony. Kingsley, who attended as royal chaplain, admired 'the serious, reverent dignity of my dear young master, whose manner was perfect.' The crown princess brought her little son, Prince William (afterwards the German Emperor William II), who wore highland dress. The short honeymoon was spent at Osborne.
On 17 March the prince and princess were back at Windsor, and on the 20th they held a court at St. James's Palace in honour of the event. At Marlborough Public engagements. House they received an almost endless series of congratulatory addresses. Numerous festivities and entertainments followed, and the prince's social experience widened. On 2 May he attended for the first time the banquet of the Royal Academy. He bad hardly spoken in public before, and tie had learnt by heart a short speech. His memory momentarily failed him and he nearly broke down. The accident led him to rely henceforth in his public utterances on the inspiration of the moment. He mastered the general idea beforehand but not the words. His tact and native kindliness stood him in good stead, and he soon showed as an occasional speaker a readiness of delivery and a grace of compliment which few of his contemporaries excelled. Lord Houghton, who was a past master in the same art, judged the prince to be only second to himself.
The corporation of the City of London presented the prince with the freedom on 7 June, and gave a ball in honour of himself and his bride on the same evening at the Guildhall. He had already identified himself with civic life by accepting the freedom of the Fishmongers' Company on 12 Feb., which his father had enjoyed. A second City company, the Merchant Taylors', paid him a like compliment on 11 June. In this busy month of June ​the prince and princess went, too, to Oxford to take part in the pleasures of Commemoration. They stayed with Dean Liddell at the prince's college, Christ Church (16-18 June), and at the encænia he received from the chancellor, Lord Derby, the honorary degree of D.C.L. A year later similar experiences awaited the prince and princess at Cambridge during May week. They stayed in the royal apartments at Trinity College, and the prince received the honorary degree of LL.D. Meanwhile a sumptuous ball given by the guards regiment in the exhibition building at South Kensington on 26 June 1863 brought the gaieties of their first season to an end.
The prince's married life was mainly spent at Marlborough House. But Sandringham constantly drew him from London ; he visited friends in all parts of the country for sport or society, and was in Scotland every autumn. Nor was his habit of foreign travel long interrupted. Part of the early spring was soon regularly devoted to Cannes or Nice in the Riviera, and part of the early autumn to Homburg, while tours on a larger scale were not infrequent.
Outside London his career for the most part resembled that of any man of wealth and high station. At Sandringham the prince until his death spent seven or eight weeks each year, living the life of a private country gentleman. The first Easter after Sandringham rebuilt, 1870. his marriage was spent at Sandringham but the old house was then condemned as inadequate, and a new mansion was completed in 1870. The hospitality at Sandringham was easy and unconstrained ; and the prince's guests were drawn from all ranks and professions. He interested himself in his tenants, and maintained his cottages in admirable repair. On every detail in the management of the estate he kept a watchful eye. The furniture and decorations of the house, the gardens, the farm, the stables, the kennels, were all under his personal care. For his His love of animals. horses and dogs he always cherished affection. The stables were always well filled. In the kennels at Sandringham were representatives of almost every breed. He was an exhibitor of dogs at shows from 27 May 1864, and was patron of the Kennel Club from its formation in April 1873. He actively identified himself with the sport of the county. For some twelve years he hunted with the West Norfolk hounds, at times with the princess for his companion, but after 1880 he abandoned hunting, both at home and on visits to friends. Shooting at Sandringham gradually took its place as the prince's main sport. To his shooting parties were invited his Norfolk neighbours as well as his intimate circle of associates. He reared pheasants and partridges assiduously, profiting by useful advice from his neighbour, Thomas William Coke, earl of Leicester, of Holkham. Partridge-driving grew to be his favourite sporting recreation. He was a variable and no first-rate shot, but was successful with high pheasants. For his autumnal vacation at Scotland during September and October Queen Autumn holidays in Scotland. Victoria lent him Abergeldie Castle, on Deeside near Balmoral, which she had leased in 1862 for sixty years. He varied his sojourn there by visits to Scottish noblemen, with one of whom, the duke of Sutherland, he formed an intimate friendship. The duke's mother was a beloved associate of Queen Victoria, and at the ducal seat, Dunrobin Castle, the prince was a frequent guest. In Scotland the prince's chief sports were grouse-shooting and deerstalking. He had killed his first stag on 21 Sept. 1858 ; on 30 Aug. 1866 he killed as many as seven, and for years he was no less successful. Fishing never attracted him. But he was always fond of the sea, and his early life on the Isle of Wight made him an eager yachtsman. Succeeding his father as patron of the Royal Yacht Squadron at Cowes, he became a member, on 8 July 1865, commodore in 1882, and finally admiral in 1901. He was soon a regular witness of the Cowes regatta in August, and as early as 1866 was owner of a small yacht, the Dagmar. But neither horse-racing nor yacht-racing occupied much of his interest till he reached middle life.
But while country life had no lack of attraction for the prince, London, which Queen Victoria had practically abandoned for Osborne, Balmoral, or Windsor, was the chief centre of his mature activities. Place in London Society. In the capital city he rapidly became the leader of fashionable life. The queen's withdrawal left him without a rival as ruler and law-giver of the world of fashion, and his countenance was sedulously sought by all aspirants to social eminence. With manhood he developed increasingly an accessibility and charm of manner, a curiosity about persons, a quickness of observation, and a love of hearing promptly the ​current news. He took genuine pleasure in the lighter social amusements and gave them every encouragement. Consequently society in almost all its phases appealed to him, and the conventions of royal exclusiveness, to which he had been trained, gave way to his versatile human interests. There was a democratic and a cosmopolitan breadth about his circle of companions. He did not suffer his rank to exclude him from gatherings to which royalty rarely sought admission. He attended the reunions of the Cosmopolitan Club as a private member, or dined with friends at the Garrick Club, or attended the more bohemian entertainments of the Savage Club. In 1869 there was formed under his immediate auspices and guidance a new club called the Marl borough Club, with a house in Pall Mall almost overlooking Marlborough House. The members were drawn from the wide range of his personal acquaintances, and he joined them at the Marlborough Club without ceremony. A chance meeting at the Cosmopolitan Club in 1867 with the Hungarian traveller, Arminius Vambery, made the stranger thenceforth a favoured associate. The experience was typical of his easy catholicity of intercourse.
His mother, while denying his title to political responsibility, was well content that the prince should carry on in her behalf her husband's works of charity and public utility. He readily obeyed her wish in this regard. No public institution or social movement, which his father had favoured, sought his countenance in vain. Of the Society of Arts he was soon elected president (22 Oct. 1863) in succession to the prince consort. He always took an active part in the choice of the recipient of the Albert medal, which was founded by the society in 1862 in his father's memory to reward conspicuous service in the arts, manufactures, and commerce. When on his accession to the throne he exchanged the post of president for that of patron, he accepted with much satisfaction the award of the Albert medal to himself. But he went far beyond his father in his personal association with great public institutions. He created a new precedent by accepting the presidency of St. Bartholomew's Hospital on 20 March 1867, His philanthropic energy. office which he also held till his accession. His public energy in any genuine cause of social improvement, education, or philanthropy knew indeed no slackening till his death. In every part of the country he was busy pronouncing benedictions on good works. Among his early engagements of this kind were the opening of the British Orphan Asylum at Slough (24 June 1863) ; the opening of the new town hall at Halifax (August 1863) ; the laying of foundation stones of the new west wing of the London Hospital (June 1864), of the British and Foreign Bible Society (11 June 1866), and of new buildings at Glasgow University (8 Oct. 1868) ; and the unveiling of the statue of Peabody, the American philanthropist, in the City of London (23 July 1869). He presided at innumerable charity festivals, beginning on 18 May 1864 with the Royal Literary Fund dinner, and he repeated that experience at the centenary celebration of the Fund in 1890. Like his father, too, he was especially active, when the opportunity offered, in organising exhibitions at home and abroad.
Early visits to Ireland had brought that country well within the scope of his interest, and although political agitation came to limit his Irish sojourns, he lost few opportunities in manhood of manifesting sympathy with efforts for the country's industrial progress. As guest of the viceroy, Lord Kimberley, on 8 May 1865, he opened the Grand International Visits to Ireland. Ireland Exhibition at Dublin. It was thus in Ireland that he first identified himself in an authoritative way with the system of exhibitions. He returned to Dublin in the spring of 1868 on a visit of greater ceremony, and the princess came with him to pay her first visit to the country. The lord-lieutenant was the marquis (afterwards first duke) of Abercorn, whose eldest son, Lord Hamilton, had joined the prince's household in 1866 and was a very ultimate associate. The prince was now invested on 18 April with the order of St. Patrick; he was made honorary LL.D. of Trinity College, Dublin, witnessed the unveiling of Burke's statue outside the college, attended Punchestown races, and reviewed the troops in Phœnix Park. It was the period of the Fenian outbreak, and there were threats of disturbance, but they came to little, and the prince and princess were received with enthusiasm. The lord mayor of Dublin in an address of welcome expressed a hope that the prince would acquire a royal residence in Ireland. Before and since the recommendation was pressed on the English government and it was assumed that it had the prince's acquiescence. A third visit was paid to Ireland during the prince's adult career, in August 1871, when he opened the Royal ​Agricultural Exhibition at Dublin. Earl Spencer, the lord-lieutenant, and Lord Hartington, the chief secretary, were his personal friends, and under their auspices he enjoyed a week of brilliant festivity. Unluckily at its close (Sunday, 7 Aug.), while he was staying at the Viceregal Lodge in Phoenix Park, a proposed meeting in the park of sympathisers with Fenian prisoners in England was prohibited. A riot broke out by way of demonstrating that 'patriots are dearer to [Irish] hearts than princes.' The political disaffection, although it did not prejudice the prince's relations with the Irish masses, was not easily silenced, and fourteen years passed before the prince sought a new experience of Irish hospitality.
III
His mother's desire to exclude the prince from all political counsels was not altogether Attitude to politics. fulfilled. Her ministers at the foreign outset of his adult career questioned her prudence in keeping him in complete ignorance of political affairs. From 1864 onwards the prince, stirred in part by the princess's anxiety for the fortunes of her family, was deeply interested in the wars which disturbed central Europe. Prussia and Austria continued their endeavours to deprive Denmark of all hold on Schleswig-Holstein. The prince's Danish sentiment was in accord with popular English feeling. But it caused embarrassment to Queen Victoria, who in spite of her private German leanings was resolved on the maintenance of England's neutrality. Her relations with her son were often strained by his warm support of the Danes.
In 1865 Lord Russell, the prime minister, avowed sympathy with the prince's request for access to those foreign despatches which were regularly placed at the disposal of all cabinet ministers. The queen reluctantly so far gave way as to sanction the communication to the prince of carefully selected specimens of the confidential foreign correspondence. The restrictions which guarded the privilege dissatisfied the prince, and his endeavours to secure their (diminution or removal formed a constant theme of debate with the sovereign and ministers till near the end of his mother's reign. The queen's oft-repeated justification for her restraints was the prince's alleged lack of discretion and his inability to keep a secret from his intimates. Resigning himself with some impatience to the maternal interdict, the prince sought other than official means of information and influence in foreign matters. To foreign ambassadors he offered abundant hospitality, and with them he always cherished frank and cordial intercourse.
The prince's relations with the French ambassador in London, Prince de la Tour d'Auvergne, during the Danish crisis of 1864 show him in a characteristic light. On 8 Jan. 1864 a first child, a boy, had been born Birth of an heir 8 Jan. 1864. to the prince and princess an heir, at Frogmore. There were many festive celebrations, and the prince's guests were influential. But the rejoicings over the new experience of fatherhood did not lessen the prince's excitement regarding the foreign situation. On 10 March the christening took place at Buckingham Palace. At a concert in the evening the French ambassador was present. Napoleon III was making proposals for arbitration between Denmark and the German powers. The prince at once questioned his French guest on the subject with what the latter described to his government as the prince's customary indifference to rules of etiquette. Danish sympathies. The prince warned the ambassador with heat that the Danes were a brave people, who were ready to meet death rather than any kind of humiliation (10 March 1864). Bang Leopold, who was staying with Queen Victoria, sought to moderate the prince's energy. Twelve days later the ambassador dined at Marlborough House, and was surprised by signs of greater prudence and moderation in the prince's talk, which he attributed to the influence of King Leopold. The prince now agreed that Denmark would be wise in assenting to a pacification. He also spoke in favour of the idea of Scandinavian unity. The ambassador in reporting fully to his government the prince's deliverances, pointed out that the views of the heir to the English throne needed consideration, and that it would be wise for France, in view of the prince's opinion, to do what was practicable in support of Danish interests (Les origines diplomatiques de la guerre de 1870–1, Paris 1910, torn. ii. pp. 109 seq.). Thus while Queen Victoria and her ministers held that the prince's opinions counted for nothing, he contrived privately to give foreign ambassadors quite a different impression. The discrepancy between the home and foreign verdicts on his relations with foreign policy grew steadily.
The prince's tact always more or less controlled his personal feelings. Gladstone detected only 'a little Danism' in the ​prince's conversation. If the prince was careful to prevent Count von Beust, the Austrian ambassador, whose hostility to Denmark was admitted, from even approaching the princess, he succeeded in establishing the best social relations between himself and the count. A passion for direct personal intercourse with all who dominated great events tended to override personal sentiment and prejudice. In April 1864 he drew on himself a severe rebuke in the royal circle by visiting Garibaldi, who was staying with the prince's friend, the duke of Sutherland, at Stafford House. He sought out first-hand intelligence of all that was passing abroad. In July of the same year, when he dined with Lord Palmerston, Sir Horace Rum bold, who was then secretary of legation at Athens, was of the company. The prince at once sent for him to learn the exact position of affairs hi Greece, where his wife's brother, Prince William of Denmark, had just been elected king as George I.
It was, too, never his practice to depend for his knowledge of foreign complications on those whom he met at home. Scarcely a year passed without a foreign tour which combined amusement with political discussions. In September 1864 the prince paid a visit to his wife's family in Denmark, crossing In Denmark and Sweden, Sept. 1864.from Dundee to Copenhagen, He extended his tour to Stockholm, where he was entertained by King Charles XV and had a first experience of elk-shooting. He freely discussed the political situation from various points of view. The expedition extended his intimacy among the royal families of Europe. Not only did he make a lasting acquaintance with the cultured Swedish ruler, King Charles XV, who as the grandson of General Bernadotte had a warm affection for France and a keen suspicion of Prussia, but he then inaugurated a long and cordial intimacy with the Russian dynasty. During his visit to Copenhagen the Princess of Wales's sister Dagmar was betrothed to the Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia, the heir of the Tsar Alexander II. The grand duke's death next year annulled the match, but the princess transferred her hand to the grand duke's next brother, Alexander, afterwards Tsar Alexander III, and a first link between the royal families of England and Russia was thereby forged.
From Denmark the prince proceeded to Hanover and thence visited his sister Alice in Darmstadt. On the return journey he was the guest at Brussels of his grand-uncle King Leopold, who was fertile in political counsel. The prince was home again on 6 Nov. The visit to Germany was repeated in 1865, when Queen Victoria unveiled a statue of the prince consort at Coburg. The prince there saw much of his German and Prussian relatives, with some of whom he stalked and shot bustards.
His foreign engagements in 1866 brought him for the first time to Russia. On the journey he stayed for a few days at Berlin, where his sister and her husband gave in his honour a banquet which the king of Prussia attended. On 9 Nov., his twenty-fifth birthday, he reached St. Petersburg to attend the wedding of his wife's sister Dagmar with the tsarevitch Alexander.A first visit to Russia, Nov. 1866. The ceremony took place at the Winter palace. A visit to Moscow preceded his return to Berlin on the way home. On the Russian court he exerted all his habitual charm. Indeed throughout Europe his personal fascination was already acknowledged. Lord Augustus Loftus, the English ambassador in Berlin, noted on his leaving Berlin that the golden opinions he was winning in every country and every court of Europe had an 'intrinsic value' in England's international relations. On the affection of Parisians he had long since established a hold. France welcomed him with marked cordiality when, as the guest of Napoleon III, he visited the International Exhibition in Paris in June 1867. He served on the royal commission for the British section—a first taste of a common later experience. A fellow guest in Paris was Abdul Aziz, the sultan of Turkey, whose acquaintance he had made at Constantinople in 1862. The sultan reached England next month, and the prince was active in hospitalities on the queen's behalf.
The prince's family was growing. A second son, George, who ultimately succeeded him on the throne as George V, was born to him at Marlborough House on 3 June 1865. Their first daughter, Princess LouiseThe prince's children (afterwards Princess Royal), was born at Marlborough House on 20 Feb. 1867. A second daughter, Princess Victoria, was born on 6 July 1868, and a third daughter, Princess Maud, on 26 Nov. 1869. Visitors at Sandringham or Marlborough House were invariably introduced to the children without ceremony and with parental pride. After the birth of Prince George in 1865, the princess accompanied the prince on a yachting cruise off Devonshire and Corn- wall, in the course of which they visited the Scilly Islands and descended the ​Botallack tin mine near St. Just. For the greater part of 1867, after the birth of Princess Louise, the Princess of Wales was disabled by severe rheumatism, and in the autumn her husband accompanied her to Wiesbaden for a six weeks' cure.
A year later a foreign trip of the comprehensive type, to which the prince was well accustomed, was accomplished for the first time with his wife. In NovemberA seven month's tour, Nov. 1868-May 1869. 1868 they left England for seven months' travel. At Paris they stayed at the Hotel Bristol, which was the prince's favourite stopping place in Paris through life. They visited the emperor at Compiègne, and the prince took part in a stag hunt in the park. Thence they passed to Copenhagen. The prince paid another visit to the king of Sweden at Stockholm, and there his host initiated him into the Masonic order, in which he subsequently found a new interest. Christ- mas was celebrated at the Danish court. Another sojourn at Berlin with the crown prince and princess (15-20 Jan. 1869) was attended by elaborate festivities. The king of Prussia formally invested the prince with the collar and mantle of the order of the Black Eagle. He had been knight of the order since his birth, but the full investiture could be performed only in the Prussian capital. The collar was the one which the prince consort had worn. In the eveningPrince Bismarck. there was a state banquet in the prince's honour, and then he had his first opportunity of conversing with Prince Bismarck, who with rare amiability wore, by command of his master, the Danish order of the Dannebrog in compliment to the guests. From Berlin the prince and princess passed to the Hofburg palace at Vienna, where the Emperor Francis Joseph was their host, and renewed an earlier acquaintance with the prince. They offered their consolation to the exiled king and queen of Hanover before leaving for Trieste.
There they embarked on H.M.S. Ariadne, which was fitted up as a yacht, and travel began in earnest. The duke of Sutherland was chief organiser of the expedition, and he enlisted in the company Sir Samuel Baker the African explorer, Richard Owen the naturalist, (Sir) William Howard Russell the war correspondent, and (Sir) John Fowler the engineer, who were all capable of instructive guidance. The ultimate aim was to inspect the great enterprise of the Suez Canal, which was nearing completion, but by way of prelude a voyage was made up the Nile. The itinerary followed the same route as the prince had On the Nile. taken eight years before. At Cairo the party saw much of the viceroy Ismail Pasha. On the Nile, Baker arranged for the prince's sport, Owen gave lectures on geology, and Fowler described the wonders of the Suez venture. The prince was in the gayest spirits, playing on his guests harmless practical jokes, and putting all at their ease.
On 25 March the prince and his party reached Ismailia to visit the Suez Canal works. The Khedive was awaiting them, but a more interesting figure, M. de Lesseps, conducted them over the newly excavated waterway. The prince opened the sluiceAt the Suez Canal. of a completed dam, allowing the Mediterranean to flow into an empty basin connecting with the Bitter Lakes. Before the Khedive parted with his English friends at Ismailia he invited Baker to take command of an expedition against the slavers on the White Nile. The prince took an active part in the negotiation and suggested the terms of service, which Baker finally accepted with good result (W. H. Russell's Diary).
The prince was deeply impressed by the proofs he witnessed of M. de Lesseps' engineering skill. The Suez Canal was opened on 16 Nov. following, and next summer Lesseps paid a visit to London. On 4 July 1870 the prince, as president of the Society of Arts, formally presented to him the Albert gold medal founded in his father's memory for conspicuous service. In an admirable French speech he greeted Lesseps as his personal friend, whose attendance on him at Suez he reckoned an inestimable advantage.
On the return journey from Alexandria on 1 April 1869, the royal party paused at Constantinople, where the Sultan Abdul At the Suez Canal. Aziz was their host. But the Prince interrupted his stay there to make a tour of the Crimean battle-fields and cemeteries. Subsequently they went to Athens, to stay with the Princess of Wales's brother, King George of Greece, and to visit the country's historic monuments. Paris was reached by way of Corfu, Brindisi, and Turin. For a week Napoleon III offered them splendid entertainment at the Tuileries. Not until 12 May 1869 were they home again at Marlborough House.
A year later France was exposed to external and internal perils, and the prince's generous host fell from his high estate. The whole tragedy moved the prince; it ​stimulated his political interests and thirst for political news. It was at a dinner-party at Marlborough House that Delane, the editor of 'The Times,' who was one of the guests, received the first intelligence in England of the outbreak of theThe Franco-German war, 1870. Franco-German war, on 15 July 1870 (Morier, Memoirs). Throughout the conflict the prince's sympathies inclined to France. His mother's hopes lay with the other side. But the queen was no less anxious than her son to alleviate the sufferings of the emperor and empress of the French, when they sought an asylum in England from their own country. The empress arrived at Chislehurst in September 1870, and the emperor on release from his German prison in March 1871. The prince and princess were assiduous in their attentionThe Prince Imperial. to the exiles. To the young Prince Imperial especially he extended a fatherly kindness, and when in 1879 the French youth met his death in the Zulu war in South Africa, the prince personally made arrangements for the funeral at Chislehurst, and was himself a pall-bearer. He was a moving spirit of the committee which was formed for erecting a monument to the French prince's memory in Westminster Abbey in 1880, and when the House of Commons refused to sanction that project, he urged the transfer of the memorial to St. George's Chapel, Windsor. He was present, too, when a statue of the French prince was unveiled at Woolwich (13 Jan. 1883). But the downfall of the French empire and the misfortunes of the French imperial family in no wise diminished the cordiality of the prince's relations with France under her new rulers. No sooner was the republican form of government recognised than he sought the acquaintance of the republican leaders, and he left no stone unturned to maintain friendly relations with them as well as with his older friends in the French capital. The perfect quality of his social charm enabled him to keep on good terms with all political parties in France without forfeiting the esteem of any. The prince showed his lively curiosity about the incidents of the Franco-German war by exploring in August 1871 the battle-fields round Sedan and Metz in the company of Prince de Ligne and of his equerry, Major Teesdale. He travelled incognito as Baron of Renfrew. From Alsace he passed on to join the princess once again at Kissingen. His strong French leanings were kept well under control in German company. A certain coolness towards the Prussian royal family was popularly imputed to him during the course of the recent war. But when the crown prince of Prussia visited London in Sept. 1871 the prince greeted him with a geniality which caused surprise in Germany. His courtesies led Bismarck's circle to imagine some diminution of his affection for France. But his conduct merely testified to his natural complacency of manner in social life.
While performing with admirable grace the ceremonial and social functions attaching to his station, and while keenly studying current political events from a detached and irresponsible point of view, the prince somewhat suffered in moral robustness through the denial to him of genuine political responsibility, and his exclusion from settled and solid occupation. The love of pleasure in his nature which had been carefully repressed in boyhood sought in adult life free scope amid theAllegations against the prince. ambiguities of his public position. The gloom of his mother's court helped to provoke reaction against conventional strictness. From the early years of his married life reports spread abroad that he was a centre of fashionable frivolity, favouring company of low rank, and involving himself in heavy debt. There was gross exaggeration in the rumours. But they seemed in many eyes to receive unwelcome confirmation, when a member of fashionable London society, Sir Charles Mordaunt, brought an action for divorce against his wife, and made in his petition, solely on his wife's confession, a seriousThe Mordaunt case, Feb. 1870. allegation against the Prince of Wales. The prince was not made a party to the suit, but the co-respondents, Viscount Cole, afterwards earl of Enniskillen, and Sir Frederick Johnstone, were among his social allies. The case opened before Lord Penzance on 16 Feb. 1870, and the prince volunteered evidence. Amid great public excitement he denied the charge in the witness-box (23 Feb.), and the court held him guiltless. Apart from the prince's intervention, the case presented legal difficulties which riveted on it public attention. Lady Mordaunt was proved to have become hopelessly insane before the hearing, and on that ground the court in the first instance refused the petitioner relief, but after five years' litigation the divorce was granted (11 March 1875).
Public feeling was roused by the proceedings, and the prince's popularity was ​for a time in peril with the austere classes of the nation. The sensational press abounded in offensive scandal, and during the spring of 1870 the prince's presence at the theatre, and even on Derby race-course, occasioned more or less inimical demonstrations. He faced the situation with characteristic courage and coolness. The public censure was reinforced by a wave of hostility to the principle of Public criticism. monarchy which, partly owing to the republican triumph in France, was temporarily sweeping over the country. Enterprising writers sought to drive the moral home. At the end of 1870 there was published a clever parody of Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King' called 'The Coming K——,' which with much insolence purported to draw the veil from the prince's private life. The assault was pursued next year by the same authors in 'The Siliad,' and the series was continued in 'The Fijiad' (1873), 'Faust and 'Phisto' (1874), 'Jon Duan' (1875), and finally in a prophetically named brochure, 'Edward VII; a play on the past and present times with a view to the future' (1876). All current politics and society came under the satirists' lash. But the burden of the indictment, phrased in various keys of scurrility, was that the prince's conduct was unfitting him for succession to the throne. The recrudescence of Queen Victoria's popularity and the manifest good-nature and public spirit of the prince soon dissipated for the most part the satiric censure. Yet an undercurrent of resentment against reputed indulgences of the prince's private life never wholly disappeared.
There was never any serious ground for doubting the prince's desire to serve the public interest. On 13 July 1870 the queen's dread of public ceremonies imposed on him the important task of openingThe Thames Embankment, 13 July 1870. the Thames Embankment. The queen had promised to perform the ceremony, and her absence exposed her to adverse criticism. Three days later the prince illustrated his fixed resolve to conciliate democratic feeling and to encourage industrial progress by inaugurating the Workmen's International Exhibition at the Agricultural Hall. His attendance proved his native tolerance and broad-minded indifference to social prejudice. The trades-union leaders who were the organisers existed on sufferance in the eye of the capitalist public, and Auberon Herbert [q. v. Suppl. II], who received the prince on behalf of the promoters, was a leading advocate of republicanism. But it was the sturdy faith in the virtue of exhibitions which he had inherited from his father that chiefly brought him to the Agricultural Hall. Already on 4 April 1870 he had placed himself at the head of a movement for the organisation of annual international exhibitions at South Kensington in modest imitation of former efforts. He played an active part in preliminary arrangements, and he opened the first of the series on 1 May 1870. The experiment was not a success, but it was continued for four years. The prince was undaunted by the failure, and a few years later revived the scheme on a different plan.
The year 1871 was one of sadness in the prince's household. On 6 April his last child, a son, was born to the princess and died next day. In the autumn he went into camp with his regiment, the 10th hussars, at Bramshill, and commanded the cavalry division in manoeuvres in Hampshire. A private visit which he paid from the camp to his Cambridge lecturer Kingsley at Eversley illustrates his kindly memory for his early associates. Subsequently in October he stayed with the earl and countess of Londesborough at Londesborough Lodge near Scarborough. Serious illness, Nov.-Dec. 1871. On returning to Sandringham early in November typhoid 18n - fever developed (19 Nov.), and a critical illness followed. Two of his companions at Londesborough Lodge, the eighth earl of Chesterfield and his own groom, Blegge, were also attacked, and both died, the earl on 1 Dec. and Blegge on 14 Dec. (cf. The Times 22 Jan. 1872). The gravest fears were entertained for the prince. His second sister, Alice, was staying at Sandringham, and she and the Princess of Wales were indefatigable in their attendance in the sick chamber. On 29 Nov. Queen Victoria arrived for a few days, and a serious relapse on 6 Dec. brought her back on an eleven days' visit (8-19 Dec.). Sunday 10 Dec. was appointed as a day of intercession in the churches with a special form of prayer. Four days later, on the tenth anniversary of the prince consort's death, there were signs of recovery which proved true. The date was long thankfully remembered. Princess Alexandra presented to Sandringham church a brass eagle lectern inscribed 'A thanksgiving for His mercy, 14 Dec. 1871.'
By Christmas the danger was past, and rejoicing succeeded to sorrow. There was an elaborate national thanksgiving ​at St. Paul's Cathedral on 27 Feb. 1872, when the prince accompanied the queen and the princess in public procession. The queen privately demurred to 'this public show ' on the ground of ' the dreadful fatigue' for the prince, and of the incongruity of making religion * a vehicle' for a display of popular feeling. But the whole nation had shared the anxiety of the royal family, and claimed a share in their elation.
A visit to the Riviera completed the prince's convalescence. He left on a yachting expedition to Nice on 11 March, and afterwards voyaged down the coast to Italy. Before coming home he repeated an A third visit to Pope Pius IX. early experience which always interested him In full state he paid a third visit to Pope Pius IX. He was home again on 1 June ready for his public work. In the interests of health he made his headquarters at Chiswick House, which the duke of Devonshire lent him. There he gave garden parties, which surprised many by the number and range of invited guests. His chief public engagement in London was a rare visit to the East End in behalf of the queen. On 24 June he opened the Bethnal Green Museum, to which Sir Richard Wallace [q. v.] had lent a portion of his great collection. The prince's appearance at Ascot in the same month was the occasion of a highly popular greeting.
IV
The prince's illness evoked a new enthusiasm for the monarchy. The duke of Cambridge voiced the general sentiment, when he wrote to his mother that it had ' routed ' the recent republican agitation. ' The republicans say their chances are up thank God for this ! Heaven has sent this dispensation to save us ' (Sheppard's Duke of Cambridge, i. 310). Yet the mighty outbreak of popular sympathy, though it discredited and discouraged criticism of the prince, had not wholly silenced it, nor was the anti-monarchical agitation altogether extinguished. On 19 March 1872 Sir Charles Dilke [q. v. Suppl. II],Gladstone and the prince's position, 1872. then a rising liberal politician, who had lately preached through the country republican doctrine, moved in the House of Commons for a full inquiry into Queen Victoria's expenditure, and the motion was seconded by Auberon Herbert, who shared Dilke's republican views. Gladstone, the prime minister, who strenuously resisted the motion, impressively confessed his firm faith in the monarchy, amid the applause of the whole house. But at the same time Gladstone in private admitted the moment to be opportune to improve the prince's public position. With the prince Gladstone's relations were uninterruptedly happy. He often spoke with him on politics, thought well of his intelligence and pleasant manners, and treated him with punctilious courtesy. On 25 Jan. 1870 Gladstone spent an hour explaining to the prince the Irish land bill, and was gratified by the prince's patience. The prince was no party politician, and he cherished no rigid political principles. His interest lay in men rather than in measures, and his native tact enabled him to main-tain the best personal terms with statesmen whose policy he viewed with indifference or disapproval. Gladstone's considerate treatment of him conciliated his self-esteem without affecting materially his political opinions. The personal tie between the political leader and the heir-apparent was involuntarily strengthened, too, by the comprehensive differences which separated Queen Victoria from the liberal statesman.
In the summer of 1872, to Queen Victoria's barely concealed chagrin, Gladstone invitedThe Queen and the prince's official employment. her attention to the delicate question of the prince's official status. The welfare of the prince and strength and dignity of the crown required, Gladstone urged, that he should be regularly employed. At great length and with pertinacity Gladstone pressed his views in writing on the sovereign. He offered various suggestions. The prince might be associated with the rule of India and join the Indian council. With somewhat greater emphasis Ireland was recommended as a fit field for the prince's energies. Some of the duties of the lord-lieutenant might be delegated to him, and a royal residence might be purchased for his occupation for several weeks each year. The Irish secretary, Lord Hartington, the prince's intimate friend, favoured the proposed Irish palace. But the queen was unconvinced. She doubted whether the duties of the Indian council were onerous enough to keep the prince employed. In Ireland the prince's intimacy with the family of the duke of Abercorn imbued him with Orangeism. She evasively allowed that increased occupation would be advantageous to the prince, and she gave vague ​assurances of assent to Gladstone's general proposition. But her unwillingness to pursue the matter in detail brought the negotiation to an end.
The prince's career underwent no essential change, although there was a steady widening of experience on the accepted lines. New titular honours were from time to time bestowed on him. On 29 June 1875 he was, much to his satisfaction, made a field-marshal. The distinction stimulated his interest in the army, which was in name at least his profession. Foreign tours abroad became more frequent, alike in France, Germany, and Austria. The great International Exhibition at Vienna in 1873 gave him opportunity of assiduous work. He was president of the royal commission for the British section, and took an active share in its organisation. At the opening ceremonies in Vienna in May he was the guest of the Emperor Francis Joseph, and played his part with his accustomed grace. At theIn Russia, Jan. 1874. beginning of 1874 he went for a second time to St. Petersburg, again as a wedding guest, now to attend the marriage of his next brother, Alfred, the duke of Edinburgh, to the Duchess Marie. The bride was Tsar Alexander II's daughter, and her sister-in-law, the tsarevna, was the Princess of Wales's sister. The prince's amiability won him fresh laurels at the Russian court. On his way home he stayed once more in Berlin with the old German Emperor William I, and then with the crown prince and princess at Potsdam, joining his brother-in-law in a boar-hunt. In July 1874 the prince and princess gave evidence of their earnest wish to play with brilliance their part at home at the head of London society. They then gave at Marlborough House a fancy dress ball on a more splendid scale of entertainment than any they had yet attempted. The prince wore a Van Dyck costume, with doublet cloak of light maroon satin embroidered in gold. The only guests who were excused fancy dress were the duke of Cambridge and Disraeli. Two days later the duke of Wellington acknowledged the force of the example by offering the prince a similar festivity at Apsley House, where the prince appeared in the same dress.
An experience a few months later illustrated the good-humour and cool conciliatory temper in which the prince faced public affairs. The prince and princess decided to pay a first visit to the city of Birmingham. The mayor, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, a friend of Sir Charles Dilke, was acquiring a general reputation as an advocate of extreme radicalism, and had in articlesAt Birmingham, 3 Nov. 1874. in the 'Fortnightly Review' shown republican leanings. The programme included a procession of the royal party through the streets of the city, the reception of an address in the town hall, an entertainment at lunch by the mayor, and visits to leading manufactories. All anticipations of constraint or unpleasantness between the prince and the mayor were belied. With a tact which the prince himself could not excel, Mr. Chamberlain proposed his guest's health in the words: 'Here in England the throne is recognised and respected as the symbol of all constituted authority and settled government.' The prince was as discreet in reply (3 Nov.). (Sir) John Tenniel's cartoon in 'Punch ' (14 Nov. 1874), entitled 'A Brummagem Lion,' showed Mr. Chamberlain as a lion gently kneeling before the prince and princess, and the accompanying verses congratulated him on concealing his 'red republican claws and teeth,' and on comporting himself as 'a gentleman' in the glare of the princely sun. The episode merely served to illustrate the natural felicity with which both the chief actors in it could adapt themselves to circumstance.
In spite of the queen's qualms a more important public duty was laid on the prince than had yet been assigned him. Even in his father's lifetime a tour in IndiaTour in India. had been suggested, and Gladstone had considered a plan for associating the prince with the government of India at home. Early in 1875 Disraeli's government decided that the prince should make a tour through India, with a view to proving the sovereign's interest in her Indian subjects' welfare (20 March). The unrest from which native India was never wholly free seemed to involve the project in some peril, and at the outset controversial issues were raised by politicians at home. The expenses were estimated at a sum approaching 200,000l., although in the result they did not exceed 112,000l. The government decided to debit the amount to the Indian exchequer, and radical members of parliament raised a cry of injustice. The prince's status in India also raised a perplexing problem of a more academic kind. The unofficial position of the prince in England seemed to the queen and her advisers a just ground for denying him in India the formal rank ​of her official representative. That position was already held by the viceroy, and his temporary suspension was deemed impolitic. Consequently the prince went nominally as the guest of the viceroy. The The prince's precedence in India. distinction was a fine one, and made little practical difference to the character of his reception. But the precedence of the viceroy was left in form unquestioned, and the queen's exclusive title to supremacy was freed of any apparent risk of qualification for the time being. The prince's suite was large. It included the chief officers of his household, Lord Suffield, Colonel (Sir) Arthur Ellis, and Mr. Francis (now Lord) Knollys, who had become private secretary on Herbert Fisher's retirement in 1870, and held that office till his master's death. Other members of the company were Sir Bartle Frere and General (Sir) Dighton Probyn, both of whom had seen much service in India; Frere took with him Albert Grey (now Earl Grey) as his private secretary. Colonel (later General) Owen Williams and Lieutenant (now Admiral) Lord Charles Beresford acted as aides-de-camp; Canon Duckworth went as chaplain; (Sir) Joseph Fayrer as physician; (Sir) W. H. Russell as honorary private secretary (to write an account of the tour), and Sydney P. Hall as artist to sketch the chief incidents. Lord Alfred Paget, clerk marshal to Queen Victoria, was commissioned to go as her representative. Private friends invited by the Prince of Wales to be his guests were the duke of Sutherland, the earl of Aylesford, and Lord Carrington. The tour was so planned as to combine a political demonstration of amity on the part of the English crown with opportunity of sport and recreation for the prince. In both regards the result was thoroughly successful. The prince showed keenness and courage as a big game sportsman, bearing easily and cheerfully the fatigue, while he performed all the ceremonial functions with unvarying bonhomie.
The prince started from London on 11 Oct. 1875, and embarked at Brindisi on H.M.S. Serapis, an Indian troop-ship, which had been converted into a royal convoy. He stayed at Athens with King George of Greece, visited the khedive and Cairo, and after passing through the Suez Canal landed for aAt Bombay, 8 Nov. 1875. few hours at Aden. He arrived off Bombay on 8 Nov., was received by the viceroy, Lord Northbrook, and was welcomed by the reigning princes. At Bombay he stayed with the governor, Sir Philip Wodehouse, at Government House, where his birthday was celebrated next day. Having laid the foundation stone of the Elphinstone dock on 11 Nov. he picnicked at the caves of Elephanta (12 Nov.), and left on the 18th on a visit to the Gaekwar of Baroda. The Gaekwar provided him with his first opportunity of big game hunting. By his own special wish he came back to Bombay before the end of the month in order to proceed to Ceylon, where he engaged in some venturesome elephant shooting. Returning to the mainland, he reached Madras on 13 Dec., laid the first stone of a new harbour, and attended many festivities. Sailing for Calcutta on 18 Dec., he arrived on the 23rd. There the viceroy became his host, and he spent Christmas at the viceroy's suburban residence at Barakpore. On New Year'sAt Calcutta, 1 Jan. 1876. Day 1876 he held a chapter of the order of the Star of India, and unveiled a statue of Lord Mayo, the viceroy who had been assassinated in 1872. After receiving the honorary degree of D.C.L. from Calcutta University, he proceeded to North India, where he inspected scenes of the mutiny, and laid at Lucknow the first stone of a memorial to Sir Henry Lawrence and to those who fell in the defence of the city. On 11 Jan. he entered Delhi in formal procession. Passing thence to Lahore, he later in the month went into camp in Cashmere as the guest of the Maharajah of the state. At Agra on 25 Jan. he visited the Taj Mahal. February was mainly devoted to big game shooting, chiefly tigers, at Moradabad and in Nepal. A visit to Allahabad early in March and to Jabalpur as a guest of the Maharajah preceded his embarkation at Bombay on the Serapis (13 March). Smallpox was raging in the town and his departure was hurried. In a farewell letter to the viceroy he bore testimony to the satisfaction with which he had realised a long cherished hope of seeing India and its historic monuments, and of becoming more intimately acquainted with the queen's Indian subjects.
On the return journey he showed many tactful attentions. At Suez he received Lord Lytton, who was on his way out to succeed Lord Northbrook as viceroy. At Cairo he was again the guest of the khedive at the Ghezireh Palace. After leaving Alexandria he paused at two English possessions— Malta, where he met his brother, the duke of Connaught, and at Gibraltar. Subsequently he landed at Cadiz for the ​purpose of visiting Alfonso XII, the new king of Spain, at Madrid. Thence he passed by rail to Lisbon to enjoy the hospitality of Luis I, king of Portugal.
On 5 May the Serapis reached Portsmouth, and the prince was met there by the princess and their children. TheReception in London, 19 May 1876. English people welcomed him
precedent which the prince had set in boyhood by his visit to Canada. The personal tie between the princes of India and English royalty was greatly strengthened by his presence among them in their own country. In future years the prince's two sons successively followed his Indian example. His elder son, the duke of Clarence, in 1889-90, and his younger son and successor, George (when Prince of Wales), in 1905-6, both made tours through India in their father's footsteps. When King George visited India for the second time in the winter of 1911-2 after his coronation he went over much of the same ground and observed many of the same ceremonies as his father had done thirty-six years before.
The prince at once resumed his usual activities at home and on the European continent. The fascination which France exerted on him from boyhood had fully ripened, and in 1878 the popularity, which came of his repeated presence in Paris, Growth of interest in France. acquired a signal strength. His position there was based on ever broadening foundations. Even when he was a favoured guest of the imperial court, he had not limited his French acquaintance to imperial circles. Louis Philippe and most of his large family, into whom the prince consort's kindred had married, had been exiles in England since 1848, and the prince from boyhood shared his parents' intimacy with them and their partisans. Thoroughly at home in Paris, he always succeeded in the difficult task of maintaining the friendliest intercourse with persons who were wholly alienated from one another by political sentiment or social rank. He enjoyed visits to the duc and duchesse de la Rochefoucauld-Bisaccia (15 Oct. 1874) and to the duo d'Aumale at Chantilly (22 Oct. 1874). La comtesse Edouard de Pourtales, le comte La Grange, le marquis de Breteuil, and all the royalist members of the French Jockey Club who stood outside the political sphere, were among the most intimate of his French associates, and with them he exchanged frequent hospitalities. The marquis de Galliffet, one of Napoleon's generals, who afterwards served the republic, was many times a guest at Sandringham. At the same time the prince was on equally good terms with republican politicians of all views and antecedents. On private visits to Paris the prince gained, too, admission to theatrical and artistic society. Freeing himself of all official etiquette, he indeed so thoroughly explored Parisian life that he was in person as familiar to the public of Paris as to that of London. To the French journalists and caricaturists he was a 'bon garçon,' an arbiter of fashions in dress, 'le plus parisien des anglais,' even 'plus parisien que les parisiens.' If the press made somewhat insolent comment on his supposed debts, his patronage of fashionable restaurants, his pupilage to his mother, and his alleged intimacies with popular favourites of the stage, the journalistic portrayal of him as a jovial Prince Hal was rarely ungenial (cf. Jean Grand Carteret, L'Oncle de l'Europe, 1906, passim).
The International Exhibition in Paris of 1878 gave the prince an opportunity of publicly proving his identity with French interests in all their variety. The prince presided over the royal commission which was formed to organise the British section, At the Paris Exhibition 1878. he impressed its members, among whom were the leaders of British commerce, with his business capacity as well as his courtesy. He spared no effort in promoting the success of the movement, which was intended to give the world assurance of France's recovery from the late war, and of the permanence of the new republican form of government. The prince entertained the members of the English commission at the Café de la Paix on 29 April before the exhibition opened. In the days that followed he together with the princess took part in Paris in an imposing series of public celebrations, and his presence deeply impressed the French people. On 13 May he attended in state the opening ceremony, which was performed by Marshal MacMahon, the French president. With the marshal and his ministers he was at once on the friendliest terms and lost no opportunity of avowing his affection for their country, and his strong desire for a good understanding between her and England. He was the president's guest at the Elysée, and Lord Lyons, the English ambassador, whose acquaintance he had made at Washington, gave in his honour a brilliant ​ball, which was attended by the president and the chieftains of political and diplomatic society. At an entertainment provided by M. Waddington, minister for foreign affairs, the prince met for the first time Gambetta, whose career had interested him and whose oratory he had admired as a chance visitor to the Chambre des Députés. Lord Lyons undertook the introduction. Gambetta thanked the prince for his frank expression of sympathy with France, and the prince assured the republican statesman that he had never at any time been other than France's warm friend. The interview lasted three quarters of an hour. Before they parted the prince expressed the hope of seeing Gambetta in England. Though that hope was not fulfilled, the prince sought further intercourse with Gambetta in Paris. Later in the year (22 Oct.) the prince met the English exhibitors at the British embassy, and gracefully spoke of his wish to unite France and England permanently in bonds of amity. Nearly a quarter of a century later he was to repeat as king in the same place almost the identical words, with the effect of arresting the attention of the world.
V
The prince was less curious about domestic than about foreign policy, but his lively interest in every influential personality led him to cultivate the acquaintance of all who controlled either.The prince and Lord Beaconsfield. It was still the queen;s wish that her ministers should treat him with official aloofness, and habits of reticence were easy to Lord Beaconsfield, her favourite prime minister. Assiduously courting his royal mistress's favour, he tacitly accepted her modest estimate of her son's political discretion. Yet Lord Beaconsfield's forward foreign policy in opposition to Russia was quite as congenial to the prince as to his mother, and he made many professions of his agreement. In all companies he announced his anti-Russian sentiment, and he talked of applying for a command in the field, if war broke out between Russia and England (cf. Rumbold, Further Recollections, 1903, p. 126). He sedulously cultivated the conservative leader's society. In January 1880, when Lord Beaconsfield's political position speciously looked as strong as ever, the prince went by his own invitation on a visit to Hughenden, the prime minister's country residence (12 Jan.). The old statesman was some- what embarrassed by the compliment. After his fall from power, the prince's attentions continued, and Lord Beacons- field dined with the prince at Marlborough House on 19 March 1881. It was the last time Lord Beaconsfieid dined from home. Exactly a month later he died. The prince represented Queen Victoria at the funeral, and laid on the coffin a wreath with a card on which he wrote ' A tribute of friendship and affection.'
With a complete freedom from party prepossessions, the prince was at the same time seeking to extend his personal knowledge of the liberal leaders. The advanced radical wing of the liberal party won before the dissolution of 1880, both in parliament and the country, a prominent place which roused high expectations. Sir Charles Dilke was the radical chief, and Mr. Chamberlain, whom the prince met at Birmingham in 1874, was Dilke's first lieutenant. An invitation to Mr. ChamberlainThe prince and the radicals. to dine at Marlborough and the House in 1879 caused the group surprise, and when on 12 March 1880 Lord Fife, a member of the prince's inner circle, invited Dilke to dinner to meet the Prince of Wales, 'who would be very happy to make your acquaintance,' the situation looked to the radical protagonist a little puzzling. But the prince's only purpose was to keep in personal touch with the promoters of every rising cause. To Dilke the prince 'laid himself out to be pleasant.' They talked nearly all the evening, chiefly on French politics and the Greek question.
From an early period the prince had occasionally attended debates in both houses of parliament, seated in the upper chamber on the cross benches and in the House of Commons in the peers' gallery in the place over the clock. He rarely missed the introduction of the budget or a great political measure. On 6 May 1879 he personally engaged in the parliamentary conflict. He voted for the second reading of the deceased wife's sister bill, which, in spite of his support, was rejected by 101 toHis vote in parliament, May 1879. 81. Lord Houghton seems to , have persuaded him to take the step> which challenged the constitutional tradition of the heir-apparent's insensibility in public to controversial issues. With the accession of Gladstone and the liberals to power in the spring of 1880 he set himself to follow the course of politics with a keener zest. He took the oath in the House of Lords at the opening of the new parliament with a view to regular attendance. The prime minister was willing ​to gratify his request for the regular communication to him of the confidential despatches, but Queen Victoria was still unwilling to assent, save on terms of rigorous selection by herself, which the prince deemed humiliating. He let it be known that he asked for all the confidential papers or none. But Gladstone encouraged his thirst for political knowledge, although it could only be partially and informally satisfied.
With Dilke, who became under-secretary for foreign affairs in Gladstone's administration in May 1880, the prince rapidly developed a close intimacy, and through him apparently hoped to play a part on the political stage. The prince anxiously appealed to the under-secretary 'to beIntimacy with Sir Charles Dilke. kept informed of foreign affairs.' Dilke perceived that the prince's views of modern history were somewhat vitiated by the habitual refusal to him of official knowledge. But in Feb. 1881 Dilke willingly assented to the prince's proposal that while in Paris next month he should see M. Jules Ferry, the premier, and endeavour to overcome his unreadiness to negotiate promptly a new Anglo-French treaty of commerce. Dilke prepared a note of what the prince should say. In March he satisfactorily performed his mission, which was a new and pleasing experience. Gambetta, who was Dilke's personal friend, wrote that the prince ' had made some impression.' But the general negotiation moved forward slowly. In the autumn Dilke arrived in Paris. The prince was there again at the time, and once more offered to use his influence, both with M. Ferry and with M. Tirard, minister of commerce. The prince showed himself anxious to become better acquainted with Gambetta, and Dilke invited the two to meet at 'déjeuner' (24 Oct. 1881). A day or two later (on a suggestion from the prince made through Dilke) Gambetta sent him his photograph, which he signed thus: 'Au plus aimable des princes. L. Gambetta, un ami de 1'Angleterre.'
The cordiality of the relations between Gambetta and the prince forms an interesting episode in the career of both men. Gambetta was clearly impressed by the width of the prince's interest in European affairs. The prince in the Frenchman's eyes was far more than 'un festoyeur'; he loved France 'a la fois gaîment et serieusement,' and his dream was of an Anglo - French entente. According to Madame Adam, Gambetta's confidante, the prince, by disclosing to the states- man at an early meeting secret negotiations between Bismarck and Lord Beaconsfield, led Gambetta to qualify the encouragement which he was proposing to offer Greek ambitions for territorial expansion. But Madame Adam seems here to exaggerate the influence of the prince (Adam, Mes Souvenirs, vii. 15 seq.).
In March 1881 the royal family was greatly shocked by the assassination of the Tsar Alexander II in St. Petersburg. Lord Dufferin, the English ambassador, promptly advised, on grounds of humanityIn St. Petersburg, March 1881. and policy, that the prince and princess, whose sister was the tsarevitch's wife, should come to Russia for the funeral of the murdered sovereign. Queen Victoria deemed the risk almost prohibitive, and warned Lord Dufferin that the responsibility for any untoward result would rest on him (Lyall's Life of Lord Dufferin). But neither prince nor princess hesitated for a moment. They attended the funeral, and the prince invested the new tsar with the order of the Garter. Their presence proved an immense consolation to the Russian royal family and lightened the heavy gloom of the Russian court and capital. Courage was never lacking in the prince. In the summer of 1882 the outbreak of rebellion in Egypt, and the resolve of the English government to suppress itVolunteers for the war in Egypt, July 1882. by force of arms, deeply stirred his patriotic feeling. He at once offered to serve in the campaign. The duke of Cam-bridge, the commander-in-chief, to whom he addressed his proposal, forwarded it to the government, and Lord Granville, the foreign minister, replied to the duke on 30 July 1882, 'It is highly creditable to the pluck and spirit of the prince to wish to run the risks, both to health and to life, which the campaign offers, but it is clearly undesirable H.R.H. should go' (Verner, Duke of Cambridge, 1901, ii. 234-5). Precedents for the appearance of the heir-apparent on the field of battle abounded in English and foreign history, but they were held to be inapplicable.
A desire to be useful to the state, in spite of his lack of official position,The franchise bill, Nov. 1884. repeatedly found expression during Gladstone's second administration. In the struggle between the two houses over the franchise bill (November 1884), the prince offered his services in negotiating a settlement. He asked Lord Rowton to let it be known that he was willing to act as intermediary ​between Gladstone and Lord Salisbury, the leader of the opposition. But the friendly suggestion was not seriously entertained. The prince shared the queen's habitual anxiety concerning warfare between lords and commons, but his proffered intervention probably reflected nothing beyond a wish to figure in political affairs.
Friendliness with members of the liberal government did not always imply acquiescence in their policy. Of the liberalDissent from the liberal government, 1881–4 government's attitude to many of the problems which South Africa and Egypt presented, the prince openly disapproved, frank in private expression of dissatisfaction alike with the recall from the Cape in 1880 of Sir Bartle Frere, his companion in India, and with the treaty of peace made with the Boers after the defeat of Majuba in 1881. He was president of the committee for erecting a statue of Frere on his death, and unveiled it on the Thames Embankment on 5 June 1888, when heDissent from the liberal government, 1881–4 called Frere 'a highly esteemed and dear friend of myself.' Next year (1 Aug. 1889), when he presided at the Guildhall over a memorable meeting to celebrate the jubilee of the abolition of slavery in the British colonies, he paid in a stirring speech a further tribute to the services of his friend Sir Bartle Frere. Of the pusillanimity which seemed to him to characterise the liberal party's treatment of the Soudan in 1884 he spoke with impatience, and he earnestly deplored the sacrifice of General Gordon. When Lord Salisbury moved a vote of censure on the government for their vacillating policy he was in his place in the House of Lords on 25 Feb. 1885. He was present at the memorial service in St. Paul's Cathedral on the day of mourning for Gordon's death (13 March 1885). He actively interested himself in the movement for commemorating Gordon's heroism. He attended the first meeting for the purpose at the Mansion House on 30 May 1885, and moved the first resolution. He summoned another meeting at Marlborough House on 12 Jan. 1886, when the scheme of the Gordon boys' memorial home (now at Chobham) was inaugurated. On 19 May 1890 he unveiled Gordon's statue at Chatham.
On 8 Feb. 1884 the government decidedA royal commission on housing, 8 Feb. 1884. to appoint a commission on the housing of the working classes. The prince's friend Dilke, now president of the local government board, was made chairman, and the prince expressed a desire to serve. Gladstone at once acceded to his request. The matter was referred to the queen, who raised no objection (13 Feb.). The subject interested him deeply. As duke of Cornwall he was owner of many small houses in south London, and as the leases fell in he was proposing to retain the buildings in his own hands, with a view to converting them into better habitations. The change in tenure improved the profits of the estate as well as the character of the dwellings. On 22 Feb. 1884 Lord Salisbury moved an address to the crown for the appointment of the commission. The prince supported the motion, making on the occasion his first and only speech as a peer in the House of Lords. 'I take the keenest and liveliest interest in this great question,' he said. He was flattered at having been appointed a member of the commission. He had greatly improved the dwellings on his Sandringham estate; he had 'visited a few days ago two of the poorest courts in the district of St. Pancras and Holborn, and had found the conditions perfectly disgraceful.' He hoped measures of a drastic kind would follow the inquiry.
The commissioners formed an interesting but hardly homogeneous assembly. Cardinal Manning had accepted a seat, and difficulties arose as to his precedence. The prince's opinion was invited. He thought that Manning, being a cardinal, ranked as a foreign prince next to himself. Among the other members of the commission, the marquis of Salisbury held highest rank. The queen with certain qualifications took the prince's view, which was finally adopted, but not without some heart-burnings. The commissioners included, too, Henry Broadhurst, a labour member of parliament, and Mr. Joseph Arch, a leader of agricultural labourers. The prince attended the meetings with regularity, and abridged his holiday at Royat in May 1884 in order to be present at one of the early sittings. On 16 Nov. he entertained many of the members at Sandringham. With all his colleagues he established very cordialFriendliness with Mr. Joseph Arch. relations. With Mr. Arch, who lived in Warwickshire, at Barford cottage, he was especially friendly, and the liking for him never waned. When Mr. Arch sat in the House of Commons (1885-6, 1892-1900) for the division of North West Norfolk in which Sandringham stands, the prince greeted him as his own representative and visited him at his home in the summer of 1898.
​The commission decided to take evidence at both Edinburgh and Dublin (January 1885). It was deemed politic for the prince, if he travelled with the commission at all, to go to Dublin if he went to Edinburgh. The final decision was that he should go to Dublin independently of the commission and study the housing question there privately. In spite of the political agitation that was raging in the country, both the queen and Lord Spencer, the lord-lieutenant, saw some advantage inVisit to Ireland, April 1885. such an expedition. The prince had not been to Ireland for fourteen years. It was now settled that he and the princess should revisit the country in April. The conditions admitted of his inspecting the crowded slums of Dublin and at the same time of his testing anew the loyalty of the Irish people.
The experiment was not without its dangers, but the threats of opposition came to little. The nationalist leaders issued a manifesto urging on their followers anNationalist attitude. attitude of reserve. The lord mayor and corporation of Dublin refused to present an address of welcome, but a city reception committee well filled their place (9 April). The prince visited without protection the poor districts of the city and was heartily received. On 10 April he laid the foundation stone of the New Museum of Science and of the national library; at the Royal University he received the hon. degree of LL.D. and the princess that of Mus.Doc. Next day he opened the new dock at the extremity of North Wall, and named it the Alexandra basin. He paid a visit to Trinity College, Dublin, and presented in the gardens of Dublin Castle new colours to the duke of Cornwall's light infantry.
On 13 April the royal party started for Cork. The home rulers of the south urged the people to resent the visit as a degradation. On the road hostile demonstrations were made. But the prince was undisturbed. From Cork he passed to Limerick, where no jarring notes were struck, and thence went by way of Dublin to Belfast, where there was abundant enthusiasm (23 April). After a day at Londonderry (26 April), he left Larne for Holyhead (27 April). The nationalists' endeavour to prove the disloyalty of Ireland met with no genuine success.
VI
One of the interests which grew upon the prince in middle life was freemasonry, which powerfully appealed to his fraternal and philanthropic instincts. He lent hisAs freemason. patronage to the craft in all parts of the British empire. Initiated into the order in Sweden in December 1868, he received the rank of Past Grand Master of England at a meeting of Grand Lodge on 1 Sept. 1869. In Sept. 1875, after the resignation of the marquis of Ripon, he was installed in great splendour at the Albert Hall as Grand Master of the order.
During the twenty-six years that the Prince of Wales filled the office he performed with full masonic rites the many ceremonies of laying foundation stones in which he took part. He did what he could to promote the welfare of the three great charitable institutions of freemasons, the Boys' School, the Girls' School, and the Benevolent Institution. He presided at festival dinners of all the charities, twice at the first (1870 and 1898) and the second (1871 and 1888), and once at the third (1873). On his accession to the throne he relinquished the grand mastership and assumed the title of protector of the craft in England. His interest in freemasonry never slackened.
Meanwhile Gladstone remained faithful to his resolve to provide the prince with useful and agreeable employment. One officeA trustee of the British Museum, 6 May 1881 which Lord Beaconsfield's death rendered vacant was filled on the prime minister's recommendation by the prince, with the result that he entered on a new if minor sphere of interest which proved very congenial. On 6 May 1881 he was appointed a trustee of the British Museum, and eight days later joined the standing committee, again in succession to Lord Beaconsfield. Until the prince's accession to the throne he constantly attended the committee's meetings, kept himself well informed of all matters of importance in the administration of the museum, and warmly supported the action of the director whenever it was called in question. It was with reluctance that he retired from the management of the museum at his accession, on learning that a sovereign could not be member of a body which was liable to be sued in a court of law. One of the prince's services to the museum was the election, through his influence, of his friend Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild [q. v. Suppl. I] as fellow trustee; the baron's Waddesdon bequest was an important addition to the museum's treasures. In the capacity of trustee the prince received on 9 June 1885 the statue of Darwin, which was erected at the ​entrance of the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, and was unveiled by Professor Huxley.
Association with the British Museum stimulated his earlier interest in new educational institutions, especially those which developed technical or artistic instruction. In music he delighted from childhood, and to efforts for the expansion of musical teaching he long lent his influence. As early as 15 June 1875 he had presided at a conference at Marlborough House to consider the establishment of a National Training School for Music. Three years later he accepted a proposal to institute a National College of Music. On 28 Feb. 1882 he presided at a representative meeting at St. James's Palace, and in an elaborate speech practically called into being the Royal College of Music. He formally inaugurated the college on 7 May 1883 in temporary premises, with Sir George Grove as director. Six years later he personally accepted from Samson Fox [q. v. Suppl. II] a sum of 30,000l. (increased to 40,000l.) for the provision of a special building, the foundation stone of which he laid on 8 July 1890. He opened the edifice in May 1894 and never lost his enthusiasm for the venture.
In no part of the country did he fail to encourage cognate enterprises with a readiness altogether exceeding that of his father, in whose steps in these regards he was proud to follow. In every town of England he became a familiar figure, opening colleges, libraries, art galleries, hospitals, Parks, municipal halls, and and docks. On 2 May 1883 he was at Oxford laying the foundation stone of the Indian Institute. On 28 April 1886 he visited Liverpool to inaugurate the working of the great Mersey tunnel. Very readily he went on like errands to places which no member of the royal family had hitherto visited. The centres of industry of every magnitude, Sheffield, Leeds, Wigan, Bolton, Hull, Newcastle, Portsmouth, Blackburn, Middlesbrough, Great Grimsby, and Swansea, as well as Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester, all possess public buildings which were first dedicated to public uses by the prince. One of the most memorable of his provincial engagements was his laying the foundation stone of the new at Truro on 20 May 1880. It was the first cathedral erected in England since St. Paul's was rebuilt in 1697. The bishop, Edward White Benson, was well known to the prince in his earlier capacity of headmaster of Wellington College. By the prince's wish the ceremony was performed, despite clerical misgivings, with full masonic rites. Some seven years later (3 Nov. 1887) the prince returned to attend the consecration of the eastern portion of the building, the first portion to be used for divine worship. Dr. Benson, then archbishop of Canterbury, was his companion.
The development of his property at Sandringham stirred in him an active interest in agriculture, and his provincial visits were often associated with the shows of the Royal Agricultural Society, of which he was elected a life governor on 3 Feb. 1864, and subsequently became an active member. He was four times president, for the first time in 1869, when the show was held at Manchester, afterwards in 1878 at Kilburn, in 1885 at Preston, and in 1900 at York. He rarely failed to attend the shows in other years, being present at Gloucester in the year before his death; he subsequently accepted the presidency for the meeting at Norwich in 1911, which he did not live to see. In 1889, the jubilee year of the society, he acted at Windsor for the queen, who was president, and presided the same year at the state banquet given in St. James's Palace to the council and chief officers of the society. He showed minute interest in the details of the society's work.
At the same time, there was no district of London to which he was a stranger. He not only laid the foundation stone of the Tower Bridge on 21 June 1886 but opened the complete structure on 30 June 1894. He showed interest in the East End by opening a recreation ground in Whitechapel on 24 June 1880. He laid the foundation stone of the People's Palace in London on 8 June 1886, and on 21 June 1887 he opened for a second time new buildings at the London Hospital. His educational engagements in the metropolis were always varied. They included during this period the formal installation of the Merchant Taylors' School in the old buildings of Charterhouse on 6 April 1878, the opening of the new buildings of the City of London School on 12 Dec. 1882, and of the City of London College in Moorfields on 8 July 1883, together with the new foundation of the City and Guilds of London Institute on 25 June 1884. On 21 Dec. 1885 he went to Sir Henry Doulton's works at Lambeth in order to present ​Doulton with the Albert gold medal of the Society of Arts in recognition of his services to the manufacture of pottery.
His faith in the advantage of exhibitions was not shaken by the inauspicious experiments of 1871–4, and he actively aided in 1883 a revival on a more limited scale of the old scheme. His neighbour in Norfolk, Sir Edward Birkbeck, had interested him in His enthusiasm for London exhibitions, 1883–7. his attempts to improve the fishing industry of the country, and under the prince's direct auspices a National Fisheries Exhibition at Norwich in April 1881 developed in 1883 into an International Fisheries Exhibition at South Kensington, which the prince ceremonially opened and closed (14 May–31 Oct.). The success of the undertaking justified sequels at the same place, in the International Health Exhibition next year, and in the International Inventions and Music Exhibition in 1885. There followed a far more ambitious enterprise in 1886, when the prince with exceptional vigour helped to organise an exhibition of the manufactures and arts of India and the colonies. It was the only one of these ventures which was controlled by a royal commission, and the prince was president of the commissioners. Queen Victoria, on her son's representations, showed an unwonted activity by opening this exhibition in person (4 May 1886). Great popular interest was shown in the enterprise, and a handsome profit was realised.
The prince was anxious to set on a permanent basis the scheme which had made so powerful an appeal to the public not only of Great Britain but of India and the colonies. Queen Victoria's jubilee was approaching, and many suggestions for a national celebration were under consideration. In the autumn of 1886 the prince proposed to the lord mayor of London that a permanent institute in London, to formThe Imperial Institute. 1887. a meeting-place for colonial and Indian visitors, and a building for the exhibition of colonial and Indian products, should be erected as a memorial of the queen's long reign. The prince professed anxiety to pursue his efforts to strengthen the good feeling between the mother country, India, and the colonies. At a meeting which he called at St. James's Palace on 12 Jan. 1887, the project of an Imperial Institute at South Kensington was adopted and a fund was started with 25,000l. out of the profits of the recent Indian and colonial Exhibition. Large donations were received from India and the colonies. All promised well. Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone on 4 July 1887, and on 28 April 1891 the prince was formally constituted president of the corporation. The completed building was opened by Queen Victoria on 10 May 1893. A week later the Prince of Wales gave a great reception to all who had shown interest in the movement. Some interesting functions took place there under his guidance. On 28 July 1895 he presided when Dr. Jameson lectured on Rhodesia, and he attended a banquet to the colonial premiers on the occasion of the queen's diamond jubilee on 18 June 1897. But in spite of his active support the Institute failed to enjoy public favour. It satisfied no public need, and evoked no general enthusiasm. The prince reluctantly recognised the failure, and in 1899 assented to the transfer of the greater part of the building to the newly constituted London University. The operations of the Institute were thenceforth confined to very modest dimensions. Despite its chequered career, the venture gave the prince a valuable opportunity of identifying himself with the growing pride in the colonial empire, with that newborn imperialism which was a chief feature of the national sentiment during the close of his mother's reign.
Punctuality and a methodical distribution of his time enabled the prince to combine with his many public engagements due attention to domestic affairs, and at the same time he enjoyed ample leisure wherein to indulge his love of recreation at home and abroad. The education of his two sons, His sons' education. Albert Victor and George, called for consideration. In 1877 they were respectively thirteen and twelve years old. The prince had little wish to subject them to a repetition of his own strict and elaborate discipline. Nor had he much faith in a literary education for boys in their station. A suggestion that they should go to a public school, to Wellington College, met with Queen Victoria's approval; but the prince finally decided to send them as naval cadets to the Britannia training-ship at Dartmouth. He met his mother's criticism by assuring her that the step was experimental. But the prince was satisfied with the result, and in 1879 he pursued his plan of a naval training by sending the boys on a three years' cruise in H.M.S. Bacchante to the Mediterranean and the British colonies. The plan had the ​mendation of novelty. In providing for the youths' further instruction, the prince followed less original lines. The younger boy, George, like his uncle Alfred, Queen Victoria's second son, made the navy his profession, and he passed through all the stages of nautical preparation. The elder son, Albert Victor, who was in the direct line of succession, spent some time at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1883, according to precedent. He then proceeded to Aldershot to join the army. In all important episodes in his elder son's career his father's presence testified his parental concern. When Albert Victor, on coming of age, received the freedom of the City of London (29 June 1885), his father was the chief guest at the luncheon in the Guildhall which the corporation gave in honour of the occasion. The prince was with his son at Cambridge not only when he matriculated at Trinity in 1883 but when he received the honorary degree of LL.D. in 1888. A few years later the young man, pursuing most of his father's experiences, set out for an Indian tour, and his father accompanied him as far as Ismailia (October 1891).
Family rejoicings attended the celebration of the prince and princess's silver wedding on 10 March 1888, when Queen Victoria dined with them at Marlborough House for the first time. The old German emperor, William I, died the day before. With him the prince was always on affectionate terms and he had repeatedly accepted the emperor's hospitality in Berlin. He had visited him on 18 March 1885 to congratulate him on his eighty-eighth birthday. Queen Victoria was especially anxious to show his memory due respect, but she assented to the suspension of court mourning for the prince's silver wedding. The number of congratulations and presents bore striking witness to the prince's popularity.
The royal family was bound to experience many episodes of sorrow as well as joy. The prince was pained by the death in 1878 of his second sister, Alice, princess of Hesse-Darmstadt, who had helped to nurse him through his illness of 1871. To his acute distress, too, his youngest brother, Leopold, duke of Albany, died suddenly while on holiday at Cannes (24 March 1884), and the prince at once went thither on the melancholy errand of bringing the remains home. Subsequently he unveiled with much public ceremony a statue of the duke at Cannes. But the prince and all his domestic circle were perhaps more deeply affected by the tragic death of his brother-in-law, the crown prince of Prussia, who after a three months' reign as Frederick III had succumbed to the painful disease of cancer of the throat (15 June 1888). The tragedy gave the prince many grounds for anxiety. His lifelong affection for the Empress Frederick, his eldest sister, was quickened by her misfortune. He showed her every brotherly attention. On her first visit to England during her widowhood the prince crossed over to Flushing to escort her to her native country (19 March 1889). In Germany her position was difficult. Her English predilections and her masterful disposition often roused hostility. Bismarck and his son Herbert had treated her and her husband with scant respect. The prince's sympathies lay with his sister in her struggles abroad, and not unfrequently was he moved to anger by what seemed to him the cruel indifference of the Bismarcks to her feelings. The complexity of the situation was increased by the conduct of her eldest son, the prince's nephew, who now became, as William II, German emperor in succession to his father. His uncompliant attitude to his mother often wounded his uncle and threatened alienation. Yet the native amiability of the prince did not suffer any lasting breach between himself and those whose conduct roused his disapproval. In his family circle there were some whose dislike of the young ruler was far more firmly rooted than his own. But the prince sought paths of peace and conciliation. The new emperor was his mother's favourite grandson and had at command a social charm which equalled his uncle's. When in 1890 the emperor dismissed Bismarck from his service and he became politically his own master, the outer world came to attribute to uncle and nephew a personal and political rivalry which hampered the good relations of the peoples. This allegation was without foundation in fact. On occasion the kinsmen caused each other irritation, but there was no real estrangement. The mutual resentments which at times ruffled their tempers were harboured solely when they were absent from one another. The ill-feeling disappeared when they met. The prince's unconcealed leanings to France barely touched the personal relation with his nephew. The prince's good-nature was comprehensive. The younger Bismarck's manner was even less ​complacent than that of his rough-spoken father, but the prince's social tact enabled him to meet the older man with a perfect grace and to extend a courteous greeting to Count Herbert Bismarck on his private visits to England.
No lack of cordiality marked the first meetings of uncle and nephew after the emperor's accession. The emperor arrived at Spithead on 2 Aug. 1889 in order to present himself to his grandmother in his new dignity; the prince met him on landing and welcomed him with warmth. Next year the prince and his second son, George, were the emperor's guests at Berlin (April 1890), just after Bismarck's dismissal. The emperor attested his friendly inclinations by investing Prince George with the distinguished order of the Black Eagle.
In 1889 a new factor was introduced into the prince's domestic history. The first marriage in his family took place. On 27 July 1889 his eldest daughter, Princess Louise, married the sixth earl of Fife, then created first duke. The princes son-in-law, who was eighteen years senior to his wife, belonged to his most intimate circle of friends. Objection was raised in some quarters on the ground of the bridegroom's age and of his place in the prince's social coterie, and in other quarters owing to his lack of royal status. But the union proved thoroughly happy, and it made opportune a review of the financial provision for the prince's children. The prince's family was growing up, and his domestic expenses caused him some anxiety. His income had undergone no change since his marriage, and he deemed it fitting to raise the question of parliamentary grants to his children. The prince's income was not exorbitant in view of the position that he had long been called on to fill, now that Queen Victoria had ceased to play her part in society.
Early in 1885, when his elder son came of age, the prince discussed the matter with the queen with the knowledge of the liberal ministry. There was no unwillingness on any side to treat his wishes considerately, but neither the queen nor her ministers showed undue haste in coming to close quarters with the delicate issue. Lord Salisbury was now prime minister, but the conservative government was as reluctant as any liberal government to lay a large fresh burden on the revenues of the state in the interests of the royal family. The queen sent a message to the House of Commons, asking provision for the prince's two eldest children (July 1889). A committee of inquiry representative of all parties in the House of Commons was thereupon appointed. Mr. Bradlaugh opposed the appointment on the ground that the queen should make the necessary provision out of her savings. The government proposed, with the approval of the queen, that the eldest son of the Prince of Wales should receive an annuity of 10,000l., to be increased to 15,000l. on his marriage. The second son was to receive, on coming of age, an annuity of 8000l., to be increased on his marriage to 15,000l. Each of the three daughters was to receive on coming of age an annuity of 3000l., with a dowry of 10,000l. on marriage. There would thus fall due immediately 21,000l. a year, with 10,000l. for Princess Louise. But signs of discontent were apparent in the committee, and Gladstone, who deprecated any weakening of the monarchy by a prolonged controversy over its cost, recommended the compromise that the prince should receive fixed additional annual sum of 36,000l. for his children's support, and that new provision should terminate six months' after Queen Victoria's death. The proposal was adopted by the committee, but was severely criticised in the House of Commons. Henry Labouchere bluntly moved a peremptory refusal of any grant to the queen's grandchildren. His motion was rejected by 398 votes to 116. Mr. John Morley moved an amendment complaining that room was left for future applications from the crown for further grants to the queen's grandchildren, and that the proposed arrangement ought to be made final. Most of Gladstone's colleagues supported Mr. Morley; but his amendment was defeated by 355 votes to 134 and the grant of 36,000l. a year was secured.
On 17 May 1891 the prince enjoyed the new experience of becoming a grandfather on the birth of the duchess of Fife's first daughter. But a severe blow was to befall the domestic circle within a year. In December his second son, George, fell ill of enteric fever, from which he recovered; but early in the next year Albert Victor, his elder son, who had been created duke Clarence (24 May 1890), was seized by influenza, which turned to pneumonia and proved fatal (14 Jan. 1892). The calamity was for the moment crushing to both parents. But the sympathy of the nation was abundant, ​in a published letter of thanks the prince and princess gratefully acknowledged the national condolence. The duke's death was the more distressing owing to his approaching marriage to Princess Mary (May) of Teck. Next year, after the shock of mourning had passed away, Princess May was betrothed to the second son, Prince George, who filled his brother's place in the succession to the throne and was created duke of York on 24 May 1892. The marriage took place on 6 July 1893, and the succession to the throne was safely provided for when a first child, Prince Edward of Wales, was born on 23 June 1894.
The prince's recreations.
The theatre.
Amid all his domestic responsibilities and his other engagements the prince always found ample leisure for sport and amusement. Of the theatre and the opera he was from boyhood an ardent admirer, and both in London and Paris he enjoyed the society of the dramatic and musical professions. The lighter forms of dramatic and musical entertainment chiefly attracted him. But his patronage was comprehensive. Wagner's operas he attended with regularity, and Irving's Shakespearean productions at the Lyceum Theatre from 1872 onwards stirred his enthusiasm. With Irving, the leader of the dramatic profession through a great part of the prince's career, his social relations were of the friendliest. He supped on the stage of the Lyceum with Irving and a few of his friends after the performance of ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ (8 May 1883), and when Queen Victoria was on a visit to Sandringham (26 April 1889), he invited Irving to perform in her presence ‘The Bells’ and the trial scene from ‘The Merchant of Venice.’ With the comic actor J. L. Toole he was on like cordial terms, and thrice at the prince's request Toole appeared in characteristic parts on visits to Sandringham. Toole was there at the celebration of Prince Albert Victor's coming of age on 8 Jan. 1885. (Sir) Charles Wyndham, (Sir) Squire Bancroft, (Sir) John Hare, and many other actors in addition to Irving and Toole were the prince's guests on occasion at Marlborough House. The dramatic profession generally acknowledged his sympathetic patronage by combining to present him on his fiftieth birthday (9 Nov. 1891) with a gold cigar box. To the prince's influence is attributable the bestowal of official honours on leading actors, a practice which was inaugurated by the grant of a knighthood to Henry Irving in 1895.
The prince and the turf.
His racing successes.
But the recreation to which the prince mainly devoted himself from middle life onwards with unremitting delight was horse-racing. He joined the Jockey Club on 13 April 1864. But it was not for at least ten years that he played any part on the turf. His colours were first seen at the July meeting at Newmarket in 1877. In 1883 he leased a few horses at John Porter's Kingsclere stable, and two years later he inaugurated a breeding stud at Sandringham. In 1893 he left John Porter's stable at Kingsclere, and thenceforward trained horses at Newmarket under Richard Marsh, usually having at least eleven horses in training. By that date he was a regular visitor at Newmarket, occupying a set of rooms at the Jockey Club. That practice he continued to the end of his life. He was a fair judge of horses, though hardly an expert. His luck as an owner was variable, and signal successes came late in his racing career. His main triumphs were due to the merits of the three horses Florizel II, Persimmon, and Diamond Jubilee, which he bred in 1891, 1893 and 1897 respectively out of the dam Perdita II by the sire St. Simon. With Persimmon, the best thoroughbred of his era, the prince won for the first time the classic races of the Derby and the St. Leger in 1896, and the Eclipse Stakes and the Gold Cup at Ascot in 1897. In 1900, when his winning stakes reached a total of 29,585l., he first headed the list of winning owners. In that year his racing triumphs reached their zenith, when Persimmon's brother, Diamond Jubilee, won five great races, the Two Thousand Guineas, the Derby, Newmarket Stakes, Eclipse, and St. Leger. He had played a modest part in steeplechasing since 1878. But his only conspicuous success in that sport was also achieved in 1900, when his Ambush II won the Grand National at Liverpool. So imposing a series of victories for an owner in one year was without precedent. No conspicuous prosperity attended his racing during the early years of his reign. But in 1909 he was for a third time winner of the Derby with the horse Minoru, and was in the same year third in the list of winning owners. At the time of his death he had twenty-two horses in training, and his winning stakes since 1886 then amounted to 146,344l. 10s. 1d. The pastime proved profitable. He sold Diamond Jubilee to an Argentine breeder for 31,500l. The skeleton of Persimmon he presented to ​the South Kensington Museum (5 Feb. 1910).
With fellow patrons of the turf the prince always maintained cordial intimacy. The members of the Jockey Club included his closest friends. For twenty years he entertained to dinner all the members at Marlborough House and afterwards at Buckingham Palace on Derby night. Rarely missing an important race meeting, he was regularly the guest of Lord Sefton at Sefton Park or of Lord Derby at Knowsley for the Grand National, of Lord Savile at Rufford Abbey for the St. Leger at Doncaster, and of the duke of Richmond at Goodwood for the meeting in the park there.
In yacht racing also for a brief period he was only a little less prominent than on the turf. In 1876 he first purchased a racing His career in yacht- racing.schooner yacht, Hildegarde, which won the first queen’s cup at Cowes in 1877. In 1879 he acquired the well-known cutter Formosa, and in 1881 the schooner Aline, both of which enjoyed racing reputations. But it was not till 1892 that the prince had a racing yacht built for him. The vessel known as the Britannia was designed by George Lennox Watson [q. v. Suppl. II], and was constantly seen not only in the Solent, on the Thames, and on the Clyde, but also at Cannes. For ﬁve years the yacht enjoyed a prosperous career, winning many races in strong competitions, often with the prince on board. In 1893 prizes were won on the Thames (25–26 May), and the Victoria gold challenge cup at Ryde (11 Sept.). Twice at Cannes the Britannia won international matches (13 March 1894 and 23 Feb. 1895); and on 5 July 1894 it defeated on the Clyde the American yacht Vigilant; but that result was reversed in a race between the two on the Solent on 4 Aug. 1895. In 1895 the German emperor ﬁrst sent out his yacht Meteor to meet his uncle's Britannia, and for three years interesting contests were waged between the two vessels. Thrice in English waters during 1896 was the German yacht succcssful—at Gravesend (4 June), at Cowes (11 June), and at Ryde (13 Aug.). But after several victories over other competitors the Britannia won the race for the queen's cup against the Meteor at Cowes (3 Aug. 1897), and three days later the emperor’s Meteor shield was awarded his uncle's vessel.
The prince's open indulgence in sport, especially in horse-racing, attracted much public attention, and contributed to the general growth of his popularity. But in 1891 there was some recrudescence The Tranby Croft case, 1891.of public impatience with his avowed devotion to amusement. An imputation of cheating against a guest at a country house when the prince was of the company led to a libel action, at the hearing of which the prince for a second time appeares as a witness in a court of law (5 June 1891). The host was Mr. Arthur Wilson, a rich shipowner of Hull, and the scene of the occurrence was his residence at Tranby Croft. The evidence showed that the prince had played baccarat for high stakes. A wave of somewhat reckless gambling had lately enveloped English society, and the prince had occasionally yielded to the perilous fascination. Cards had always formed some part of his recreation. From early youth he had played whist for moderate stakes, and he impressed Gladstone in a homely rubber at Sandringham with his ‘whist memory.’ On his tours abroad at Cannes and Homburg he had at times indulged in high play, usually with fortunate results. The revelations in the Tranby Croft case shocked middle-class opinion in England, and there was a loud outburst of censure. In a private letter (13 Aug. 1891) to Dr. Benson, archbishop of Canterbury, long on intimate terms with the royal family, the prince expressed ‘deep pain and annoyance' at the ‘most bitter and unjust attacks’ made on him not only ‘by the press’ but ‘by the low church and especially the nonconformists.’ ‘I am not sure,’ he wrote, ‘that politics were not mixed up in it.’ His genuine attitude he expressed in the following sentences: ‘I have a horror of gambling, and should always do my utmost to discourage others who have an inclination for it, as I consider that gambling, like intemperance, is one of the greatest curses which a country could be afflicted with.’ The scandal opened the prince's eyes to the perils of the recent gambling vogue, and he set himself to discourage its continuance. He gradually abandoned other games of cards for bridge, in which, though he played regularly and successfully, he developed only a moderate skill.
VII
During Lord Salisbury’s ministry (1886–1892) the prince’s relations to home and foreign politics remained as they had been. Queen Victoria's veto on the submission of oficial intelligence was in no way relaxed. The prince was socially on ​pleasant terms with Lord Salisbury, who was foreign secretary as well as prime His continued minister. The prince visited interest in him at Hatfield, bllt they ex- foreign affairs changed no confidences. Independently however of ministerial authority and quite irresponsibly, the prince with increasing freedom discussed foreign affairs with friends at home and abroad. At Biarritz, where he stayed in 1879, at Cannes, or at Paris he emphatically declared in all circles his love of France, his hope of a perpetual peace between her and England, and his dread of another Franco-German war. Nor did he qualify such sentiments when he travelled in Germany. He showed his open-mindedness as to the Channel tunnel scheme by inspecting the works at Dover (March 1882). In the spring of 1887 he was at Cannes during an alarming earthquake, and his cool and courageous behaviour during the peril enhanced his reputation in southern France. In the same year M. Taine, the historian, attached value to a rumour which credited the prince with meddling in internal French politics hi order to keep the peace between France and Germany. The French prime minister, M. Rouvier, was threatened with defeat in the chamber of deputies at the hands of M. Floquet and M. Boulanger, who were reputed to be pledged to an immediate breach with Germany. The prince was reported to have persuaded the Cointe de Paris to detach his supporters in the chamber from the war-faction and to protect with their votes the ministry of peace. M. Taine's rumour doubtless misinterpreted the prince's cordial relations with the Orleanist princes, but it bears witness to the sort of political in- fluence which was fancifully assigned to the prince in France. It was rare, however, that his good-will to France incurred suspicion of undue interference. The monarchs of Europe looked askance on the French International Exhibition of 1889, which was designed to commemorate the revolution of 1789, and the prince abstained from joining the British commission, of which he had been a member in 1867 and president in 1878. But he had no scruples in visiting the exhibition together with the princess and his sons. They ascended under M. Eiffel's guidance to the top of the Eiffel Tower, which was a chief feature of the exhibition buildings. Before leaving the French capital, the prince exchanged visits with President Carnot, went over the new Pasteur Institute, took part in a meet of the French Four-in-Hand Club, and attended the races at Auteuil. A few years later March 1894), when diplomatic friction was arising between France and England over vents in northern Africa, Lord Dufferin, the English ambassador in France, addressed the British Chamber of Commerce, and denounced popular exaggeration of the disagreement. The prince, who was at Cannes, at once wrote to the ambassador, agerly congratulating him on his prudent handling of his theme and reporting to him the commendations of German and Russian royal personages whom he was meeting on the Riviera. In Germany he was less suave in pronouncing his opinions. He complained to Prince von Hohenlohe at Berlin in May 1888 of the folly of the new and irritating system of passports which had lately been devised to discourage Frenchmen from travelling in Germany. But Bismarck ridiculed the notion that any importance attached to his political views. In Germany he was rarely regarded by publicists as other than a votary of Parisian gaiety.
A few months later, in Oct. 1888, he illustrated his love of adventure and his real detachment from current diplomatic controversy by extending his travels further east, where political conflict was rife among most of the great powers. He spent a week with the king of Roumania at his country palace of Sinaia, en P a g in g in a bear hunt in 'he neighbourhood, and attending military manoeuvres. Thence he proceeded to Hungary to join the ill-starred crown prince Rudolph Id. 30 Jan. 1889) in bear-hunting at Gorgeny and elsewhere, finally accompanying him to Vienna (16 Oct.). No political significance attached to the tour. Subsequently he more than once boldly challenged the patrician prejudices of the German and Austrian courts bypassing through Germany and Austria in order to shoot in Hungary as the guest of his friend Baron Hirsch, a Jewish millionaire, who was excluded from the highest Austrian social circles. In the autumn of 1894 he spent no less than four weeks with the baron at his seat of St. Johann. The sport was on a princely scale. The head of game shot during the visit numbered 37,654, of which 22,996 were partridges. According to German and Austrian strict social codes, the prince's public avowal of friendship with Baron Hirsch was a breach of royal etiquette. But he allowed neither social nor diplomatic punctilio to qualify the pleasures of foreign travel. His cosmopolitan sympathies ignored fine distinctions of caste. visits to Roumania ​Russia throughout this period was the diplomatic foe of England, and the prince vaguely harboured the common English suspicion of Russian intrigues. But he lost no opportunity of confirming his knowledge of the country. Substantially Russia meant to him the home of close connections In Russia, 1994.of his wife and of the wife of his brother Alfred. He signally proved how closely he was drawn to the land by ties of kindred in 1894, when he twice within a few months visited it at the call of family duty. In July 1894 he went to St. Petersburg to attend the wedding at Peterhof of the Grand Duchess Xenia, the daughter of Tsar Alexander III (the Princess of Wales's niece), to the Grand Duke Alexander Michailovitch. At the end of October 1894 he hurried to Livadia to the deathbed of his wife's brother-in-law, Tsar Alexander III. He arrived when all was over, but he attended the funeral ceremonies and greeted the accession of his wife's nephew, Tsar Nicholas II, who soon married a niece of his own. The old link between the prince and the Russian throne was thereby strengthened, but its strength owed nothing to diplomatic influences or to considerations of policy.
When Gladstone became prime minister in 1892, the problem of the prince's access to state business received a more promising solution than before. GladstoneConfidential relations with Gladstone's ministry 1892–4.sought to gratify the prince's wish that information of the cabinet's proceedings should be placed at his disposal. The queen's assent was not given very readily. She suggested that she herself should decide what official news should be passed on to her son. She deprecated the discussion of national secrets over country-house dinner-tables. But she finally yielded, and thenceforth the prince was regularly supplied by the prime minister's confidential secretary, Sir Algernon West, with much private intelligence. The privilege which the prince had long sought was thus granted on somewhat exceptional terms. The prince freely commented in writing on what was communicated to him. His interest was chiefly in persons, and he frankly criticised appointments or honours, and made recommendations of his own. He avoided intricate matters of general policy, but on minor issues he offered constant remark. Of the common prejudice of rank he gave no sign. Royal commissions of inquiry into social reforms continued to appeal to him. In 1891 he had sought Lord Salisbury's permission to serve on the labour commission, but his presence was deemed impolitic. When the agricultural commission was in process of formation in 1893, he urged the nomination of Mr. Joseph Arch, his colleague on the housing commission. The queen protested, but Arch owed to the prince an invitation to sit. In the same year another royal commission was constituted to inquire into the question of old age pensions, under the chairmanship of Lord Aberdare. Of this body the prince was a member; he attended regularly, put pertinent questions to witnesses, and showed sympathy with the principle at stake. Gladstone informed the prince of his impending resignation in February 1894, and thanked him for unbounded kindness. The prince replied that he valued their long friendship. When Lord Rosebery formed a government in succession to Gladstone, the prince had for the only time in his life a close personal ally in the prime minister. But his influence on public business saw no increase. Lord Rosebery's administration chiefly impressed him by the internal dissensions which made its life precarious.
Gladstone and the prince continued to the last to exchange marks of mutual deference. When on 26 June 1896 the prince opened at Aberystwyth the new University of Wales, of which he had become Final re- lations with Gladstone, 1896–7.chancellor, Gladstone in spite of his infirmities came over from Hawarden to attend the ceremony, and at the lunch which followed it the old statesman proposed the prince's health. They met again at Cimiez next year, when Gladstone took his last farewell of Queen Victoria. On 25 May 1898 the prince and his son George acted as pall-bearers at the funeral of Gladstone in Westminster Abbey. So emphatic an attention caused among conservatives some resentment, which was hardly dissipated by the prince's acceptance of the place of president of the committee formed to erect a national memorial to Gladstone (1 July 1898). But it was not in a spirit of political partisanship that the prince publicly avowed his admiration of Gladstone. The prince acknowledged Gladstone's abilities, but he was chiefly grateful for the cordial confidence which had distinguished Gladstone's relations with him. Gladstone, who respected his royal station and deemed him the superior in tact and charm of any other royal personage within his ​range of knowledge, saw imprudence in Queen Victoria's denial to him of all political responsibility.
On the fall of Lord Rosebery’s ministry and the accession to office of Lord Salisbury, the prince illustrated his attitude to the party strife by inviting the out-going and the in-coming ministers to meet at dinner at Marlborough House. Other men of distinction were there, including the shahzcda, second son of theamir of Afghan- istan, who was visiting this country. The entertainment proved thoroughly har- monious under the cheerful inﬂuence of the prince. A littlelatcr, when Lord Salisbury‘s administration was ﬁrmly installed, the prince’: right to receive as matter of course all foreign dcspatches was at length formally conceded. Like the members of the cabinet he was now in-
Li'3.§_..n.~.. vested with a ‘cabinet’ key to
       "'f§;; the oﬂicial pouches in which
‘private information is daily circulated among ministers by the foreign oﬁice. The privilege came too tardily to have much educational effect, but it gave the prince a better opportunity than he had yet enjoyed of observing the inner routine of government, and it diminished a veteran grievance. Yet his main ener- gies were, even more conspicuously than of old, distributed over society, sport, and philanthropy, and in spite of his new rivileges he remained an unofficial onloo er in the political arena.
In some directions his philanthropic interest seemed to widen. The ardour and m,,$u,, energy with which at the end
             l of the nineteenth century the
problems of disease were pursued caught his alert attention, and he gave many proofs of his care for medical research. He regularly performed the duties of president of St. Bartholomew‘s Hospital, and learned much of hospital management there and elsewhere. He did what he could to encourage the study of consumption, and the investigation of cancer interested him. When he laid the foundation stoneof the new wing of Brompton Consumption Hospitalin 1881, he asked, if the disease were preventable, why it was not prevented. On 21 Dec. 1888 he called a meeting at Marlborough House to found the National Society for the Prevention of Consumption. It was, too. under his personal auspices that the fund was formed on 18 June 1889 to commemorate the heroism of Father Damien, the Belgian missionary who heroically sacrilied his life to the lepers of the Sandwich Islands. A statue of Father Damion which was set up at Kalawayo was one result of the movement. Another was the National Leprosy Fund for the treatment and study of the disease, especially in India. On 13 Jan. 1890 the prince presided at a subscription dinner in London in support of this fund, and to his activity was in part attributable the foundation of the Albert Victor Hospital for leprosy at Calcutta He was always on good terms with doctors. Through his friendship with Sir Joseph Fayror, who had accompanied him to India, he was oﬂered and accepted the unusual compliment of being made honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians on 19 July 1897. He received not only the diploma but a model of the goldheaded cane in possession of the college, whose line of successive owners in- cluded Radcliﬁe and the chief physicians of the eighteenth century.
In the summer of 1897 the prince took an active part in the celebration of Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee. The ‘Vi_i|i:t..:II"ia’s queen gave public expression §"'“°“" of her maternal regard, which yubllee, rssn. no differences on political or private matters effectually diminished, by creating in his behalf a new dignity— that of Grand Master and Principal Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. In all the public festivities the prince ﬁlled a chief part. Among the most elaborate private entertainments which he attended was a fancy dress ball given by his friends the duke and duchess of Devonshirs at Devon- shiro House, where the splendours recalled the prince’s own effort of the same kind at Marlborough House in 1874.
But the prince was responsible for a lasting memorial of Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee in the form of a scheme for permanently helping the London hospitals to lessen their burden of debt. On 5 Feb. 1897 the prince in honour of the The ﬁnd. jubilee inaugurated a fund. for subscriptions from a shilling upwards. The prince became president of the general council, and a meeting at Marlborough House christened the fund ‘ The Prince of Wales's Hospital Fund for London.’ Success was at once achieved. Within a year the donations amounted to l87,000l., and the annual subscriptions to 22,0501. The fund continued to ﬂourish under the prince's and his friends’ guidance until his accession to the throne. when it was renamed ‘King Edward VII Hospital Fund,‘ and his son took his place as president. The eﬁort has ​conspicuously relieved the pecuniary strain on the chief London hospitals.
VIII
Three years and a half were to pass between the celebration of Queen Victoria's sixty years of rule and the end of her prolonged reign. French caricaturists insolently depicted the extreme senility which would distinguish the prince when his time for kingship would arrive. But the prince as yet showed no loss of activity and no narrowing of interest. As soon as the diamond jubilee festivities ended the prince and princess proved their liking for modern music by attending the Wagner festival at Baireuth (Aug. 1897). Thence the prince went on his customary holiday to Homburg, and on his way home visited his Difficulties siste ^ the 'Empress Frederick with the at Cronberg. One of those re- German curring seasons of coolness was dividing his nephew the German emperor and himself. Private and public events alike contributed to the disagreement. There was a renewal of differences between the emperor and his mother, and the emperor had imprudently expressed by telegram his sympathy with President Kruger of the Transvaal Republic, who was resisting the demands of the British government in South Africa. The emperor disclaimed any intention of wounding English susceptibilities. He deemed him- self misunderstood. The prince, however, for the time absented himself from Berlin on his foreign travels, and did not recommend himself to German public favour by an emphatic declaration of un-alterable personal devotion to France, at the moment that a period of estrangement menaced that country and England. In the spring of 1898, when the two governments were about to engage in a sharp diplomatic duel over their relations in north Africa, the prince laid the foundation stone of a new jetty at Cannes and pleaded in public the cause of peace.
Varied anxieties and annoyances were accumulating. The ambiguity of his position at home was brought home to him in April, when he was requested to preside, for the first and only time in his career of heir-apparent, over the privy council. Since 1880, when Queen Victoria had made it her practice to spend the spring in the The prince Riviera, a commission had been and the privy privately drafted empowering the prince and some of the ministers to act, in cases of extreme urgency, on her behalf in her absence from the council. Hitherto the commission had lain dormant, and the prince merely learnt by accident that such a commission existed and that his name was included in it. The concealment caused him annoyance. Now in April 1898, on the outbreak of the Spanish- American war, it was necessary to issue a proclamation of neutrality, and he was called upon to fill the queen's place in the transaction.
In the summer an accidental fall while staying at Waddesdon with his friend Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild caused a fracture of his kneecap (18 July 1898), and disabled him for two months. The death on 6 Feb. 1899 of his next brother, Alfred, now become duke of Saxe-Coburg, was a serioiis grief. His relations with the duke had been close from boyhood, and the wrench with the past was severe. At the end of the year the gloom was lightened by the arrival, after a four years' absence, of the German emperor on a friendly visit to Queen Victoria and the prince. The episode was an eloquent proof that there was no enduring enmity between the emperor and either his uncle or his uncle's country, whatever were the passing ebullitions of irritation. The em- The German P eror arrived just after the emperor's outbreak of the South African Sov' 1899 war ' m *k course of which the prince was to learn that even in France there were limits to the effective exercise of his personal charm.
During 1899 and 1900 misrepresentations of England's aim in the war excited through-out Europe popular rancour which involved the prince, equally with his mother and the English ministers, in scurrilous attack. The war was denounced as a gross oppression on England's part of a weak and innocent people. The emperor's presence in England when the storm was breaking was a welcome disclaimer of approval of the abusive campaign. But in the spring of 1900 the prince suffered practical experience of the danger which lurked in the continental outcry. On his way to Denmark, while he and the princess were seated in their train at the Gare du Nord, Brussels, a youth, Sipido, aged fifteen, fired two shots at them (4 April). Attempt on Th ev were unhurt, and the the prince's prince showed the utmost cool-IQOO* AprU ness ' ^^ e act was an outcome of the attacks on England which were prompted by the Boer war. It was the only occasion on which any nefarious attempt was made on the prince's life. The sequel was not reassuring to British feeling. Sipido and three alleged accomplices were put on their trial at Brussels ​on 1 July. The three associates were acquitted, and Sipido was held irresponsible for his conduct. Ordered to be kept under government supervision till he reached the age of twenty-one, he soon escaped to France, whence he was only extradited by the Belgian government after a protest by British ministers. There was much cause for friction at the time between England and Belgium. Not only had the Boer war alienated the Belgian populace like the other peoples of Europe, but the old cordiality between the royal houses had declined. The close h intimacy which had bound Leopold II, Queen Victoria to her uncle the Bei!iaas he lato ki g' Leopold I, had been echoed in the relations between his successor King Leopold II and the prince. But the queen's sense of propriety was offended by reports of her royal cousin's private life, and the charges of cynical cruelty to which his policy in the Congo gave rise in England stimulated the im- patience of the English royal family. After the outrage at Brussels, the prince and King Leopold II maintained only the formalities of social intercourse. The hostile sentiment which prevailed in Europe deterred the prince from attending the Paris International Exhibition of 1900. . This was the only French venture of the kind in the long series of the century which he failed to grace with his presence. As in the case of 1878 he was president of the royal commission for the British section, and he was active in the preliminary organisation. During 1899 he watched in Paris the beginnings of the exhibition buildings. But the temper of France denied him the opportunity of seeing them in their final shape.
IX
Early in 1901 the prince's destiny was at length realised. For some months Queen Victoria's strength had been slowly failing. In the middle of January 1901 physical prostration rapidly grew, and on 20 Jan. her state was critical . The Prince of Wales arrived at Osborne on that day, and was with his mother as life ebbed away. Her last articulate words were an affectionate mention of his name. Whatever had occasioned passing friction between them, her maternal love never knew any diminution. The presence of his nephew, the German emperor, at the death -bed was grateful to the prince and to all members of his family. Queen Victoria died at Osborne at half-past six on the evening of Tuesday, 22 Jan. 1901. Qnen Victoria's
Next morning the new king travelled to London, and at a meeting of the privy council at St. James's Palace took the oaths of sovereignty under the style of Edward VII. ' I am fully determined,' he said, * to be a constitutional sovereign in the strictest sense of the word, and as long as there is breath in my body to work for the good and amelioration of my people.' He explained that he had resolved to be known by the name of Edward, which had been borne by six of his ancestors, not that he undervalued the name of Albert, but that he desired his father's name to stand alone.
King Edward's first speech as sovereign, deliberately and impressively spoken, was made without any notes and without con- sultation with any minister. According The new to n * s h aD i* h e had thought it king and over during his journey, and when he had delivered it he embarrassed the officials by his inability to supply them with a written copy. He had expected a report to be taken, he explained. The published words were put together from memory by some of the councillors and their draft was endorsed by the king. The episode, while it sug- gested a certain unfamiliarity on his part with the formal procedure of the council, showed an independent sense of his new responsibilities. A few days later (29 Jan. 1901) the king issued appropriate addresses to the army and the navy, to his people of the United Kingdom, to the colonies, and to India.
In the ceremonies of Queen Victoria's funeral (2-4 Feb.) the king acted as chief mourner, riding through London behind the bier from Victoria station to Paddington, and walking through the streets of Windsor to St. George's Chapel, where the coffin was first laid. On Monday he again walked in procession from the Albert Memorial Chapel at Windsor to the burial place at the Royal Mausoleum at Froginore. His nephew, the German emperor, was at his side throughout the funeral ceremonies. The emperor's brother, Prince Henry of Prussia, and his son the crown prince were also in the mourning company. Almost the first act of the king's reign was to give public proof of his good relations with his royal kinsmen of Germany. It had been Queen Victoria's intention to invest the crown prince her great-grandson with the order of the Garter. This intention the king now carried out; at the same time he made the Queen Victoria's funeral. ​emperor a field-marshal and Prince Henry a vice-admiral of the fleet. By way of marking his chivalric resolve to associate his wife with all the honour of his new status, he devised at the same time a new distinction in her behalf, appointing her Lady of the Garter (12 Feb. 1901).
His first public function as sovereign was to open in state the new session of parliament on 14 Feb. 1901. This royal duty, which the queen had only performed seven times in the concluding forty years of her reign and for the last time in 1885, chiefly brought the sovereign into public relation with the government of the country. The king during his nine years of rule never omitted the annual ceremony, and he read for himself the speech from the throne. That practice had been dropped by the queen in 1861, and had not been resumed by her.
Queen Victoria had been created Empress of India in 1876, and King Edward was the first British sovereign to succeed to the dignity of Emperor of India. By Act of Parliament (1 Edw. VII, cap. 15) another addition was now made to the royal titles with a view to associating the crown for the first time directly with the colonial empire. He was declared by statute to be King not only of Great Britain and Ireland but of 'the British dominions beyond the seas.' On the new coinage he was styled 'Britt. Omn. Rex,' in addition to the old designations.
Queen Victoria left the new king her private residences of Osborne and Balmoral, but her pecuniary fortune was distributed among the younger members of her family. The king was stated on his accession to have no debts and no capital. Gossip which erroneously credited him with an immense indebtedness ignored his business instincts and the good financial advice which he invariably had at his disposal in the inner circle of his friends. Like Queen Victoria he relinquished on his accession the chief hereditary revenues of the crown, which had grown in value during her reign from 245,000l. to 425,000l. As in 1837, the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall were held, despite radical misgivings, to stand on another footing and to be royal appanages in the personal control of the royal family. The duchy of Lancaster, which produced 60,000l. a year, was reckoned to be the sovereign's private property, and the duchy of Cornwall, which was of like value, that of the heir- apparent. On his ceasing to be Prince of Wales the parliamentary grant to him of 40,000l. lapsed, while the duchy of Cornwall passed to his son. The king's income, in the absence of a new parliamentary grant, was thus solely the 60,000l. from the duchy of Lancaster. The Act of 1889, which provided 36,000l. a year for his children, became void six months after late sovereign's death.
On 5 March a royal message invited the House of Commons to make pecuniary provision for the king and his family. A select committee of twenty-one was appointed on 11 March 1901 to consider the king's financial position. The Irish nationalists declined to serve, but Henry Labouchere represented the radical and labour sections, to whom the cost of the monarchy was a standing grievance. The committee was chiefly constituted of the leaders of the two chief parties in the state. It was finally decided to recommend an annual grant of 470,000l., a sum which was 85,000l. in excess of the income allowed to the late queen. The increase was justified on the ground that a larger sum would be needed for the hospitalities of the court. No special grant was made to Queen Alexandra, but it was understood that 33,000l. would be paid her out of that portion (110,000l.) of the total grant allotted to the privy purse; 70,000l. was secured to her in case of widowhood. The king's son and heir, George, duke of York, who now became duke of Cornwall and York, received an annuity of 20,000l., and his wife, the duchess, received one of 10,000l., with an additional 20,000l. in case of widowhood; the three daughters of the king were given a joint annual income of 18,000l. Some other expenses, like the repair of the royal palaces (18,000l.) and the maintenance of royal yachts (23,000l.), were provided for independently from the Consolidated Fund. The resolutions to these effects were adopted by 250 to 62. They were resisted by the Irish nationalists and by a few advanced radicals, including Henry Labouchere, Mr. Keir Hardie, and Mr. John Burns. Mr. Burns warmly deprecated a royal income which should be comparable with the annual revenues of Barney Barnato [q. v. Suppl. I], Alfred Beit [q. v. Suppl. II], or Mr. Andrew Carnegie. The civil list bill which embodied the resolutions was finally read a third time on 11 June 1901 by 370 against 60, and it became law on 2 July (1 Edw. VII, cap. 4). The generous terms were accepted by the nation with an enthusiasm which proved the sureness of the crown's ​popularity and augured well for the new reign. The Irish opposition was mainly due to a feeling of resentment at the refusal of the government to alter the old terms of the sovereign's accession oath, in which while declaring himself a protestant he cast, in the view of Roman catholics, insult on their faith. Nowhere was there any sign of personal hostility to the new ruler.
The king came to the throne in his sixtieth year endowed with a personality of singular charm and geniality, large worldly experience, wide acquaintance with men and women, versatile interests in society, and philanthropy, enthusiasm for sport, business habits, and a resolve to serve his people to the best of his ability. Among the king's friends there were fears that he would prove himself unequal to his new station, but the anticipations were signally belied. His mother's deliberate
details of his great office and he was too old to repair the neglect of a political training. Nor was he of an age at which it was easy to alter his general mode of life. He cherished a high regard for his mother's statesmanship and political acumen, but he had no full knowledge of the precise manner in which they had been exercised. At the outset there were slight indications that he over-estimated the sovereign's power. In consultation over a king's speech he seemed in some peril of misinterpreting the royal function. But his action was due to inexperience and to no impatience of ministerial advice. Despite his share in two royal commissions he had never studied deeply domestic legislation, and about it he held no well-defined views. He had watched more closely the course of foreign politics. His constant habit of travel, his careful maintenance of good relations with his large foreign kindred, his passion for making the personal acquaintance of interesting men and women on the continent, gave him much knowledge of foreign affairs both political and social. Yet the diplomatic details of foreign policy lay outside his range of study. While he was desirous of full information from his ministers, he soon came to view them as responsible experts whose procedure was rarely matter for much personal comment. The minutes of each cabinet meeting, with which the prime minister supplied the sovereign, usually provoked from Queen Victoria's pen voluminous criticism. King Edward VII usually accepted the prime minister's notes without remark, or if he was moved to avowal of acquiescence or remonstrance, he resorted to a short personal interview. The immense correspondence between the sovereign and the prime minister which continued during Queen Victoria's reign almost ceased, and its place, so far as it was filled at all, was taken by verbal intercourse, of which the king took no note. To appointments and the bestowal of honours he paid closer attention than to legislative measures or details of policy, and he was never neglectful of the interests of his personal friends, but even there he easily and as a rule gracefully yielded his wishes to ministerial counsel. His punctual habits enabled him to do all the formal business that was required of him with despatch. In signing papers and in dealing with urgent correspondence he was a model of promptitude. No arrears accumulated, and although the routine tried his patience, he performed it with exemplary regularity. He encouraged more modern technical methods than his mother had approved. He accepted type-written memoranda from ministers, instead of obliging them as in the late reign to write out everything in their own hands. He communicated with ministers through his chief secretary more frequently than had been customary before. Although he was for most of his life a voluminous letter writer, his penmanship greatly deteriorated in his last years and grew difficult to decipher. When the situation did not admit of an oral communication, he preferred to use a secretary's pen.
It was inevitable that his place in the sphere of government should differ from that of his mother. Queen Victoria for the greater part of her reign was a widow and a recluse, who divided all her thought with unremitting application between politics and family affairs. The new king had wider interests, Without his mother's power of concentration or her tenacity of purpose, he distributed his energies over a more extended field. On acceding to his new dignity there was no lessening of his earlier devotion to sport, society, and other forms of amusement. He was faithful to his old circle of intimate friends and neither reduced nor extended it. His new official duties failed to absorb his whole attention. But it was in the revived splendours and developments of royal ceremonial that to the public eye ​the new reign chiefly differed from the old. Though Queen Victoria had modified her seclusion in her latest years, her age and her dislike of ceremonial functions had combined to maintain the court in much of the gloom in which the prince consort's death had involved it. The new king had a natural gift for the exercise of brilliant hospitality, and he sought to indulge his taste with liberality. London became the headquarters of the court for the first time for forty years. No effort was spared to make it a prominent feature of the nation's social life. Over the ceremonial and hospitable duties of sovereignty the king exercised a full personal control, and there he suffered no invasion of his authority.
The first year of the new reign was a year of mourning for the old. In its course it dealt the royal family another sorrowful blow. The king's eldest sister, the Empress Frederick, was suffering from cancer. On 23 Feb., within a month of his accession, the king left England for the first time during the reign to pay her a visit at Friedrichshof, her residence near Cronberg. They did not meet again. She died on 5 Aug. following. The king with the queen now crossed the Channel again to attend the funeral at Potsdam. Then the king went, according to his custom of thirty years' standing, to a German watering place, Homburg. No change was apparent there in his old habits which ignored strict rules of royal etiquette. Subsequently he joined the queen at Copenhagen, where he met his wife's nephew, the Tsar Nicholas of Russia, and the tsar's mother, the dowager empress, sister of Queen Alexandra. It was a family gathering of the kind which the king had long since been accustomed to attend periodically. As of old, it was wholly innocent of diplomatic intention. But the increased publicity attaching to the king's movements in his exalted station misled some domestic and many foreign observers into the error of scenting a subtle diplomatic purpose in his established practice of exchanging at intervals visits of courtesy with his royal kindred on the European continent. With his insatiable curiosity about men and things, he always liked frank discussion of European politics with foreign statesmen, and he continued the practice till his death. But such debate was scarcely to any greater degree than in earlier years the primary aim of his foreign tours.
Meanwhile the king accepted without change the arrangements already made for
the Ophir in order to open the new commonwealth parliament at Melbourne. On their return journey they visited Natal and Cape Colony, and thence traversed the whole of Canada. The king after a first visit as sovereign to Scotland met them on their arrival at Portsmouth on 1 Nov., and declared the tour to be a new link in the chain which bound the colonial empire to the throne. A few days later he created by letters patent the duke of Cornwall Prince of Wales. It was not easy, suddenly, to break the long association of that title with himself.
On 22 Jan. 1902 the year of mourning for the late queen ended, and court festivities began on a brilliant scale. Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle had been thoroughly overhauled and newly decorated, the former becoming the chief residence of the court. Windsor saw comparatively little of the new king. Sandringham remained his country residence, and he spent a few weeks each autumn at Balmoral, but Osborne he abandoned, giving it over to the nation as a convalescent home for army and navy officers (9 Aug. 1902). Although little of his time was spent at Windsor or Balmoral, he greatly improved the facilities of sport in both places in the interests of his guests.
The first levee of the new reign was held on 11 Feb. at St. James's Palace, and the first evening court on 14 March at Buckingham Palace. The court initiated a new form of royal entertainment; it was held at night amid great magnificence, and replaced the afternoon drawing-rooms of Queen Victoria's reign. A tour in the west of England during March gave the king and queen an opportunity of showing their interest in the navy. At Dartmouth the foundation stone of the new Britannia Naval College was laid, while the queen launched the new battleship Queen at Devonport and the king laid the first plate of the new battleship Edward VII. A few weeks later he made a yachting tour off the west coast, paying a visit to the Scilly Isles on 7 April. The expedition followed a course with which he had familiarised himself in early youth.
Throughout the early period of the reign the nation's political horizon was ​clouded. Not only was the war in South Africa still in progress, but the alienation of foreign public opinion, which was a fruit of the conflict, continued to embarrass England's foreign relations. Neither in France nor Germany had scurrilous caricature of the king ceased. The king had always shown the liveliest sympathy with the British army in the field, and he did not conceal his resentment at the attacks made in England by members of the liberal party during 1901 on the methods of the military operations. On 12 June he presented medals to South African soldiers, and then conferred the same distinction on both Lord Roberts and Lord Milner, who was on leave in England discussing the situation. The king, though he did not interfere with the negotiations, was frank in his expressions of anxiety for peace. It was therefore with immense relief that he received the news that the pacification was signed in South Africa on 31 May 1902. He at once sent messages of thanks to the English plenipotentiaries, Lord Milner, high commissioner for South Africa, and Lord Kitchener, who had lately been in chief military command, and to all the forces who had been actively engaged in the war. On 8 June the king and queen attended a thanksgiving service in St. Paul's.
X
The peace seemed an auspicious prelude to the solemn function of the coronation, which had been appointed for 26 June 1902. The king warmly approved proposals to give the formality exceptional magnificence. Since the last coronation sixty-four years ago the conception of the monarchy had broadened with the growth of the colonial empire. The strength of the crown now lay in its symbolic representation of the idea of imperial unity. There were anachronisms in the ritual, but the central purpose well served the present and the future. Representatives were invited not only from all the colonies but, for the first time, from all manner of administrative institutions—county councils, borough councils, learned societies, friendly societies, and railway companies. The king desired to render the event memorable for the poor no less than for the well-to-do. He gave the sum of 30,000l. for a commemorative dinner to 500,000 poor persons of London, while the queen undertook to entertain the humble class of general servants in the metropolis. Two other episodes lent fresh grace to the ceremony. The king announced his gift of Osborne House to the nation, and he instituted a new order of merit to be bestowed on men of high distinction in the army, navy, science, literature, and art. The order was fashioned on the lines of the Prussian 'pour le mérite' and was a more comprehensive recognition of ability than was known officially in England before. The total official cost of the coronation amounted to the large sum of 359,289l., a sum greatly in excess of the 200,000l. voted by parliament for Queen Victoria's coronation (cf. Blue Book (382), 1909).
A few days before the date appointed for the great ceremony rumours of the
While still convalescent he had his first experience of a change of ministry. Lord Salisbury, whose failing health. counselled retirement from the office of prime minister, had long since decided to resign as soon as peace in South Africa was proclaimed. But when that happy incident arrived he looked forward to retaining his post for the six weeks which intervened before the coronation. The somewhat indefinite postponement of the ceremony led him to carry out his original purpose on 11 July 1902. On his recommendation his place was taken by Lord Salisbury's nephew, Mr. Balfour, who was already leader of the House of Commons. There was no immediate change in the complexion or the policy of the government, and no call for the sovereign's exertion. Although there was little in common between the temperament and training of the king and his first prime minister, the king was sensible of the value of Lord Salisbury's experience and wisdom, and the minister, whose faith in the monarchical principle was strong, showed him on his part a personal deference which he appreciated. The intellectual brillance of Lord Salisbury's successor often dazzled the king, but a thoroughly constitutional conception on each side of their respective responsibilities kept a good understanding alive between them.
​On 9 August the postponed coronation took place in Westminster Abbey. The ritual was The post-somewhat abbreviated, but the poned coro- splendour scarcely diminished, nation, 9 Aug. Although many of the foreign guests had left London, the scene lost little of its impressiveness. The crown was placed on the king's head by Frederick Temple, archbishop of Canterbury. Queen Alexandra was crowned at the same time by W. D. Maclagan, archbishop of York. There followed a series of public functions which aimed at associating with the ceremony various sources of imperial strength. An investiture and parade of colonial troops took place on 12 Aug., a review of Indian troops on 13 Aug., and a naval review at S pithead on 16 Aug. Next day at Cowes the king received visits from the Boer generals Delarey, De Wet, and Botha, who had greatly distinguished themselves in the late war and had come to England to plead on behalf of their conquered country for considerate treatment. The shah of Persia arrived to pay the king his respects three days later. On 22 Aug. the king and queen started for Scotland in the royal yacht Victoria and Albert ; they went by the west coast, and visited on the passage the Isle of Man. On the return of the court to the metropolis, the king made a royal progress through south London (24 Oct.), and lunched with the lord mayor and corporation at the Guildhall. Two days later he attended at St. Paul's Cathedral a service of thanksgiving for his complete restoration to health.
With the close of the South African war England began to emerge from the cloud of animosity in which the popular sentiment of a great part of Europe had enveloped her. There was there ^iG every reason why the king should now gratify his cosmopolitan sympathies and his lively interest in his large circle of kinsmen and friends abroad by renewing his habit of foreign travel. Save during the pro-Boer outbreak of ill-will, he had always been a familiar and welcome figure among .all classes on the continent. His cheering presence invariably encouraged sentiments of good-will, and it was congenial to him to make show of a personal contribution to an improvement of England's relations with her neighbours, and to a strengthening of the general concord. He acknowledged the obligation that lay on rulers and statesmen of preserving European peace ; and he wished England, subject to a fit recognition of her rights, to stand well with the world. At the same time his constitutional position and his personal training disqualified him from exerting substantive influence on the foreign policy which his ministers alone could control. He repeatedly gave abroad graceful expression of general approval of his ministers' aims, and his benevolent assurances fostered a friendly atmosphere, but always without prejudice to his ministers' responsibilities. He cannot be credited with broad diplomatic views, or aptitude for technical negotiation. While he loved conversation with foreign statesmen, his interest in foreign lands ranged far beyond politics. In the intimacies of private intercourse he may have at times advanced a personal opinion on a diplomatic theme which lacked official sanction. But to his unguarded utterances no real weight attached in official circles either at home or abroad. His embodiment in foreign eyes of English aspirations inevitably exaggerated the popular importance of his public activities abroad. The foreign press and public often made during his reign the error of assuming that in his frequent interviews with foreign rulers and statesmen he was personally working out a diplomatic policy of his own devising. Foreign statesmen and rulers knew that no subtler aim really underlay his movements than a wish for friendly social intercourse with them and the enjoyment of life under foreign skies, quite unencumbered by the burden of diplomatic anxieties.
In his eyes all rulers of state were bound together by ties of affinity, and these ties His kinship were strengthened for him by with foreign many bonds of actual kinship, rulers. ^.t his accession the rulers of Germany, Russia, Greece, and Portugal were related to him in one or other degree, and two additions were made to his large circle of royal relatives while he was king. In October 1905 his son-in-law, Prince Charles of Denmark, who had married his youngest daughter, Maud, in 1896, was elected king of Norway (as Haakoii VII) when that country severed its union with Sweden; while on 31 May 1906 Alfonso XITI, king of Spain, married Princess Ena of Battenberg, daughter of the king's youngest sister, Princess Beatrice. There was good justification for the title which the wits of Paris bestowed on him of Toncle de 1'Europe.' Most of the European courts were the homes of his kinsfolk, whose domestic hospitality was always hi readiness for him. In return it gratified his hospitable instinct to ​ welcome his royal relatives beneath his own roof.
To no country of Europe did his attitude as king differ from that which he had adopted while he was prince. To France his devotion was always pronounced. He had delighted in visiting Italy, Russia, Austria, and Portugal. His relations with Germany had always stood on a somewhat Personal peculiar footing, and they, too, relations with underwent small change. They Germany. ^ad k een co i ou red to a larger extent than his other foreign connections by the personal conditions of family kinship. Since the Danish war, owing to the influence of his wife and her kindred, he had never professed in private much sympathy with German political ambitions. The brusque speech and manner, too, with which Bismarck invariably treated the English royal family had made German policy uncongenial to them. Despite the king's affection for his nephew, the German emperor, short seasons of domestic variance between the two were bound to recur, and the private differences encouraged the old-standing coolness in political sentiment. But the king was never long estranged from his nephew. He was thoroughly at home with Germans and when he went among them evoked their friendly regard. No deliberate and systematic hostility to the German people could be truthfully put to the king's credit. His personal feeling was very superficially affected by the mutual jealousy which, from causes far beyond his control, grew during his reign between the two nations.
While ambitious to confirm as king the old footing which he had enjoyed on the European continent as prince, his conservative instinct generated involuntary misgivings of England's friendship with peoples outside the scope of his earlier experience. He was startled by to Japan? de so novel a diplomatic step as the alliance with Japan, which was concluded during the first year of his reign (12 Feb. 1902) and was expanded later (27 Sept. 1905). But he was reassured on learning of the age and dignity of the reigning Japanese dynasty. When the Anglo -Japanese arrangement was once effected he lent it all the advantage of his loyal personal support. He entertained the Japanese Prince and Princess Arisugawa on their visit to London, and conferred on the prince the distinction of G.C.B. (27 June 1905). In 1906, too, after the Russo-Japanese war, he admitted to the Order of Merit the Japanese heroes of the conflict, Field-marshals Yamagata and Oyama, and Admiral Togo.
XI
Family feeling solely guided the king's first steps in the foreign arena. After his eldest sister's death the king and emperor made open avowal of mutual affection. The German On 26 Jan ' 1902 the Prince of emperorat Wales was the emperor's guest Sf adl 5& in ' at Berlin for his birthday, and on the king s coronation the emperor made him an admiral of the German fleet. At the end of the year, on 8 Nov. 1902, the emperor arrived at Sandringham to attend the celebration of his uncle's sixty-first birthday. He re- mained in England twelve days, and had interviews with the prime minister and the foreign secretary. Details of diplomacy were not the theme of the uncle and nephew's confidences. Rumours to a contrary effect were current early next year, when the two countries made a combined naval demon- stration hi order to coerce the recalcitrant president of the Venezuelan republic, who had defied the just claims of both England and Germany. It was imagined in some quarters that the king on his own initiative had committed his ministers to the joint movement in an informal conversation with the emperor at Sandringham. Much wrang- ling had passed between the statesmen and the press of the two countries. But the apparently sudden exchange of a campaign of altercation for concerted action to meet a special emergency was no exceptional diplomatic incident.
The spring of 1903 saw the first foreign tour of the king's reign and his personal introduction to the continent in his new role. On 31 March 1903 he left Portsmouth harbour on board the royal yacht the Victoria and Albert, on a five o^iQoa 1 * weeks' cruise, in the course of which he visited among other places Lisbon, Rome, and Paris. The expedition was a vacation exercise, which gave him the opportunity of showing friendly courtesy to foreign rulers and peoples. He went on his own initiative. His travelling companions were members of his own household, who were personal Thestatugin fri nda - There was also in his his suite of retinue a member of the per-Mr. Charles manent staff of the foreign Hardmge. offi( ^ ^ H(m Charles Hardinge, assistant under-secretary there. Mr. Hardinge, who was made K.C.V.O. and K.C.M.G. in 1904, and Baron Hardinge of ​Penshurst in 1910, served as British ambassador at St. Petersburg from 1904 to 1906 and was permanent under-secretary at the foreign office from 1906 till the king's death. While he was attached to the foreign office, he usually accompanied the king on his foreign tours, and the precise capacity in which he travelled with the sovereign occa- sionally raised a constitutional controversy, which the true facts deprived of genuine substance. The presence of the foreign minister or at any rate of a cabinet minister was necessary to bring any effective diplo- matic negotiation within the range of the king's intercourse with Ms foreign hosts. Mr. Hardinge was personally agreeable to the king. He was well fitted to offer advice or information which might be of service in those talks with foreign rulers or statesmen on political themes in which the sovereign occasionally indulged. He could also record suggestions if the need arose for the perusal of the foreign minister. In debates in the House of Commons some ambiguity and constitutional irregularity were imputed to Mr. Hardinge's status in the king's suite, but it was made clear that no ministerial responsibilities devolved either on the king or on him during the foreign tours, and that the foreign policy of the country was unaffected by the royal progresses (Hansard, 23 July 1903 and 4 June 1908).
The king's route of 1903 was one with which he was familiar. His first landing- place was Lisbon, where he was Jon ' the guest of King Carlos. The two monarchs complimented each other on their lineal ties and on the ^ancient alliance between their two countries. After short visits to Gibraltar and Malta, the king disembarked at Naples on 23 April, and four days later reached Rome. The good relations which had always subsisted between England and Italy had been little disturbed by pro-Boer prejudice. The Roman populace received King Edward with enthusiasm, and he exchanged with King Victor Emanuel professions of warm friendship. With characteristic tact the king visited Pope Leo XIII at the Vatican, where he had thrice before greeted Pope Pius IX. From Rome the king passed with no small gratification to his favourite city of Paris for the first time after more than three years. He came at an opportune moment. The French foreign minister, M. Delcasse, had for some time been seeking a diplo- matic understanding with England, which should remove the numerous points of 'riction between the two countries in Egypt, Morocco, and elsewhere. The king's ministers were responsive, and his visit to Paris, although it was paid independently England's of the diplomatic issue, was diplomatic well calculated to conciliate ^ rencn P UDUC opinion, which was slow in shedding its pro-Boer venom. On the king's arrival the temper of the Parisian populace looked doubtful (1 May), but the king's demeanour had the best effect, and in his reply to an address from the British chamber of com- merce on his first morning in Paris he spoke so aptly of the importance of developing good relations between the two countries that there was an immediate renewal of the traditional friendliness which had linked him to the Parisians for near half a century. The king and Tiie president, M. Loubet, and President M. Delcasse did everything to Loubet. enhance the cordiality of the welcome. The president entertained the king at a state banquet at the Elysee and the speeches of both host and guest gave voice to .every harmonious sentiment. The king accompanied the president to the Theatre Fran9ais, to a military review at Vincennes, and to the races at Long- champs. He did not neglect friends of the old regime, and everywhere he declared his happiness in strengthening old ties. His words and actions closely resembled those which marked his visit to Paris under Marshal MacMahon's auspices in 1878. But, in view of his new rank and the recent political discord, the episode was generally regarded as the propitious heralding of a new departure. On 5 May he returned to London and was warmly received.
The king lost no time in returning the hospitalities of his foreign hosts. On 6 July President President Loubet came to Loubet in London to stay at St. James's London, Palace as the king's guest, and y ' M. Delcasse was his companion. Friendly negotiations between the two governments took a step forward. On The king's ^ Nov. the king and queen royal guests, of Italy were royal guests at Windsor, and were followed just a year later by the king and queen of Portugal. There was nothing in the visits of the foreign sovereigns to distinguish them from the ordinary routine of courtesy. The visit of the president of the French republic was unprecedented. It was proof of the desire of France to make friends with England and of the king's sympathy ​with the aspiration. M. Delcasse's policy soon bore practical fruit ; on 14 Oct. 1903 an arbitration treaty was signed by the two governments. Its provisions did not go far, but it indicated a new spirit in the international relation. The Anglo-French The entente agreement, which was concluded cordial e, on 8 April 1904 between M. 8 April loo-i. Delcasse and Lord Lansdowne, the English foreign secretary, was an instrument of genuine consequence. It formally terminated the long series of difficulties which had divided England and France in many parts of the world, and was a guarantee against their recurrence. The king's grace of manner both as guest and host of President Loubet helped to create a temper favourable to the ' entente cordiale.' But no direct responsibility for its initiation or conclusion belonged to him. Some French journalists who were oblivi- ous of his aloofness from the detail of state business placed the understanding to his credit, and bestowed pa'SEteur.- *>*. th *J { . '. le roi pacificateur. The title is sym- bolically just but is misleading if it be taken to imply any personal control of diplomacy.
It was not the king's wish to withhold from Germany and the German emperor, whatever the difficulties between the two governments, those attentions which it had been his habit to exchange with his nephew from the opening of the emperor's reign. On 29 June 1904 the king sailed for Kiel in his yacht Victoria and Albert, attended by an escort of naval vessels. He was received by the emperor with much cor- diality, visited under his nephew's guidance the German dockyards, attended a regatta off Kiel, and lunched at Hamburg with the burgomaster. In his intercourse with the German emperor it flattered the king's pride to give to their meetings every show of dignity, and contrary to his usual practice a cabinet minister now joined his suite. The presence of Lord Selborne, first lord of the admiralty, gave the expedi- tion something of the formal character of a friendly naval demonstration, but no political significance attached to the inter- change of civilities. An arbitration treaty with Germany of the same tenour as that with France was signed on 12 July 1904, but such a negotiation was outside the king's sphere of action. The failure of the Kiel visit to excite any ill-feeling in France indicated the purely external part which his charm of manner and speech was known to play in international affairs.
The king's habitual appetite for foreign tours was whetted by his experience in Hanue of the the spring of 1903. While king's foreign constant movement character- travel, i^ his life at home, and a business-like distribution of his time enabled him to engage in an unending round of work and pleasure through the greater part of his reign, he spent on an average some three months of each year out of his dominions. His comprehensive travels did not embrace the colonies or depen- dencies outside Europe, but his son and heir, who had visited the colonies in 1901, made a tour through India (Nov. 1905-May 1906), and the king thus kept vicariously in touch with his Indian as well as with his colonial subjects. His travelling energy was freely lavished on countries nearer at hand. Five or six weeks each spring were spent at Biarritz, and a similar period each autumn at Marienbad. These sojourns were mainly designed in the interests of health. But with them were combined four cruises in the Mediterranean (1905, 6, 7, and 1909) and one cruise in the North Sea (1908), all of which afforded opportunities of pleasurable recreation, and of meetings with foreign rulers. In addition, he paid in the winter of 1907 a visit to Prussia and in the summer of 1908 one to Russia. Such frequent wanderings from home greatly increased the king's foreign reputa- tion. It was only occasionally that he paid visits to foreign courts in the panoply of state. He travelled for the most part incognito. Few episodes, how- ever, of his migrations escaped the notice of the journalists, who sought persistently to confirm the erroneous impression that he was invariably engaged on a diplomatic mission.
In Paris he resumed his old career. Each year, on his way to or from the south, HI* social ke revisited the city, seeing old circle in friends and indulging in old Paris. amusements. In meetings with the president of the French republic and his ministers he repeated his former assurances of amity. When M. Loubet retired in January 1906, he showed equal warmth of feeling for his successor, M. Failures, to whom he paid the courtesy of a state visit (3 May). In the summer of 1908 he had the satisfaction of entertaining the new president in London with the same ceremony as was accorded to his predecessor in 1904. He was loyal to all his French acquaintances new and old. On M. Delcasse's ​fall from power in June 1905 he continued to exchange friendly visits with him during his later sojourns in the French capital. M. Clemenceau, who became prime minister in October 1906, and held office for nearly three years, was reared in Gam- betta's political school, members of which had always interested the king since his pleasant meetings with their chief. M. Clemenceau was the king's guest at Marien- bad on 15 Aug. 1909. Political principles counted for little in his social intercourse. He was still welcomed with the same cordiality by representatives of the fashion- able royalist noblesse as by republican statesmen. A modest estimate was set on his political acumen when in informal talk he travelled beyond safe generalities. An irresponsible suggestion at a private party in Paris that the entente ought to be con- verted into a military alliance met with no response. Nor was much heed paid to some vague comment which fell from his lips on the intricate problem of the relations of the European powers on the north coast of Africa. But every- one in France appreciated his French sym- pathies and acknowledged his personal fascination.
His cruises to the Mediterranean during these years took him to Algiers in 1905, Mediterranean and to Athens and the Greek cruises, 1905, archipelago in April 1906 ; at 19 ^ 6 '1907, Athens, where he was the guest of his brother-in-law, King George I, he witnessed the Olympic games. In 1907 he landed from his yacht at Cartagena to meet the young king of Spain, who had married his niece the year before. Twice in the course of the same journey he also met the king of Italy, first at Gaeta (18 April), and secondly on the return journey by rail outside Rome (30 April). Two years later (1909) he enjoyed similar experiences, meeting the king of Spain at San Sebastian and Biarritz, and the king of Italy at Baiae ; then he also visited Malta and Sicily, besides Pompeii and other environs of Naples. In April 1908 he cruised in the North Sea, and he visited in state the three northern courts of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, In Denmark he was a familiar figure. To the new kingdom of Norway, where his son-in-law reigned, he went for the first time. At Stockholm he had been the frequent guest of earlier Swedish kings while he was Prince of Wales.
During a single year, 1905, the German emperor and the king failed to exchange In the Baltic. hospitalities. Germany lay outside the ubiquitous route of his pleasure cruises, Temporar and circumstance s deterred the estrangement kin g fr m deliberately seeking from the personal intercourse with his Slw. nephew. For the continued friction between Germany and England the king had no sort of responsibility. But the emperor was for the moment inclined to credit his uncle with want of sympathy, and there followed one of those short seasons of estrangement to which their intimacy was always liable. Reports of unguarded remarks from the royal lips in the course of 1905 which reached the emperor from Paris had for him an unfriendly sound. Meanwhile the German press lost no opportunity of treating the king as a declared enemy of Germany. The king's voyages were held to be shrewd moves in a diplomatic game which sought German humiliation. The meetings of the king with the king of Italy were misconstrued into a personal attempt on the king's part to detach Italy from the triple alliance. The interview at Gaeta in April 1907 was Misappre- especially denounced as part hensionsin o f the king's Machiavellian design of an elaborate coalition from which Germany was to be excluded. Adverse comment was passed on his apparent desire to avoid a meeting with the emperor. He was represented as drawing a cordon round Germany in the wake of his foreign journeys, and there were even German politicians who professed to regard him as a sort of Bismarck who used the velvet glove instead of the iron hand. He was deemed capable of acts of conciliation to suit his dark purposes. It was pretended that, with a view to soothing German irritation for his own objects, he by his own hand excised from the official instructions to the English delegates at the Hague conference (June 1907) his ministers' orders to raise the question of a general reduction of armaments. Serious French publicists well knew the king to be innocent of any such wiles. French caricaturists, who made merry over his * fievre voyageuse,' only echoed the German note in a satiric key. They pictured the king as a * polype Europeen ' which was clutching in its tentacles all the sovereigns of Europe save the German emperor, without prejudice to the international situation.
The German fancies were complete delusions. The king had no conception of any readjustment of the balance of European power. There was no serious quarrel ​between emperor and king. The passing cloud dispersed. On 15 Aug. 1906 the At Friedricijs- kin visited the emperor at hof, is Aug. Friedrichshof near Cronberg on his journey to Marienbad, and a general conversation which only dealt in part with politics put matters on a right footing. Sir Frank Lascelles, the English ambassador at Berlin, who had accom- panied the king from Frankfort, was present at the interview. Just a year later (14 Aug. 1907) a like meeting at Wilhelms- hohe renewed the friendly intercourse, and in the same year the German emperor and empress paid a state visit to Windsor (11-18 Nov.). The emperor exerted all his charm on his host and his fellow guests. The formal speeches of both emperor and king abounded in felicitous assurances of good-will. During the emperor's stay at Windsor the king gathered about him as imposing an array of royal personages as ever assembled there. On 17 November he entertained at lun- cheon twenty-four men and women of royal rank, including the king and queen of Spain, Queen Amelie of Portugal, and many members of the Orleans and Bourbon families, who had met in England to celebrate the marriage o"f Prince Charles of Bourbon to Princess Louise of Orleans. The entertainment showed the king at the head of the royal caste of Europe, and attested his social power of reconciling discordant elements. The emperor remained in England till 11 December, sojourning privately at Highcliffe near Bournemouth on leaving Windsor. Again on his way to Marienbad the king spent another pleasant day with the emperor at Friedrichshof (11 August 1908). King Edward returned the German emperor's formal . . ., WTT* i -r-i i visit to Windsor in February 1909, when he and the queen stayed in Berlin. For the second time during his reign a cabinet minister bore him company on a foreign expedition. At Kiel some four years earlier the first lord of the admiralty, Lord Sel borne, had been in the king's suite when he met his nephew. The king was now attended by the earl of Crewe, secretary for the colonies. On neither of the only two occasions when a cabinet minister attended the king abroad did the foreign minister go. In both instances the minister's presence was of compli- mentary rather than of diplomatic signi- ficance, and was a royal concession to the German emperor's love of ceremonial observance. The king's Berlin expedition did not differ from his visits of courtesy to other foreign capitals.
With the aged emperor of Austria, whom he had known and liked from boyhood, and in whose dominions he had often sojourned, the king was equally desirous of repeating friendly greetings in person. He paid the emperor a visit at Gmiinden on his way out to Marienbad in August 1905, and on each of the two meetings with Meetings will. * he German A emperor at Cron the emperor berg, m August 1907 and of Austria, August 1908, he went the next day to Tschl to offer salutations to Emperor Francis Joseph. All these meetings fell within the period of the king's usual autumn holiday. But on his second visit to Ischl the emperor of Austria entertained him to a state banquet, and Baron von Aerenthal, who was in attendance on his master, had some political conversation on affairs in Turkey and the Balkan provinces with Sir Charles Hardinge, who was in King Edward's retinue. But the king's concern with the diplomatic problem was remote. He was once more illustrating his zeal for ratifying by personal intercourse the wide bounds of his friendships with European sovereigns.
On the same footing stood the only visit which the king paid to the tsar of Russia The visit during his reign. He made to Russia, with the queen a special journey June 1908. (9 June 1908) ^ Reval> l t was the first visit ever paid to Russia by a British sovereign. It followed his cruise round the other northern capitals, and the king regarded as overdue the personal civility to the tsar, who was nephew of his wife, and to whom he was deeply attached. The tsar had been driven from his capital by revolutionary agitation and was in his yacht off Reval. The interview proved thoroughly cordial. French journalists hailed it with satisfaction ; Germans scented in it a new menace, but the journey was innocent of diplomatic purpose. Objection was raised in the House of Commons that the king's visit showed sympathy with the tsar's alleged oppression of his revolutionary subjects. The suggestion moved the king's resentment. He acknowledged no connection between a visit to a royal kinsman and any phase of current political agitation. The unrest in Russia was no concern of his, and only awoke in him sympathy with the ruler whose life it oppressed. Unwisely the king took notice of the parliamentary criticism of his action, and cancelled the invitation to a royal garden party ​(20 June) of three members of parliament, who had questioned his prudence. His irritation soon passed away, but his mode of avowing annoyance was denounced by the labour party 'as an attempt by the court to influence members of parliament.' It was the only occasion during the reign on which the king invited any public suspicion of misinterpreting his constitutional position. The criticism to which he was subjected was due to a misunderstanding of the character of his foreign tours, but the interpellation was no infringement of public right.
He was hardly conscious of the deep-seated feeling which the alleged tyranny of the Russian government had excited in many quarters in England. When in the customary course of etiquette the king received the tsar as his guest at Cowes in August the tsar in 1909 a fresh protest against his friendly attitude took the form of an influentially signed letter to the foreign secretary. But politics did not influence the king's relations with the tsar. The tsar was accompanied at Cowes by his foreign minister, M. Isvolsky; but as far as the king was concerned, the visit was solely a confirmation of old personal ties with the Russian sovereign, and lengthened impressively the roll of European rulers whom he sought to embrace in his comprehensive hospitality.
With the perilous vicissitudes of royalty the king naturally had a lively sympathy, and he suffered a severe shock on learning of the assassination of his friend and cousin and recent guest, King Carlos of Portugal, and of his son the crown prince
assembly of royal personages at Windsor less than three months before. By way of emphasising their intense sorrow the king and queen and other members of the royal family defied precedent by attending a requiem mass at St. James's church, Spanish Place, near Manchester Square, on 8 Feb. in memory of the murdered monarch. It was the first time that an English sovereign had attended a Roman catholic service in Great Britain since the Reformation. By the king's wish, too, a memorial service was held next day in St. Paul's cathedral, which he and his family also attended. Both houses of parliament presented an address to the crown expressing indignation and deep concern at the outrages. The king's heartfelt sympathy went out to the new king of Portugal, the late king's younger son, Manoel, and in November next year he entertained the young monarch at Windsor, investing him with the order of the Garter, and greeting him at a state banquet on 16 Nov. as 'the heir of our oldest ally in history.' King Manoel was King Edward's last royal guest. There was some irony in the circumstance. King Manoel's royal career was destined to be brief, and within five months of King Edward's death his subjects established a republic and drove him from his throne to seek an asylum in England.
XII
Although so substantial a part of his reign was passed abroad, the king manifested activity in numberless directions when he was at home. From London, which was his headquarters, he made repea tedexpeditions into the country. As of old he was regular in attendance at Newmarket and other race meetings. Although he did not repeat during the reign his early triumphs on the turf, the successes of his horse Minoru, who won the Derby in 1909, greatly delighted the sporting public. He encouraged the opera and the theatres by frequent attendance. He was lavish in entertainment at Buckingham Palace and freely accepted hospitalities at the London houses of his friends. He was indefatigable in paying attention to foreign visitors to the capital, especially those of royal rank. When the duke of Abruzzi came at the end of 1906 to lecture to the Royal Geographical Society on his explorations of the Ruwenzori mountains in east Africa, the king was present and with impromptu grace and manifest desire to prove his interest in foreign policy moved a vote of thanks to the lecturer, whom he hailed as a kinsman of his ally the king of Italy (2 Jan. 1907). At stated seasons he was the guest for shooting or merely social recreation at many country houses, where he met at ease his unchanging social circle. From 1904 to 1907 he spent a week each January with the duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth. In the autumn he went a round of Scottish mansions.
While unremitting in his devotion to social pleasures, he neglected few of the philanthropic or other public movements with which he had already identified himself. Occasionally his foreign tours withdrew him from functions which could only be performed effectively at ​home. During the colonial conference of 1907 he was away from England, but he returned in time to entertain the colonial premiers at dinner on 8 May. On his birthday later in the year (9 Nov.) he received as a gift from the Transvaal people the Cullinan diamond, the largest diamond known, which was a notable tribute to the efficiency of the new 'settlement of south Africa. Two sections of the magnificent stone were set in the royal crown.
Every summer the king was at work both in London and the provinces, laying foundation stones and opening new public institutions. In London and the neighbourhood his varied engagements included the inaugurations of St. Saviour's cathedral, SJSfein Southwark (3 July 1905); of London and the new streets Kingsway and E*ft25L<, Aldwych (18 Oct. 1905); of hood, 1905-9. Museum, South Kensington (22 June 1909), and the laying of the first stone of the new buildings of the Imperial College of Science and Technology, South Kensington (8 July 1909).
To his earlier interests in medicine and therapeutics he was always faithful. On 3 Nov. 1903 he laid the foundation stone of the King Edward Sanatorium for Con- sumption at Midhurst, and he opened the building on 13 June 1906. He gave abundant proofs of his care for general hospitals ; he opened a new wing of the London Hospital (11 June 1903) and laid foundation stones of the new King's College Hospital, Denmark Hill (20 July 1909), and of the new King Edward Hospital at Windsor (22 June 1908). His broad sympathies with philanthropic agencies he illustrated by receiving at Buckingham Palace ' General ' Booth of the Salvation Army (22 June 1904) and Pre- bendary Carlile, head of the Church Army ( 13 Jan. 1905). His veteran interest in the housing of the poor led him to pay a visit (18 Feb. 1903) to the L.C.C. model dwellings at Millbank, and he showed a characteristic anxiety to relieve the sufferings of poverty by giving 2000 guineas to Queen Alexandra's Unemployment Fund (17 Nov. 1905).
In the country his public labours were year by year even more conspicuous. On 19 July 1904 he laid the foundation stone of the new Liverpool cathedral ; and inaugur- Pubiic at d the new King's Dock at engagements Swansea (20 July) and the new S^SE? 11 " water supply for Birmingham at Rhayader (21 July). A year later he visited Sheffield to instal the new university, and he went to Manchester to open a new dock of the Manchester Ship Canal and to unveil the war memorial at Salford. On 10 July 1906 he opened the high-level bridge at Newcastle, and later new buildings at Marischal College, Aberdeen (28 Sept.). In 1907 he laid the foundation stones of new buildings of University College of Wales at Bangor (9 July) and opened Alexandra Dock at Cardiff (13 July). In 1908 he opened the new university buildings at Leeds (7 July) and the new dock at Avonmouth, Bristol (9 July). In 1909 he returned to Manchester to open the new infirmary (6 July), and then passed on to Birmingham to inaugurate the new university buildings. His last public phil- anthropic function was to lay the corner stone of a new wing of the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital at Norwich (25 Oct. 1909). To the public schools he showed as before many marks of favour. He twice visited Eton, on 13 June 1904, and agin on 18 Nov 1908 when he opened the hall and library, which formed the South African war memorial there. He was at Harrow School on 30 June 1905, and he opened the new buildings of University College School, Hampstead, on 26 July 1907, and a new speech room at Rugby on 3 July 1909. To Wellington College, founded by his father, he remained a frequent visitor, and on 21 June 1909 he attended the celebration of the college's jubilee. He proved his friendly intimacy with the headmaster, Dr. Bertram Pollock, by nominating him, as his personal choice, just before his death in 1910, to the bishopric of Norwich. It was the diocese in which lay his country seat.
To Ireland, where, in spite of political disaffection, the prince's personal charm had always won for him a popular welcome, he gave as king evidence of the kindliest feeling. In July 1903 he and the queen paid their first visit in their capacity of sovereigns soon after his first foreign tour. They landed at Kingstown on 31 July. Although the Dublin corporation refused by forty votes to thirty-seven to present an address, the people showed no lack of cordiality. The king with customary tact spoke of the very recent death of Pope Leo XIII whom he had lately visited, and he bestowed his favours impartially on protestant and Roman catholic. The catholic archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Walsh, attended a levee, and the king visited Maynooth College. He subsequently went north to stay with Lord Londonderry at Mount Stewart, and after a visit to Belfast made a yachting tour The king in Ireland. ​round the west coast, making inland excursions by motor. Coming south, he inspected the exhibition at Cork, and on leaving Queenstown on 1 August issued an address of thanks to the Irish people for his re- ception. He expressed a sanguine belief that a brighter day was dawning upon Ireland. There was good ground for the anticipation, for the Land Purchase Act which was passed during the year gave promise of increased prosperity.
A second visit to Ireland of a more private character followed in the spring of 1904 and confirmed the good impression of the first visit. Two visits of the sovereign in such rapid succession were unknown to recent Irish history. The king was now the guest of the duke of Devonshire at Lismore Castle, and of the marquis of Ormonde at Kilkenny Castle, and he attended both the Punches- town and Leopardstown races. His chief public engagement was the laying the foundation stone of the new buildings of the Royal College of Science at Dublin (25 April-4 May). A third and last visit to Ireland took place in July 1907, when the king and queen opened at Dublin the International Exhibition (10 July). The popular reception was as enthusiastic as before.
In his relations with the army and the navy he did all that was required of their Eeiations titular head. Like his mother with the army he was prouder of his asso- andnavy. ciation with the army than with the navy, but he acknowledged the need of efficiency in both services, and attached vast importance to details of etiquette and costume. He was an annual visitor at Aldershot, and was indefatigable in the distribution of war medals and new regimental colours. He did not study closely the principles or practice of army or navy organisation and he deprecated breaches with tradition. But he put no real obstacles in the way of the effective application of expert advice. He received daily reports of the army commission inquiry at the close of the South African war (1902-3), which led to extensive changes. The chief military reform of his reign was the formation in 1907 by Mr. (afterwards Viscount) Haldane of a territorial army. The king shared Queen Victoria's dislike of any plan that recalled Cromwell's regime, and he mildly demurred to the employment of Cromwell's term, ' County Association,' in the territorial scheme. But he was flattered by the request to inaugurate personally the new system. On 26 Oct. 1907 he summoned the ma faith in Lord Fisher. lord-lieutenants of the United Kingdom to Buckingham Palace, and addressed them on the new duties that h * d been imposed on them as officers of the new territorial army. Twice in 1909 on 19 June at Windsor and on 5 July at Knowsley he presented colours to territorial regiments. His attitude to measures was always con- ditioned to a large extent by his interest in the men who framed them, and his liking for Mr. Haldane, the war minister who created the territorial army, mainly inspired his personal patronage of the movement. In the navy the same sentiment was at work. His faith in Lord Fisher, who played a leading part in the re-organisation of the navy during the reign, reconciled him to alterations which often conflicted with his conservative predilections. A large in- crease in the navy took place while he was king, and one of his last public acts was to review in the Solent on 31 July 1909 an imposing assembly of naval vessels by way of a royal benediction on recent naval policy. In home politics the king was for the most part content with the role of onlooker. His position He realised early that the in home constitution afforded him mere politics. formalities of supervision which required no close application. He failed to persuade his ministers to deal with the housing question. Few other problems of domestic legislation interested him deeply, and he accepted without searching comment his ministers' proposals. To complicated legislative details he paid small heed, and although he could offer shrewd criticism on a subsidiary point which casually caught his eye or ear, he did not invite elaborate explanation. His conservative instinct enabled him to detect intuitively the dangers underlying political innovations, but he viewed detachedly the programmes of all parties.
When the tariff reform controversy arose in 1903 he read in the press the chief pleas of the tariff reformers, and remarked that it would be difficult to obtain popular assent to a tax on bread. He deprecated licensing reform which pressed unduly on the brewer and he was displeased with political oratory which appealed to class prejudice and excited in the poor unwarranted hopes. He was unmoved by the outcry against Chinese labour in south Africa. He was not in favour of woman's suffrage.
Disapproval of political action usually took the shape of a general warning addressed to the prime minister. In filling all ​offices he claimed to be consulted, and freely placed his knowledge and judgment of persons at his minister's disposal. But, save occasionally where he wished to serve a friend in a military, naval, colonial, diplomatic, or ecclesiastical promotion, the minister's choice was practically unfettered. The personal machinery of government interested him, however, more than its legislative work or policy, but he effected little of importance even in that direction. When in 1904 resignations rent asunder Mr. Balfour's ministry and reconstruction became necessary, the king made some endeavour to repair the breaches. He sought to overcome in a powerful quarter hesitation to co-operate with Mr. Balfour. But to the king's disappointment nothing came of his effort. It was one of many illustrations of his virtual powerlessness to influence political events.
On 5 Dec. 1905 the king accepted Mr. Balfour's resignation, and admitted to office his third prime minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman [q. v. Suppl. II],Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, prime minister 5. Dec. 1905 the leader of the liberal party. The change of ministry was emphatically ratified by the general election of January 1906, and the liberals remained in power till the king's death. The fall of the conservatives caused the king little disquiet. The return of the liberals to office after a ten years' exclusion seemed to him to be quite fair, and to maintain a just equilibrium between opposing forces in the state. His relations with Gladstone had shown that a distrust of the trend of liberal policy need be no bar to friendly intimacy with liberal leaders. He had slightly known Campbell-Bannerman as minister of war in the last liberal administration of 1892-5. But the politician's severe strictures on military operations in south Africa during 1901 had displeased the king. Early in the reign he had hesitated to meet him at a private dinner party, but he suppressed his scruples and the meeting convinced him of Campbell-Bannerman's sincere anxiety to preserve the peace of Europe, while his Scottish humour attracted him.
With constitutional correctness the king abstained from interference in the construction of the new cabinet, and he received the new ministers with open-minded serenity. The innovation of including The liberal among them a labour member, ministry of Mr. John Burns, was not uncongenial to him. His earlier relations with Mr. Broadhurst and Mr. Arch taught him the prudence of bestowing responsible positions on representatives of labour. Mr. Burns personally interested him, and he was soon on cordial terms with him. With another of the liberal ministers, Lord Carrington, afterwards marquis of Lincolnshire, minister for agriculture, he had been intimate since boyhood. Mr. Herbert Gladstone, home secretary, was a son of his old friend. Mr. Haldane, secretary for war, whose genial temper and grasp of German life and learning appealed to him, quickly became a persona grata. With the ministers in other posts he found less in common, and he came into little contact with them, save in ceremonial functions.
The grant by the new ministry of self-government to the newly conquered provinces of south Africa excited the king's serious misgivings, and he feared a surrender of the fruits of the late war. But he contented himself with a remonstrance, and there was no diminution of his good relations with the liberal prime minister. After little more than two years of power Campbell-Bannerman fell ill, and from February 1908 his strength slowly failed. Just before setting out on his #annual visit to Biarritz the king took farewell of the statesman at his official residence in Downing Street (4 March 1908).Mr. Asquith prime minister 8 April 1908. The king manifested the kindliest sympathy with his dying servant. A month later the prime minister forwarded his resignation, and recommended as his successor Mr. Asquith, the chancellor of the exchequer. The king was still at Biarritz, and thither Mr. Asquith travelled to surrender his old place and to be admitted to the headship of the government. There was a murmur of dissatisfaction that so important a function of state as the installation of a new prime minister should be performed by the king in a foreign hotel. Nothing of the kind had happened before in English history. The king's health was held to justify the breach of etiquette. But the episode brought into strong relief the king's aloofness from the working of politics and a certain disinclination hastily to adapt his private plans to political emergencies.
Mr. Asquith's administration was rapidly formed without the king's assistance. It Mr. Asquith's ministry. mainly differed from that of his predecessor by the elevation of Mr. Lloyd George to the chancellorship of the exchequer and the admission of Mr. Winston Churchill to the cabinet. Neither appointment evoked ​royal enthusiasm. Mr. Lloyd George's speeches in the country often seemed to the king reckless and irresponsible Mr. Churchill's father, Lord Randolph had long been a close friend. Knowing the son from his cradle, the king found difficult to reconcile himself to the fact that he was a grown man fitted for high office, With his new prime minister he was a1 once in easy intercourse, frankly and briefly expressing to him his views on current business, and suggesting or criticising appointments. While he abstained from examining closely legislative details, and while he continued to regard his ministers actions as matters for their own discretion, he found little in the ministerial propo sals to command his personal approval. Especially did Mr. Lloyd George's budget of 1909, which imposed new burdens Attitude to on l an ded and other property, the budget cause him searchings of heart, of 1909. But his tact did not permit him to forgo social courtesies to ministers whose policy seemed to him dangerous. In society he often gave those of them whose political conduct he least approved the fullest benefit of his charm of manner.
XIII
Domestic politics in the last part of his reign brought the king face to face with a Conflict with cons titutional problem for which the House he had an involuntary distaste, of Lords. All disturbance of the existing constitution was repugnant to him. In view of the active hostility of the upper chamber to liberal legislation, the liberal government was long committed to a revision of the powers of the House of Lords. The king demurred to any alteration in the status or composition of the upper house, which in tys view, as in that of his mother, was a bulwark of the hereditary principle of monarchy. A proposal on the part of conservative peers to meet the outcry against the House of Lords by converting it partly or wholly into an elective body conflicted as directly with the king's predilection as the scheme for restricting its veto. The king deprecated the raising of the question in any form.
In the autumn of 1909 a very practical turn was given to the controversy by the lords' threats to carry their antagonism to the year's budget to the length of rejecting it. Despite his dislike of the budget, the king believed the lords were herein meditating a tactical error. He resolved for The king's desire for a peaceful solution. the first time to exert his personal influence to prevent what he judged to be a political disaster. He hoped to exert the reconciling power which his mother em- ployed in 1870 and again in 1884, when the two houses of parliament were in collision : in the first year over the Irish church dis- establishment bill, in the second year over the extension of the franchise. The circum- stances differed. In neither of the earlier crises was the commons' control of finance in question. Nor was the king's habit of mind as well fitted as his mother's for the persuasive patience essential to success in a difficult arbitration. The conservative peers felt that the king was in no position, whatever happened, to give their house pro- tection from attack, and that he was prone by temperament to unquestioning assent to ministerial advice, which was the path of least resistance. Early in October 1909 he invited to Balmoral Lord Cawdor, one of the most strenuous champions of the uncom- promising policy of the peers. The interview produced no result. A like fate attended the king's conversation, on his arrival at Buckingham Palace later in the month (12 Oct.), with the leaders of the con- servative opposition in the two houses, Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Balfour. Al- though these negotiations could only be strictly justified by the emergency, there was no overstepping of the limits of the royal power. Mr. Asquith was willing that the interviews should take place. The con- versations were in each case immediately communicated by the king to the prime minister in personal audience.
The king's proved inability to qualify the course of events was a disappointment. The finance bill, which finally passed the House of Commons on 5 November by a majority of 379 to 149, was rejected ay the lords on 30 November by 350 to 75. War to the knife was thereupon inevitable Between the liberal party and the House of Lords, and the king at once acquiescence acquiesced in the first steps of n the his government's plan of cam government's paign> Qn 15 p^ by the prim minister's advice he dissolv jarliament, for the second time in his reign Che general election gave the government a majority which was quite adequate for their purpose. They lost on the balance seventy-five seats, and their former numerical superiority to any combination f other parties disappeared. But with nationalists and labour members they still were 124 in excess of their unionist oppo​nents, and their efficient power to challenge the House of Lords' veto was unmodified. Mr. Asquith continued in office. The king was in no way involved in Mr. Asquith's declaration at the Albert Hall on the eve of the general election (10 Dec. 1909) that he would not again assume or hold office without the safeguards necessary to give legislative effect to the decisions of the majority in the House of Commons. Before the new parliament opened Mr. Asquith saw the king when he was staying privately at Brighton on 13 Feb. 1910. The king offered no impediment to the government's immediate procedure, which was publicly proclaimed eight days later when the king opened parliament and read his ministers' The king's words : ' Proposals will be laid speech, before you, with all convenient ?eb. 1910. speed, to define the relations between the houses of parliament, so as to secure the undivided authority of the House of Commons over finance and its predomin- ance in legislation. These measures, in the opinion of my advisers, should provide that this House [of Lords] should be so con- stituted and empowered as to exercise impartially, in regard to proposed legis- lation, the functions of initiation, revision, and, subject to proper safeguards, of delay.'
The presence in the second sentence of the phrase ' in the opinion of my advisers ' gave rise to the misconception that the words were the king's interpolation, and were intended to express his personal unwillingness to identify himself with his ministers' policy. As a matter of fact the phrase was, like the rest of the paragraph, from the prime minister's pen, and the king made no comment on it when the draft was submitted to him. A similar formula had appeared previously in the speeches of sovereigns to parliament when they were under the formal obligation of announcing a warmly controverted policy of their ministers' devising. The king's personal misgivings of the constitutional change were well known, and it was courteous to absolve him of any possible implication of a personal responsibility.
In March the cabinet drafted resolutions (with a view to a future bill) which should disable the lords from rejecting or amending The commons' resolution on provide that a bill being passed the lords' veto, by the commons in three succes- B1 - sive sessions and being thrice re- jected by the lords should become law in spite of the lords' dissent. The terms of the resolutions were laid before the king, and he abstained from remonstrance. The reso- lutions were duly carried on 12 April, and the bill which embodied them was formally intro- duced into the commons. Meanwhile Lord Rosebery on 14 March moved that the House of Lords resolve itself into committee to consider the best means of reforming its constitution so as to make it strong and efficient, and on 16 March the lords agreed to Lord Rosebery's motion. For such a solution of the difficulty the king had no more zest than for the commons' scheme. On 25 April parliament adjourned for Easter, and next day the text of the commons' veto bill was circulated. The controversy went no further in the king's lifetime.
The ministers were resolved in case of the peers' continued obduracy to advise the king to employ his prerogative so as to give their policy statutory effect. Should the majority of peers decline to pass the bill for the limitation of their veto, the ministers determined on a resort to Lord Grey's proposed plan of 1832, whereby a sufficient number of peers favourable to the government's purpose would be formally created in the king's name to outvote the dissentients. But the time had not arrived when it was necessary directly to invite the king's approval or disapproval of such a course of action. The king for his part did not believe that the matter would be pressed to the last extremity, and was content to watch the passage of events without looking beyond the need of the moment.
The political difficulty caused the king an anxiety and irritation which domestic The king's policy had not previously personal occasioned him. He found no attitude. comfort in the action of any of the parties to the strife. The blank refusal of the conservative leaders to entertain his warnings was unwelcome to his amour propre. The prospect of straining his prerogative by creating peers solely for voting purposes could not be other than uncongenial. But while he tacitly recognised his inability to decline the ad of his responsible ministers, he had before him no plan for the creation of peers to call for an expression of opinion. To the last he privately cherished the conviction that peace would be reached by some less violent means. His natural buoyancy of disposition and his numerous social pleasures and interests outside the political sphere effectually counteracted the depressing influence of public affairs. While the last battle of his reign was waging in the houses ​of parliament he was spending his annual spring holiday at Biarritz;, where his time Return from was mainly devoted to cheerful Biarritz, recreation. He returned to Eng- 27 April 1010. land on 27 Aprilf j us t when the Easter vacation called a parliamentary armistice. Within nine days he was dead.
On the political situation the effect of his death was a prolongation of the truce. The lords ^ con f erence of representatives controversy of the two parties met in the 1910-n. endeavour to adjust amicably the differences between the two houses. The effort failed (15 Nov. 1910), and after another dissolution of parliament (28 Nov. ) the liberal government's plan, in which King Edward had tacitly acquiesced, was carried into law, with the consent of a majority of the upper chamber and without the threatened special creation of peers (10 Aug. 1911).
XIV
Since his severe illness of 1902 the king's physical condition, though not robust, had borne satisfactorily the strain The king's of a bugy life> He benefited health. , , J greatly by his annual visits to Biarritz and Marienbad and by his yachting cruises, and he usually bore the appearance of good health. A somewhat corpulent habit of body rendered exercise increasingly difficult. He walked little and ate and smoked much. On the shooting expeditions in which he still took part he was invariably mounted, and his movements were slow. There were occasionally dis- quieting symptoms, and the king was not very ready in obeying medical directions when they interfered with his ordinary habits. But his general health was normal for his age.
For the past few years he was subject to sudden paroxysms of coughing, which indicated bronchial trouble. A trouble"* 1 seizure of the kind took place at the state banquet in Berlin on 8 Feb. 1909. On the outward journey to Biarritz early in March 1910 he stayed two days in Paris. A cold caught in the Theatre Porte St. Martin, where he witnessed the performance of M. Rostand's ' Chantecler,' developed rapidly on the way south. A severe attack of bronchitis followed and caused his physician in attendance (Sir James Reid) much anxiety. The news of the illness was not divulged, and at the end of ten days recovery was rapid. A motor tour through the Pyrenees as far as Pau preceded his return home.
The king arrived in London from the continent on 27 April in good spirits. The same evening he went to the opera at Covent Garden. Queen Alexandra was absent on a Mediterranean cruise, sojourning for the time at Corfu. Next day the king paid his customary visit to the Royal Academy exhibition. On 29 April he entertained at lunch Viscount Gladstone on his departure for south Africa, where he had been appointed governor- general. Sunday, 1 May, was spent at Sandringham, where the king inspected some planting operations. There he con- tracted a chill. He reached Buckingham Palace next afternoon, and imprud- ently dined out in private jntoymol * he same evening. On reach- ing Buckingham Palace late that night his breathing became difficult, and a severe bronchial malady set in. Next morning his physicians regarded his condition as somewhat serious, but no early crisis was anticipated. The king rose as usual and transacted business, making arrangements for his reception the following week of Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, the late president of the United States of America, who had announced a visit to England. He spoke regretfully of the superiority of the climate of Biarritz to that of London. During the two following days the symptoms underwent little change. The king continued to transact business, receiving each morning in formal audience one or more representatives of the colonies. On Thursday, 5 May, he received Sir John Dickson-Poynder, Lord Islington, who had been appointed governor of New Zealand, and he considered details of the welcome to be accorded to a royal visitor from Japan, Prince Fushimi. He sat up and was dressed with his customary spruceness, but he was coun- selled against conversation. The breathing difficulty fluctuated and did not yield to treatment. Meanwhile Queen Alexandra had been informed of the king's illness and was returning from Corfu. The king was reluctant for any public announcement of his condition to be made. But on the Thursday evening (5 May) he was persuaded to assent to the issue of a bulletin on the ground that his enforced inability to meet the queen, according to custom on her arrival at the railway station, called for explanation. He modified the draft with his own hand. Queen Alexandra reached the palace that night, and next morning (6 May) the news of the king's condition appeared in the press. That day proved his last. He rose as usual, and in ​the morning saw his friend, Sir Ernest Cassel. As the day advanced, signs of coma developed. In the evening his Ma h 'i9lo state was seen * be hopeless. About ten o'clock at night he was put to bed. He died just before midnight.
The shock of grief was great at home and abroad. The public sorrow exceeded that mighty outburst which his mother's death awoke in 1901. Yet the king may fairly be judged to be ' felix opportunitate mortis.' To the last he was able to conduct his life much as he pleased. In the course of the illness he had faced without repining the j thought of death. He was spared any I long seclusion from society or that enforced | inactivity of slowly dwindling strength of which he cherished a dread. His popularity had steadily grown through his reign of nine years and three and a half months. There had been no conflicts with public i?utatfon P inion - Practically all his ac- tions, as far as they were known, had evoked the enthusiasm of the mass of his subjects. There was a bare possibility of his injuring, there was no possibility of his improving, his position, in which he had successfully reconciled pursuit of private pleasure with the due performance of public duty.
On 7 May the king's only surviving son met the privy council at St. James's Palace, and was proclaimed as King George V on 9 May. On 11 May the new monarch formally announced his bereavement in messages to both houses of parliament, which had been in recess and were hastily summoned to meet. Addresses of condolence were impressively moved by the leaders of the two great parties in both houses of parliament in the House of Lords by the earl of Crewe and Lord Lansdowne, and by Mr. Asquith and Mr. Balfour in the House of Commons. Mr. Enoch Edwards, on behalf of the labouring population, also gave voice in the lower house to the general sentiment of admiration and grief.
Fitting funeral ceremonies followed. For two days (14-15 May) the coffin lay in state in the throne room at Buckingham Palace, and there it was visited privately by relatives, friends, and acquaintances. On 16 May the coffin was removed in cere- monial procession to Westminster Hall, and there it lay publicly in state for four days. Some 350,000 persons attended. The interment took place on 20 May. The procession passed from Westminster Hall to Paddington station, and thence by train to Windsor. After the funeral service in St. George's Chapel, the coffin was lowered to the vault below. Besides the members of the king's family the chief mourners included the German m peror (the king's nephew), the king of Norway (his son-in-law), and the kings of Denmark and Greece (his brothers-in-law). Four other kings were present, those of Spain, Bulgaria, Por- tugal, and Belgium, together with the heirs to the thrones of Austria, Turkey, Rou- mania, Servia, and Montenegro. There were also kinsmen of other rulers, the prince consort of the Netherlands, Grand Duke Michael of Russia, and the duke of Aosta. The American republic had a special envoy in Mr. Roosevelt, lately president, and the French republic in M. Pichon, minister for foreign affairs. No more representative assembly of the sovereignty of Europe had yet gathered in one place. The exclusively military character of the ceremonial excited some adverse comment, but all classes took part in memorial services and demonstra- tions of mourning, not only in London and the provinces but throughout the empire and the world. In India, Hindus and Mohammedans formally celebrated funeral rites.
XV
Edward VII eminently satisfied con- temporary conditions of kingship. He in- herited the immense popularity which b 10 ^ 6 ? to the crown at the close of his mother's reign, and his personality greatly strengthened the hold of royalty on public affection. The cosmopolitan temperament, the charm of manner, the social tact, fitted him admirably for the representative or symbolic function of his great station. A perfect command of the three languages, English, French, and German, in all of which he could speak in public on the inspiration of the moment with no less grace than facility, gave Him the ear of Europe. Probably no king won so effectually the good-will at once of foreign peoples and of his own subjects. He was a citizen of the world, gifted with abounding humanity which evoked a universal sym- pathy and regard.
The outward forms of rule were congenial to him. He deemed public cere The king mony essential to the royal and royal state, and attached high value **** to formal dignity. Spacious splendour appealed to nun. By all the minutiae of etiquette he set great store, and he exerted his authority in securing ​their observance. For any defect in cos- tume or uniform he had an eagle eye and was plainspoken in rebuke.
King Edward cannot be credited with the greatness that comes of statesmanship and makes for the moulding of history. His relations Nether the constitutional checkb with politics. , . i v on his power nor his discursive tastes and training left him much oppor- tunity of influencing effectually political affairs. No originating political faculty can be assigned him. For the most part he stood with constitutional correctness aloof from the political arena at home. On questions involving large principles he held no very definite views. He preferred things to remain as they were. But he regarded all party programmes with a cheerful i optimism, sanguinely believing that sweep- j ing proposals for reform would not go very far. From youth he followed with close I attention the course of foreign politics, I and it was not only during his reign that i he sought in tours abroad and in hospi- talities at home to keep in personal touch with foreign rulers and statesmen. His main aim as a traveller was pleasurable recreation and the exchange of social courtesies. But he rarely missed ms love an occasion of attesting his love of peace. . , . of peace among the nations, i Not that he was averse from strong meas- ures, if he thought them necessary to the due assertion of his country's rights. But in his later years he grew keenly alive to the sinfulness of provoking war lightly, and to the obligation that lay on rulers of only appealing to its arbitrament in the last resort. He was a peacemaker, not through the exercise of any diplomatic initiative or ingenuity, but by force of his faith in the blessing of peace and by virtue of the influence which passively attached to his high station and to his temperament. His frequent absences from his dominions remotely involved his position in a certain element of danger. There was a specious ground for the suggestion that in home affairs he did too little and in foreign affairs too much. The external show of personal control which belongs to the crown at home seemed at times to be obscured by his long sojourns in foreign countries. The impression was at times encouraged, too, that the king was exerting abroad diplomatic powers which under the constitution belonged to his ministers alone. He grew conscious of the exaggerated importance which the foreign public attached to his foreign movements, and he confessed at times to some embarrassment. But he fully realised the futility of encroaching on His social instincts. ministerial responsibilities, and in his inter- course with foreign rulers and diplomatists, so far as politics came witliin the range of the conversation, he confined himself to general avowals of loyal support of ministerial policy.
His sociability, his love of pleasure, and the breadth of his human interests stood him in good stead in all relations of life. He had an unaffected desire for others' happiness, and the sport and amusements in which he openly indulged were such as the mass of his subjects could appreciate and share. The austere looked askance on his recrea- tions or deemed that the attention he paid them was excessive. But his readiness to support actively causes of philanthropy and social beneficence almost silenced articulate criticism. His compassion for suffering was never in question. He valued his people's approbation, and welcomed suggestions for giving every class opportunities of greeting him in person. Many times he cheerfully responded to a schoolmaster's request that in passing a schoolhouse on a private or public journey he should pause and exchange salutations with the schoolchildren. With the promptitude of an expert man of busi- ness, he was able to distribute his energies over a very wide field with small detriment to any of the individual calls on his time. He had a passion for punctuality. The clocks at Sandringham were always kept half an hour fast. He gave every encourage- ment to the progress of mechanical invention for the economising of time which distinguished his reign. He became an ardent devotee of motoring, in which he first experimented hi 1899, and which during his last years formed his ordinary mode of locomotion at home and abroad. In the development of wireless tele- graphy he also showed much interest, exchang- ing some of the earliest wireless messages across the Atlantic with Lord Minto, governor-general of Canada (21 Dec. 1902), and with President Roosevelt (19 Jan. 1903).
He had a strong sense of ownership and was proud of his possessions. Though his attitude to art was largely that of a rich owner of a great collection, he had a keen eye for the fit arrangement of his treasures, and knew much of their history. He dis-liked wasteful expenditure, but personally made careful provision for his own and his friends' comfort. No pride of rank limited his acquaintance, and he always hospitality, practised hospitality on a generous scale. If he had a predilection for men of wealth, his catholic favour embraced every kind of faculty and fortune. ​He rejoiced to escape from the constraints of public life into the unconventional ease of privacy. At times he enjoyed practical joking at the expense of close friends. But while encouraging unembarrassed social intercourse, he tacitly made plain the limits of familiarity which might not be over-stepped with impunity. He loved the old fashions of domesticity. His own and his relatives' birthdays he kept religiously, and he set high value on birthday congratulations and gifts.
While he derived ample amusement from music and the drama, chiefly from the theatre's more frivolous phases, he showed small capacity for dramatic criticism. A man of the world, he lacked the intellectual equipment of a thinker, and showed on occasion an unwillingness to exert his mental powers. He was no reader of books. He could not concentrate his mind on them. Yet he was always eager for information, and he gathered orally very varied stores of knowledge. A rare aptitude for rapidly assimilating the outlines of a topic enabled him to hold his own 2SEo. in brief t*lk with experts in every subject. He did not sustain a conversation with much power or brilliance ; but his grace and charm of manner atoned for any deficiency of matter. If his interest lay more s love of in persons than in things, he remembered personal details with singular accuracy. He illustrated his curiosity about persons by subjecting all his guests at Sandringham to the test of a weighing machine, and by keeping the record himself. At the same time he deprecated malicious gossip, and his highest praise of anyone was that he spoke no ill-natured word. He was never happy save with a companion who could talk freely and cheerfully. Solitude and silence were abhorrent to him.
A loyal friend, he was never unmindful of a friendly service, and he was always faithful to the associates of His loyalty y earl d jj e wag fond in friendship. ,. i / j jj of offering his friends good ad- vice, and was annoyed by its neglect. He could be at times hasty and irritable ; but his anger was short-lived, and he bore no lasting ill-will against those who excited it. His alert memory enabled him from boy- hood to death to recognise persons with sureness, and many stories are told how instantaneously he greeted those to whom he had been once casually introduced when meeting them years afterwards in a wholly unexpected environment. His circle of acquaintances at home and abroad was probably wider than that of any man of his time. But he never seems to have forgotten a face.
Physical courage was an enduring characteristic. By bodily peril or adverse criticism he was wholly un- moved - I f hi* native shrewd- ness stimulated an instinct of self-preservation, he never showed any sign of flinching in the face of danger. He admired every manifestation of heroism, and in 1907 he instituted the Edward medal to reward heroic acts performed by miners and quarrymen. Two years later a like recogni- tion was designed for brave service on the part of policemen and firemen. While religion played no dominant part in his life, he was strict in religious observances, and required those in his employment at Sand- ringham to attend church regularly. He had a perfect tolerance for all creeds, and treated with punctilious courtesy ministers of every religious persuasion. He was greatly attached to dumb animals, and his love for dogs excelled even that for horses. A favoured dog was always his companion at home and abroad. On tombstones in the canine graveyard at Sandringham there are many inscriptions bearing witness to the king's affection for his dog companions. The latest of these favourites, his terrier, 'Caesar,' was led behind his coffin in the funeral procession.
XVI
As the heir to the crown, the eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert was the subject of portraiture from his infancy. The earliest portrait apparently is the large chalk drawing by Sir George Hayter in 1842. As a child the Prince of Wales was painted several times by Winterhalter, the court painter, and was also drawn and painted in miniature by Sir William C. Ross. Most of these early portraits, some of which are familiar from engravings or lithographs, remain in the royal collection at Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle. The prince was painted in groups with his parents and brothers and sisters by Sir Edwin Landseer and Robert Thorburn, as well as by Winter- halter. A portrait by W. Hensel was painted in 1844 for King Frederick William of Prussia, one of the prince's godfathers. Other portraits were also drawn by R. J. Lane and artists who enjoyed the queen's confidence. As the youth of the Prince of Wales happened to synchronise with the invention and great development of portrait Portraits. ​photography, his portraits during boyhood up to the time of his marriage were for the most part based on photography, several excellent engravings being made from them. When about sixteen the prince was drawn and painted by George Richmond, R. A., and in 1862 a portrait in academical robes was painted by command for the University of Oxford by Sir J. Watson Gordon. Portraits of the prince in plain clothes were painted by S. Walton (1863) and Henry Weigall (1865). After the prince entered the army and joined the 10th hussars, he was painted in uniform several times by Winterhalter (1858), by Lowes C. Dickinson (1868), by H. Weigall (1870), and by H. von Angeli (1876). At the time of his marriage to Princess Alexandra of Denmark in 1863 a pair of portraits of the bridal couple were painted by Winterhalter. Among foreign artists who painted the Prince of Wales were Karl Sohn and Theodor Jentzen, but perhaps the most interesting was J. Bastien-Lepage, to whom the prince sat in Paris in 1880. During his later years as Prince of Wales the prince was not very frequently painted, except for official purposes, such as the portraits by Frank Holl, painted in 1884 for the Middle Temple and in 1888 for the Trinity House. A full-length portrait, painted by G. F. Watts, R.A., for Lincoln's Inn, was not considered successful, and was therefore withdrawn by the painter ; it is now in the Watts Gallery at Compton in Surrey. The most successful of official pictures was the full-length standing portrait by A. Stuart-Wortley, painted in 1893 for the United Service Club. W. W. Ouless's painting of the prince as commodore of the Royal Yacht Squadron was executed in 1900. After the accession of King Edward VII to the throne in 1901, portraits of his majesty became more in demand. The official state portrait was entrusted to Mr. (afterwards Sir) Luke Fildes, R.A., and was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1902. The design for the portrait of the king on the coinage, postage-stamps, and certain medals was entrusted to Mr. Emil Fuchs. Subsequent portraits of the king were painted by H. Weigall (for Wellington College), Harold Speed (for Belfast), Colin Forbes (for the Canadian Houses of Parliament at Ottawa), A. S. Cope, A.R.A. (in Garter robes ; for Sir Ernest Cassel), P. Tennyson-Cole (for the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, by whom it was presented to the king ; a replica is in the possession of the Grocers' Company), James Mordecai (now in St. James's Palace), and Sir E. J. Poynter P.R.A. (for the Royal Academy). During the reign and after the king's death the number of pictorial presentments of every description increased to an indefinite extent. The king sat to more than one foreign painter. The greater number of the portraits mentioned here were exhibited at the Royal Academy.
Portraits in sculpture of King Edward VII as Prince of Wales or as king are also very numerous, whether busts or statues, from his childhood to his death, while posthumous busts continue in demand. He sat to both English and foreign sculptors, including Canonica, the Italian. A colossal bronze equestrian statue of the Prince of Wales as colonel of the 10th hussars, by Sir J. Edgar Boehm, was presented to the city of Bombay by Sir Albert Sassoon in 1878.
The pictures of public events in which the king played the chief part are very many, including his baptism in Painted by Sir George Hayter, Louis Haghe, George Baxter, and others ; his marriage in 1863, painted by W. P. Frith, R.A., and G. H. Thomas ; the paintings of the jubilee ceremonies in 1887 and 1897 ; the marriages of his brothers, sisters, and children ; ceremonies at Windsor Castle, such as 'The Visit of Louis Philippe ' and 'The Emperor of the French receiving the Order of the Garter' ; leading up to the events of his own reign, 'The King opening his First Parliament' by Max Cowper ; 'The King receiving the Moorish Embassy in St. James's Palace' by J. Seymour Lucas, R. A. ; 'The Coronation of King Edward VII' by E. A. Abbey, R.A., and like events. During the Indian tour of 1875 a number of incidents were recorded in drawings by Sydney P. Hall, W. Simpson, and other artists. Most of these remain in the royal collection. A valuable collection of original drawings for illustrated periodicals, depicting scenes in his majesty's reign, is in possession of Queen Alexandra.
King Edward was a good and willing sitter, but a difficult subject. Hardly any portrait gives a satisfactory idea of a personality in which so much depended upon the vivacity of the likeness. One of the best likenesses is considered to be that in the group of the Prince of Wales and the duke of Connaught at Aldershot, painted by Edouard Detaille, and presented to Queen Victoria by the royal family at the Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Another good portrait is that in the group of Queen Victoria with her son, grandson, and great-grandson, painted by (Sir) W. Q. ​Orchardson, R.A., in 1900 for the Royal Agricultural Society.
Memorials of the king were planned after his death in all parts of the world. InMemorials. England it was decided that there should be independent local memorials rather than a single national memorial. In London it is proposed to erect a statue in the Green Park, and to create a park at Shadwell, a poor and crowded district of east London. In many other cities a statue is to be combined with some benevolent purpose, such as a hospital or a fund for fighting disease. Statues have been designed for Montreal, Calcutta, and Rangoon, and hospitals are also in course of erection at Lahore, Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Secunderabad, Cashmere, Bornu, Bassein, and Poona. Memorial tablets have been placed in the English churches at Homburg, Marienbad, and Copenhagen. A statue by M. Denys Puech was unveiled at Cannes on 13 April 1912 by M. Poincaré, prime minister of France, amid an imposing naval and military demonstration. A new street and a ‘place’ in the heart of Paris are to be named after ‘Edouard VII.’ At Lisbon a public park was named after him in memory of the visit of 1903. At Cambridge University Sir Harold Harmsworth endowed in 1911 ‘The King Edward VII chair of English literature.’
S. L.