Darling Georgie (9 page)

Queen Victoria clearly resented her son’s opposition to her views. Two days after the
Bacchante’s
arrival at the Cape she wrote to her daughter-in-law:

I am very sorry that Bertie [Prince Edward] should have been sore about the Boys … The
Bacchante
going to the Cape, which was done in a hurry without due consultation with me – I
disapproved.
And feeling how valuable these 2 young lives are to the
whole Nation,
I felt
bound
to protect them against useless and unnecessary exposure in a cruel
Civil War,
for so it is, the Boers being
my subjects,
and it being a rule that Princes of the Royal Family
ought not
to be mixed up in it. In any other war, should in time there be one (when George be older) and his ship be
obliged necessarily
to take part in it, I would
quite agree
with Bertie.

It seemed that Queen Victoria considered that for a second son to be involved in war was all right but certainly not for the heir.

Prince George, unaware that his activities were arousing so much family interest, had meanwhile become fascinated by King Ketchewayo, the King of the Zulus, who about eighteen months earlier had been taken prisoner at the battle of Ulundi. The two Princes had been taken to visit him by the Governor of Cape Province, on the farm on which he had been interned. Prince George was riveted by Ketchewayo’s stature and size. Although he himself was slowly growing, he was still well below average height for his age. He wrote admiringly in his diary on 26 February 1881, possibly still smarting from his mother’s comment about his size, that ‘he
[Ketchewayo] is 18 stone and is nearly six feet tall, large boned, but heavy in the haunches, with enormous thighs and legs’. The Prince also wrote of Ketchewayo’s four wives, describing them as each ‘weighing between 16 and 17 stone. They were happily squatting on the ground, wrapt in Scotch plaids’ (Dalton, 1886).

The Prince’s sympathies were clearly with the victims of the African conflict, and he was able to empathize with the defeated. A few days after his visit to Ketchewayo he wrote to his mother from Cape Town. ‘This is really a dredful war is it not? All these poor people killed & also poor General Colley.’ This was a reference to Sir George Colley, High Commisioner for South East Africa, killed at the battle for Majuba Hill by the Boers a few days earlier.

The life at sea of the two Princes came to an end on 5 August 1882. The diminutive Prince George had grown into a seventeen-year-old with skills that later would be put to good use in his career in the Royal Navy. He was known for his calmness in an emergency, probably the only situation in which he could be relied on not to lose his temper. Three days later he and his brother were confirmed by the Archbishop of Canterbury who told them that the Christian character was best developed by difficulties and warned them that they must not yield to the enervating influences that must gather round them. Prince George, now fully trained and in full control of his feelings, was ready to take the next step on his journey which would finally end when he became monarch of an Empire on which ‘the sun never set’ but which had reached its territorial peak.

O
N
12 A
UGUST
1882, having learned a great deal about seamanship during his three cruises aboard the
Bacchante,
the seventeen-year-old Prince George returned to his family to begin what he must have hoped would be a period of leisure before moving on to the next stage of his career. In the event both he and his brother were given only about two months to accustom themselves to a family life which for the past two years at sea had been unavailable to them. They attended concerts and the theatre with their parents and played tennis with their sisters in the garden at Marlborough House. It was a month later, when he arrived with his family at Abergeldie Castle in Aberdeenshire, that Prince George first became fascinated by an activity that was later to become a passion: shooting birds and animals for sport.

Today we are increasingly concerned about the preservation of animals, many species of which were in the nineteenth century decimated by hunting, the favourite sport of the aristocracy. Private parks of staghounds and other animals were also becoming popular among the
nouveaux riches,
but hunting remained on the whole an expensive pastime and the preserve of the upper classes. Since big game hunting was physically demanding, time-consuming and extremely expensive, it was less popular even among those who could afford it. The shooting of small game, which in 1831 had ceased to be the legal privilege and monopoly of landed proprietors, was more accessible, less demanding and certainly less dangerous, while big game hunting remained an activity which was not obstructed even by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The RSPCA, which was founded in 1824, acquired the patronage of Queen Victoria in 1840. The Queen had great personal concern for animal welfare, as long
as it did not refer to the shooting of grouse or stags. The RSPCA satisfied itself that its duty applied only to domestic animals, such as the dogs and horses belonging mainly to the lower orders, and it did not attack the blood sports which, it argued, involved only wild animals which did not share the feelings or obligations of domestic animals. Since the society relied for its influence and income on the support of the Royal Family and members of the aristocracy, it was not encouraged to consider such sport as cruel.

The shooting of small game continues to be acceptable, on the often specious grounds that some creatures have to be culled in the interests of other creatures. Killing of big game for sport has now been banned, however, and the gun has been replaced by the camera.

At a time when the ecological consequences of hunting and shooting were unknown, and the activities rarely questioned, Prince Eddy and Prince George became addicted to both pastimes. The ‘gun’ and the ‘horse’, both symbols of power, were the
sine qua non
of a male-dominated sport, and the killing of partridge, grouse, hares and foxes were to keep the Princes fully occupied in the weeks following their graduation from the
Bacchante.
Within five days Prince George had shot his first partridge and two days later thirteen grouse. By Christmas his score had risen to forty-eight plus one fox. On 30 December he noted in his diary: ‘Eddy got the brush, and I got the head.’

The wildlife in Norfolk enjoyed a brief respite while Prince Edward, Mr Dalton and three other tutors took the boys first to Lausanne and then to Heidelberg to continue their general education and to study French and German. In re-entering society Prince Eddy and Prince George tried – albeit with little success – to make up for the lost years of their adolescence. Their social life was limited to tennis, walking and rowing on the lake, activities hardly destined to improve their interpersonal skills. Neither of them could wait to get back to Sandringham to resume the blood sports that were to excite Prince George, already an enthusiastic and accurate shot, throughout his later life.

Despite the increasing pleasures of life in England and in particular at
home, the two brothers, who had been inseparable companions, were saddened to be parted for the first time. Nineteen-year-old Prince Eddy had to be groomed for his future role as King, and tutors were engaged to coach him for further education at Cambridge. He was also to undergo military training and was enrolled in the 10th Hussars, his father’s regiment. Less was expected from Prince George who, having come to love the life that had at first terrified him, continued his career at sea. In all the changes to which the two Princes had been exposed they had always been there for each other and had played an important role in one another’s lives. They may have been separated in age by eighteen months, but other than in appearance they might have been twins. Both had been born prematurely and had developed slowly. They had been tutored together at home and, as naval cadets, aged nineteen and seventeen respectively, they were young for their years. Prince Eddy was passive, dreamy, ungainly and addicted to sexual adventure. Prince George was emotional, vulnerable, self-aware and heavily dependent on the approval of a mother, who had let him down by making implicit promises she had not kept. At the age of twelve, an immature, cosseted boy from a home where he had been led to believe that he was indispensable, he had been cast upon the waters. He and Prince Eddy, two halves of a whole, had clung to one another and survived.

Although Prince Eddy had done his best, he had never been comfortable as a naval cadet. Life at sea was not his
métier,
and the experience had diminished him. Prince George, psychologically more robust than his brother, had come to look upon his long absence from the home in which he had felt secure and protected as a challenge. Each of them knew that they had either to sink or swim. While Prince Eddy sank, Prince George swam, and now the time had come for them to part. Parting was not easy for either of them. In the absence of their mother they had mothered each other and, for the second time in their lives, a ‘mother’ had ceased to be available to them. Two weeks after Prince George had returned to the Navy to join his new ship HMS
Canada
his brother wrote him a sad and moving letter which was not dissimilar from the letters they had both
received over the years from Princess Alexandra. ‘My dear George, so we are at last separated for the first time and I can’t tell you
how
strange it seems to be without you and how much I miss you in everything
all day long.
’

At the age of eighteen Prince George’s formal education with his tutors had come to an end. The sea and the Royal Naval College at Greenwich were to be his university. Although his instructors spoke well of him, his grandmother continued to concern herself with his morals. He had been in the Navy for two years when Queen Victoria wrote to him as she might once have written to his father. She reminded him of the pitfalls that had befallen Prince Edward and which now lay before her grandson:

Avoid the many evil temptations wh. beset
all
young men especially Princes. Beware of flatterers, too great love of amusement, of
races
& betting & playing high. I hear on all sides what a good steady boy you are & how you can be trusted. Still you must always be on the watch & must not fear ridicule if you do what is right. Alas! Society is very bad in these days; what is wrong is winked at, allowed even, & as for betting or anything of that kind, no end of young and older men have been ruined, parents hearts broken, & great names and Titles dragged in the dirt. It is in
your
power to do immense good by setting an example & keeping your dear Grandpapa’s name before you … I am afraid that you will think this a long lecture, but Grandmama loves you so much and is so anxious that you should be a blessing to your Parents, herself and your Country, and she cd.
not
do otherwise than write to you
as she feels.

‘Put not your trust in Princes, nor in the children of man, in whom there is no help …’ Like the psalmist, Queen Victoria was right to be distrustful of Princes. Like many a parent, she had found the task of raising children, and in particular her son and heir, ‘in the way that they should go’ daunting. Like many grandparents, she is likely to have believed that providence had provided her with grandchildren so that she might be given a second chance to exercise the maternalism with which, as a young
mother herself, she had failed to be in touch. In her poetic letter she was able to express feelings that she might well have had difficulty in verbalizing even to her grandson.

On 1 June 1883 Prince George was appointed to the corvette HMS
Canada.
Two months later Midshipman Prince George sailed on her under the command of Captain Francis Durrant, who took the place of Mr Dalton as the Prince’s governor. Prince George looked up to Captain Durrant and admired him and they soon became close friends. Anxious to return to the familiarity of life on board ship, Prince George hoped that this would help him with his distress at being parted from his brother. He was well liked by his shipmates but made only a few close friends. Eddy lived on in his memory, and he saw little reason to ‘replace’ his brother with an unknown shipmate. His solution then, as it would be later, was to find a replacement love for that to which he had been entitled as a child but which had been denied him. He unconsciously attached himself to other ‘carers’. It would have been understandable perhaps had he searched for a ‘father’ (Prince Edward also having been unavailable), as later he searched for a mother (in his wife), to counteract the smothering love of Princess Alexandra.

In addition to Prince George’s parents and brother, one other person was both to have an effect on him and later to influence his attitude to women. In late adolescence Prince George was probably a stranger to any sort of intimacy. He made up for this by the warmth of the many letters written during his years at sea, not only (as ever) to his mother but also to male contemporaries of his parents, whose wisdom he needed and respected. One man to whom he had remained close was Charles Fuller, who as a ‘nursery footman’ had fulfilled the role of father and mother to the two Princes. Engaged about two weeks after the birth of Prince Eddy, Mr Fuller became particularly fond of the boys throughout their childhood. He served them with love and affection and accompanied them as their valet aboard the
Bacchante.
Although Prince George was now eighteen years old, Mr Fuller continued to show concern for his royal master. While the Prince was growing up it was as if he had two surrogate parents
both of whom were constantly at his side; while Canon Dalton concerned himself mainly with his intellectual development, it was Charles Fuller who ‘mothered’ him. Mr Fuller was always available, always loyal, never (unlike Princess Alexandra) made unreasonable demands of him and attended to his physical well-being. In his letters to the Prince he never failed to fuss over him, to remind him to wear clothing appropriate to the weather, to take care of his health and – presciently – to smoke less. Although Charles Fuller was ordered to accompany Prince Eddy when he went to Cambridge, he remained close in spirit to his favourite, Prince George. A few days after the Prince embarked on HMS
Canada,
Mr Fuller wrote to say how much he missed him.