Childhood at Court, 1819-1914 (11 page)

To the children, a never-ending delight of Osborne was the Swiss Cottage. Prince Albert had always loved the
Schweizerei
, or Swiss Dairy Farm, at his childhood home, Rosenau. Though it was long assumed that the cottage was a prefabricated building manufactured abroad and imported in sections prior to being erected at Osborne, it was more probable that the estate carpenters constructed the buildings themselves, possibly with assistance from a Continental carpenter, or under the Prince’s guidance.* It was made to imperial measurements, with basic overall dimensions of twenty-five feet by fifty feet, and erected on a rubble plinth about half a mile east of the house. The external logs, nine inches square, were initially coated with burnt umber, and later blackened with tar.

The children laid the foundation stone in 1853, and the completed dwelling was presented to them on 24 May 1854, their mother’s thirty-fifth birthday. The first floor balcony and other details were in imitation of a traditional Swiss-style farmhouse. The interior was scaled down to child-size in every detail, with a fully-equipped kitchen and range. Here the Princes could learn carpentry and gardening, the Princesses housekeeping and cookery. Family parties were held in the dining-room on the first floor with an informality which was out of the question at the house. Miniature tea, dinner and dessert services, with plates inscribed ‘
SPARE NOT, WASTE NOT, WANT NOT
’, were used by the royal children for many years.

Much of the furniture and ornaments were collected by Prince Albert, mainly from Lucerne. They included a
secretaire
, or writing desk, embellished with wood carvings of rural Swiss life. Less homely was a carved table incorporating an ornate engraving, captioned ‘
DIE SOHNAE EDUARDUS IV
’, in which the young Princes in the Tower were about to be smothered as they lay sleeping. Perhaps the lesson was not lost on Queen Victoria’s young sons that they were lucky not to have lived in medieval times.

In one room there was a doll’s house grocery shop, ‘Spratt, Grocer to Her Majesty’, where they learned the prices of everyday goods. The commodities on display included coffee, cocoa, several different kinds of tea, a selection of British wines, ‘currie’ powder and other spices, dried and crystallized fruits, and isinglass, or gelatine originally made from the air-bladders of freshwater fish. In the sitting-room upstairs a space was set aside for a small natural history museum containing fossils, and geological and botanical specimens, collected by the children on their father’s instructions.

Garden plots near the cottage were laid out for each child, with spades, forks, wheelbarrows and trolleys marked with their initials, to forestall arguments: P.o.W., Pss.R., Pss.A., P.A., Pss.H., Pss.L. and so on. Their work was professionally criticized, and they were paid by the hour. They were taught how to erect tents, and make bricks.

Behind the cottage a miniature earth fort with redoubts (detached earthworks) was completed in 1856, on the suggestion of Prince Albert who had enjoyed playing in mock forts at Coburg with his brother. The Princes helped to construct the fort as a birthday surprise for Queen Victoria under the supervision of Affie’s governor, Lieutenant John Cowell. In 1860 Arthur assisted in adding the brick-built Albert Barracks inside the fort, and a drawbridge was added the following year. It remained a source of fascination for him and succeeding generations of royal children throughout the rest of the century.

In the meantime, a first visit to Scotland in 1842 had marked the beginning of the Queen’s love affair with her northern kingdom. She and her husband were immediately enchanted with the Scottish landscape (which reminded Albert of his native Thuringia, although his brother Prince Ernest pooh-poohed the comparison as a symptom of romantic fantasy), and respected the Highlanders for their simple manners and lack of pretence. The idea of having their own retreat in Scotland, far less accessible than the Isle of Wight, appealed to them. In 1848 they purchased a lease of the small castle of Balmoral, Deeside, and bought the property outright in 1852.

All the children revelled in Balmoral. To start with, it meant travelling to the Highlands by night on a train, at what then seemed the daredevil speed of 30 m.p.h., with a break in the journey to see the historic sights of Edinburgh. Once they arrived at their Deeside home, the fresh, sharp air gave them plenty of energy and kept them in good spirits. They enjoyed long pony expeditions across the hills which lasted up to a whole day, accompanied by a luncheon basket. The Queen and her daughters took their sketch-books, and once the eleven-year-old Princess Royal had to be rescued by one of the Scottish keepers after she sat on a wasps’ nest. Prince Albert and his sons went deer-stalking and shooting, or on botanical explorations. In the evening there was dancing to the sound of bagpipes.

On a visit to Edinburgh in 1822 King George IV had gratified local sensibilities by wearing Highland costume, and his niece and her family likewise adopted the appropriate dress. In doing so, they helped to set a trend. All the children wore kilts, which were handed down to the younger ones irrespective of sex. Till the age of five, the Princes as well as their sisters had worn frocks, the only difference being that the boys’ were pleated, while the girls’ were gored. Helena generally took the part of a boy in theatricals; paintings of the children by Winterhalter usually showed her in Highland dress, with her hair parted at the side like her brothers. Highland costume became the generally accepted formal dress for the Princes when they appeared on public events; the Prince of Wales was thus attired when he and the Princess Royal accompanied their parents to the opening of the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace in May 1851.

As a result, kilts for boys became fashionable among the middle classes. People only had to see a colour print of the Prince of Wales in Highland dress at the opening of the Great Exhibition, or some similar public function, to be inspired to follow the trend. Kilts could be handed down to younger sons, and they did not wear out or go out of fashion. Moreover, the concept of bare knees above the socks satisfied traditional Victorian notions of manliness and ‘hardening’ the wearer. They were less popular in the south of England, where they were generally reserved for formal occasions, if worn at all. Some families disliked the velvet jacket with its expensive silver buttons, while in some cases the would-be English wearer found it too much like fancy dress.

A by-product of Queen Victoria’s love of everything Scottish was the popularity of tartan in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. The middle classes were equally entranced by its association with the ‘romantic Highlands’. Its large checks showed to advantage on wide skirts and dresses for child and adult alike, silk tartans being made up into dresses for the Princesses.

Alice particularly enjoyed the freedom of Balmoral, especially visiting the cottagers without ceremony. Among the children, she was the most sensitive to the sufferings of others. Though outwardly exuberant, particularly in the family theatricals, her exterior hid a more introspective personality, with a particular desire to help others, whether it was visiting the wounded in hospitals at home during the Crimean War, or visiting the cottagers to distribute food and clothing. She also enjoyed riding her pony over the hills. So did Princess Helena, who went out in all weathers, never minding the rain, coming back soaking wet but all the better – and more hungry – for the experience.

That all the children, apart from the haemophiliac Leopold, enjoyed good health was no accident. Prince Albert was never particularly strong, and a martyr to perpetual stomach upsets, sore throats and swollen glands. The Queen had inherited her Hanoverian forebears’ good health, but improved living standards played a part in their children’s health. They all had healthy hair, good teeth, excellent complexions, and none suffered from bandy legs or rickets. Under Prince Albert’s thorough regime, the kitchens and drainage systems at Windsor and Buckingham Palace were reorganized. Typhoid fever and diphtheria, infectious diseases which often started as a result of unhealthy conditions, claimed the lives of many young children in Victorian England – but not in the royal household. Ironically it was typhoid which caused his own death, while seventeen years later (to the very day) one of his daughters in Germany succumbed to diphtheria.

Osborne and Balmoral were built on modern lines with good sewerage, plenty of lavatories and bathrooms, and the luxury of running hot and cold water for family and servants alike; baths were plumbed in to drain as well. Much time was spent in these holiday homes, and the children caught few of the normal infectious childhood diseases. Bertie often suffered from a running nose in babyhood, and there were outbreaks of measles in 1853 and a mild form of scarlet fever in 1855, but otherwise they escaped serious epidemics. The parents attributed much to the sea air and bathing at Osborne and immunity of the ‘hardening effect of the salt on the constitution’. Hot summer days at Osborne, where the family generally spent between sixty and ninety days each year, encouraged a routine which included breakfasting outside as frequently as possible.

Queen Victoria was always impervious to cold. She agreed with Stockmar, whose experience of practising medicine had instilled in him the conviction that warm temperatures encouraged germs and sickness. Cold baths and open windows were taken all the year round. The Queen liked to say that all her children took after her, though they did not. Vicky suffered from chilblains, particularly after her marriage when she lived in Germany, while Alice and Beatrice became very rheumatic. Few of the servants shared this dislike of heat. Lady Lyttelton, for one, had always relished being able to retire from the well-ventilated if not chilly nursery to her own room and roaring fire.

Another regular excitement for the children was the prospect of a cruise on board the
Victoria and Albert
. Sometimes they sailed around the coast of southern England. In August 1846 the two elder children were taken for an ‘aquatic excursion’ along the coast of south Devon, and to Guernsey. Vicky had inherited her mother’s ability to sail well, and despite occasional bouts of seasickness at first, amused everybody by rushing around in high spirits until asked how she was feeling. Then she would lie down and pull a grimace in imitation of her mother’s ladies, moaning, ‘I’m very ill’.

In July 1852 Affie was on board another cruise along the south coast, and his journal was full of nautical observation, as befitted a future Admiral of the Fleet. They cruised past Plymouth up the Tamar on board the
Fairy
:

We passed the Dock Yard: there were a great many ships in front of the Dock Yards: they had not got any rigging, and were rather white looking on account of not being painted for service. We saw a lead mine from the ‘Fairy’ which we were told was 700 ft. deep; we have got some ore from it. The river was very dirty and full of mud, so that the ‘Fairy’ had to dig through till at last we could not go any further. When we came down we went close under the shore of the Harbour and the batteries saluted.
¹⁶

Theatricals and
tableaux vivants
were regularly staged by the children, partly for the amusement of their parents, household and a few invited guests, and partly as an extension of their French and German classes. The French governess Madame Rolande was often
metteur-en-scène
, and Prince Albert generally supervised their efforts overall. Records show that no English plays were performed by the children in his lifetime, and performances were usually on Twelfth Night, or as close to his and the Queen’s wedding anniversary (10 February) as possible.

The favourite choice at first was usually Racine’s
Athalie
, which had just gained a new lease of life as a result of incidental music composed by Mendelssohn, a great favourite of the royal family. First staged at Windsor on the Queen’s twelfth wedding anniversary in 1852, the play was quite a demanding one for a juvenile cast. Queen Athalie was portrayed by the Princess Royal, while Alice played both the grand priest Joad and his wife Josabeth, and the Prince of Wales was given the minor role of Abner. The set was the same as that used for a performance of
Julius Caesar
by Charles Kean and William Macready two years earlier, and the young royal players wore specially designed costumes ‘of fine merino, with gold and silver braid’. The text was heavily cut ‘and curtailed to avoid tediousness and to enable the Children to act it’, and naturally the performance won the Queen’s unqualified approval. She recorded in her journal that evening that ‘Vicky looked very well and spoke and acted her long and difficult part . . . really admirably, with immense expression and dignity and with the true French emphasis, which indeed they all did’, while ‘Alice was ‘méconnaissable’ as the Priest, with a white beard and hair. She acted beautifully, Affie very nicely and Bertie very well, but his Roman armour was a little too big for him.’
¹⁷

The same play was performed again three times between 10 and 13 January 1853 in the Tapestry Room at Windsor. A fuller version of the text was used, and the cast was augmented by members of two court families, the Phipps and the Seymours. The dress rehearsal and ‘first night’ were very successful, with Vicky giving a splendid performance at the climax of the play, ‘the scene of fury, where she rushes out in a rage, extremely well’. However, she let matters down on the last performance, when she forgot much of her part.

Athalie
was accordingly dropped from the repertoire. A number of more lighthearted German plays were introduced. Among them was
Das Hahnenschlag (The Cockshy)
, which included two songs by the children, and a piece from Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, played by Dr Barker behind the scenes. Another was
Die Tafelbirnen (The Pears)
, by Agnes Frantz, ‘a charming childish little piece’. Also judged a success was
Les Deux Petits Savoyards
, performed on 16 January 1854, in which the title roles were taken by Alice and Affie, while Vicky had the most important part, ‘Madame la Marquise de Verseuil’ in whose castle the action took place, and Bertie ‘Le Bailli’. ‘It was most successful and was very pretty and our Children did their parts extremely well,’ the Queen wrote in her journal. ‘Bertie (whom his father had painted to look quite hideous) acted with great spirit, and dear little Lenchen was incomparable as Clement, so important, never making a mistake. Everyone was inclined to laugh when she appeared, but she did not perceive it.’
¹⁸