King Edward VII A Biography

Front matter

KING EDWARD VII

A BIOGRAPHY

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Preface

Ir is at the request of King George V., King Edward VII.’s son, that this biography has been undertaken.

The work, while it incorporates much information which has already been published, is based on documents in the royal archives to which King George has given me access, and on numerous collections of letters addressed by the late King to personal friends and to men of prominence in official life, which I have consulted with His Majesty’s sanction. His Majesty has also permitted the reproduction in facsimile of the two specimens of the late King’s handwriting which appear in this volume and illustrate the marked change in its character in the course of forty years.

Beyond this assistance King George is in no way responsible for the book. For its plan and execution, to which I have devoted four years of thought and labour, I am alone responsible. I have pursued to the best of my ability the lines which my previous experience as a biographer dictated. I have sought to give practical application to principles which I defined twelve years ago in these terms: “ Biography is of no genuine account unless it make for thoroughness and accuracy of statement, for an equitable valuation of human effort, and above all for honest independence of judgement.”

My account of Kaiser William II.’s character and conduct is my own unaided interpretation of tested evidence drawn from very varied sources both published and unpublished. The co-ordination of the piéces justificatives in chronological order renders imperative, I believe, the conclusions which I have reached.

In the case of a great historic figure like King Edward VII., no less than in that of one of smaller prominence in the world’s affairs, sympathy with one’s theme is essential to

v vi PREFACE justice in biography. To that credential I modestly think that I may fairly lay claim. In a work of such multiplicity, I cannot expect, whatever my efforts, to escape all error in fact or inference, but the investigations which I have long pursued into the career of King Edward have developed my faith in the generosity of his disposition as well as in his shrewdness of judgement. I trust that without sacrifice of candour or of any other fundamental principle of the biographer’s art, I have drawn my portrait so as to convey to the present and to future generations a signally humane, human and many-sided personality very rare among princes.

To the intensity and range of King Edward’s interest, before he came to the throne, in politics and more especially in foreign politics, this book bears constant witness. It is therefore inevitable that the various changes in the political situation at home and abroad during nearly forty years of his adult life should fill a large space of my canvas. I believe that I have been able to throw new light on many vexed issues which now belong to history.

Besides the unpublished material at my disposal, I have made full use of all the information which, as far as I know, is already in print. I have examined newspapers (notably The Times) and periodicals of the epoch as well as the comprehensive and illuminating collections of diplomatic archives published by the French and German Governments and memoirs of leading statesmen of this and other countries. I have given in my footnotes precise references to all the published sources which I have consulted.

Of the character of my indebtedness to King George I have already spoken. Warm thanks are at the same time due to many who have helped me with the loan of original letters of the late King, with personal reminiscences of him and with very varied suggestions. To my regret, several of those who have rendered me efficient aid have not lived long enough to acquaint themselves with the uses to which I have put their assistance.

To the late Viscount Morley and the late Viscount Knollys I owe much advice and encouragement in the initial stages of

1 So as not to prolong unduly the list on the opposite page I have reserved for my footnotes acknowledgements to various persons who have assisted me on specific points.

PREFACE vii the work. The Right Hon. Sir Frederick Ponsonby, Keeper of the King’s Privy Purse, has from first to last rendered me in all directions help which it would scarcely be possible for me to overestimate. He has also lent me a few interesting and pertinent memoranda of his father, the late General Sir Henry Ponsonby. My searches in the Windsor Archives have been facilitated by Viscount Stamfordham, Keeper of the King’s Archives and King George’s Private Secretary, and by the Rev. Albert Lee, Clerk of the Archives. The late Sir Arthur Davidson, formerly Equerry and Assistant Private Secretary to King Edward, who showed the liveliest interest in the undertaking up to the time of his death, was especially helpful in enabling me to consult the papers of the late King which still remain in Queen Alexandra’s care at Marlborough House. With the Marquis of Lincolnshire, the late Viscount Chaplin, and Colonel Gerald Ellis, son of the late Colonel Sir Arthur Ellis, I have enjoyed the advantage of personal conversation on many points in the late King’s career. The Earl of Rosebery has kindly allowed me to print a few extracts from letters written by him as Prime Minister.

To the following persons I am indebted for the loan of original letters and papers in their possession from the late King’s pen: The Earl of Elgin for the papers of the late Major-General Bruce and Mrs. Bruce; Colonel Wilfrid Ashley, M.P., for letters to Viscount Palmerston; the representatives of the late Earl Russell for letters to that statesman; the Harl of Derby for letters to his grandfather, Edward Geoffrey, fourteenth Harl of Derby, Prime Minister, and to his uncle Edward Henry, fifteenth Earl of Derby; Mr. Henry Gladstone for letters to the late Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone; Lord Beaconsfield’s Trustees for letters to the late Earl of Beaconsfield (by the courtesy of Mr. G. E. Buckle) ; the Dowager Countess of Granville for letters to the late Earl Granville, K.G.; Major Cadogan for letters to the late Earl Cadogan ; Sir Arthur Leetham for letters to the late Viscount Wolseley ; Sir Bartle Frere for letters to his father and mother, the late Sir Bartle and Lady Frere ; the Marquis of Salisbury for letters to his late father, the Prime Minister ; Lady Spring Rice for letters to her father, the late Sir Frank Lascelles; Mr. Ernest Law, C.B., for letters to his uncle, the late Mr. Alfred Montgomery ; Earl Spencer for letters vill PREFACE to the fifth Earl Spencer; the Marquis of Londonderry for letters to his mother, the late Marchioness; the late Sir Reginald Acland for letters to his father, Sir Henry Acland; Sir Frederick Liddell, K.C.B., for letters to his father and mother, the Dean of Christ Church and Mrs. Liddell; the late Lady Beresford for letters to her husband, Lord (Charles) Beresford ; the Marquis of Lansdowne, and the Earl of Midleton for letters addressed to themselves.

Mr. Stephen Gaselee, Librarian of the Foreign Office, has kindly sent me, at my request, some extracts from the Foreign Office Archives by permission of the Secretary of State. I have derived, too, much benefit from the Archives of the Russian Embassy in London by the courtesy of M. Eugéne Sabline, formerly chargé d'affaires, and until October 1924 in charge of the liquidation of the former Russian Embassy.

In the choice of portraits, I have had the advantage of the counsel of my friend Mr. Lionel Cust, Surveyor of the King’s pictures and works of art. To the Benchers of the Middle Temple I am indebted for permission to reproduce the portrait in their possession by Frank Holl, R.A.

The second and concluding volume of the work, which will cover King Edward’s reign, is in active preparation, and will be issued before the end of the present year.

SIDNEY LEE.

January 1, 1925.

Contents

CHAP. PAGE PREFACE . : : . é A é : Vv I. PARENTAGE AND Birtu 4 : E % : 1 um. CHILDHOOD : : . " 3 : : 12 mr. Prince ALBERT’s EpucaTIoNAL CopE A 5 ao eds tv. THe Horizon wWIDENS UNDER New RESTRAINTS . ioe 40 vy. THREE Montus 1n Rome 5 ; ‘ : Sp aye vi. At EDINBURGH AND OXFORD : : : Saag 6. vu. A Misston To THE NEw WorLD. : : 5 ek! vi. Last Staces OF UNDERGRADUATE LiFE . ‘ oe LES 1x. THe DratH oF THE PRINCE CoNsORT : ' a Lee x. Tourtne THE NEAR EAStT—SETTING UP AS HOUSEHOLDER AND CouUNTRY GENTLEMAN . é : : = a0 xt. BETROTHAL AND MARRIAGE . : P 5 on AS xir. Socran SOVEREIGNTY . : 2 , Re ats)

xm. THe Prince and Poxitics—Mrnistriss, 1863-1874— Honours AND APPOINTMENTS—ACCESS TO OFFICIAL

INFORMATION . F : : : ‘ . 199

Chapter I Parentage And Birth I

Kine Epwarp VII. was born at twelve minutes before eleven on the morning of Tuesday, 9th November 1841, at Buckingham Palace.1 His mother, Queen Victoria, had continued to “ write notes, sign her name, and declare her pleasure up to the last moment as if nothing serious was at hand.” ? Sir Robert Peel, the Prime Minister, had already accepted an invitation to dine with her on the evening of the eventful day.

At the birth there were present not only the boy’s father, Prince Albert, and his maternal grandmother, the Duchess of Kent, but also the chief officers of State whom Prince Albert had hurriedly summoned to make formal attestation of the fact that the new-born babe was lawful heir to the Crown of the United Kingdom with its colonies and dependencies beyond the seas. Conspicuous among these witnesses were the two men who excited at the time the country’s liveliest interest—Sir Robert Peel, the Conservative Prime Minister, who had held office for a bare two months, and the veteran hero, the Duke of Wellington, who, having in the evening of his days exchanged a soldier’s life for that of a politician, had joined Peel’s cabinet without a portfolio. Just after the birth there hurried on the scene William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury, a type of rigid ecclesiastical

1 The Official Bulletin ran: ‘‘ The Queen was safely delivered of a Prince this morning at forty-eight minutes past ten o’clock. Her Majesty and the Infant Prince are going on well. (Sgd.) Jamus Crarg, M.D.

CHARLES Locoox, M.D.

Rozsert Frravson, M.D.

RicHaRD BLaGpEN, M.D.” 2 Sir James Graham, apud Croker Papers, ii. 408.

VOL. I 1 B

2 LINEAGE OHAP.

Toryism whom King Edward well remembered in later life as the last Primate to conform to the dying habit of wearing a wig.

II

The new-born Prince was, in due time, justly proud of the long line of kings from which he descended. The blood of many strains—Saxon, Norman, Scottish, Welsh, German—mingled in his veins. In the remote distance, his direct progenitors included the historic figures of King Alfred, William the Conqueror, Edward I. (justly reckoned the ablest of English rulers), Henry VII., and James I. The chequered fortunes of the royal house of Stuart, which derived from James I., always moved in him an especially tender sentiment. His more immediate ancestors were the three Hanoverians, George I., George II., and George III. King George III., a belated champion of personal sovereignty and a shining example of domestic virtue, was King Edward’s great-grandfather. From him the descent of the Crown had taken an unusual turn. Although King George III. was father of nine sons and six daughters, yet when he died, blind and imbecile, on the 29th January 1820, at the age of eighty-two, his family was lawfully represented, in the third generation, only by an infant grand-daughter scarcely eight months old.

This infant was Victoria, the only child of the aged sovereign’s fourth son, Edward, Duke of Kent, who had married late in life avowedly for dynastic reasons. His choice had fallen on a homely German princess, the youngest daughter of the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Saalfeld, who was widow of a reigning Prince of Leiningen, and sister of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, subsequently first King of the Belgians. The Duchess of Kent’s shrewd and well-informed brother Leopold was long the oracle alike of his niece, Princess Victoria, and of his grand-nephew the future King Edward, through his early years.1

1 On 2nd May 1816 Prince Leopold married as his first wife Princess Charlotte, sole child and heiress of the Prince Regent, George III.’s eldest son, and, at that time, George III.’s only grandchild. The Princess Charlotte’s premature death on 6th November 1817 left Prince Leopold a childless widower and threatened for the moment George III.’s family with early extinction. Prince Leopold remained in England till 1831, when he accepted the offer of the throne of Belgium.

I QUEEN VICTORIA 3

The sudden death of Princess Victoria’s father eight months after her birth was followed at no long interval by the deaths, without legitimate issue, of her father’s three elder brothers who came before her in the succession. Two of these brothers enjoyed short and inglorious spells of kingship as King George IV. and King William IV. respectively. The death, on the 20th June 1837, of King William IV., to whom Princess Victoria stood in relation of heir-presumptive, made her Queen of England just after she had celebrated her eighteenth birthday.

Despite her youth, Queen Victoria showed, from the opening days of her long reign, a surprising aptitude for the responsibilities of her high station. Under the wise guidance of her first Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, she rapidly familiarised herself with affairs of State. Her will was always strong, and a quick intuition rather than any force of intellect or conscious exercise of reasoning faculty soon enabled her to form decided and often Sagacious opinions on the vast variety of questions which came to hernotice. At the same time her instincts were very womanly ; her domestic affections were strong, and her sympathies with suffering and misfortune alert. A girlish zest, which she long retained, for simple pleasures and for the lighter sides of life added to her charm. She rode, danced, played games, and displayed a lively interest in music, drama, and art. The English people welcomed with immense enthusiasm the new sovereign, whose artless promise favourably contrasted with the forbidding traits of her immediate predecessors—men far advanced in middle life whose personal failings forfeited respect. The chivalric devotion which the young Queen awoke in her subjects strengthened amazingly the position of the monarchy in England.

It was primarily at the suggestion of her uncle Leopold, now King of the Belgians, the family counsellor, that the Queen chose for her husband her first cousin Albert, second son of the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg and her mother’s and her uncle Leopold’s eldest brother. The young man, her junior by three months, moved in her, as soon as they met, a passionate attachment which grew in strength with fuller knowledge. Their marriage, which was celebrated at St. James’s Palace on the 10th February 1840, proved throughout its twenty-one years’ duration one of the happiest unions in recorded history.

Prince Albert played a somewhat pathetic part in the annals

4 PRINCE ALBERT CHAP, of his adopted country. Carefully educated at the University of Bonn, he remained for life an earnest student of books. Of unexceptionable morals, he was scrupulously conscientious in his devotion to duty, applied himself assiduously to works of philanthropy and industrial welfare, and developed a faculty for business and organisation. But the fibre of his thought was essentially German, and despite his strenuous and well-intentioned endeavours, he failed to assimilate the less deliberate and less searching view of life habitual among English people. To the Queen’s chagrin, her subjects never adopted her exalted estimate of his disposition and abilities. In their eyes his shy and ungenial manner was always reminiscent of his German birth and affinities. By the Queen’s desire he shared her public and political responsibilities, and his intellectual power and cautious temper gave value to the political assistance which he rendered her. Some qualified praise came his way, but there was more sour censure. All his activities were jealously scrutinised by the English press and society. In course of time the Queen’s intense faith in her husband and his profound earnestness exerted a ~ perceptible influence on her character. She lost much of her early blitheness and buoyancy. Unfriendly critics were constant in complaint of the German proclivities with which Prince Albert infected the Queen and her Court.

Ill

King Edward’s entry into the world was the signal for impressive demonstrations of national joy. A first child, Victoria, “Princess Royal of England,” had been born to the youthful parents, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, also at Buckingham Palace, on 20th November 1840, less than a year before. But popular interest in the domestic and dynastic fortunes of the young Queen was vastly stimulated by the birth of a second child and first son. No heir had been born to a reigning sovereign for some seventy-nine years. Few were alive to recall the 12th August 1762 when Queen Charlotte, wife of King George IIL, gave birth at St. James’s Palace to the last preceding Prince of Wales, whose career, first as Prince of Wales, then as Prince Regent on behalf of his incapacitated father, and finally for a last ten years as King George IV., cost the Crown much dignity.

I THE NATION’S JOY 5

The nation regarded King Edward’s birth as promising the monarchy, which his mother had lately rescued from national scorn, an honourable stability.

On the evening of the Prince’s day of birth the customary banquet took place at the Guildhall on the admission to office of the new Lord Mayor of London, John Pirie. Sir Robert Peel and his fellow-ministers were guests of the City, and gave fervid expression to the national enthusiasm. William Ewart Gladstone, the future apostle of Victorian liberalism, who was as yet an unbending Tory, was present by virtue of his ministerial office of Vice-President of the Board of Trade. He was to come into personal relations with the new-born Prince in infancy, and was to maintain an uninterrupted intimacy until his death near the end of the century. On the 9th November 1880 Mr. Gladstone, then at the zenith of his political career, described to the Prince in his usual letter of birthday congratulation how he attended the Lord Mayor’s Banquet thirty-nine years before, “when ‘ God Save the Prince of Wales,’ in illuminated letters reaching across the end of the Guildhall, announced to the company the birth of your Royal Highness and the sentiment which it awoke in the heart of every loyal citizen and subject.”

The press of the country faithfully echoed the general exhilaration. The Times next morning described in exuberant terms “the one universal feeling of joy which ran throughout the kingdom.” The comic weekly, Punch, which was less than five months old, and was to follow with close and frankly critical attention every turn in King Edward’s future career, reflected the popular excitement. In its issue after the Prince’s birth (November 13) it regaled its readers with some rollicking stanzas, of which the first ran :

Huzza! we’ve a little Prince at last, A roaring Royal boy ;

And all day long the booming bells Have rung their peals of joy.

The event was straightway set as a theme for the English poem at Cambridge University. The successful competitor, Sir Henry Maine, afterwards eminent as a jurist, looked forward in rather tame couplets to the time when the infant might become “the perfect man ” and so develop into “ the perfect king.”

6 INHERITED TRAITS die

IV

“QO how happy, how grateful did I feel to that Almighty Providence who has blessed me so peculiarly,” wrote the Queen in her Journal on the birth of her heir, whose physical condition fully satisfied the parental pride. “ Our little boy is a wonderfully large and strong child,” she informed her beloved uncle and mentor, Leopold, King of the Belgians (November 29, 1841), “with very large dark-blue eyes, a finely formed but somewhat large nose, and a pretty little mouth.” +

From his first hours of life Queen Victoria reiterated with wifely adoration the hope that in career and character her son should be a copy of his father. Her letters to her uncle abound in such phrases as these: ‘“‘I hope and pray he may be like his dearest papa”’;? “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.” 8 Through the child’s infancy, boyhood, and early manhood Queen Victoria clung tenaciously to such wifely aspirations. Lord Melbourne, who, after retirement from the office of her first Prime Minister, remained the recipient of the Queen’s domestic confidences, cautiously approved her conjugal ardour: “ Your Majesty cannot offer up for the young Prince a more safe and judicious prayer than that he may resemble his father. The character, in Lord Melbourne’s opinion, depends much upon the race, and on both sides he has a good chance.” 4

As the event proved, it was from his high-spirited, shrewd, and quickwitted mother in the early pride of Queen and wife, rather than from his grave and reserved father, that King Edward drew many traits as boy and man. In course of time, too, her example taught him how to reconcile free play of personal will in the ways of political criticism and suggestion, with a full recognition of the constitutional principles of ministerial responsibility and the disqualification of the Crown for the personal exercise of political power. From his father he may have derived something of his organising aptitude, of his philanthropic activity, and his zest for foreign politics. Very few distinctive features of his character seemed to throw back to earlier progenitors. To his grandfather,

1 Letters of Queen Victoria, 1837-61, i. 457, 2 Tbid. i. 460. 3 Martin, Life of Prince Consort, i. 21. 4 Letters, i. 458,

I “ ALBERT EDWARD ” 7 the Duke of Kent, who was both a military martinet and a patron of experiments in social reform, may perhaps be traced his almost pedantic insistence on correctness in dress and uniform, as well as a sympathetic interest in schemes of social betterment. He was not in the direct line of descent from King Henry V., King Henry VIII., or King George IV.—proverbial examples of pleasure-loving princes to whom, at one or other period of his career, he was popularly likened. Heredity indeed throws imperfect light, despite Lord Melbourne’s forecast, on his matured personality. It is not easy to trace to the influence of either parent or of any forefather the frank joie de wire, the charm of address, the captivating bonhomie, the cosmopolitan touches, the sympathy with the French outlook on life, and the zeal for sport, which his nature soon developed. It is plain that he inherited little of his father’s austerity or cautious reticence and nothing at all of those studious and academic predilections which spoke eloquently of Prince Albert’s German temperament.

V

The child “is to be called Albert and Edward is to be his second name,” wrote the Queen to her uncle Leopold, 29th November 1841 1—Albert after his father and Edward after the Queen’s father, the Duke of Kent. Lord Melbourne, when acknowledging the like intimation, guardedly questioned the right of the name Albert to priority :

Lord Melbourne supposes that Your Majesty has determined yourself upon the relative position of the two names, but Hdward is a good English appellation, and has a certain degree of popularity attached to it from ancient recollections. Albert is also an old Anglo-Saxon name—the same, Lord Melbourne believes, as Ethelred—but it has not been so common nor so much in use since the Conquest. However, Your Majesty’s feelings, which Lord Melbourne perfectly understands, must determine this point.”

The Queen was unmoved by Lord Melbourne’s reasonable comment. ‘Albert Edward” became the Prince’s appellation in all relations, save in the family circle where through life he was called “ Bertie” ; in letters to his kindred he invariably used that signature instead of his full name. It was only on

1 Letters of Queen Victoria, 1837-61, i. 457. 2 Tbid. i, 458.

8 TITLES od his accession to the throne, more than fifty-nine years after his birth, that he abandoned his first Christian name Albert. In substantial agreement with Lord Melbourne’s suggestion, he then assumed the sole name of Edward, which embodies the purest English tradition.

The title of Prince of Wales, by which the new prince was to be publicly known for the greater part of his life, was not, strictly speaking, inherited. In accordance with custom, it was by Letters Patent that Queen Victoria created her son Prince of Wales when barely a month old. With that honour was linked the Earldom of Chester.1 At the same time the heir to the throne of the United Kingdom assumed at birth and without legal formalities an imposing series of other prescriptive titles. The infant prince at once became Duke of both Cornwall and Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, and Great Steward of Scotland. Save the Duchy of Cornwall, which was the gift of King Edward III. in 1337 to Edward the Black Prince and was then entailed on all heirs-apparent of English sovereignty, the inherited titles of the infant Prince were legacies from Scotland, conveyed to the Crown of England on the accession of the Scottish King James I. in 1603.2 (Before he came to the throne, King Edward, while travelling tmcognito abroad, habitually employed his Scottish title of Baron of Renfrew, only substituting for it on rare occasions his English title of Earl of Chester.)

An additional title was inherited by the infant from his father. According to the law of German heredity, Prince Albert shared, with a large number of princes of Saxon descent, the title of Duke of Saxony, and Prince Albert’s son was heraldically entitled to that honour. The Queen was anxious for her heir to enjoy the paternal distinction. By her direction there was at once designed for the new-born prince an armorial shield which quartered the Royal Arms of Saxony with the Royal Arms of England. The

1 These joint dignities had, since the time of the Black Prince, the eldest son of King Edward III., invariably been conferred by the sovereign on the heir-apparent, in Letters Patent soon after his birth.

* A more imposing hereditary Scottish titlek—Prince of Scotland—which was long enjoyed by heirs to the Scottish Crown before 1603, was borne from birth by King James I.’s son, Charles I., and by his grandson, Charles II., but was ignored after the revolution of 1688, and was dropped in the case of subsequent Princes of Wales. Cf. The Times, February 22-23, 1924, for a proposal to revive the dignity.

I SPONSORS 9 procedure provoked adverse criticism in social and_ political quarters, where there was fear of the influence on the new heir-apparent of Prince Albert’s German sympathies and sentiments. Lord Palmerston and the Whigs of Holland House talked frankly of the fresh proof which the Queen was giving of the German leanings of the Court.1

VI

The Queen’s vigorous health made recovery from her confinement rapid. In December she removed with her infant heir to Windsor Castle, where a great part of his boyhood was to be spent. There the christening ceremony took place.

The choice of sponsors exercised the mind of the Queen and her husband as soon as the boy was born. She wished to satisfy evenly the claims of her heir’s English and German kinsfolk. As English sponsors she selected two of the few surviving children of King George III.—her uncle, the Duke of Cambridge, King George’s seventh son, and her aunt, Princess Sophia, his fifth daughter, a spinster. With them she associated two of Prince Albert’s German relatives—his stepmother, the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg, and the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha, a widowed cousin. A third German sponsor, Duke Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, next brother of the reigning Duke, stood in the same relation of uncle to both the Queen and Prince Albert.

But to these five lineally related godparents the Queen and Prince Albert, with an eye on international policy, added a reigning monarch of the European continent. Reluctantly the Queen repressed a wish to invite her uncle, King Leopold. Her dead father’s surly and unfriendly brother, King Ernest of Hanover, threatened to make trouble if the Belgian sovereign were preferred to himself. Bickerings within the domestic circle led her to “ set her heart ” on Frederick William IV., King of Prussia, who had ascended his throne the year before. She ignored mutterings of discontent at the rival Courts of Paris, Vienna, and St. Petersburg ; and at the persuasion of the Prussian minister in London, Baron Christian von Bunsen, a scholar and theologian as well as a diplomatist, who was one of Prince Albert’s few intimate friends, the Prussian King accepted the flattering invitation.

1 Greville Memoirs, 1837-62, ii. 63-5.

10 FREDERICK WILLIAM IV. OF PRUSSIA omar.

The Prince of Wales was baptized with befitting pomp on the 25th January 1842, some ten weeks after his birth. The scene was St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. Archbishop Howley of Canterbury, attended by Archbishop Vernon Harcourt of York, Bishop Blomfield of London, Bishop Edward Stanley of Norwich, Bishop Sumner of Winchester, and Bishop Bagot of Oxford, conducted the ceremony, which Sir George Hayter commemorated in a notable painting. Prince Albert, who settled every detail, declined an original anthem which had been specially written by Sir George Elvey, the organist of St. George’s, and substituted Handel’s “ Hallelujah Chorus.” The Queen was arrayed in “ the cumbrous robes of the Garter.” The child, whom an eye-witness credited with “ fierce stout features,” was carried to the font by the Mistress of the Robes, the Duchess of Buccleuch. By the Queen’s special invitation the Duke of Wellington bore the Sword of State in the procession. ‘“‘ You will have heard,” wrote the Queen to the King of the Belgians after the ceremony (February 1), “ how perfectly and splendidly everything went off on the 25th. Nothing could have done better, and little Albert (what a pleasure that he has that dearest name !) behaved so well.”