ELIZABETH AND HER FUTURE CONSORT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 422, 25 July 1947, Page 6

ELIZABETH AND HER FUTURE CONSORT

| Written for "The Listener" |

by

JOAN

WOOD

A Worthy Tradition Will Guide Them

HE consort of the future Elizabeth II of England is no longer a subject for speculation. The Princess, we are told, has chosen-and chosen for herself. The Prince Consort-to-be is a commoner since his recent naturalisation. He is first cousin to King Paul of Greece or his father’s side, second cousin on his mother’s. Nevertheless, he has no Greek blood in his veins. The present royal family of Greece is descended from George of Denmark, the second King to be placed on the throne of Greece by the Great Powers of Europe when Greece secured her independence from Turkey. On his father’s side the .ex-Prince Philip is a direct descendant of George II of England, through a Danish line: On his mother’s side, he is a great-grandson of Queen Victoria, through Princess Alice who married Louis IV of Hesse. He and Princess, Elizabeth are more distant cousins than were Victoria and Albert. But in mixture of blood and rank this match may seem not so very different from the marriage of the last, reigning Queen of England, which will almost certainly be referred to for matters of precedent. In point of fact, the position is very different indeed. Victoria’s marriage to Albert was a pre-arranged affair in the ordinary tradition. It was planned when the innocent protagonists were still in

the nursery. Victoria may have had it in her hands to refuse to propose marriage to the Prince. She was scarcely free to choose another. Some five different possibilities were spoken of, including Prince Alexander of the Netherlands (favoured by William IV), and a couple of English Dukes. But as far as we know Victoria became properly acquainted with none of them. Her uncle, King Leopold of the Belgians, who had missed’ (by the death of Princess Charlotte) being a Prince Consort himself, was determined that his‘ young German nephew, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, should be planted beside the throne of England. The Prince, we are told, was prepared from babyhood to marry the Queen. He and his brother were sent on visits to England. Victoria waxed lyrical in her journal over the kind and charming youth. She almost fell in love. But she was an inexperienced and highly susceptible young girh who might have fallen for any handsome stranger-with less happy results. The "choice" was hers. But the marriage’ was arranged from childhood all the same, Albert. Was Homesick Again, Albert was a foreigner. He was German through and through. He did not readily take to the English, whom he was bent on improving, nor they, understandably enough, to him. At the beginning he was horribly homesick. He liked an hour or two of hunting before breakfast, but a whole day

of sport wae incomprehensible to him. He was something of a dilettante. He enjoyed playing the organ, painting and reading poetry; he enjoyed a certain mild gaiety and goodfellowship. He loathed the English Sunday. But if he liked more warmth of spirit than the English habitually showed, he equally disliked the formal dancing into the small hours of the morning, the rather dismal frivolity, on which his young wife flourished. ‘Seemingly they had nothing in commor? He could not at the beginning have hoped for much help from that quarter in the extraordinarily difficult position he occupied. But Albert had a Teutonic seriousness and determination. He gritted his teeth and put all his hitherto latent energy into making a success of things. He had a sense of mission. He could do good. "Dear Mama," he wrote, after his betrothal, "with the exception of my relations with her (the Queen) my future, position will have its dark sides, and the sky will not always be blue and unclouded. But life has its thorns in every position and the consciousness of having used one’s powers and. endeavours for an object so great as that of promoting the good of so many will surely be sufficient to support me." Poor Albert! He had to wait some years for that dream to come true. The Queen, however, had something of the same determination, almost from the first softened by love; though it went hard with her to share her power

and subdue her headstrong wilfulness and arrogance. Her husband had a better head than she-but only through love, not reason, would she acknowledge it. Albert eventually emerged triumphant, but it was no small task to break in to humility a youthful, arrogant, and dogmatic Sovereign. Points of Difference All round, then, Albert’s position was very different from that of Philip, Mountbatten to-day. For Prince Philip, & now plain Lieut. Mountbatten, is an English commoner. He was naturalised before his engagement was announced by the ordinary laws of naturalisation; not afterwards, like Albert, who required a special Act of Parliament. -More than that, brought, up and educated in England, Lieut. Mountbatten iy in nearly all respects an Englishman, with a nayal>#, career which accords well with the tradi-" tions of the House of Windsor. But most important difference of all, he will not, unless some sudden and drastic accident occurs, marry a reigning Queen. So perhaps, after all, the position of the consort of Queen Victoria may not provide very much in the way of precedent for the present situation. Who Should Go First?

Nevertheless the position of a male royal consort remains a ticklish business. It is still not defined by statute nor by an accepted convention of the Constitution. On the occasion of: Prince Albert’s marriage the burning questions were-as they may well be to-day-ones of rank and precedence and income. As to rank, there was some suggestion of making Albert a Peer. But he flatly refused. From his own letters one might imagine this was due to an excess of nationalistic pride, were it not that Victoria in her letters made it quite clear that she would brook no interference in politics from her consort, for she and Lord Melbourne between them were fully capable of taking care of the land. So it really became a matter as to who should go first through the door. Lord Melbourne referred to the Bill for the naturalisation of Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg, Albert’s uncle, afterwards King of the Belgians. He had married Princess Charlotte, who, if she had not died young would have reigned instead of Victoria. The Bill empowered the Prince Regent to give the Pririce (Leépold) precedence over everyone except princes of the blood. It was proposed that the same should be done for Albert, except that, as husband of the Queen, he should take rank above the Princes, But when the Bill for Albert’s naturalisation came before the House of Lords the Duke of Wellington objected to the clause and the matter was left to the Queen. Albert’s precedence was settled by Royal prerogative alone. But the situation con‘tinued to rankle. We learn that yer", afterwards there was a proposal to sett, "2 this matter of the position of the Prince Consort once and for pil by Act of: Parliament. One can imagine that in France or Germany such a matter would be cut and dried and established for all time. Not so in England, where the proposal came to nought. Albert was, in fact, even without the title of Prince

Consort until 1857, 17 years after his marriage, when it was conferred on him by letters patent. How Much To Spend? The matter of income, too, caused the Queen some considerable mortification. The sum of £50,000 was suggested by Lord Melbourne. This is what had been given to Leopold, and it was the sum given to Queen Consorts since the reign of George II. But a Queen, it was argued, by those blackguardly Tories, required a much more elaborate household than a Prince, who was only a man after all. Moreover Queen Consorts were recognised by the Constitution, Prince Consorts not. Again, the country was in a depression. So to the Queen’s chagrin Albert was given only £30,000 a year-which, with the Queen’s income, : seems to have been ample once his. household was properly organised. ; Poor Albert, in fact, found the Palace in the state of chaos one can imagine. as existing in an establishment where the Lord Steward was responsible for the laying of the fires while the Lord Chamberlain was responsible for lighting . them; where the insides of the windows were cleaned by one or other of their. departments while the outsides were the. responsibility of the Office of Woods, and Forests. It took as long then to, mend a broken sash as it does to'get: cement for Buckingham Palate to-day. It was four years before Prince Albert,

at first a mere cipher, was able to assert | his authority in the ‘matter gf Palace | expenditure. ) And that was only one of his troubles, | Prince Albert in the first years of his marriage was a rather unpopular nonen- | tity. for all Victoria’s adoration. He was | simply the Queen’s husband and the | Queen’s subject, holding precedence by | Royal prerogative. But he did not lohg | remain a nonentity. Just as he soon be- | came the master in his own house, so} his influencé came to guide the Queen | throughout her public life, which con- | tinued long after his death. A Peerage | would have been irrelevant to the position he eventually built for himself. It is important to realise to ,what an extent his later role was made by his own. actions* and personality in ways which had nothing to do with rank. Position of the Sovereign The husband of. Princess Elizabeth, however, will probably accept a Peerage (so we have been given to understand) and already there is talk as to what rank will be conferred on him. Beyond that his role, like Albert’s, will largely depend. on .bimself and his attitude and policy in conjunction with that of Elizabeth as Queen. However, it must be remembered that the position of a Sovereign to-day is somewhat different from what it was in Queen Victoria’s time. The Hanoverian kings who preceded Victoria had wrought havoc with royalty.

Victoria sought to re-instate it by taking an active interest in politics, or rather by a participation which became ardent partisanship. She adored the Whigs in the person of Lord Melbourne who guided her first Queenly footsteps (she was only 18), but she loathed the Tories with an equal ardour. It was Prince Albert who made friends with Sir Robert Peel when the Tory party finally, in spite of all Victoria’s efforts, came into power. Albert had vowed that he would take no part in politics, but jhe found there was much in the way of balance and impartiality as well as of proper Constitutional behaviour that he could teach his young wife, three months his elder though she was. Prince Albert studied law. He steeped himself in the British Constitution. He became the Queen’s secretary and confidential adviser. More and more the reign became a joint one in all but name, and jointly they created a tradition that gave royalty once more the mana and respectability which for a while it had lost, In fact, together they raised it to a particular kind of dignity that it had never had. Albert believed in the permanence of the crown through shifting ministries; he believed in a continuity in foreign policy which it seemed to him that this gave. He believed in a stability in nice accord with his own sober and dutiful attitude to life. But he did more than believe. He became an active centre of foreizn affairs. From the time of the Peel ministry it is said that not a despatch was sent from the Foreign Office without his perusal, and no report of any importance was allowed to be kept from him. In domestic politics, haber, the role of the Queen and her Consort became progressively more passive than active, They set a standard. They became a pattern. Constitutionally the political power of the Sovereign was, and still eee

is, very limited. But no constitution can limit the powers of the monarchy in philanthropy, in art and music and industry. Albert became a patron of everything. He made model farms, he encouraged musicians, he dabbled in architecture. But his tour de force was the great Exhibition and the Crystal Palace. There was no end to Victoria’s pride and satisfaction. And England was proud of him, too, though to the end it never forgot that he was a foreigner. To the Prince Consort, then, as much as to the Queen herself, we owe the character of Victoria’s reign. There is no question ‘that a Prince Consort can have a wide influence for good or ill, since royalty has become a symbol of all that is right and respectable in English life. Politically, his hands are tied. Even the reigning Monarch has little to do with politics. Legally the Sovereign can appoint and dismiss ministers, dissolve Parliament, create Peers, and refuse assent to any Bill which Parliament may have passed. But to-day it is almost always unconstitutional to use these powers without the advice of the Ministry. Now and then, however, awkward problems arise which call for a decision. And even though to-day one might not so readily say to Princess Elizabeth as Lord Melbourne said to Victoria on her engagement, "You will be much more comfortable, for a woman cannot stand alone for any ti in what--ever position she may be," still most of us find it good to have someone to consult. And though the position of Prince Consort is not an easy one, it is not so hard to-day to play second fiddle to a woman as it was in Albert’s time. There — are more precedents. ¥ ; So, altogether, Lieut. Mountbatten begins without most-and those the great-est-of Albert’s handicaps. But above all, it is his role to carry on a tradition, not to make one.