NO ROYAL ROAD TO THE THRONE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 945, 20 September 1957, Page 4

NO ROYAL ROAD TO THE THRONE

The story of the British Heirs-Apparent, from the time of George | to that of

Edward

VIII

is largely

a story of frustration

"MIEN in great place are thrice servants: servants of the Sovereign, of State; servants of fame; and Servants of business; so that they have no freedom, neither in their persons, nor in their actions, nor in their times." Bacon wrote this of those who seek power, but it applies also to those born into hereditary power. The heir to such power is a servant of his sovereign as well as of the people he will one day rule, and the servant, too, of custom. What is the best preparation for a young person destined to be a sovereign? This topical question is raised in a book that traces the education and character of British heirsapparent from the time of George I to Edward VIII.* It is largely a story of frustration. With our much greater knowledge of psychology we can see more clearly how some of these mistakes arose. Frustration and dislike, misunderstanding and injustice are common in families. Parents will strive to mould children in their own image, and

children will rebel. In a royal family the situation is immensely complicated by special circumstances, including adulation, politics, and popular interest. Tennyson’s lines, "That fierce light which beats upon a throne and blackens every blot," is proverbial, but compared with Tennyson’s day, that light now is as an electric floodlight to a candleimmeasurubly more searching and mobile. Then the camera had not been wedded to the printed word. As The Listener pointed out editorially, there has always been criticism of British Royalty, but with exercise of this right there has been joined yveneration, largely mystical-religious, of the institution and its representatives. In his second volume of British history, Sir Winston Churchill emphasises that this feeling remained widespread and lively during the Civil War in the time of Charles I. That over a long period criticism has lessened, and is thought by many to be improper, arises from a combination of circumstances, the most potent of which is the higher

standards by which Royalty has lived. The history of this criticism is well brought out in Thomas Sidney’s book. In the disreputable 18th century criticism was frequent and often rude. Even _ in Queen Victoria’s widowhood Punch made fun of her favourite Scottish servant, John Brown. The involvement of the Prince of Wales in the Baccarat Scandal of the nineties raised a storm, and one Radical M.P. predicted that in a few years the nation would turn republican. Some thought this might have happened had the hated Duke of Cumberland, and not Princess Victoria, succeeded William IV. Victoria’s education had been sketchy and her life so secluded that she was never left alone, and talked to others only under surveillance, but she brought innocence, what the author calls a "clean slate" to the Throne. What a change this was after the scandals of the Hanoverian kings and princes, when the very dogs of London barked the hames of mistresses! The catalocue

given here may surprise even those with a good knowledge of the period. Royal family quarrels were conducted in public, with the participants taking political sides. George I hated his son, and acted accordingly, but when that son gucceeded he hated his son Frederick, apparently the best of the whole connection, and ignored his existence, "After the death of George I a paper was found ‘in his cabinet, writtem by Charles Stanhope, and ‘detailing a proposal from Admiral Lord Berkeley that the Prince of Wales should be shanghaied aboard a ship and taken to America, ‘whence he would never be heard of more.’ The disposal of troublesome heirs in this way was not unknown at that time... True, the King did not apparently go further with the Admiral’s proposal. But the mere fact that he filed the paper, instead of having its originators sent to the ‘Tower for treason, suggests he took the plan seriously." George III was a goodliving man, but his son the Prince Regent and George IV turned out to be the First Cad of Europe, as well as the ‘First Gentleman. He was a man of parts, and his vices may have been fostered by his restrictive upbringing; which one critic called a "stupid, odious, German sergeantmajor system of discipline." Political considerations even entered into the choice of tutors.

The frustration entailed by the curricula for heirs-apparent is traced through to Edward VIII. Prince Frederick, who died prematurely, wanted to be an active soldier-he coveted the command that. led to Culloden-but George II would not allow it, though the King himself commanded in battle, the last to do so. The same kind of wish was denied to the Prince, who became Edward VII. In the First World War the future Edward VIII was allowed to go to the front, but not as a combatant. They feared he might be captured. His brother George, who was to become King, served with the fleet, including Jutland. In Edward, Prince of Wales, afterwards King Edward VII, we have a classic case of mistaken upbringing. He is nearer to our time; he was a good and most popular king; and from the first his life is copiously documented. Queen Victoria seems to have disliked him actually from birth. Her first child, the girl who became the mother of the Kaiser, was her favourite. "Bertie," as she called him, did not take to bookish education; and his father the Prince Consort, was convinced, in accord with a belief of the time, that, in this historian’s words, "education could mould a human being into any shape desired by the teacher." The brain of a baby in his cradle was regarded as a sort of blank sheet on which tutors could inscribe what they wished. Undesirable characteristics could be suppressed by discipline, and lifelong likes and dislikes, inclinations and thoughts, implanted by a tutor, who followed the right curriculum. Study and discipline were to make the heir, like his father, a combination of a giant and an pe Ter ype The Queen was a woman of limit education and no doubt some of the weighty arguments of the German philosophers were over her head, but she was ready enough to agree, for Albert had only to pronounce something right for her to accept it as unchallengable truth. The Prince Consort did a great deal for the intellectual life of "England, but his curriculum for his son was stupid and cruel. Albert "believed that it was long nights of study that had made him wise," and he was "without the sense of humour which gives a sense of proportion and regarded all conversation that was not ‘serious’ as waste of time." Victoria and Albert had the excuse that they feared in their son the recurrence of the vices of the Georges. "His mother and father solemnly discussed the faults of his Hanoverian ancestors and considered how to suppress the tendencies Edward might have inherited. It was a worthy motive, but they went to work the wrong way, backed by their German adviser, Baron Stockmar-a man whom Gladstone (himself an over-serious person), desctibed as a mischievous old prig. It was books, books, books-study all the time. Every day the tutor had to write a report on progress to Albert, who commented on it. [Think of that, you moderns who dread a report once a term! One did not need to be a modern educationist to see the folly of all this. Punch published this comment: The dear little Wales--sure the saddest of talesIs the tale of the studies with which they are ng thee In A naa aa and bibs, handed over to Who for eight years with solid instruction was ramming thee. — Giants indulging the for this -high pressure fashion : Of Prince training, Punch would uplift warning. Locomotives, we see, over-stoked soon may be Till the super-steamed boiler blows up one fine morning. ' . Eminent men did the same. The cultivated and worldly-wise Lord Mel-

bourne, on whom the Queen had leaned before her marriage, told her that education might be able to do much, but not as much as expected. "It may mould and direct character, but it rarely alters it." The pressure went on. Edward was not allowed to mix at all freely with boys of his age, Until he was 17 he never talked with one, except under supervision. Everybody and everything was screened. When he went to Universities, he did not live as a student in college, but had his own establishment. Novel-reading, even Scott, was discouraged. Yet there were good qualities, There is plenty of testimony to Edward’s charm. The Dean of Christ Church found him "the nicest fellow possible." He was a youth when he visited Canada and the United States, but he captivated everybody. Edward liked and understood people, but did not care for books, and that was his attitude all his life. Noting that Edward had a "singularly sweet manner," but could not bear being bored, Disraeli added: "I can’t myself." Gladstone said of Edward that he knew everything except what was in books. It was not from books that Edward drew the ability to charm the Anglophobe public of Paris and prepare the way for the Entente. Cordiale. Of course, the boiler did "blow off," at any rate, in the Queen’s opinion. When he came of age Edward was given an establishment of his own, and married happily, though not for love in the conventional sense. A young man with an exceptional capacity for human companionship and a strong zest for life, found himself free for the first time, with money to spend, and regarded as the social leader of the nation, The world was a very wonderful place, and if he sampled its delights not wisely but too well at times, who should blame the released prisoner? There remained, however, the question of adequate employment, and though he was middle-aged when he came to the throne, this was never provided for him as Prince. The Queen never got over her dis’ike and distrust of him. "Bertie" was light-minded and indiscreet. He could not be trusted with State papers, and before he was conceded this’ right, these were actially shown to one of his brothers, Edward wanted to do more than open exhibi-

tions and lay foundation stones, and politicians urged that something better to do be found. _ The Queen turned down every suggestion. He was too young. It would be improper for the heir to fill such a post. The position would not really provide him with occupation. . . Whether the proposal was that he should represent the Queen in Irelandr-which had been visited by the Sovereign for only 22 days in 200 yearsor learn the business of government by working as a sort of apprentice civil servant in different departments or serve on the Indian Council . . . or work on the Local Government Board, the Queen had a reason ready for saying No, The Irish idea, pushed by various Ministers year after year in the ho that the charming and genial Prince and Princess might work the miracle which defeated them of bringing peace to Ireland, was the only one which the Queen seems to have considered seriously. But serious consideration always resulted in rejection. . .- Edward did find some employment on commissions and committees, but his chief service was storing up experience of the world for use when he

was King. Despite his strict insistence on etiquette he had a liberal mind, But he and his mother never came together. "There is a greater distance between my mother and myself than there is between the Queen and her humblest subiect."" So he was reported. "I never in my life had .a_ heart-to-heart talk with her" (he said on another occasion ). "I never left the room and her presence without a sigh of relief." ‘It quite irritates me to see him in the room," the Queen said to a Minister. Publicly, however, Edward was always loyal to his mother. Edward and Alexandra brought up their two sons sensibly in an affectionate and easy family lite. George, who became George V, was the second, and seems to have been the stronger character. Both boys became naval cadets, and to George the Navy became a profession. It suited his simple character; his son Edwerd was.also a cadet, but the fact that he missed the rough and tumble of ordinary school life was a handicap, and it is advanced here as part of the tragedy of Edward VIII that whereas his father. reached the responsibility of executive rank in the service, the son did not. There was affection between King George and his son, but the refrain of his father’s advice was: "You must remember who you are.’ Belonging to a new age, the young man was discouraged from taking part in some of its activities, such as flying. So he became to a large extent what his grandfather had been, an ornamental prince,

He obstinately refused to accept the idea that, like other staff officers, it was his duty not to take risks (in the first war), and his obstinacy. was symbolised by refusal to wear the ribbons of French and Russian war medals which had been given him. He could not bring himself to wear what he considered unearned medals when sO many men who had done real fighting received none, Of Edward’s peace activities, this biographer says, there remained, as he has recorded in retrospect, "a sense of incompleteness and inner discontent." His intimate circle of friends, composed mostly of "lightweights" perhaps encouraged him to believe overmuch in the infallibility -of his judgment and the power of his popularity. Thanks to the wisdom of her parents and the conditions of the second war, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth was the most democratically educated of all heirs-apparent. She and her husband show an even deeper wisdom in the education of their son. The problem

for the future-to find occupation for. him when he grows up-is extremely difficult. The nation and the Commonwealth expect the Sovereign to be regal, to maintain ceremony and pageantry, but at the same time ask the Royal Family to mix with the people and be democratically minded. The people or peoples must co-operate sympethetically and intelligently. There should be an end to such folly as crowds rushing to the scene the moment it is announced that Prince Charles is going to a certain preparatory school. The heaviest responsibility rests with the Press, sections of which are avid to exploit royalty and frequently disregard its right to privacy, We have seen Lord Altrincham’s criticism distorted in condensation. The public has a game to play according to rules, as well as

the Royalty it watches.

A.

M.

*HEIRS APPARENT, by Thomas Sidney; Allan Wingate, English price 25/-.