Dearest Vicky, Darling Fritz (4 page)

Fritz was nineteen and Vicky only ten, and it was too early to raise the subject of marriage. Nevertheless, to disguise any suspicions of matchmaking other European monarchs were also invited. Mindful of the upheavals of 1848 and reluctant to leave their kingdoms or empires unless really necessary, they all refused to come. London, a byword for its toleration of political refugees and dethroned exiles, was regarded by other European monarchs as a hotbed of underground socialism and anarchy. The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, purpose-built for the exhibition, was seen less by observers as the triumph of nineteenth century engineering its creators intended it to be, than a potential disaster. Merchants of doom prophesied that the enormous glass structure would surely collapse from the weight of bird droppings, or else shatter from the salvo of the guns at the opening ceremony.

Even the Prince of Prussia and his family had to be persuaded to attend. A few days before their departure from Germany, King Ernest Augustus of Hanover (Queen Victoria’s sole surviving uncle, though there was no love lost between either) warned King Friedrich Wilhelm IV that London was full of potential republican assassins who would undoubtedly seize the chance to make an attempt on his brother’s life. King Friedrich Wilhelm’s subsequent letter to Albert, asserting that a mob was on its way to London for the very purpose, drew a sarcastic reply assuring him that all guests would receive the same degree of protection as Queen Victoria and Albert himself, as they were presumably also on the list of potential victims. To this there was no answer, the King withdrew his objections, and on 29 April Prince Wilhelm, Princess Augusta and their two children arrived together at Buckingham Palace.

Queen Victoria’s initial verdict in her journal on Fritz was remarkably restrained; ‘The young Prince, who is 19, is not handsome, but has a most amiable, attractive countenance & fine blue eyes.’
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Vicky and Fritz came face to face for the first time in the magnificent setting of the Chinese Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace. She had been allowed to join the adults ostensibly as company for Louise, who was barely two years older than her. True to her upbringing as a good submissive Prussian princess, Louise hardly said a word all the time and looked thoroughly bored. Chattering in fluent German and English with a remarkable lack of self-consciousness, Vicky could hardly have failed to make an impression. She had already had a private visit to the exhibition, and thanks to her father she knew much about the items on display. When the royal party went for a drive to the exhibition she rose to the occasion magnificently and astounded Fritz with her knowledge as she took him on a conducted tour around the Crystal Palace, full of energy despite the heat and dust which gave him a headache, answering the questions he asked in faltering English. She could see that he was rather taken with her, and the added fact that he was puzzled by the exhibits, which gave her a chance to flaunt her superior knowledge, brought out the best in her. Like her father, she could never resist an opportunity to instruct others or give them the benefit of her superior education, a trait which would have seemed priggish in a child with less charm. With a sense of tact well in advance of her tender years, she swiftly led him by the arm to show him something different every time his parents began to argue, in order to spare them embarrassment.

When they were at Crystal Palace the Queen’s mother, the Duchess of Kent, became accidentally separated from their party. At once Fritz was quite concerned, only to find with astonishment that all of them went into peals of laughter at the thought that any harm could possibly come to her in a place like London.
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To the prince who had stood at the palace window in Berlin and seen the first shots fired in the disturbances of 1848, this was a revelation.

Inclined to be shy and tongue-tied with people his own age, Fritz was amazed by this girl who was obviously flattered by his attention, and eagerness to be guided around the exhibition by a child half his age. She too was normally shy in the presence of strangers, but there was no trace of timidity in her manner as she played the part of hostess to him with a poise well beyond her years. She only spoilt things, understandably in view of her age, when her parents told her afterwards that she was too young to be allowed to stay up late and attend the opera. With a display of petulance which showed how much she was her mother’s daughter, she stumped off to bed in a sulk, refusing to say goodnight. Even paragons had their human side.

Over the next two weeks Vicky and Fritz were allowed to spend several hours in each other’s company, something her parents would never have allowed had she been a few years older. During their conversations they learnt much about each other, though Vicky was the more forthcoming. She told him plenty about the family and about England, and when he mentioned that he was attending the university at Bonn where her father had studied, she warmed to him even more.

Any theories in hindsight that Vicky and Fritz fell in love with each other on this first meeting are palpably nonsense. She was still an undeveloped, plump child of only ten, but it was obvious that she made a vivid impression on him. Some thirty years later he told Catherine Radziwill, who had become a close friend of them both, how taken he had been with her from the start. ‘She seemed almost too perfect; so perfect, indeed, that often I caught myself wondering whether she was really a human being.’
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It might be more accurate to say that in 1851 he fell in love with England. He had already learnt something about the country’s renowned technological superiority, respectability, and tolerant political outlook from his tutors at Bonn; but seeing it at first hand was a different matter entirely. Above all, he was totally captivated by the royal family. Queen Victoria was already the mother of seven children (with two more to come) who were affectionate, healthy, well-mannered, and devoted to their parents, and the leader of this group of children was the Princess Royal, full of interest in everything around her, blessed with high spirits and a welldeveloped sense of humour. In the French phrase of the day, she was encouraged to ‘produce herself’ and be seen to her best advantage. To Fritz the contrast between these young hosts at Windsor, and the royal children of German courts, overwhelmed by etiquette and with individuality fiercely suppressed if not drummed out of them altogether by a conventional upbringing, could hardly have been greater. The difference between Windsor and his forbidding home life at Berlin, presided over by a profoundly disunited and unhappy family, was equally pronounced.

As for Vicky, she had led a very sheltered life with only her younger siblings and parents, plus the usual courtiers and servants, for company. Fritz was a handsome, dashing young man with fair, slightly auburn hair and a moustache, holding himself well as befitted a youth with his military upbringing. To her he was more like a distant cousin to whom she naturally looked up, perhaps even regarded as something of a hero. But he had only come to stay with the family for a few days; and when he went back to Prussia, would he remain as such, or would he just be a happy childhood memory?

Within a few days, the Queen was coming to like their young guest more and more. On 8 May she noted: ‘Am extremely pleased with Fritz, who I find so right & liberal minded, quite understanding the poor King’s character & well aware, that when he joins his Regiment at Potsdam, he will be exposed to every kind of intrigue & attempt to imbue him with the old traditionary [sic] doctrines. But he said there was no fear whatever of his listening to, or being influenced by, these people’.
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Fritz stayed briefly with the family at Osborne before returning home, having asked Albert if he would help him with the occasional letter or memorandum in future. This was the man who would henceforth be his mentor, he had decided, rather than the distant military tutor demanding total unquestioning obedience, who happened to be his father. Albert was more than happy to oblige, intent on giving him much the same advice that he had offered his father during his temporary exile, on the merits of constitutionalism and a modern monarchy for the modern age. All that he had seen in England confirmed Fritz in this belief. In contrast to fighting in the streets of Berlin in 1848, English revolutionary fervour had amounted to no more than a few half-hearted Chartist riots and broken windows at Buckingham Palace. Augusta’s visions of liberalism and German unification did not look nearly so remote in the light of Prince Albert’s words on the subject. His mother’s liberal views, he began to find for himself, were being applied successfully in the most powerful industrial country in the world.

After the visit Fritz and Vicky began to correspond regularly, while the Queen had at last gained some insight into the unhappiness of her guests’ family life. She was in a good position to sympathize, for after the marriage of her half-sister Feodora her own childhood had been lonely, dominated by her ambitious widowed mother and a grasping comptroller, with only a middleaged governess for a friend. She begged Augusta to show confidence in her son, so that he would likewise have a little more confidence in himself. She wrote a few weeks later: ‘I am always afraid in his case of the consequences of a moral clash, should his father strongly recommend something and his mother warn him against it. He will wish to please both, and the fear of not succeeding will make him uncertain and hesitating.’
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Soon after his return to Bonn, Fritz was at a dance with several other students. He struck up a conversation with their host, Eberhard von Claer, and told him how much he had loved England. Suddenly becoming very grave, he lowered his voice and said to him, ‘If you will give me your word of honour that you will not repeat anything, I will show you something.’ Claer assured him that His Royal Highness could rely on his discretion. Ensuring that nobody was eavesdropping on them, Fritz pulled out a large gold locket which had been near his heart, pressed the spring, and showed him what was inside – a charming portrait of a young girl, little more than a child. After letting Claer look at it for some time he gazed at it himself clearly moved, kissed it fervently, and placed it again near his heart. He then put his finger to his lips in order to request silence on the matter, and went back to join the other guests.
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For a while his university studies were interrupted by further military activities. He was commissioned to take command of the castle guard at the public unveiling of a statue to Friedrich the Great in Berlin, and then accompanied his father to observe Russian manoeuvres at Warsaw, where he was appointed Commander of a Russian regiment. After spending the autumn on duty with the First Regiment of Infantry Guards, he was promoted to the rank of Captain. In October he went back to Bonn for the final session of his studies, which came to an end in March 1852. On leaving the university he was presented with a testimonial and various gifts, and the other students staged a torchlight procession in his honour.

University life may have been an unusual move for a Hohenzollern prince, but for Fritz there was to be no respite from the Prussian military tradition, and it is unlikely that he would have wished it otherwise. At camp near Potsdam he celebrated his twenty-first birthday with a supper and dance for the officers of his regiment, followed by manoeuvres and the study of theory. In the spring of 1853 he became indisposed with a chill which developed into a severe inflammation of the lungs. On medical advice he went to recuperate at Ems, a holiday and health resort in Hanover, and thence to Switzerland, to spend a few months on the shores of Lake Geneva, within sight of a perpetual mantle of snow on the Alpine slopes, and the picturesque castle of Chillon.

This period of absence and ill-health was to have disagreeable consequences at home. Not a man to be trusted, Prince Karl took it upon himself to suggest that his nephew might be too delicate to ascend the throne; it would surely be more practical, he argued, to have an heir apparent who was ‘healthy and capable of work’, namely his own son Friedrich Karl. Wilhelm and Augusta insisted that the succession could not be tampered with in this way, but this defence of their son could not prevent the gathering of supporters in both camps among the army officers, one party upholding Fritz’s rights, the other those of his cousin. The affair went no further, but Fritz never trusted either his uncle nor his cousin again.

Once he was pronounced fit and well he returned to resume his duties, taking part in an inspection of the Austrian contingent in the German Federal Army at Olmutz with the Tsar and Emperor Franz Josef, who awarded him a Colonelcy-in-Chief of an Austrian regiment. In December 1853 he went on his travels again, visiting classical Italy. Just before Christmas he met Pope Pius IX, who held out his hand for the ring to be kissed; but Fritz, either not realising the significance of the gesture or else deciding that Protestants should do otherwise, grasped it and shook it heartily. On their subsequent meetings the Pope kept both hands carefully behind his back. During the next few months Fritz’s interest in art and archaeology, already fostered by his classics tutor Professor Ernst Curtius, came to life; he was fascinated by Roman ruins, churches, palaces and art treasures, which till then had been little more than names in a book to him. He stayed in Rome until March, visiting Naples, Vesuvius, Pompeii and Sicily among other places, returning to the papal capital for Easter, and attending the Good Friday service in the Sistine Chapel. After leaving Rome for a second time he returned home via Florence and Venice with various treasures, including an exact model of the triumphal arch of Titus made from marble, two vases, and several copperplate engravings of paintings hanging in the Vatican.

Meanwhile Queen Victoria continued her correspondence with Augusta, rarely letting an opportunity slip of singing Vicky’s praises. Her eldest daughter, the Queen wrote of the twelve-year-old child in the spring of 1853, ‘has made much progress with her music, and has a great deal of talent for drawing; she has a genuine love of art and expresses opinions about it like a grown-up person, with rare good sense.’
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The Queen’s own ‘rare good sense’ was questionable in writing with such honesty, for Augusta cannot have been too favourably inclined towards hearing about this old head on young shoulders whom, she knew, was regarded by both mothers as a possible wife for the future King of Prussia. One story which was doubtless kept from Augusta was Vicky’s mischievous effort at coquetry. On a drive she dropped her handkerchief over the side so that one of the equerries could recover it for her. Seeing through her daughter’s motives, Queen Victoria ordered the coachman to stop the carriage and let down the steps, then she told the smirking girl to get out and fetch it herself.
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