Master of ceremonies

Queen Victoria regarded her eldest son as feckless, indiscreet and intellectually stunted. She had a point. Of his coming of age, when her hold over him would weaken, she wrote: “I try to shut my eyes to that terrible moment.” Her maternal instincts did not even blind her to his physical defects: “The nose is becoming the true Coburg nose and begins to hang a little, but there remains unfortunately the want of chin which with that large nose and very large lips is not so well in profile.” What the Queen failed to foresee was that Albert Edward would, in profile or otherwise, be an absolute master of what was to become the primary function of the English monarchy: ceremony.

At St John, Newfoundland, in 1860, he listened to 14 speeches of welcome. That at the age of 18. At the May Ball at Trinity, Cambridge, in 1864, he bowed 1,876 times. He was an expert on etiquette, and a tireless traveller. He danced beautifully. The boy who had thrown stones at his distinguished tutor’s head grew up into the man who never, at least in public, put a word wrong. He showed the same impeccable, laid-back courtesy to begums and to bishops, even extending it—according to one onlooker—to the inanimate sites of antiquity: the bleached stones he was compelled as a royal visitor to view but in which he had no real interest. And, unlike most of his generation, Edward was not a racist.

Stanley Weintraub’s exhaustive portrait of the man who would be king puts the emphasis on the “would”, taking us only as far as his accession to the throne in 1901. The book’s title, while conjuring the era of Wilde, is also a reference to the Prince of Wales’s longing to inherit, and to inherit as Edward VII. His mother wanted him to be crowned Albert I, in honour of his father. Edward’s decision, therefore, to favour his second name was symbolic of his desire for independence from parental authority. Weintraub makes this the theme of his book.

It opens with a dubious anecdote in which the boy prince is thrashed by his father for disobedience (given “a sharp switching that would have made the Headmaster of neighbouring Eton proud”), the implication being that Edward’s life can be viewed as one long parental beating. Weintraub excellently conveys the sly tactics employed by the prince to get away with as much as he could—he did what he felt like, and, when caught, made apologies that were charming and disarming. On an early tour of Italy, Edward was required by his father to keep, and later display, a journal of his activities. The Prince Consort then, with wearisome inevitability, complained of the lack of intellectual content. Edward’s response is a masterclass: “I am sorry that you were not pleased with my journal, as I took great pains with it, but I see the justice of your remarks and will try to profit by them.” In maturer years, when his offences were of the extra-marital kind, he wrote to his mother what can be seen, in retrospect, as the manifesto of his adult life: “Whatever ill-natured stories you may hear about me, I trust you will never withdraw your confidence from me till facts are proved against me. Then I am ready to submit to anything.”

The names of Edward’s mistresses—Clifden, Schneider, Bernhardt, Vane-Tempest, Warwick, Langtry, Keppel—make up an impressive charge sheet. Edward, as he got fatter, resembled more and more a satyr in evening dress. If one stays on his side, it is because he was not, in comparison with others, a hypocrite. Among his friends, he was open about his love affairs, and, unlike some others (Gladstone, for example), he did not set himself up as a bastion of morality. His life of boozing, schmoozing, and heaving himself in and out of bed with his friends’ pretty wives makes for entertaining social comedy.

This is a book for those who want to know why trousers are ironed with the crease at the front, why jackets are worn with the bottom button undone, and where crêpe Suzette got its name. It is for those who will enjoy the reference to the Prince of Wales’s “nine-strand pearl choker that dramatised her slender neck”. Weintraub produces a string of well-turned phrases. Edward proceeds abroad “in transparent incognito”. He admires Disraeli’s “congenial raffishness”. But, perhaps inevitably, the author also repeats himself. We hear several times the aside that Edward liked dressing up in uniform, preferably foreign ones. Other references are not picked up: on an Italian tour, Edward meets the painter Frederic (later Lord) Leighton in Rome, and we are told he is to become a “lifelong friend”. Leighton is only mentioned once again in the book, and that is not with reference to the Prince of Wales. The editors could have done a better job.

The persistent message is that we should pity Edward, whose desire to be more involved in politics was obstinately snubbed by the Queen. This is not always easy to do, much as we may like him. The story is of a well-heeled, well-fed and well-meaning Prince, who, by his relentless willingness to help, achieved a gradual shifting of reputation over the decades. Although Stanley Weintraub describes the delicacy of this change well, the book lacks serious plot, and that, I’m afraid, is the fault of the author’s subject matter. The Homeric catalogue of dinner parties, levées and openings, titles, trifles and colonial tours, starts to become dizzying. As we hear God Save the Queen sung for the thousandth time, we are left wondering how Edward could have stood it.