Royal Nursery.
He endured some early criticism, unusual for the times. After he had progressed to midshipman on the St George, he was christened ‘Midshipman Easy’ by Punch magazine, referencing the spoiled son of foolish parents in an 1836 novel. Others ran headlines ‘The Boy Sailor’ and ‘Alfred the Great Roughing it’. Victoria was particularly upset by the Times, with what she felt was an ‘imprudent’ reference to the cost of Alfred, as ‘Mr Midshipman Easy’, and ‘the Princely Hero of a Court’, with all the ‘royal receptions, and royal salutes, and royal fiddle-faddles of every description’ when he reached Fleet ports around the Mediterranean. ‘We want him to learn his profession, not in a vapid half-and-half, Royal Highness kind of way,’ the Times said. ‘He was sent out to be trained to salt water, and it is upon rose water that his first lesson in navigation is taking place.’35
Queen Victoria requested there not be public receptions when Alfred’s ship visited Malta, Gibraltar, Morocco, Tunis, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Palestine and Corfu. But there was never a shortage of military men and officials, and their wives and society ladies, keen to demonstrate royal and loyal affection.
An article in Household Word, edited by Charles Dickens, said Alfred was as popular with his messmates ‘as any other sensible, good humoured and high spirited English boy might be’, but lampooned the way local officials and military bowed ‘almost to prostration to a little boy in a cadets uniform’. This was a sycophancy that Alfred ought to be removed from, and if an illustration in the London Illustrated News had portrayed them ‘creeping on their bellies to lick the dust off the Prince’s shoes the effect of abjectness could hardly have been stronger’.36
Alfred’s fellow ‘middies’ seemingly agreed, and adopted their own little ceremony: whenever a Royal salute was fired they would bump him, or put him over a table in the gunroom and ceremoniously deliver a mock beating with a dirk scabbard to ensure he did not ‘give himself airs’.37
Notwithstanding Albert’s earlier efforts to ensure that while it was Her Majesty’s Navy, Her Majesty’s sailor son ought to be afforded no special favours, within five years Alfred was promoted to Lieutenant on the Raccoon, although that was delayed at one point ‘on account of him having allowed some slight indiscipline among the crew of his boat’38 Another ‘slight indiscipline’ included efforts to source some additional income by selling some of the Queen’s correspondence.
But that was the least of it. As the Queen was to learn, what happened in ports like Malta did not always stay in Malta.
During Fleet visits to La Valetta, locals declared ‘viva Alfredo’ and in the ensuing receptions, operas and balls, Alfred enjoyed the warm embrace of various contessas wanting to dance with a Prince who perhaps stood a heartbeat away from the throne. Life for the British establishment in Malta was high spirited: ‘…if you don’t want to be made love to you should not be so pretty’ was a sentiment recalled by a prominent society lady.39
Alfred danced until the early hours ‘exhibiting high pleasure and delight’, as the Malta Observer reported. And did more than dance. Gossip reached London in 1862 that a ‘dashing young naval officer had got into a scrape with a lady. The Queen was onto it.’40 Alfred, in the grand Hanoverian family tradition, had an affair in Malta with ‘a lady of rank’, the start of a life-long affection for the pleasures to be had while in port in Malta. (Alfred would later name his third child, born in Malta, Victoria Melita, in honour of the island, the name thought to come from Greek word for ‘honey’).
The Queen, who had not forgotten or forgiven Edward’s behaviour in Ireland, and always worried about him taking Alfred down the low moral road, lamented Alfred’s ‘thoughtless and dishonourable behaviour’ without ‘a particle of excuse’. She told Princess Victoria, ‘The conduct of Affie has dealt a heavy blow to my weak and shattered frame and I feel quite bowed down with it’. Vicky empathised, wondering ‘how could Affie be such a goose, to play such a silly trick and stand in his own light…I feel so pained to think that he could be so thoughtless as to add to your grief by misbehaviour. It is so disheartening, as he had been going on so well in every respect and is such a darling’41 although she too was annoyed Alfred could indulge ‘amusing ladies plenty of his time’.42
Victoria felt the misbehaviour even more than Edward’s Curragh escape—‘the bitter anguish that followed Affie’s conduct is far worse than Berties’—and she was reluctant to even see him. ‘I had wished not to see him and thought for himself it would have been better. But for the world it was necessary so I saw him. It was very trying.’43
In what would have been an excruciating maternal confrontation for any son, let alone with the Queen, Alfred exhibited sufficient anxiety and subdued tone to at least ‘show me he feels enough’. But Victoria lamented having to handle such matters without the help of Albert or a male of sufficient age and experience she asked General Jonathan Peel who could ‘help her with her sons’ and ‘keep them in the path of duty’44 and away from their ‘wickedness’ with women, which sometimes forced payments to keep irate husbands quiet, or the risk- of prostitutes, who Albert had warned ‘will consider you good sport’.45
To Victoria, even the illness of Alfred’s younger brother Prince Leopold, a haemophiliac, was, she told Vicky, ‘ less trying than the sinfulness of one’s sons—like your two elder brothers…one feels that death in purity is so far preferable to life in sin and degradation.’46
And she was also dealing with government ministers over another plan for Alfred to become a king. When King Otto abdicated the Greek throne in 1862 Athens chose Alfred as his successor, a Greek plebiscite backed the move with ‘the Alfred fever…raging all over the country’ and The Times declared the appointment ‘certain’ because ‘the Greeks have no other candidate’.
The Queen was aghast. Alfred was much too needed in England as the spare heir, she protested. Edward might not have children or might die, and typhoid could quickly decimate a court. So ‘we could not spare one heir’. Besides which Alfred was too young, had other ‘duties’ in line at Coburg, and his children couldn’t possibly be brought up as Greeks.47
Victoria enjoined the British Government to vehemently oppose the move and her Greek tragedy was averted. Alfred was instead formally designated Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the small kingdom of his father’s family. The ruling Ernest II had salaciously lived up to the title of ‘father of his people’ but was officially childless, and while the title would normally fall to his brother Albert’s eldest son, Edward was Queen Victoria’s heir apparent so he renounced in favour of his brother.
Despite the reinforced Germanic link, Alfred continued to cause Victoria anguish. She saw men in the image of her husband, or after his death as a ‘John Brown’, evidencing what she saw as Albert and her close servant’s sense of nobility, selflessness, dignity, devotion and humility. Or a ‘John Bull’, living life hard, displaying raciness, arrogance and a devotion to the pleasures of table, turf, and bed.
To her disgust, Alfred was, like his brother, more John Bull. She complained to her daughter ‘he gives me cause for sorrow and anxiety (I mean morally)’. She was particularly determined to prevent him from ‘getting into mischief’ with Alix, his future sister-in-law and Princess of Wales, who Alfred had been ready to take her ‘at once’. While she was now engaged to Edward, Victoria confided to Vicky:
we do all we can do keep him from Marlborough House as he is far too much épris of Alix to be allowed too much there without possibly ruining the happiness of all three and Affie has not have the strength of mind or rather of principle and character to resist the temptation, and it is like playing with fire.48
He caused his mother a different anguish when he fell seriously ill in Malta, and her heart sank ‘as I realized my darling Boy had the same fever
