2000), p. 123.
3 John Van der Kiste & Bee Jordaan, Dearest Affie: Alfred Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria‘s Second Son, Stroud (London,: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1984), pp. 16, 45.
4 Jane Ridley, Bertie, A Life of Edward VII, (London: Vintage, 2013), p. 15.
5 Helen Rappaport, Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert and the Death That Changed the British Monarchy, (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2011), p. 29.
6 Ridley, Bertie, pp. 16, 26, 79.
7 Roger Fulford (ed.), Dearest Child: Letters Between Queen Victoria and the Princess Royal, 1858–1861, (London: Evans Brothers, 1964), p. 267.
8 Ridley, Bertie, p. 19.
9 Kiste & Jordaan, Dearest Affie, p. 45.
10 Ridley, Bertie, p. 23.
11 ibid., pp. 26, 29, 34.
12 Kiste & Jordaan, Dearest Affie, p. 17.
13 Ridley, Bertie, p. 27.
14 Greg King, Twilight of Splendour: The Court of Queen Victoria During Her Diamond Jubilee, (Hoboken, US: John Wiley and Sons, 2007), p. 134.
15 ibid., p. 28.
16 Fulford, Dearest Child, pp. 110, 131, 134.
17 Kiste & Jordaan, Dearest Affie, pp. 29, 34.
18 Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 110.
19 Hibbert, Queen Victoria, p. 268.
20 Rappaport, Magnificent Obsession, p. 30.
21 Ridley, Bertie, p. 48.
22 ibid., pp. 42, 54.
23 Ridley, Bertie, p. 58.
24 Rappaport, Magnificent Obsession, p. 51.
25 Ridley, Bertie, p. 58.
26 Turtle Bunbury, www.turtlebunbury.com/history
27 Rappaport, Magnificent Obsession, p. 51.
28 Kiste & Jordaan, Dearest Affie, p. 42.
29 Roger Fulford (ed.), Dearest Mama: Letters Between Queen Victoria and the Crown Princess of Prussia, 1861–1864, (London: Evans Brothers, 1968), p. 53.
30 Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 295.
31 Rappaport, Magnificent Obsession, pp. 50, 66.
32 Longford, Queen Victoria, p. 66.
33 Rappaport, Magnificent Obsession, p. 167.
34 Kiste & Jordaan, Dearest Affie, p. 31.
35 The Times, (30 December 1858, BLN).
36 Political Examiner, (15 January 1859, BLN).
37 www.euryalus.org.uk
38 Cork Examiner, (12 December 1862, BLN).
39 Lady Winifred Fearnaught, Chronicles of Service Life in Malta, (London: Edwin Arnold, 1908), p. 104.
40 Longford, Queen Victoria, p. 55.
41 Fulford, Dearest Mama, pp. 104, 107, 122.
42 Kiste & Jordaan, Dearest Affie, p. 85.
43 Fulford, Dearest Mama, pp. 108, 121.
44 Rappaport, Magnificent Obsession, p. 163.
45 Ridley, Bertie, p. 58.
46 Wilson, Victoria: A Life, (London: Atlantic Books, 2014.), p. 272.
47 George Earle Buckle (ed.) Letters of QV 1862–69, (London: Murray, 1907), p. 48.
48 Fulford, Dearest Mama, cited from pp. 51, 211.
49 QV Journal, (18 February 1863, NLA).
50 Kiste & Jordaan, Dearest Affie, p. 48.
51 Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 334.
52 Fulford, Dearest Mama, p. 211.
53 ibid., pp. 261, 262, 265, 267, 325, 328, 331.
54 Kiste & Jordaan, Dearest Affie, p. 55.
55 George Buckle, Letters of Queen Victoria, (London: John Murray, 1926), p. 432.
56 Juliet Rieden, The Royals in Australia, (Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 2015), p. 30.
57 Ridley, Bertie, p. 98.
58 Curtis Candler, Notes About Melbourne and Diaries, (Melbourne, 1848), p. 340.
2
Alfred, the unprincely
That frivolous and immoral court did frightful harm…and was very bad for…Affie…the utter want of seriousness and principle.
— Queen Victoria.
The Continent’s biggest city was abuzz as tens of thousands of visitors flocked to the Exposition Universelle de 1867, a world fair to demonstrate all the brilliant éclat that was France, and surpass Paris’ first exposition in 1855 and the underwhelming 1862 exposition put on by rival Britain.
Exposition Universelle des produits de l’Agriculture, de l’Industrie et des Beaux-Arts de Paris was Emperor Louis Napoleon III’s proclamation of Paris as the heart of a new world order, the mother of an emerging global civilisation of peace and prosperity under the cultural and spiritual leadership of France.
Seven million people descended onto the grand new boulevards of Baron Georges-Eugène Haussman to absorb 50,000 exhibits of human activity and excellence from 42 nations, a Napoleonic demonstration that the bounty of man and nature could be transformed into a universal harmony for all. As Victor Hugo effused in a preface to the exposition guide: ‘…O France, adieu!…thou shalt no longer be France: thou shalt be Humanity! No longer a nation, thou shalt be Ubiquity…as Athens became Greece, as Rome became Christianity, thou, France, become the world.’1
Notwithstanding the French challenge to her Empire’s pre-eminence, Queen Victoria would not be in attendance. She had visited the first Paris exhibition, taking her family at a pivotal moment in the rapprochement between the two countries in the Crimean War. Napoleon visited Windsor and then went on a full charm offensive with Victoria’s family as his guests in Paris, refitting the Palais de Saint-Cloud for their stay, and purchasing anything which was seen to please the Queen at the exposition.
Edward, the Prince of Wales, had also been seduced, as Victoria presciently noted. ‘The beauty of the French capital, the liveliness of the French people, the bonhomie of the French Emperor (Napoleon III), the elegance of the French empress (Empress Eugénie) made an indelible impression on his pleasure-hungry nature.’2
Now in 1867 both sons had a pleasure-hungry
