Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 8/Prince Alfred's romance
PRINCE ALFRED’S ROMANCE.
Amidst the solemn discussions of politics; in the presence of a revolution, and in full view of an empty throne; nobody ventures to introduce what may seem like levity, or the “personal talk” which Wordsworth looked down upon so grandly: but I have no sort of doubt that, while columns upon columns of the newspapers have been daily filled with the politics of Greece, everybody in England would have liked better to read twenty lines about Prince Alfred’s feelings and sayings than all the wisdom of all the statesmen. I have no doubt whatever that the commonest thought of all, in England, and possibly on the Continent, has been the longing to know how the youth himself felt when a crown was offered him—when a whole people was worshipping him, and he was not allowed to accept the homage or the throne. The Queen’s children have been brought up in an atmosphere of such good sense, and with such habits of practical activity, that it seems to have been taken for granted at once that Prince Alfred would see, as a man of full age would, the difficulties and perplexities that he would have had to deal with as King of Greece; so that his state of mind has probably been a more dignified one than a mere tame obedience to other people’s decisions: but still,—he is eighteen,—he is at the very age of enthusiasm and confidence, when all things seem possible to an heroic spirit: and we may easily conceive that there may have been some struggle at heart while the young midshipman was under orders to go aloft, or trying to attend to his lessons in his cabin, in preparation for his examination for lieutenant.
Of one thing he cannot be deprived—that of having as romantic a story as any young person of his generation. It is true, every youth and maiden, of any age or country, believes that his or her own story is as perfect a romance as life ever yielded, and there may be nobody of eighteen who has not felt much as Prince Alfred feels to-day<!— see list of hyphenated words -->; but there is the great difference in his case, that the thing is true. The story cannot appear more romantic to him than it does to everybody else. Hence all the world is overflowing with sympathy towards him; whereas it would only smile at the emotions excited in other young people by the contemplation of their own story.
The Prince and his brothers and sisters have been brought up in the businesslike and simple way which is usually supposed to belong to the strongest sort of royalty. It is everywhere understood that there is more formality and exclusiveness in the habits and manners of constitutional sovereigns and their families and courts than is seen where the monarch has such entire possession of power as not to have to think of the appearance of it: but, in the case of our Royal family, while there is all possible watchfulness over the dignities and claims of all its members, there is none of the helplessness of grandeur, none of the pernicious leisure for dreaming, and temptation to a relaxing egotism—which are the worst liabilities of princes. The Queen’s children have done real work of head and hands all their lives. After school hours, their play was another sort of work,—the boys building a dairy with their own hands, and their sisters afterwards serving the dairy as real milkmaids. They have set their butter and cream before the Queen; they have made the stirabout in Highland cabins; and there is no member of the family who does not know that the moon is not made of green cheese. Thus, any one of them whom Fortune addresses as she has now greeted Prince Alfred is pretty safe from the dreamy selfishness which would be found in a pampered and spoiled boy of some royal houses, and in our own—some hundred years ago! Still, the thought recurs, that our young Prince is at the very age when the offer of a throne is most tempting, and when the prospect of difficulty is least discouraging. So, if there has been some struggle, nobody would think the worse of him for it.
No doubt he knows the story of the ex-queen of Greece. If he had sat on that throne he would have felt some touches of compassion for her, notwithstanding her disrepute and her unpardonable offences. For the sake of her dreams and her fate he would have pitied her: but, as it is, her story must be an impressive warning to him. She, a daughter of the Grand Duke of Oldenberg, was no more warranted in forming visions of being a great Eastern Queen than any other young lady in the school-room: but she set her heart upon Greece as the country she was to restore to greatness. She had, I believe, met Prince Otho as a boy at some German watering-place; and she so met him again when he was talked of for the throne of Greece. Her mind was now made up to be Queen of Greece, and to revive its greatness in the form of the most brilliant of modern empires. Her ambition, vanity, and want of sense operated to show how much more is necessary to such a work than grand ideas and strong passions and a stubborn will. She took the power out of her husband’s hands presently; but she could do nothing with it. She did nothing for the substantial interests of the country; she let herself be made a tool of by rapacious German courtiers; she offered to the Czar to betray, as far as she could contrive to do so, the other protecting powers, and was intriguing with Russia against England, France, and Sardinia during the Crimean war: and she has ever since had to endure the burden of the contempt and vigilant dislike of the Emperor of the French. Her friend, the late Czar, shook his head, and said she “began too soon.” When she boasted of the great Hellenic empire she was founding, and pointed to the great palace the unborn emperors were to occupy, the agricultural country of Greece had only 100,000 men employed in cultivating the soil. There were only 12,000,000 acres altogether; and only one ninth part was private property; and this busy ruler saw with indifference the private estates crushed under the burden of taxes, and the rest lying unretrieved, in swamp or drought. Here there was an expanse of marshes, spreading in all directions from year to year; and elsewhere there was a desert where the streams were perpetually shrinking, and the water-springs had long been dried up. The Bavarians at court flourished like the green bay-tree: but nothing else throve. As the soil grew barren, the boast was of commerce as a means of Greek greatness; but there were only 18,000 seamen in the country; and the Emperor Nicholas smiled in his cabinet at the idea of a nation consisting of 1,000,000, when Otho became king, without means to develop the private estates, and without a government which would set about saving the public lands,—a people actually importing corn, and without prospect of sufficient bread,—proposing to turn the Turks out of Europe, and to reign at Constantinople under the smile of approving Czars. She “began too soon,” he said; and he is understood to have foreseen that, unless she speedily changed her course, she would find herself once more seated behind her embroidery-frame in an old German castle, wiping away her ceaseless tears of mortification at the loss of such a chance for greatness as has very rarely fallen to the lot of woman. The Emperor Nicholas was in his tomb many years before the catastrophe arrived, and the humiliation of the dreamer is greater in proportion. She has not mended her aims or her ways; the country has not improved; and the unworthy sovereigns are discrowned, not on the complaint of betrayed protectors, but by a disgusted and indignant people. Not allowed to land, on their return from an excursion, they humbled themselves painfully and unavailingly. The King would make any concessions, but “it was too late;” and the Queen sat passionately weeping,—remembering, possibly, that other reproach of being “too soon,” and seeing, possibly, at last that both rebukes were deserved by rulers who had neglected the primary duties of government to revel in wild dreams of empire. There she is at last in the old German castle, without a single comforting thought to rest on, as she bends over her embroidery-frame! She rides out daily, we are told, with such appearance of court attendance as she can muster; but the familiar scenery must be painful to her, not only because it is not Greece, but because it must revive many of the notions of her youth, now turned to shame and despair.
How much wiser may we assume Prince Alfred to be than she was at his age? If he has felt any stir of enthusiasm under the actual offer of the Crown, we may be sure that it was about a very different object. He may think that it would be a fine thing to retrieve that little kingdom, like a neglected estate. He may think that it would be delightful to drain those marshes, and fill the old river beds, and irrigate those barren public lands. He may have heard, and may believe, that nothing but good government is wanted to set the prosperity of Greece growing from hour to hour: and he may feel what a noble task it would be to do this. But, if he has had anything of a political education, he must be aware of the embarrassments and mortifications he must inevitably undergo from without, and of the frequent disturbance, or perpetual turmoil, that he must be liable to within his little kingdom. If he has not had a political training which would satisfy him of this, he must, of course, commit the decision of the affair without reserve to others. Of his perfect readiness to be disposed of as was judged best, there has never been any doubt: and everybody gives him credit for seeing that it is not as the youth Alfred that he is chosen by a people who can know nothing about him, but as an English Prince. Yet, while we declare that all these things are quite clear and very certain, there is a warm and tender corner in our hearts in which we feel that the boy may have some natural dreams which it is hard to give up; possibly, some feeling that it is hard to be parted from a crown, and from such a devoted people, by the political ideas and consultations of foreign powers. We see how certainly and how soon the justification of such objections would be perceived by the boy himself: we only say that any sighs which may come from that source are natural at the moment,—that is all.
It is exceedingly likely that the whole business may seem to him and his shipmates a capital joke. Perhaps it would be best so; for it is certainly a spoiling process for any youth to go through,—be he as sensible as he may,—to have a whole people worshiping him at one moment and with one heart and mind. It is bad for each royal child at all times to be the object of the exclusive care of any grown person; and especially for a youth to be the sole charge of a governor. It is bad for him to have the movements of others determined by his interests, as when Prince Alfred’s captain and shipmates stay or go, and pass hither or thither for his sake; or when the ship remains at Baiae instead of going to Naples, that he may the better study for his examination. This moral mischief, inseparable from the conditions of royalty, is understood to be reduced to a low point in Prince Alfred’s case by his subjection to professional discipline. In a somewhat similar way we may hope that the hurtful effects of the homage of Greece may be diverted by the amusement it may excite among a set of young middies who suddenly find themselves with a chosen king in the midst of them. Without any ungracious levity, there may be a good deal of fun in the case, in the eyes of sailor boys.
There is another view of it. Prince Alfred is at the age when the moral sense is keen, and virtuous emotions are strong. It may be that he is deeply impressed by the steady, resolute, magnanimous conduct of his mother and her government in the affairs of Greece and the Ionian Islands. He may feel himself more honoured by the refusal of a crown on his behalf than he could be by wearing it, even by popular choice. It is possible that he may have seen, and may now remember, what was said of Lord Fairfax by the Duke of Buckingham; and, though the lines do not precisely apply to our young Prince’s part in the transaction with the Greeks, they may perhaps rest in his mind through some sympathy in the estimate of the true quality of greatness:
He might have been a king,
But that he understood
How much it is a meaner thing
To be unjustly great than honourably good.
In contemplating Prince Alfred’s story of to-day, we must remember what his prospects are. He, who is every inch a sailor now, is to be the sovereign of a country which has never smelt the sea. He is the presumptive heir of his uncle of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, and it does seem strange that this heir should be a sailor. Perhaps some of the Germans who are eager about a navy for the Fatherland are looking forward with satisfaction to a sailor becoming a German sovereign, though his territory lies inland. If he looks forward, it must be with some misgiving as to how the dullness of a small German Court will suit a man who has been roving the seas from boyhood upwards. His chief ambition, we may hope, is professional. If he is as fond of his calling as we hear he is, he need not look beyond professional aims. If he should advance the naval service of his country, and prove himself qualified for the rank which should be won only by desert, he need not look further, for he can attain no higher personal dignity, whatever may be his conventional rank.
This looking forward for our young princes brings in some very grave and very interesting considerations. Three out of the four eldest of the family will be Germans; and while their lot is cast there, beyond all doubt, Germany and its prospects are changing from day to day. When the Princess Royal became Prussian, there was every prospect of a growing sympathy and likeness between England and Prussia, and therefore Germany generally, as Prussia was likely to be the ruling genius of Germany. We should at that time have said that, with the husband of Princess Alice at another German Court, and Prince Alfred at a third, there was every prospect of an English growth of German liberties, and of a strengthening intimacy between the peoples, corresponding with the connections between the royal families. But a dreary change has already come over the prospect. We feel, by sympathy, that our Princess Royal and her husband must be very unhappy about public affairs; and the anxiety cannot but be shared by all her family,—as it is indeed by everybody in England who knows what is going on in Prussia. At this very time, when circumstances appeared singularly favourable to sound political progress in Prussia, and when political wisdom and virtue there were sure to act beneficially on all Germany, the infatuated king is putting everything to hazard,—the throne itself, the peace of the country, and the place of Prussia in Europe,—for nothing else whatever than the gratification of his extravagant notions of prerogative. The position of his son and his son’s wife is extremely hard. They see the fine promise of their lot all turned to menace, and their future throne endangered, when nothing would be easier than to make it a greater and happier sovereignty than it has ever been yet. They must be cruelly ashamed of the absurdities of the king, as well as indignant at his recklessness and faithlessness. They thought to be absent during the crisis, and to see their way by the time of their return; but the king has gone on from bad to worse, and is plunging deeper into difficulty every day. It is easy to say that while the nation is clear and resolute in its fidelity to the Constitution, and the Crown Prince is of the same way of thinking, it is certain that the king must lose the day. There can be no doubt of that; but the anxiety is about what must happen first. If the young people are what we take them to be, they must have many a misgiving about whether they can, in so hard a position, do and bear everything exactly as they ought, while every movement—every word, even every act of silence—may be of incalculable importance to the people and the country. A more gratuitous calamity than this conflict between the Crown and the Constitution in Prussia has not occurred in our time; and the dread which hangs about it must depress the spirits and perplex the future of all the members of our Royal family who have reached the years of political understanding. The outbreak of Stuart doctrine in the leading State overthrows all anticipations. Nothing can fill the hearts of our dauntless royal race with fear; but all confidence is gone for the time, and all hope of harmony and easy political growth. The Prussian people will hold fast to their constitution; but they will not secure it without a struggle. Whenever there is a convulsion at Berlin, there will be reverberations at Hesse-Darmstadt, as there have been already, by anticipation, at Saxe-Coburg; or at least dust-clouds of perplexity and darkness of doubt. Such are some of the cares of princes; and they have come early upon some in whom we have an interest.
These days, in which thrones are offered to selected princes, remind us of the old ages in which the same thing was done for other reasons: and this again suggests the thought of noble enterprise as a fit aim and occupation for princes who are free to adopt it. There are no Crusades now; for most people, from the prince to the peasant, see that to go and fight “for an idea” in countries where they have no business, is not work for heroes, or sages, or honest men. But there are fine things remaining to be done still. For one example,—what a proud and beneficent achievement it would be for one of our young princes to go out, after due training, to our possessions on the Pacific, and lay, broad and deep, the foundations of a new England in Vancouver Island and British Columbia! That all the requisite conditions of natural wealth, health, and strength exist, there is no real doubt; and there is perhaps no other spot in the Queen’s dominions of such future political importance. The noblest reputation might be gained by any British subject who, duly qualified, should go out in the name, and sustained by the sanction of the country, and there develop the resources of the territory, and be the medium between a growing and rising population and England, and establish another England in the midst of Russian and American settlements, and in full view of the great Asiatic nations, and the island tribes of the Pacific, who look wistfully to us for guidance up the ascent of civilisation. There is no saying how much the fate of the western hemisphere may depend on how we act in regard to that colony of mighty promise; and any prince who should associate his name with its future greatness may be well satisfied with his share of glory. Such enterprises will always lie ready to the hand capable of wielding them; and no prince so qualified to make his mark on the earth and its history can want for a romance at least as interesting as that of Prince Alfred.