Dearest Vicky, Darling Fritz (7 page)

In his letters to England Fritz had reassuringly painted a rather roseate picture of Berlin’s attitude to the marriage, which in fact was almost overwhelmingly hostile. Albert allowed himself to be taken in, appearing to believe that any criticism was largely manufactured by a fiercely xenophobic Berlin press, and naively wrote to Fritz that ‘the people to whom you belong, and to whom Vicky is to dedicate herself, do not fear and hate English influence but will rather be pleased that your future wife is an English princess.’
²⁷

Later that year the Queen learnt that the Prussian court expected their future King’s wedding to take place ‘at home’ in Berlin. It was not an unreasonable supposition, but she made plain to Lord Clarendon that this was impossible: ‘Whatever may be the usual practice of Prussian princes, it is not every day that one marries the eldest daughter of the Queen of England. The question therefore must be considered as settled and closed.’
²⁸

By autumn King Friedrich Wilhelm IV had suffered a couple of strokes and was increasingly confused. His physicians declared him no longer capable of discharging the duties of a sovereign and Wilhelm was declared Regent for three months. It proved a mixed blessing for Fritz, as he was to discover when Augusta told them that she felt her opinions, or at least some measure of advice on matters of policy for her less intelligent husband, might be called for. Fritz found with dismay that her determination to be heard was making the atmosphere very difficult, with an exasperated Regent ordering her not to meddle and she becoming increasingly frustrated at being regarded as of no account. To be the only son and heir of such a mutually antagonistic couple was a thankless task. ‘Sometimes when opinions differ it is wiser to pretend to agree so as not to irritate her still further,’ he wrote to Vicky, as ‘she is too autocratic a character to put up for any length of time with not having a say in everything now . . .’.
²⁹

Fritz arrived at Dover on 23 January 1858, two days before the wedding, and went straight to Buckingham Palace, where the court had moved from Windsor a week earlier to receive all the guests. That evening he joined the family at a state performance of Shakespeare’s
Macbeth
at Her Majesty’s Theatre. After the final curtain the National Anthem was the signal for a massive burst of applause, followed by repeated calls for ‘the Princess’. When the Queen took Vicky and Fritz by the hand to the front of their box, the cheering increased to a deafening roar.

Throughout the previous year Vicky’s fond letters had dwelt increasingly on how much she would miss her father once they were married. The Prince Consort had found her such an apt pupil and valuable confidante that he would himself miss her deeply. Queen Victoria was inclined to be jealous of her daughter’s intellect and the way in which she commanded her father’s attention, and there had been the odd stormy scene in private between husband and wife; on the other hand, she was reproaching herself for having encouraged the girl to marry so early. Fritz knew his betrothed well enough to understand that, much as she loved him, for all her intellectual qualities she was still a very young seventeen, and would find it a terrible wrench to leave her closelyknit family. Walburga von Hohenthal, the orphaned daughter of a German diplomat, was chosen as one of her ladies-in-waiting and came to England to meet her about a month before the wedding. She thought her future mistress, who was only a year younger than her, still looked extraordinarily young; ‘All the childish roundness still clung to her and made her look shorter than she really was.’
³⁰

As Fritz knew only too well, family and court life in Prussia could not be compared with the happiness found in England. He was aware of the bad impression made on their hosts by the other German princes with their uncouth manners and crude conversation. Even Prince Wilhelm had been tactless enough before Christmas by saying that as Regent he was too busy to attend the wedding, and only a desperate letter from Albert had persuaded him to change his mind.

St James’s Palace, where the Queen had been married, was chosen again for her daughter’s ceremony on Monday 25 January. Fritz was promoted that morning to Major-General of the Prussian First Infantry Regiment of Guards, and arrived at the chapel in his new uniform. He was accompanied by his father on his right and his uncle Prince Albrecht on his left. Approaching the altar, he stopped near the Queen’s seat and bowed to her and his mother, then knelt to pray at the altar steps. At that point Vicky, in a dress of white silk trimmed with Honiton lace, trembling and very pale, entered on her father’s arm, both being escorted by King Leopold. She curtsied to her mother and Wilhelm, then Fritz came forward, dropped on one knee before her, and affectionately pressed her hand to his heart. Both spoke their responses firmly, which reassured the nervous Queen rather more than the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was so ‘agitated’, that he managed to omit several passages of the service, as he had done at the bride’s confirmation. The ceremony was concluded with the
Hallelujah Chorus
, after which bride and bridegroom led the procession out of the chapel to the strains of Mendelssohn’s
Wedding March
, the first time it was so used.

Returning to Buckingham Palace Vicky and Fritz appeared on the balcony, both with and without their parents, and after a wedding breakfast the young couple left by train for their twoday honeymoon at Windsor. Inside the castle, at last they found themselves alone together for more than a brief moment. After all the excitement of the previous few hours, surrounded by enthusiastic admirers and a phalanx of relations, it was unbelievably quiet, but they were glad to have a brief respite from being the centre of attention. Vicky would recall years later that they were ‘two young, innocent things – almost too shy to talk to one another.’
³¹
Their parents were attending a state banquet at the palace, followed by a concert where the Queen and the Prince Consort were unable to appreciate the music properly as everyone within earshot was still talking about the wedding. Not until the small hours of the following morning did the exhausted mothers and fathers retire.

Next day the diarist Charles Greville noted that the ceremony ‘went off yesterday with amazing
éclat
, and it is rather ludicrous to contrast the vehement articles with which the Press teemed
(The Times
in particular) against the alliance two years ago with the popularity of it and the enthusiasm displayed now.’
³²

On 27 January, having seen most of the guests depart, the rest of the family joined them at Windsor, and on the next day Fritz was invested with the Order of the Garter. On 29 January they all returned to London, and in the evening the Queen, the Prince Consort and the newly-weds again attended the theatre, the audience demonstrating their approval of the match once more by cheering the couple as they stood at the front of the royal box during the Anthem. On the following day a small drawing-room ceremony was held, and in the evening there was a private party for the bridesmaids and their families. Meanwhile Fritz was taken out to see the sights of London by night.

By now the glitter of the festivities was wearing thin. Fritz knew that behind the gaily smiling face Vicky presented in public, deep down inside she was filled with increasing anguish as the time approached to leave home. It would have taken a thoroughly insensitive bridegroom not to know that she would not find Berlin the most accommodating of environments after having been brought up in the happy yet over-protected family circle at Windsor, Osborne and Balmoral. She had had such a sheltered upbringing, and only ‘dined out’ once before her marriage – with her cousins. The capital of Prussia was hardly a place for an English adolescent girl who was known over Europe to be schooled in advanced political theory directly opposed to the views of her in-laws. He spent much of 1 February with his father-in-law, while Vicky made the most of this last precious day at home with her mother.

But for the newly-married girl the dreaded departure could not be postponed, and so the next morning there were tearful farewells on the stairs. The weeping Queen stayed at home, so it was left to the Prince Consort and the two elder boys to see Fritz and Vicky on their way. He wrapped a blanket tenderly around her shoulders to protect her from the wind and snow as they waved goodbye from their open carriage – a supreme sacrifice of comfort on such a bitter day – to crowds of well-wishers lining the city street. ‘Be kind to her, or we’ll have her back,’ shouted a group of cockney draymen. At Gravesend they boarded the royal yacht, the
Victoria and Albert
; Fritz led Vicky to the cabin, where she clung to her father in a last embrace prior to the farewell. At the palace she had sobbed to the Queen, confessing that ‘I think it will kill me to take leave of Papa’; and Bertie told the family that she was ‘in a terrible state’ when she had to say goodbye.
³³

As Albert sadly stepped ashore, he waited in vain for a few moments to see if they would reappear on deck. The only one in the small family group not to break down at the parting, he was too overcome to speak. The next day he wrote to his daughter, assuring her that his heart had been very full; ‘I am not of a demonstrative nature, and therefore you can hardly know how dear you have always been to me.’
³⁴

After a stormy North Sea crossing, with Vicky’s desperate homesickness on her first night away from her old home made worse by storms and howling wind, they anchored at Antwerp to begin a series of celebrations and receptions planned for them on their way to Berlin. Fritz was relieved to see her put on a smiling face as she waved to the multitudes at Antwerp when he led her off the yacht. At Brussels they danced together at a ball given in their honour, and visited the cathedrals at Cologne and Magdeburg. This time Fritz could play the part of the well-informed guide, with their roles at Crystal Palace in May 1851 reversed.

One incident did nothing to enhance their German welcome. They stopped at Hanover to call on King Georg, son of Ernest Augustus, the last surviving son of George III, who had been heir to the British throne until Vicky was born. A gold dinner-service which had belonged to his father had been the subject of disputed possession until a British commission decided in favour of Hanover, much to Queen Victoria’s anger. Vicky was a little piqued when this same service was used at table for the dinner given in their honour. Yet there were lighter moments, as when they stopped at Wittenberg where Field-Marshal von Wrangel, a veteran of the Napoleonic wars, welcomed them to Germany on behalf of the army. As he stepped into the carriage with them the train started with a jolt, and he found himself suddenly sitting in a large apple tart just presented to them. All three were helpless with laughter as Vicky called for their attendants to clear up the mess.

After breaking their journey at Potsdam to stay with Wilhelm and Augusta, they entered Berlin on 8 February, another day of bitter cold, in the state coach. The rest of the royal family had assembled to greet them at the Bellevue Palace, and for Vicky it was her first sight of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV and Queen Elizabeth. The latter was so taken aback at seeing this young girl in her low-cut dress without any wrap or coat running up the steps to greet them, apparently oblivious of the cold, that she temporarily forgot her hatred of England, and asked if she was not frozen. Back came the graceful answer with a ready smile: ‘Completely, except my heart, which is warm.’
³⁵

As the Neue Palais was not ready, they were given apartments in the Berlin Schloss, the Prussian monarchy’s traditional home, a maze of endless dark corridors connecting the vast rooms, where the winter wind whistled mercilessly down the chimneys. Though the state apartments had not been lived in since the death of Friedrich Wilhelm III, they were the setting for most of the court’s social gatherings, receptions and dinners.

To Fritz, one palace or castle was no better and no worse than another. He had grown up in relatively spartan surroundings, without the modern conveniences of the palaces in England which Vicky had taken for granted. At first he found it a little hard to understand her bitter complaints about their lack of comfort. She had no cupboards in which to hang her clothes, no bath, and no lavatories; their carpets were dusty and threadbare; most of the family portraits were darkened beyond recognition by smoke from the old stoves, which provided the only source of heating. There was no proper lighting, and she was expected to read by a flickering candle, which struggled to stay alight in the teeth of Arctic winds penetrating the northfacing windows. She had only been in Berlin for a few days before her eyes were bright red, her nose was streaming with a cold, and she was getting chilblains in her fingers.

Out of Hohenzollern reverence for the dead, the building had been kept more or less as a shrine to the late King. The room in which he had breathed his last had been left undisturbed, except for the removal of his body, and this death chamber was situated between Fritz and Vicky’s bedroom on one side and their sitting room on the other. The kitchen and servants’ quarters were at the other end of the Schloss, so that the domestic staff had understandable cause for complaint at the distances they were expected to walk. Completely devoted to his wife, Fritz was sympathetic to her requests for making the place more comfortable, and he steeled himself to brave derision and ask for modest improvements to be put in hand. At his request a bath with running hot and cold water was soon installed, but not without a good deal of grumbling and derision from family and household alike.

Within a few days of arriving at the Schloss, he naively sent a telegram to his parents-in-law: ‘The whole Royal Family is enchanted with my wife. F.W.’ As the Prince Consort dryly remarked, the Berlin telegraph office must have been amazed.
³⁶
They were certainly fascinated by her, for she had so little in common with them. She much shorter than they were; none of the princesses was less than five foot ten in height, while at her marriage she was a mere five foot two, and her small features made her look even younger than her age. Fritz’s cousin Grand Duchess Olga, sister of Tsar Alexander II and Crown Princess of Württemberg, who resented anything and anyone English because of the Crimean war, was particularly ungracious to Vicky and asked her if she was sixteen before turning her back on her.