Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/567

 anxious concern very soon after he was born. Baron Stockmar, Prince Albert's mentor, whose somewhat pedantic counsel carried great weight in the royal circle, was from the first persistent in advice. Before the boy was six months old, the baron in detailed memoranda defined his parents' heavy responsibilities. He warned them of the need of imbuing the child with a 'truly moral and truly English sentiment,' and of entrusting him to the care of 'persons morally good, intelligent, well-informed, and experienced, who fully enjoyed the parental confidence' (6 March 1842). After due consultation and deliberation Lady Lyttelton was installed as head of Queen Victoria's nursery establishment in April 1842. Her responsibilities grew with the rapid increase of the queen's family. She held the post till 1851, and inspired the prince with the warmest affection. In 1843 an anonymous pamphlet 'Who shall educate the Prince of Wales?' which was dedicated to Queen Victoria, bore witness to the importance generally attached to the character of the prince's training. The anonymous counsellor restated Stockmar's unexceptionable principles, and Prince Albert sent a copy to the sententious baron. An opinion was also invited from Lord Melbourne, the late prime minister, in whom the queen placed the fullest confidence (19 Feb. 1843). He laid stress on the 'real position' and 'duties' which attached to the rank of heir-apparent and on 'the political temptations and seductions' to which previous heirs-apparent, notably George Ill's eldest son, the prince regent (afterwards George IV), had succumbed. Melbourne recalled the tendency of English heirs-apparent to incur the jealousy of the reigning sovereign and to favour the party in opposition to the sovereign's ministers. Without Lord Melbourne's reminder Queen Victoria was well aware that her uncle George IV was a signal object-lesson of the evil propensities to which heirs-apparent were liable. Nor did she forget that she herself, while heir-presumptive to the crown, had suffered from the jealous ill-will of King William IV (Queen's Letters, i. 580).

In the result Lord Melbourne's hints and Stockmar's admonitions decided Queen Victoria and her consort's educational policy. Stockmar, tackling the question afresh, on 28 July 1846 deduced from the spirit of revolution abroad the imperative need of endowing the child with a sense of the sacred character of all existing institutions, a sound faith in the Church of England, a capacity to hold the balance true between conservative and progressive forces, and a sympathy with healthful social movements. With the utmost earnestness the boy's parents thereupon addressed themselves in Stockmar's spirit to the task of making their son a model of morality, of piety, of deportment, and of intellectual accomplishment, at the same tune as they secluded him from any active political interest. Their effort was not wholly beneficial to his development. Yet, whether or no the result were due to his parents' precautions, the country was spared in his case, despite occasional private threatenings, any scandalous manifestation of the traditional rivalry between the sovereign and the next heir to the throne.

English, French, and German governesses soon joined the royal household. German the prince spoke from infancy with his father and mother, and he habitually conversed in it with his brothers and sisters ( Memoirs, ii. 120). He always retained through life a full mastery of all the complexities of the language. To his many German relations he spoke in no other tongue, and to his grand-uncle, King Leopold I of Belgium, and to that monarch's son and successor, King Leopold II, with both of whom he was through youth and manhood in constant intercourse, he talked in German preferably to French. Yet French, too, he learned easily, and acquired in due time an excellence of accent and a width of vocabulary which very few Englishmen have equalled.

Childhood and boyhood were wholly passed with his parents, sisters, and brothers in an atmosphere of strong family affection. His eldest sister, Victoria, whose intellectual alertness was in childhood greatly in excess of his own, was his inseparable companion, and his devotion to her was lifelong. His next sister, Alice (b. 25 April 1845), and next brother, Alfred (b. 6 Aug. 1844), soon joined in the pursuits of the two elder children, but the tie between the prince and Princess Victoria was closer than that between him and any of his juniors. The children's time was chiefly spent at Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle, but there were frequent sojourns at Claremont, Esher, the residence of King Leopold, and at seaside resorts. The prince stayed as a baby with the duke of Wellington at