Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/599

 of novelty. In providing for the youths' further instruction, the prince followed less original lines. The younger boy, George, like his uncle Alfred, Queen Victoria's second son, made the navy his profession, and he passed through all the stages of nautical preparation. The elder son, Albert Victor, who was in the direct line of succession, spent some time at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1883, according to precedent. He then proceeded to Aldershot to join the army. In all important episodes in his elder son's career his father's presence testified his parental concern. When Albert Victor, on coming of age, received the freedom of the City of London (29 June 1885), his father was the chief guest at the luncheon in the Guildhall which the corporation gave in honour of the occasion. The prince was with his son at Cambridge not only when he matriculated at Trinity in 1883 but when he received the honorary degree of LL.D. in 1888. A few years later the young man, pursuing most of his father's experiences, set out for an Indian tour, and his father accompanied him as far as Ismailia (October 1891).

Family rejoicings attended the celebration of the prince and princess's silver wedding on 10 March 1888, when Queen Victoria dined with them at Marlborough House for the first time. The old German emperor, William I, died the day before. With him the prince was always on affectionate terms and he had repeatedly accepted the emperor's hospitality in Berlin. He had visited him on 18 March 1885 to congratulate him on his eighty-eighth birthday. Queen Victoria was especially anxious to show his memory due respect, but she assented to the suspension of court mourning for the prince's silver wedding. The number of congratulations and presents bore striking witness to the prince's popularity.

The royal family was bound to experience many episodes of sorrow as well as joy. The prince was pained by the death in 1878 of his second sister, Alice, princess of Hesse-Darmstadt, who had helped to nurse him through his illness of 1871. To his acute distress, too, his youngest brother, Leopold, duke of Albany, died suddenly while on holiday at Cannes (24 March 1884), and the prince at once went thither on the melancholy errand of bringing the remains home. Subsequently he unveiled with much public ceremony a statue of the duke at Cannes. But the prince and all his domestic circle were perhaps more deeply affected by the tragic death of his brother-in-law, the crown prince of Prussia, who after a three months' reign as Frederick III had succumbed to the painful disease of cancer of the throat (15 June 1888). The tragedy gave the prince many grounds for anxiety. His lifelong affection for the Empress Frederick, his eldest sister, was quickened by her misfortune. He showed her every brotherly attention. On her first visit to England during her widowhood the prince crossed over to Flushing to escort her to her native country (19 March 1889). In Germany her position was difficult. Her English predilections and her masterful disposition often roused hostility. Bismarck and his son Herbert had treated her and her husband with scant respect. The prince's sympathies lay with his sister in her struggles abroad, and not unfrequently was he moved to anger by what seemed to him the cruel indifference of the Bismarcks to her feelings. The complexity of the situation was increased by the conduct of her eldest son, the prince's nephew, who now became, as William II, German emperor in succession to his father. His uncompliant attitude to his mother often wounded his uncle and threatened alienation. Yet the native amiability of the prince did not suffer any lasting breach between himself and those whose conduct roused his disapproval. In his family circle there were some whose dislike of the young ruler was far more firmly rooted than his own. But the prince sought paths of peace and conciliation. The new emperor was his mother's favourite grandson and had at command a social charm which equalled his uncle's. When in 1890 the emperor dismissed Bismarck from his service and he became politically his own master, the outer world came to attribute to uncle and nephew a personal and political rivalry which hampered the good relations of the peoples. This allegation was without foundation in fact. On occasion the kinsmen caused each other irritation, but there was no real estrangement. The mutual resentments which at times ruffled their tempers were harboured solely when they were absent from one another. The ill-feeling disappeared when they met. The prince's unconcealed leanings to France barely touched the personal relation with his nephew. The prince's good-nature was comprehensive. The younger Bismarck's manner was even less