Another series of visits, and renewed intercourse with the much-loved uncle and his young Orleanist wife at Ramsgate, filled the autumnal months of 1835.
CHAPTER VII.
EARLY DAYS OF PRINCE ALBERT.
Birth—Melancholy Story of his Mother—Brought up under the Care of his two Excellent Grandmothers—His Winning Ways as a Child—His Tutor, Florschütz—The Brothers, Ernest and Albert—Visit to Brussels, and its Beneficial Effects—Hard Study—Tour through Germany, &c.—First Visit to England, and Meeting with Victoria—Studies at Brussels—Enters the University of Bonn—Tour to Switzerland and Italy—Public Announcement of Betrothal—Leaves Coburg and Gotha for his Marriage.
THE INFANT COUSINS VICTORIA AND ALBERT.
Albert, the second son of Duke Ernest I. of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and his wife, the Princess Louise, daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, was born at the Rosenau, a charming summer residence belonging to the Duke, about four miles from Coburg, on the 26th of August, 1819. His mother is described as handsome, though of very diminutive proportions, fair, with blue eyes; and her son Albert, whom she idolised, closely resembled her. She was clever and entertaining; yet her marriage was an unhappy one, and a separation took place by mutual consent in 1824, after which date the Duchess never saw her children. Two years later the separation was turned into a divorce. The Prince never forgot her, but spoke of her to his dying day with much tenderness, and the very first gift which he ever made to the Princess Victoria was a little pin which his mother had given him. Not until the Prince was almost a young man did his mother die. When she died her race became extinct, save in the persons of her two sons. Many years later, her remains were brought to Coburg, and laid in the family mausoleum beside the Duke and his second wife. This mausoleum was not completed until 1860, in which year Queen Victoria deposited a votive wreath on the tomb of the mother of her husband. Prince Albert’s paternal grandmother, the Duchess Dowager of Coburg, in writing to her daughter, the Duchess of Kent, announcing Albert’s birth, lauded his beauty, and—little thinking how the fortunes of the two infant cousins were to be intertwined hereafter—thus concluded her communication:—“How pretty the May Flower (the Princess Victoria, born the preceding May) will be when I see it in a year’s time. Siebold cannot sufficiently describe what a dear little love it is. Une bonne fois, adieu! Kiss your husband and children.” Siebold was an accoucheuse who had attended at the births of both the children. On the 19th of September the Prince was christened, and thus named:—Francis Charles Augustus Albert Emmanuel.
The young Prince seems to have been adored as a child by all, whether relatives or others, who came in contact with him. “He leads captive,” said his fond mother, when he was two years old, “all hearts by his beauty and gentle grace.” After the sad separation of his father from his mother, the Prince was brought up largely under the care of his father’s mother, whom the Queen describes, from personal recollection, as “a most remarkable woman, with a most powerful, energetic, almost masculine mind, accompanied with great tenderness of heart, and extreme love for nature.” Of an evening she used to tell to her two grandchildren, Ernest and Albert, the stories of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, and, when they were old enough, employed them in writing letters to her dictation. She fondly described Albert, when he was not yet two years old, by the pet, diminutive name, “Alberinchen.” And she says—“With his large blue eyes and dimpled cheeks, he is bewitching, forward, and quick as a weasel. He can already say everything.” The step-maternal grandmother of the Prince too, second wife of his maternal grandfather, was sensible, kindly, and good, and took an interest in the children by no means inferior to that displayed by their own grandmother. With the former lady they spent very much of their time in their early years, at Gotha, and at her mansion in the vicinity of that town.
When Albert was not yet four years old he, with his brother, was removed to the care of a tutor, Herr Florschütz, who most admirably discharged his duties, which he continued to fulfil until his pupils had become young men. With the assistance of masters for special subjects, he conducted the whole of their early educational training, and continued to control their studies until they left the University of Bonn. The two brothers, spite of the difference of about a twelvemonth in their ages, pursued all studies in common, and the closest brotherly love and amity united them from first to last.