On the conclusion of Prince Albert Victor’s residence at Cambridge, the honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him, and then his father decided that it was time for him to enter the army. He was gazetted a lieutenant in the 10th Hussars, of which the King is now colonel-in-chief, and while he was quartered at Aldershot the father and son saw a great deal of each other. In the army, as in the navy, Prince Albert Victor was treated as far as possible exactly like his brother officers; and indeed it is highly probable that, had he been offered any exceptional privileges, he would have steadily refused to take advantage of them. The Prince became a captain in the 9th Lancers and in the 3rd King’s Royal Rifles and aide-de-camp to the Queen in 1887, and two years later attained the rank of major, returning to his old regiment, the 10th Hussars.
Prince Albert Victor’s training as a soldier was real and thorough. He was not spared the drudgery of drill and the riding school through which the ordinary subaltern has to pass, and yet at the same time his work was frequently interrupted by the duty of attending various ceremonial functions. This life was but sparingly varied with days with the hounds and shooting, to which the Prince eagerly looked forward. It is generally agreed by his contemporaries that he became an excellent officer, and his private letters to his friends prove how absorbed he was in his military career.
King Edward had retained such pleasant recollections of his own visit to India, that he determined that his elder son should at an early date make a tour in the great Eastern dependency. The tour was arranged, and proved extremely successful from every point of view, the Prince particularly enjoying the excellent and varied sport shown him by his keen Indian hosts. His Royal Highness was gazetted honorary colonel of the 4th Bengal Infantry, the 1st Punjab Cavalry (Prince Albert Victor’s Own), and the 4th Bombay Cavalry.
Soon after his return from India, Prince Albert Victor was created Duke of Clarence and Avondale, and Earl of Athlone, in the peerage of the United Kingdom. He was formally introduced to the House of Lords by his father on 23rd January 1890, the ceremony being watched by Queen Alexandra from a gallery. This was an event unique in English history. The Duke of Clarence was the only eldest son of a Prince of Wales who attained his majority, to say nothing of taking his seat in the House of Lords, while his father was still Heir-Apparent to the Crown.
During the year which followed, the King gave up regularly a certain portion of his time to initiating his elder son in all the varied, if monotonous, duties which were likely to fall to his lot, a task which was really in no wise irksome, for those who knew the Duke of Clarence best were well aware that his father had ever been his best friend, and that he himself was never so happy as when he was allowed to share in any sense his father’s life and interests.
After the death of the Duke of Clarence, the King and his family naturally retired into the deepest privacy, and it was many months before His Majesty had sufficiently recovered from the blow to be able to take up again the thread of his public duties.
CHAPTER XVII
THE HOUSING OF THE WORKING CLASSES—MARRIAGE OF PRINCE GEORGE—THE DIAMOND JUBILEE—DEATH OF THE DUCHESS OF TECK
The year 1893 brought to the King a very fortunate distraction, which prevented his mind from dwelling too much on his still recent bereavement in a way that could not have been accomplished by the customary round of ceremonial visits and functions. This distraction was his appointment as a member of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Poor. The King was genuinely delighted with this opportunity. He threw himself with the greatest zeal into the work, and not only attended all the sittings, which took place in one of the House of Lords’ Committee Rooms, but visited, incognito, some of the very poorest quarters of London. It is well known that he was exceedingly anxious to serve on the Labour Commission, but Ministers have always been unwilling that the Heir-Apparent should take an active part in matters connected, even indirectly, with politics, and he has had, therefore, constantly to play the part of the Sovereign’s deputy without the responsibilities and interests naturally attaching to the position.