The Education of a King
By E. F. BENSON.
TO read any Life of the Prince Consort is to follow with unlimited respect and admiration the record of a completely conscientious man. He never deviated from what he believed to be his duty, and in the un- remitting performance of it he wore himself out and died an old man at the age of forty-two. By nature he was a student : as a boy he pursued knowledge with the ardour of a lover : music, art, literature and science were his passions. He preferred discussing metaphysics • in the corner of a ballroom with an aged philosopher to taking the floor with a pretty girl : at the age of seventeen he refused to go home to Coburg for the Christmas holidays, because it would make too long a break in his studies, and hinder him from getting on with his treatise on" Mode of thought of the Germans" and "following the thoughts of the great Klopstock to their depth." It was incredible to him, when at the age of twenty he married the Queen, that Englishmen could spend an entire day in hunting or shooting.
He put all his conscientiousness into the education of his eldest son. Before the child was a year old, he was in correspondence with his own tutor, Baron Stockmar, on the subject and they exchanged vast memoranda. The object of this education he once defined as being to render the Prince "as unlike as possible to his maternal great-uncles," and the Queen really stated the same thing in other words when she wrote to her Uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians, that her fervent prayer was "to see him resemble his angelic dearest Father in every, respect both in body and mind," for no greater contrast than that between the Prince Consort and those unedifying brethren could be imagined. But was the system wise ? The Prince of Wales as a boy was brought up without the companionship of any boys of his own age, for boys were often greedy, idle, little brats. He saw nobody but his family and his tutors, with the object that in their society, subject to very strict application to his studies, he would get to be what his father naturally was. In that there lay a profound psychological mistake, for education, though it should bring out and enlarge natural gifts, has little effect on temperament.
He was sent to Oxford just before he was eighteen, at an age when his mother ascended the throne. What makes University life so valuable for most young men is that they begin to taste liberty, and from the oppor- tunity of abusing it learn self-control. But that was not the Prince Consort's idea of it. "The only use of Oxford," he wrote to the Dean of Christ Church when his son was entered, "is that it is a place of study" . . "the more I think of it, the more I see the difficulty of the Prince being thrown together with other young men," and as for a taste of liberty, the bonds of discipline were tightened up. He was put under the governorship of General Bruce and lived with him and a resident tutor at a house called Frewin Hall. Eminent professors came there to lecture to him, and once a week several of them were invited to dine : a few young men, carefully selected, were allowed to join these " convivial meetings." Hunting was severely rationed, for it took too many hours out of the working-day, but he was allowed to play court-tennis, as Henry VIII had done, with his tutor. Smoking was prohibited altogether, for his father never smoked, and at the end of every term he had a private examination, conducted by the Educational Professors, who sent in their reports to Windsor. Often they were discouraging, and the Prince Consort scanned the want of his progress in German, French, Ancient and Modern History, Natural Science, Ecclesiastical History and Law (which were his subjects) with much depression. He seemed a stupid and backward boy, but they all thought him charming.
After a year of Oxford he was sent out to Canada as his mother's representative and then made a tour of the United States. It was a change that might have made anybody dizzy. Genial and tactful and supremely enjoying himself, he was welcomed everywhere with a frenzy of enthusiasm. The Prince Consort could not understand it, for he did not see that this manner, this geniality was a far greater asset to a future King than his detestation of books was a handicap, and that his gift of remembering faces more than counterbalanced his difficulty in remembering dates. His Governor was with him, and allowed that he had done well, but added that he was much pleased with himself. That- tendency must be nipped, so, within a few days of his. landing in England, back he went to Frewin Hall for more discipline. Then Cambridge must be tried : perhaps Frewin Hall had been too central, and now under the same supervision of governor and tutor, Madingley Hall, four miles out of Cambridge, was taken for him. He rode or drove into the town for his lectures and re- turned to his retreat. There was reading aloud after dinner.
One hardly knows whether to sympathize more with the high conscientiousness that planned such a regime, or with the victim of it. The Prince Consort, at his son's age, would have found such a life most congenial ; he would have had unlimited opportunity for study, and the unlimited society of Professors, and it was most disappointing that his son was not emerging as an erudite Galahad. By now his quick temper ought to have vanished under the rebukes of his governor ; he ought to have learned the worthlessness of idle chatter ; he ought to have felt what a waste of time it was to -hunt- all day, and his natural disinclination to read books should, by an incessant application of them, have rendered him a passionate student. But the scheme had miscarried, and it was very puzzling. On the other side the boy had been deprived of they .free birth- right of youth which is to be .experimental and excessive and impetuous, and of learning therefrom the value of self-control. But the son had his -life in front of him,- and his father's life was done. I think our sympathy should incline to the latter.
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