Part of the trouble was that she considered him to be a ‘caricature’ of herself; she saw her own failings magnified in him. So, in fact, had Baron Stockmar, who confided in Gibbs that the boy was ‘an exaggerated copy of his mother’. But whereas she had tried to improve herself, he appeared incapable of the effort. ‘It is such a difficult age,’ the Queen lamented. ‘I do pray God to protect, help and guide him.’ His father had had many evening discussions with him, as he had with his other children, but he had not appeared to profit very much even from these. ‘Oh! Bertie alas! alas!’ It was just ‘too sad a subject to enter on’.
The Prince Consort expressed quite as deep a concern, particularly after receiving far from encouraging reports from Colonel Bruce, who had to admit that, while his charge could undoubtedly be charming, he was still far too prone to outbursts of temper, to egotism and to the adoption of domineering attitudes. He exaggerated the importance of etiquette and dress; had little or no respect for learning; possessed small powers of reflection and was ‘prone to listlessness and frivolous disputes’. After a time Bruce noticed an improvement in his behaviour: the boy undoubtedly had ‘a fund of natural good sense and feeling’, yet with this went a ‘considerable share of wilfulness and constitutional irritability’; and while he seemed ‘really anxious to improve himself’, the progress was ‘but slow and uncertain’.
In November 1858, when writing to his eldest daughter, to whom the Prince of Wales was to be allowed to make a short visit, the Prince Consort asked her urgently not to ‘miss any opportunity of urging him to hard work’; their ‘united efforts must be directed to this end’. She would find her brother ‘grown-up and improved’, but ‘unfortunately he [took] no interest in anything but clothes, and again clothes. Even when out shooting he [was] more occupied with his trousers than with the game!’ It was particularly important that he should have ‘mental occupation’ while he was in Berlin. The Prince Consort had already urged Bruce to ensure that the boy was kept fully occupied for several hours a day with ‘serious study’; and he now urged his daughter to try to arrange this, to suggest, perhaps, that he went to some lectures.
The Prince did not go to any lectures, preferring dinners and balls. But he did sit patiently while his sister, in obedience to her father’s injunction, read aloud to him from improving books; and his visit was an undoubted success. The Germans found him charming and tactful, most bezaubernd; and he and his brother-in-law, who was ten years older than himself, got on together extremely well. Even the Prince Consort had to agree that Bertie had shown a ‘remarkable social talent’, and that ‘his manners [had] improved very much’. He was certainly
lively, quick and sharp when his mind [was] set on anything, which [was] seldom … But usually his intellect [was] of no more use than a pistol packed in the bottom of a trunk if one were attacked in the robber-infested Apennines… You would hardly believe it, but whilst he behaved so well and showed such tact under the restraint imposed by society, he tormented his new valet more than ever in every possible way, pouring wax on his livery, throwing water on his linen, rapping him on the nose, tearing his ties, and other gentilesses.
The Queen was equally exasperated. ‘Poor Bertie! He vexes us much,’ she had written to her daughter before the visit. ‘There is not a particle of reflection, or even attention to anything but dress! Not the slightest interest to learn, on the contrary, il se bouche les oreilles, the moment anything of interest is being talked of.’ Now that he had arrived home he spoke endlessly about his visit, but it was all about parties and theatres and ‘what people said etc. Of the finer works of art etc., he [said] nothing, unless asked.’
To encourage his appreciation of art and to acquire ‘knowledge and information’, the Prince was sent to Rome immediately on his return from Berlin. Colonel Bruce was once more in charge of the party and was provided by the Prince Consort with a detailed itinerary together with the most exact instructions as to the Prince’s behaviour and course of study. At the same time Bruce was instructed by the Queen to be present whenever the Prince talked to any ‘foreigner or stranger’. It was ‘indispensable that His Royal Highness should receive no foreigner or stranger alone, so that no report of pretended conversations with such persons could be circulated without immediate refutation.’
Colonel Bruce’s duties were to be made less onerous by the presence in the party of his wife as well as Mr and Mrs Tarver, an equerry and a doctor; and in Rome he was also to be provided with the services of an Italian tutor, of Joseph Barclay Pentland as archaeological guide, and, as artistic adviser, John Gibson, the sculptor, who had lived in the city for several years and whose statue of Queen Victoria had recently been completed for the Palace of Westminster.
The travellers sailed from Dover to Ostend on 10 January 1859 and, after a visit to King Leopold at Laeken, made a sightseeing tour of various German cities before crossing the Brenner Pass on their way to Verona and thence to Rome where, on 4 February, their luggage was unpacked in the Hôtel d’Angleterre. Here, early every morning, the Prince was set to work at his lessons. Before breakfast, so Bruce reported to his father, ‘he learns by heart and prepares for his Italian master who comes from 10 to 11 a.m. He reads with Mr Tarver from eleven to twelve, and translates French from 5 to 6 p.m., and has the next hour in the evening for private reading or music. He has a piano in his room.’ The afternoons were spent inspecting ancient remains and the contents of art galleries, none of which the Prince appeared to find as intriguing as the portraits of a lovely Italian woman in John Gibson’s studio. Sometimes in the evening he was taken to the opera; often he was required to give dinner parties at which Odo Russell, the diplomat, Frederic Leighton, the artist, the Duke of St Albans, Robert Browning, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, the French writer Jean Jacques Ampère, and the American historian J.L. Motley were all occasional guests. Once he was allowed to watch the spring carnival and to join in the confetti-throwing in the Corso.
Within a week of his arrival, the Prince was taken for an audience with the Pope by Colonel Bruce, who, remembering the Queen’s earnest injunction, sought and obtained permission to be present. The Pope spoke in French which the Prince appeared to understand quite well; and the audience progressed smoothly enough, despite Bruce’s nervous coughs, until His Holiness raised the delicate subject of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England, which so alarmed Bruce that, in defiance of curial protocol, he hastily removed his charge from the papal presence and left the Vatican without calling upon the Secretary of State, Cardinal Antonelli, as customary etiquette required.