The Queen was not at all disposed to agree. Eventually she consented to the two boys going with their parents; but Princess Louise, who had not been well and was not yet two years old, ought certainly to be left behind. It was selfish of her mother to consider taking her.
On receipt of this reply, Princess Alexandra burst into tears, while her husband replied to the Queen in warm support of his wife:
I regret very much that you should still oppose our wishes but as you throw responsibility entirely on Alix if we take Louise, I naturally shall share it and have not the slightest hesitation or fear in doing so. Alix has made herself nearly quite ill with the worry about this but what she felt most are the words which you have used concerning her. Ever since she has been your daughter-in-law she has tried to meet your wishes in every way … You can therefore imagine how hurt and pained she has been by your accusing her of being ‘very selfish’ and ‘unreasonable’, in fact, risking her own child’s life. None of us are perfect — she may have her faults — but she certainly is not selfish — and her whole life is wrapt up in her children — and it seems hard that because she wishes (with a natural mother’s pride) to take her eldest children with her to her parents’ home every difficulty should be thrown in her way, and enough to mar the prospect of her journey, and when Vicky and Alice come here nearly every year with their children (and I maintain that ours are quite as strong as theirs) it seems rather inconsistent not to accord to the one what is accorded to the others.
The Queen reluctantly gave way about Princess Louise. But there were other matters on which she was adamant. The itinerary of the holiday must be approved by her as the Prince’s every movement abroad ‘or indeed anywhere [was] of political importance’; a strict incognito must be preserved at all times; Sundays must be days of rest and worship, not amusement; invitations could be accepted only from close relations; and a strict eye must be kept on expenses.
Knowing that these conditions would not be too rigorously observed, the Prince readily consented to them. On 17 November 1868, the day before Mr Gladstone became Prime Minister for the first time, he left London accompanied by his wife, his three children, a doctor, thirty-three servants and a large suite including Colonel Teesdale, Lord Carrington, Captain Arthur Ellis, the Hon. Mrs William Grey, a woman of Swedish birth who was one of the Princess’s favourite attendants, and the Hon. Oliver Montagu, a younger son of Lord Sandwich, an amusing, animated officer in the Household Cavalry, described by the Prince affectionately as ‘a wicked boy’ and well known to nurse a romantic, idealistic passion for the Princess, to whom he remained devoted for the rest of his life.
From Paris the royal party travelled through Germany by way of Cologne and Düsseldorf to Lübeck, where they embarked for Copenhagen. Just before Christmas the Prince went to Stockholm to spend a few days with King Charles XV, who, to the Queen’s horror, initiated him into the Order of Freemasons. On 16 January 1869 the three children were sent home to England while their parents went on to Hamburg and thence to Berlin, where they stayed with the Crown Princess and where the Prince was delighted to be invested with the collar and mantle of the Order of the Black Eagle. Though the King of Prussia and the Prince of Wales got on well enough together, relations between the Queen and the Princess were far less cordial, the Queen scarcely deigning to notice the Princess and the Princess retaliating by addressing the Queen as ‘Your Majesty’ instead of ‘Aunt Augusta’ as she had been asked to do. The Queen rebuked the Princess at a ball, then haughtily walked off; and the Princess was not much mollified to receive a dinner service from the Queen by way of apology.
Apparently Queen Victoria did not hear about these embarrassing scenes in Berlin; but she was annoyed when told by the wife of the Ambassador to the Austrian Emperor that the incognito nature of the Prince’s visit had not been observed in Vienna, that the Prince had spent a whole day being escorted round the town from one Habsburg household to another and that, as there were ‘twenty-seven Archdukes now at Vienna, it was hard work to get through the list’.
Leaving Vienna for Trieste, the royal party embarked for Alexandria aboard the frigate H.M.S. Ariadne which had been specially fitted up as a yacht. And in Egypt the Prince gave further offence to his mother. In Cairo he was joined by friends whom she deemed wholly unsuitable companions for a voyage up the Nile or, indeed, anywhere else. First of all there was Colonel Valentine Baker’s brother, Sir Samuel Baker, who had recently discovered the lake which he named the Albert Nyanza. An intrepid explorer Sir Samuel might well be, but he was certainly not a suitable travelling companion. His principles were ‘not good’, and the Queen much regretted ‘that he should be associated for any length of time’ with her son and daughter-in-law. Then there was a party which had come out from England to witness the completion of the Suez Canal. This party included Richard Owen, the naturalist, to whom, as a friend of the Prince Consort, the Queen could, of course, have no objection; John Fowler, the engineer; and the outspoken and garrulous William Howard Russell. But it also included various relations, including two sons, of that most undesirable nobleman, the Duke of Sutherland, as well as the Duke himself. ‘If ever you become King,’ the Queen warned the Prince as soon as she learned who was to accompany him on the voyage, ‘you will find all these friends most inconvenient, and you will have to break with them all.’
Declining to break with any of them, the Prince moved into the Esbekiah Palace in the highest spirits. The Palace had been specially furnished by the Khedive, who had provided solid silver beds and chairs of beaten gold in a bedroom a hundred and forty feet long. In the gardens illuminated fountains played all night long; and troupes of acrobats and dancers appeared from tents to perform against banks of exotic flowers.
For the voyage up the Nile the Khedive had provided six blue and gold steamers each of which, gaudily decorated with scenes depicting incidents in the lives of Antony and Cleopatra, towed a barge packed with provisions including 3,000 bottles of champagne, 4,000 bottles of claret and 20,000 bottles of soda water. The Prince’s own steamer was equipped with thick carpets as well as an ample selection of English furniture which the enterprising Sir Samuel Baker had chosen for him on the Khedive’s behalf. The Prince and Princess had also been provided with horses, a white donkey, four French chefs and an unspecified number of laundrymen. ‘You will doubtless think that we have too many ships and too large an entourage,’ the Prince wrote in apologetic explanation to the Queen.
‘But … in the East so much is thought of show, that it becomes almost a necessity.’ As for Sir Samuel Baker, whatever his principles were, he was not only a good sportsman but a marvellous organizer: ‘He has really taken a great deal of trouble to make all the necessary arrangements for our comfort, in which he has most thoroughly succeeded … I cannot say how glad I am to have asked him to accompany us.’
The Prince was particularly glad to have Sir Samuel Baker’s company because of his experience in the shooting of wild animals. The royal party visited all the usual sights which the Prince had already seen in 1862; and in a temple at Karnak near Luxor they drank champagne beneath exploding fireworks. But, as on his previous visit, it was the shooting which the Prince appeared to relish most, letting fly at all manner of wildfowl, at cranes and flamingoes, at cormorants and herons, merlins, pelicans and hawk owls. He could scarcely fail to hit a great number; and one day to his delight he shot twenty-eight flamingoes. Later he killed a crocodile; and in the tomb of Rameses IV he caught an ‘enormous rat’. Seeing her husband so happy, having forgiven him now for his selfishness at the time of her illness, finding the attentions of Oliver Montagu so pleasing and flattering, and surrounded by other congenial companions in a landscape that enchanted her, the Princess felt that she had never been so happy.