The possibility of some sort of public thanksgiving for the Prince’s recovery had already been raised before Christmas. But Gladstone’s suggestion of a public procession through London and a service in St Paul’s Cathedral did not find much favour with the Queen. She considered that it would not only be too tiring for the Prince but would also make a ‘public show’ of feelings that would be better expressed in private. The Princess of Wales ‘quite understood’ the Queen’s attitude; ‘but then on the other hand’ she also considered that the people, having taken ‘such a public share’ in the family’s sorrow, had a ‘kind of claim to join with [them] now in a public and universal thanksgiving’. This being also the government’s view, it was arranged that there should be a thanksgiving ceremony in St Paul’s on 27 February.
There was as much excitement in London that day as there had been when Princess Alexandra had arrived for her wedding. There were also even more accidents: numerous people were knocked down by the crowds and trampled on; several others were kicked by horses and thrown from cabs or carts; a baby was crushed to death in the arms of its parents; three women fell out of windows; two had epileptic fits; a stand collapsed opposite Marlborough House, injuring many of its occupants; and a branch of one of the tall elm trees in St James’s Park, where, according to The Times, ‘the eye of official propriety was outraged by the sight of ragged dirty youths calmly enjoying positions so conspicuous’, snapped off, sending twenty of them hurtling to the ground.
Yet, despite these and other calamities, the royal carriage was greeted by deafening cheers all along the route. Having once overcome her reluctance to appear in public, the Queen was determined that ‘the people — for whom the show’ was being put on — should be enabled to see it properly. So she insisted on an open carriage. And as soon as the procession was on the move she obviously enjoyed herself, waving and nodding to the spectators, raising her son’s hand up in her own at Temple Bar and, to their noisy delight, kissing it. He himself, the Times correspondent thought, looked pale and drawn; and, as he raised his hat from his head in acknowledgement of the cheers, he ‘revealed an extent of caducity ill-suited to his youth’. Yet he was obviously ‘deeply moved by the enthusiasm of the dense masses’.
On his return to Marlborough House after the service the Prince wrote to his mother to tell her that he could not find words to express ‘how gratified and touched’ he was ‘by the feeling that was displayed in those crowded streets’ towards her and himself. The Queen also heard from Gladstone, who thought that the celebration was perhaps the most satisfactory that the City of London had ever witnessed. It was a quite ‘extraordinary manifestation of loyalty and affection’. That evening in London the streets were crowded with people looking at the illuminations and the flags, the brilliantly lit shop windows and the banners festooned across the house fronts bearing legends such as ‘Te Deum’ and ‘God bless the Prince of Wales’. A.J. Munby recorded:
And amidst all this the working folk, men and women, boys and girls, merrily moving along; sometimes half a dozen decent lasses arm in arm, dancing in a row, and singing, while their prentice swains danced by them, playing the flute or the accordion. I never saw such a crowd, nor a sight so striking in England: it was like a scene out of one of Sir Walter’s novels of ancient English life.
Republicanism as a significant force in British politics, already damaged by the excesses of the Paris Commune, had suffered a blow from which it was never completely to recover.
A few months before, even so convinced a royalist as Munby had been expressing doubts about the Prince of Wales, whom he had seen looking ‘sleek and thoughtless’ at the Botanical Gardens in June. A Norfolk friend of Munby, Joseph Scott-Chad, had been to a ball at Sandringham and, while confirming that the Prince was always ‘judiciously kind and hospitable to everyone’, had spoken also of his ‘ill habits and gross practical jokes’. But now such talk was hushed in thankfulness at his recovery. One day before Christmas, Munby was talking to Mrs Theodore Martin at her house in Onslow Square when J.A. Froude, the historian, called with Charles Kingsley:
They began to talk about the Prince of Wales … and the wide and profound interest which his illness has caused. The silent multitudes, said Froude, have had a chance of showing what the real feeling of the country is; and the few malcontents have been cowed … Kingsley expressed great hope and confidence in the Prince of Wales’s character; and Mrs Martin exclaimed, ‘After such a burst of enthusiasm, and from such a nation, what a King he ought to be!’
The enthusiasm had spread to all classes. Charles Dilke no longer found receptive audiences for his anti-monarchical speeches, which were now received with far less enthusiasm and interrupted by royalist demonstrators singing ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘God Save the Queen’. The Prince was not, of course, thenceforward free from attack. The Coming K — : A Set of Idyll Lays, which lampooned him in the character of Guelpho, appeared in 1873 and enjoyed a wide circulation, as did many other less amusing and cruder satirical pieces. There were to be times enough in the future when the Prince was forced to face the jeers of hostile crowds. But, as Lord Carrington observed, the worst was over, and the monarchy was safe.
While the Prince embarked with the Princess for three months’ convalescence in the Mediterranean, the government set their mind to the problem of establishing a more permanently healthy relationship ‘between the monarchy and the nation by framing a worthy and manly mode of life [with regard to] public duties for the Prince of Wales’.
For years the form which this worthy mode of life might take had been the subject of inconclusive debate. Every suggestion that had been put forward had been set aside in face of the Queen’s objections. The Prince himself would have liked to have been given some employment in the army, but the Queen considered that he would not take enough interest in the troops. Gladstone thought that the Prince might be useful on the Indian Council, but the Queen doubted that there was really enough for him to do on the Indian Council. Might he not, another minister proposed, be employed in the office of the President of the Local Government Board? The Queen could not suppose that he would perform any useful function there either. Should he then be attached in succession to various government offices ‘so that he might be taught the business of the different departments’? The Queen did not think he should. In fact, the Queen, so Princess Alice said, saw no point in planning for the Prince of Wales.
‘She thinks the monarchy will last her time,’ Princess Alice wrote, ‘and it is no use thinking what will come after if the principal person himself does not, and so she lets the torrent come on.’
Some years before, Disraeli had suggested that the Prince might be bought a house in Ireland in a good hunting country where he could ‘combine the fulfilment of public duties with pastime, a combination which befits a princely life’. The Queen, however, would not hear of it; it was ‘quite out of the question’; once a royal residence had been established in Ireland, other parts of her dominions, such as Wales and even the Colonies, would demand why they had been neglected. Besides, ‘any encouragement of [the Prince’s] constant love of running about and not keeping at home or near the Queen [was] earnestly and seriously to be deprecated’. Nevertheless, the proposal had been repeated by Gladstone two years later when it was hoped that the purchase of a royal residence in Ireland might be combined with the Prince’s appointment as a kind of non-political Lord Lieutenant, spending all his winters in Ireland and performing ceremonial duties there while all official responsibility remained with the Irish Secretary in London. After all, Gladstone added in a letter to Lord Granville, the Prince ‘possessed that average stock of energy which enables men to do that which they cannot well avoid doing, or that which is made ready to their hands’. Besides, the Prince would obtain ‘a very valuable political education’. But the Queen was even more adamant in her opposition to this suggestion than she had been to the earlier one. She would welcome her son’s removal from London for the Season, but he was not fitted for the exercise of high functions of state. If a member of her family were to be appointed to the proposed office, a younger son, Prince Arthur, had superior qualifications.