So the Prince could do nothing but await the trial, which he did in extreme trepidation, condemning the conduct of Gordon Cumming, who had been reported as having been seen playing baccarat in France, as ‘simply scandalous throughout’. Gordon Cumming’s version of the affair ‘was false from beginning to end’. He did not have ‘a leg to stand on and his protestations of innocence were useless’. The Prince’s certainty about the man’s guilt did not, however, make it any easier for him to face the prospect of the forthcoming trial with equanimity. The Princess — who loyally castigated Gordon Cumming as ‘a brute’, a ‘vile snob’ and ‘a worthless creature’ whom she had always thoroughly disliked and who was now behaving ‘too abominably’ — said that her husband was making himself ‘quite ill’ with worry.
This was obvious when he appeared at last in court at the beginning of June looking tired and tense and increasingly nervous as the proceedings dragged on. He listened with evident anxiety as Sir Edward Clarke, representing Gordon Cumming, skilfully made it appear not only that his client had been unjustly condemned on bad evidence but that he was also the victim of a conspiracy to save the Prince from exposure in a public scandal. And the Prince looked dismayed as Sir Edward also maintained that he had deliberately ignored army regulations which, applying to him as a field marshal as they did to every other officer, required all cases of alleged dishonourable conduct to be submitted to the accused’s superior officer.
In contrast to Gordon Cumming, who responded to all the questions asked him in a firm, clear voice, the Prince, when it came to his turn, gave his answers in so low a tone that only a few of them could be heard. This, as the editor of the Daily News said, caused an unfavourable impression.
There had been a murmur of disapproval in court when Gordon Cumming ostentatiously turned his back on the Prince as he took his place in the box. But the spectators generally were on Gordon Cumming’s side; and when, on the seventh day of the trial — taking their cue from a four-hour summing up by the Lord Chief Justice in the defendants’ favour — the jury brought in a verdict against him, there was an angry outburst of prolonged hissing.
The demonstrations in court were an accurate reflection of the feelings of the people outside, many of whom wrote to the Gordon Cumming family to express their sympathy with them. The Prince was loudly booed that month at Ascot; and the attacks upon him in the Press were quite as vituperative as they had been at the time of the Mordaunt divorce case. According to the Review of Reviews, the various country gentlemen whom the editor interviewed gave it as their unanimous opinion that the Prince ought to be condemned as ‘a wastrel and whoremonger’ as well as a gambler, it being not so much baccarat as ‘the kind of life of which this was an illustration that was the cause of their disgust’.
The Queen well understood this feeling. It was not just ‘this special case — though his signing the paper was wrong (and turns out to have been contrary to military regulations),’ she told her eldest daughter, ‘but the light which has been thrown on his habits which alarms and shocks people so much, for the example is so bad … The monarchy almost is in danger if he is lowered and despised.’ American as well as English newspapers agreed with her. ‘The scandal cannot fail to add,’ the New York Times advised its readers, ‘to the growing conviction that “royalty” is a burden to the British taxpayer for which he fails to receive any equivalent.’ The Times ended a long article on the case on 10 June:
We profoundly regret that the Prince should have been in any way mixed up, not only in the case, but in the social circumstances which prepared the way for it. We make no comment upon his conduct towards Sir William Gordon Cumming. He believed Sir William had cheated; he wished to save him; he wished to avoid scandal; and he asked him to sign the paper. This may have been, and probably was, a breach of military rule; but with that the public at large does not concern itself. What does concern and indeed distress the public is the discovery that the Prince should have been at the baccarat table; that the game was apparently played to please him; that it was played with his counters [a set given him by Reuben Sassoon, marked from 5s. to £10, engraved with the Prince of Wales’s feathers and] specially taken down for the purpose; that his ‘set’ are a gambling, a baccarat-playing set… Sir William Gordon-Cumming was made to sign a declaration that ‘he would never touch a card again’. We almost wish, for the sake of English society in general, that we could learn that the result of this most unhappy case had been that the Prince of Wales had signed a similar declaration.
In an effort to allay these adverse comments, the government was approached with the suggestion that ‘some public utterance in defence or apology for the Prince should be made’. But Lord Salisbury, who had succeeded Gladstone as Prime Minister, expressed the opinion ‘very earnestly’ that it was not right that any minister of the Crown should make any such pronouncement.
We may be examined as to all matters that fall within the scope of our duties [Salisbury wrote to Hartington on 16 June] but the private morals of the Prince of Wales do not come within that scope; and we ought not to be questioned about them. If we are questioned we should refuse to discuss them. There is a further question in which I understand you have interested yourself. Whether the Prince of Wales himself should make any such pronouncement … I confess if I had the advising of him (which I am not likely to have) I should recommend him to sit still, and avoid baccarat for six months: and at the end of that time write a letter to some indiscreet person (who would publish it) saying that at the time of the Cumming case there had been a great deal of misunderstanding as to his views: but the circumstances of that case had so convinced him of the evil that was liable to be caused by that game, that since that time he had forbidden it to be played in his presence. Such a declaration — referring to what he had done would suffice to deodorize him of all the unpleasant aroma which this case has left upon him and his surroundings: but nothing else would be sufficient.
The Queen suggested that an open letter, expressing the Prince’s disapproval of gambling, might be written to the Archbishop of Canterbury. But the Prime Minister did not agree with this suggestion either. And when approached again by Lord Hartington on the Prince’s behalf, he clung to his opinion that ‘anything’ in the nature of a public statement or correspondence would not be judicious. So Francis Knollys, who had just been about to leave Marlborough House to catch the 12.29 train to Chenies to see the Archbishop, stayed in London. And two months later the Prince wrote a private letter to the Archbishop expressing a rather disingenuous ‘horror of gambling’, gambling being a term which, as he had already made clear in conversation with him, he did not apply to a little harmless flutter by those who could afford to lose their stakes, on either cards or horse-racing, ‘a manly sport’ which was ‘popular with Englishmen of all classes’.
Condemning the Press which had been ‘very severe and cruel, because,’ as he put it to his sister Victoria, ‘they know I cannot defend myself’, the Prince was equally displeased with the government for not protecting him from Sir Edward Clarke’s attacks as Gladstone had protected him during the Mordaunt case by taking, as Knollys put it, ‘all the indirect means in his power (and successfully) to prevent anything being brought out in the course of the trial that could be injurious to the Prince and the crown’. The Prince was also still angry with Sir William Gordon Cumming, a ‘damned blackguard’ who crowned his infamy, in the Prince’s eyes, by marrying, on the very day after the trial, ‘an American young lady, Miss Garner (sister to Mme de Breteuil), with money!’ The Prince hoped he would never have to see the man again; and, according to Gordon Cumming’s daughter, ‘said that anyone who spoke to him would never be asked to Marlborough House again, also no Army or Navy Officer was to accept invitations to shoot at [Gordon Cumming’s country estates] Altyre or Gordonstoun’. When he went down to Eastbourne that summer the Prince was seen to be in a ‘very bad temper’.