1957-03-06 — Page 4

Page

I

1987

THE CHINA MAIL, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 1957.

The subtle relationship of

THE QUEEN and

· 1887

THE MAN SHE LOVES

F you had the trust of an

intelligent, handsome

ambitious dad

with

young brilliant

career before him, would you let him marry a woman born to rule the greatest Empire in the world?

Even if he were deeply in love, would you advise him to take a queen as his wife?

It is not ne remote a ques- Lon from

everyday our own, Hives as you may think.

It is a problem In essence, which confronts any young the modern business man

LOOK BACK A LITTLE

by Leonard Mosley

RESEARCHER: JOHN CRUEBEMANN

outraged. He was necused of. desecrating the Sabbath,

The Friend

1

NATHANIEL GUBBINS

AFTER the Alanbrooke Home Guard as a private

War Diaries the Gub- on May 14 of that year, bins War Diaries...

Despite his brilliant analyses of the military situation published from time to time in his column nobody thought of pro- moting an ex-corporal of the Kaiser's war to the runk of general in the dif- ficult days of 1940.

4

Therefore Gubbins, modest and self-effacing, hid his bitter disappoint- ment by joining the Surrey

to the village; I thought là was the second, but gave 1001] to majority opinion.

"Armed with loaded revol- vers, we demanded entranca to the Arat houted and searched it,

causing consider. able alarm and despondency to the occupiers, as we had all spent some time at the ban and were trigger happy."

His Diary says: "Had chance of joining two local regiments, the White Hart Fusiliers or the Golf Club Grenadiers. Chose the Golf Club Grenadiers because they had a better supply of whisky in the clubhouse, Tastically this With characteristic modesty

as a shrewd decision, I was right.

Gubbins then says: "Of courge because later

the police, and the next day o Grenadiers had more foreign maid working in the empty bottles to convert second house was arrested." into incendiary anti-tank bombs known as Molotov Cocktails,"

Gubbins goes on to de- scribe his experiments with incendiary bottles helped by Private Baldy Budgen, an- other brilliant strategist overlooked by the

War

While Baldy stood behind

"If Albert went to the North Gubbins lighting paraffin-

declared Victoria, Pole,"

"Isoaked rags in the necks of would go with him."

prehensions of the first months of marriage had been disalpatet WITH great tact, diplomacy, She was just as eager as ever and shrewdness he chose to be Queen, but also anxious the highly subtle relationship tentacles everywhere. But they and happy intimacy. To his not to laugh at such intolerance to be a complete wife-even if that must exist between I were not

tactful and astonishment, nlways

the Queen an- nor even ignore it. He gave it meant sharing some of her Office. not always discreet,

nounced that the honeymoon up his Sunday afternoon chess- fantastic and awesome queen and consort,

power "The spirit of intrigue exists would last only 48 hours. When games instead, and took to read- with her husband. When Prince Albert of Saxe-

of un Improving Coburg married Queen Victoria in the whole breed," grumbled he remonstrated with her, she Ing books

"I

the nature to his wife. Am the Duke of sharply replied: of England, 117 years ago, he Victoria's uncle,

British too well

I am never easy wag only

news- Sovereign. aware of Cumberland.

He had a private secretary in what the country was saying papers called them the Cobugs, when I am not on the spot."

the Palace called Anson, and it about this match between an

The polliclans and the light

Albert had immersed himself was upon Anson that he relied obscure German princeling and

advisers around little circle of powerful Queen on

In the intricacies of English for nine years after his marriage Victoria at the Palace feared

and for advice on how to understand a keen the influence he might have, în the privacy of the bedchamber, eager student of foreign affairs, and get on with the British,

that he had much to

When Anson died his joss was upon the chamoured and ador. He felt

and give in the way of advice ing young Queen,

a grievous one, because Albert suspicious. And soon this good counsel.

and his secretary

communicated had become cuspicion

The close and intimate friends. And to he had few mough of them; he was attacked and criticised for once wrote: "I am fearfully in his interference in domestic and

foreign affairs. want of a friend,"

the most

arth.

world of today—those, I mean, The British people were glad

They set out, from the first, he should to make sure that

polities and was

up

who hay happen to fall in love to know that their Sovereign with a "tycoon's daughter, or had taken herself a husband, come other girl richer or more and looked joyfully forward to Influential than he is,

the time when she would pro-

But when ho brought duce an heir to the Throng. But, as Lord

Melbourne told never, by word or act or posi- political matters with his wife, Victoria at the time of her tion, steal the limelight from the lines of her lips tightened engagement: Your marriage the Queen and make for him and she changed the subject to

self position powerful enough books, or music, or hunting. to diminish their own import- ance.

He will probably spend the rest of his married life (0) persuading her that he really did take her for love and not for money; (b) trying not 10 resent the power of her bank account or her position; and (c) quelling the suspicion of enemies that he would never have got anywhere in life had it not been for the in Kuence of his wife.

THE

Distrust

THE week-end news of the Duke of Edinburgh's eleva- tion to Prince highlighted again

Wha

is liked in the country, but there is no enthusiasm for it." The people distrusted Albert

he beesuse

A foreigner. The fact was that the German princely family of Coburg, from

Albert

sprang. was intensely disliked and dis- trusted,

whom

German

Like yet anather family later on, the Battenbergs, or, as they became, the Mount- battens, they were immensely capable and they spread their

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Straat

Albert

renounced

his

Own

German titles when he married Victoria, and expected in return to be named Prince Consort or

Not polo but

chess

She had taken to heart the advice of her Prime Minist

that she should not listen or be influenced in affairs of State

on able to assure by her husband, ond she was him that Albert was not even allowed to express an opinion.

"When I am with him, I prefer to talk of other subjects," she said, primly.

So the facts of married life between an unimportant hus band and an all-important wife slowly, and not without bitter-

ness, came home to Albert,

*I am only the husband and not the master of the house," he complained to his brother. And to the Duke of Wellington he said: "My position is most pecullar and delicste... the husband should sink his own individual existence in that of

his wife."

Albert had his first lesson in the peculiarities, and tetchy pre- judices of the English when it was mentioned in one of the

Plans

BU

DUT the

people

newspapers.

the bottles, Gubbins snatch- ed them from him and hurled them in all direc-

We informed the

It must have been, hard for o man so self-effacing as Gubbins to record his triumph at Bisley during a shooting competition.

He says: "Our platoon”80m+ mandor had offered a bottle of Scotch to the firet man to score five consecutive ·buli's- eyes at a range of 200 yards. Stimulated by the reward, 1 was fortunate enough to be the first to achieve this, prob. ably because I had. опсе pazadd the muskotry Instruc- tors course In the rexi

Army."

But after triumph came die- Gubble says: "The next

tions, setting vegetation aster.

ablaze in the village and time I went to Bisley I had been were sul terrifying the local inhabi- to a birthday party given by

felt Albert

tants,

But by that time Anson had When Albert heard of theso taught the Queen's husband all renewed attacks upon him he he needed to know about his was at first angry and then in adopted country, and Albert had despair. But he slowly recover- wen the respect for which he ed. He realised that, in the first few years of marriage, he yeamed.

had made considerable progress, He had won the confidence of his wife and made her willing to consult him in her position as Queen,

Perhaps even more important, he had learned, despite all the efforts of the Queen's advisers, how to make her listen to him nd how, quietly, but efficiently, to exercise his influence upon

He had enemies at Court still. the affairs of State without He had not yet won over the giving the Government of the people. But if he could only day cause to complain of his consolidate the respect of the interference,

massed towards him, he might "I have come to be extremly yet make them bellove that they pleased with Victoria during the had in him a husband worthy past few months," he wrote to of their Queen.

Baron Stockmar. his friend

sulks "She has only had the twice, Altogether zhc puts more confidence in me." In Love

WH

Victoria was deliver- WHEN

Ing their first child, the unimportant husband had made such Inroads upon the all- important wife that the Queen asked Melbourne to instruct newspapers that he Play Chubby, the locksmiths, to make at least be given the title

a key for Albert to open the prince. But to his amazernent games on Sundays.

of

there was strenuous opposition True, the game he played was

to such a move.

was nol

It

not polo but until 17 years after the marriage that Victoria less, the

gave him the title of Prince Consort, and there is no doubt that the delay in according him princely tile rankled bitterly in his mind.

This ought in have been done at our wedding," he wrote to his brother Ernest, "but you know what the state of affairs was here at the timo. .tho Tories cut my allowance.

the Royal Familly were against. it."

The biggest shock that Albert received, however, after he had married his queen, was to dis- cover that be too was just a Witte apprehensive that he might prestime too much from the fact that he was her husband.

Repulse

THE Queen had already ruled

the Empire for three years" before her marriage, and sho was intoxicated by the power- ful Isolation of her position.

She was os jealous

of her rank-and the influence it gave her-las any millionaire is of his bank balanco. She was determined not to share it, not even with the man she loved. So, having failed to be named a prince, Albert was shocked ¡and diamayed when he asked to be made a peer of the realm, and was repulsed,by the Queeri, "The English are very jealous of a foreigner interfering in the government of their country," she wrote him. “Already some papers - have expressed in hope that you would not interfere. It you were a peer, they would all say that the Prince meant to play a part;"

Albert, like many," another man since, began to learn what it: los to be married to, a woman richer, and more power- ful- than himself,

Complaint

#TEX had gone to Windsor

aire Boneymoon and Albert looked forward to mi 100g

1

secret Cabinet boxes while sho was being confined,

So he set out to plan schemes

which would win popularity with them-or, if not popularity, at least their admiration,

It was all part of his deter mined ambition, to prove him- if something more than just the husband of a reigning and all-powerful Queen,

TOMORROW

a clean

sweep at the palace

chess. Nong the By now she was so deeply in at Sabbatarians were love with him that all the op-

THAT PHILIP

TOUCH-

its quicker

11

MANSION HOUSE

| LIVERFOLUST ST

Soon afterwards Gubbins had his first dispute with Baldy, a stoutlah man not un- like Sir Winston Churchill both In his appearance and his unquenchable onthu- clasm,

In

Baldy Budgen, and shot a lot of holes in the wrong target."

Gubbing also describes an- other morning-after-the-night- live hand-grenades. before when he had to throw

He writes: "I have always been nervous of hand-grenades, Baldy wanted to throw the and on this particular morning bottles while Gubbins lit the

at the bombing range I was a fuses, but as Baldy, in on un-

bil shaky. When I pulled out guarded moment, had once the pin and was preparing to said it might be a good idea to throw my right hand hit the chuck chuck a bottle into the club- wall of the trench behind me. house, Gubbins, with his good

"I nearly

the imagination, and

dropped grasp of the situation, drelded grenade but managed to sling aguinst this move, even though it clear of the parapet. Unfor- Baldy's remark may not have tunately I did this before the been made seriously.

order "Throw.'' The 'startled instructor, standing in an ex- pored position, took cover before his head was blower of."

#CHIC,

brooke, Gubbins

Like Churchill

and

Arm

Alan-

argued about the matter most and Budgen

of the night, which they spent In the smoke-room Both men were on duly there and sup- posed to be guarding the golf course against German para- troops,

A

Scarch party

an

The rest of the Diary tells of Gubbins and Budgen accepting.

invitation by Sir George Cullum Woich, once a volunteer in our platoon and now Lord Mayor of London, to transfer do a Home Guard Anil-Aircraft Rocket Battery.

NOTHER incident recorded in the Diary was when Tighls were seen flashing from a house during an air rald.

ΤΟ quote: "There some dispute in the club about had which house it was. The ser- patriotism. I was tired of field geant of the guard, and two exorcises

With typical modesty Gubbins' says: "I have no idea why Budgen underlook this difficult task in his spare time. But I was know why I did. My motives

to nothing

do

L

with·

on a middle-

and crawling round others thought it was the first the countryside left-hand house on the road aged stomach.”

ROYAL JUS IN PORTUGAL-FROM FRIDAYS EXPRESS

"MANSION FOUSEJII GIT

"see" you in there

move

1

..