I am feeling that my brain is emerging from its year long fog and that my reading mojo might be creeping back. I do feel under lockdowns 1, 2, 3 or whatever my little grey cells have turned to mush and I have been unable to concentrate on anything that needs, well, concentration.
But now with the sun shining (well today at least) and the daffodils and crocuses beginning to poke through the ground, a sense of hope and anticipation is emerging and this week I have found myself actually looking at some non-fiction. I enjoy non-fiction but I cannot zap through it like I do a novel or detective story and I need to concentrate.
I am a huge fan of Queen Victoria as you probably all know by now and I have read extensively about her, her family etc etc and one person who I have found intriguing and not really explored, is her grandson, Kaiser Wilhelm. We all know the basic facts about him but I wanted to read more and researched a biography. Several historians I know recommeded the one by John C G Rohl but the only problem with this is its size. It is in three volumes, superbly researched and regarded as the definitive book on Wilhelm. I have dithered about wondering whether to get it but decided against it until I discovered quite by chance that there is a 'concise life' which has been produced from these volumes and is more accessible. So I ordered it and it arrived last week and I have begun to read it.
I have always felt that Prince Albert sacrificed his daughter, Vicky, to a marriage with the future Emperor of Germany, as he felt that placing her in the court would help bring about a united Germany which was his dream and master plan. The Queen went along with it as everything her Beloved Albert did was right in her eyes but as the years passed and she witnessed Vicky's unhappy and fraught life I do wonder if she had doubts.
Vicky gave birth to WIlhelm when she was just eighteen. Eighteen! Married and sent away to a foreign and hostile country at seventeen and a year later, a mother. The birth was disastrously handled as the baby was in the breach position and the doctors were incompetent so that when the baby was finally delivered, he had been literally dragged out of his mother and nerves in the neck were damaged which left him with a withered and paralysed arm,
Vicky could not cope with this disability. She had high hopes that with the birth of her son and the accession of her husband Frederick some time in the future would mean a more progressive future for her adopted country. Instead she felt ashamed that she had a 'crippled' son and she took little pleasure in him.
"the flaw had to be removed and if the measures prescribed by the doctors failed, the physical handicap would have to be corrected through the child's upbringing"
This was her decision and Vicky then embarked on a system of education that made Wilhelm's life a misery. Not only did her undergo the most barbaric efforts to straighten and 'cure' his withered arm, which caused him hours of pain, but the work he was supposed to undertake would flatten anybody.
What I find incomprehensibleis how Vicky could inflict this on her son, when she had witnessed first hand what effect this kind of regime had on her brother Bertie, the Prince of Wales and later Edward VII. Bertie was the future King and Victoria and Albert wanted him to reflect his father with all his virtues and intellect and they failed. Now Vicky also wanted her son to be like 'Beloved Papa' and repeated the same process with the same result.
She was not exactly encouraging:
"the hand and the spelling are so bad, there was hardly a word without a mistake or a letter left out. I think you should take a little more pain or you will get into such a slovenly way of writing. Then you begin 'liebe mama' which I think is very cool, don't you think you could find a little word which sounds more affectionate?"
Wilhelm loved his mother and tried so hard to win her love in return and her approval but in vain. She found him arrogant and smug and it seemed that only one of his tutors realised "no one has the idea that this boy has a soul like other children, that it requires nurturing, purification, sanctification, it is only I who am pursued by this thought as it it were a nightmare. I feel sorry for the poor boy. Where is this person to find love and faith which he will need more than anyone else?"
In time Wilhelm came to hate his parents, but his mother in particular, and while I am not finding excuses for the future Kaiser and his bombastic and warlike behaviour, one can only feel sorrow for this poor neglected child who suffered such an awful childhood.
I always found Vicky rather an unlikeable personality. She rejoiced in her intellect and her closeness to her father and was contemptuous of her brother Bertie. She seemed to be somewhat lacking in sympathy and empathy as poor Wilhelm found out.
A fascinating and thought provoking start to this book.
