Free Darling Georgie by Dennis Friedman Page A

nor the secrets of the dispatch box with his spouse. He did what he was obliged to do, no more and no less. Trained always to do his best, King George V satisfied the demands of his conscience, although it would occasionally make claims on him he would have difficulty in fulfilling. His harsh conscience found fault with everything. He held himself responsible for mistakes and became depressed or blamed others for them which made him anxious and those around him resentful.
    On 6 August 1879, after the tears of the two Princes on boarding the
Bacchante
had dried, the first stage of the three-year cruise began agreeably enough. Two months earlier Prince George had celebrated his fourteenth birthday aboard the
Britannia,
but he had not been allowed shore leave because he was studying for his passing-out examination. On the day before his birthday his mother wrote to him from Paris:
    My own dear little Georgie, – Fancy my writing from Paris to wish you joy on your dear birthday, your 14th too. [Princess] Victoria says ‘so old and so small’!! Oh my! You will have to make haste to grow, or I shall have that sad disgrace of being the mother of a dwarf!!! But let me wish you many happy returns of that dear day, which we ought to spend together always. My thoughts will be so much with you to-morrow, and I pray to God to bless you and make you grow up a real good boy who will be the pride and pleasure of us all who know you. I hope and trust you will do your utmost to pass a good examination, too. Already 14 and I can hardly believe it yet. Now you are both so big and old boys already.
    Prince George was already being taught that discipline and regulations must take precedence over love.
    The Prince was certainly small for his age (in an entry in his diary four months late, he notes his weight as being six stone four pounds and his height as four feet ten and five-eighths inches, but even so he could hardly have been happy about his mother’s comments. He was to wonder not for the first time quite what it was that his mother had meant by her birthday letter to him and whether he should take her remarks seriously. She had written to him using the endearments to which he had by now become accustomed. He thought he understood why she had not been there for him on his birthday (the reason had been explained to him by Mr Dalton), but he could not understand why she was not even in England! She had told him furthermore what a disgrace it would be for her to be a mother of a dwarf! Not only was his birthday disregarded, but the first years of his manhood, like the months following his birth, were spent apart from his mother. Prince George was not the only one who was troubled. It wasequally hard for Princess Alexandra to see her favourite son growing up without her. Unable to face the loss of her loved one, she devalued him in her letters by making him smaller and therefore easier to let go. Failing to understand her reasoning, Prince George was determined to impress her with his size and, if that was not possible, with his power. From the moment of his departure from his mother and his motherland, his ambition was to command others, to climb the heights of the career ladder and so to impress Princess Alexandra that she would be proud of him and continue to love him. By the time he was twenty-six Prince George had attained the rank of Commander in the Royal Navy by merit alone, but he left his mother in no doubt that he was doing it for her. The Naval Commander was still signing his letters to his mother from ‘your darling little Georgie dear’.
    When the two boys began to count their blessings, they realized that their surrogate mother, Mr Dalton, was to remain with them (as was Charles Fuller, the valet they had known from birth) and be responsible for their general education (the Admiralty appointed him acting Chaplain for temporary service) during the entire time they were under his care. Shore leave made a welcome break from