be long before he is able to do anything." The Prince pleaded, "Oh, never mind that, only get him better."
General Bruce died and a new governor had to be appointed in his place. The Prince of Wales and his wife were not to enjoy the countryside about Sandringham House, or the drawing rooms of Marlborough House, in London, without continuous, stern supervision. The Queen looked about for another "balanced" man who would keep her son "from doing what was hurtful to him, or unfit to his position," and who would be "responsible" to her. 9 The man chosen was General Sir William Knollys, a soldier in his sixty-fifth year, secure from flippancy and likely to curb the Prince's taste for "worldly, frivolous, gossiping kind of conversation," 10 which the Queen deplored.
There were some curbs the Queen could not put upon her son. When he came of age, in November, 1862, he inherited the estates of the Duchy of Cornwall, which had prospered grandly under the Prince Consort's care. In twenty-one years the income had increased from £I6,000 to almost £6O,000, and there was an accumulated capital sum of £6OO,000. From this the Prince was able to buy Sandringham, and the hope of freedom to entertain his friends there. In time, he became not only a luxurious country host, but also a model landlord to the farmers and cottagers living on his 7,000 acres.
1862
ON JULY I, 1862, Princess Alice was married to Prince Louis of Hesse‐ Darmstadt, at Osborne. The Queen wrote of it as a "sad marriage." She shut herself off so that no one in the congregation could see her during the service, and lunched afterwards, with the bride and bridegroom, alone. Then the young couple drove to a house near by; but they were left in solitude only one day. Next afternoon the Queen went to see them. She was bitterly sad at losing the nearest of her daughters.
The fineness of Princess Alice's heart was revealed in the first letter she wrote her mother, after she arrived in Darmstadt, her new home. "You tell me to speak to you of my happiness, our happiness. You will understand the feeling which made me silent towards you, my own dear bereaved Mother, on that point. But you are unselfish and loving and can enter into my happiness, though I could never have
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