NINETY years, to the day, before the death of the last
King-Emperor on 6 February 1952, a 24-year-old Prince of Wales set
off on a tour of the Ottoman Empire. The young prince and his
entourage left Windsor Castle still in mourning after the sudden
death of his father, Prince Albert, in December 1861.
The trip had been planned by Prince Albert, and was primarily
intended to be educational rather than political, as part of the
Consort's enthusiasm for scientific inquiry and exploration, which
would lead to the creation of the museums of South Kensington and
the establishment of Imperial College.
Although there were clear reasons for the future Supreme
Governor of the Church of England to meet the reigning Sultan, from
whom he received the Order of Osmanieh in Constantinople (25 May
1862), the journey was not without risk. The visit followed close
upon the Crimean War (1853-56), and might have been seen as
continued support for the Turks against Russia, while British
interests in a secure route to India were no great secret.
In Damascus (28 -29 April), he was taken into the Christian
Quarter, which had been razed to the ground only two years before,
when Druze militiamen had slaughtered at least 3000 Christians in a
three-day blood-bath. Prince Albert Edward picked up a chunk of
broken marble from a destroyed basilica as a souvenir of his
visit.
On the way out across Europe, the prince was able to stay with
one German cousin, who became his brother-in-law that year, Grand
Duke Louis IV of Hesse, and at his return he paid his respects to
another in Athens, King Otto I of Greece (1815-67), who invested
him in his hotel with the Order of the Redeemer, first class, on 29
May. Within five months, Otto himself was ousted, fleeing back to
Bavaria.
The royal trip was accompanied by an artist-turned-photographer,
Francis Bedford (1816-94), who had previously photographed Prince
Albert's homelands in Coburg and Gotha. Bedford took more than 200
photos during the four-and-a-half-month royal trip, and later sold
172 of them commercially.
The prince bought two complete sets, and one is brought together
here for the first time since 1862 to chart the royal progress and
the eagerness with which both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had
embraced the new technology.
Not that this was a promotional press tour in the way in which
the India Tour was covered for the present Prince of Wales and his
late wife, revealing so much unhappiness at the Taj Mahal. Indeed,
there are few photographs of this royal party; we first meet them
at the outset in the Cairo palace given over for their use by
Muhammad Sa'id Pasha, the ruler of Egypt, at the Pyramids at Gaza,
and sitting amid the ruins at Karnak, and then sheltering from the
sun at Capernaum on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
Equally restrained is the photo of 26 March when Gustave le Gray
(1820-84), a French resident in Egypt, photographed them before
they left Egypt for Palestine, looking uncomfortably out of place
in heavy tweeds. At Karnak in March, Jemima Blackburn, née
Wedderburn, completed a watercolour of the royal party two days
after she had appeared in one of Bedford's group photos.
While on the Nile, the prince was allowed to keep anything that
was excavated while he was present. At his return, he had a scarab
of steatite made up into a particularly unattractive brooch as a
marriage gift for Alexandra of Denmark, whom he married the
following spring, in March 1863. She might have been happier with
the sensitive black granite statuette of Queen Senet (XIIth
Dynasty).
There is a carefully staged picture of a mummy being taken from
its coffin case at Thebes (18 March) in front of the future king.
It is shown alongside the painted stela of the coffin lid of a
priest of Amon-Re. Pages from the Papyrus of Naskhem, a funerary
text, the Amduat from 1500 BCE intended only ever for the kings of
Egypt themselves, come from a later copy unusually made for a
priest.
As the prince was still a minor, he travelled with his governor
and tutor and his own chaplain. No doubt he was kept restrained
under the beady eye of the Bishop of Norwich, Dr Edward Stanley.
There is little mention of religion in the prince's own journal,
which he kept assiduously until 14 June, a week after leaving a
rapturous welcome in Malta on his way back on HMY
Osborne.
We do not learn how Easter was observed, on 20 April, when the
party was en route from Nazareth to the Lake of Tiberias,
where the prince enjoyed swimming before breakfast the next day and
then shooting "4 quail, 1 pigeon, 1 sandrail", and three other
birds that reminded him of English blackbirds, as they rode along
the waterside. Somewhat enviously, Bertie, as he was later
notoriously to become known, noted that another courtier bagged
several partridge.
Stanley's devotions for the royal charge seem to have been
restricted to a few prayers under canvas, but the octogenarian
bishop was certainly a man of some spirit. A week earlier, he had
insisted that they stay up late to witness the Samaritan Passover
on 12 April, and then headed off next morning to Nablus, where they
viewed the Samaritan Pentateuch. This codex was traditionally
ascribed to Abishua, the great grandson of Aaron, but later
scholars reckon it to be from the 12th century CE. Here they also
visited two former churches now turned into mosques.
What the prince gained from exploring the Near East, circling
the Fertile Crescent from south to north, is not clear. He was less
interested in photography than his parents, but made shooting
something of a national pastime for the landed classes. His jejune
observations in his journal suggest that he still had much to learn
diplomatically; his comment on the newly completed Dolmabahçe
palace (1856), where the Sultan entertained him, that it "was very
pretty and beautifully done up" does not stand up to much scrutiny
taken alongside some English royal houses.
At the door to the gallery is a bust of the prince, by then King
and Emperor, dating from 1902, by Sydney March (1875-1968). The
prince, who took the regnal name of Edward almost to defy his late
mother's adoration of his father, appears solid and resolute
beneath his Garter mantle. The years had taken their toll, but
maybe he still dreamed of bachelor nights under canvas beside the
Syrian sea.
"Cairo to Constantinople: Early Photographs of the Middle
East" is at The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London SW1,
until 22 February. Phone 020 7766 7300.
www.royalcollection.org.uk