The contrasting lives and connections of Canon John Dalton, tutor to the future King George V, and his fiercely socialist-minded son, Hugh Dalton MP. From Royalty Digest, November 1999

Of the various families who have served or been connected with the British royal family since Queen Victoria’s day in two generations or more, no father and son provided a greater contrast in their attitudes than Canon John Dalton, who gave years of faithful service as tutor and prelate, and his son Hugh, Labour MP and cabinet minister in the first post-war government.

Born in 1839, John Dalton was the son of the vicar of Milton Keynes, and followed his father into the church by taking First Class Honours in Theology at Cambridge, followed by Holy Orders. As curate at Whippingham, near Osborne, he was recommended as tutor to Princes Albert Victor and George of Wales, an appointment approved by their grandmother Queen Victoria in 1871. Prince and tutor agreed that the boys’ childhood should be happy, without the pedantry which had been the hallmark of Baron Stockmar during an earlier generation.

Every detail of the boys’ education was discussed by both men, and despite his firm belief in discipline, Dalton knew when to temper severity with kindness. Hard work and a general education on lines as liberal as circumstances permitted were important, and he intended to treat his charges like ordinary boys as far as circumstances allowed. He demonstrated to them the value and duty of daily prayer and Bible reading, but his efforts to interest them in art and architecture, through visits to monuments, shrines, churches and galleries in London, were less successful.

The Prince of Wales respected Dalton's attention to detail and sense of responsibility, even his tactfully-expressed disapproval of the lavish extravagance at Sandringham and Marlborough House. He did not hesitate on occasion to protest against the distractions with which the Prince and Princess spoiled their children, or to point out the harm being done to the rhythm of their education by the regular journeys abroad (notably to their grandparents in Denmark) and other diversions in which they were apt to indulge the youngsters. Even so he had his indulgent side, and sometimes let them shoot at him with bows and arrows, pretending he was a running deer.

Dalton's practice was to combine business with pleasure, instruction with recreation, while keeping them hard at work. Writing to Queen Victoria from Sandringham (31 January 1874), he noted that they ‘daily prosecute their studies with due diligence and attention,’ leading ‘a very regular and quiet life in the country here, and keep early hours both as to rising in the morning and retiring to rest at night’.

He kept two large albums in which he recorded their proficiency in all subjects of the curriculum, and each Saturday he added general remarks on their conduct that week. Prince George was evidently much like his father at a similar age. At eleven, it was noted that one week he had ‘been much troubled by silly fretfulness of temper and general spirit of contradiction’, although his work was up to the usual average. A few months later, Dalton wrote, the Prince needed ‘steady application. Though he is not deficient in a wish to progress, still his sense of self-approbation is almost the only motive power in him. He has not nearly so high a sense of right and wrong for its own sake as his elder brother.’ The Prince must have been grateful that his father took these reports less gravely than Prince Albert did those of Baron Stockmar about his father.

At length it would be advisable, the Prince of Wales thought, to send his sons out into the world. Even the Princess was concerned at their perpetual quarrelling, use of strong language, their habit of regularly interrupting the adults' conversation, and playing havoc with games of croquet. The solution was for them to leave home for a while, and in the summer of 1876 he decided to send them both to sea for two years, offering George the option of making the Royal Navy his career. Dalton felt that neither Prince had reached the normal educational standard for their age; Queen Victoria wanted Eddy to attend Wellington College, but Dalton believed it would be inadvisable to separate them. In a memorandum of 11 February 1877; he wrote that Prince Albert Victor required the stimulus of his brother’s company to induce him to work at all. ‘The mutual influence of their characters on one another (totally different as they are in many ways) is very beneficial’. Though the education of Prince Albert Victor was difficult now, ‘it would be doubly or trebly so if Prince George were to leave him. Prince George’s lively presence is his mainstay and chief incentive to exertion; and to Prince George again, the presence of his elder brother is most wholesome as a check against that tendency to self-conceit which is apt at times to show itself in him. Away from his brother, there would be a great risk of his being made too much of and treated as a general favourite.’

He recommended that they should join Britannia as naval cadets at Dartmouth. Queen Victoria objected, as the very rough sort of life to which boys were exposed on board ship was unlikely ‘to make a refined and amiable Prince, who in after years (if God spares him) is to ascend the throne. It would give him a very one-sided view of life which is not desirable.’

The Prince of Wales persuaded her to give approval for them to be sent to sea ‘as an experiment’, and she agreed on condition that Dalton would continue to supervise them. They joined the ship in September 1877, and had their own cabin, but otherwise they were treated just the same as the other 200 cadets. Dalton’s first report back to the Queen reassured her that her grandsons were in good health and spirits, adding tactfully that Prince Albert Victor was not pulling his weight; there was no danger of him ‘working too hard, or overtaxing his powers, as Your Majesty seems to fear; in fact he might work harder than he does without any risk of detriment.’

He also accompanied them during their cruise round the world in HMS Bacchante. In 1886 a two-volume account of their voyage was published, its 750,000 words of text written mainly by Dalton though published under the Princes' names under his editorial direction. For services rendered he was later made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George, a chaplain to Queen Victoria and a Canon of St George’s, Windsor.

Also in 1886 he married the sister of a shipmate, Catharine Evan-Thomas. Their son Hugh was born at the family home The Gnoll, a country mansion near Neath, Glamorgan, in August 1887, and brought up mainly at The Cloisters near St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Prince Albert Victor was invited to be one of his godparents, and though he was visiting his grandparents in Denmark when the christening took place, he sent a set of drinking cups bought in Copenhagen as a present. When Prince George returned from service with the Mediterranean Fleet and visited Windsor shortly before Christmas 1888 he met Mrs Dalton and the infant Hugh for the first time, writing in his diary (ironically, in view of later judgments) of his old tutor and wife, that 'They have such a nice little boy, fifteen months old.'

Hugh Dalton was certainly not destined to follow his father into royal service. On the contrary, his initial contacts with royalty and what he called ‘the stiff class structure of our society’ made him a lifelong radical. The royal family offended his ‘sense of social equality’, and, perhaps an even greater sin in his estimation, had first claim on his father’s affections. John Dalton had been selflessly devoted to the welfare and development of the Prince of Wales’ sons, and his son paid the price. Hugh's brash, outspoken manner irritated everyone at Court. Queen Victoria met him for the first (and perhaps only) time at a Christmas party at Windsor when he was four, and remarked that not only had he inherited his father's loud voice, but he was also extremely greedy.

The young Daltons' childhood was not particularly happy. John’s second son was stillborn, and later the birth of a girl, appropriately given the names Alexandra Mary (but known en famille as ‘Georgie’), was such a disappointment to her father that when told he had a daughter, he allegedly turned on his heel in disgust and left the room. He never took more than a grudging interest in his children, and this paternal coldness failed to bring them together. Hugh teased and bullied her unmercifully, the start of a mutual lifelong aversion.

As Prince and King, George V treated Hugh with distant politeness. Soon after ascending the throne in 1910 he took John to India as his Chaplain, invited him each summer to Balmoral, and entrusted him with the education of his own children. He enjoyed his former tutor's spirited reading of lessons from the Old Testament, in which the Almighty was endowed with a thundering bass and Isaiah with a piping falsetto. However he was unpopular with other members of the clergy, who found him overbearing and cantankerous. He took a particular dislike to one Canon, remarking that 'If the King sends that man to represent him at my funeral, I shall jump out of my coffin and spoil the whole show.'

The King recommended Dalton's appointment as Dean of Westminster and later Dean of Windsor, only to meet with insuperable hostility from his colleagues. Albert Baillie, a nephew of Queen Victoria's much-admired prelate Dean Stanley, was appointed in 1917 instead, and John reportedly gave the King one of the worst hours he had ever spent, while the King’s Private Secretary Lord Stamfordham warned Baillie that ‘It is not too much to say that Dalton has made your predecessor an unhappy man for a quarter of a century.’

Baillie likewise had to put up with similar trouble for the next fourteen years, until the elder man's death at the age of ninety-one. King George V noted in his diary for 28 July 1931 'the sad news that dear old Dalton passed away in the night…I have always been devoted to him.'

The objectionable facets of his character were evidently handed down from father to son. Only once during his reign had King George V obliged to receive them together, and afterwards he told the Canon brusquely never to bring ‘that anarchist son’ near him again. In 1924 Hugh Dalton was first elected to Parliament in the Labour interest, and by the time of his mother's death in 1944, he was a senior minister in the wartime coalition government.

His sister, a lifelong Conservative, was married to Sir John Forbes Watson, Director of the Confederation of British Employers. Their mother's jewellery and ornaments were bequeathed to her and the private papers to her brother, but both considered they had an equal claim to all her possessions. A bitter quarrel in the arbitrating presence of a representative of the Public Trustees ended with Hugh suggesting that royal items of obvious financial value could be sold as long as they did not bear the royal cipher. He waved a contemptuous hand over the rest, booming at his sister, ‘You can have the bloody lot!’ King George VI was so angry when told that Dalton had sold gifts originally presented by members of his family that he asked for any royal presents still in the possession of the Forbes Watson family to be returned forthwith.

When Clement Attlee had his first audience as Prime Minister in 1945, King George VI expressed concern at the news that Hugh Dalton might be made Foreign Secretary. Attlee bowed to his sovereign’s wishes, or at least allowed him to think he was doing so. Ernest Bevin became Foreign Secretary, and Dalton Chancellor of the Exchequer. Later the King told Hugh Gaitskell, destined to become Attlee’s successor as Labour leader, that Dalton was ‘the only one of your people’ he could not abide. The new Chancellor had little enthusiasm for his sovereign, commenting in his diary at the time that he was 'as nearly inanimate as an animate Monarch could be!'

It probably came as little surprise to Buckingham Palace when his career was interrupted by resignation in November 1947 after he inadvertently revealed budget proposals to a newspaper lobby correspondent. However his disgrace was of short duration, and he rejoined the cabinet in June 1948 as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. On the birth of Prince Charles in November he wrote in his diary of the cheering outside Buckingham Palace that went on till after midnight. ‘If this boy ever comes to the throne,’ he noted, ‘it will be a very different country and Commonwealth he’ll rule over.’

After the general election of October 1951 returned the Conservatives to power, Dalton was a senior and generally respected member of the opposition front bench. When Queen Elizabeth II gave her first public presentation at the Accession Council at St James’s Palace on 8 February 1952, the second full day of her reign, attended by an assortment of Privy Councillors, ‘people one didn’t remember were still alive,’ noted Dalton, ‘and some looking quite perky and self-important.’ He thought the Queen ‘very small – high pitched, rather reedy voice. She does her part well, facing hundreds of old men in black clothes with long faces. She will take up this task “which has come to me so early in life.”’

During the former minister's remaining ten years he wrote and published three volumes of memoirs, recalling his political career and his chequered relations with the royal family. With his death in February 1962, almost a century of Dalton connections with royalty came to an end.