Shooting Victoria

by Paul Thomas Murphy

  Albert’s genuine fears about the health of his children led to the final explosion. The royal couple’s second child, Bertie—the future Edward VII—was born on 9 November 1841, the first Prince of Wales born in eighty years. The public was jubilant, not least because the specter of that reactionary, constitution-busting bogeyman, Victoria’s uncle Cumberland, ever taking the British throne now faded into near-nothingness. Victoria herself, however, slipped into a serious post-partum depression, of which Lehzen attempted to take advantage: she “lets no opportunity of creating mischief and difficulty escape her,” Anson wrote. Attempting to raise her spirits, Albert took Victoria away to Claremont in the countryside, leaving the children at Windsor. Within four days, Stockmar called them back; the Princess Royal was seriously ill—thin, pale, and feverish.

  Albert was livid. All connected with the children—their nurse Mrs. Southey, Dr. Clark, the Queen herself—he considered responsible, but that meddling Blaste was at the bottom it all: “All the disagreeableness I suffer,” he wrote, “comes from one and the same person.” He and Victoria had the worst argument of their married lives, the Queen accusing Albert of wishing to kill their children, and screaming that she wished they had never married. Albert stormed off, and the couple continued their argument through missives sent to Stockmar. In one of these, Albert enclosed a ferocious note to Victoria: “Dr. Clark has mismanaged the child and poisoned her with calomel and you have starved her. I shall have nothing more to do with it; take the child away and do as you like and if she dies you will have it on her conscience.” He had reached the breaking point; as he told Stockmar “the welfare of my children and Victoria’s existence as sovereign are too sacred for me not to die fighting rather than yield them as prey to Lehzen.”

  The Queen gave way. Albert was to have total control of the nursery and their children’s upbringing. He quickly replaced Mrs. Southey with Lady Lyttelton, the Queen’s Lady of the Bedchamber, who adored the Prince. Lehzen was now in an internal exile, inhabiting a room in the Palace but removed from Victoria’s daily life. Significantly, she did not attend the bal masque, or this ball at Her Majesty’s. By the end of the coming summer, realizing that the Queen had no need for her anymore, she would retire to a small house in Hanover. Albert had successfully become everything a man could be to Victoria. Her esteem for him could only grow if he could become superhuman—godlike—in her eyes.

  For two hours that night at Her Majesty’s Theatre, the Queen and Albert performed on their pavilion stage. One reporter empathized with the fatigue Victoria must feel, when she and her court had to rise, turn, and curtsey with the arrival of every one of her many honored guests. Soon after midnight she rose and curtseyed to the crowd. The two bands struck up the national anthem, and “amidst loud cheering and clapping of hands” the royal party returned to their carriages and to the Palace. Once the royal couple left, the crowd thinned, giving room to all on the floor to dance, which they did until the early hours, caring for the destitute weavers by forgetting about them. Those last to leave could not have gotten to bed before dawn, not long before respectable shopkeepers like John Francis woke to the new day.

  Francis continued to play the charade that it was just another day of business, setting out early to open his shop. He waited in the aromatic stillness until he knew William Elam had risen and set out for his own place of work. Then, he shut up shop and returned to Titchfield Street, crept up the two flights to his room, and broke open a locked box containing all of his roommate’s possessions. If he expected to find the full ten pounds there, he was disappointed: Elam’s box contained less than half of that, four pounds and ten shillings in gold. It would have to do—or it wouldn’t. He returned to his shop to wait for Johns.

  When the door with his name on it opened, however, he looked up not to see Johns, but instead his landlord, Mr. Foster, angrily bearing down upon him. William Elam had returned to his room at Great Titchfield Street, discovered that his box had been rifled, and reported the theft immediately to Foster, who had seen Francis’s return and suspected him immediately. Francis knew why Foster had come, though he attempted to appear unconcerned.

  “What have you been about?” Foster asked him. “I suppose you know what I have come here for?”

  “Oh,” said Francis, “I suppose you want the money.” He pulled the gold from his pocket and gave it to Foster. Foster had always had a good opinion of Francis, but in an instant that was destroyed. He told Francis never to return to his home again. Francis, however, had boxes containing all his possessions at Foster’s: what about those? he asked. Foster refused to hand them over, thinking that they might contain evidence of other crimes Francis had committed. He left Francis alone to contemplate the impending ruination of his business.

  Johns, again accompanied, came later that day. Francis gave up, telling him at last that he could not pay a penny. Johns and his men then emptied the shop: trundling cigars, tobacco, snuff, pipes, Grimstone’s Eye Snuff into a cab, leaving Francis with nothing but the lingering odor of tobacco, a few coppers, and his name on the door to a room he had almost certainly not paid for. His great project had ended, and he had lost everything—all his clothes (besides those on his back), his carpentry tools, his poetry, his room, and his friends, gone. In the afternoon, he closed up shop, and walked out and away from this neighborhood forever.

  He set out south, down past Buckingham Palace, Green Park, and St. James’s, to Tothill Street, to the pawn shop of a Mr. Ravenor. There, he told the clerk he wanted to buy a pistol—a cheap one. The clerk, James Street, found two for him to look at. Both were old—older and in far worse shape than the pistols Oxford had bought: flintlocks missing flints, and with rusted screw barrels, which, when new, could be removed with a key for more effective loading. Each was missing its key, however, and could only be loaded through the barrel. Francis chose the smaller of the two, one seven inches long. Well aware of its low value, he offered three shillings for it. Street wanted more, but quickly agreed to Francis’s price. Francis paid with his small change: three fourpenny pieces, a sixpence, and the rest in pennies, halfpennies, and farthings. “It appeared to be all he had in the world,” Street later told police.

  Not quite. Francis still had two purchases to make. He struck out north, toward Whitehall, and within minutes entered a small oilman’s shop on Charles Street. He needed a flint. The clerk told him they rarely sold flints, but he looked anyway, and found one among some old stock. Francis showed him the pistol; the clerk noticed it had no leather to tie a flint on, rooted around his shop until he found a strip, and with it tied the flint to the pistol. He also noticed that the pistol seemed to have no trigger, but Francis pulled back the cock, and the trigger sprang out. Francis paid for the flint with two halfpennies.

  He made one more purchase later that night; the police later found a shopkeeper across town who thought—but could not swear—that Francis bought gunpowder from him. The location of his shop, deep in Marylebone, makes this unlikely, but Francis clearly did buy gunpowder someplace—a small quantity, but enough to load the pistol through its muzzle. While the police learned about all of these purchases, however, they could never prove that Francis bought a bullet for his pistol, although they made an exhaustive attempt to do just that.

  To sleep, and to hide away until Sunday, Francis found shelter at yet another coffee house: St. Ann’s, at the very end of Oxford Street. Since this place was just doors away from his parents’ home, he likely knew the owner, Mr. Goodman, and possibly was able to defer his payment for a little time. A little time was all he needed. This was one Sunday when he would not be returning home for dinner; his family never knew how close Francis was to them as he lay low and awaited his opportunity.

  ten

  A THOROUGH SCAMP

  It was easy, in 1842, to catch sight of the Queen on Sundays while she was in residence at Buckingham Palace, since she regularly attended service at the Chapel Royal at St. James’s Palace. It was of course the shortest of
walks from Buckingham Palace to St. James’s—less than a quarter-mile—but the Queen rode from palace to palace with her household, in a series of carriages. On either side of the Mall, under the shade of the magnificent elm trees, bystanders watched the short parade come, and, after the service, return. While Victoria and Albert attended the sermon of the Bishop of Norwich at the Chapel Royal during the early afternoon of Sunday 29 May, a crowd outside awaited their return to Buckingham Palace. Among that crowd, standing on the Mall directly across from the southeastern entrance to Green Park, stood a sixteen-year-old boy by the name of George Pearson. Pearson had only recently arrived in London from Suffolk to work at his brother’s printing business as a wood engraver. This Sunday he was exploring the wonders of the metropolis and had come to St. James’s to see the greatest wonder of all, the Queen.

  Pearson was a shy boy and betrayed that shyness with an acute stammer, one that amounted to verbal paralysis when he felt fear or stress. It was two in the afternoon when the crowd stirred upon seeing the activity on Stable Yard Road. The train of closed carriages emerged from there, turned right for the Palace, and approached the boy. The crowd cheered, all eyes fixed on the last carriage, the one carrying the royal couple. Albert sat to the right, Pearson’s side, with his equerry Colonel Wylde riding beside him; Victoria’s equerry Colonel Arbuthnot rode apace on the Queen’s side. Victoria bowed to those on her side of the Mall while Albert acknowledged those around Pearson. They passed Pearson and trotted on. He turned to watch the backs of the footmen standing on the back of the Queen’s carriage.

  He froze. Three or four yards in front of his eyes, a dark-complexioned youth, his back against the rails of St. James’s Park, stood with arm extended, clutching a small pistol and pointing it toward the carriage. The youth didn’t fire, Pearson thought.* He seemed confused and angry with himself as he returned the pistol to the breast of his black surtout coat. Pearson heard him mutter “They may take me if they like, I don’t care—I was a fool not to shoot.” For some moments—as long as a minute or two—the two young men stood still, indecisively. Then John Francis crossed the Mall and disappeared through the gate and into Green Park.

  Pearson, immobilized by agitation, watched him go, wondering whether what he had seen was a joke, and wondering if he had really seen what he thought he had: no one else in the now-dispersing crowd seemed to. But then he saw next to him a tall, white-whiskered old man, whose startled face showed he had obviously witnessed what Pearson had. “What a remarkable thing it was!” he said to Pearson: he “never knew such a thing in his life!” Then, he turned and slowly walked away, toward Piccadilly. Pearson quietly followed him: perhaps the man was on his way to report the attempt to the police, in which case Pearson too should come forward as a witness. The old man walked on, Pearson following, to St. James’s Street, where he stopped and turned to the boy, again commenting on the remarkable scene the two had just witnessed. He then asked the boy for his name and address; Pearson haltingly articulated them, and the old man carefully wrote them down. The two then walked together down Piccadilly. The man turned and left Pearson on the corner of Duke Street. Pearson watched him amble slowly away—and never saw him again. In the coming days, the police (with Pearson’s help) exerted an enormous amount of energy attempting to find the old gentleman—to no avail. The gentleman, whoever he was, must have had the questionable pleasure of reading about himself in the newspapers a few days later, when he was excoriated for not raising an alarm or reporting the crime.

  Pearson continued on east, to his brother’s home in Holborn. He assumed that the old man was reporting the attempt to the police, and supposed that the police might come to him soon. They never came. When he spoke with his brother, he was calmer, able to tell him what he had witnessed without his stammer defeating him.

  George’s brother, Matthew Flinders Pearson, was a good fifteen years older than he, and a respectable businessman in Holborn. He was genuinely alarmed by his brother’s account, and knew that they could not leave reporting the crime to the old gentleman, or wait for the police to come. Indeed, he mistrusted the very idea of reporting to the police, considering it unlikely that they would give the tale of a semi-articulate country boy much credence, and fearing the consequences of public alarm: he considered that the attempt should be kept as secret as possible. That need for secrecy was the opinion shared by everyone who learned of the attempt in the next twenty-four hours. Matthew decided therefore to report the attempt to a political authority, and the brothers Pearson set off on an odyssey that would bring them overnight to the presence of the highest powers in the kingdom.

  Matthew brought George to a Holborn friend he knew to be politically inclined. Thomas Dousbery, a boot and shoe retailer, dabbled in radical thought and was the secretary of the Cordwainer’s benevolent fund; he was acquainted with a number of political figures, and he would surely know what to do. With Matthew translating, George haltingly told Dousbery his story. Dousbery believed George’s account demanded serious attention, and recommended the three speak with the most highly placed city official he knew: Alderman Sir Peter Laurie—the same Sir Peter who had taken such an interest in Oxford’s case, and, incidentally, was still taking an interest in his official capacity as President of Bethlem Hospital. Dousbery was sure that Laurie trusted in him, and would not see Pearson’s account as a “trumped up tale.”

  At six that evening, then, Dousbery and the Pearsons were received by Laurie at his ornate mansion on aristocratic Park Square: surroundings guaranteed to overawe young Pearson and hopelessly tie his tongue: He stammered so badly, Laurie wrote in his diary, “that his brother who was with him had to repeat a statement he had made to him when he was not excited or afraid.” Laurie considered that Pearson should take his account straight to Buckingham Palace. He doubted the discretion of the police and the Tory Home Secretary, James Graham, believing that if Pearson went there his account was likely to make “noise” and to become public. Best to speak with a royal official. Laurie therefore wrote them a letter of introduction to Charles Augustus Murray, the Master of the Queen’s Household—a letter which Laurie, a man well known for his egotism, later claimed saved the Queen’s life.

  From Laurie’s mansion adjacent to Regent’s Park, the three hurried south to Buckingham Palace to find themselves stymied by royal protocol. Upon presenting their letter at the door, they were curtly informed that Murray had just sat down to dinner at the Queen’s table, and could not—“on any pretence”—be spoken with until bed time. Rather than wait until then, and rather than argue that the matter was of sufficient importance to interrupt Murray, they decided to bring the letter to Murray in the morning, and returned to Holborn. The Queen, they thought, would have to wait to hear about her assailant.

  Victoria, however, already knew. For besides George Pearson and the mysterious old man, there was one other witness to Francis’s attempt: Prince Albert. Albert, watching the crowd from his carriage, had seen the “little swarthy ill-looking rascal” aim the flintlock at his face, and had spent the entire afternoon certain that he had nearly been killed. He wrote about the assault to his father the next day:

  … when we were nearly opposite Stafford House, I saw a man step out from the crowd and present a pistol full at me. He was some two paces from us. I heard the trigger snap, but it must have missed fire. I turned to Victoria, who was seated on my right, and asked her, “Did you hear that?” She had been bowing to the people on the right, and had observed nothing. I said, “I may be mistaken, but I am sure I saw some one take aim at us.”

  As far as Albert was concerned, the swarthy ill-looking rascal was aiming directly at him and not at the Queen; Victoria later wrote to her Uncle Leopold “Thank God, my angel is also well; but he says that had the man fired on Sunday, he must have been hit in the head.”

  Albert was deeply distressed after this attempt—distressed at the attempt itself, and at the amazing fact that no one around him had seen what he had. He asked his footmen
if they had noticed anyone stretch a hand toward the carriage. (He didn’t mention the pistol, thinking that best be kept secret.) They had seen nothing. He then ran out onto the palace balcony to see if there was a commotion on the Mall: surely, if anyone else had seen the assailant, there would be an outcry, and hundreds would have converged on the perpetrator. But all was quiet; the crowd had dispersed, “satisfied with having seen the Queen.” Albert then spoke with the Queen’s equerry, Colonel Arbuthnot—who, riding on the Queen’s side of the carriage, also saw nothing. Albert, wishing Arbuthnot to maintain “profound secrecy,” asked him to communicate what had happened to four people only: the two Commissioners of the police; the Home Secretary, James Graham; and the Prime Minister, Robert Peel.

  Upon hearing of the attempt, Peel rushed to the Palace and listened to Albert’s tale as the two walked in the palace gardens. With a member of the police, Peel took down Albert’s statement in writing, taking special note of Albert’s description of Francis. He then acquainted the Home Secretary with the situation. Sir James Graham walked to Scotland Yard to call on the elder and the more military of the two police commissioners, Colonel Charles Rowan: from the start, Graham envisioned something like a military operation to catch the would-be assassin. Rowan was out, but he returned between five and six and hurried around the building to the Home Office, where Graham showed him Albert’s statement. Both men then reported to the Palace. Peel was there, and the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary left Rowan to confer with the Prince. The three agreed that they should limit the knowledge of the assault to a very few—the Prince, Peel, Graham, Rowan, the two equerries, and the two police inspectors attached to the Palace—while at the same time launching a major police operation to catch the assailant. The Queen in the meantime would not present herself as a target by going out in her carriage until she absolutely had to—that is, not for three days, until Wednesday, when she was to attend a royal levee at the Throne Room at St. James’s. That was the plan that Rowan took from the Palace, anyway. Whether Peel, Graham, and particularly Albert were fully aware of the same plan, agreed upon in two separate conversations, is unclear. And the Queen herself had not agreed to anything. The subsequent confusion put Victoria in grave danger.