297: And Robert Francis Pate Senior … was on that day introduced to both Prince and Queen: Walford 228.
297: … sending him to be trained as a gentleman at a school in Norwich: Times 29 June 1850, 8.
297: Pate set his son up in the Queen’s service as a cornet in the prestigious 10th Hussars: Times 28 June 1850, 8; 12 July 1850, 7.
298: He was odd from the start, but was at first tolerated and even liked by his fellows: Times 12 July 1850, 7.
298: … Pate threatened to “make a hole in the river”: Times 12 July 1850, 7.
298: He avoided mess with his fellows and instead took long and solitary walks: Times 12 July 1850, 7.
298: … the cook and the messman, he convinced himself, were trying to poison him: Times 12 July 1850, 7; “Robert Pate.”
298: Pate fled instead London with little more than the clothes he wore: Times 12 July 1850, 5; Morning Chronicle 12 July 1850, 5.
298: To his astonished father, he explained that he was a hunted man: Times 12 July 1850, 5.
298: He was arrested upon his return: Morning Chronicle 12 July 1850, 5.
298: … his attempts at explaining himself were so incoherent that his commanding officers refused to prosecute him: Times 12 July 1850, 7.
298: … he wrote to Pate Senior a letter asking “in as delicate a manner as I could” for him to take his son away: Times 12 July 1850, 7.
298: … he granted Pate a leave of absence: Times 12 July 1850, 7.
298: … for £1800 he quickly sold his Lieutenant’s commission and set himself up in comfortable apartments in Jermyn Street: Reynolds’s Weekly 14 July 1850, 5; “Robert Pate.”
299: … the younger Pate was a man of extremely temperate habits, and obsessively regular in paying his bills: Times 12 July 1850, 7.
299: … creditors began to apply to his father for payment: Times 12 July 1850, 7; “Robert Pate”; Reynolds’s Weekly 14 July 1850, 5.
299: … he was alarmed by the change that had come over his son: Times 12 July 1850, 7; “Robert Pate.”
299: A doctor in Brighton recommended that he see the most celebrated mad-doctor of all: “Robert Pate.”
299: His younger sister had moved from Wisbech to London to live with a family friend, the eminent surgeon James Startin: Morning Chronicle 12 July 1850, 6.
299: … it did not take long before James Startin realized that the wild man whose eccentricities in the parks he had often witnessed was his future sister-in-law’s brother: Times 12 July 1850, 7; “Robert Pate.”
299: … he spoke in a “short choking manner,” with wild eyes and expression, and then would lapse into sullen silence: Morning Chronicle 12 July 1850, 6; “Robert Pate”; Times 12 July 1850, 7.
299: … The O’Gorman Mahon … understood Pate to be a maniac from their first conversation: Reynolds’s Weekly 14 July 1850, 5; Times 12 July 1850, 7; Morning Chronicle 12 July 1850, 6.
300: … Conolly acknowledged that the man was certainly mad—but advised his father to do nothing: Times 12 July 1850, “Robert Pate.”
300: James Startin began to fear that he would commit a violent act upon himself or his relatives: Times 12 July, 7; “Robert Pate.”
300: “I told my foreman I had great apprehensions that Captain Pate, as I always called him, was losing his senses”: “Robert Pate.”
300: “I had never seen him so excited as on this day”: Times 12 July 1850, 7.
300: “There was something peculiar in the manner in which he turned about and walked away”: “Robert Pate.”
301: The Duke of Cambridge was seriously ill with “gastric fever”—most likely typhoid: Victoria Letters (first series) 2:257.
302: … Victoria was mortified to discover that the Duchess had refused to rise at a dinner where a toast to Albert was given: Fulford 309–11.
302: She would be to Victoria a “link with bygone times and generations … we all looked upon her as a sort of grandmother”: Purdue, “Daughters.”
303: … “Much was done to set Mamma against her”: Victoria Letters (first series) 2:273.
303: … her third son—her favorite son, as it turned out: Frankland.
304: George Anson, thirty-seven years old and apparently completely healthy, complained to his wife of a pain over his eye and immediately collapsed: Martin 2:230.
304: … they both broke down and were, according to Lady Lyttelton, “in floods of tears, and quite shut up”: Lyttelton 393.
305: And Peel was a mentor to the young Prince: James 151.
305: … she had welcomed John Russell’s Whig ministry with good grace: Weintraub, Victoria 189.
305: Peel was the government, keeping “all in his own hands”: Victoria’s Journal 2 July 1846, qtd. in Longford 188.
306: … her husband, a German and thus, he once told Albert to his face, unable to understand British interests: St. Aubyn, Queen Victoria 245.
306: He regularly neglected to send the Queen dispatches until after he had issued them: Hibbert, Queen Victoria 204; St. Aubyn, Queen Victoria 247.
306: In the ongoing dispute between Prussia and Denmark, they favored Prussia, and Palmerston Denmark. When the states of Italy rose up against their Austrian rulers, they favored Austria, and Palmerston Italy: St. Aubyn, Queen Victoria 248.
306: … he had actually helped arm Garibaldi the year before, without consulting the Queen or even his Cabinet colleagues: St. Aubyn, Queen Victoria 249; Longford 200.
306: “I felt really I could hardly go on with him”: Victoria Letters (first series) 2:195.
307: Pacifico claimed that he had lost the enormous sum of £32,000 in the conflagration: Ridley 507.
307: Don Pacifico’s parents were—and perhaps he was—born in Gibraltar: Derek Taylor 9,17.
307: When the Greek government failed to recompense him, he turned to the British consul, who brought the matter to Palmerston: For details of the Don Pacifico affair, see Ridley 486–528; Derek Taylor throughout.
307: Palmerston agreed that Greece owed Pacifico the full amount—plus another £500 for his suffering: Ridley 508.
307: … in mid-January 1850, when the British Mediterranean fleet stormed into Athens’s waters with more ships than Nelson had commanded at the Battle of the Nile: Martin 2:269.
307: Opinion in Britain was divided as to whether Don Pacifico or Greece was the true victim: Ridley 515.
308: The French ambassador promptly returned to France for consultations; the Russians contemplated recalling their own ambassador: Derek Taylor 198.
308: Before this debate, Victoria and Albert had insisted that Palm-erston leave the Foreign Office: Victoria Letters (first series) 2:235–6.
308: He proposed reshuffling the Cabinet completely: Victoria Letters (first series) 2:235–37.
309: Two months later … the royal couple met again with Russell and modified their plans: Victoria Letters (first series) 2:243–4.
309: “It is impossible to say at this moment what will be the result”: Victoria Letters (first series) 2:248.
309: “We are in a crisis,” Victoria wrote to uncle Leopold: Victoria Letters (first series) 2:251.
309: Palmerston himself later claimed he could hardly remember such a “display of intellect, oratory and high and dignified feeling”: Ashley 2:161.
310: “… the principles on which the foreign policy of Her Majesty’s government has been regulated have been such as were calculated to maintain the honour and dignity of this country”: Victoria Letters (first series) 2:248; Times 24 June 1850, 3.
310: … a vote against Palmerston was a vote for “Cossack domination”: Times 26 June 1850, 2.
310: Speaking for four and a half hours with few notes and no pause for the water or oranges set beside him: Roebuck 242; Ridley 522.
311: “It is like shooting a policeman”: Times 26 June 1850, 4.
311: His policy had bettered mankind: Times 26 June 1850, 5.
311: “… as the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indign
ity when he could say Civis Romanus sum”: Ridley 524.
311: “… a most brilliant speech,” she admitted to her journal: Longford 201.
311: Russell was ecstatic about it—”one of the most masterly ever delivered,” he wrote: Victoria Letters (first series) 2:252.
311: The Stranger’s Gallery was packed more tightly than ever: Times 27 June 1850, 2.
312: “We are living at a period of the most wonderful transition”: Albert, Addresses 60.
312: He “appears to be almost the only person who has considered the subject both as a whole and in its details”: Martin 2:202.
312: “The Prince’s sleep is again as bad as ever, and he looks very ill of an evening”: Martin 2:243.
312: … Albert had given £500 and Victoria £1,000: ffrench 46.
313: … he had studied the alternatives and was now absolutely committed to that choice: Cole 1:166–7.
313: The residents of Knightsbridge adjoining the site raised a stink: ffrench 77; Christopher Hobhouse 18.
313: … a classic demonstration of the broth-destroying propensity of too many cooks: Cole 1:163.
313: … they “freely”—in both senses of the term—”availed themselves of the most valuable suggestions”: Times 3 June 1850, 8.
313: … a sheet-iron dome 200 feet in diameter and 150 feet high: Christopher Hobhouse 16.
313: … “a monster balloon in the process of inflation”: Times 21 June 1850, 8.
313: … a squat and sprawling warehouse that would take an estimated 19 million bricks to build: Cole 1:164; Leapman 52; ffrench 73. Others claim 15 million: Strutt 9; Christopher Hobhouse 16; Auerbach 42.
314: … he “would become associated in the minds of the people not with a benefit, but with an injury”: Times 27 June 1850, 5.
314: … a “tubercle” on “the lungs of this huge metropolis”: Auerbach 43; Times 19 March 1850, 3.
314: He had opposed the 1832 Reform Bill; he was dead set against the railways; he despised Free Trade: Auerbach 43.
314: “… one of the greatest humbugs, one of the greatest frauds, one of the greatest absurdities ever known”: Times 19 June 1850, 4.
314: … a magnet to attract to London the dregs of foreign lands: Papists, thieves, anarchists, and secret societies bent on assassinating the Queen: Christopher Hobhouse 20.
314: “The Exhibition is now attacked furiously by The Times”: Martin 2:235.
Chapter 17: The Most Disgraceful and Cowardly Thing That Has Ever Been Done
315: … that man had refused to give way, throwing out his arm every time Pate tried to pass him: Times 29 June 1850, 8; 12 July 1850, 7.
316: … when alerted that the Queen would be going out, they were under orders to get there first and patrol the area: Geraghty 30.
316: … no one had alerted the police: RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1850, 27 June 1850.
316: They trotted to the edge of the street and then stopped, awaiting their opportunity to make the tight turn onto busy Piccadilly: Times 29 June 1850, 8.
316: … such a situation, she later wrote, “always makes me think more than usually of the possibility of an attempt being made on me”: Geraghty 30.
316: … brought it slashing down on the right side of the Queen’s head, bending the wire of her light summer bonnet, the metal ferrule at the cane’s tip audibly smacking her forehead: Victoria Letters (first series) 2:253; Times 28 June 1850, 8.
317: Victoria instinctively raised her hand to her bonnet and recoiled away from Pate, falling into the laps of her alarmed children: Times 6 July 1850, 8; Morning Chronicle 28 June 1850, 5; Geraghty 30.
317: Robert Renwick leapt up, leaned forward, and seized Pate by the collar: Times 29 June 1850, 8.
317: Those around him grabbed hold of him as well: Times 28 June 1850, 8.
317: “They have got the man,” Fanny Jocelyn told Victoria: Geraghty 30.
317: To the crowd, it seemed as if the Queen was simply adjusting her bonnet: Morning Chronicle 28 June 1850, 5.
317: One man threw a vicious punch at Pate’s face and blood gushed from his nose: Times 28 June 1850, 5.
317: Lady Jocelyn burst into tears, and the Prince of Wales’s face went red: Longford 192.
317: … Colonel Grey galloped to Victoria’s side, catching behind him the sight of the crowd to the left rushing upon Pate: “Robert Pate.”
317: Voices began to call for a lynching: Daily News 28 June 1850, 4.
317: James Silver of A Division … noticed the seething crowd and heard a voice: “The villain has struck the Queen!”: Times 29 June 1850, 8.
317: He instantly ran to the spot, plunged into the crowd, and, with some difficulty and with the help of other constables drawn by the commotion, rescued him from the chaotic assault: Times 29 June 1850, 8.
318: … they passed Messrs. Fortnum and Mason’s emporium, and Pate could steal a look at his elegant rooms above them: Morning Chronicle 28 June 1850, 5.
318: … Victoria directed her visibly mortified equerry Charles Grey to ride through the parks and find Albert: Geraghty 31.
318: She sent Fanny Jocelyn back to Cambridge House to inform the Duchess what had just happened: Leeds Mercury 29 June 1850, 5.
318: She sent for her physician, James Clark, to tend to her wound—which was by now throbbing so painfully that she retired upstairs to treat it herself with arnica: Times 6 July 1850, 8; Geraghty 31.
318: Home Secretary George Grey, “greatly distressed and in tears,” came to her later that evening—and managed to compose himself enough to return to Commons and make his own contribution to the debate: Rowell 31; Times 28 June 1850, 4.
318: Sir James Clark arrived and examined the Queen: he found a “considerable tumor” on her brow: Examiner 6 July 1850, 428; Times 12 July 1850, 7.
318: “Certainly not: if I do not go, it will be thought I am seriously hurt, and people will be distressed and alarmed”: “The Character of Queen Victoria,” 318.
319: “The feeling of all classes [is] admirable,” she wrote that night in her journal, “the lowest of the low being most indignant”: Rowell 31.
319: … “one of the most magnificent demonstrations of loyalty it has ever been our fortune to witness”: Morning Chronicle 28 June 1850, 5.
319: … “the mark of the ruffian’s violence plainly visible on her forehead”: Times 28 June 1850, 8.
319: “I never heard such shouting”: Punch 19:18 (1850).
319: When Madame Viardot reached the line “Frustrate their knavish tricks,” the crowd roared: Morning Chronicle 28 June 1850, 5.
320: “The small stick with which the prisoner struck the blow was not thicker than an ordinary goosequill”: Times 28 June 1850, 8.
320: Pate’s cane—a type known as a partridge cane—was longer, heavier, and much thicker than the newspaper claimed: Lloyd’s Weekly 7 July 1850, 7; Times 29 June 1850, 8.
320: Victoria long remembered the injury Pate had given her: a walnut-sized welt and a scar that lasted ten years: Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper 30 June 1850, 12; Gathorne-Hardy 1:244.
320: “… it is very hard and very horrid that I a woman”: Geraghty 30.
320: … the Queen until the end of her life considered this one the meanest and most ignoble—”far worse,” she wrote, “than an attempt to shoot”: Geraghty 31.
321: “I own it makes me nervous out driving, and I start at any person coming near the carriage”: Victoria, Letters (first series) 2:253.
321: At Vine Street station, Pate was searched: Times 28 June 1850, 8.
321: The several witnesses to the assault who came with him to the station were questioned, and Pate was charged with assaulting the Queen: Times 28 June 1850, 8.
321: Pate … asserted emphatically “those men cannot prove whether I struck her head or her bonnet”: Morning Chronicle 28 June 1850, 5.
321: … a little wire and woven horsehair: “Robert Pate.”
322: Otway had just been promoted to Superintendent of C Division: Times 28
June 1850, 8.
322: Field, already a legend, was very soon to become an even greater one: Collins 204, 206–7.
322: Field was known for his roving eye, which caught all in a glance: Dickens, Amusements 357–369.
322: He made note of Pate’s obsessive neatness. He also confiscated a number of Pate’s papers: Times 28 June 1850, 8.
322: … he brought them to the Home Office examination the next day, but did not bring them forward: Reynolds’s Weekly News 30 June 1850,1.
322: Pate could offer no motive for striking the Queen besides claiming “felt very low for some time past”: Times 29 June 1850, 8.
322: “I wish to Heaven I had been at your right hand yesterday, and then this should not have happened”: Times 29 June 1850, 8.
322: … he sat up and observed the comings and goings at the station house: Times 29 June 1850, 8.
323: At 12:15 the next day, Superintendent Otway personally escorted Pate out of the station: Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper 30 June 1850,12.
323: Pate Senior was not there; he would arrive from Wisbech later that afternoon: Times 29 June 1850, 8.
323: Richard Mayne—now senior Chief Commissioner since the retirement of Charles Rowan earlier in the year—was to read the charge: Times 29 June 1850, 8; Emsley.
323: … Pate sat and stared vacantly: Reynolds’s Weekly 30 June 1850, 1.
323: Jervis brought forward just enough witnesses … to connect Pate with the attack and to justify a remand: Times 29 June 1850, 8.
323: John Huddleston requested more time than that, requesting a postponement until Friday 5 July: Times 29 June 1850, 8.
324: Pate drew up a list of books he wished transferred from his library at home to Clerkenwell: Times 29 June 1850, 8.
324: Otway then led Pate out the front door of the Home Office and directly into an unruly mob: Times 29 June 1850, 8.
324: Commissioner Hay had positioned a number of police before the Home Office to control the crowd: Reynolds’s Weekly 30 June 1850,1.
324: … the “absorbing topic of conversation” throughout London: Times 29 June 1850, 8.
324: William Gladstone spoke that Thursday evening, attacking Palmerston’s brutal nationalism with a visionary appeal to a brotherhood of nations: Times 28 June 1850, 5.
Shooting Victoria Page 62
