I, Victoria

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘I think, not cross, ma’am. Most probably they were shy and embarrassed. Strange faces are apt to give the idea of ill-humour, you know; but once you are used to them – and they are used to you, which is more to the point – you will find them as agreeable as anyone. You know that to be true in the Duke’s case,’ he pointed out coaxingly. ‘There was a time not long ago when you disliked him amazingly.’

  I sighed, conceding the point. ‘But I do not want you to go out, my lord. I cannot do without you. And I’m sure you will not like to go.’

  He sighed too. ‘Nobody likes going out – but I am a good deal tired, and it would be a great rest for me.’

  I looked at him in dismay. Could it be that this was not just another crisis, but really the end of things? ‘Must it be?’

  ‘I will not go unless I have to, you may be sure; but if I do, you will have an excellent man in Peel, whom you may absolutely trust.’

  ‘I may grow to trust him, but I could never confide in him as I do in you. He could never be a friend to me as you are.’

  His eyes grew moist, and he leaned forward confidingly. ‘As to that, I see no reason why we may not continue to meet, and to correspond, if it is Your Majesty’s wish.’

  ‘It is – it is!’ I said, feeling enormously relieved at the prospect. ‘If I could see you – write to you – have your opinions, I should not feel so alone.’

  Lord M. nodded. ‘I have touched on it with Sir Robert, and he has said most generously that he has no objection whatever to a continuation of purely social intercourse between us – indeed, he said that he would be glad of whatever gives Your Majesty comfort. You see how properly he speaks of you! But, of course, we would not discuss politics together any more.’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said more brightly, meeting his eyes, and seeing in them the same conviction – that no-one would dictate to us what we should and should not discuss. ‘It would make the change-over much less disagreeable to me if I might not lose my friend as well as my Prime Minister.’ But I still did not really, at bottom, believe it would come to that.

  The defeat of my Government in June over the budget was brought about by a remarkable combination of what ought to have been conflicting interests. There was a strange alliance between the West India sugar merchants, who objected to new duties on sugar, and the anti-slave-traders, who objected to the fact that slave-grown sugar was now more freely imported than free-grown. The Chartists, who Lord M. said ought sooner to have voted for the Anti-Christ than the Tories, voted against the Government on the grounds that no-one was going to give them what they wanted anyway, so they might as well have a change just for the variety. And tinkering with the Corn Law scale of duties annoyed everyone – the agriculturists because they wanted more protection, and the industrialists because they wanted none.

  The Corn Laws were a great cause of dissension throughout the early part of the century. As Lord M. explained it to me, the arguments for and against the protection of corn prices were roughly these: the free importation of foreign corn, it was said, would reduce home production and cause a dangerous dependence on other countries which could be fatal in time of war, and would make us vulnerable to blackmail by foreign governments. The contrary argument was that the competition of free trade would reduce the price of corn which would make bread cheaper for the lower classes, for whom it was the staple diet.

  Lord M. dismissed this latter argument as sentimental nonsense: if bread were cheaper, he said, employers would simply feel justified in cutting wages, and the poor would be no better off. Besides, when the harvest was good at home, very little foreign corn was imported anyway, and when it was bad at home, it was usually bad abroad too, and foreign corn was both so scarce and so expensive that the import duties made little difference. Lord M. was largely against changing the law simply because it would cause such disruption and set one class against another. He always thought change should be avoided unless it would bring some definite good.

  (The Corn Laws were finally repealed by the Tories under Sir Robert Peel in 1846, and in justice to Lord M. I can’t see that it made very much difference either way. The repeal did, however, make poor Peel so unpopular that he was forced to resign immediately afterwards, so if the Corn Laws can be said to have defeated Lord M. in ’forty-one, they did the same for Peel five years later.)

  After the Government’s defeat in June 1841, Lord M. was persuaded, somewhat against his better judgement, not to resign, but to go to the country in the hope of getting an improved majority. I was very glad of this decision, which gave me a respite, and I was such a fervent Whig I was sure the country could not be so infatuated as to prefer the Tories; but the elections were an embarrassment for the Whigs, and in August the Government was defeated heavily in both Houses. The crisis I had dreaded ever since I first came to the Throne was now upon me.

  I wrote to Lord M. on a black-bordered paper (the Court was in mourning for the Queen of Hanover) which I thought only too appropriate. ‘The sad, sad event has taken place at last. I have dreaded it for so many months, and the reality is so very, very painful and dreadful to believe!’ He wrote back, ‘I also feel deeply the pain of separation from a service which has now for four years been no less my pleasure than my pride.’

  I felt I was abandoned amongst my enemies, and no amount of reassurance by Albert would convince me that I should like Peel just as much one day. Lord M. did all he could before he left to reconcile me to it, and to make me accept Albert and Peel in his place as my mentors; but though I loved Albert dearly, I did not yet want him as my partner in government; and Peel I neither loved nor trusted.

  My last audience with Lord M. as Prime Minister took place on the 30th of August at Windsor. After dinner we went out together on to the Terrace and walked a little, quite alone, talking of old times. We had so many happy memories; and after a while it was necessary to change the subject, for we were both close to tears.

  ‘What will you do now?’ I asked him.

  ‘Oh, this and that,’ he said lightly. ‘I shall cultivate the habits of a country gentleman. I think I shall buy some horses – I haven’t done very much riding lately.’ We talked of horses, and of rides we had taken together in the past. ‘I hope I shall see a little of the bloom of spring and summer which I have missed for so many years,’ he said. ‘There will be compensations, you see, to being out of office.’

  ‘In or out of office, I shall always regard you as my most dear and valuable friend,’ I said. My voice shook as I spoke, and we stopped of the same impulse and turned to each other in the starlight. His kind, dear face was almost hidden in shadow, but it was so familiar to me I did not need light to see it. ‘For four years I have seen you almost daily,’ I said in a low voice. ‘I do not know how to contemplate the change. I have not said much – I have not made a fuss as I did last time – but that is because I feel it so much more.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I have observed your courage, and admired your efforts at control so much.’ He stopped abruptly, and I put my hands blindly into his, feeling them, large, dry, comfortable, close round mine as on so many occasions before, when I had been afraid or lonely. He had been not quite father, not quite lover to me – a little of both – the first love of my lonely life, and he was very, very dear to me still. We were not parting because our love had ended, and that is the hardest sort of parting of all.

  He bent his head and spoke softly. ‘The time of my service to you has been the proudest and happiest part of my life. For four years I have seen you daily, and liked it better every day. It is as if—’

  He stopped again, and I said, ‘Oh, don’t! My heart is breaking!’

  He made a strange little sound like a sob, and lifted his head a little, and I saw the tears on his cheeks glint in the starlight. He had tilted his face back so that his tears should not drop on to my hands, which would have been lèse-majesté, and I would have smiled at such consideration if I had not been crying too by then.

  ‘I
shall not be far away,’ he managed to say after a while. ‘I shall still see you.’

  ‘But it won’t be the same,’ I said despairingly, and he did not argue. We both knew it.

  ‘You must rely on the Prince now. Lean on him, seek his advice. He must be everything to you. And trust Peel. He is a good man.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said; but in my heart I said no. In my heart I said, I don’t want Peel, I want you! I wanted things to go on the way they were. All my life people had been leaving me, and I hated change, it frightened me. And Lord M. had always been on my side, my one true friend and supporter. Albert was still in some ways an unknown quantity. Albert was already on terms with Peel, whom he liked far more than I ever should, for they were alike in their tastes and their temperaments. And now Peel was being foisted upon me as my principal minister. Suppose he and Albert worked together to push me aside, took over government from me piecemeal until I was nothing more than a cypher, a consort to be paraded on public occasions for the people to cheer at? I had grown up in an atmosphere of conspiracy, and it was hard for me not to see it all around me, even in the one I loved best – oh, especially in him! For where one loves, one has the most to lose, and trust has the greatest territory to cover.

  And I knew that as Queen Regnant I had a great weakness which Albert and Peel could exploit if they wished; for what could be easier than to use my periods of confinement in childbed to weaken my position and take away my power? And who could more easily conspire to do so than my husband and my Prime Minister?

  ‘I wish you would not go!’ I sobbed at last. ‘Oh, I wish you would not!’

  ‘It has to be,’ he said, and there was a world of sadness in his voice.

  28th May 1900

  TWO DAYS later Albert and I went to Claremont and it was there that I had my first audience with my new council of ministers. My heart was very full, and I spoke little, knowing that I would easily be tipped over into tears; but I kept my composure and behaved, I think, with dignity. My visible condition – for I was seven months’ pregnant by then – must have affected the ministers, for they behaved in the gentlest way, speaking softly and showing me every consideration. Even Sir Robert’s manner was softened, and he assured me with an unexpected tremble in his voice that he considered it his first and greatest duty to consult my happiness and my comfort in everything; no person, he said, would be proposed to me in any capacity who was in the least disagreeable to me. In my heart I answered, ‘Then take yourself away and bring me back Lord Melbourne!’ but outwardly I was all complaisance, and said what I must. I must have performed well, for afterwards Peel said that I had behaved perfectly to him, and the other ministers all agreed that they had the fullest confidence in my intended fairness towards them.

  Ah, but what about fairness to me? The longer this pregnancy went on the more ill I felt, and the more nervous and alone. Lord M. was gone; Albert had aligned himself with the enemy; I had only Lehzen left.

  That awful pregnancy ended at last, on the morning of the 9th of November 1841, when after severe suffering I gave birth to a fine, large boy. Albert stayed with me throughout, holding my hand, wiping my brow, supporting me with his love. I don’t know what I would have done without him. But though I had now fulfilled the promise of a year ago and given the country and my husband an heir, my troubles were not over. Soon another attack was to be mounted, and by the one nearest me, who should have loved and sympathised with me most, to deprive me of the last support of my early life. Albert had seen off Lord M.; now he had to remove an even more hated rival for my attention, before he could reign alone. He was king of my heart already, but he knew, as I knew, that I had not surrendered everything to him yet, and the last battle was about to be joined.

  Sunday the 16th of January 1842 – oh, how I remember that date! We had been to Claremont for a few days, for I was badly in need of rest and change. My second child had been born less than a year after Pussy; I had had a wretched pregnancy and a difficult birth; and having had two children in twenty-one months of marriage, I was exhausted and depressed, and my poor nerves were so chafed that I could hardly bear myself. Since the boy was born, everything seemed to irritate me, and though I tried so hard to control my temper, it only made it worse when I lost it – as if every annoyance was stored up like an explosive shell in a magazine, which all finally went off together.

  When we reached the Palace that Sunday we went straight up to the nursery to see Pussy. She had been a lusty baby for the first nine months of her life, but in the autumn of 1841 she had begun to ail and lose weight; her food disagreed with her, she was often sick, and cried and was fretful. She was given the very best of everything: Clark decreed she should be fed none but asses’ milk – which was the richest, richer than Jersey even – together with chicken broth and the finest arrowroot. As the food was so rich, to avoid overloading her little stomach it was measured out carefully to her in small amounts and at long intervals. But still she did not thrive.

  The nursery was stiflingly hot, too hot for my comfort, but it was the understanding in those days that cold air was fatal to babies, so I did not question it. Certainly the new baby seemed to like it: he lay quietly in his cot, staring ahead of him with those dark-blue eyes, peacefully blowing bubbles and moving his limbs slowly like an underwater creature. (Even now poor Bertie reminds me somewhat of a large fish – slow-moving and glassy-eyed.)

  Pussy was a different matter. As soon as we came through the door we could hear her whimpering, and as I bent over the cot, I could smell by the sour odour that she had been sick again. I turned to the nurse, who had got up hurriedly from the fireside at our appearance.

  ‘How has the Princess Victoria been, Roberts?’

  ‘Much the same, madam,’ Mrs Roberts said, curtseying. ‘She brought up her last feed, I’m afraid.’

  Albert bent over the cradle and stroked his daughter’s hollow cheek with the back of one finger. ‘How pale and thin she is,’ he said, and I could hear the anxiety in his voice. ‘Poor little Puss!’ The baby whimpered again, turning her eyes up to Albert’s face as if in appeal. ‘See how she looks at me! Poor baby, she’s so hungry.’ He looked at me accusingly. ‘This regimen does not suit her, you know.’

  I knew – he made no secret of it – that he did not agree with the nursery regime laid down by Clark; but what irritated me most was the insinuation that only he cared about Pussy, that I, her mother, who had borne the suffering and inconvenience and downright danger of giving birth to her, did not mind seeing her unwell.

  ‘When is her next feed due?’ I asked Roberts tersely.

  ‘Not for another two hours, madam.’

  ‘So long?’ Albert looked up sharply. ‘But she’s hungry! A child so thin can’t be getting enough to eat.’

  ‘She’s fed according to Doctor Clark’s instructions, sir,’ Roberts said, resentfully. Albert did not like pertness from servants, and I saw the corners of his nostrils whiten.

  ‘You make her wait, although she’s hungry? Ah, she is so helpless that all she can do to tell you her trouble is to cry, but you ignore it.’

  ‘The food is rich enough, sir. She doesn’t need more,’ said Roberts. She looked at him with a narrow, sidelong glance. ‘I’m afraid gentlemen don’t understand babies. It does them no harm to cry a bit.’

  Albert turned sharply away from her and muttered to me, ‘Now that is a spiteful remark. I know who has been at work here.’

  It was not much, but it was enough to touch off my temper. ‘Oh, and what would you do?’ I enquired angrily. ‘Feed her every time she cries? That would be a splendid thing, would it not? She’d be dead inside a week – and much you would care!’

  ‘Please, Victoria, let us not argue,’ he said in a low voice.

  But I was in a passion now. ‘Oh, no, let us not argue, let us do exactly as you say! You know all about babies, of course! What you would like best, I suppose, is for me to leave the nursery altogether so that you can get on with murdering my child in pe
ace!’ I saw him grow pale, and felt that strange, perverse thrill one has when one lets go of oneself and says the unsayable. The words seemed to leap out of my mouth with their own power. ‘Yes, you would murder her if I let you! You’ve never cared for her, I know that. You were sorry she was a girl, and now you have a boy you’d be happy to see her dead!’

  A dreadful shiver of excitement surged through me as I passed beyond the bounds of control. I had said monstrous things; I had struck him, with my words, as hard as I could; now I waited, vibrating with the lust for battle, for him to strike back. But at the last moment he caught himself up, remembering what I had ceased to care about – that Roberts was listening to every word, and that it would be all round the Palace by evening. ‘Liebe Gott, I must have patience,’ was what he did say – muttered rather – and he swung on his heel and went quickly away, closing (not even slamming) the door behind him.

  My unexpressed rage almost choked me. As I stared at the closed door I could feel it like a lump jammed half-way down my throat, immovable, and my stomach lifted for an instant as though I really might retch. It was not the first quarrel we had had, for my nerves had been in a state of irritation all through my second pregnancy, but Albert would never quarrel properly: when rational argument failed, he would withdraw himself, first verbally and then, if I persisted, physically. I ought to have taken warning this time from many little storm signals, in myself and in him, but it always maddened me to have him walk out of the room in the middle of a quarrel, and just then I felt I must have it all out or die from rage. Trembling with the effort of control, I said something neutral to Roberts, I know not what, and went to look for Albert.

  He was in his dressing-room. I had never seen him so angry. He was walking up and down with a snatched, angry gait; his eyes blazed, his face was white except for two small red spots over his cheekbones, his lips were pressed hard together. The look of him made me shiver inwardly with something that was not aversion. I was both excited and angry, but there was something else in me, too, something that licked its lips at the sight of him.