Lord M. tried one last protest. ‘But how will you manage with two Alberts in the family?’
‘The boy will be called Bertie,’ I said simply.
Royal babies had always been baptized privately, but after all the uncertainty over the Succession for so many years past, it was decided to have a public Christening for the boy, in St George’s Chapel, Windsor. It was to be a grand affair, and the organist composed a special anthem for the occasion and submitted it for our approval. Albert read it through and pronounced it tedious.
‘We can hardly ask someone else to write one,’ I said. ‘It would be such an insult when he has composed it specially – and on his own organ.’
‘Then we shall have no anthem at all,’ Albert decided. ‘No-one likes them anyway, and no-one remembers them a week later. If we end the service with an anthem, we shall all go out criticizing the music and feeling bad.’
It was so true, I laughed. ‘Well, what then?’
‘We should end with everyone singing. Something devotional, but something we can all join in.’ He frowned a moment, and then, ‘Yes, of course! The Hallelujah Chorus: we can all join in that, with all our hearts.’
I opened my mouth to protest, for I have never liked Handel’s music, and all my life I seem to have been haunted at every occasion of a remotely celebratory nature by that wretched Hallelujah! Hallelujah! business. But then I remembered I was now a submissive wife, and closed my mouth again. In the event it worked very well, and we were praised for the innovation (and as it was played while we walked out, I did not have to hear much of it). As on so many occasions, I discovered that Albert was right after all. The Christening went off very well, the baby behaved perfectly, and the Dean of Windsor made it memorable for me by solemnly congratulating the Queen for ‘saving the country from the incredible curse of a female succession’. I had the misfortune to catch Albert’s eye at that moment and had to bite my cheeks to stop myself from bursting out laughing.
It was a tremendous occasion, with well over six thousand people travelling up from London for it. The Great Western Railway ran trains every half hour, and had to fit out two new waiting-rooms at Slough Station for the accommodation of distinguished persons, with crimson carpet, marble fireplaces, and vast gilt-framed looking-glasses. I had never used the railway at that time – it was not until June of that year that I ventured, very nervously, for the first time upon it; and then I could not conceive how anyone could prefer the roads. When I and Albert travelled by chaise, we were forced to gallop along as fast as possible to avoid being surrounded by inquisitive horsemen and gig-drivers, which jolted me quite frightfully and frequently resulted in the most interesting bruises. Besides that, there was the inconvenience of the dust; and every time we did stop, we were besieged at once by crowds all wanting to stare and poke their heads in at the windows.
But the railway train was utter, utter bliss – so fast and so smooth, and giving us absolute privacy, so that it was like being transported along in one’s own drawing-room. I adored the speed, and would have liked to go ‘flat out’ as they called it, but Albert was made very nervous by the countryside whipping by – ‘Not zo fast please, Mr Conductor!’ he muttered once, and obliged me to send a message forward to slow down – so afterwards I made it a rule that the Royal Train should never go at more than forty miles per hour. Even so, it was four times the speed of a carriage on the road, and I believe that the railways, along with photography, were the best and most universally beneficial of the many inventions of this century.
The Duke, I should say, hated the very idea of railway trains, ever since the horrid accident he had witnessed at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830, when William Huskisson had been run over and killed by a locomotive engine. The Duke absolutely refused to travel by train until, accompanying me on a journey in August 1843, he could not help himself and was forced despairingly to climb up into a railway carriage again. I must say he saw immediately the advantages he had been forgoing, and was quite reconciled to the mode of transport from then on.
But to go back to the Christening, The Times complained the next day that the guests had been almost all German, which was aimed at Albert’s choice of the King of Prussia for a godfather. (Albert felt that Prussia was a natural ally for England, and longed to see a united Germany under Prussia’s leadership, with Pussy on the throne. The King of Prussia’s marriage was childless, and his brother, the Crown Prince, had a son who was only ten years older than Pussy, so it was not beyond the realms of possibility.)
After the Christening, there came the reorganisation of the Nursery. Mrs Southey was not proving satisfactory: she seemed unhappy in her work, could not keep order amongst the servants under her, and was frequently absenting herself, so that the children were left in the care of lower people for long periods. I asked Lord M.’s advice, and he suggested that we should appoint a lady of rank as Governess, not just as a figurehead, but genuinely to take charge.
‘At all costs let her be an aristocrat,’ he wrote to me. ‘Women of the middle rank have frequently little education and less sense. They are possessed by strong prejudices, and they are more liable to have their heads turned by their elevation. And they always seem to have innumerable low connections who press them for their interest at Court and force themselves upon your notice, putting you at the inconvenience of driving them off and being rude to them.’
Albert agreed (nobly, since it came from Lord M.) that this was sound advice, and our choice fell upon Lady Lyttleton, who had been one of my Ladies of the Bedchamber since 1838. She was a Spencer by birth, a Whig lady of the old school, tolerant, liberal, well educated, and devoted to children (she had five of her own whom she had been left to bring up alone after the death of her husband in 1837). She remained as Governess until she retired in 1851, and the children all became devoted to her and called her ‘Laddle’. She said from the beginning that she did not believe in punishments for small children – ‘One is never sure that they are fully understood by the children as the consequences of their naughtiness’ – but by some means or other she soon got Pussy to mind her, and after that there could be no difficulty with the others when they came along. Under her influence there was a little more of common sense and a little less of theory brought into nursery practice, and Pussy soon threw off her troubles and began to thrive as before, becoming, in Laddle’s own words, ‘a fine, fat, fair, royal-looking baby, and too absurdly like the Queen’.
When I do something, I like to do it thoroughly. If Albert wanted a meek and submissive little Hausfrau in the German style, I decided, he should have it – and we’d see how he liked it! Oh yes, I’m afraid there was a little spirit of perversity in me, which, disagreeing with his view of things, wanted to give him so much of it that it made him sick! I would be clinging and frail and helpless, have no opinion of my own, show him that I was incapable of so much as choosing a bonnet without his guidance; and when the full weight of my dependence finally broke his arm, I would tell him so!
But that was only one small and very reprehensible corner of my mind. There was a great deal of me that wanted a man to guide and support me – as my dependence on Lord M. had shown. I had lost my father in earliest childhood, and had searched ever since for someone to replace him, someone wise and strong to care for me and keep me safe. Yielding to Albert of necessity, and somewhat against my wishes, expecting to dislike it, I found it in the end almost entirely delightful.
The yielding did not come all at once, of course. There were still quarrels, disagreements and hurt feelings; I could not change my spots in one day – and some spots, I have to admit, never completely disappeared. But over the years I became a better person for submitting – more rational, better informed, and above all happier. To have someone else make the decisions and take the responsibility has a wonderfully liberating effect on the spirit, and if I was obliged to change myself, it was almost always for the better. For his part, Albert, finding himself at last in wha
t he felt to be his natural and rightful position of authority repaid me with devotion, tenderness, and a warmth of perfect companionship which I guess few people are lucky enough to experience in their lives. I found a deep and quiet content in the safe fortress of his care which made me look back in amazement at the Victoria who had so bitterly refused to enter it.
But the most obvious immediate change in my life was that, once I had given Albert the keys to my Boxes, he became in fact, though never in name, my Private Secretary. It was a decision I never regretted, and my deep-seated fear that my power would be usurped was shown to have been completely foolish and groundless. No-one could have been better served by any secretary than I was by Albert, who read State papers for me, prepared synopses, marked my reading, wrote drafts of my official statements and letters, recorded important conversations, researched the backgrounds of people and situations in order to advise me, and kept all the resultant papers in meticulous and catalogued order. It was a monumental task, and grew greater year by year as ever more State departments looked to him as my right hand.
I came to rely more and more on him in matters of government as in domestic things; and burdened as I was by almost continual pregnancy and childbirth, I cannot see how I could possibly have managed without him. Indeed, if he had not been there to share the work with me, the exercise of my power must have suffered, and perhaps fallen into other hands, hands from which I would have been puzzled to wrest it later. Far from usurping my prerogative, Albert preserved it; and he did it not for himself or his own glory – for there was no glory in it for him – but solely and unselfishly for me and for the country. Anson had spoken truly. Of all the princes in Europe I might have married, I do not believe there was another such as him – hardworking, dedicated, and utterly selfless. Is it any wonder that I raged sometimes that the country he served so tirelessly did not appreciate him? Or that since he has left us, I have striven to raise his monument in every corner of the land?
As to the overt cause of the quarrel, Lehzen did not actually leave my service until September. The date of her retirement was agreed between her and Albert without consulting me (which I suppose he felt was a kindness) and I was told about it in July as a fait accompli. My dear Lehzen behaved in the matter of her leaving just as she had in everything else – unselfishly, considering only my welfare. She gradually handed over her duties to her successors, and finally slipped away quietly, early in the morning of the 30th of September, in order to spare me the ordeal of a formal goodbye. She retired to Hanover to live with her sister, and I gave her a new carriage and a pension of £800 a year to make her comfortable. Sadly her sister died not long afterwards, and my poor old governess lived alone for the rest of her long life. I wrote to her once a month, but only saw her on two more occasions, though she lived another twenty-eight years. She died in 1870, within a month of her eighty-sixth birthday, and they say the last word on her lips was my name. As I sit here, almost as old myself, and surrounded by children and grandchildren, I contemplate the loneliness of her old age with enormous pity and not a little sense of guilt.
On the morning after her departure I woke having dreamed that she had come back to say goodbye to me, and the realisation of the truth was very painful. But Albert was there beside me, to take me into his arms, to listen to my trouble and soothe it away with reason and kisses. It was the beginning of a new era. Now all the old influences on me had gone, the stormy seas were negotiated, and I had sailed into a safe haven. From now on there would be only one influence, and that both benign and unfailing: my beloved husband and friend. But when a person makes another creature completely dependent on them, be it child, spouse or animal, it behoves them to make sure they will always be there. Albert brought me to a state where I could do nothing without him, and then most cruelly abandoned me to struggle through an endless desert of years alone. But of course neither of us thought of that then. We were only twenty-three years old, and when you are young, you naturally assume that you are immortal, and that everything will go on just the same for ever.
Thirteen
5th June 1900, at Balmoral
I HAVE been obliged to telegraph to Salisbury to warn him against withdrawing our troops too soon from South Africa. It is natural for the lower classes to believe, on the strength of our recent successes, that the war is all but over, but it is my experience that too much enthusiasm at moments like this makes us relax our guard, and then fresh troubles arise and more troops have to be sent. I remember how it was in the Crimea! But Salisbury is a good man, and will listen to me. He was the first of my Prime Ministers to be younger than me (in fact he was a page at my Coronation, as I remember!), but when he came in in the year ’eighty-five I was so relieved to be rid of Gladstone I was like a child let out of school! He – Salisbury – has now been my longest-serving Prime Minister, and apart from the subject of ecclesiastical patronage, we agree so well on everything that it has been a most tranquil period of my life – in politics, that is.
The weather has been atrocious since the 2nd, and I have felt out of sorts, disliking the curtailment of my carriage exercise and missing having Baby about me. Also Georgie feels obliged to leave on Saturday, for reasons that seem wholly inadequate to me; I dislike having people go away. May and the children stay on, however. The new baby thrives, but little David has been fretful, and we only just got to the bottom of it yesterday. It seems that when Henry was born, Georgie told David that his little brother had ‘flown in through the window’ and that they had ‘cut off his wings so that he couldn’t fly away again’. It seems that since then, the boy has lived in fear of stumbling across the horrid, bloody things, and has been having nightmares about finding them under his pillow or in his bed. Really, as I told Georgie, I can’t approve of lying to children like that. He meant no harm, but it is better if they are too young to understand something that they be told just that – that they are too young. David has an over-active imagination which hardly needs feeding with horrors!
I have always had a good imagination, and in writing, these last few months, about my early life, I have been able to make myself feel what it was like to be young and untried and ignorant, and write accordingly. But now I come to write about my children, and it is rather different. For one thing, one changes so much oneself through their lifetimes, that to pick out the way one felt about them at any particular time would not be to give a true picture. Perhaps there is no true picture of motherhood. The odd thing about having children is that they don’t really grow up. My children as they are today seem to me to be quite separate individuals from the goggling, squalling babies they began as, and yet both exist together in my mind. It is as if a new child comes into being at each intermediate stage of growth – so that on that reckoning I have had not nine children but something like sixty-three.
Children are supposed to be a blessing, and so they are of course in many ways; but they diminish one. Little pieces of one’s clay are pulled away and rolled into new shapes, and though one sees a likeness here and a likeness there, the newness is always greater than the similarity. Suddenly you find that there is a full-grown stranger in the room, and you have grown old. They take away your young, strong life in the service of their own, and when they hand it back and go off independent at last, you find it shrunken, damaged and ill-fitting, all the nice shiny youthfulness gone.
Probably it is different for a man. Albert used to talk a great deal about the children perpetuating our love, being living monuments to our wonderful union, the eternal proof to future generations that he and I had loved, and so on. Well, he always had the wider vision. Mentally he lived on a mountain-top with great vistas spread all around him. I seemed always to be toiling up the slope behind him, carrying the picnic basket and the rugs, and stubbing my toes on the rocks in the path!
I had nine children in seventeen years – seven of them born in the first ten years – and though I loved them and cared for them, and often had great pleasure from them, they kept me from
Albert, and they had from him some of the love that should have been mine. Often I resented that. I expect I would have felt quite differently if Albert had lived, if I had been allowed to enjoy long years of quiet intimacy with him after the children were grown up. I think that I could watch him now playing with his grandchildren and feel nothing but pleasure, and spare them his attention and smiles and kisses without jealousy. But Baby was only four years old when he died. All of our life together – oh, so horribly short as it turned out to be! – was taken up with parenthood. There was no time, only that pitiful one month in 1840, for me to be a wife and not a mother.
Would I have had it any other way? Well, there had to be children, of course, given my position; and even if it had not been a necessity, I think I would not have wanted to deprive Albert of the joys of fatherhood, which evidently meant so much to him. Perhaps if we could have stopped after four, that would have been just right. Vicky, Bertie, Alice and Affie – the Big Four, as we used to call them because they gravitated so naturally together – they would have provided us with the dynastic replacements we needed, without wearing me out and keeping me from my beloved husband.
Oh dear, I ought to strike that out! It sounds as though I don’t love my younger children, which is far from the case. And Baby, dear Baby, how could I ever have borne my miserable widowhood without her? She is my constant companion, thoughtful and kind and diligent – no, I could never have done without her! It must stay as it is: I could not part with any one of them. But I shan’t strike out that paragraph, for this is meant to be my utterly truthful account, and I shall make sure that no-one will ever read it who can be hurt by it.
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