We started at twenty minutes to nine and took carriages as far as Loch Callater, where the ponies were waiting for us – my darling Fyvie whinnied when he saw me; Alice had Inchrory and Lenchen had Alice’s grey Geldie, who was very safe – and set off up into the mountains. The day was glorious, the country in such beauty, the heather blooming and the bracken all turned to golden brown; and in the distance the light on the mountains was so soft that the blue shades on them looked almost misty, like the bloom on a plum. Sometimes we walked, and sometimes rode; the men walked mostly, and talked about game, and politics, and such-like. Sometimes Louis came up to walk beside my pony, and we discussed the view, and whether it would make a good sketch, and where it reminded us of. When he went to walk with Alice, Albert took his place, and we exchanged a special smile, and then went on in a companionable silence which, between lovers, can be sweeter than words. The air was very sharp, but so still that where the sun fell on one’s head or shoulders it felt very hot. Albert was wearing his cape and deerstalker cap with the laps turned up, and I wondered he was not too hot; but I thought he looked very handsome in them. With the hat covering his bald top, he looked young again, and to me utterly delicious.
We stopped just before two o’clock at the top of the valley of Cairn Lochan, which Grant had told us we should find ‘a bonny place’, as indeed it was. The hills leading down into it were green and steep, broken in places by grey precipices; and the river Isla wound through the bottom of the valley like a silver ribbon, fringed with trees. We stopped to have luncheon at a flat place right above a vertical drop (which made me nervous about anyone’s moving backwards) where there was a magnificent view right up the valley and down into another glen leading off it. The air was very keen up here, and Brown found a little standing pool which was frozen hard as thick as a shilling, and the ice did not even melt when he broke a piece off and brought it to us held in his hand; but the sun was warm on our shoulders, and there were bees in the heather, which was in full bloom around us. The rugs were spread and we sat, and Duncan and Brown served us; we were all hungry after our long ride, and even my dear darling, who sat beside me, ate with good appetite. We had some excellent patties, I remember, and very good potatoes, a fine claret – and, of course, a ‘grand nip’ of John Begg’s finest! Afterwards I made some sketches, and Albert came up behind me to watch. Then he reached over a hand and tore a corner off my page, and resting his cheek against mine he took the pencil from my hand and wrote on it the date and the names of our party, and that we had lunched there. I smiled, and he left the breath of a kiss on my cheek (without anyone’s seeing, of course) and whispered, ‘Remember!’ This note he buried in a Seltzer bottle, like the others.
We went home then by a different route, and it was all new to us, for it was in a different direction from any of our other expeditions. Albert was delighted. ‘I wish we could know every inch of these mountains! But it would take a longer expedition than one day, I suppose.’
‘Well, we have time,’ I said. ‘Not this year, but next.’ He smiled, but said nothing. We got back down to the road at half past four, as it was growing dusk, and rode back along the side of the river. We startled a stag at one point, but by the time Albert had his gun up to his shoulder it was too far off in that light to shoot. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Let it live. I am too benevolent after such a fine day to wish it ill.’ The moon rose in the clear sky, and shone first faintly gold and then blue-white; almost full, and very beautiful. ‘There will be another sharp frost tonight,’ my darling said; and then putting his mouth close to my ear, so that his moustache tickled my cheek, he whispered, ‘It will be a cold night. Will you keep me warm, wifey?’ My heart jumped like a startled deer – but with delight, not fear, of course.
We got home at twenty minutes to seven, and did not dress that evening, but dined en famille, and afterwards looked at maps of the Highlands, talking over the day and planning where we might go next. Louis asked Alice to sing for him, and she went to the piano and gave us The Bonnie Lass o’ Fyvie, which is a very sad air, but sounded more like a love-song as Alice sang it, gazing into Louis’ face. Albert leaned over the back of my chair while she sang, and stared into the fire. It was burning up bright, with that red heart to it you see on cold nights. ‘The frost is in the fire, you see,’ he said to me. ‘I love snow, and all the forms of the radiant frost – of which this is one.’
I caught the quotation from him. ‘I love all that thou lovest, spirit of delight!’ I turned my head to look up at him. ‘When the song is ended, I think we should say goodnight. It is time the young people were in bed.’
‘And the old people?’ He smiled. ‘After such a long day, an early night is advisable for all, I think. And besides, I have another poem for you, which I can only tell you in private.’
So we went to bed. When I was in my dressing-gown, and my hair was down, I sent my maid away, and Albert came to lean against the chimneypiece in his old way and watch me brush my hair. ‘You’ve been happy today,’ he said.
‘It was a lovely day, but I’m always happy when I’m with you,’ I answered.
‘I have been with you these last six months, but you have not been happy,’ he reminded me, with gentle reproach.
‘Oh,’ I said, looking up quickly; but he was smiling. ‘I have been better of late, have I not? I have only cried once since we’ve been here, over Mamma’s poor carriage.’
‘Yes, I can give you a very good certificate this time,’ he said, ‘and I’m happy to witness the improvement, and to see you witness it. You see it is as I have always told you, that if you will only look outside yourself, you will manage very well. It is because you dwell on your own feelings that you increase your pain to an unbearable degree.’
‘Yes, I know you are right,’ I said, ‘but when I am in the middle of it, I don’t want to look outside myself.’
‘You enjoy it, in fact,’ he said drily.
‘Oh, not enjoy it precisely,’ I said quickly, ‘but it’s hard to see beyond it.’
‘I think half your grief over poor Mamma was rage, because you would not accept God’s will. You like to have your own way, and not even the Almighty is to thwart you.’
I felt faintly shocked. ‘Oh! no – but Albert, you grieved too.’
‘Yes, for I loved Mamma very much. But I accepted God’s will, as. I always do – and as you must learn to do for your peace of mind, however hard it is.’
I felt my mouth tighten. ‘There are some things one cannot accept.’
‘Yes, I know you think death is one of them. But that is not my way. I am happy in my lot, but if God called me home, I would go willingly. You cling to life as something valuable in itself, but I do not set the same store by it. If I had a severe illness, I’m sure I would not struggle, but give up at once. That would be His will.’
‘That,’ I countered severely, ‘would be merely want of pluck.’ I thought he would argue with me, but he only looked at me for a moment with an odd expression, almost smiling; his eyes softly gleaming, his mouth under his moustache seeming to curve upwards with a wry humour, as though watching the caperings of an incorrigible but adored child. Then he said, ‘Oh my wifey, if you only knew how much I have missed you these past months!’
‘Missed me? But I have been here – I mean, wherever you were. You had only to come to me, but you would go out exhausting yourself with business—’
He shook his head and lifted a hand to stop me. ‘I am selfish, I know, but what has always kept me going through all my work and worry is the knowledge that you are vitally interested in everything I do; you want to know everything that happens to me, everything I’ve said, everything that’s been said to me. I love to tell you things, and see your face alight with passion, to see you angry or delighted or concerned by turns at what I tell you – and all on my behalf. But these last months it has been like knocking at the door of a darkened house. No light shows and no-one comes, and you feel that hollow certainty that there is no-one w
ithin, and you are all alone with night coming on.’
‘Oh my darling,’ I said, all contrition now. ‘I never thought – I didn’t realise—’ I rose to my feet and put myself into his arms. He closed his arms round me, and I pressed my face against his neck, smelling the familiar scent of his skin which was bliss and warmth and safety and home. ‘Oh Albert, I’m so sorry! You will never find the house dark again, I promise! I will always, always answer you! Forgive me, my love. I didn’t mean to be selfish; but it didn’t seem right not to mourn Mamma. It was her due – don’t you think?’
‘Everyone should be mourned – but with moderation, as in all things,’ he said, putting me back from him to look down into my face. ‘Rationality, order, harmony – that is what we should strive for. I hope you remember that, if it comes to mourning me.’
‘I should not survive you,’ I said sharply, ‘so the question would not arise.’
He gave me that strange, half-smiling look, and said in a different voice, a soft voice that thrilled me as though I were seventeen again, ‘Don’t you want to know what the other poem is, that I said I had for you?’
‘Yes, of course. Is it Shelley too?’
He nodded, and ran his hands down my arms to take hold of my hands, and looked into my eyes. ‘Shelley again – and most improper, so I’m sure you can’t have heard it before:
The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things, by a Law divine,
In one another’s being mingle.
Why not I with thine?
‘I wish we were only one person, my sweet Victoria! I wish I had your great vitality and courage and steadfastness. But as we are two people, we must do the best we can, and find out if there may not sometimes be some advantage to it. Shall we try now? Veux tu, mon âme?’
‘Je veux,’ I said.
A long time later I lay in his arms with my head on his shoulder, in the position I liked best to be, feeling so safe and happy and loved; and I heard him sigh happily, and felt him draw me a little tighter, rather as a cat in a warm basket flexes its paws in pleasure. I smiled into my darling’s neck. ‘I wish we didn’t have to go back to Windsor,’ I murmured.
‘I wish we didn’t, too,’ he agreed; and then we drifted off to sleep.
29th November 1900
I WISH that I could end the story there. But like an evil enchantment that hung about the place, as soon as we got back to Windsor, things started to go wrong. The work we had managed to leave behind for a while fell back on to Albert like a boulder, and he staggered under the weight before, agonisingly, taking up the strain. Then at the beginning of November the news came that the Portuguese royal family had all been struck down with typhoid, and that King Pedro and his brother Ferdinand were dead. Albert had loved these cousins almost like his own sons, and he was deeply distressed. I tried to comfort him, but he seemed utterly dejected; and his unhappiness manifested itself in various aches and pains, toothache, backache, headache, and a sharp neuralgic pain behind one eye, which tried him very much.
Then on the 12th November – I will never forget the date – my poor darling came into my room looking utterly miserable, and holding a letter in his hand. ‘Oh good God,’ I said at once, looking at it, ‘not another death! Say it is not another death!’
‘It is worse,’ Albert said, and his voice was as black and cold as the tomb. ‘It is the worst thing that could happen. Death would be a blessing compared with this.’
‘But what is it?’ I cried. He was near enough now for me to see the writing on the letter – it was from Stockmar. ‘From the Baron? What has happened? Sit, sit and tell me.’
He collapsed rather than sat in the chair beside me. He looked more miserable than any creature I have ever seen, before or since. ‘It’s about Bertie. It’s about our son.’
It was the last thing I expected. ‘Bertie? What can Stockmar know about Bertie that we don’t?’ Bertie had been with us only a few days before for his birthday celebrations, and he had seemed perfectly well and in good spirits. Now he had gone back to Cambridge, and I could not see how Stockmar in Coburg could have more recent news than those.
Albert did not give me the letter to read, but staring ahead of him in a dreary way he said, ‘The Baron writes to warn me that there is a rumour abroad, a most dreadful story, that while Bertie was at the Curragh he – he committed a most heinous crime.’
‘What? I don’t believe it!’ I cried indignantly. ‘Bertie would never, never do such a thing! He is as honest as the day is long! He has many faults, but he is not a criminal. How could the Baron entertain the idea for a moment? I wonder he dares write such a thing to you!’
‘No, you don’t understand,’ Albert said. My anger had not stirred him. He looked blankly ahead of him as though he were facing the end of everything. ‘I don’t mean that sort of crime.’ He shuddered. ‘Good God, theft or forgery or even murder would be easier to bear than this! What he has done is much more vile. He has betrayed us, brought shame on the whole family, put the very Throne in danger. He has – he has consorted with a common harlot!’
For a moment I did not understand what he had said; wound up like a spring by his foreboding words, my mind snapped back on itself uncomprehendingly. ‘Consorted with—?’
Albert nodded. ‘If Stockmar has heard it, it must be all over Europe already. Everyone will know what he has done – and the Baron wonders how it will affect his prospects of marrying Alix of Schleswig-Holstein. Of course, there can be no thought of that now. He has lost her for ever. Penniless her father may be, but he will not relish the prospect of tying that sweet, innocent girl to a hardened rake.’
‘Hardened rake? Bertie?’ I felt almost hysterical. ‘For God’s sake, tell me what he is supposed to have done!’
‘I’ve told you – must I spell it out? You should not be burdened with the disgusting details of his foul misconduct. I will tell you only that while he was at the Curragh, a girl was brought into his bed.’ I saw his lips whiten. ‘Whether or not he desired it, he certainly did not refuse it, and the rumour the Baron has heard is that he liked her so well he brought her back with him to Windsor.’
I grasped eagerly at that. ‘But that is not true – we know that is not true – so the rest may be false too.’
‘Not to Windsor Castle,’ he said, ‘but there are lodgings in the town, and inns, and who knows what friends he might have who would harbour the girl?’
‘Well, we don’t know,’ I said stoutly, ‘and until we do we should not believe the worst. Stockmar is not always right, you know, and he is a long way from England – or from Ireland. Until we find out the truth we should accept nothing of this story.’
He stood up wearily. ‘I know the truth. I have seen it in him all along – that poisoned blood; the infection lurking, waiting to come out! His great-uncles’ inheritance is coming home to roost. Our son is corrupt. It would be better if we had not lived to see this day.’
‘For Heaven’s sake,’ I said impatiently, ‘won’t you try to find out the truth before you condemn the boy?’
‘Yes,’ he said glumly; ‘but if it is true we must quite give up the match with Princess Alix – and my heart was set on that. Indeed, we will have difficulty in finding any princess in Europe who will have him.’ He swayed a little, and I saw his face drain yellow-white. ‘I think—’ he muttered, and then clapped his hand over his mouth and hurried away. Upsets always went to his stomach.
I don’t know, for he never told me, how he went about getting confirmation of the story, but I know where it came from in the end – Lord Torrington, that arch gossip of all gossips. Torrington knew all the details (which Albert did not want to tell me, but which I ‘wormed’ out of him, for Bertie was my son too, after all) and even said that the story was well known around the clubs, which both depressed
Albert and confirmed his opinion of those places.
It seems it had happened on the last night at camp, when there had been a farewell ball given at the Mansion House in Dublin in Bertie’s honour. He was very popular amongst the other boys, and they had all had more than enough to drink. They danced, and flirted, and went back to camp very late. When Bertie got into his hut, he found the girl in his bed, naked, and saying that she was ‘a present’ from his fellow Guards officers. Her name was Nellie Clifden (I wish I had never known her name – it made it worse, somehow) and she was an actress, and very pretty in a common way. Bertie ought, of course, to have turned her out into the night, but he didn’t; and it seems that he liked her well enough to smuggle her back with him, not to Windsor, but to Cambridge, where he installed her in lodgings.
Now I have wondered since whether this ‘prank’ was all indeed just high spirits on the part of Bertie’s friends. I know it is the sort of thing boys do, and it was the very reason Albert did not want Bertie to mix with other youths, for they take a delight in corrupting each other, particularly if one of them is more innocent than the others, and they think such escapades are amusing and manly. But there is no doubt that when we were at the Curragh that summer, Albert had made some very searing remarks about the general idleness and profligacy of young officers – ‘English youth’, he had called them – and how they engaged in idle chatter in the mess rather than serious discussion of military matters. I had seen one or two disagreeable looks amongst those who overheard the rebukes; and I remembered that every time Albert had tried to improve the Army it had been bitterly resented. The Army was the heartland of the Fashionables, and it was the last place they wanted a foreigner interfering – especially a German. Perhaps the Guards officers had not merely carried out a thoughtless prank, but had done it deliberately to corrupt Bertie, so as to ‘get their own back’ on Albert – for his views on such matters, and particularly with regard to Bertie, were well known.
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