The Queen, Her Lover and the Most Notorious Spy in History

by Roland Perry

  Victoria knew that something had to be done. She wrote of her ‘feelings of horror and regret at the result of the bloody civil war’, then announced that the transfer of power from the company to the state should ‘breathe feelings of generosity, benevolence and religious toleration’. At her behest, a reference in the Queen’s Proclamation of 1858 that threatened the ‘undermining of native religions and customs’ was replaced by a clause guaranteeing religious freedom.

  It was seen as a further step in the democratisation of the empire, although Indians who understood what was happening would remain disgruntled. It was about British Empire maintenance, not Indian independence. The proclamation set out the changes. Canning was made India’s first viceroy. As such, he was in an environment that suited him far better than the pressures of war. He could apply himself as a diligent administrator without the anxieties and huge challenges that the rebellion had created. The East India Company was dissolved by a special British Act of parliament. Britain’s possessions and protectorates on the Indian subcontinent were formally incorporated into the British Empire. A fifteen member council was created to run India. Indians were promised more prominent positions in government. Princes were to be paid off to keep them content, even more than they had been with the company. Ancient rites and customs were to be encouraged and retained to keep the natives happy and distracted from further rebellion, although small ‘out-clauses’ would allow the British to move against more extreme rituals. Rebels, except for those who had murdered British subjects, were to be granted pardons.

  31

  A ‘FRIEND’ IN TROUBLE

  Victoria wrote to Lord Stanley early in 1859 about the British governors who had survived the Indian uprising with distinction: ‘Lord Elphinstone also ought not to be left unrewarded, and a step up in the peerage . . .does not appear too high an honour for him, for he has greatly contributed to the saving of the Indian Empire.’

  The Prince of Wales’s biographer, Stanley Weintraub, noted that during the uprising Elphinstone had ‘demonstrated courage and resourcefulness when panic was more common’.

  True to her word, Victoria followed through. In May 1859 Elphinstone was rewarded with an important civil award—the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath—and made a peer of the United Kingdom with the title Baron Elphinstone of Elphinstone in the County of Stirling. These were most important honours to him. He had inherited his Scottish Baronetcy; he had more than earned these British citations.The Duke of Cambridge congratulated his great friend and informed him there had been a vote of thanks in parliament. ‘I felt a real pleasure in bearing my tribute,’ he wrote, ‘to the great powers of government and organisation which you have displayed in those eventful times.’

  Victoria could not have put it better. She had resumed some discreet, occasional correspondence with Elphinstone after not having quite forgiven him for leaving the royal court for India again in 1853. But when things hotted up in India, she was concerned for him, and began to understand his decision.Victoria was proud of his outstanding service and the fact that it had been recognised by her government, albeit after a nudge and intervention from her. If she had been the prime mover in awarding him so highly after his first stint as governor at Madras, there would have been questions asked about their relationship again. Even in 1859, there were still many in parliament, the royal court, the public and the press who recalled the whispered, rumoured ‘scandal’ about the young princess and the captain of the Horse Guards of nearly a quarter-century earlier. Elphinstone had achieved on merit in Bombay, which was the way he wished it to be.

  He wanted to come home to sort out some minor issues over his estates in Scotland but the British government asked him to stay on in India into 1860. In February of that year, he felt poorly and was soon in bed with a reoccurrence of the fever that had struck him in Madras, and an extra problem with heart palpitations. His personal surgeon and closest friend in India, Richard De Courey Peele, was at a loss on how to treat him. Elphinstone asked him to contact Husna, who had not spoken to the governor for two years since their falling out over the uprising. She turned up at the residence and examined him in his bed as if he were another patient and not a former lover.

  ‘The palpitations can be eased by chest massage,’ Husna told him, ‘and I can probably alleviate that. But the broader problem for you is the heat.This time I do endorse that you go to the hills to recover.The air is better. It’s cooler.’

  Elphinstone was taken to a hill resort outside Bombay and after a month’s seclusion under the supervision of both De Courey Peele and Husna, he made an apparent recovery. In early April 1860 he returned to the residence to applause from his big staff. He took up duties for a few hours a day, and in late April announced to Husna that he would ride with her again in the morning. But after a week of rides, she noticed that he was pale, sweating and having trouble breathing. She ordered him to bed again. Both she and De Courey Peele became concerned with his weight loss. Husna recommended Elphinstone imbibe hemp oil. De Courey Peele overruled its use.They argued over it in front of the governor.

  When De Courey Peele insisted it not be administered, Husna secretly put the oil into his food and it seemed to improve Elphinstone’s condition and feeling of wellbeing. He felt fit enough to travel for the first time in months.

  ‘I think it better I return to London,’ Elphinstone said to her one morning.‘I’ll go to the German spas after that.’

  Husna stayed at the residence in the room next to him on his last night in Bombay. In the middle of the night he was awoken by his bedroom door opening.

  ‘Only me, my lord,’ Husna whispered. ‘I want to be close to you.’

  She slipped into bed next to him. He turned to her.

  ‘I don’t want you to get this bloody fever,’ he croaked. ‘It’s contagious.’

  ‘I’ll risk it,’ she said, snuggling close as they embraced.

  He was sweating. His nightshirt was soaked. Husna got up and poured some water from the jug on the wash-stand into the basin. She removed his shirt and gently ran a sponge over his entire body. She then dried him with his towel, found a clean nightshirt and helped him put on the fresh garment.

  ‘You’re so soothing,’ he said, with a wan smile, ‘so . . .’

  ‘Loving?’ she asked, kissing him softly, letting her lips linger.

  ‘Yes, loving,’ he said, his voice a whisper.

  ‘I love you, my lord.You are the only man, save my father, that I have ever said that too.’

  He turned to her.

  ‘I have that feeling for you too,’ he mumbled.

  ‘More than your little queen?’

  ‘Different. . .’

  She kissed him lightly and settled to sleep.

  When Elphinstone was ready to be taken on the first stage of his journey home the next morning by De Courey Peele, Husna embraced him and through tears said:‘If you want me to come to London to care for you, I shall, happily.’

  ‘I’ll write,’ Elphinstone said, as servants waited to carry him from the residence,‘and you can meet me in Germany.’ As they embraced, he whispered in her ear:‘I do love you.’

  32

  LAST WRITES

  The journey over land and sea was agony for Elphinstone. His condition worsened and by the time he reached London on 12 June 1860, he knew his time was almost up.There would be no trip to freshen up at the German spas. De Courey Peele attended him daily and took up residence at Elphinstone’s home at 29 King Street St James, London. Elphinstone wrote to Victoria first, telling her of his plight. She was distressed. She wrote to Lord Canning in India: ‘Alas! Another most valuable public servant and friend of ours, Lord Elphinstone, only returned [to London] to die.’

  After a hectic day of writing and review of his last will on 18 July 1860, Elphinstone was deteriorating rapidly. He signed the will in front of witnesses, including De Courey Peele. The thirteenth lord’s signature was spidery; the last intellectual effort of an accomplished h
uman being. Sedated, he spent a comfortable night, sleeping on into 19 July 1860.

  Victoria, a few minutes ride away in Buckingham Palace, spent a restless night waiting for news on the inevitable demise of her former lover.At 6 a.m. she got up and asked one of her staff to visit Elphinstone. Then she changed her mind. ‘Have a common carriage prepared,’ she said.‘I shall visit him myself.’

  She rode with a lady-in-waiting and two guards out a side entrance to Buckingham Palace Road, past the front of the palace, along The Mall, left into Stable Yard Road, and then into King Street and Elphinstone’s home. She was met by a startled De Courey Peele at the front entrance.

  ‘How is the lord?’ she said softly, as he bowed and ushered her in.

  ‘Close to parting, your majesty.’

  ‘May I see him?’

  ‘He is barely conscious,’ the doctor began but on seeing Victoria’s expectant look added, ‘yet he would be honoured, ma’am.’

  He led her along a passage to the bedroom. Victoria was stunned to see how thin Elphinstone had become. He was lying on his back, his cheeks hollow, his mouth open, sucking in his last hours, perhaps minutes, of breath. De Courey Peele leaned over him.

  ‘My lord,’ he said,‘the queen is here to see you.’

  Victoria moved close and took Elphinstone’s hand. It was ice-cold.

  She squeezed it and could not fight back tears, yet she kept her voice steady as she whispered:

  ‘Elphi, my love, Elphi.’

  Elphinstone’s eyes opened. He turned his head and squinted.

  Making out Victoria, he smiled wanly but warmly.Victoria leaned close and hugged him. She whispered: ‘My beautiful, darling Elphi. I always loved you, my first love.’

  His hand responded by clasping hers with the last ounces of strength in him. He then went limp and turned his head away. Victoria gave a yelp. Her hand went to her mouth. ‘Is he . . .?’

  De Courey Peele touched his wrist, feeling for a pulse. It was weak.

  ‘He will not last the day, your majesty,’ he said quietly. ‘But it is wonderful you have come. You could see how much he appreciated your presence.’

  Victoria wept as she was accompanied by the doctor back to the carriage. Her lady-in-waiting comforted her on the return to the palace. Victoria was taken to her bedroom where she planned to remain for the rest of the day. In the next few hours, close friends and confidants gathered at Elphinstone’s home. Apart from De Courey Peele they included Colonel Bates, his former military secretary, and a relative, Mr Adam, who had been his private secretary throughout the seven-year Bombay presidency. Elphinstone lost consciousness in the afternoon and died in the evening. He was 53. His cryptic death certificate put down the ‘cause of death’ as ‘intermittent fever, with enlarged spleen’.

  The 13th Lord Elphinstone’s last words were to De Courey Peele: ‘Let it be known, my good friend, that through the pain I died fulfilled—in life, in love and in achievement.’

  33

  NOBLE INTENTIONS

  Elphinstone was buried in the quiet Church of England graveyard of the elegant and beautiful St Peter’s, Limpsfield, in Surrey near the Kent border. He was placed next to the grave of his uncle Mountstuart Elphinstone, situated under the church’s window on the north-facing wall.Victoria pondered going to the funeral, but decided she would be overcome by grief and her reaction would be noted. Instead, she sent a large wreath.

  Victoria remained sorrowful over her former lover’s death. She remarked to any close to her of the loss of her ‘good friend’, but she could not avoid the continued grief created by the memories that flooded her mind on Elphinstone’s demise. He would leave a hole in her life that could not be filled by another. She had known, loved and respected him for 25 years. Ever since her early years,Victoria had been smitten by the handsome captain of the Horse Guards. Now he was gone and she felt empty, abandoned and unloved. She needed someone to talk to about the loss but there was not a soul to whom she could turn to unburden her feelings. She began something in her diary but then ripped out the page and burnt it.There was always the fear that her diaries would be made public posthumously and she was aware that in her exalted position every scribble, however absent-minded, pointless or simplistic, would be pored over by future historians. She had seen it countless times before with royalty everywhere and knew that as queen of the world’s greatest empire her every utterance would be analysed perhaps for centuries to come. At times like this it unnerved her. She could not rely on her diary, which was her silent ‘companion.’ It might one day turn on her.

  Instead,Victoria decided to write to the one confidante she could trust implicitly to keep secrets: nineteen-year-old Vicky. Vicky was mature for her years and devoted to her mother, father and children. Victoria was at Osborne House on 25 July, six days after Elphinstone’s death. She planned at first to write to congratulate Vicky on the birth of her second child, Charlotte. It was a stunning mid-summer day.The sea was calm, the sky cloudless.Victoria sat alone in the pink-coloured alcove overlooking the beach where she had entertained Elphinstone. She wrote:

  Thousand, thousand good wishes, blessings and congratulations! Everything seems to have passed off as easily (indeed more so) as I could have expected though I always thought it would be very easy, and totally different to the last time, and the darling baby, such a fine child. I am delighted it is a little girl, for they are such much more amusing children.This [Charlotte] will be another Beatrice. How I long to hear who she is like and what she is called!

  Victoria went on to confess her affair with the thirteenth lord, whom her daughter knew and admired from his court days. This purging on paper was a considerable release for Victoria from an experience that had played on her mind since those turbulent days. Now that the secret was with someone she loved and trusted so dearly, she discreetly commissioned the Yorkshire-born royal sculptor Matthew Noble, 42, to create a larger than life-size marble monument of Elphinstone, which cost £3235. Noble was her favourite sculptor. He had exhibited scores of works at the Royal Academy, starting with the bust of the Archbishop of York in 1845. In 1847, she and Albert had been most pleased with the bust he did of Victoria. She came to know, like and trust Noble in the few sittings she granted him when he did the preparatory drawings and measurements. It led her to commission a bust of Albert, which once more pleased the royal couple. In 1856, Noble entered and won a very keenly fought competition to do the Wellington monument at Manchester. In 1858, he was asked to execute a huge marble bust of Albert, again for Manchester.That city’s mayor,Thomas Goadsby, also commissioned a nearly nine-metre high marble statue of Albert.

  In a private meeting with Noble at Buckingham Palace, Victoria discussed her requirements for Elphinstone’s image. They stood near a table in her study.

  ‘I want a dignified marble monument to this man as I remember him,’ she said softly and sombrely. ‘He should be in the robes of the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, with his left hand over his heart.’

  ‘So I was informed, your majesty, in the note from you and I have taken the liberty of creating these sketches.’ He removed drawings from a leather folio holder and handed them to her.

  ‘Wonderful . . .remarkable . . .’ she said examining the drawings. ‘This is as I recall him!’

  ‘“Recumbent, but not deathly,”’ was your instruction, your majesty.’

  ‘Yes, you have done well, Noble, so very well.’

  ‘And the dedication?’ he asked as he took out a quill and paper.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ she handed him a sheet.

  TO THE MEMORY OF

  THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOHN

  13th LORD ELPHINSTONE

  BORN 1807. DIED 1860.

  THIS MONUMENT IS ERECTED

  AS A TRIBUTE OF SISTERLY AFFECTION’

  Noble read it out and nodded. ‘“Sisterly affection”, your majesty?’

  ‘I wish the memorial to be discreet in every respect, Noble.’

  ‘I understand,
majesty,’ he said. ‘The question is where the monument should be placed. At that size, and using marble, it will have to be sculpted where it will be located.’

  ‘So I was forewarned. It should be at the lord’s burial place at St Peter’s, Limpsfield.’

  ‘Has the priest there been informed?’

  ‘No. Just in case he is . . .er . . .difficult—a situation which might draw unnecessary attention to the monument—he is to be sent on a sabbatical.’

  ‘Oh,’ Noble chuckled, ‘where?’

  ‘France, for a year.’

  ‘That will be plenty of time, majesty.’

  Victoria handed him a plan of the church.

  ‘You should create it inside the building,’ she instructed.‘It should be near the wall outside which Lord Elphinstone is buried.’ Victoria pointed to another sketch on the table. ‘There is another request. I want two stained-glass windows placed in the wall between his grave outside and your creation inside.’ She pointed at a drawing on the left and with her eyes down added: ‘In this window in the bottom part I wish to see er . . .a queen knighting a kneeling man in full regalia. The top part can be some other religious depiction. I’ll leave that to you, Noble. The top part will take away the significance of what I actually wish in the bottom half of the panel.’

  ‘Yes, majesty, I can see to this with a very special glazier friend,’ Noble nodded. ‘But stained glass? The archbishop may not agree.’