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

by Roland Perry

  ‘If you were to try to deny it,’ Albert noted, ‘she can drag you into a court of law and force you to own it.’ Once Bertie was ‘in the witness box, she will be able to give, before a greedy Multitude, disgusting details of your profligacy for the sake of convincing the jury, yourself cross-examined by a railing, indecent attorney, and hooted and yelled at by a Lawless Mob! Oh Horrible prospect, which this person has in her power, any day to realize! And to break your parents’ hearts.’

  Given Bertie’s sheltered life, tendency to stutter and unconfident character, this would have been a shocking letter, its emotional blackmail meant to leave him guilt-ridden and fearful. It was a cunning way of railroading him into the marriage he had been resisting. The message was in Albert’s lines, not between them. His mother the queen and the monarchy itself, to which Bertie was intricately bound, had to be protected. He reacted predictably with shock, contrition and repentance and not a little horror that a bit of sustained fun, where two people appeared to do no harm to each other, should create such a ruckus. Bertie said he had ended the affair despite the boasts in London by Nellie, who was cashing in on the claim that she was Bertie’s ‘princess’. Unconvinced by his son’s claims, Albert decided he had to visit his son to work things out and elicit assurances from him. Albert was in a sorry mental state. He told Victoria that he had lost the zest to live, which was in accord with Stockmar’s recent observations in Prussia.

  ‘If I had a severe illness,’ Albert said, ‘I am sure I would give up at once; I should not struggle for life. I have no tenacity for life.’ This was strangely defeatist for a 41-year-old in a job that he had fought for and had built up. It reflected his overwork in dealing with his own and the queen’s affairs. In this mood and with his constitution failing, Albert met Bertie at Madingley Hall, Cambridge.They walked outdoors until the early hours of 26 November 1861. It was cold. Albert coughed so much that Bertie suggested they return to the hall.

  ‘Not until we resolve this prostitute thing,’ Albert said, a handkerchief thrust to his mouth.

  ‘There is nothing to resolve, Papa.’

  ‘Are you still seeing this woman?’

  ‘Occasionally, but as a friend only.’

  ‘That is not good enough.You must rid her from your life. Then and only then will the rumours die.’

  ‘Papa that is . . .is so . . .so,’ Bertie began but was held up by a sudden stutter, something that had afflicted him less in the last few months.

  ‘What boy? Say it!’

  ‘Un-un-unfair!’

  ‘Unfair?! That we ask you to desist from an affair that is a danger to you and the monarchy itself?’

  ‘Does Mama know of this . . .too?’

  ‘Of course and she is distressed, like me.’

  ‘I d-don’t believe . . .believe that.’

  ‘Why? Do you think she approves?!’

  ‘I thought sh-sh-she might be . . .un-un—’

  ‘Understanding? Why? You are committing a morally outrageous and disgusting act with a common whore! Your mother is head of the Church, queen of empire!’

  ‘B-b-but . . .’

  ‘Spit it out,’ Albert ordered and then went into a coughing fit. Bertie was suddenly angry.

  ‘You should ask her how sh-she . . .would know how I feel.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  Bertie could not bring himself to say more.

  When he could speak without coughing, Albert said, in a more conciliatory tone: ‘I want you to agree never to see this woman again or any other whore.Will you do that my son, please, if not for your sake but for that of me and your mother?’

  Bertie burst into tears. When his father pushed the request, Bertie was unable to reply but nodded his head vigorously. The emotional ‘chat’ seemed to clear the air. Albert, in some pain, left Cambridge by train for London feeling worse physically but assured that the matter had been resolved.

  Albert needed rest but was forced to confront a political problem. A mail ship, Trent, en route to England from the United States, had been seized by American government authorities. On board were Confederates aiming to reach England to raise funds and buy weapons. Palmerston, aware that the queen was in mourning and Albert was ill, had reverted to his former belligerence in a draft ultimatum to President Lincoln. Albert now had to intercede in a bellicose encounter that could lead to war. It added to the strain on him. It was his last act of conciliation as prince consort. He had contracted a serious lung problem that Dr Jenner, even more the optimist than the semi-retired Clark, diagnosed as pneumonia.

  Clark returned to the court during the crisis, despite his own wife being near death. He believed that Albert probably had typhoid fever but complaints about severe pain in the stomach confused the diagnosis. Typhoid was the leading disease killer in an era in which one person in every three died of infection of some kind. The main reason was poor sanitation. Sewage went into the waterways, making the River Thames in particular a cesspool in the summer months. Parliament would rise early to avoid the stench. Victoria’s keenness for Osborne and Balmoral was in large part because they were disease-free zones. The dreaded ‘fever’, which had plagued London since 1820—nearly all the time both Victoria and Albert had been alive—was not mentioned, especially to Victoria. She was desperate about her husband a few days after he returned from the Cambridge meeting. He went to bed but continued to decline. Albert insisted on telling Victoria all Bertie had said. It exhausted him further.

  ‘He insisted that you would understand his behaviour,’ Albert said in a whisper as Victoria sat beside his bed, holding his hand. Her face flushed.

  ‘Do you know what he meant?’ Albert asked.

  ‘I have no idea whatever,’ she said a little too quickly.

  ‘He suggested that you could explain how you would know how he felt.’

  ‘I have no idea what he is talking about. Has he gone mad? I would never condone his dalliance with such a person!’

  Albert frowned. He seemed confused rather than suspicious as he lapsed into a deep sleep. She panicked and ordered the doctors to come quickly.They were concerned about her mental state and that the truth about Albert’s condition would distress her too much. Victoria was in an emotional whirl over her husband that wavered between fear, false optimism and hysteria. She began to flail around for a reason, a scapegoat, for what had befallen Albert. She settled on Bertie and his behaviour that had so worried ‘Papa’.

  Albert had declined fast after the attempt at conciliation on the trip to Cambridge. Had their conversation destroyed Albert’s will to live? It was bad enough for the highly moral, pious, and narrow-minded Albert to know that his first-born son had dallied with an Irish prostitute. Some fathers of that era (or any other) in any class may have been secretly relieved, even pleased that a son had ‘broken his duck’ in this manner. But not Albert, and not when he had lined up for his son a stunning, chaste young woman to be his wife and the future Queen of England. Certainly the father-and-son discussion had taken several hours outside in the cold winter’s night air to avoid being overheard. Then Victoria reflected on Bertie’s remark about her being ‘understanding’ of his behaviour. She wondered if this comment had sown some nasty seed of doubt in Albert’s mind about her. Victoria fretted that it may have been enough to make Albert decline further.

  On Friday 13 December, Albert took a turn for the worse. He died the next night.Victoria was grief-stricken as never before. She had lost her husband, closest friend, mentor, guide, in effect her king. It was Albert that had taken over the royal duties of attending to the toughest problems involving judgement, approval, disapproval and discussion over all affairs of state that needed the monarch’s input, if only for a signature. He had created another deeper layer for royal involvement, weaving together the main themes of the era concerning government, science, religion, art, industry, capital, labour, personal endeavour and a sense of justice for all. In so doing, Albert had enriched, intellectually and aesthetically, the mona
rchy, all the institutions that counted, and society in general. That he was humourless, overly reserved, more religious than the archbishop, over bearing and apparently ‘cold’ was offset by his ideals, drive and sense of purpose. His legacy was a steady constitutional monarchy that had kept the nation stable in an era where all other European states were in turmoil. Had he not appeared at the British court, the monarchy may not have survived.

  Victoria had lost people in her life—Melbourne, Wellington, Elphinstone and the Duchess of Kent among them—who were in their own way unable to be replaced. But Albert’s closeness and her dependence on him would leave a chasm that would affect her private life and public duties in ways she had never contemplated. There was no-one to share the joys and damnations of parenthood; no partner to attend glittering events, or a quiet dinner over which almost every uncensored thought could be aired; no true love in the deeper sense beyond romance. Now that had vanished.Victoria was overwhelmed, as if trapped in some horrific, ethereal nightmare.

  35

  THE QUEEN HAS GONE MISSING

  It was as if the British empire had lost both Prince Albert and Victoria. A few days after her husband’s death, she slipped into seclusion to mourn at Osborne for two months. She had lost the will to face her ministers, the public, her family, friends and life itself.Victoria did not believe she would live another year without her beloved. She returned to Windsor but remained out of sight. She slept with a cast of Albert’s hand and clasped it through each night. She had the presence of mind, despite the blurred vision of her existence, to commission plenty of busts and statues of him. Everyone who met her in the first half of 1862 was struck by her melancholy and sadness. Some believed the death had this time truly driven her insane.Victoria indicated to Lord Clarendon that any major conflict in parliament might cause her to go mad. He let Lord Derby know that the opposition should go easy on the government until the summer recess.

  Victoria ignored overtures to see anyone, including her Privy Councillors, something she had never done when in England since her first day as queen in 1837. Yet she did respond to her new clerk, who had the hopeful name of Arthur Helps. He suggested that she sit in one room while he and three councillors stood in another, with the door open between them. As each item on the agenda was read out, Helps looked to her for a response. If she nodded, he would say, ‘approved’.Victoria began attempting to read the ‘boxes’—the business of state that needed her royal assent and signature. She read things she did not understand either in part or completely. She had abrogated this responsibility among many to her husband soon after their marriage, which he hungrily and happily took over.Two decades on, she was lost, out of touch and at this moment uninterested in any affairs of state.

  After a few months Victoria regained a vague connection to the family, making sure that Bertie was sent abroad—to Palestine—before the intended marriage to Princess Alexandra. She was carrying out Albert’s fervent wishes. Yet Victoria refused to meet Bertie, believing more and more that his ‘disgusting’ behaviour at Curragh and specific remarks in the Cambridge chat had killed her husband.

  ‘I never can, or shall, look at him without a shudder,’ she wrote to Vicky. But Vicky leapt to her brother’s defence, persuading her mother to reconsider. Victoria conceded that the affair may not have killed him but that it did break her husband’s heart. She hardened towards the disappointing Bertie, insisting again that he was a ‘caricature’ of herself: she meant that he embodied her own worst features. Victoria poured out her feelings in letters to Vicky, who was nervous over her mother’s comment about Bertie saying to Albert that Victoria would understand his behaviour. He had not said how, neither had he alluded to the Elphinstone affair, although it was a little worrying to Vicky that her brother had nearly, but not quite, divulged Victoria’s biggest secret. She wrote to Bertie and reminded him never to even hint that he knew something. Bertie apologised in a letter, admitting that in a fit of pique over his father’s demands he had said something he should not have.

  Victoria was not so forgiving, although she dare not confront her son over what may have been said and why he had hinted at her ‘understanding’ of his behaviour with Nellie Clifden. The guilt of her own youthful years had come back, but things improved on Bertie’s return from abroad.Victoria was impressed with his demeanour.When his governor (his supervisor, companion, guide and mentor), General Bruce, died of a fever on the trip, she fretted over how the twenty-year-old would cope. He had lost both father and guide in a short time. Her concern was the first positive sign that she might be coming out of mourning although no-one close to her believed she would ever overcome her grief.Victoria’s worry spilled into action. She sent Vicky as an envoy to the Danish royal court to explain Bertie’s situation. She did not want him or his future partner railroaded into a marriage he and his intended bride would both regret.The fair-minded, sympathetic mother and mother-in-law re-emerged, if temporarily. But Victoria’s level of interest in her family and offspring ran only in any depth to the immediate worries about Bertie’s pending marriage. For the rest of her children, emotions, actions, even guidance were on hold at least until November 1862.

  After that, Victoria began emerging ever so slowly from a void of gloom and mourning. It manifested by showing more concern for her family, which meant embroiling herself in everything from Bertie’s marriage to Alexandra and who should take the throne of Greece to the battles between Prussia (and the Austrians) and the Danes. She reproached Vicky for siding with the Prussian attitude to that encounter, and argued with her over England not supporting the Prussians. She was involved, she was committed and she was effusive in her diary with endless references to Albert, mainly centred on asking: ‘What would Albert do or say?’ Or ‘what was Albert’s line or directive on this or that?’ This was working through her grief in a positive way. But so far she had done nothing in public. Victoria had not gone out in an open carriage. She had not opened parliament. Press reaction, cautious at first, soon began to ask questions. Some even mentioned the possibility of abdication. Should she disappear into retirement and let Bertie run the show and ‘the firm’? By the end of 1862, a year after the shock of Albert’s permanent departure, she was thinking more clearly.There were no real thoughts about giving up, yet she was not yet committed to ‘going on’. In part this was because she thought she should die. One ‘friend,’ the Duchess of Buccleuch, kept talking to her about the loss. She could not understand how her majesty could ‘go on, or work or live’. It was not good commentary for Victoria’s morale. But she was doing all three. It’s likely that her inner strength was far greater than that of her friend. Bertie’s 1863 marriage to ‘Alix’ exacerbated some differences between him and his mother. When Alix’s father inherited Denmark’s throne in November 1863, the German Confederation (Prussia and Austria) took the opportunity to invade and annex the disputed territories of Schleswig and Holstein.Victoria sympathised with Prussia and Austria, where most of her relatives resided. Bertie sided with his wife, who was anti-Prussian, as was prime minister Palmerston and foreign secretary Russell. Bertie offended Victoria further in the same year by visiting Garibaldi when the Italian revolutionary leader came to England. Bertie’s lead caused London society and the people to greet Garibaldi warmly in London, much to Victoria’s fury. She rebuked Bertie, but he was 22 and maturing as his own man. He stood his ground. Victoria blamed his comptroller, General Knollys, who looked after his financial affairs, for arranging her son’s meeting with Garibaldi. But Bertie took the responsibility for it: another sign that he was growing up.Victoria’s general indifference in the wake of her losses allowed her son to go further on his own way, especially in his attraction to Paris, which was facilitated by Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie. Knowing of his early preference for prostitutes, they introduced him to the most sensual court courtesans, who were his for the choosing. And Bertie chose often, gaining a taste for the most erotic and exotic offerings of the flesh. Enchanted, Paris was set to become
his favourite hedonistic centre.

  Victoria still stayed away from her subjects who by late in 1864 were becoming disenchanted with her public shyness. Some were calling openly for her to make way for Bertie. Mrs M.A. Murray, a working-class ‘fan’, put her views to her beloved majesty and made her laugh, cry and think:

  My dear Queen,

  I earnestly hope you will excuse a poor subject writing to ask a great favour . . .it is to let your beloved son be Regent during the rest of your Life. Not that you have been an indolent Queen[;] a better could not exist and I am so afraid he will not live long enough to be king.You know my dear Queen you will still be Queen Dowager and we will all regonize [sic] you just the same . . .

  But it was not devotion, indifference or even detestation that was going to snap her out of her phantom life since Albert’s death.Victoria reacted to all these attitudes, but it would take, if not the love of a man, then the close attention of someone she wanted near her. Ever since finding passionate love with Elphinstone, and then the best and most important relationship of her life with Albert, she had felt secure, loved, needed and adored. Since their deaths, no-one had filled the void. But, during the four years of her bereavement and relative seclusion, one man did emerge: John Brown, the Highlander.