The Widow of Windsor

by Jean Plaidy

  At Windsor she was growing really anxious. Brown’s condition was not improving.

  Each day she sent for Sir William and Dr Reid and demanded that she be given a full account.

  ‘It has somehow taken a hold of him, Your Majesty.’

  ‘But Brown is not old. He’s so strong.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Sir William. ‘But it is often people who have never been ill who are suddenly stricken down. Illness bewilders them. They have never had it before. It seems to take them by surprise.’

  ‘I don’t think anything would take Brown by surprise.’

  She herself was getting better. The rest had done her good and the pain and stiffness of her joints was disappearing.

  And then on that dreadful March day the news was brought to her. John Brown was dead.

  She was prostrate with grief. She could not believe it.

  ‘I have lost my best and truest friend,’ she protested. How could life be so cruel? It seemed that she only had to love and the loved one was taken from her. Perhaps love was the wrong word to use when speaking of a servant, but Brown was no ordinary servant. Dearest Albert, her great love, her reason for living, had been snatched from her at a comparatively early age; Lord Beaconsfield had been taken, true he was a very old man; and now John Brown … It was senseless. It was cruel.

  She was desolate. It was no use the family’s trying to console her, for she was inconsolable.

  ‘He was part of my life,’ she said. ‘Now I have to start again. This is the second time. It is asking too much.’

  She was oblivious to the comments her attitude set in motion.

  The question was being asked everywhere. What had been the relationship between the Queen and John Brown? Had he been her lover? Had she been secretly married to him? Had he some peculiar psychic power over her? Was he the medium through whom she was in touch with Albert?

  Nobody understood the Queen. She was a lonely woman; her children – though she loved them – could never mean to her what the strong figure of a man beside her could mean. She was essentially feminine; she needed a man to care for her, to look after her, to lean on; and although as Queen she would never give up one tiny bit of her sovereignty, even to Albert, as the woman she wished to exploit her frail femininity. Albert had supplied the perfect prop; and afterwards there had been Lord Beaconsfield to give her what she needed in her public life. But it was her private life that was most important and in that she had good faithful honest John Brown.

  And now he had been taken from her.

  What could she do? She must start again. It was almost as it had been in that dreadful desolate December more than twenty years ago.

  Once more she was alone.

  What could she do to show her sorrow? Of one thing she was certain, she would make no secret of it. The whole of England must mourn for the death of good faithful Brown.

  She herself wrote an account of his virtues for the Court Circular. Her secretary, Sir Henry Ponsonby, trembled for what he called her indiscretions concerning John Brown. He was horrified when she decided that there should be a life of him. She had discovered that he had kept diaries. Sir Theodore Martin had, under her guidance, written what she called an excellent life of the Prince Consort which meant that Albert had been presented to the public as almost a saint. Now she would like him to do the same for that other man in her life. Sir Theodore was a little horrified as to what effect this would have and tactfully replied that because of his wife’s physical condition he feared that he must spend too much time with her to be able to do justice to the work, so the Queen decided she would find another biographer. Those about her trembled at what revelations this would bring forth, but the Queen gave herself up to considering memorials. There should be a statue which should be placed at Balmoral; and at Osborne she would have a granite seat set up in memory of him.

  She became a little irritable with those about her.

  ‘How I miss John Brown’s strong arm!’ she was often heard to say.

  She talked about him a great deal; his ‘bashfulness’; his quaint sayings; everything that he had been to her. Often she would lie on her sofa and think of those days when he had carried her to her room.

  Then she would weep silently and think of the past and would be so lost in it that she would wake startled and think she heard a voice thick with bashfulness and yet lilting with his Highland accent demanding to know ‘Why ye’re sitting in the dark greeting, woman?’

  Once more, she said to herself, I am left lonely.

  Chapter XXIII

  THE DILKE DIVORCE

  In order to overcome her melancholy the Queen decided to prepare for publication another edition of her journal. She would call it More Leaves from a Journal of a Life in the Highlands; and it would cover the years 1862–1882. She would dedicate it: ‘To my loyal Highlanders and especially to the memory of my devoted personal attendant and faithful friend John Brown.’

  It pleased her very much to go carefully through her accounts of those long ago days and recall them so clearly. She wept quietly because the early part brought back so vividly the utter desolation of the years following Albert’s death and how threatening and dour the mountains had seemed when he was no longer there to compare them with his beloved Thuringian forests.

  She sent Bertie an advance copy of the Journal which brought him hurriedly to Windsor.

  ‘Mama,’ he cried, ‘I do beg of you not to have this generally circulated.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she cried indignantly.

  ‘It is too personal.’

  ‘My dear Bertie, I know I am not an author of the standing of Mr Dickens or Mr Thackeray or Scott and Tennyson, but I venture to think that my account of my life in the Highlands will give pleasure to a great many people.’

  ‘I am sure it will, Mama, but it is exposing your private life to the world.’

  ‘My private life, Bertie, contains nothing of which I am ashamed.’

  That shaft went home and Bertie had the grace to blush.

  ‘I am sorry, Mama, but I do feel strongly about it.’

  ‘Well, Bertie, I am prepared to admit that it would not be good for the family if every member of it exposed – as you say – his or her actions to the world. I can assure you that when dear Papa’s Life was published – and it was so beautifully and feelingly done by Sir Theodore Martin, I read it with the greatest pleasure and felt better than I had done since he had died. And I am sure my first Leaves did no harm and did me a great deal of good. I might tell you, Bertie, that Lord Beaconsfield complimented me on it and used to refer to us as fellow authors and I venture to think that Lord Beaconsfield’s assessment of literary merit must have been far greater than yours for I have heard it said that you rarely open a book.’

  Bertie said he wasn’t thinking of literary merit, but the effect of making her private life known to the world.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said the Queen.

  ‘I seem not to be mentioned in it.’

  ‘Which shows how carefully you have read the book. You are mentioned five times.’

  ‘That does not seem much for your eldest son.’

  ‘My dear Bertie, had you come more often to Balmoral your name would naturally have appeared more frequently in the Journal. Now, let me hear no more of this matter.’

  Bertie left Windsor as some described it ‘with his tail between his legs’ as he so often did after his encounters with his mama; but at least the Life of John Brown was not published, although the Queen had gone so far as to have his journals edited.

  First there were delays – unavoidable, so the Queen was told; and it might have been that she too began to realise the lack of wisdom in publishing them. The matter was allowed to drop; but that did not mean she did not continue to mourn her faithful Highland servant.

  Leopold’s married life was progressing favourably. Princess Helen was again pregnant which was remarkable, for his little daughter Alexandra was a healthy little creature. ‘Yet anoth
er grandchild!’ sighed the Queen. ‘So many, that I have to think hard to count them up.’

  Then Leopold had another of his bouts and the doctors thought a spell at Cannes would be good for him. As the spring had come, the South of France would be delightful so he and his family took up residence at the Villa Nevada and letters reached the Queen, much to her gratification, that Leopold’s health had greatly improved.

  A year had passed since the death of John Brown and the Queen, who always kept anniversaries, had a superstitious feeling about them. Because she had suffered acutely on such and such a day she would feel that there was some malevolent purpose at work and she would come to dread that day. She remembered that her beloved husband and daughter Alice had both died on the 14th of December and it was on that very date that Bertie had come right up to the gates of death and by a miracle been brought back to life.

  Now it was the 27th of March; a year to that day when they had come to tell her that her dear faithful John Brown was dead. She had written in her Journal that she mourned him still. She supposed she would never cease to do that.

  She awoke with a feeling of apprehension for she had been reading her Journal before she slept; and when a telegram arrived from Cannes she expected disaster.

  It was only faintly alarming; Helen had just sent word to say that Leopold had slipped and damaged his knee. A trifling matter with most people, but the slightest injury in Leopold’s case could bring on the dreaded bleeding.

  The Queen felt depressed. She wondered whether she should go out to Cannes. Helen understood the care that had to be taken and so did Leopold’s servants; but Helen was expecting her second child. The Queen was uncertain what to do. Mr Gladstone was always so peevish when she suggested leaving the country. Oh, how she missed the kind understanding of Lord Beaconsfield!

  And the next day came the terrible news. Leopold was dead. He had had a kind of epileptic fit which had been brought on by a haemorrhage of the brain.

  So she had lost another child.

  ‘He was the dearest of my sons,’ she said; but she knew that this was what they had been forced to expect ever since they had discovered his weakness. She should be thankful that he had been spared to her for so long.

  His body was brought home and he was buried in St George’s Chapel at Windsor.

  Three months later his posthumous son was born.

  An anxious time followed Leopold’s death and the Queen’s mind was taken from family concerns to State matters.

  She was very dissatisfied with her government; there was anxiety about Egypt, the affairs of which country were now almost completely under British domination. A fanatical leader known as the Mahdi had arisen in the Sudan which was under Egyptian rule and therefore a concern of Britain. The government, to the Queen’s dismay, decided that it would be better to abandon the Sudan and leave it in the control of the Mahdi, agreeing however to rescue the Egyptian forces which still remained there. Their efforts to do this were so dilatory that there was, as the Queen described it, unnecessary massacre; but finally the government agreed to send out General Gordon to Khartoum.

  Mr Gladstone’s conception of Empire was, alas, not that of Lord Beaconsfield; and the Queen considered it the height of disaster to the country that that clever, far-sighted man had died to leave matters in the hands of The People’s William.

  There was also much with which to concern herself at home. Bertie had been elected as a member of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes. Mr Gladstone was constantly deploring the fact that Bertie had too little with which to occupy himself and to give Bertie his due he did enjoy having some task presented to him; it might well have been that had he been given some post he would not have got into such mischief as he did.

  Bertie had become far too friendly with Sir Charles Dilke, that dreadful radical, and now the Prince himself was becoming something of a radical.

  He was taken round London to see how the poor lived and declared himself to be horrified. First of all a typical working man’s dress had to be found for him and he went incognito in company with others. He came back to her – and told her what he had seen.

  Poor Bertie, with all his faults he was very kind-hearted; there were tears in his eyes as he kept reiterating: ‘Something must be done.’

  ‘There was a room without any furniture, Mama,’ he went on. ‘A heap of rags and a poor skeleton of a woman lying on it, too weak to move; her children had no clothes whatsoever … I wanted to empty my pockets of everything I had but I was told that if I showed so much … so much, Mama, there would be a riot. These people would not believe there was so much money in the world! Something must be done.’

  She herself agreed to this. Something must be done. General Booth and his Salvation Army were making people aware of conditions in the poor districts like those of St Giles’.

  She read The Bitter Cry of Outcast London and wept.

  She discussed it with the Prime Minister and she wondered why men who were so concerned with religion and the vote seemed to think that the distressing housing conditions and starvation of the poor was of less moment. She even felt a little drawn towards Sir Charles Dilke.

  ‘I begin now,’ she said, ‘to understand his concern for poor people.’

  There was worse to follow. General Gordon had reached Khartoum where he was besieged by the Mahdi and his men.

  ‘He must be relieved at once,’ insisted the Queen.

  Mr Gladstone’s Ministry was as usual dilatory; his government, he said, had no desire to be involved in a war in Egypt.

  The people were with the Queen and they deplored the government’s neglect of those men fighting the Empire’s battles far away. Then before the relief arrived General Gordon was killed at the storming of Khartoum; she was furious with her government and at the same time very sad. She could not honour his family enough and fell back to her usual method of showing respect by having a bust made and placing it in Windsor Castle.

  But in spite of the fact that relieving forces eventually arrived the Sudanese expedition was far from an unqualified success and she brooded on the fact that had Lord Beaconsfield been in command it would have been very different.

  Of all her children the Queen had perhaps relied most on Beatrice since Albert’s death. Beatrice had then been ‘Baby’ and her quaint doings and sayings had diverted the Queen in her misery. As the youngest, Beatrice – still sometimes known as Baby – had been more constantly with her mother than any of the others. She was now the only one left; she was twenty-seven and the Queen had told herself that Beatrice would never marry. For one thing she was very shy; she disliked going to dinner-parties unless she was certain who her neighbours at the table would be and they were old friends. So naturally the Queen had imagined that she would always have Beatrice with her.

  Her dismay was great when Beatrice came to her and said: ‘Mama, I have fallen in love and want to get married.’

  The Queen almost fell off her chair. ‘In love!’ she said. ‘What nonsense, dearest child. How could you fall in love?’

  ‘It was not very difficult, Mama, and I am sure you will agree with me, when you know it is Henry.’

  ‘Henry. What Henry is this?’

  ‘Prince Henry of Battenberg.’

  ‘It’s quite impossible.’

  ‘Oh no, Mama, quite possible … if you give your consent.’

  ‘I should never allow you to be so foolish. My dearest child, you were so desolate when darling Leopold died. And this … Henry came along and you imagined you wished to marry him. Everything will settle down in time. Don’t worry.’

  Poor Beatrice! Gone were the days of childhood when her quaintness had made it permissible to disagree with Mama.

  She grew pale, wan and listless. She was obedient, but her conversation was dull and confined to ‘Yes, Mama’ and ‘No, Mama’ which was quite boring.

  ‘What is the matter with you, child?’ demanded the Queen. ‘And don’t talk to me about this fo
olish matter of Henry of Battenberg.’

  ‘Then there is nothing to be said, Mama,’ replied Beatrice.

  Of course the Queen could not stand by and see poor Baby growing pale and thin. She supposed she would have to give way.

  At length she said, ‘I had better see this Henry of Battenberg.’

  He came; he was charming; he was devoted to Beatrice and to see the change in that dear child made the Queen weep.

  Henry said he did understand her reluctance to part with such a treasure and they would reside in England so that their marriage would make little difference to the Queen.

  She embraced them both and wished them well; and referred to herself in a letter to Vicky as ‘Poor shattered me.’

  Of course it was not a grand marriage and Vicky would not approve of that; but the Queen wondered whether Vicky’s, which had been grand, had brought her much happiness. Beatrice was radiant; and the Queen reproached herself for ever trying to keep such joy from her dearest child.

  She embraced her warmly but when Prince Henry and his new wife left for their honeymoon she shivered a little. She hoped poor Beatrice would not suffer too much from the ‘shadow side’ of marriage.

  A great scandal had broken on London. A Mr Donald Crawford M.P. was suing for divorce and whom should he name as co-respondent but Sir Charles Dilke.

  The Queen was very interested when she heard. ‘Oh, these radicals!’ she said to Beatrice. ‘They are so concerned for the rights of this and that, so anxious to look into the purses of other people, when all the time they themselves are not beyond reproach.’

  But almost immediately she was anxious on account of Bertie. He did seem to have a habit of being mixed up in public scandals. She would never forget that dreadful Mordaunt case; and then there was that horrible Aylesford affair. And he was a friend of Sir Charles Dilke.

  Happily Bertie was not involved in this one; and it was a great relief that he was not for it was the most shocking of them all.

  The Dilke case was the great cause célèbre of the 1880s. It seemed that everyone from the Queen to her humblest subject was following the details as they emerged. The situation was one which could not fail to appeal. The dignified celebrated politician caught up in a very sordid affair and shown in the worst possible light. It appeared that Mr Crawford had received an anonymous letter advising him to ‘Beware of the Member for Chelsea!’ – the Member for Chelsea being Sir Charles Dilke. He had been inclined to think that this was the work of a practical joker until he received a second unsigned letter: