QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History

by Christopher Hibbert

  Relations between the anxious mother and the wilful son grew progressively worse. Concerned about his moral as well as his physical well-being, she told him that he must not go to Cowes during the Regatta 'to lounge about or pay visits to fashionable ladies or indeed get familiar with people'. He must also, she insisted, be more polite and sociable when at Balmoral, visit the tenants more often, be more respectful to his mother and less quarrelsome with Beatrice.

  In his determination to spend his time more profitably, to take on public responsibilities concerned with health, social issues, and the arts, he consulted Lord Beaconsfield. But Beaconsfield was not forthcoming and, after consulting the Queen, proposed that the Prince should be his mother's confidential assistant in her dealings with foreign affairs, in effect, that he should carry on with the work he was already doing.

  Of course I am very glad (& it interests me exceedingly) to see all the despatches which the Queen receives & to make 'precis' or analyses of them for the Queen, as I have been doing lately [Prince Leopold replied to Beaconsfield]. But then all this is done, & much better done, by her Private Secretary, & I feel that the Queen only gives me these things to do to keep me employed, & not because it is of any necessity to her ... Were my relations with the Queen more cordial, or could I ever hope that they might become more cordial, I should not be so very anxious as I am; but, as I fear, you are only too well aware, we are not on such terms as we ought to be, & we are never on such good terms as when we are absent from one another.30

  As he might have expected, the Prince's complaint to Lord Beaconsfield was quite ineffective and, when his mother heard of it, it merely served to make her more angry with him than ever and, as she put it, 'grieved to see you still think you can act behind my back'. When the Prince told Beaconsfield that the work he was given to do interested him, he was quite evidently speaking the truth; and, as relations between him and his mother gradually improved, she was grateful for his help. She allowed him to make use of a Cabinet key so that he could unlock boxes to consult confidential papers. 'Dizzy' had given him the key, his father's key, he told a friend: his brother, the Prince of Wales, was not allowed to have one.

  The Queen's secretarial staff, however, were far from pleased that Prince Leopold should have been thus favoured, for they found him to be the highest of high Tories, opinionated, interfering and indiscreet, and they were thankful when in May 1878, to his mother's shocked concern, he told her, in a letter which Ponsonby described as 'respectful and dutiful in expression', that he declined to make the usual spring visit to Balmoral. Instead, he went to Paris for a fortnight.

  On a subsequent visit to the Continent, Prince Leopold met Princess Helen of Waldeck-Pyrmont whom he was to marry.

  He had been thinking of marriage for some time. Having fallen in love with the beautiful Alma, Countess of Breadalbane, he had hoped to marry the granddaughter and sole heiress of the third Viscount Maynard, who had been bequeathed estates worth £20,000 a year; but nothing came of this and soon afterwards she married Lord Brooke, heir to the earldom of Warwick. Nor did anything come of a proposed marriage to Mary Baring, daughter of Lord Ashburton, who had given him some encouragement to believe that she might accept his offer, but who soon decided that she was too young at nineteen to settle down, particularly with a young man who was so often ill.31

  The Prince had then considered Princess Caroline Matilda of Schles-wig-Holstein; but although the Queen liked her and was prepared to accept the girl to 'prevent a bad mistake being made' by his falling in love with someone less suitable, the girl's family raised objections, declaring that, before his death, her father had written a letter prohibiting the match.32

  At last the Prince found a suitable bride in Princess Helen of Waldeck-Pyrmont. The Queen repeated her doubts that Leopold's health was up to marriage with any girl, at the same time expressing 'shock' at having to lose her son to a wife; yet, if he was determined to marry, she had to agree that, from all she had heard of her, Princess Helen was a good choice, even though the girl was reputed to be clever, perhaps too clever.33 When her family arrived in England - with eighty trunks of luggage -for the wedding, the Queen was much taken with the bride whom she now saw for the first time. 'Helen is tall and "elancee"', she wrote in her journal, 'with a fine figure, rich colour, very dark hair, dark brown, deep-set eyes & a sweet smile. She has a charming, friendly manner & is very affectionate & warm hearted.'34

  Even so, the thought of Prince Leopold's marrying was 'terrible'. He had recently slipped on a piece of orange peel, hurting his knee so badly that he had to hobble about with a stick, and on the wedding day he was 'lame and shaky'. It was 'a sad exhibition', she told the Crown Princess, 'and I fear everyone must be shocked at it and blame me! I pity her but she seems only to think of him with love and affection.'35

  She certainly, like the Duke of Edinburgh's wife, pleased her mother-in-law by not being nervous in her presence. Indeed, she stood less in awe of the Queen than almost everyone else in the family. Soon after her marriage - at which the Queen appeared, for the first time in over forty years, wearing her white wedding lace over her black dress - she stormed into her mother-in-law's room to complain that a maid had been chosen for her without her being consulted in the matter. She wished, she said, to make her own appointments. After she had gone the Queen commented that she could do nothing with her; 'but unfortunately in this case she is quite right. It is what I should have done myself.'

  To the astonishment of the Queen, who had doubted her son's ability to have children, her daughter-in-law became pregnant soon after the marriage and gave birth to a healthy daughter. The following spring the child's father, by then created Duke of Albany, decided to go to the south of France for the sake of his health, thinking, as his mother put it, that he required 'a little change and warmth'. 'But he is going alone,' she added, 'as Helen's health does not allow her to travel just now. I think it rather a pity that he should leave her.' And it was here at Cannes that, having fallen down on the tiled floor of a club house, he died in March 1884.36

  The Queen was 'stunned, bewildered and wretched... utterly crushed' by the loss of one who, she now decided, had been the 'dearest' of her 'dear sons'. 'Oh! what grief,' she wrote. 'How dear he was to me, how I watched over him ... He was such a charming companion, the "Child of the House" ... and that poor loving young wife ... Too, too dreadful! But we must bow to God's will and believe that it is surely for the best. The poor dear boy's life had been a very tried one.' His body was brought back to Windsor to be buried in St George's Chapel. His mother, blind as usual to the misdemeanours past and present of her favoured Highlanders, decreed that when the coffin was taken to the Chapel, Archie Brown should be present because he had, so she said, been such a devoted servant to the Prince in his lifetime.37

  Less than four months later the Duchess gave birth to another child, a boy. This baby, the second Duke of Albany, was the Queen's thirty-second grandchild. She was to have six more. Four of these were the children of Princess Beatrice.

  As the youngest daughter of the family, and a precocious and endearing child, Princess Beatrice had always been more indulged than her sisters. She had been allowed to behave in a way that would have been considered reprehensible in them. When told not to help herself to some delicacy on the table which would not have been 'good for Baby', she took it anyway with the characteristic comment, 'But she likes it, my dear.'38 And when reproached, aged four, for being naughty she carelessly agreed that she had been: 'I was very naughty last night. I would not speak to Papa, but it doesn't signify much.'39

  After the birth of Prince Leopold the Queen had told Sir James Clark that she thought that if she had yet another child 'she would sink under it'. Clark had thought that this was not improbable, though it was her mind that would give way, not her body.[lxi]40 After the birth of Princess Beatrice she had soon regained her spirits, however. 'I have felt better and stronger this time than I have ever done before,' she wrote in her journal. She had qu
ite thrown off her recent unhappiness when she had felt obliged to ask Prince Albert to support her in her dealings with their other children and not to scold her in front of them. 'I was simply rewarded and forgot all I had gone through when I heard dearest Albert say, "It is a fine child, and a girl!'"41

  As the child grew up, her mother became even more reluctant to part with her than she had been to part with Princess Alice and Princess Helena. She made it quite clear that marriage would be severely frowned upon. She intended, so she admitted herself, to keep Beatrice 'young and childlike' for as long as possible, since she 'could not live without her'. This was for 'Baby's' good as well as for her own comfort. Besides, the shy girl had no wish to marry; nor had she ever had. When as a child she had watched Frith painting his picture of her eldest brother's wedding, the painter had asked her if she would have liked to have been one of his bridesmaids. 'No,' she replied much to her mother's satisfaction, 'I don't like weddings at all. I shall never be married. I shall stay with mother.'42

  'I may truly and honestly say,' the Queen told the girl's eldest sister, 'I never saw so amiable, gentle, and thoroughly contented a child as she is. She has the sweetest temper imaginable and is very useful and handy ... She is my constant companion and hope and trust will never leave me while I live. I do not intend she should ever go out as her sisters did (which was a mistake) but let her stay (except of course occasionally going to theatres) as much as she can with me.'43

  Years later the Queen still had the 'most violent dislike' of her 'precious Baby' marrying, and was still thanking God 'for such a devoted child who was really almost as much like a sister as a daughter'; and when Princess Beatrice's brother, Prince Leopold, died she was all the more indispensable. There must still be no question of marriage. 'I hate weddings,' the Queen said. 'They are melancholy things and cause the happiest beings such trials with them, bad health etc. etc.'44

  Henry Ponsonby was reprimanded for having mentioned someone else's marriage at dinner: there must be no talk of such a thing in Princess Beatrice's presence.45 Marriage, she often contended, was 'rarely' a source of 'real happiness'. She 'could never be enthusiastic about any marriage'. Indeed, she would go further: 'I hate marriages, especially of my daughters ... I detest them beyond words ... I often wonder,' she continued with increasing disregard for her grammar, 'that any mother can bear of giving up your own child, from whom all has been so carefully kept and guarded - to a stranger to do unto her as he likes is to me the most torturing thought in the world.'46

  When she heard that Princess Beatrice had not only changed her mind about marrying but had actually chosen a man she wished to make her husband, the Queen flatly declined to talk about it. For weeks on end she refused to speak to her daughter, communicating with her by notes pushed across the breakfast table. Eventually, in 1885, she consented to the marriage, but only on the understanding that the man, Prince Henry of Battenberg, would come to live at Court, since it would have been 'quite out of the question for Beatrice to have left home. Indeed, she would surely 'never have wished it herself, knowing well how impossible it was for her to leave her mother'. After all, in twenty-two years, she had 'only been absent for 10 days once'.47

  Even though her daughter was to remain at home, the Queen dreaded the approach of the wedding day when she would have to give up her 'own sweet, unspoilt, innocent lily and child' into the hands of another. She hoped and prayed there would be 'no results' for some time. At least she was thankful to say that there was 'no kissing (etc) which Beatrice dislikes' and which, so the Queen said, used to try her so 'with dear Fritz'. She had always considered there was 'gt want of propriety and delicacy ... in treating your Bridegroom as tho (except in one point) -he were your Husband'. Young people were unfortunately 'getting vy American in their lives and ways'.'48

  The wedding day itself, the Queen expected, would be 'a gt trial' for her. But, in the event, the ceremony, held in the church near Osborne at Whippingham - the first time a royal bride had been married in a parish church in England - was, she thought, 'very touching'.

  'I stood very close to my dear child, who looked very sweet, pure and calm,' the Queen wrote in her journal. 'Though I stood for the ninth time near a child and for the fifth time near a daughter, at the altar, I think I never felt more deeply than I did on this occasion ... When the blessing had been given, I tenderly embraced my darling "Baby".'49

  According to Labouchere's weekly journal, Truth, the ceremony was, however, not so pleasantly moving as the Queen's journal suggests. The Queen herself looked 'exceedingly cross', the Prince of Wales 'ill at ease and out of sorts'; the bridesmaids were remarkable for a 'decided absence of beauty'; the Archbishop of Canterbury gave a tedious address which made the Queen 'tap her foot in a very ominous way' and the Prince of Wales 'fidgety'; the Grand Duke of Hesse looked 'old and haggard', the Duke of Edinburgh 'even more sour and supercilious than usual', while his Duchess's 'sullen expression which [had] become habitual... appeared to be accentuated for the occasion'. 'Princess Louise,' the report concluded, 'looked well but has a very flighty manner. Lord Lome was in tartans, but certainly looked very common ... Prince George of Wales seemed thoroughly well pleased with himself. He is a very ordinary looking lad but apparently has more go about him than his brother.'50

  When the service was over and Princess Beatrice left for a villa a few miles away at Ryde for a honeymoon lasting a bare two days, it was 'horrid' for the Queen to have to say goodbye to her: it was like 'a punishment or a necessary execution'. She put her fingers in her ears to shut out the noise of the band. She then burst into tears and later commented, 'I agree with the Mohammedans that duty towards one's Parents goes before every other but that is not taught as part of religion in Europe.'51

  Fortunately, the Queen grew fond of Prince Henry: he was 'so full of consideration for her' and became like a 'bright sunbeam' in the house, always so cheerful and helpful, as much at ease in her presence as she was in his; and, although there were in time to be four 'results' of his marriage to Princess Beatrice, the Queen was pleased to have these grandchildren always about the house.

  Chapter 54

  THE GRANDCHILDREN

  'And there sat Grandmama not idol-like at all, not a bit frightening, smiling a kind smile, almost as shy as us children.'

  In her later years the Queen much enjoyed the company of young children. One of her ladies, Marie Mallet, described how delighted she appeared to be when her fetching little son, Victor Mallet, was presented to her, and pleased in particular by the interest he took in a portrait by Landseer of Eos, Prince Albert's favourite greyhound. The boy himself, who greeted her with a confident 'Good morning, Queen', was 'charmed at once by her beaming smile and great gentleness of voice and manner', and highly pleased with a miniature landau drawn by a pair of grey horses which she gave him as a present. On a later occasion she 'laughed till she cried' when the boy, by then three years old, having made a very low bow on entering the room, went up to kiss her hand, produced a little black and white toy pig and announced, 'Look at this pig. I have brought it all the way from London to see you. '1

  Although she never outgrew her distaste for the whole concept and process of childbirth, the Queen endeavoured when she could to be present at the birth of her grandchildren, holding the hands of the mothers-to-be, murmuring words of sympathy and encouragement, and stroking their arms for hours on end. She nursed the babies on her knee when they were ill; and when they were a little older she allowed them into her room to play, preferably one at a time. 'Dear little things,' she said. 'I like to see them so at home with me.' She loved 'to hear their little feet & merry voices' when they came to stay with her. 'I must tell you how I enjoyed those 10 quiet days with your beloved ones!' she wrote after one such visit at Osborne in 1893. 'I don't know when I felt happier during the past few years.'

  She had urged her daughters not to have too many children too soon. 'It is very sad,' she had told her eldest daughter, to become pregnant too often sinc
e it was 'ruin to the looks of a young woman'. Yet grandchildren, then great grandchildren, had nevertheless been produced at an astonishing rate.

  When the Prince of Wales's fourth child was born in July 1868, the Queen wrote to her eldest daughter, 'The baby - a mere little red lump - was all I saw; & I fear the seventh grand-daughter & fourteenth grandchild becomes a very uninteresting thing - for it seems to me to go on like the rabbits in Windsor Park! The present large family is very far from enjoyable or good for me.' 'Unlike many people,' she told the Dean of Windsor, 'the Queen does not rejoice greatly at these constant additions to her family.'2 In the end, however, she became reconciled to the process. On receiving in November 1896 a telegram which had arrived at Balmoral announcing the birth of twins to her granddaughter, Princess Margaret of Hesse, the eighth child of the Emperor Frederick, she 'laughed very much and [was] rather amused at the list of her great grandchildren being added to in such a rapid manner'.3

  She was quite ready to condemn the behaviour of these descendants when in one of her cantankerous moods; and then the belief that they were 'sweet, dear, merry simple things' was quite forgotten. The Prince of Wales's sons, for example, were ill-bred and ill-trained when they were small, 'as wild as hawks'.4 She 'could not fancy them at all'. Yet she grew to love them both; and they to revere her. The elder son of the younger of the two, the future Duke of Windsor, known in the family as David, well remembered being taken as a small boy to see her: