Victoria Victorious: The Story of Queen Victoria

by Jean Plaidy

  ERNEST HAD RECOVERED from his indisposition and had now left us.

  Albert took a very painful farewell of his brother and was very sad at the parting.

  Ernest was a self-evident libertine and yet that had not diminished Albert's love for him; the same thing applied to his father; and Albert's grief at parting from them had been so great that it had angered me.

  It seemed to me that the Coburgs, my mother's relations, were every bit as immoral as my father's. I was on the point of taking this up with Albert since he had been so very censorious about Lord Melbourne, but I restrained myself—admirably I thought—for I guessed it would provoke another storm.

  Albert was very melancholy in the days following his brother's departure and he spent a good deal of time with Anson and Stockmar. They went out together and I wondered whether Albert was renewing his acquaintance with Sir Robert Peel.

  I knew that he was studying politics and history—particularly that of England. He told me he found it quite fascinating and he was almost wistful about it.

  Albert was being very careful in what he said. I was sure he hated those storms as much as I did. My twenty-first birthday was approaching and I was now two months pregnant. I felt slightly less discomfort in some ways but I was beginning to feel very tired. What I had always thought was being borne out. Childbearing was a very unattractive— though necessary, I admitted—part of marriage.

  My spirits were always lifted by my conferences with Lord Melbourne, and when I found state matters a trifle boring he would always switch to gossip. He usually had some anecdote to bring out for my amusement… either some present scandal or one from the past. I always said I learned more of my ancestors from Lord Melbourne's stories than I did from the history books.

  There were still ribald cartoons about us and sly hints in the Press.

  “Don't look at them,” was Lord Melbourne's advice.

  I refused to receive the Cambridges at Court as the Duchess had not stood up when Albert's toast was drunk, and one day Albert was at a function given by Queen Adelaide. I did not go. I was feeling very tired and uncomfortable and Lehzen had said it could be dangerous to exert myself. I gave in to her persuasions and as we had agreed to go, Albert reluctantly went alone.

  He would have been delighted to have stayed with me, which was gratifying. We might have had one of our quiet evenings, singing duets, playing the piano, indulging in a game of chess which Albert invariably contrived to win. A quiet evening at home, early to bed, and then rising fresh in the morning. That was what he wanted.

  Albert had a great tendency to go to sleep during banquets. He said it was because of the trivial conversation that generally prevailed and produced a soporific effect.

  “You must not let people see it,” I said. But of course they did. We could not sneeze in public without its being noted and probably construed as our having one foot in the grave.

  At this particular banquet when the meal was over Albert left. He had thought it a good opportunity to get away and had forgotten that after dinner speeches followed.

  When the Duke of Cambridge rose to speak he said that he had noted the Prince had left.

  “Can we blame him?” he asked. “Naturally he is anxious to get home to spend the night with a fine girl.”

  This was cheered and reported and enlarged on.

  Albert was furious. “The coarseness is unforgivable,” he said.

  “The Cambridges are annoyed because I did not marry their son George. That is what they wanted. Uncle William and Aunt Adelaide wanted it too. That is why they say such things.”

  Albert said it was crass, obscene.

  Lord Melbourne chuckled about it and said it was a fine compliment to me.

  I saw Lord Melbourne's point and laughed with him. But Albert was really angry. He said it set the public imagining… obscenely.

  I had not thought of that. It was amazing how much more the good saw in these things.

  IT WAS MY twenty-first birthday. How much had happened since this time last year. A wife and a mother-to-be.

  I had always loved birthdays and there was to be a ball to celebrate the occasion. What would a birthday be like without a ball! Albert would have liked to spend the day quietly in the country. I had to remind him that that was not possible for a person in my position, even if I had wanted to—which I most certainly did not!

  Presents were fun. Albert's was a bronze inkstand—a very fine one. Albert liked presents to be useful.

  He had talked to me again about Mama. He did not like this discord between us, and was very anxious that it should cease. It is unnatural, he said. Again and again I told him of what I had endured during my childhood; he would smile gently, but I had the impression that he thought I was not quite innocent of blame.

  How different from Lehzen, who saw only my side! But then she had been there. She had seen it happening.

  But I loved Albert more dearly than ever. He was so beautiful and so good. I loved singing and playing duets with him, but I wished he enjoyed dancing. He danced well and gracefully, as he did everything, but he was always watching the clock and waiting for the moment when he could slip away. He had no desire to dance with anyone else. How gratifying! How touching! And how different from so many men! I thought of his brother Ernest and shuddered. How fortunate I was to have Albert. But I did wish he enjoyed dancing.

  Lord Melbourne was quite sentimental when he congratulated me on my birthday.

  “I feel so old,” I said.

  “Never mind,” said Lord M, “when you are forty you will feel much younger.”

  That made me laugh. But Lord M insisted that it was true.

  I had taken his advice and was discussing state affairs with Albert. This made me realize that I did not know a great deal about them. I had always taken Lord Melbourne's view, and I did find some of them rather boring.

  How different Albert was! He said there were many things which I should be aware of. Trade was on the decline; the bad harvests in the last four years had raised prices and there were riots in some of the big towns. The Duke of Wellington had told Albert that, outside war, he had never known a town ravaged as Birmingham had been recently and by its own people. These things could not be brushed aside, as Lord Melbourne believed they could. They must be faced up to; something must be done. There was trouble abroad. The West Indian colonies were in revolt; Canada and Ireland were a problem; the Chinese were causing trouble.

  Albert was very serious about these matters, and I almost wished I had not agreed that he should learn something of them.

  He was meeting a great many people and I was sure he had renewed his acquaintance with Sir Robert Peel. He interested himself in causes. He had become President of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery and the Civilization of Africa, and soon after my birthday he was going to address the Society in that role.

  He practiced his speech with the care he bestowed on everything he undertook. I knew he was very nervous; and I was not surprised at that when I considered those wicked cartoons and paragraphs about him in the Press.

  So I was delighted when his speech was well received and he was warmly applauded. I knew people would in time realize his worth, but the waiting for that to dawn was irksome, and he had so many enemies.

  I shall never forget that day in June. It began ordinarily enough. It was our custom at six o'clock in the evening to take a drive in our little carriage drawn by four horses. We set out as usual, just Albert and myself with two postilions.

  We had not gone very far—it could not have been more than a hundred and fifty paces from the Palace—when a shot rang out. It was so loud that I was quite stunned.

  I looked around sharply and saw a man, small and most disagreeable looking, leaning against the railings and in his hand he was holding something which was pointed straight at us. I realized that it was a pistol for the man was very close—so near that I could see his face clearly. There was purpose in it—and that was to kill me.

/>   Then I heard another shot. It was like a nightmare. Crowds of people everywhere. Someone shouted, “Get him. Kill him.”

  Albert was very calm. He put his arm around me, holding me tightly.

  “Drive on,” he shouted to the postilion and we went on at a sharp trot.

  “Are you all right?” asked Albert.

  I nodded. I said, “He was trying to kill me, Albert.”

  “To kill us,” corrected Albert.

  “But why? What have we done to him?”

  “People blame their rulers for the state of the country. Dear liebchen, I feared for you. Are you sure… the little one…?”

  “The little one seems unaware,” I said.

  “My dear brave little Victoria.”

  It was strange really. I had not felt any great fear when I looked into that pistol. I often thought afterward that rulers are given a special quality. Instinctively they know they may face death at any time. Although the people cheer and wish them long life, there can always be some in the crowd who are eager to make that life shorter.

  When we came back to the Palace, there were crowds waiting for us. They cheered me wildly.

  I had faced death and so won back their esteem.

  LORD MELBOURNE CALLED. He was most disturbed.

  “Your Majesty,” he murmured, looking at me as he so often did with tears in his eyes.

  I smiled at him and answered, “I am still here, Lord Melbourne.”

  “Thank God,” he said fervently. “I must tell you we have the miscreant. It was quite easy to pick him up. He just stood there waiting to be taken.”

  “What sort of man?”

  “Vermin,” said Lord Melbourne contemptuously. “A little revolutionary. He was immediately seized by a certain Mr. Millais who was there with his son.”

  I always remembered that later, because the son, John Millais, became a great artist.

  “He is eighteen years old.”

  “So young to want to murder.”

  “Oh, it is often the young who get what they think of as high-minded ideals. He is undersized, feeble in mind and body…a little rat of the gutters. His garret was full of papers of a revolutionary nature. He fancied himself as a Danton or Robespierre. My God, when I think of what might have happened…Your Majesty…”

  He was far more upset than I, and I felt I had to comfort him. “I am still here, my dear friend,” I said.

  “It could have happened so easily. The bullets went over your heads and buried themselves in the wall.” He shivered. “And in Your Majesty's condition …”

  “I think it was over before I realized what was happening. But I do hate it when people want to kill me.”

  “It is not you they wish to kill but the system…law and order… all that makes our country great.”

  I nodded. “Albert was magnificent.”

  “Yes. The Prince showed great calm. The best thing you could have done was to drive on and behave as though nothing had happened, and that is what he realized. It is what the people like.”

  “The people were most loyal.”

  “Oh yes indeed. There is nothing like a near assassination to bring out the people's affection. Had that villain succeeded in his vile task— praise God that he did not—you would have become sainted martyrs. As you escaped, you are merely the beloved Queen and her consort. A better proposition really, for although you are of slightly less value living than dead, it is better to be alive than holy.”

  That was Lord Melbourne's way of making light of something that touched him deeply, and I felt very tender toward him.

  He was right. We were wildly cheered at the opera, and the people sang the national anthem—the right version—with great enthusiasm.

  “Long live the Queen.”

  I was as popular as I had been before the Flora Hastings scandal. So some good came out of the incident.

  I felt a little concerned about that young man. I talked of him with Albert.

  “You see, Albert,” I pointed out, “he believed he was right. He was really mad.”

  Albert was astonished that I could speak for him; but Albert, being so good himself, could not understand the failings of others as easily as I, being less virtuous, did.

  The young man, whose name was Edward Oxford, was committed to Newgate on a charge of high treason, which warranted the death penalty. But it was judged that he was mad and he was sent to an asylum.

  I felt a little relieved about this. I never wanted harsh punishment for such people and perhaps I preferred to think of him as mad, for in that case the man could have been said to have acted without reason— and I did not like to think that anyone hated me enough to want to kill me.

  LORD MELBOURNE CAME to see me soon afterward and said that he wished to speak to me on a rather delicate matter. After the shooting incident several members of the government had raised the question of a Regency.

  “You mean in the event of my death?” I said.

  Lord Melbourne looked unhappy.

  “My dear Lord Melbourne,” I said, “this is perfectly reasonable. I might so easily have been killed the other day. I am to have a child. I do not forget what happened to my cousin, the Princess Charlotte.”

  “Your Majesty is very wise. I think I shall get agreement for the Prince to be named Regent in the event of such tragic circumstances, of which it is too painful to speak, coming to pass.”

  “You mean…Albert would be Regent?”

  “That is so.”

  I was delighted. It would give him so much pleasure to be chosen; and I was beginning to realize how left out he felt and what a difficult role he had been thrust into.

  “I don't expect much opposition from the other side of the House,” went on Lord Melbourne. “Peel will most certainly give his support.”

  “Indeed he will,” I said with a trace of irony. “They are very good friends.”

  “It is well that it should be so,” replied Lord Melbourne.

  I stopped him because I did not want to hear about the uncertain state of the government and the possibility of Peel's soon being Prime Minister. It was too depressing.

  I said I should be pleased if Parliament agreed that Albert should be appointed Regent in the event of my death.

  As Lord Melbourne had predicted, the motion was passed easily through the House; there was a murmuring from Sussex, which was to be expected. That side of the family was annoyed that I had, as they said, “brought in the Coburgs.” Lehzen did not like it either. She was very depressed.

  “Silly Daisy,” I said, “because they make preparations for my death that does not mean I am going to die!”

  She was very worried these days. She had changed since my marriage. Dear Daisy, she would not accept the fact that a person grows up. One's children—and she looked on me as her child—cannot remain dependent all their lives. Poor Lehzen, how she fought against the passing of time!

  Albert, of course, deplored my relationship with her. I gave her the affection that, he believed, should have been my mother's. As a matter of fact I had seen more of my mother since my marriage than I had for some time before. I think it was in Albert's mind to bring about a reconciliation. Lehzen knew this and resented it because she realized that my mother would never forgive her for the part she was sure she had played in our estrangement, and she had always been jealous of my devotion to Lehzen.

  So poor Lehzen was very uneasy. She told me that the Prince was critical of her. He pried into household matters. She had always run the household. I supposed it ran smoothly enough. I never heard of anything going wrong. But of course Albert's Teutonic thoroughness demanded perfection.

  And now Lord Melbourne, whom Lehzen had possibly looked upon as an ally in the camp against my mother, was becoming one of Albert's admirers and making him a possible Regent—which was the last straw.

  She could no longer hide her animosity to Albert.

  It was a very difficult position for me to be in when the two people I loved most dear
ly were antagonistic toward each other. In a way I was flattered because their animosity grew out of their love for me. Lehzen was certainly jealous of Albert. I don't know whether he was jealous of her or not, but he did resent her influence on me.

  Albert was finding fault with matters in the household. Two people were employed, he said, where one would have served adequately. He discovered that one of the windows in the kitchens had been broken for some weeks and nothing had been done about repairing it.

  “Oh, that is Lehzen's affair,” I said thoughtlessly.

  “But it seems that Lehzen does not make it her affair.”

  “A broken window in a big palace, Albert,” I said. “What a fuss about a little matter.”

  “A broken window is an invitation to intruders. I do not call that a little matter. I have your safety to consider.”

  “Oh, Albert, how kind you are! I'll speak to Lehzen about the window.”

  Lehzen was incensed. “I never before heard of a prince strolling round looking for broken windows.”

  “I don't think he looked, Lehzen. He just saw.”

  She pursed her lips and thrust some caraway seeds into her mouth—a sign of being disturbed.

  She told me that people did not like the idea of Albert's appointment.

  “Oh, the people like or dislike according to their mood.”

  “I'm afraid to open a paper these days.”

  “Oh, Daisy, that's not true.”

  I knew that she kept certain cartoons—those in which Albert figured. Now she flung open a drawer and took out some paper cuttings.

  I took them from her. The top one was captioned “The Regent.” It was a caricature of Albert—recognizable though not a bit like him— standing before a mirror trying on a crown.

  I laughed. “That is just the sort of thing they would do.”

  “They don't like it, you know.”

  “Daisy, he is not the Regent. He would only be … if anything happened to me.”

  “I can't bear to think of it.”

  I was staring at another cartoon. Albert had a pistol in his hand and was aiming it at the crown—presumably meant to be me. At least they had not put me there in person. The caption said, “Ach, mein dear, I shall see if I can hit you.”