Victoria Victorious: The Story of Queen Victoria

by Jean Plaidy

  I defended Albert, of course. “It is for the good of us all. He is thinking of our safety…my safety, Daisy.”

  “Do you think I don't concern myself with your safety? If that had been a real assassin instead of that young boy, I would have thrown myself between you and him without a second thought.”

  “I know you would. But Albert wants to prevent people getting into the Palace.”

  “It was all right before he came.”

  “But this boy broke into the Palace. How?”

  “Boys can climb up anywhere.”

  “If boys can do so, others can. Albert is right. There should be more security. People get lax when there is no supervision.”

  “I have supervised…”

  I looked at her sadly. I was more worried than she could guess, because I could see clearly that this conflict between her and Albert would not end here.

  The day would come when I should have to choose between Lehzen and Albert, and there could only be one choice I could make.

  Dear, dear Lehzen, companion of my childhood, the one I had sworn to love forever…But that had been before Albert came into my life.

  Little In-I-Go Jones had made an amusing story for the Press; he had had his little adventure, but what he had done had gone deeper than that.

  CHRISTMAS WAS ALMOST upon us.

  “We shall spend it at Windsor,” said Albert.

  We should celebrate it in the German fashion, with Christmas trees and presents on the table. Mama had brought that fashion with her so it was not new to me.

  Albert was very happy. He had instituted new rules into the Palace. He had scored several triumphs over Lehzen, which she had perforce been reluctantly obliged to accept. There was an armed neutrality between them that I had decided I would not think about while we were at Windsor for the Christmas holiday.

  Albert and I left in the carriage with the rest of the household traveling behind us. Immediately following was the baby with the nurses and Lehzen traveling with them. She was already regarding little Pussy as hers, much to the chagrin of Mrs. Lilly, who was a very forthright lady. Mrs. Southey was comfortable and unquarrelsome; she accepted with equanimity all that was asked of her—which I suppose was the right attitude for a wet nurse.

  Mama was coming to Windsor to join us. Lehzen did not like that either. She knew that in the conflict with Albert, Mama would be her bitter foe. Albert wielded great influence with me and Mama was no longer the enemy. Moreover I was beginning to feel quite conscience-stricken by the way in which I had behaved, for Albert was convincing me that I had not been without fault.

  Albert wanted a quiet Christmas, carrying out all the old German customs, which I had to agree was very pleasant; walking, riding, singing, a quiet game of chess, early to bed, rising at six, when it was dark, being ready to go into the forest to watch the dawn and stroll among the beautiful trees whose names I now knew—and much else that was growing also.

  I was quite happy to do all this, for I was still easily tired after my ordeal. And I had to admit that if it was quiet, it was pleasant.

  And then something happened to spoil it.

  One morning when I went to Dash's basket to see why he did not come to me, I found him lying still.

  “Dash! Dashy!” I cried.

  He did not move and then I knew.

  I sat there, the tears flowing. Albert came and found me.

  He lifted me up and held me tenderly in his arms. He said, “He was getting old, you know.”

  I nodded.

  “He was stiff with rheumatism. He could not run as he used to. That must have been a trial for him. He had to go, Liebchen. It happens.”

  What a comfort Albert was. He said we would bury him with honors for he had been a good friend to me and I had loved him dearly. He used to enjoy going up to Adelaide Cottage and we decided he should be buried there.

  I had a marble stone made for him and on it were engraved the words Albert and I had chosen for him:

  Here lies

  DASH

  The favorite spaniel of Her Majesty Queen Victoria In his tenth year

  His attachment was without selfishness

  His playfulness without malice

  His fidelity without deceit

  READER

  If you would be loved and regretted

  Profit by the example of

  DASH

  Whenever I was at Windsor, I would walk to his grave and remember.

  WHILE WE WERE at Windsor I wrote to Lord Melbourne. I was a natural writer and so wrote many letters; and I often picked up my pen and wrote to my friends when the mood took me—and Lord Melbourne of course was a very special friend who received his fair share of my letters.

  I reproached him for not joining us at Windsor. I wished he had. Albert was less eager for his company. Although Albert enjoyed good conversation, he liked it to be serious, and Lord Melbourne's was hardly that. Albert had urged me again to invite what he called more interesting people to our dinners. He said conversation was often dull. It was never dull with Lord M but my dear Prime Minister's rather cynical approach to life did not appeal to Albert, and although Lord Melbourne had been a very good friend to Albert—and Albert realized this—he did not enjoy his company as I did.

  Lord M wrote that the uncertainty of events kept him in London. He reminded me that I should have to return for the Opening of Parliament and he was sorry to take me away from the joys of domesticity at Windsor. He was giving a great deal of thought to a speech from the throne in view of the difficult situation. Moreover, there was the baby's christening to be considered.

  I wrote back that I was reluctant to leave Windsor. I was growing more and more fond of the place because Albert loved it so much. The forest reminded him of his own dear Rosenau, and he had made me see so much more of the delights of nature than I ever had before. There was one reason why my return to London would be very agreeable. I should have the pleasure of seeing Lord Melbourne.

  When I did see him I sensed at once that there was a certain gravity in his manner. Things, he said, were not good. The Exchequer was in a weak state; and I guessed that he was worried about the imminent fall of the government. I knew, of course, that this had to come. Conversations with Albert had taught me that a government cannot go on tottering forever. It must collapse sooner or later. A very depressing thought. Albert was not in the least depressed by the prospect. I knew that he thought Sir Robert Peel was a politician of greater worth than Lord Melbourne. It was a matter we did not discuss because we both knew that the outcome might end in a storm neither of us wanted.

  I opened Parliament in late January and it was decided that the christening should take place on the anniversary of our wedding day.

  Uncle Leopold promised to attend. I was delighted at the prospect of seeing him but I was without that wild joy with which I used to anticipate his visits in my childhood. I hoped he would not lecture me on the duty of producing more children or my behavior with Albert. He would probably advise Albert, too. I often wondered what account Stockmar gave to him, and how much he knew of our domestic trials.

  We had snow, which turned to ice, and there was a strong wind buffeting the walls of the Palace. Albert enjoyed it. He loved the gardens at Buckingham Palace. They were quite extensive—forty acres actually— and in some parts of them it was like the country. Albert and I would walk under the trees and he would give me his little botany lessons that I tried hard to concentrate on to please him.

  He was delighted when the pond froze so that he could go skating. He told me how he and Ernest had skated at Rosenau. Rosenau seemed perfection. The weather was always right and there always seemed to be harmony between the brothers—in spite of the differences in their characters. I began to suspect that events seen from a distance gained a certain enchantment which bemused even such a calm and reasonable person as Albert.

  However, he went to skate. I would have joined him in this but he forbade it… oh, in such a tender way, b
ecause, he said, I was not yet recovered from Pussette's birth, so I contented myself with watching. Wrapped up in furs, my ladies and I would go out and admire Albert as he moved across the ice so beautifully. He was very graceful. I knew the English did not like his looks. They said he did not look as an Englishman should look; with those beautiful blue eyes and dark lashes and clear-cut features he was almost like a woman. They liked men to be men, they said. What they meant was that they liked them to be Englishmen and not Germans. They commented on his figure—his small waist and well-shaped legs. Not entirely manly, they said.

  A terrible thing happened that morning. I have never forgotten it. I might so easily have lost him then. I remember still those moments when I saw him disappear beneath the ice.

  I had just been thinking that it was a little warmer, but that the ice might have thawed did not enter my head until it happened.

  “Albert!” I screamed; and in the space of a few seconds I lived through nightmares. I pictured them bringing him out of the lake. I saw his body on a stretcher, stiff and cold. Albert, my beloved, lost to me forever.

  Then I saw Albert's head above the hole in the ice and I ran. There was no time to do anything else. I had to save him.

  I stepped cautiously onto the ice. Albert saw me. He called, “Go back. The ice is too thin. It's dangerous.”

  But I did not heed him. I was not going to stand by and wait for people to come and rescue Albert.

  I moved toward him. The ice was holding and my determination to save him was stronger than my fear or my weakness. I was there.

  I stretched out a hand.

  “Go back,” cried Albert.

  But I continued to hold out my hand. He grasped it and to my infinite joy, by clinging to me he was able to scramble out of the water.

  “Oh Albert,” I cried, sobbing with relief. But I was practical immediately. He was shivering with cold in his wet garments. “Come quickly into the Palace,” I said.

  Divested of his sodden clothes, wrapped in warm blankets, sipping hot punch, Albert smiled at me tenderly.

  “My brave Liebchen,” he said.

  “Oh, Albert, if I should lose you I should want to die,” I said; and I meant it.

  I ENJOYED THE christening. It was wonderful to see dear Uncle Leopold, and it was amazing how little my resentments seemed to matter when I was face to face with him. He was one of the sponsors. Albert's father was also one, but as he was unable to attend, the Duke of Wellington stood proxy for him. Mama, Queen Adelaide, the Duchess of Gloucester, and the Duke of Sussex were the other sponsors.

  Pussy behaved with unusual decorum and did not cry at all. She seemed quite interested in the gloriously apparelled people who surrounded her. She was really becoming quite pretty. A fact that delighted me. I could not have borne it if she had retained the froglike features of her birth.

  Lord Melbourne attended the ceremony. He looked at me very sentimentally and I was touched with uneasiness for I knew things were going very badly for the government.

  “The baby behaved impeccably,” he said. “I can see she is going to take after her mother.”

  I laughed.

  “She might have shown some displeasure,” he went on. “Think what an effect that would have had on the proceedings.”

  He could always bring a light touch into everything even when he was disturbed.

  I arranged that Lord Melbourne should sit beside me at the dinner party that followed the christening; and we talked a great deal about old times and he was his usual witty self.

  I could not help thinking how sad I should be if I should have to accept another in his place.

  It was soon after that when I made a truly alarming discovery. I was pregnant once more.

  MY FIRST IMPULSE was fury; then the fear came. Oh, no, I could not go through all that again… and so soon. I was only just getting over Pussy's birth, and here I was starting it all over again.

  I loved Albert, and in spite of one or two storms, my marriage was a happy one, but this side of it could never please me. It was the shadow side of marriage.

  Albert was delighted at the prospect of another child and I resented his pleasure.

  “You, Albert, do not have to go through all the tiresome painful ordeals.”

  Albert said that it was God's will, and that children had to be born as they were.

  “Then I wish that He had given men a bigger share in it,” I retorted.

  Albert was shocked by what he considered blasphemy, but I meant it.

  When I told Lehzen she was horrified. “But it is far too soon. My precious one, you have only just recovered. Oh, this is too bad… this is thoughtlessness. This is putting too big a burden on my little one.”

  She took a delight in blaming Albert; and such was my mood at the time that I let her go on.

  I said, “I hated it. All those people in the next room, waiting…Oh, I know it is the custom in the case of a royal birth…”

  “It's inhuman,” said Lehzen.

  “I shall not allow it again.”

  “And why should you?” asked Lehzen.

  “I cannot bear it, Daisy,” I cried. “Not again. So soon.”

  “There, my precious,” she soothed. But much as she felt for me she could not hide the fact that she was pleased because she believed I felt some resentment against Albert.

  I was always so very disturbed to see this animosity between those two whom I loved.

  THAT WAS A sad year for me. During the months that followed I went through all the discomforts of pregnancy; but more than that, change was forced upon me and I had to face the fact that I was going to be deprived of one who was very important to me: my dear Lord M.

  There was a conflict of loyalties. I had my ties with my foreign relations always in mind; and these were in constant opposition to the good of my country. Lord Palmerston was an arrogant man; I knew he was shrewd and very clever; he would have no interference in foreign affairs outside the government, which meant that my wishes were of no importance to him.

  The trouble was the growing breach between France and England; and of course Uncle Leopold had strong ties with France, Aunt Louise being the daughter of Louis Philippe.

  It was due to that old nuisance, Mehemet Ali. Palmerston wanted to crush him and so put an end to French domination in Egypt. Lord John Russell did not agree with Palmerston, which meant there was a division within the government itself. Lord Melbourne, in his usual way, wanted to let it alone and I begged him to override Palmerston and seek a peaceful settlement with France. But Palmerston was not the man to be overridden. He ordered the British fleet to take action and so forced Mehemet Ali to go back to his allegiance to the Sultan.

  Palmerston was triumphant when he succeeded in this for it turned out that his calculations had been correct, and Louis Philippe was disinclined to take the offensive on behalf of his Egyptian ally. Instead he joined with the other states involved, who pledged themselves to maintain Turkey and Egypt in status quo.

  Palmerston's bold—and successful—action was regarded with dismay by Uncle Leopold and the French, and a great coldness blew up between England and that country. Albert sided with Leopold and the French; and he made me see that I should take their side.

  Meanwhile the government was growing weaker. The triumph abroad meant little to the people; it was home affairs that were of the utmost importance to them.

  The blow came in May—the month of my twenty-second birthday.

  The government's budget, which leaned toward free trade and reduced the tax on sugar, was defeated by a majority of thirty-six. Sir Robert Peel immediately called for a vote of no confidence in the government and he won. It was true by only one vote. But that was enough.

  Albert was very grave. “This will mean an election,” he said.

  “I pray the Whigs will succeed,” I replied fervently.

  “I think, my love, that is most unlikely.”

  “Oh Albert, I cannot bear to think of those terrible T
ories in power.”

  “My dearest, Sir Robert Peel is one of the finest statesmen in the country—I might say the finest.”

  I hated those sly references to Lord Melbourne and I felt my anger rising.

  “I cannot endure the man,” I said shortly.

  “I think if you give him a chance you will change your mind. When he came to see you he was aware of your animosity and that must have made him a little nervous. I think if you would set aside your dislike, you would get to know him very well.”

  “How can one set aside one's dislikes!”

  “By taking an unjaundiced view, by looking at the man as he is and not merely as the opponent of one whom you want to keep in office.”

  “My dear Albert, you have no idea what I have suffered through that man. He wanted to turn out my bedchamber women. I cannot go through all that again…at this time…in my condition.”

  Albert soothed me. “Come and sit down, Liebchen. I want to talk to you and I want you to listen carefully and promise not to be angry.”

  “Angry… with you!”

  He nodded. “I want you to know that everything I have done is for your good…to make you happy…to make life easy for you during these months that I know are trying for you.”

  I lay against him. I loved to hear him talk like that.

  “I know, dearest Albert, that you are so good to me. I have a hot temper. I am impulsive… and not always appreciative. But I do know … yes, I do, that you love me and that this love between us is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “I believe that, too. My dear one, we have to face facts. There is going to be an election and the Tories are going to win.”

  “How can you be so sure of that? I could not bear it.”

  “It is almost a certainty. For a long time the government has been on the verge of collapse. It has come now.”

  “Then the new Prime Minister will be Sir Robert Peel.”

  Albert nodded.

  “Albert, I cannot bear it. The trouble I had last time…I managed to get rid of them.”