‘You wished to see me?’
‘Oh! Yes – yes, Cousin! Come in.’ He came in and shut the door behind him, and stood waiting with an enquiring look for me to speak. He did not seem at all conscious; I might have been going to secure him as my partner for a game of Tactics after dinner. The nervousness was all mine. I twisted my hands together to stop them shaking and tried to speak naturally, though I’m afraid my voice came out rather higher than usual. ‘I – I saw you coming up the hill. Did you have a pleasant ride?’
‘Very pleasant, thank you.’
‘And have they given you a nice horse?’
‘A delightful horse, indeed.’
‘The weather is rather warm for riding, however.’
‘Perhaps it is a little, now. It was cooler when we set off.’
I racked my brains for something else to say, and cursed my unready tongue for offering me no words. I had never had any small-talk, as I often complained to Lord M. ‘Say anything rather than nothing,’ he always told me. And suddenly, thinking of him, I felt quite calm. It was absurd to be hunting about for trifling things to say, when our lives were waiting to be determined. I lifted my eyes to his, and though I could feel my cheeks burning with consciousness, I said bravely, ‘I think you must know, really, why I have asked you to come here this morning. There is something that I must ask you.’ Now I saw a blush rise from his collar and rush up to his cheeks, and the realisation that he was shy, too, strengthened me. I would have died to save him the least embarrassment, and my heart overflowed into words – ardent, simple words, the best, really, if I had thought about it. ‘Dearest Albert, I am so very much in love with you that I can hardly bear it! It would make me really too happy if you would consent to what I wish – that is, to marry me!’
It was like the breaking of a dam. I saw his cheek pale, and then somehow or other he had crossed the space between us without my knowing how he did it, had taken me in his arms, and was kissing me again and again, my cheek, brow, lips. A few words escaped him, all in German: ‘Liebe Kleine … darling Little One … I love you too, so much!’ I was stunned, dazed with happiness; I clung to him, returned his kisses with ardour, astonished to know that my love was returned, and by such an angel as Albert. He loved me! He did love me, and how was that possible? In a little while he took my hands and led me over to the sofa, and we sat down together, gazing at each other, laughing now with relief and happiness.
‘Will you really marry me?’ I asked incredulously. ‘Really?’
‘It will give me the greatest happiness I can imagine on this earth,’ he said, ‘to share my life with you.’
I felt so humble, so glad. ‘Oh, you are too good! I know I am not worthy of you, dearest, dearest Albert, but I will try so hard to make you happy!’
‘No, no, it is I who must make you happy! It will be both my duty and my pleasure.’
I lifted his dear hand to my lips and kissed it, and laid it against my cheek. ‘You are making a great sacrifice, I know, but I will strive to make you feel it as little as possible.’
‘It is no sacrifice,’ he said earnestly. ‘You must believe me.’
But, ‘It is, I know it is!’ I cried. ‘You will give up so much for me, and I—’
‘Victoria!’ My name, spoken by him for the first time without qualification, shocked me into silence. Now he had my attention, he took my face gently between his hands, looking down seriously into my eyes. ‘You must believe me, I make no sacrifice. I love you very much, and we will have a most fortunate life together.’ And then, still holding my face, he lowered his head and kissed my lips. ‘Dearest little one, I love you so very much!’ he whispered. He kissed me again, but now it was different. A stillness seemed to come over me; I tasted him, and it was strange and exciting, something outside my imaginings. The taste of a man! His lips parted, I tasted his mouth, and it seemed some essence of him was passing into my body, and I could feel my heart beating against my ribs like a captive bird, almost frighteningly hard, as if it wanted to get to him. When his mouth left mine at last he clasped me close, resting his cheek against my head, and I could hear him breathing quick, as though he had been running. My body was a torrent of excitement. What was happening? What would happen next? ‘Is it love?’ I asked wildly. ‘Yes, yes, it is love,’ he replied almost gruffly; and he sounded as if he, too, was astonished. ‘Will you love me for ever?’ I cried. ‘Oh yes, for ever!’
At last we were able to separate ourselves (not very far, only far enough to hold hands and look at each other) and talk a little about what we should do. I told him that I thought we should marry in February, and what Lord Melbourne had said about Parliament.
‘He knows then? Lord Melbourne knows?’
‘Dear love, he is my Prime Minister. I had to speak to him – but no-one else, I promise you.’
‘Yes, yes, I must not forget that you are the Queen. Who else must you tell?’
He sounded upset by the idea. ‘No-one!’ I cried hastily. ‘No-one at all. I wish it to be our secret, to keep as long as we can.’
‘You will want to tell your mamma?’
‘No,’ I said sharply. ‘Not her.’
He sighed, I think. He was not unaware of the state of things between Mamma and me. ‘Uncle Leopold, then?’
‘Oh yes, we must tell him. How happy he will be! Wise, wise Uncle! He knew from the beginning how it would be.’
‘We should both write to him,’ Albert said, lifting my hand and kissing it. ‘Separately.’
‘And show each other our letters.’
‘If you wish. I shall never have anything to hide from you, dearest Victoria.’
‘Nor I from you, dearest Albert. Let us write at once, after luncheon. But we must ask him to keep it the strictest secret. I don’t want to share you with anyone yet. Oh, what a pity we have to go down to luncheon! I could sit here with you for ever!’
‘We have a little time more,’ he murmured, putting his arms round me, and we kissed again, as if he could never tire of it.
We were not able again that first day to be alone together; but I was so happy I walked as though on a cloud all day, and though I said nothing to anyone about what had happened, I think my eyes must have betrayed me a thousand times. He came down to dinner that first evening of our love in the Windsor uniform of dark blue with the red facings and cuffs. I had once written in my Journal how well Lord Melbourne looked in it; when I saw Albert I could barely keep from crying out. His eyes met mine, and a most loving look passed between us, and I delighted in the warmth of having that secret with him, the best secret of all!
When I was about to retire for the night, my dresser gave me a note which had been passed to her from Albert’s valet.
Dearest, greatly beloved Victoria, how is it that I have deserved so much love, so much affection? I cannot get used to the reality of all I see and hear, and have to believe that Heaven has sent me an Angel whose brightness shall illumine my life. I am bewildered by the suddenness with which my situation has changed, from being alone in all I did to being the object of such full, generous, and joyous love as you give me. With your hand and heart I shall have achieved the height of my desire. You are so good and kind to me, that I feel I can never repay you, except with my absolute and lifelong devotion. Good night, God Bless you. Ever, in body and soul, your slave, your loyal, Albert.
Oh Albert, my own, my dear love, all I have of you now is your letters! Holding that one in my hand – the first you sent me in our lives together – I kiss your dear name, remembering that the pen that made those strokes was held by your warm and living hand, your strong, young hand! Your warm, moist tongue dampened the wafer that sealed it! You were alive, flesh and pulsing blood, with me in the world, there to be seen and touched and held! How little I thought then that I could ever be without you! Why did you leave me here alone? It is a cruel and bitter thing to be without you, even now, all these years later. When I remember that first time that you took me in your arms, I would give
anything I have to go back, just for a few moments, and taste that joy again.
But it is impossible, of course; and even if it were not, I have nothing to give that would be enough. Time makes no bargains with us, for Time holds all the high cards.
Later
I HAD to break off for a while. It astonishes me a little that I can still weep, all these years later. But oh, my loss! Well, I can think, I can remember, and it will have to do. Those days of our courtship, how heady they were! What perfect, perfect happiness! Even being separated from him for a few hours was a joy, because of the thought of reunion, and how sweet it would be, the anticipation of his kisses made sharper by waiting. We lived only for each other, and when we were in company and could not touch each other, I touched him with my eyes, and felt him caressing me with his. When he danced with me, we locked our hands tightly together; and when he danced with someone else, I felt the imprint on my own hand of the long fingers I saw folded so indifferently round another’s.
But when we were alone together – and it happened more and more often as poor Ernst ailed and hardly left his bed – we flew together like magnets, and I was crushed in his arms and kissed and kissed until I was breathless. Though in his shyness he had few words, he told me everything with his body. Now when I attended to business in the Blue Closet, he was there with me, to wield the blotter for me and correct my spelling. He laughed very much to see that I wrote ‘schocking’ instead of ‘shocking’. ‘Was für ein’ vierkliches Alpenblümchen bist du!’ he chuckled. When he sat to scratch out my mistakes, I leaned on his shoulder, and dropped kisses on the top of his head. ‘Your hair is so fine, so beautiful, I love it so!’ ‘Can you love even the top of my head?’ he asked, half laughing, half in wonder. ‘Every single part of you, from the crown of your head to the tip of your toes.’ ‘Liebes Kleinschen! Du bist so zuss!’ ‘In English!’ ‘I cannot in English! I have not the words.’
Little one, little one! He called me that so often, as though my smallness were in itself something lovely. Once when I was writing and he was hovering over me with the blotter, he suddenly took the pen from my hand and lifted my fingers and kissed them. ‘Your little fingers are so small, I can hardly believe they are fingers! Look how I can cover your hand completely with one of mine. It astonishes me.’ He shook his head in smiling wonder. ‘The only other hands I have ever held until now are Ernst’s, and they are like a giant’s compared with these fairylike things!’ There was no more writing then. He led me to the sofa, and took me in his arms. ‘I love you so much, ich kann nicht sagen wie!’
One day I asked, as lovers do, ‘When did you guess that I loved you? Did you know what I was going to say, that day I called you here?’
‘No, I was taken completely by surprise. I did not expect it all to happen so quickly. The last I had heard, you were wanting to put me off for three more years. I came prepared to tell you I would not wait – villain that I am, to think of threatening such a thing!’
‘Oh, but how wicked I was to think of making you wait so long! But it was only because they kept teasing me and pressing me so much, and I can never bear to be forced to anything. And I hadn’t seen you then, dearest, dearest love. Now you are here, now I have seen you, all I want is to be yours instantly!’
‘Can you really love me so much?’ His eyes filled with tears, and he pressed me to his heart and cried, ‘Ich habe dich so unausfrechlich lieb!’ and then covered me with kisses. (Torture to remember, but sweet, so sweet. Anyone who has loved will have known such moments; and I am glad there are new lovers in the world every day, who can feel as we felt, and touch, and know. Nothing dies for ever; all things are renewed. But love while you can, young lovers, for it will be meagre comfort later, to watch those who come after you as I watch you.)
In those long talks we had that autumn at Windsor, he told me about his childhood in the Schloss Rosenau, four miles from Coburg, a small palace, not grand so much as gemütlich, he said, built in the Gothic style with a mock battlemented tower, lots of decorated stonework, and a vast corby-stepped (as the Scotch call it) gable. Rosenau sat in the foothills of the Thuringian mountains; the River Itz flowed through its flower-bright meadows, and the music of a waterfall tumbling into a grotto could be heard from its terraces. This paradise was at the heart of the green forest, and at night cruel nature would creep right up to its walls, and the child Albert would hear the scream of rabbits, the soft, deadly rush of owls’ wings, the fantastic barking of the stags challenging death. But in summer the liquid cooing of wood-pigeons perching on the window-sill in the early sun would wake him; and through the open windows he would hear the splash of the fountain in the courtyard and the chack-chack of jackdaws echoing amongst the chimneys.
He told me about his own little room, with the green wallpaper all patterned over with convolvulus, and the cedar chest which gave such a wonderful aromatic smell to his clothes – ‘as though the forest had come right into the house’. He told me about riding with Ernst, about the green, spicy smell of the woods, and the particular soft sound of horse-hooves muffled by thick layers of pine-needles. He told me about the little gardens he and Ernst had created and tended themselves, and the bathing-house built for them on the lake, where they learned to swim. He told me of the collections they had made of minerals, pressed flowers, stuffed birds, and insects, and the miniature wooden house, like a Swiss cottage, where they had kept their ‘museum’.
He told me a little, just a little, about his mother (the rest came later, in the safe, warm darkness of a shared bed, where the best and saddest secrets are told). She had been married as a romantic girl of sixteen to his father, a man fourteen years older with already debauched habits, who had neglected her shamefully while running after other women of the lowest sort. Princess Louise had been a tiny creature of fairylike, golden beauty and bubbling high spirits, gentle, charming and warm-hearted. Albert had adored her; but when he was four she had been sent away, and he had not even been allowed to say goodbye to her.
‘Ernst and I had whooping-cough. We were isolated in the nursery, we didn’t even know she was going. I heard the horses’ hooves crossing the courtyard, and though I didn’t know what horses they were, I had such a feeling of foreboding that I cried out. I cried and called for her, but she didn’t come.’ He paused, and added after a moment, ‘I never saw her again.’
The fact of the matter was that, neglected by her unfaithful husband, the Princess had sought comfort of her own with a gentleman of the court, a Baron von Meyern. Duke Ernst discovered the affair and sent her away; two years later they were divorced and she married her lover, but died at the age of only thirty-one after a long and bitter illness. Albert never forgot her. On the day he left me to go back to Coburg, he gave me a little turquoise pin which had belonged to her, and I knew what a treasure he was bestowing on me.
After his mother’s departure Albert and Ernst had been taken from their nurse and given into the care of a tutor, Herr Florschütz, and had been brought up from that time entirely by men. (I think perhaps that may have been why Albert never cared for women’s company, and was always very shy and reserved with them. After our marriage, when I first introduced him to my ladies, he found it a great bore and had the greatest difficulty in remembering one from another. He had learned his manners, of course, and could be attentive, but he never really liked women – except for me – and of course they instinctively knew it.) He also had a deep horror (engendered by the activities of his father and brother) of infidelity and sexual adventure, which he condemned utterly. That accorded wholly with my own wishes with regard to him, of course! I had never been particularly censorious about such things in others (society in those days was so loose that it would have done me no good) but as far as my own husband was concerned, I would never have tolerated the least deviation; and it was good to know that I never could have had the slightest reason for unease on that score. Albert loved me, and was interested in no-one else, and that suited me perfectly.
He told me that when he had met me in 1836 he had thought me amazingly sophisticated, because I knew how to go on in company and did not seem to feel shy and ill at ease, as he did! (I naturally told him how far that was from the truth; that I was desperately shy in company, but in view of my position had had to learn how to hide it.) He said he had had no idea how unhappy my childhood had been, and pitied me greatly, for he had always loved his father (in spite of his wickedness) and had been gently treated by him; and of course he had had Ernst for a companion, and they had always been very fond brothers.
‘I hate to think of you so lonely, my Victoria,’ he said. ‘I shall see to it that you are never lonely again. I shall be everything to you – father, mother, brothers and sisters.’
‘And lover,’ I suggested slyly, and he laughed and kissed me. ‘Zelbsverständlich!’
We exchanged locks of our hair, and marvelled at how close in colour they were; we sang duets together, and our voices blended into a single strand; and one day he taught me to waltz. We moved so well together, like one creature with four legs! It was a delicious feeling to have a man’s arm so strongly round my waist, and to whirl and whirl about the room with him. The motion was so exciting, I could see why the waltz had been banned for so long from polite society! We had an informal dance on the last day of his visit, and waltzed together in company for the first time, to show everyone how well we suited.
‘I like the thought that you will never waltz with anyone but me,’ he murmured into my ear.
‘I like the thought that this will be my last dance of any sort as an unmarried girl,’ I whispered in reply, and I think we both blushed a little.
By that time I had told my mother the secret that everyone else must already have guessed. Albert insisted that I must tell her, and so on the 10th of November I sent for her and told her that I had something to say that I was sure would please her, namely that I had chosen Albert for my future husband. She stared at me for a moment as though she could not believe her ears, and then her face crumpled and she burst into tears. She put her arms out to me and cried, ‘Oh Vickelschen, oh I am so glad, so very glad!’ I allowed her to embrace me, and, moved by her evident delight, even patted her back a little, awkwardly. Then I put her away from me, and she dabbed at her eyes with a scrap of lace handkerchief, and putting her head on one side a little, in that birdlike way she had, she said, ‘Well, my child, though you have not asked me for it, I give you my blessing, my best blessing to the marriage. It is what I always hoped for, ever since you both shared the same midwife.’
I, Victoria Page 20