I, Victoria

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  There were things about this speech which gave me foreboding, which I didn’t want to think about. I hastened to call in Albert, who had been waiting in the next room, and Mamma flung her arms around him effusively, and broke into a stream of German. She was so happy, she said, so delighted; she would bless the day when she could call him ‘son’; she was as anxious for his happiness as for mine (or perhaps a little more so, I thought sourly, watching her face); and she begged him to call her Mamma from that day onwards.

  Albert said everything that was proper, and I was proud of him. But Mamma showed her true colours afterwards, for the very next day she wrote a letter to me of bitter recrimination, saying that she, my own mother, was the last person in the Palace to know about the betrothal, that even Albert’s valet had been told before her (which was not true, though I should have thought him a simpleton not to have guessed – but then she might have guessed just as well). She plagued Albert with letters, too, begging him to appoint her friend Lord Dunfermline as his personal adviser, and saying that she wanted to go on living with us after we were married – which I’m glad to say struck Albert with as much horror as it did me. Of course, I wrote back with great firmness saying it was impossible; after which she sent me endless tiresome, complaining letters, saying that she was being turned out of her own home, that it would break her heart to leave me, that Albert and I were so young we must have an older head to advise us, that she could not afford a separate establishment, and so on and so on. I think it was a revelation to Albert to see what I had had to put up with; but he dealt with his part of the business with great tact and kindness, and began to lay the foundations of a better understanding between Mamma and me – though that was not to be for a few years yet.

  Other members of the royal family were told by letter of our betrothal, and I was gratified by the cordiality of their good wishes for us. Some of them called with their congratulations – amongst them my cousin George Cambridge, whose chilly reserve towards me was quite melted away now that he was safe from having to marry me. We shook hands warmly and became good friends from then on.

  Albert and Ernst were to leave for Coburg on Thursday the 14th of November, and that day dawned heavily for me; but Albert cheered me at once by sending Eos in to ‘say goodbye’ to me while I was dressing. She gave me her paw, and when I caressed her silky, bony head she licked my hand affectionately. Later Albert and I had our private farewell in the Blue Closet, where we had spent so many hours of blissful communion. He gave me his mother’s pin and promised to write every day.

  ‘Only three months – not even quite three,’ he said, ‘and I shall be with you again.’

  ‘And you will come to me then as a bridegroom, not a cousin,’ I replied. He drew me to him, and I rested my cheek against his. ‘I don’t know how I shall get through the time.’

  ‘You will have so much to do, it will pass in a flash,’ he said. ‘As I will, saying goodbye to everything.’ And then he put me gently from him. ‘Let me look once more into those beautiful eyes before I go,’ he said. He looked down gravely into my face. ‘So clear, like pools of pure water. I love that honesty in you, Victoria. Don’t let anything ever change that.’

  ‘I shan’t change,’ I said. ‘I love you, Albert.’

  ‘I love you, too.’ He kissed me once more, and then it was time to go. I went with him to my dressing-room, where Mamma and Ernst waited, and then escorted them to the top of the staircase, kissed Albert one last time, and watched them go down to their carriage and drive away. Then I could only run away to my room and cry – wretched to have parted with him, and yet happy to think that we would meet again so soon, and be united then for ever. When I was able to stop crying, I wrote a letter to him, and then spent the afternoon in the indulgence of talking about him with my kind Lord M.

  7th May 1900

  I HAVE got out the letters he sent me from Coburg during those three months. They were my comfort then, and touch me still, speaking as they do of his love and joy. ‘I have your dear, loving letter before me, and rejoice to read over and over again the intimate outpouring of your warm and tender heart. It is my greatest delight to see there in your own dear words the thing which is of the greatest importance to me – that you love me. How often I wish I had that same passionate nature! It pains me to think how cold and stiff my letters to you must seem in comparison with yours; for though I love you deeply, I have no words to express my feelings about you, however much I try to look for them. Dearest, most greatly beloved one, I can only trust that you do know how truly I am devoted to you; that you recognise that only the thought that I exist for you gives meaning to my life.’

  And another: ‘Your dear picture stands on my table in front of me, and I can hardly take my eyes from it. I imagine you there in the little blue sitting-room where we were so happy, sitting together on the little sofa. How I wish I could be transported there by magic, to cheer your loneliness.’

  And another: ‘My desire is to walk through the whole of my life, with its joys and storms, with you at my side! Where love is, there is happiness. Love of you fills my heart.’

  I read them over and over again until I feared my eyes must wear the words from the pages. To be loved by him – by this perfect angel, so beautiful, so intelligent, so good – seemed too fortunate to be true. I could scarcely believe myself so blessed; and in just a few weeks I would be joined to him in matrimony, and he would be entirely mine, all my own, for ever. I could only vow to strive to make myself worthy of him.

  It must be said, however, that the rest of the country did not at that time see my beloved in the same light. Lord M. had warned me how it would be, but I was not then to learn that foreigners were unpopular. It was a time when Chartism was on the rise, and poverty and unrest were rife; the wealthy believed all foreigners were fomentors of revolution, while the working classes believed they imported notions of absolutism and repression and the Divine Right of Kings.

  Of all foreigners, Germans were the most disliked, and of German states, Coburg. ‘Lucky Coburg’, they said, had once again allied itself above its station. It was a nothing of a country, a tin-pot place with a population no bigger than that of Bristol, and an income not half as big. Albert was handsome, but he was just another penniless princeling. Why should England be expected to keep supporting these nobodies?

  Lord M. had told me that there would be no difficulty in getting the usual pension of £50,000 per annum for Albert through Parliament – after all, it had been recognised as the appropriate income for the sovereign’s consort for more than a century, ever since Queen Anne had married George of Denmark. However, when Lord John Russell rose to propose it in the Commons, the Radicals and the Tories spoke out against it. The country was in a poor way, they said, and people were starving. Did the House not remember that when the grant of £50,000 to Prince Leopold was proposed, the feeling had been that it was too high? How much more so was it now, when times were bad! And besides, it was known to be a very dangerous thing to set a young man down in London with so much money in his pocket. Colonel Sibthorpe, a rabid Tory, proposed £30,000 instead, and the motion was carried by an insultingly large majority (Sir Robert Peel voted for it, something I found it difficult to forgive him for later!). It meant that my beloved angel was valued at £20,000 a year less than stupid, insignificant George of Denmark! I was furious, and blamed the Tories bitterly. Lord M. tried to persuade me it was because of the economic state of the country, but I knew what was at the bottom of it.

  ‘As long as I live, I shall never forgive those infernal scoundrels, those abominable, infamous Tories!’ I wrote in my Journal. ‘Poor dear Albert, how cruelly they are using that dearest angel! Monsters! You Tories will be punished! Revenge! Revenge!’

  The next struggle with Parliament was over the question of Albert’s rank. I had reluctantly given up (for the time being, at least) the hope of having him made King Consort, but Lord M. had promised me that there would be no difficulty in giving him the pre
cedence I preferred, which was immediately after me. However, when this was proposed, as one of the clauses of Albert’s Naturalization Bill, the Opposition began rumbling again. The Duke objected to this ‘controversial issue’ being ‘smuggled in’ in a Bill on nationality; Lord Brougham maintained that it was for Parliament to propose the Prince’s rank, not the Crown. My uncle Cumberland, who was now King of Hanover, of course, declared he would not give place to a ‘paper Royal Highness’, and bullied my uncles Sussex and Cambridge (who would have agreed to anything for an increase in their pensions) into siding with him. Finally the Duke pointed out stiffly that if Albert were given the rank I desired, he would take precedence over his own eldest son, which would be constitutionally impossible. And what if the Queen should die without producing an heir? The Prince would then rank higher than the son of the King of Hanover, the Heir Apparent himself.

  In the end, the Bill went through with the question of precedence still undecided, and I added the Duke to the list of ‘nasty wretches’ on whom I cried revenge. Indeed, when Lord M. produced a list of guests for my wedding, I took up a pen to strike out the Duke’s name, declaring that I would not invite that wicked, foolish old man to the Chapel Royal.

  ‘I must beg you to think again,’ Lord M. said, sounding quite alarmed. ‘By reason of his age, station and position he cannot be omitted. It would be the gravest insult.’

  ‘I mean it to be an insult,’ I said. ‘He has insulted my beloved Albert.’

  ‘He did not mean it so. He only did what he thought right according to his conscience,’ Lord M. said anxiously.

  ‘I don’t believe it. He hates us; and this is my wedding, and I will only have those who sympathise with me. Why should I surround myself with enemies on this day of all others?’

  ‘I do assure you, ma’am, the Duke is not your enemy. One of the reasons he is so highly respected is that his disinterestedness in matters concerning the well-being of the nation and the Crown is beyond question.’ I knew this was true, but it only made me feel crosser and more sulky. ‘And since he is so well respected, his supporters will expect him to be at your wedding.’

  ‘Let them expect!’ I snapped. ‘Tories to a man! And what do I owe them? Nothing but hate.’

  ‘The whole country will expect it,’ Lord M. said inexorably. ‘The Duke is a great hero, the saviour of England in the late wars, and our most eminent statesman. If you leave him out, there will be a dreadful scandal which will certainly damage the Crown. I cannot allow you to risk that.’ He smiled at my scowling face. ‘Would I insist on it if it were not so important? I know how important your wedding day is to you as a woman; but you must also see how important it is for the Queen of England to do her duty.’

  ‘Very well,’ I snapped. ‘If I must have him to the wedding, I must, but I will not invite him to the breakfast afterwards.’ And then, seeing his careworn face, I realised how much I had been vexing him lately, after neglecting him the whole time that Albert was in England. I softened. ‘Tell me the truth,’ I said hesitantly. ‘Do you think I am growing obstinate?’

  ‘Well, rather,’ he said with a crooked smile, and then we both laughed.

  The next difficulty arose over the question of my bridesmaids. That they must be young women of good character was certain; but Albert wrote to say he felt I should strike off anyone whose mother had had a chequered history. I was doubtful about this, for in the past – in Lord M.’s heyday – different standards had applied to the ladies of the aristocracy so it would hardly be fair to judge them, as it were, in retrospect; and besides, if people were to be blamed for the sins of their mothers, my own Albert would be sent to the right-about. However, I wanted to please him, so on his urging I presented the suggestion to Lord Melbourne.

  Lord M. was taken aback. ‘My dear ma’am, it will not do! One might ask for references when engaging a cook or a footman, but one can hardly do the same for people of rank. To enquire into the conduct of a Duchess would be the most frightful impertinence.’

  ‘But can there be one rule for the low and one for the high?’ I said. ‘The Prince believes I should be surrounded only by the morally irreproachable.’

  ‘That would be a very difficult feat to manage,’ he said wryly. ‘Which of us, indeed, is beyond reproach? I must tell you, ma’am, that Lady William Russell said of the Prince that his character was such as would be highly approved at a German university, but somewhat ridiculed at one of ours.’

  ‘No, really,’ I said, ‘it is too shocking that morality should be ridiculed in universities!’

  ‘One should not ridicule what is truly good,’ he agreed, ‘but the persecuting of everyone’s little peccadilloes is not what I would expect a monarch to stoop to. One looks for a certain greatness in one’s sovereign, a certain being above noticing such things.’

  I should have been angered at the implication, but the image he conveyed rather tickled my imagination. ‘I believe, my lord,’ I said teasingly, ‘that you do not like the Prince as much as you would if he were not so strict.’

  ‘Oh! no, I deeply admire his strictness in respect of himself; but one ought not to judge other people too severely, or one is liable to make all sorts of mistakes. Remember the lamentable case of Lady F. H?’

  ‘Pray do not remind me of that!’ I said hastily, feeling myself blush.

  ‘I do so not to give you pain,’ he said, ‘but to warn you against finding fault too readily. In this country all should go by law and precedent. If someone should ask you to sit in judgement upon accusations or reports against anyone’s private character, you should advise them that you do not care to pronounce a verdict where you are not the proper Court of Appeal.’

  This seemed to me to be excellent advice, and as far as I could, I lived by it afterwards. Albert, having been brought up differently, and with such an example always in his mind from his own parents, remained a great stickler for spotlessness of reputation. For myself, I would always sooner not enquire into people’s pasts, as long as they behaved themselves while in my service.

  While we were wrestling with these difficulties, Mamma was still being as troublesome as she knew how, demanding to be given precedence of my aunts at my wedding – ‘Surely the mother of the bride has some importance? I know I am nothing to you, Victoria, but the people will expect it. It is you alone I think of. I would not have them accuse you, dear love, of cold-heartedness towards your own mother’ – and demanding not to be ‘sent away’ and ‘exiled from you’ after the wedding. Neither Lord M. nor I could seem to convince her that she would not be allowed to live with Albert and me afterwards, and I began to have dreadful visions of her having to be dragged away bodily, clinging to every door-frame and shrieking murder!

  With all these frustrations and annoyances, it was hardly to be wondered at that I quarrelled at last even with Albert. He wrote to me demanding to be allowed to choose his own Household, and to include some of his compatriots in his staff; and I was obliged to be firm with him. ‘As to your wish about your gentlemen, I must tell you, my dear Albert, that it will not do. You may entirely rely on me that the people around you will be absolutely pleasant people of high standing and good character, not too idle and not too young. Lord Melbourne has already suggested several to me who would be entirely suitable.’ Lord M. indeed had suggested that his own secretary, George Anson, should become Albert’s private secretary, and it was a choice I thoroughly approved, Anson being a good, gentle, intelligent, hard-working and completely amiable man. ‘I know you will deal excellently together.’

  Albert wrote back his dismay. ‘I am sorry you have not been able to grant my request, for I know it was not an unfair one. As to your suggestion of Mr Anson, I give you to consider, dearest love, if my taking the secretary of the Prime Minister would not make me seem like a partisan in the eyes of many? As to his character, I know nothing of him except that I have heard he is addicted to dancing. I entreat you to allow me to appoint men of my own country – high-minded, virtuous and
non-political men, of the stamp of our dear Dr Stockmar – to my Household.’

  Lord M. was horrified by that idea. ‘It will only draw attention to the Prince’s foreignness, which is the last thing we wish to do. And it will be said that you are ruled by him and he is ruled by Germans.’ Remembering some things that had been said about dear Lehzen, I agreed with him. ‘It is my greatest wish to do everything most agreeable to you, my dearest Albert, but I must differ with you respecting Mr Anson. It is for the Queen to choose your Household, together with her principal minister – a very clever, honest and impartial man – and between us we must know better than you who will be acceptable not only to yourself, but to the people at large. What you suggest would not do at all. Pray do not tax me again on the subject.’

  To my astonishment he did not yield. I next received a quite harrowing letter, appealing to the heart, speaking of his anticipated isolation from everything familiar. ‘Think of my position, dear Victoria: I am leaving home, with all its associations, all my bosom friends, and going to a country where everything is new and strange to me – men, language, customs, modes of life, position. Except yourself, I have no-one to confide in. And is it not even to be conceded to me that two or three of the people who are to have charge of my private affairs, should be persons who already command my confidence?’