I, Victoria

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  And even that very first night, when I understood very little of what was going on, I knew with the instinct of my love that there was for him in what we did a great and terrifying release, a yielding of self that was almost painful to him, and yet which left him redeemed and restored. I understood the greater meaning behind his words, that he could not have done it before, knowing he was pledged to me; and I knew how perilous it was for him even with me, how little defence it left him, who needed so much protection. But I had told him from the beginning openly of my love; from the day that I proposed to him had showed it without hesitation, poured it out for him unstintingly, enough to waste half, if he had a mind, and still be satisfied; and coming with dread to be married to me, like a lamb brought to the sacrifice, he had found not pain and death but safety and life, with the one woman in the world he could truly repose in.

  God brought us together for His purposes, knowing how we would suit, and how well we would work together for His greater glory. (Uncle Leopold, of course, claimed exactly the same credit to himself; but I am not such a simpleton as to mistake the tool for the Carpenter!)

  11th May 1900

  THE THREE days of our honeymoon passed in a whirl; a blissfully happy one for me, a mixture of deeply satisfying moments alone with Albert – waking, breakfasting, working, walking on the Terrace – and in the evenings all the jollity of company to dinner, of mirth, jokes, and laughter. On the Wednesday I sent off to London for one of my favourite Pagets (they were such a large family, they always provided one with a choice for every occasion!) and instructed him to organise a ball at Windsor that evening, with as much company as he could possibly come by. He performed this task with a relish, and we had the most tremendous evening, though poor Albert was still rather under the weather, and disappeared at about eleven o’clock. When I went up at ten minutes after midnight I found him fast asleep on the sofa in our bedroom, looking as beautiful as an angel and as innocent as a child. I roused him with a kiss, and we went in great good humour to bed, where he comported himself neither as angel nor child, but to the great satisfaction of us both.

  On the Thursday evening we had another ball, though a smaller one, and Albert danced a galop with me, which was delightful; and the next morning, Friday the 14th, we went back to London.

  ‘It has gone by so quickly, I can’t believe it’s over,’ I said as the carriage bowled us back towards the capital.

  ‘What is?’ Albert asked, coming back from a reverie.

  ‘Our honeymoon,’ I said.

  He smiled slowly, and reached out for my hand, carrying it back with him into his lap. ‘Oh, that! You are mistaken, liebe kleine. That will never be over.’

  The first months of our marriage were so happy! Back at Buckingham Palace (which had been redecorated for my marriage, with new chintzes, fresh paint, and lots of gilt) we settled to a delightful routine. We breakfasted together, and then took a walk in the gardens with the dogs, where Albert began to transform my lamentable ignorance about things natural. Before I married him, I could hardly have told one tree from another; now I began to learn the qualities of the different plants and the habits of the bees and butterflies. He had such a clear way of explaining things, and I have always loved to learn; teacher and pupil took equal pleasure in the lessons.

  The morning was devoted to work, and while I read despatches and State papers, Albert stood by to blot my signature, or wrote letters of his own at a desk placed alongside mine. I was very jealous of my prerogative, and in those early days did not fully appreciate what a treasure I had. I did not think to share my official work with Albert, and in my still-fresh pleasure in my own powers did not notice that he, too, hated to be idle, and would watch me with a sad, patient look as I did alone what could so much better and more easily have been done by two.

  Luncheon we usually had with a small party, perhaps eight or ten close friends or relatives, and in the afternoon, if I had no official engagements, we would ride out, or walk again, or sketch, or play duets on the piano. In the evening we might go to the theatre or the opera (Albert loved the opera as passionately as I did) or entertain at home with a dinner. I loved the jollity of a large company to dinner, but I have always disapproved of the dreadful custom of the men remaining at the table after the ladies have withdrawn. What happens over the port and brandy is seldom edifying (I have Albert’s word for it!) and I have always frowned on the ‘stayers’ who do more than bow to the convention. Albert, I’m glad to say, disliked the custom as much as I did, and never stayed more than five minutes before joining me in the drawing-room, where he would take the seat beside me and we would laugh and talk so comfortably together. When the rest of the company joined us, we would have music and sing duets, or sometimes he would play chess with Anson while I talked to Lord M.

  Sometimes on ‘company’ evenings we would have an informal ball afterwards. Albert was such a splendid dancer, and I loved to whirl around the room in his arms to the intoxicating rhythm of the waltz. But when the warm weather came, I found it just as intoxicating to slip out with him on to the terrace, and stand with his arm round my waist and my head on his shoulder, listening to the nightingales in the Palace garden. But of course it mattered very little what we did – it was the fact that we did it together that made every activity a joy.

  Sometimes in those early days I would wake up with the old fear, which had afflicted me when I first became Queen, that it would all prove to have been a dream. But as soon as I opened my eyes, the first thing I would see was Albert’s lovely face hanging above mine, as he leaned up on his elbow, watching me.

  ‘I have been waiting for you to wake up,’ he said once.

  ‘You said you would always wake me with a kiss,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Ah, but I would sooner you were awake just before I kissed you. There would be so much more pleasure in it.’

  ‘For you or for me?’

  ‘For both, of course.’ And he kissed me. ‘You see?’

  There seemed no end to the pleasures he could create for me. One morning he said he did not want to separate from me even for the time it took us to dress, and so he appointed himself my lady’s maid, and helped me very neatly, even putting on my stockings for me, though he made me almost helpless with laughter by his mimicry of a most affected and mincing young female. He was such a talented clown! He invented two comic characters called Herr Pamplemus and Herr Zigeuner, and drew a series of caricatures of them in absurd situations; and sometimes when we were in the middle of a conversation he would suddenly jump up and be one of them, and strut about the room in character until I was almost sick with laughing.

  Most of all, my husband was my friend, the one above all others I liked to be with, with whom I never tired of talking, who could unfailingly cheer me and make me laugh, and bring the world to life and colour with his presence. Every morning he woke me with a kiss; every time he looked at me, his face lit in a smile that ravished my heart. If he went somewhere without me, he never went out or came home without coming through my room or into my dressing-room to see me; he never passed me without taking the opportunity to touch me or, if that were not possible, to salute me with his eyes. He was in everything my true companion; and with the joy of that came the blissful feeling of safety, for he was my husband, my very, very own, and would therefore never leave me. One of my greatest delights was to go into his dressing-room in the morning and watch him shaving. That seemed to me the very essence of intimacy and security. A mistress might bed with a man, but only a wife would see him scrape the bristles from his chin.

  The only thistle in our bed of roses was Mamma, and she proved a problem not easy to solve. She continued to be extremely unwilling to leave us, and though Albert was kind and patient with her, and by his tactful behaviour to her in the drawing-room avoided many of those scenes I had always found so exhausting, he was as determined as I was that she should go. The difficulty lay in where to put her. Lord M.’s first suggestion, of which I approved, was that the
King of Hanover should be given Kensington Palace in return for giving up his suite at St James’s Palace, which he never used, to Mamma. I thought this an excellent idea, but both parties refused indignantly, and so Lord M. said sadly that there was nothing for it but that I must rent a furnished house for her out of my own purse. I was furious. Mamma’s income had been increased specifically so that she could live within her means and begin to pay off her debts, but she had done neither, and still applied to me for money all the time. Now I was even to be forced to pay for the privilege of being rid of her! In the worst of bad grace I agreed to pay a maximum of £1,500 a year, and for four years only, ‘after which she will have to find for herself’. A pleasant furnished let was found for her, Ingestre House in Belgrave Square, and on the 15th of April 1840 – ‘sad and momentous day’ as Mamma described it – she left Buckingham Palace, complaining bitterly, to take up residence there.

  It was not many days before she was complaining that it was too small – ‘no better than a little dog-house’ and too out of the way. Should the Queen’s own mother, who if things had been only a little different might have been Queen Dowager herself, live no better than a merchant’s wife? This went on at tiresomely regular intervals until September, when the death of my aunt Princess Augusta released her two residences, Frogmore House at Windsor, and Clarence House in St James’s (where Uncle William and Aunt Adelaide had lived before his succession). I gave both of these to Mamma, who was finally appeased, and once certain essential repairs and refurbishments had been carried out, she moved into Clarence House on the 21st of April 1841.

  It was not only in finding her a place to live that she gave me trouble: there was also the question of her comptroller. Conroy, of course, had resigned and gone to Italy, and if ever a woman needed a good man in charge of her finances, it was Mamma. Lord M. suggested Colonel George Couper, who had acted for Lord Durham in Canada and given great satisfaction, and I thought it an excellent choice: he was a man of great ability, hard working, and with very pleasing, gentle manners; and above all, he was a man of unimpeachable integrity. Mamma, however, was still pining after Conroy (with whom she did not cease to correspond) and wanted one of his sons to take his place. Colonel Couper, she complained, lacked presence, fire, brilliance. Lord Dunfermline, her only trustworthy friend, tried patiently to explain to her that a woman who had been already burnt needed emollients, not more fire, and assured her that no-one of the name of Conroy would ever be considered for an instant. Mamma continued to drag her feet, until finally Lord Dunfermline was forced to threaten her with being turned over to the Duke if she did not accept Colonel Couper.

  She yielded reluctantly, but under the advice of Rea, her Clerk of the Works (who was one of Conroy’s creatures), she stipulated that Couper must have no dealings with her affairs prior to the date of his appointment (officially the 1st of January 1840, though he did not join her until she left Buckingham Palace) and she locked all the papers up in two large commodes, of which she alone had the key. Colonel Couper, who early confided in me that Mamma’s affairs were in a great state of confusion, may have been relieved at first not to have to delve into the secrets of Conroy’s stewardship, but as time passed and he and Mamma grew fonder of each other, he grew more and more apprehensive about what those commodes contained. It took him ten years to persuade her to give up the keys, and when he did finally open the commodes, the contents proved as shocking in their way as those of Bluebeard’s closet.

  However, that was all in the future: in April 1840 I was merely deeply relieved to be rid of Mamma at last, and to have put her finances in the hands of an honest man. But I was simultaneously discovering that while married life was a bed of roses, there were also thorns to be contended with. For one thing, Albert was beginning to show jealousy of Lehzen; and for another, I had discovered I was pregnant.

  Ten

  14th May 1900, at Windsor

  IT HAS always seemed to me a wicked thing that women should have to bear all the disagreeable, agonising and really dangerous part of providing a family, while men have nothing but pleasure and convenience in it. My feelings on discovering, only a month after my wedding, that I was pregnant, were not of gratitude to a beneficent God. I knew there had to be children, but if I had only been able to have a year of happy enjoyment with Albert, having him to myself, how thankful I would have been! But no, I was in for it at once, and furious I was to have been caught so soon! Years later I wrote to Vicky (herself then married, of course),

  The first two years of my marriage were utterly spoiled by childbearing. I had constantly to bear with aches, sufferings, miseries and plagues of all sorts. I could enjoy nothing – not travel or go about with dear Papa – enjoyments all to be given up – constant precautions taken. That is the yoke of the married woman! Without that, certainly it is unbounded happiness, if one has a husband one worships. But I had nine times for eight months to bear real misery (besides many duties) and I own it tried me sorely. One feels so pinned down – one’s wings clipped – in fact, at the best, only half oneself. If I could only have waited a year, as I hope you will, it would have been very different.

  (My poor Vicky, like me, fell pregnant almost at once, and her first child was born just a year and two days after her wedding day. She had a far worse time in giving birth than ever I had, and was in labour two days in agony that not even vast doses of chloroform could do away with. I had sent one of my own doctors, Martin, to attend her, but the idiot German doctor did not send for him right away, and when Martin did arrive it was to be told that there was no hope, and that the Princess and her child were both dying. Martin thrust him aside, took charge, and working furiously for the next twelve hours managed to save them both. The baby eventually emerged bottom foremost (which is a sad trial to a woman), and was alive but damaged: in the struggle to bring him into the world, his arm had been torn out of its socket, and was blue and lifeless. This I did not know at the time. The first reports spoke only of a live boy, and Arthur, who was eight at the time, raced up and down the corridors at Windsor shrieking, ‘I’m an uncle! I’m an uncle!’ as if it were some grand title or honour which had been bestowed on him! We were all tremendously thrilled at the arrival of the first of the new generation. It was only later that I learned of my poor child’s suffering and the state of the baby’s arm. Vicky and Fritz called the boy Frederick William Albert Victor, but he was always known as Willy in the family. The doctors prescribed all the wrong treatment for the arm, claiming it would improve with massage and hot fomentations, but it remained useless. I sometimes think that the unsatisfactory way Willy has grown up has something to do with that useless arm, for he hates to have it mentioned or stared at. At all events, after that Vicky had no more opinion of German doctors than I had, and her other – far too numerous – confinements were all attended by English doctors.)

  Childbearing had always been the one thing I dreaded; and there had been before me all my life the example of my cousin Princess Charlotte. I had always felt peculiarly attached to her, as though by some spiritual thread, for her death in childbed had been necessary for me to be born. If our fates were linked in one respect, might they not be in another? The thought of her great suffering and death was always in the back of my mind.

  A few days after my condition was confirmed, on the 21st of March, I felt really unwell, and I lay down on the sofa and cried bitterly, to think that this was only the beginning, and there were eight interminable months of it still to come. Poor Albert was distressed, and greatly perplexed besides, for what could he say, after all, to comfort me? What was done could not be undone; he could not even give me the verbal sympathy of wishing it had not happened. I believe if asked he would have said that he would gladly have suffered the whole thing for me; but my view is that if it were men who had to have the babies, the human race would have been extinct long ago.

  Meanwhile I lay on the sofa and railed at Fate in a mixture of fury and apprehension.

  ‘All my pleasure
ended!’ I sobbed. ‘No more riding or dancing or doing anything! I was so looking forward to the summer with you, and now it is all ruined!’

  ‘There will be pleasures still,’ Albert said coaxingly.

  ‘For you, perhaps,’ I said passionately, ‘but I shall be blown up like a balloon by midsummer, fit for nothing. It’s too horrible!’