‘But it won’t be for ever, dearest love.’
‘Eight months is for ever! And everyone will stare at me.’
‘They won’t stare. And afterwards, think of having a baby – a boy – our son, my darling. Won’t that be wonderful?’
‘I don’t like babies – horrid, bald things, gaping and paddling like nasty little frogs!’
‘But the wonder of it,’ Albert said wistfully. ‘The miracle of life – God’s great gift – to bring into the world an immortal soul—’
This head-in-cloud sentiment got short shrift from me. ‘Well enough for a man to talk! It’s not you who will have to bear the pain and suffering and all the awfulness! And women often die in childbirth! You don’t think of that!’ And I burst again into weeping. He hung over me affectionately, soothed me, stroked my hands, bathed my temples with lavender-water. ‘You won’t die, my darling. You are thinking of Princess Charlotte, I know, but it won’t be like that for you. Hasn’t your old friend Lord Melbourne always told you that her troubles came from being kept too low, with a starvation diet and constant bleeding? That won’t happen to you. Look how rosy and healthy you are, beloved! Your own hearty appetite and good spirits will see you through.’
The tears began to subside – for now. ‘You won’t let them bleed me?’ I said quaveringly. ‘They killed my father with bleeding him – Uncle Leopold said so.’
‘Of course not. You will have a happy, healthy pregnancy, and nothing will go wrong. You know you are never ill.’
‘Well, that is true,’ I said, mollified. I was proud of my robust health.
He grew tender. ‘And you know also that God would not separate us now, when we have just found each other. You have told me so often you believe we have a task to do. Don’t you think that He remembers that?’
Still hiccuping a little, I put myself into his arms and rested my hot face on his shoulder, and he stroked my head and kissed whatever bits he could reach of me. After a while I said in a more steady voice, ‘I wish we could have gone on as we were a little longer. I wish it had not been so soon.’
He tightened his arms around me. ‘We are too good lovers for that, my little flower.’
I kept pretty well through that first pregnancy, and though I had fits of lowness and misery, and more than a few bouts of weeping, I could not be miserable all the time. I still had a husband whom I adored, and who dedicated himself to me, cheering my sedentary hours, singing with me, playing to me, reading aloud, playing foolish games to amuse me. I am naturally passionate, and when I am depressed I believe I will always feel so, just as when my spirits are high I cannot believe I was ever miserable. My journals are full of always! and never! – that is just my nature. But it must have tried poor Albert, who believed in rationality and control, to keep up with me; to dry my floods of tears one minute, and dissuade me from going out for a walk in a violent hailstorm the next.
There were times (I can’t deny it) that I felt pleased and excited about the prospect of a child being born of our love, but my anticipation was always of the time when the child would be two or three years old. The intervening business was a disagreeable and degrading process to be got over somehow. In fact, the only advantage I ever discovered in being pregnant was that for a few months I could leave off my stays. All through my life women have been so tightly corseted that I have sometimes looked back at unlaced periods of history with acute envy (though to be sure loose lacing and lack of corsetry does seem to be somehow allied to loose morals and lack of personal restraint: look at Charles II’s reign!). I am sure the tight constriction of the upper body was the cause of much of the fainting that went on amongst gently born females; for the lower classes didn’t do it nearly so much. I know one was supposed to attribute it to sensibility, which the poor didn’t have, but I should not be surprised if it turned out to have been stays after all.
Being in an interesting condition did not mean that I could retire from the public gaze, or from my public duties, which was very trying. When one’s ankles are swollen and one’s back aches, the last thing one wants to do is to stand for hours and hours at an audience, or be smilingly polite to foreign diplomats. Nor did it make me blind and deaf to the tension within my own Household, between the two people closest to me. Looking back I can see how difficult it must have been for Albert, miserably homesick and struggling to find his place, and how resentful he must have felt of Lehzen, who already had hers. I had been careful not to give Lehzen any official position which might cause public resentment (which was her own advice), but since my accession she had been in charge of my private correspondence, and of the Household arrangements, keeping my quarterly accounts and countersigning the bills for my Privy Purse to pay. This, of course, gave her a sphere of influence and a certain amount of power; and my affection and gratitude gave her access to me on privileged terms. But Lehzen was not one to abuse her position, and I had never discussed politics or matters of State with her, as some jealous people thought.
All the same, Albert had been trained by Uncle Leopold and was fitted by his own abilities and wishes to govern alongside me, and now he found that he was not allowed access by me to any State papers, nor given anything to do beyond blotting my signature; and I suppose it was natural for him to feel jealous of Lehzen, and in his jealousy to blame her for his enforced idleness. He thought she had warned me not to let him interfere in matters of State.
But the truth is that it was not her doing, but my own. When I was a little girl at Kensington, lonely, miserable and oppressed, my one sustaining thought was that one day I would be Queen of England, and then I would be above everyone, and beyond tormenting. It was my consolation and my pride; and to that pride had been added something else which I learned from Lehzen, and from Uncle Leopold – a deep sense of duty and responsibility. The two things together made it impossible for me to share my power with anyone, for not only was it the central pillar of my being, but the proper application of it was a solemn duty laid upon me by God which I could not – and still cannot – lightly set aside. If God had not especially wanted me, Victoria, to be Queen of England, He would not have gone to so much trouble to arrange it.
Also, to be completely honest about myself, there is a stubbornness in me, which was nourished by the long campaign of a Certain Person to usurp my prerogative; and having fought for it so long I was not likely to give it up now to anyone, not for the asking – and certainly not for the pressing. My reasons were sufficient for me, and since I was the Queen, I felt it was not for anyone, even my husband, to question them. So I would give no explanations; I merely said this is what I will have, and that must do for you.
Albert, however, saw things differently. He was a man, and he was a German, and the combination does not make for submissiveness. It was as natural to him as breathing to command, to rule, to decide, to protect: to him the husband was master, and the wife must yield and obey. Not only was that the natural order, ordained by God, but it completely coincided with his own wishes; and his homesickness only emphasised for him how different things were from his ideal, from the way it would have been at home in beloved Coburg. It must have seemed to him that I wanted to keep him as a pet, and it offended his manly pride and made him mad. But I was Queen and I made the rules, and there was nothing he could do about it; and he was wise enough to see that pressing me only made me more stubborn. He felt his powerlessness very much, poor darling: it was his nature to rule the roast, and here he was in a position where he not only did not rule it, he did not even provide it.
He bore it very patiently at first; but when my birthday came around in May, he gave me the present of a large brass inkstand, and as soon as the celebrations were over asked me when he might have an inkstand of his own, and be allowed to use it.
‘You do not trust me on even the most trivial matters to do with the Household,’ he complained, ‘and on matters connected with the politics of the country, where I might be of real use to you, you do not consult me at all.’
‘But I love you so much,’ I said, hoping to sweeten him, ‘I don’t want to waste our precious time together discussing politics, when we might be kissing and playing and talking love.’
He looked grave. ‘This is not treating me as I deserve,’ he said. ‘I have a mind, you know, as well as two lips. Do you not value it at all?’
‘Of course I do,’ I said. ‘I think you the cleverest man in the world.’
‘Then why do you keep me idle? “Ein unnütz Leben ist ein früher Tod”,’ he added, quoting Goethe: a useless life is an early death.
Feeling threatened by the mention of death – which I also thought introduced an unfair element into the argument – I’m sorry to say I ‘flew off the handle’; and then I flew off to Lord M. for advice. ‘What am I to do? I have kept him from affairs of State as much for his own sake as mine, for people do still think of him as a foreigner, and if he is seen to advise me or help me, there will be resentment, and accusations of meddling.’
Lord M. listened, and nodded sympathetically, but said, ‘He could be such a help to you, ma’am, in carrying the heavy burden which has been laid upon you. I do think you should acquaint him with everything – perhaps not all at once, but gradually, so that people get used to the idea. People can get used to anything in time, you know, even foreigners. There was a time – you will hardly believe it – when I did not at all like lobsters.’
I laughed, but pressed him anxiously, ‘Now do, do be serious! I have always thought that God sent the Prince to me for a purpose, but surely he should be my helpmeet in social matters, not political – in the same way that a Queen Consort would help a King.’
‘Yet your situation is not quite the same as that of a King. You have more burdens laid upon you than a man would have in the same position, for you must be King and Queen. You cannot give the female part of your royal duties to anyone else,’ he pointed out with a kindly look, ‘therefore it is only reasonable that you should have help in other spheres, to lighten the load.’
‘So you really think I should discuss State business with the Prince?’
‘I think you should not deprive yourself of a valuable resource. He has such well-informed and steady opinions, and his good sense greatly impresses those who have the honour to converse with him. Holland was saying to me only the other day that it is now all the fashion to praise the Prince.’
‘Is it so?’ I said, pleased. ‘Well, I do think he is excessively clever. But here’s another thing: if I ask for his opinion and it does not agree with mine, I cannot act on it, for I am the Queen, and the responsibility is and must be mine. I cannot be acting against my conscience just to please him! But if I do not take his advice once I’ve asked for it, there will be such resentment! He will feel worse than if I did not ask him at all, and we shall quarrel.’
‘As to a conflict of opinions,’ Lord M. said calmly, ‘Your Majesty has ministers to advise you, which the Prince knows very well. It would not be all between you and the Prince, and if your ministers agree with you, there will be nothing more to be said. He will understand that.’
I remained doubtful. ‘He blames Lehzen,’ I said bluntly. ‘He thinks I tell her things I won’t tell him and that she tells me not to trust him.’
Lord M. nodded. ‘So I have understood.’
‘But it isn’t true! You know she does not interfere. She has always been on our side. And you have never had any difficulty with her.’
He smiled a crooked smile. ‘I am not Your Majesty’s husband. And there are those who think the baroness does influence you, perhaps without either of you knowing. It would be natural now that you are married, for your intimacy with the baroness to lessen as that with your husband grows.’
It was gentle, sensible advice, but my resentment flared all the same at what seemed a sidelong attack on my old favourite. ‘I know who says so,’ I said hotly. ‘It is Stockmar! He still thinks of me as a silly child, incapable of seeing what is going on around me. Lehzen influence me without my knowing, nonsense! It is another plot to rid me of her, and I won’t have it!’
And so my determination hardened, and Albert’s position did not improve. He remained idle and frustrated, condemned to a life of frivolity which had never been what he liked, even in his bachelor days.
15th May 1900
IN THE June of 1840 a very frightening thing happened. I was in my fourth month of pregnancy, and feeling pretty well, the sickness over and the other discomforts not yet too great. At six o’clock on the 10th Albert and I set out to pay a visit to Mamma in Belgrave Square. He was determined that I should at least do my duty by her, and show her the attention the world would think proper; and as long as she was not under my roof, I was willing to be civil, especially when he was beside me to charm Mamma and keep her endless complaints at bay. (She and Albert got on very well, each being the only person the other could talk to about beloved Coburg!)
It was a lovely summer evening, so we had taken an open carriage, the Russian-style droshky, and my favourite greys. As we drove up Constitution Hill the heat was just going out of the day, leaving a warm and balmy evening. The sunlight had taken on that lovely golden tone, throwing the long shadows of trees black across the gilded grass of the Park. The swifts were hurtling and shrieking across the pale bowl of the sky, the warm air was brushing our cheeks, and I felt well and happy.
Albert and I had been talking about horses and I had just turned my head away from him to look at a horse going by, and was saying, ‘There, now, what do you think to that chestnut? Do you not think there is something excessively showy about four white socks on a chestnut?’ when suddenly there was a tremendously loud report close at hand. Indeed, it was so close that I hardly knew it was a report, for it made my ears ring, and was, in a contradictory sense, too loud to be heard. The horses flung up their heads and stopped, and at the same instant Albert seized my hands and cried out, ‘My God! My darling, are you all right? I pray the fright has not shaken you!’
I looked at him, laughing, for his alarm seemed so comical when I saw nothing to be alarmed at. ‘It is nothing, dear love, just someone shooting birds, I suppose. They should not shoot so close to the road—’ But at that moment I looked past him and saw, standing on the footpath opposite the carriage, a strange, swarthy little man holding a pistol in each hand, his arms folded across his breast in the most affected and theatrical manner. And then, quite slowly it seemed, he unfolded his arms, extended his right hand, and pointed the pistol straight at me. It was an extremely horrid thing to see that black muzzle, like a little, evil eye, come round to stare straight at me, picking me out from all the people in the world for death. My stomach seemed to sink away from me, not so much with fear but with the nastiness of knowing that someone meant quite deliberately to put a ball through my head and kill me. To be made suddenly aware of that degree of hatred is the most unsettling thing in the world.
It takes time to write, but it took no time to happen. I saw him point the pistol at me and I instinctively ducked, at the same instant as Albert, who had also seen the movement, thrust me downwards, covering me with his body. There was another violent explosion, and I think that time I heard the ball whistle across the carriage above my head. The passers-by, who had been frozen into horrified immobility by the first report, were unfrozen by the second, and flung themselves upon the little man. He was only a puny undersized thing, and he completely disappeared under an enthusiasm of well-fed Londoners, some of whom were shouting, ‘Assassin! Kill him! Hang him!’ and other such loyal phrases. I sat up, straightened my bonnet, smoothed my mantle, and looked at Albert, who was quite white.
‘Are you all right?’ he said, his eyes scanning my face as though he expected to see I know not what signal of doom writ there.
‘Yes, I am not hurt,’ I said.
‘But the fright – your condition –’ he said in a low, urgent voice. (It was still meant to be a secret, but I don’t suppose there was anyone in London by that time who did not k
now about my ‘condition’.) ‘We should go back home perhaps. You should lie down and rest.’
I shook my head. I felt a little dazed, though I think that may have been the concussion of sound as much as anything. ‘We must go on to Mamma’s. She will hear of this and fear the worst if we don’t show her we are not dead. Tell the postilion to go on.’
The colour was returning to his face. ‘How brave and sensible you are,’ he said. ‘Very well, we shall go on,’ and he called out the order. An enormous cheer went up as our horses moved forward, and I smiled and acknowledged it with a wave and a bow. ‘There are enough people to call a constable, or take the villain to a magistrate,’ I said. ‘What on earth could have possessed him to shoot at me? He must be insane.’
But Albert looked grim. ‘He is a vile traitor. He will hang for it,’ he said firmly.
When we had spent some time with Mamma, we left again in the carriage, and drove a long way round, partly to give me some air, and partly to show the people I was not hurt, for rumours get about in the most astonishing way, and I would not have been surprised to learn that half of London by then would be willing to swear they had actually seen me carried away lifeless and bleeding. The drive home saw us attended by every rider and driver in the Park, both male and female, gathering around our carriage and forming the most enthusiastic escort all the way back to the Palace. Everyone seemed enormously relieved that I had come to no harm, and the cheers and hat-waving warmed my heart and made me feel that the would-be assassin must indeed be mad, for I was not so unpopular after all. ‘I think they know about my condition,’ I murmured to Albert as I waved and bowed. ‘It makes them happy because they don’t want my uncle Ernest on the throne. What a comforting thing it is to have an unpopular Heir Presumptive!’
Albert secured my other hand and pressed it. ‘How can you joke?’ he said. ‘It is over now,’ I replied. I think he was more upset than I was. It is being at a distance and not knowing what is going on that upsets me; danger does not unnerve me as long as I am in the centre of things (and well that it doesn’t, for that was not the last attempt on my life by any means! Most of the madmen had pistols, but the assault that upset me most happened in 1850, in the gateway to Cambridge House, when a man stepped from the crowd and struck me in the face with a walking-stick. The brim of my bonnet broke the force of the blow, which might otherwise have cracked my skull; but I was knocked unconscious and my forehead and eye were badly bruised and swollen. I carried a scar from that attack for ten years. I found it far worse than being shot at. As a soldier’s daughter I can accept that sometimes to face fire is the price of holding high office, and such attacks seem in a way ideological rather than personal. But for a man to strike any woman is brutal and wicked, a most cowardly attack upon our weaker frames, and I felt the upset of it very much).
I, Victoria Page 25