I, Victoria

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  As I came in and shut the door behind me, he turned and looked at me with a sort of grim relish. ‘Ah yes, here you are,’ he said. ‘I expected it. I knew you would not be able to leave it there.’

  ‘Leave it there? No, indeed!’ I retorted. ‘The health of my child is not so unimportant to me as it seems to be with you!’

  He boiled over. ‘How dare you say that? How dare you? It is you that cannot see what is under your nose! The child is starving! The food Clark orders for her is too rich and she cannot keep enough of it in her stomach to nourish her. I have told you so before, but you won’t listen to me. And Clark doses her with calomel, which is too powerful for such a tiny child. Good God, it’s meant for overfed aldermen after civic banquets, not frail little babies with empty stomachs!’

  ‘Oh, you know better than the doctor, I suppose? I wonder you do not prescribe for everyone in the Palace, if you are so skilled in medicine! Clark has been a physician for thirteen years, but don’t let that consideration trouble you!’

  ‘I know Pussy is not well, and I can see he is making her worse. How can you see her and hear her cry and not know that? Your heart must be as hard as flint. But no, you won’t even accept the evidence of your own senses if your precious Lehzen decrees otherwise!’

  I was stung. ‘Lehzen has nothing to do with this,’ I began, but he overrode me.

  ‘Lehzen has to do with everything in this house! You are besotted with the woman! And not content with letting her rule you, you hand over the nursery to her as well.’

  ‘Mrs Southey is head nurse, as you know very well. Lehzen merely takes a kindly interest in the babies, which is perfectly natural.’

  ‘She is never out of the nursery! Every time I go to see my children I see her and Southey sitting by a great roaring fire, far too hot for the little ones, and gossiping together like a pair of tricoteuses at the guillotine! And don’t tell me she and Clark are not hand and glove! She supports him in everything – which is why you can’t see how wrong he is about Pussy. It’s Lehzen who orders everything in this house, and I’m sick of it!’

  ‘Yes, I know about your crazy jealousy of her,’ I snapped. ‘All it is is that you want to rule the roast. You think no-one but yourself should ever be considered or consulted. You think I am nothing—’

  ‘On the contrary,’ he said fiercely, ‘I know very well who and what you are. It is you who forgets. Because Lehzen was your governess you treat her like an oracle. You think every good quality you have comes from her—’

  ‘I know how much I owe her, which you seem to have forgotten! If it had not been for her I should not have survived the misery of Kensington – but perhaps you don’t care for that. It’s all one to you what I suffered – and do suffer still! Lehzen endured miseries for my sake, and stood by me when there was no-one else to help me. She has never asked for anything for herself, but because I don’t turn her out to starve like an old dog now that I don’t need her help any more, you think yourself slighted.’

  Albert rolled his eyes. ‘You are irrational about that woman! You think she is the fountain of all virtue; but the truth is she is a crazy, stupid intriguer, obsessed with the lust for power! She sees herself as a demi-god – and anyone who refuses to acknowledge her as such, you treat as a criminal!’

  ‘She does not lust for power! She thinks only of serving me!’

  ‘She serves herself, Victoria, can’t you see that? When you married me she was afraid of losing her power, so now she seeks to keep control of you through the nursery, and by turning you against me, whispering lies and dripping poison into your ear.’

  I was maddened by the unjustness of this attack on my dear friend. ‘She does not!’ I panted. ‘She never speaks ill of you, though God knows you deserve no loyalty from her, the way you hate her and vilify her!’

  ‘I don’t hate her, though I have every reason to—’

  ‘You do! It is you who are irrational about her! I hardly ever see her now, but you are ate up with jealousy over her.’

  He boiled up again. ‘Hardly ever see her? The moment I am out of the house she comes creeping into your room—’

  ‘She does not!’

  ‘And when we disagree about something you go running to her to complain about me – and she magnifies every little difference between us and makes it into some great offence!’

  Oh, this was so unjust! I lashed out with all my strength. ‘At least she truly loves me, which is more than I can say for you! You might learn a thing or two about loyalty from her!’

  He seemed to grow still. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I mean what I say. You are cruel and unjust and utterly selfish, the most selfish man I have ever met! You think of no-one but yourself and your own advancement! Your position in Court is not high enough for your ideas of yourself – that is what it is really about!’

  ‘You are not in earnest.’

  But I was soaring now, on wings of pure fire. ‘But I am!’ I said triumphantly. ‘I’m sick of your ingratitude, and I wish I had never married you! You have brought me nothing but misery with your jealousy and disloyalty and greed for power! In fact I wish I had never even met you! I was far better off without you!’

  ‘Then the situation is easily rectified!’ he snapped, white with anger, and stalked out of the room. I celebrated my victory by bursting into tears, and running into my own room, where I flung myself down upon the sofa and wept until I felt sick. Oh, it was dreadful, dreadful! I had never seen him so angry, for he had always held back, as I knew instinctively, from the brink over which we had both just plummeted. How could I have said those things to him? I had seen them hurt him, but I didn’t mean them. If only he would trust me! He was wrong about Lehzen. He had no cause for jealousy, but he would not let me love anyone but him, and wanted me to get rid of her. I was angry with him for that, for I would not have wished to deprive him of anyone he loved or found valuable; but I had wept myself into penitence now, and my bruised heart was crying out for him. I wanted his arms, his warmth, his kisses. Now the heat of my anger had drained away I felt cold, and lonely for him, and I wanted to forgive and be forgiven, to be enfolded, to be close.

  Ah, but this was not like our other quarrels. This one had gone deep with him, and while I was still lying tear-stained on my sofa, wondering where he was and what he was thinking, I received a note from him – a bitter, unforgiving, cold little note.

  Doctor Clark has mismanaged the child and poisoned her with calomel and you have starved her. I shall have nothing more to do with it. Take the child away and do as you like, and if she dies you will have it on your conscience.

  Oh, that was cruel! When I am in a passion I say things in the heat of the moment, hurtful things that I don’t in the least mean. But I could never, never have written that note: such calculated anger is not in me. Words spoken can hurt, but they dissipate on the air like soap bubbles; words written are etched on the mind and the heart for ever. I felt myself wither under that frosty touch. He was angry still, and I was not forgiven. He had withdrawn from me not only his presence, but his love, and without it I knew I would die, as a plant dies without the sun.

  Twelve

  1st June 1900, at Balmoral

  THAT DREADFUL quarrel with Albert: I can never forget it. When I received his letter, I knew I was alone again, with everyone against me, as I had been at Kensington. But this time it was worse, for then at least I had Lehzen; now I could not turn to her for support, because she was the cause I was fighting for. Out of old habit, I turned to Stockmar as mediator. I sent him a note, asking him to tell Lehzen that something had happened to upset me and that I could not see her for a few days: I knew if I saw her she would have it out of me, and not for anything would I tell her what had happened between Albert and me. I am loyal, you see, even when most wounded.

  I knew every hand was against my old friend. The men who ruled my life were her enemies: Albert, Anson and Stockmar. Mamma, even had I wished to confide in her at tha
t time, regarded Lehzen with loathing as the person who had made me hate her. Lord M., who always understood, was no longer with me, and I could never have confided in Peel; who, besides, would certainly have taken Albert’s part against Lehzen. I had long known that no-one liked my old governess except me; but I was bewildered and hurt by the eagerness of everyone to take her away from me. If I loved her, that should surely have been reason enough to leave her alone.

  The next day I felt so forlorn and bewildered, as though I had had a dreadful dream; I could not stop crying, and crying gave me a headache and made me feel sick. Albert was still angry, and punished me with a cold formality of manner as though I were a stranger. He would not speak to me except of necessity; and when he looked at me, his eyes went straight through me. I was desperate for reconciliation, but he had slept in his dressing-room last night, and that meant I had no way of reaching him. Bed was the one place all quarrels could be resolved; and to be banished from sharing it with him was desolating.

  If emotion could not reach him, I thought, I must try to sway him by his own system of ratiocination. He had to go out that morning to open the new Stock Exchange, and when he was gone I rushed to my desk and penned a sad little note to Stockmar, begging him to go between us and pacify Albert. ‘He seems so very angry still. I am not. If only you will impress upon him the importance of speaking up when he sees anything amiss, I will try to improve it. But he must listen to me, and believe what I say, and not credit stories which help to make trifles seem like serious affairs. As to the thoughtless words of yesterday, I forgive them; they were said in grief and anger and vexation.’

  Stockmar, at least, was obliged to answer me! The Prince had been writing to him, he said (I guessed he would – it was the Coburg way to resort to pen and paper in times of vexation, and Stockmar was Albert’s mentor); he knew about the quarrel, but he had not written to me before because he wanted to be sure all tempers had cooled and everyone was on an even keel again. The quarrel between us had shocked him dreadfully. He could only undertake to try and help us if such violent emotions were kept in check in future; indeed, if there were more such scenes, he would not be able to remain at Court.

  This stern warning was the covering letter to the two Albert had written to him, which he enclosed for me to read. They were a dreadful shock to me. The first was a long tirade of hatred of Lehzen, and the words seemed to sear the page with their anger. Lehzen was crazy, jealous, power-mad, an intriguer, self-seeking – and so on, and so on.

  All the disagreeableness I suffer comes from one person, and that is precisely the person Victoria chooses for her friend and confidante. She tells her everything, discusses everything with her, accepts her opinion as though it came from the oracle. Up to now I have suffered in patience, and will go on doing so for love of Victoria, if she wishes; but there can be no improvement until she sees Lehzen as she is. I declare to you as my and Victoria’s true friend that I will sacrifice my own comfort, my life’s happiness to Victoria in silence, even if she continues in her error. But the welfare of my children and Victoria’s as sovereign are too sacred for me not to die fighting rather than yield them as prey to Lehzen. It seems like a curse on our heads that everyone in the world sees the truth, and only Victoria regards the object of her infatuation as an angel and the world as suspicious, slanderous, envious …

  But it wasn’t true, none of it was true! It was like seeing a familiar face in a distorting mirror, something comfortable and everyday made twisted and frightening and evil. How could he hate Lehzen so much? What had she ever done to him? And how could be trust me so little? There was arrogance there, too, which stiffened me for a moment in anger; but only for a moment, for I turned to the second letter, and there had the glass held up to my own reflection.

  You ask me why I have not spoken out before now, why I let things go on until they reach this pass. But Victoria is too hasty and passionate for me to be able to speak of my difficulties. She will not hear me out but overwhelms me with reproaches of suspiciousness, want of trust, ambition, envy and so on. There are therefore two ways open for me: either to keep silence and go away, in which case I am like a schoolboy who has had a dressing down from his mother and goes away subdued; or I can meet her violence with even more violence of my own, in which case we have scenes (like that of the 16th) which I hate, because I am so sorry for Victoria afterwards in her misery; and besides which it undermines the peace of the home.

  Oh, my temper, my awful temper! Here I knew I was at fault. But I had had provocation! It had built up over the past year, bringing me at last to a pitch of misery; for when I had discovered, back in March, that I was with child again, I was sunk in despair. I was only twenty-one, I had been married but a year, and already I was pregnant for the second time. Was this what my life was to consist of, this endless round of childbearing, until I was worn out with it? I had been so happy to say goodbye to Mrs Lilly and get back to normal, so delighted to resume the interrupted embraces of my beloved husband – and it was all to do again! Albert had not helped by being so thoroughly besotted with Pussy, and so pleased at the thought of a second episode of fatherhood: to him it was a natural state of affairs that his wife should bring forth his children, and he had no objection at all as to numbers. He was a natural patriarch, and though he loved me, and tried to sympathise with my objections, it was only intellectual; in his heart and his bowels he was glad I was pregnant. No matter what he said, I knew really how he felt, and I blamed him bitterly and unreasonably for my condition.

  It had been a bad, wretched year. I was unwell from the beginning of the pregnancy, easily tired, my emotions perpetually in a ferment, suffering from bouts of depression and misery so intense as to be frightening. Albert seemed strange to me, a stranger, out of reach, out of sympathy, even hostile. Though he did not mention it, of course, he was afraid for my reason. My grandfather, George III, had died mad; my temper was so wild and my fury so ungoverned that he was afraid I had inherited that taint, and he watched me like a cat at a mousehole, while he did everything he could to keep me calm. I do not blame him now – I can see that he had no choice – but it was just the wrong thing to do. I am not out-of-the-ordinary intelligent, but I am very quick to sense things; I perceived his guarded watchfulness and interpreted it as coolness and indifference to my state. Why, he did not even love me enough to quarrel with me!

  When I was so desperately miserable, he seemed so calm and distant that I wanted to shake him off his cool, airy mountain-top and make him come down to the hot and dusty place where I was and share my suffering. I wanted the satisfaction of a violent quarrel, followed by tears, hugs and kisses – thunder and lightning, followed by cool, healing rain. I felt separate from him, and I wanted to be close. But his temper was not like mine, and when I raged he only withdrew; when I grew heated, he grew cooler. When I hurled abuse at him, he quietly left the room; and when I longed for his arms around me, and passionate kisses to stop my mouth, he sent me unemotional, neatly written notes showing how I had been at fault.

  Now I ask you, who was the more cruel to whom?

  No, no, I was at fault, I own it completely! My poor Albert was simply not made by nature to storm as I stormed. As I read that second note, I saw the situation for a moment as though through his eyes, saw myself in one of my rages cutting off his measured sentences, lashing out at him with whatever words came to mind. For that instant I felt how helpless he must feel, afraid to provoke me more, yet too proud to let me win on what he thought were unfair terms. We were both proud, and that was the fact of the matter; but I would show him I could also be generous and yielding. I swallowed my hurt and wrote a letter for Stockmar to give to Albert, taking pains to set it out rationally and coolly, playing the game according to their rules, humbling myself, though I was the Queen, for the sake of the great love I bore him.

  Albert must tell me what he dislikes and I will try to remedy it, but he must also promise to listen to me and believe me when I tell him the truth. Lehz
en was perhaps my confidante before my marriage, but she has not been since. Everyone acknowledges her past services to me, and my only wish is that she should have a quiet home in my house and see me sometimes. Albert surely cannot object to that? I assure you upon my honour that I see her very seldom now and only for a few minutes – Albert often and often thinks I see her when I don’t. And I only ask her questions about my papers, and my toilette for which she is of the greatest use to me – nothing else. I never speak to her about what is decided for the Nursery, and I never go to her to complain, which I fear Albert suspects I do – no, never!

  The second thing is my being so passionate when spoken to; I fear this is irremediable as yet, but I hope in time it will be got over. There is often an irritability in me (like last Sunday) which makes me say cross and odious things which I don’t mean and which I fear hurt Albert, but which he should not believe. I will strive to conquer it, though I knew before I married this would be a trouble, for the two years and a half when I was so completely my own mistress made it difficult for me to bend to another’s will. But I trust I shall be able to conquer it. Our position is very different, though, from any other married couple’s: Albert is in my house and not I in his. But I am ready to submit to his wishes as I love him so dearly. His position is difficult, Heaven knows, and we must do everything we can to make it easier.

  So I waited for the knock on the door, for the open, smiling face, the proffered hands, the forgiveness and kisses; but there was none. I was still left outside, in exile; and back from Stockmar came the ultimatum – Lehzen must go. Albert would forgive me and take me back into favour, but only if Lehzen left my service, and left the Palace.