I, Victoria

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  And then instead of being gentle, obedient, scholarly, and full of noble purpose like his father, he displayed a violent temper (oh dear, where had he that from, I wonder?), an immovable stubbornness, a deep loathing of lessons and books, and a desire for nothing but what was idle, useless and naughty. And yet he had good qualities: he had an affectionate heart, an incorrigible honesty, and a strong bent for loyalty. He was fond of animals, displayed much tenderness towards his little brothers and sisters, and when he was away from us, he had considerable charm and the knack of making himself liked – a useful thing for a future monarch. Unfortunately, these were not qualities that I was prepared to praise then (being on the whole what he had inherited from me), when he showed himself so ungrateful as to have inherited nothing from his father. He was a caricature of me: that was the trouble, and his whole misfortune.

  If he had only been the third or fourth son, instead of the first, we might have done more kindly by him in bringing him up. But we knew, you see, Albert and I, how much depended on him. He was to be King of England one day, and if Albert succeeded in realising his vision, he would be the political, philosophical and moral leader of the entire enlightened world. It was the heaviest of tasks, and nothing, we felt, must be omitted from his training that might help to make him fit for it. Not a week, not a day, not an hour of his precious childhood could safely or properly be wasted. Every detail of his physical, intellectual and moral training must be mapped out and rigidly adhered to. He must be watched day and night, and the slightest spot or deviation instantly rubbed out or corrected.

  Is it any wonder the poor bewildered child rebelled? It was all he could do – bent out of his nature, forced against his will and against all possibility of success, into his father’s exquisite mould. Either the mould would break, or he would (and he was my son in this respect, that he would always survive against all odds). But we did not see it at the time – indeed, Albert never lived to see it. Only in more tolerant old age have I come to see that almost everything we did with Bertie was wrong and bound to achieve the very opposite of what was intended (and even now I cannot admire him much, poor creature! though I love him, of course, and acknowledge his many good qualities).

  Part of the trouble was in the reputation of those same Wicked Uncles he so tauntingly, if fleetingly, resembled. I had inherited a tottering Throne, and a Crown brought to its lowest ebb of respect by the behaviour of my family, whose blood I was only too well aware of in my own veins. This blood flowed also in Bertie’s, and that we were so constantly aware of it was mostly Stockmar’s fault. He never missed an opportunity of impressing on us that the future of the Crown in England depended on a moral foundation: the least sign of depravity would inevitably pitch us into revolution and republicanism. Albert did not need to be convinced. He told me from the beginning that his object was to make Bertie as unlike as possible to any of his great-uncles, and I agreed with him whole-heartedly. (Looking back now, I do think it was decidedly odd that we did not worry about the Coburg blood in Bertie’s veins, considering the licentiousness of Albert’s father and brother. Now I come to think of it, Albert was the first virtuous Coburg for generations – and indeed it was his reaction to his father’s behaviour and his brother’s awful fate which gave him such an unconquerable horror of debauchery. Why was it that we felt Albert’s individual goodness was sufficient barrier against an inherited Coburg taint from Albert’s father, while my virtue was not able to protect Bertie from the indirect blood of my uncles? I really can’t say. It seemed at the time a very simple equation – Coburg good, Hanover bad – and I went along with it unquestioningly.)

  Stockmar assured Albert that my uncle King’s weakness was due to a faulty education, and said that it was imperative that the Prince of Wales should lead a life of utter purity, and be educated on a rational plan. Bertie must be surrounded by none but the morally spotless; and since Albert knew (and I believed) what depraved little beasts boys are, and how they corrupt each other and tell each other disgusting things, he was not allowed to mix with other boys. All his childhood he had no friends to play with other than his own brothers and sisters. Did I not remember how I had hated Conroy’s system at Kensington – the loneliness and boredom, the longing for company of my own age? Well, well, it seems not – or at least I assumed that the benefits to Bertie would far outweigh the pain. The trouble was, of course, that we had forgotten the principle of inoculation, which Lord M. had long ago propounded to me: a boy unexposed to even the mildest form of depravity has no resistance, and is likely to fall victim to the first infection that comes his way. (This is in fact what happened in Ireland in 1861, with such appalling consequences. Lord M. was always right.)

  And as to education, Bertie was unfortunate in having our brilliant Vicky ahead of him. A schedule of lessons was worked out for him which she would have found challenging: poor Bertie, who was not above average clever, found it impossible. When he did not advance, and showed a great aversion to his lessons, we called it wilfulness and responded by lengthening the hours of study and making them harder; and when he grew pale and languid with exhaustion, his anxious, concerned parents decided that he was suffering from a natural laziness which needed to be driven out of him. Poor Bertie was watched, guarded and checked every moment of the day; and when the baffled creature erupted in fury, roared, spat, swore and threw things, it seemed to us that the Devil was winning, and that we hadn’t been beating him enough.

  ‘Why must I always be good?’ he cried out one day. ‘Other children are not always good!’ We did not hear the plea, only the defiance. I think now that the whole system was wrong, of trying to make all children alike, instead of bringing out what was best in each, like a carpenter working with the grain of a piece of wood instead of against it. But it was the way we thought in those days: all children could be perfect, if only they would. I should have done better to remember what Lord Melbourne – wiser than his generation – had said to me: ‘Do not be over solicitous about education. It does not do so much as is expected from it. It may mould and direct character, but it rarely alters it.’ We wanted to make Bertie a scholar and an aesthete like his father, but deep in his nature he was a thorough sensualist. Even as a young man Albert scorned physical discomfort, and was never happier than when studying alone by the light of his green student lamp, pursuing some challenging intellectual objective. But Bertie at the same age liked comfortable chairs, fine clothes, good dinners with plenty of wine, pleasant conversation, and something jolly at the theatre with friends. We might as well have tried to teach a pig to fly.

  14th June 1900

  IT IS odd that it was Sir Robert Peel who first drew our attention to Osborne House. When I think how amazingly I disliked him in the early days, it seems strange that it was with him that Albert and I naturally discussed our desire for a house of our own. But Lord M. had been right in that, as in so much: once I got used to Sir Robert’s odd manner, I found him absolutely to be trusted. Though his way of speaking seemed stilted and pompous to me at first, I noted that he had a good voice, and his opinions were sensible; and when he grew less shy (for he was shy, though few people realised it) he proved to have a very colourful and lively way of describing events in the House and so on, which made me feel as though I was really there. (Dear Disraeli also had that talent, though it was more to be expected in him, since he was a novelist: to listen to his account of the goings-on in the House was almost like watching one of those ‘animatograph’ films! I never had such a complete picture of everything as when he was my Prime Minister.)

  Much of the trouble, I think, was that Peel was very proud, and being only the son of a cotton-spinner he had met with many slights and snubs on his way up through society. Now, I despise that sort of snobbery: it doesn’t matter to me what a man’s father was, only what he is; and I was proud of Sir Robert for refusing, like Lord M., to accept any honours for his services. But most of all I liked him because he really appreciated Albert, and praised him warmly to
me.

  It was in October 1843 that Albert and I took a stroll with Sir Robert, after his regular audience, in the garden of Buckingham Palace. The dogs were rushing about nose-down under the bushes, my hand was tucked where it liked to be under Albert’s arm, and the soot was gently falling on the privets and laurels all around us. We soon got on to the subject of houses. ‘It seems astonishing to me,’ I complained, ‘that the Queen of England should be the one person in the land who cannot have a comfortable place to live. Buckingham Palace is a disgrace! Windows that won’t open, doors that won’t shut, fires that won’t draw, bad smells in the corridors—’

  ‘The sanitary arrangements are very bad,’ Albert joined in. He was particularly interested in sewerage. ‘Do you know, there is a closet waste-pipe which discharges itself on to the leads immediately outside the Queen’s dressing-room window?’

  ‘That is very bad indeed,’ Sir Robert said gravely.

  ‘But worst of all, we have no privacy,’ I said. ‘Here we can walk in the grounds, but you know, Sir Robert, how often people get over the wall. One can never feel quite safe from interruption. And a few turns about a sooty London garden is not enough for the Prince: he needs peace and quiet and real country air. And at Windsor the public can come almost right up to the door. We have no privacy there at all – and surely even a Queen is entitled to that!’

  ‘I think Your Majesty is right to wish for it,’ Peel said, circumspectly.

  ‘What one wants is a place of one’s own,’ I said mournfully, ‘quiet and retired, where one can enjoy the solace of family life.’

  ‘Preferably a marine residence,’ Albert added. ‘The sea air is so beneficial to lungs which have been starved by London fogs.’

  ‘A marine residence?’ Sir Robert said, surprised.

  This was a new interest of ours, after a summer spent sailing up and down the south coast. ‘We so enjoyed our cruising this summer,’ I said, ‘but the drawbacks of the Pavilion are too severe. It will not do.’

  I and Albert and the children had based ourselves at Brighton, and taken excursions of varying lengths in our new steam yacht, the Victoria and Albert. (On a summer holiday the year before I had discovered it took three and a half days to sail to Scotland but only half that time to steam back, so I had asked Sir Robert to request Parliament and the Admiralty to provide us with our own steam-powered vessel. The Victoria and Albert, launched in April 1843, was a paddle-driven steamer of 1,049 tons, and I had appointed as commander Lord Adolphus Fitzclarence, one of my uncle King William’s bâtards. I never forgot my debt to my kind uncle, and helped his children when I could.) It had been a very happy holiday, but neither of us liked the Pavilion. Uncle King’s sumptuous oriental fantasy struck Albert with horror, though it represented some of the world’s finest work in that taste; but it was all too sensual and decadent for such a Child of Reason as my beloved. I thought the interiors interesting and amusing, but they would plainly not do for family life, and the place was not at all gemütlich.

  Besides that, the environment of the Pavilion presented us with severe problems. When Uncle King had settled in Brighton in 1787 it had been a tiny fishing village, and the Steyne, where he had elected to build his palace, had been surrounded by open downland and commanded a fine view of the sea. But he had made it such a popular resort, and sea-bathing had become so fashionable, that the open ground was now all built over, and houses crowded right up to the Pavilion door. No glimpse of the sea could be caught from its windows, only the crowds milling by and peering in at us, and the moment we stepped out of doors we were surrounded by a mob. They followed us everywhere, and once when we tried to stroll on the beach they had the impudence to come up and peer under my bonnet to see what I looked like. Wherever we went they treated us just as they did the Town Band when it went on parade. Lord M. used to say the people of Kent were the worst in the country, but I am not sure the people of Sussex weren’t worse – loyal, certainly, but so vulgar and impertinent!

  ‘I imagine it would not be difficult to find another house somewhere along the coast,’ Sir Robert said, ‘but whether it would be sufficiently large and imposing for a Royal Residence—’

  ‘But I don’t want it to be large and imposing,’ I said quickly. ‘You know, Sir Robert, if it were not my duty to be on public display and give great banquets and receptions, I would most gladly retire to the country, and live quietly in a cottage with my husband and children. London and the excitements of the Season would be no loss to us, I assure you.’ And my words were rewarded by a squeeze of my hand against Albert’s ribs. ‘What we want is just a dear little place of our own where we can be snug and cosy.’

  ‘Gemütlichkeit,’ Albert summed up, with a nod.

  ‘Exactly!’ said I.

  ‘In that case, ma’am,’ said Sir Robert, ‘there could be no difficulty in finding a suitable house – indeed, I think I have one in mind that might do admirably – but I have the gravest doubts as to whether Parliament would sanction any further expenditure at this moment. Things, as you know, are bad, uniformly bad.’

  At this Albert was indignant. ‘Something will have to be done sooner or later, about Buckingham Palace at least. It is a national disgrace that the Sovereign’s family should be so badly housed! Our children, you know, sir, have nothing but an attic that was meant for servants – low and dark, no ventilation, and too small already. If our family goes on increasing—’ He broke off at this approach to delicate matters, and he and Sir Robert gave identical tactful coughs. ‘The State Apartments are quite inadequate for the sort of receptions we must give,’ Albert went on. ‘There is not even a ballroom; and the kitchens cannot provide anything that is edible. It is a wonder we have not poisoned some visiting head of state by now!’

  Sir Robert had put on his most wooden face. ‘Nevertheless, sir, you must know that the country is deep in recession, and the Exchequer could not bear the strain of it.’

  I cut through the argument. ‘But we are not talking about Buckingham Palace at the moment,’ I said firmly. ‘We are talking about a new marine residence for my family, and I must tell you, Sir Robert, that I do not wish Parliament to buy it for me. I want a place that is all my own, so that I can do as I please in it and with it. If I can buy it with my own money, out of the Privy Purse, Parliament can have no objection, can it?’

  ‘Why, no, ma’am,’ Sir Robert said, looking as surprised as his inexpressive face allowed, ‘if indeed there is enough in the Privy Purse for such a purchase.’

  ‘You perhaps have no idea of the extent of the Prince’s economies, Sir Robert,’ I said proudly. ‘He has been reorganising the Household, and we are very well beforehand with the world, I assure you! A house of our very own is what we want; and I shall be very glad to be free of those tiresome Woods and Forests, and all the other charming departments, which really are the plague of one’s life!’

  Everything that had to be done in and around the palaces had to pass through some or other department – the Lord Chamberlain’s office, the Lord Steward’s, the Clerk of the Works, the Master of the Horse – all of them cumbersome and dilatory; but the Woods and Forests were the worst of all. Chancery itself moved with indecent haste compared with them! And since nothing seemed to be governed by one department alone, and none of them was willing to coordinate their activities with the others, it was maddeningly difficult to get anything done at all. Fires, for instance, were laid by the Steward’s office but lit by the Chamberlain’s, so frequently we had no fire at all, and each blamed the other while we shivered. Windows were cleaned on the inside by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, but on the outside by the Woods and Forests, and since the Woods and Forests could never be brought to clean their side on the same day, we lived in a permanent fog and had to open a window to see what the weather was like.

  Sir Robert said thoughtfully, ‘If you are determined on this course, what does Your Majesty say to the Isle of Wight? I happen to know that Lady Isabella Blatchford is anxious to sell the O
sborne estate.’

  ‘Osborne? Oh yes, I know it,’ I said, and turned eagerly to Albert. ‘You remember I told you we stayed several times at Norris Castle when I was a girl, and how I wished I had been able to buy it when it came on the market in ’thirty-nine? Well, Osborne is the next-door estate. I was never in the house, but I cantered my pony over its grounds many a time.’

  ‘The Isle of Wight is very pretty,’ Albert said. We had sailed past it that summer, and I had pointed out some of its glories to him.

  ‘Very quiet and rural, sir,’ Peel said. ‘An excellent climate, I believe, and with the railway service quite conveniently reached from London.’

  ‘The sailing would be good from there,’ Albert said. ‘How big is the estate?’

  ‘I believe it is about a thousand acres, sir,’ said Peel. ‘Parkland, woods and a farm, or perhaps two.’

  ‘What do you think, my love?’ Albert said to me in German. ‘Does not the Isle of Wight have some bad memories for you? You will not associate it with a Certain Person?’

  I don’t know whether I had told Albert or not, but in fact Conroy and his family had stayed at Osborne while Mamma and I were at Norris Castle – not in the house but at the Lodge; but I tossed aside that memory. I had had happy holidays on the Isle of Wight, and was now all eagerness to buy a house there. Once I get an idea I want to steam full ahead with no deliberation or delay. ‘No, no, I am sure it will be perfect,’ I said. ‘You must go down at once and see it, and tell me what it’s like.’

  He smiled and pressed my hand again. ‘We must go about this in an orderly fashion, my darling. There is much to discover before anyone goes to see it. It may not be suitable at all.’