I, Victoria

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  He only smiled now, as if he knew the truth of it, and got to his feet. ‘I had better get back to my work. My half-cut meadow calls me.’

  ‘It is so lovely here,’ I said, watching him as he rose up before me, loving his man’s shape, the glimpse of his chest under his thin shirt, the play of muscles in his bare forearm. ‘We are so lucky.’

  ‘Lucky, yes,’ he said, ‘but there is nothing that does not have its price.’ He had picked up his scythe and was running his thumb along the blade to test its edge. Now he snatched his hand back and drew a sharp breath. ‘Ach!’ A bright line of blood, gleaming and dark as ruby, appeared on the ball of his thumb. ‘So, you see?’

  ‘No, Albert!’ I said in alarm. The back of my knees ached at the sight of his blood. I could never bear him to be hurt.

  ‘It is nothing,’ he said, conveying it to his mouth. ‘What a clumsy fool I am.’ Then he removed the thumb in order to smile at me. ‘Even Paradise has its serpent, you see, Kleinchen!’ I did not manage to smile back, and he stooped to cup my face with his unwounded hand and kiss my lips, keeping the other well away from my white muslin gown. ‘Oh, foolish one, you have gone quite pale! It is only a little scratch,’ he said. ‘It has stopped bleeding already, see?’ He made pretence to show it to me, but did not allow me to see it, and as if to forestall any fuss went quickly back to his scything.

  I watched him, feeling my heart beat foolishly. It was nothing, it had been a nothing of an incident; but for a moment I could smell only the cold, dank odour of the bamboo’s shadows, and I felt a sense of grief I did not then at all understand.

  There was an ancient tomb which was discovered in Italy, whose entrance was decorated with a carving of a death’s-head, and under it the words Et in Arcadia Ego. Scholars have argued long about the meaning of the inscription. Does it mean, ‘I, who am now dead, once also lived in Paradise’? Or does it mean, ‘Even in Paradise, I, Death, am present’? But it seems to me that the translation does not matter, because both versions mean the same thing: remember thy mortality.

  Albert made me this garden, this perfect and beautiful Arcadia, and it breathes of him still; his presence is around every corner, near, but mockingly out of sight. For it was here that he first began to withdraw from me, though I saw it only with hindsight. I knew only that he spent too many hours away from me, planting and planning and organising and overseeing the works; working, himself, like one possessed, as if he were afraid that he would not get it finished in time. In time for what? I might have asked; but the answer then was hidden from me.

  I have my Arcadia still, and still God spares me to sit in it, and enjoy the beauty He created and His servant enhanced. But the servant has departed, and I am alone, and old, so old.

  Nothing that does not have its price.

  28th July 1900

  WE HAD the Marine Band from Portsmouth to play to us last evening after dinner – quite glorious! And the most tremendous thunderstorm broke, too, which was thrilling, and cleared the air wonderfully, so I slept much better last night. Everything today is glittering with freshness, the sky as limpid as if it had been washed, and the sea sparkles down below so invitingly that I can’t help glancing up every few minutes from my writing, as if to exchange a smile with an old friend.

  Unlike the royal palaces, Osborne was very much home to the children, and so many of my best memories here are to do with them. Albert wanted to recreate for them at Osborne the perfect happiness he had known at the Rosenau in his own childhood. Of course, his childhood had not been perfectly happy, but he liked to remember it so, when he was feeling sentimental or homesick. What he really created at Osborne was the parts of his childhood he had enjoyed, but made perfect by loving, devoted, and above all faithful parents.

  So our little ones spent a great deal of time with us when we were at Osborne, breakfasting and lunching with us when we had no important guests. Usually at these meals the smallest was placed between his chair and mine, where it could be helped from either side; and Albert kept them all in order, rebuking them if they sat badly or snatched or gobbled their food, but otherwise chatting to them so kindly and amusingly, and keeping us all laughing with his fun and mimicry.

  And then there were the outings. Never did children have so much freedom, and fun, and romping! He encouraged them to run about catching butterflies, climb trees, and roll over and over down the slopes (as I had always longed to do at Windsor when I was a child, and never had, and now never would). To facilitate this freedom, they were never dressed formally when we were alone, but had sensible clothes for romping – the little girls in stout Holland frocks, and the little boys in sailors’ dresses – ‘slops’ – which became very fashionable afterwards amongst the middling sort for their children.

  A favourite walk was always down to our little beach, when I would sit and sketch while the children and Albert dug extravagant earthworks in the sand, threw sticks into the sea for the dogs, collected shells, examined the rock-pools, paddled at the water’s edge, or went right in to bathe. Albert had not forgotten his vow that they should all learn to swim: he had a large floating ‘swimming bath’ made, a cross between a raft and a sieve. It had a wooden deck with a changing-hut and a water-closet, and the bath itself was made of zinc grating with a wooden, slatted floor which could be raised or lowered. The whole was moored to pontoons, so that it went up and down with the tide and so could be used at any time, and here the children could safely take their first swimming lessons, graduating when they could swim several lengths with confidence to the sea proper. They learned to dive, too – girls included – and in anticipation of the worst, Albert made the boys learn to swim fully clad in shirt, trousers, stockings and boots.

  Encouraged by the seclusion of our private beach, I took my first sea-bathe there in 1847. I had a bathing-machine which ran down into the sea on stone rails, and a very kind and experienced bathing-woman. It was the most exhilarating experience (until I grew too confident and put my face under the water, whereupon I was convinced I must suffocate!). I never learned to swim, but I did very much enjoy splashing and jumping about in the waves while Albert stood in the water nearby and encouraged me. I stopped going into the sea when Albert died, of course. The pleasure would have been nothing without him.

  Another thing Albert had built for the children was the Swiss Cottage, a play house, smaller than a real one, but properly constructed of wood with real fireplaces and chimneys. On the ground floor were a kitchen and scullery, fitted out with a miniature stove and boiler that really worked, and all the equipment they needed to learn to cook and keep house. Upstairs were a dining-room, where the children entertained us and a few favoured guests to meals they prepared themselves, and a sitting-room where they kept their natural history collection. (Albert and Ernst had had such a collection at the Rosenau.) In front of the Swiss Cottage, each child had his or her own garden plot, with tools made to scale for them, where they grew flowers and vegetables. Albert wanted to teach them his own love of gardening; but he also purchased what they grew at the regular price, to help them to understand commerce.

  Later, in the same part of the grounds, Albert further reconstructed his childhood with the building of a miniature fort, complete with earthworks and barracks. He and his brother had played soldiers in a mock fort when they were boys. The improving lesson to be learned here was of the classical strategies of war; but such energetic boys as ours did not need any encouragement to play at battles. (It was particularly favoured by Arthur – or ‘Arta’, as he called himself when he was little – whose godfather was the ‘Dook of Wellikon’ on whose eighty-first birthday he had been born. He was destined from the beginning for the Army and loved all things military. When he was two he was given the uniform of the Scotch Fusiliers for his birthday, complete down to the bearskin and toy rifle, and he looked so sweet and funny in it. It amused Albert very much, and Winterhalter later painted him wearing it, which became Albert’s favourite painting of Arthur.)

  T
hese contrivances were the tangible signs of his loving attention to his children, and what other children can boast more? But the memories I cherish are the little fragments of family life, so dear, so private: of Albert playing his organ with a baby on each knee, while the little fat fists tried to add a counterpart to the tune; of Albert swinging a little one to and fro between his legs in a napkin – a process which always gave rise to impassioned pleas from the older ones who were now too big for the treat. I remember picnics and pony-rides and drives in the miniature phaeton; I remember expeditions into the kitchen gardens for all parties to stuff themselves with raspberries and currants to their hearts’ desire. I remember Albert lying on his stomach on the floor with Affie and Arthur, laying out an entire campaign of lead soldiers; Albert, Bertie and Affie flying Affie’s kite and trying to stop it leaving England altogether; Albert, dogs and boys playing a wild game of hide-and-seek in and out of the plantations.

  I remember – oh sweet, poignant memory – Albert teaching Vicky to waltz, circling solemnly while she, heart-breakingly dignified, trying to be grown-up, stared down with concentration at her little slippered feet placed on top of his. I remember him watching, with such an expression of tenderness that it was almost like pain, as dear Fat Alice rushed about one October trying to stick the leaves back on the trees because she didn’t want summer to be over.

  It was always Albert who arranged the ‘birthday tables’ and planned the birthday treats. At Easter he hid the painted hard-boiled eggs around the breakfast-room and cried out ‘Warm!’ or ‘Cold!’ or ‘Hotter!’ as the children rushed round hunting for them. One midsummer he turned somersaults in a haystack to teach Bertie how it was done. On a wet autumn day when no one could go out of doors he had them all playing at charades, with the girls acting boys’ parts and the boys girls’, to everyone’s intense hilarity. In winter he built a ten-foot-high snowman for Vicky, and dragged Affie about on a sled while the little tyrant shouted and pretended to crack his whip like a miniature potentate.

  But it’s the summers that I remember best, when we could be out of doors all day. I remember one warm evening when we sat out on the lawn until after seven o’clock, with Albert and the children playing a game of his invention called ‘Naughty Rabbit’, a cross between Hot Cockles and Tag, which had them all breathless with running and laughing, until Laddle said she was afraid no-one would sleep. In the event, no-one was sick except Dacko, one of the dacks-hounds we had brought back from Coburg, and that was because he had been eating grass. And that night, after dinner, Albert and I climbed the stair to the nursery floor and walked hand in hand to each bed, to look into each little flushed and sleeping face.

  ‘They are so beautiful,’ he whispered. ‘God has blessed us.’ Lenchen had flung off her covers, and he drew them up, tenderly tucking in her chubby arm, and then stooped to kiss her cheek, a feather touch that did not wake her. ‘She smells like hay,’ he said, almost to himself.

  It was at moments like that, that I did not begrudge the effort and inconvenience involved in childbearing. To have given him such treasure, such joy, seemed a privilege I could not value highly enough.

  We went downstairs again, and when I went to my dressing-room to prepare for bed, Albert came with me, and stood leaning against the chimneypiece with his legs crossed in that elegant way of his, chatting to me as my maid undressed me. I had had my hair dressed with white roses and ivy that evening (I usually wore fresh flowers rather than jewels in it when we had no guests), and when it was undone, he reached over and took one of the roses from the dressing-table, and held it to his nose.

  ‘How soon the scent fades,’ he murmured. ‘It is wilting, poor little rose.’

  ‘It has served its purpose,’ I said, and then seeing him still look fixedly at it, I added, ‘I could press it for you, if you liked – as a memento.’

  He looked up at me quizzically, as though I had made a joke, or spoken in a foreign language; and then, pushing himself to his feet, he stepped across to me, and stooped, laying the rose gently in my hand. ‘You keep it,’ he said; brushed my bare shoulder with his lips on the way to my ear, and whispered, ‘Die Frau hat gar hübsche Schultern.’ My heart beat a little faster at this compliment. He had always admired my shoulders, and it thrilled me that he should desire me still after all those years and all those children. I watched him in the glass as he went through the door into the sitting-room on his way to his own dressing-room. ‘Don’t be long,’ he said, feeling my eyes on him.

  The rose I laid aside to be pressed when I had a moment to myself; for now, my maid finished undressing me, and when I was in my nightgown and she had brushed out my hair, I sent her away. Then I touched a little Kölnischwasser behind my ears, put on my favourite brown-and-green silk robe, and with my hair streaming down my back, went to find my husband. He was not yet in the bedroom; nor was he in the sitting-room, but as soon as I entered it I heard the sound of his organ playing, so I knew he was in his dressing-room. I walked over to the door and opened it.

  He was seated there in his dressing-gown, staring at nothing, playing. He did not notice me come in. I did not know the piece – if piece it was – but it was so melancholy that it made the hair stand up on the back of my neck; something in a minor key, with no tune, but continually modulating, as though passing through hall after hall of the mind, in which each image and memory was yet more sad. And his face, oh, his face was set and white and expressionless, a stranger’s face – a mask. I was so frightened that I shivered, and the movement, small as it was, was enough to disturb him. He stopped and turned to me (I’m sure he did not know what he was playing, but he was too much a musician not to complete the resolution he had been leading towards, and his hands played on two chords after he had turned his head, to bring the music home). Then the life came back into his face. It was like seeing a light kindled at a window in a previously empty house, and I felt my blood rush back into all the places it had abandoned for a moment. Now he looked only tired.

  ‘What is it? Have I kept you waiting?’ he said, almost in a normal voice. He stood up, and came to me, and taking my cold hands looked down into my face and said again, ‘What is it?’

  ‘Albert,’ I said, ‘you wouldn’t – you wouldn’t leave me?’ I didn’t know how else to phrase the question.

  He didn’t answer for a moment – for one heart-stopping moment. And then he said gently, quizzically, ‘Foolish little one, where would I go?’ And then, seeing it was not answer enough, he said seriously, ‘It is not you I would leave, don’t you understand that? There is nowhere I ever want to be, except in your arms. Come, come now, come to bed.’

  I did not understand, but I would not resist him, seeing how tired he was, and hoping things would become clear, I let him put his arm round me and lead me away. A few minutes later he put out the light on his side of our bed, and turned towards me, taking me into his arms. ‘Now we are safe,’ he said. ‘Now there is no world, thank God, only us.’ I turned my face up to him, and even in the dark our mouths found each other without hesitation, and we kissed with the sweetness of accustomed lovers. Then I felt him reach upwards for the little brass lever on the bedhead that worked the door lock, and my heart lifted as I heard the familiar, satistying, heavy dick as he shut out any possibility of our being disturbed.

  Afterwards he slept soundly, with no bad dreams.

  Fifteen

  7th August 1900, at Osborne

  I HARDLY know how I am to write this. Oh God, my poor darling Affie! The news came by telegram at eight in the morning on the 31st of July – the terrible news – and Baby brought them to me after I had dressed. A third child of mine lost! It is so very hard to bear. I did not even know the end was near. Marie gave me no hint of it when she visited in June with Baby Bee, though perhaps she may not have known herself – since Young Affie died she and Affie had hardly seen each other. I see now that Beatrice tried to prepare me for the shock a week beforehand, but even she did not know the full facts, for thoug
h the doctors told her he was hopelessly ill, they said he might live six months more. It has been kept secret, but he has been ill for two years with the same thing that took poor Vicky’s Fritz, and it seems that for the last two weeks he was being fed through a straw, because the horrible disease had taken such a hold on him. One could not wish him to linger on in such a state, and his death must be seen as a merciful release; but it is hard for a mother to say about her son, Thy will be done, oh God. The end, at least, was peaceful. He was sitting in the garden at six-thirty in the evening, went to bed at nine and was sleeping, ‘like a child’ they say, when he died half an hour later. I feel so for poor Marie, losing her only son last year, and now her husband; and for her dear daughters, who adored their papa – how they will grieve!

  But three children gone before me! And three dear sons-in-law besides! It is very hard at eighty-one. My only comfort has been in talking over my happy memories of his life, his childhood, Christmases and treats, his dear birthdays which he always spent here. He would have been fifty-six on Monday. It seems impossible to believe he has gone! He died at the Rosenau in dear Coburg, of course, where he has been since 1893, when he succeeded to the title. I have seen so little of him in late years, for he was five years in Malta and four at Devonport before that. Lenchen feels it very much, for he was a great favourite with her.

  I felt too shaken and broken to do or write anything for days, and the weather as if in sympathy with our tragedy has been frightful, with the most terrible gales I ever remember at this time of the year. There is a great deal of damage to the trees, several ships in the Solent have pulled their anchors, and the poor old swimming-bath has been blown on to the rocks and wrecked, quite beyond repair I am told. And I had only just been writing about it! Life is full of such ironies.