I, Victoria

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  But good weather follows bad, just as bad follows good, and life goes on – ah, how it goes on! One must endure, and bear what God sends with patience and humility. There are still moments of gladness to be gleaned in the acres of sorrow. The children, for instance, were very droll at luncheon. Little David was standing by my chair and telling me about playing football with some of the boys from the village, boasting how clever he was at it. I said, ‘That is very well, my dear, but I hope you are clever at your lessons, too.’

  ‘Oh, I am a good boy,’ he said. ‘I know lots of German.’ So then Maurice, who was listening with a superior look from the vast eminence of three years’ seniority, challenged him to say something in German; and David of course was immediately struck dumb, cudgelling his brains in vain.

  ‘You don’t know any German words at all!’ Maurice said triumphantly. ‘He doesn’t, Gangan! It’s all “spoof”!’

  David went red in the face. He can’t bear to be laughed at. ‘Yes, I do!’ he shouted. ‘I know – I know lumbago!’ He must have heard me asking Marie Mallet about her attack of it. I did laugh at that – shocking myself for a moment; but children are the strongest goad for bringing one back to life!

  And now I am sitting in the sun again and getting on with my writing, which helps to keep my mind off things. I have scribbled off a letter to Victoria Battenberg (poor Alice’s eldest), who sent me such a nice photograph of the baby to cheer me up, seven weeks old now and such a big child! When I held him on my lap at the Christening, he flung back a hand and knocked my ‘specs’ off my nose, and almost blacked my eye into the bargain! To please me, Victoria and Ludwig gave him Albert as his first name (Albert Victor Nicholas Louis Francis is the full set) but it seems they call him Dickie at home, I can’t think why.

  The three problems which almost from the beginning of the century had made governments’ heads ache – the Corn Laws, the Irish, and Chartism – became inextricably tangled together, and reached a crisis in 1848 (the annus mirabilis of Europe, as it has been called, when the continent boiled up, spilled over, and eventually settled down in a completely different pattern).

  Peel had gradually been persuading me that the Corn Laws imposed an unfair and unnecessary burden on the labouring classes and must be abolished, and the partial failure of the potato crop in Ireland in 1845, and the consequent famine amongst the Irish peasants, finally brought matters to a head. It was not that cheaper corn would help the Irish, for they were so dependent on potatoes that even if they had been given wheat they would not have known what to do with it, and had no machinery for grinding it. But the famine provided a warning that cheap food for the lower orders was pressingly needed, and so Peel introduced a measure for the abolition into Parliament in January 1846. Albert went down to the House to hear the debate, meaning it as a sign that the Bill had my full support. Unfortunately, his presence there gave offence to many, partly, I suppose, because of the old thorn of his being a ‘foreigner’, but also because the landed aristocracy did not think I had any business supporting a Bill which they thought was directly against their interests. Lord George Bentinck went so far as to write me a very impertinent letter on the subject, which made us both very angry; but on Peel’s advice, Albert never went to the House again.

  Peel got his Bill through, and the Corn Laws were repealed on the 26th of June 1846, but the disgruntled landowners had their revenge by defeating him immediately afterwards on an unrelated matter, forcing him to resign, and leaving me with no choice but to summon Lord John Russell and the Whigs to form a government. I had grown fond enough of Peel by that time (and trusted him completely, which was more important) to be very sorry indeed at losing him, especially as I did not at all care for Russell, a little, ugly man who was conceited and opinionated (his nickname was Finality Jack) and had very unappealing manners. But I had only just emerged from childbed (Lenchen was born on the 25th of May) and I was rejoicing in being fully reunited with my darling husband; so the change of government, which once would have had me trembling and in tears, now had far less impact on me. The continuity of family life, and my contentment with Albert, made matters of mere politics very much of secondary importance.

  In 1846 the potato crop failed again, this time completely, while at the same time cereal crops everywhere were very poor. The winter that followed was one of the most severe in human memory, and the sufferings of the Irish were too dreadful to be imagined. Meanwhile the removal of price controls encouraged wild speculation in wheat, especially since with the scarcity of 1846 the price soared to 115 shillings; then in 1847 the wheat harvest was enormously abundant, the price dropped to 49 shillings, the speculators were ruined, eleven banks failed, and there was disaster in the City. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland had been begging for money for Ireland, to relieve some of the desperate suffering; but with this new financial crisis, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had to tell him, ‘I cannot give you what I do not have.’

  So the three threads drew together. Chartism had strong links with the Irish problem, for the leader of the Chartists, Feargus O’Connor, was MP for Cork and also leader of the Irish Nationalists, and many of his lieutenants were Irish Nationalists too. Chartism had been rumbling and grumbling around the country in various forms all my life (the so-called ‘Massacre of Peterloo’ happened in my birth-year of 1819) but since 1839 it had been consistently demanding the six points of the ‘People’s Charter’ which gave the movement its present name. The six demands were: the vote for every man over twenty-one, regardless of his status; the secret ballot; equal-sized constituencies; the abolition of the property qualification for MPs; payment of MPs; and annual Parliaments. Apart from the fact that the demands themselves were either absurd or undesirable, or both, the greatest objection to the Chartist movement was that it stirred up the lower classes and got them into trouble. Few of the labouring sort had any desire at all for political reform, but when they were out of work or hungry or had some grievance against their employer, there were the Chartists (who were usually educated and comfortably off people of the middling sort) ready to harness the discontent and turn it into violence and civil disobedience for their own ends. I believe that is how the French Revolution of 1789 began – perhaps it is how all revolutions begin. As Lord M. said to me once, all the poor ever want is enough to eat and a little more than enough to drink; but in their ignorance they become sticks with which political agitators (who you may be sure are never hungry themselves) beat governments. And then when things go wrong, it is the poor who finish up at the end of a rope or on the treadmill, while the agitators escape abroad to plot the next rising.

  Revolution was in the air. By 1847 we were aware that trouble was brewing all over Europe, and every country was seething with discontent. There was civil war in Spain; in Portugal Queen Maria faced a pretender to the throne and fierce conflict between factions; the Austrian empire was creaking at the seams with the nationalist ambitions of its constituent countries; Italy under a new liberal Pope was preparing to make a bid for independence; Greece was suffering under intense poverty and a corrupt tyrant of a king. Everywhere there was trouble. Only two countries were peaceful: Belgium, industrialized and prosperous, where my beloved uncle Leopold, king by invitation, had modernised the institutions and ruled with justice by a liberal constitution; and Russia, where whatever the sufferings of the people, the great autocrat Nicholas I kept an iron control over everything.

  But the first revolution of 1848, the Year of Revolutions, took everyone by surprise. We had known for some time that King Louis-Philippe of France was unpopular: his regime was corrupt, and his principal minister, Guizot, was a hated reactionary. But no-one had anticipated any real danger to the Throne. The ties between our families were strong, for Louis-Philippe, when still the Duc d’Orléans, had been forced into exile during the French Revolution and had gone to Canada, where he had encountered his old friend Madame Julie de St Laurent. Madame had introduced him to my papa, and they had become great friends, and P
apa had generously lent the Duc £200 (which he could ill afford at the time) to set himself up as a teacher. (The Duc never forgot the kindness and as soon as he became king he paid back the loan to me, Papa being dead by then, of course.) On his return to Europe the Duc had come to England and become friendly with the Regent, and with Princess Charlotte and Uncle Leopold. The Duc had become King of France in 1830 and Uncle Leopold King of the Belgians in 1831, and Uncle Leopold had, of course, married the King of France’s daughter, my beloved aunt Louise.

  It was Aunt Louise who had first urged Albert and me to visit the King and Queen of France, and in order not to make it a State visit, with all the political implications, Albert and I had gone to them at their private home at Eu in 1843, as part of our first cruise in our new steam yacht. They gave us a wonderfully warm welcome (and rather touchingly ordered from London vast quantities of Cheddar cheese and bottled beer, under the impression that this was all English people ate! I heard afterwards that Peel, who was not going on the trip, sent a message to Lord Aberdeen, who was, saying he hoped the weather would be calm on the crossing so that he could do justice to all the delicacies that were being laid on!). The King and Queen and their children treated us most affectionately, and we had since quite thought of them as family. Sadly since then diplomatic relations, and my feelings about the King, had cooled because of his increasingly Bourbon attitude to ruling, and especially because of his very bad behaviour over the Spanish Marriages.

  The Spanish Marriages problem had been extensively discussed on our second visit to Eu in 1845, and I had thought the King and I understood each other. The situation in Spain was this: King Ferdinand had married for the third time in 1829 after two childless marriages, and had produced two daughters, Isabella and Louisa. But he died in 1832, leaving two-year-old Isabella Queen (with her mother Queen Christina as Regent). It was obviously of the greatest importance to all of us who Isabella eventually married. Albert and I favoured our cousin Leopold of Coburg (younger brother of Ferdinand, who had married Maria of Portugal), which would keep it all nicely in the family.

  However, in 1843 a rumour grew up that King Louis-Philippe had hatched a scheme to marry Queen Isabella to her cousin the Duc of Cadiz, and her younger sister the Infanta Louisa, to Louis-Philippe’s own son Montpensier. Since the Duc of Cadiz was widely believed to be incapable of having children, this would mean the Throne of Spain would eventually come to the Infanta Louisa and her French husband.

  If true, this would have been a shocking thing, for not only did the Treaty of Utrecht forbid the uniting of the French and Spanish thrones, but it also expressly barred any member of the House of Orléans from coming to the Throne of Spain. When we visited Eu in 1845, Louis-Philippe assured us he had no designs on the Throne of Spain, and that he wanted the Spanish marriage only because the Infanta was very wealthy and would make a good wife for his son. He further promised that he would not pursue the matter until Isabella had made all safe by marrying and producing an heir.

  We believed his assurances, and continued to promote the match between Isabella and Cousin Leopold; but the rumours persisted, and suddenly in September 1846 French and Spanish ministers (prompted by the wicked Guizot, of course!) got together and arranged the double wedding of Isabella to Cadiz and Louisa to Montpensier on the same day. We were all very angry about it, and I was especially upset that Cousin Leopold had been treated in such an offhand and really rude manner, which hurt Albert’s feelings very much. There was nothing for it but to pronounce at an end the special entente between France and England – which pleased Russia and Austria no end! (In the event, Louis-Philippe did not prosper by his scheming, for Queen Isabella went on to have five children by the Duc of Cadiz; so he did not gain the Throne of Spain, and fourteen months later he lost the Throne of France into the bargain!)

  As I said, we all knew that Louis-Philippe was unpopular, but the opposition in France was understood to be against the regime, rather than against monarchy itself, and Paris was as well defended as any capital could be. There had been a number of anti-government demonstrations, but they had passed off peacefully; but then on the 22nd of February Guizot banned a particular procession in Paris, because the numbers gathering were thought to be dangerously large. Despite the ban the procession still took place, and by then feeling in the city was running so high that the National Guard sent a deputation to the King at the Tuileries saying they could not answer for the peace unless the government was changed.

  The King accepted their word and dismissed Guizot, and everything seemed to quieten down. But on the following evening another demonstration formed in the centre of the city. The crowds were huge, but apparently peaceful, until outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs a single shot was fired. No-one knew who fired it, but the ball broke the leg of a horse. The horse was the mount of a major commanding the line regiment guarding the Ministry, and he was very, very fond of it. On such tiny things the fate of nations can depend! In the heat of the moment, and his anger and grief, he gave the order to fire into the crowd.

  They say fifty or more people were hit, many of them women and children, and the crowd ran, dispersing into the faubourgs to rouse their friends and neighbours. Gunsmiths’ shops were raided, barricades thrown up, and by next morning Paris was in armed revolt, with the National Guard joining the mob. It was 1789 all over again, and the King and Queen must have been terrified as reports came in to them through the night. By the morning an armed mob had surrounded the Tuileries, and a representative of the National Guard presented the King with a hastily drawn up Act of Abdication to sign.

  I have to say in justice to him that Louis-Philippe refused at first to abdicate, saying that he would sooner die; but his family did not entirely agree with his sentiments, and at length Montpensier persuaded him to sign. It was only just in time: as the royal family fled through the Tuileries gardens, the mob broke in and ransacked the palace. The old King was hustled away, muttering, ‘J’abdique, j’abdique,’ to everyone he passed. In the confusion the family got separated, both from each other and from their possessions, and when they eventually managed to smuggle their way to England, they had nothing but the clothes they stood up in – and in the case of the Duchesse de Nemours, not even those, for they were torn off her by the mob.

  Of course, at the time we did not receive the story clearly and concisely as I have just written it. All we had for days was rumour and suspense and false report. We heard on the 25th that Louis-Philippe had landed at Folkestone, and I cancelled our dinner engagement and summoned Russell and Palmerston to request that we might give sanctuary to the French royal family. The report turned out to be false, but it was agreed that we might put the royal yacht at the King’s disposal if and when he escaped. We were told, however, that we must be careful how we received the exiles, because the country would not like it, and it might make diplomatic relations difficult in future with the new rulers of France.

  ‘We have family ties,’ I said shortly. ‘It is a family matter. And as to the country not liking it, what sort of example would I be giving my own subjects if I failed to support a brother sovereign? I will not be seen to encourage revolutionaries. I cannot and will not ignore their plight.’

  ‘Quite so, ma’am,’ Palmerston said soothingly, silencing Russell with a glance. (I was heavily pregnant at the time, and I suppose he felt I needed tender handling: Russell was notoriously ‘tackless’, as Arthur used to say.) ‘I would not dream of asking you to do so. But I do recommend extreme caution. Our entente with France failed, as you know, because of the King’s own behaviour. I think you ought not to invite them here, to Buckingham Palace, at least not to begin with, until we see how the country takes it.’

  ‘Claremont,’ Albert said suddenly. ‘Why should they not go to Claremont? Will that be “unofficial” enough?’

  ‘Certainly, sir,’ said Palmerston, with a nod, and added kindly, ‘As for their immediate necessities, I’m sure we can manage something out of secret service funds
– we can call it a gift from an anonymous well-wisher, or something of the sort.’

  By ones and twos the desperate, heart-stricken French began to arrive; but still not the King and Queen. We began to fear the worst, and Albert, strange to say, seemed to feel it much more than me, and began to look really haggard and careworn. Perhaps I was insulated against the shock by my condition. At last on the 3rd of March we had a letter from Newhaven from the King himself, to say he had arrived safely: the British Consul at Le Havre had rescued him and smuggled him and the Queen across in disguise. It was a very affecting letter, for he addressed me as ‘madame’ instead of the kingly ‘ma soeur’, and signed himself simply by his name, with no title.

  Albert went down to Claremont to see them settled in, and on the 6th of March Palmerston allowed them to visit us at Buckingham Palace. They came looking very pale, very worn, and very shocked at what they had suffered. They were very conscious of the change in their circumstances – the poor things hardly had the means of living. I had to provide the Queen with some very basic necessities, even with a hairbrush, for which she thanked me tremblingly. She cried a good deal, and I did my best to make her comfortable, and lost any desire to point out to them that the King had brought it all on himself. He looked, indeed, very old, a poor broken old man; and it made us realise by what a slender thread our fortunes hung.

  There was one happy footnote to the story: in October of that year the National Assembly – the new ruling body of France – voted almost without a dissentient voice to restore to the exiled Orléans family their private property and incomes. Russell told me that he thought when everything was arranged the King would have better than a million pounds, so they could all live in comfort for the rest of their lives. It was unexpectedly generous of the French Republic, and seemed to show they had no spleen against Louis-Philippe, but simply wanted to be rid of him. It made me remember, with guilty amusement, something that Lord M. had once said to me – that the French could not bear l’ennui, and though they would forgive their kings for being wicked, they could never forgive them for being dull!