I, Victoria

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  The very word has a hideous sound, like an evil magician’s conjuration. And indeed, it was as though a dreadful curse had been put upon me. It bewildered me – and does to this day, for the doctors all agree that it is an hereditary disease, but it has never been in our family. I know this to be true, for it is not a thing that could be hidden in a royal house, and none of my ancestors has ever suffered from it. Nor, as far as I can discover, has it ever existed in the Coburg family (although records may be less complete on that side, especially with the death of children in infancy, where the cause may not have been ascribed). But neither Mamma nor Albert had ever heard of it on the Coburg side. Yet they say it is passed on through the mother. I cannot understand it.

  Oh, the feelings of a mother who has infected her own precious child with this hideous disease cannot be described! Every time little Leo ailed, I knew it to be my fault, and felt as though I had driven a knife through his little body with my own hand. And to this torment there could be no end, unless it be in the death of that same beloved little soul. Any blow, any little fall – and what normal child does not spend half its day tumbling down or knocking itself against one thing or another? – could start the bleeding; and then would come the swelling, the fever, the agony – the piercing cries that tore at one’s heart – the helplessness of watching the suffering without being able to alleviate it. From those bouts the child might recover, or might die – or might survive permanently crippled. To live with that knowledge day after day is what no mother ought to endure.

  Any mother in that situation would be protective, would try to stop the little one from running, from playing rough games, from climbing trees – try to stop the others in the family from wrestling or playing boisterously. Only when Leopold was lying asleep in his bed did I feel safe (and what a precarious safety that turned out to be!). He grew to be the cleverest of the boys, and the most studious; in his mental attributes and ability to apply himself, he was the most like of any of the boys to his dear father. He loved and early learned to appreciate Italian painting, which Albert so adored; his fondness for music was the most passionate of all the family, and his command of languages was extraordinary. Naturally, I suppose, my desire to make him take care of himself fretted him, and made him rebel and do the very things I tried to prevent; but I could not help admiring his spirit, which no illness or apprehension of death could dampen. Though I complained bitterly of his wilful neglect of advice and disregard of his doctors, I would probably secretly have loved him less if he had meekly accepted the restraints I tried to put on him.

  In 1876 dear Disraeli, recognising Leo’s abilities and his desire to be useful, suggested I make him my political secretary, and he served me well in that capacity, and was immensely proud to have the key to my Boxes which had once been his papa’s. We had feared we would not raise him, but in the event he lived to be a man, to serve his country, and even to marry and father two perfectly healthy children. I had been against him marrying at all, fearing the strain would be too much for him, but he insisted in his headstrong way. Helen, on whom his choice fell, proved a good and clever girl, most interesting to talk to, and very fond of mathematics, which endeared her to me. Less than a year after their wedding, she gave birth to a girl whom they called Alice.

  (I was so thrilled when I heard the news that in my haste to go and see my new grandchild I twisted my ankle and had to be carried to their room. There was Leo lying on one sofa and Helen on the other, and when I came in as a third helpless person, the effect was quite ludicrous!)

  How ironic it was that frail Leo should outlive his own father. All through his childhood I had tried to protect him from falls and accidents, but when he died, a week before his thirty-first birthday, it was not from some violent accident, but in bed, in his sleep, of a burst blood-vessel in the head. (By an awful coincidence, he died on the anniversary of that dreadful day when he rushed into my dressing-room with the terrible news that my dear John Brown had passed away in his sleep.) He was the second of my children to die before me, and bitter was my grief – but for my own loss. For my boy himself I could not repine: there was such a restless longing in him for what he could not have, and it seemed to increase year by year rather than lessen.

  Leopold had been married less than two years when he died; his son, Charlie, was born four months posthumously, a dear child of whom I have always been very fond. Helen has done an excellent job of bringing him up, poor fatherless boy; and now that my poor darling Affie has followed his only son to the grave, Charlie is to rule Coburg, his grandfather’s beloved home country. I think Albert would have been glad that Leo’s son is to have Coburg after all – a son from the son we never thought to raise.

  I was luckier than my gentle Alice, who lost her little boy Frittie when he was only three years old, after a fall from a window. Frittie was the liveliest, most spirited of her children – why is it that haemophiliac sons are so often that way? – and her grief was terrible. As to my own – what words can describe the feelings of a mother who has not only afflicted a son, but has been the cause of a daughter afflicting her son?

  And yet it was not in my family! Where could it have come from, that hideous disease? When we first learnt that Leo was afflicted, I found myself remembering Lord Melbourne’s words: ‘It is a very bad idea to marry one’s first cousin … There can be consequences … It can happen that the children of such a union are – odd.’ Could it be that Leo’s illness was a consequence of my having married my first cousin? I could not bear to think it – could not bear to imagine that anything bad could have come of my love for Albert and his for me – and so I shut the thought away, mentioned it to no-one, not even to my darling. But it was there, beneath the surface, along with my deep anxiety for the child (and another fear which was even less possible to name) and these hidden worries affected my health and my temper. I was by turns depressed, nervous and irritable, and who was to bear the brunt of my passions but my beloved? So once again the blissful stream of our marriage was disturbed by violent quarrels; on and off for four years they broke out, worse even than those we had endured just before and just after Bertie’s birth.

  I tried so hard to control myself, but one cannot keep hold all the time, and every now and then the dog would slip the leash. I raged; and Albert wrote me letters – cool, calm, mildly reproachful, sympathetic, kindly, damnable letters!

  ‘My dear Child, let us calmly consider the facts of the case … I am often astonished at the effect a hasty word of mine has produced, though in your candid way you usually explain afterwards what was the real root of your distress. I insist that I am not the cause, though I have often been the occasion of your suffering …’

  ‘I admit my method of treatment as on former occasions has signally failed, but I know of no other. If I say nothing I am accused of want of feeling, hard heartedness, cold indifference etc. etc. If I leave the room to allow you time to recover yourself, you follow me to renew the dispute and “have it all out” …’

  ‘It is my duty to keep calm and I mean to do so, for I do most sincerely pity you in your suffering. But if you were less preoccupied with your own feelings and more interested in the rest of the world you could avoid these outbreaks …’

  ‘What are you really afraid of in me? What can I do to you save, at the most, not listen long enough when I have business elsewhere?’

  Yes, what indeed? Oh, Albert, Albert, I saw, I knew, though you thought Kleines Frauchen was too silly and too selfish a little person to understand. But how could I speak to you on the subject? This was the thing I dared not even think about, dared not admit to myself for an instant. Far less how could I write it down, for written words have power, and come back to haunt you afterwards, and torment you with what might have been. But I knew, beloved, and I saw in your eyes that you knew it too. I saw you year after year withdrawing yourself from me, going away from the world, further and further, gradually into death.

  When we were in London or at Windsor, busines
s was the excuse. Well, he had enough of that in good truth, enough to leave me alone all day while he attended meetings, made speeches, inspected new schemes, planted trees, laid foundation stones. President of a thousand societies, patron of a thousand charities, every educator’s friend, every improver’s sympathetic ear – how tirelessly he spent himself, pouring out his hours and days in the service of others, as though he had a limitless store. And my share was to breakfast and dine with him: so, to see him bolt his breakfast while he read papers and reports, spoiling his digestion to save a few minutes for his crowded day; and to see him at dinner too tired to eat, his face pale with fatigue, doing his best to be civil if we had guests, making the family laugh if we had not. My share was to sleep with him, to lie pressed against him in the darkness and feel him ache; to feel him creep carefully from my side in the night, trying not to wake me, to go to his desk and punish his insomnia with study. My share was to pretend I had not wakened, because that was all I could do for him.

  Oh, how I tried to get him away from all his cares and concerns; but even away from London he did not stop. At Osborne he left me and went out all day seeing after his improvements about the estate and the farms; and at Balmoral, when he had no building or philanthropic scheme to advance, he would go out all day after the deer, tiring himself out on the mountains.

  It was at Balmoral he went the furthest from me, searching in the wild mountains and empty spaces for the Thuringia of his childhood, searching for some essential thing he had lost then which he needed in order to be able to live. I knew that was what he was doing, I saw it, though I think he did not. But he tramped exhaustingly through the rough heather and up the stony paths, always eager on the way out, always disappointed coming home – for the thing he searched for was not there to be found. At first I went with him, hoping to be some comfort to him, but as he went further and marched longer I could not keep up, and had to let him go alone. Then to be able to cover more ground he started staying overnight, at first under canvas, taking no-one but his valet Löhlein, and a ghillie or two; later he had his own bothy built at Feithort – what Brown used to call ‘the wee hoosie’ – just a single room with a bed, table, chair, stove, and a few shelves, and a second hut nearby for his people. There he stayed for longer, two nights or even three. I think he would not have come back at all, had it not been for engagements and duties.

  I was so lonely away from him, worrying about little Leo, about Vicky’s engagement to Fritz (she was too young, too young!), about Bertie’s lack of progress, about the international situation, about the latest Government crisis – and with nothing to distract me from my worries except the worse thought I dared not think. I fretted for him all day, never entirely at ease except when he was with me; and he would come back tired, with that lost look in his eyes like mist, and ask me polite questions about my day, as though I were a stranger and he would be considerate towards me whatever it cost him. But at least those expeditions helped him sleep. After a long day of physical exertion, he would fold his sad body into my arms and my heart, as if for consolation for that thing he had not found, ready for tenderness and then for oblivion.

  Once, in the early days of the Wee Hoosie, I rebelled against being left behind and followed him. Brown went with me to lead the pony over the rough tracks – Brown whom Albert had chosen for me, to sit on the box when I drove out and lead the pony when I rode, because of his magnificent physique, transparent honesty, and straightforward, independent character. It was a thing I always liked to remember afterwards, that it was Albert who had chosen Johnny Brown for my own ghillie, though he could not have known how much his choice would one day come to mean to me. But three years after Albert left me, I brought Brown down from Scotland to be ‘the Queen’s Highland Servant’, and from that time he never left me for a single day until he died. It was because of him that I was able to get through the terrible desert of years. He did everything for me – carried messages, fetched my shawl, blotted my letters, drove my carriage or led my horse – saved my life on more than one occasion – dried my tears on many another. When my steps grew uncertain, it was on his strong right arm that my left hand rested, and I knew he would not let me fall. When my hands grew stiff he tied my bonnet strings and poured my tea – yes, and put a ‘grand nip o’ whisky’ in it, too, to help me through the day! He was mother and nurse and bodyguard and friend – above all, friend – the truest, kindest, most disinterested and faithful friend one could ever hope for. Most of all, he was simply there: I did not need to send for him, or even look around for him – I had only to put out my hand.

  But that was a long way into the future. On the day I went up to the Wee Hoosie, Johnny Brown was a rather shy young man, unsmiling, and more at ease with horses than with people (he had worked as an ostler before joining our service, and there was no horse that he could not handle – and no dog that would not come to him, ears flattened and tail a-swing, to be petted). It was a long journey, through country progressively wilder, and though the day was fine, there was something forbidding about the purple starkness of the mountains, and the indigo shadows under the outcrops. But the pony, Fyvie, was strong and willing, and Brown strode with his long, springy step in front of it, not really leading it, though he held the bridle, but allowing it to follow him. It was not an arrangement conducive to conversation. Only once, when we stopped at the top of a ridge to let the pony breathe, I said to him, ‘Will it rain, do you think?’ and he looked around at the sky and seemed to snuff the wind, and then said, ‘Not on this side. Over yonder, perhaps.’ And so it proved. As we went up the glenside, I saw the rain falling white on the other side of the valley from a plum-purple cloud, even while the sun shone on us. It was the strangest sight, rather awe-inspiring. I had no desire to talk or laugh.

  Reaching the encampment at last, we found all the signs of life – ponies tethered, a fire drifting steel-blue smoke lazily through the trees, and two ghillies squatting beside their hut smoking their pipes. They scrambled to their feet as the dogs began barking, and Löhlein came to the door of Albert’s bothy, a cloth in his hands and a startled expression on his face. (He had come with Albert from Coburg in the very beginning, and was devoted to him. After Albert’s death I kept him on in my service, for he had nowhere else to go. He is dead now too. One of the penalties of a long life is that one outlives everyone.)

  ‘Where is the Prince?’ I asked him in German, and he replied apologetically, ‘He went out early this morning, Your Majesty – at six o’clock – after the deer. He took Herr Grant and Herr Macdonald. I don’t know when he will return.’

  It was a blow; but I would not seem disconcerted. ‘No matter, I will wait a while now I am here,’ I said.

  ‘His Highness did not know you were coming,’ Löhlein said, half statement, half hopeful question. I did not answer, but indicated to Brown that I would get down. ‘I shall stay a while,’ I said to him. ‘You may take off Fyvie’s saddle.’

  He glanced once into my face, with his shrewd, measuring look, and then helped me to dismount. Seeing that Löhlein was still standing there, looking put out and turning the cloth over and over in his hands, Brown said briskly, ‘Now then, Meester Lowland, will ye no get Her Mad-jesty a chair tae sit on, seeing I have holt o’ the pony and canna dae it maself?’

  This provoked Löhlein into action. He fetched a chair out from the bothy and set it up in the doorway, and I seated myself while Brown took the pony away to tie it with the others, and then sat himself down with the other ghillies. After a while they settled down and began talking to each other again in low voices, but Brown, I noticed, did not join in. He sat, his arms clasped lightly round his updrawn knees, watching me without appearing to do so.

  I waited, wondering if I had been a fool, wondering how long I should stay there, wondering if Albert did come back, whether he would be angry with me for disturbing him. The longer I waited for him the more I felt like a foolish and lovesick girl, rather than a wife of fifteen years’ standing. It was
a very still day, unusually in those hills, so little movement in the air that the smoke from the fire hardly rose, and was long dissipating, hanging like muslin in the branches of the trees. The smell of it was autumnal; and behind it I could smell pine resin and the clean snowy emptiness of Highland air – all sad smells. Under my feet was a layer of dead needles, brown and thick as a carpet; the only sounds were the soft, lilting voices of the ghillies talking in Gaelic, the occasional sigh or stamp from the ponies, and now and then a snapping and spitting from the fire.

  I tilted my head and looked up at the sky, past a framework of half-bare branches and hanging pine-cones, and it was blue and empty, except for a single dark bird circling high up, so far up I could not tell if it was eagle or kite or buzzard. (When I had first met Albert, I had not known one bird from another, but I knew them all now – and the flowers, and the trees.) What a view it must have from up there, I thought: like God’s view of His creation, the sweet, beautiful earth we had been given to look after. And suddenly my heart was aching with the sadness of all beauty, that longing to possess which can never be fulfilled. Perhaps that was Albert’s sadness, I thought suddenly, that and nothing else. Perhaps I have been fretting and worrying for nothing, and all he seeks in these empty places is the beauty that walks one pace ahead of us always, and cannot be overtaken. I should not have come here with my foolishness to fret him. I should go, now, at once, and leave him be.

  With the thought I stood up; and although he had not appeared to be looking at me, Brown stood too, with that graceful ease of trained strength, like a ballet dancer. And then one of the dogs barked, and moments later the hunting party appeared coming up the path – dogs, ghillies, ponies – and Albert. They had not killed, I saw that at once – the ponies carried nothing across their saddles. Albert walked ahead, wearing the kilt of the grey Balmoral tartan he had designed himself and a heavy tweed jacket, his gun under his arm. He walked into the clearing, came directly towards me, but, whether it was a trick of the light, or whether his mind was on other things, he did not seem to see me. He was looking straight at me, but he was walking towards the hut, and I might have been an insubstantial ghost for all that my presence was impinging on him.