I, Victoria

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  He paused a few steps from me, like a blind man who knows there is something in his path but does not know what, and I looked at him with the sudden clarity of a stranger. A man in his thirties, but looking older; a married man, a family man, with the lines of responsibility and daily cares in his face; a balding head, a double chin, a hint of girth under the waistcoat, a slackness in the cheek muscles, a pouchiness under the eyes. The slender, golden-haired, porcelain-skinned youth whose beauty seemed to have come from another sphere, as though an angel had been caught in human form – where was he? I did not care, I did not want him back – I loved this man standing before me now, whose beauty was of this earth, the beauty of experience and compassion, of human love and happiness. I had lived with him and eaten and slept with him and borne his children, and all those years of ours were in the soft wornness of his face. I loved him so much that I felt as though it must burst my heart.

  ‘Albert,’ I said at last, softly. ‘I hope you are glad to see me?’

  He did not reply. It was a mild day, and the air, though still, was fresh; but I felt a cold sweat start up under my arms and down my back – a sweat of fear. His blue eyes were blank, and there was something about the way the light fell that showed me the contours of the socket bones around them, so that it was as if I could see through the skin and flesh to the skull beneath. Beneath every beloved face is a death’s-head.

  ‘Albert!’ I said in desperate appeal.

  I am always here, even when you cannot see me. I will seek you out, I will have you; there is nowhere to hide, nowhere safe from me. Cover me with fine cloth, cover me with roses, it makes no difference. I am the great determiner, and I have already written your end.

  There seemed an utter stillness over the encampment. No breath of air stirred. Even the fire did not crackle. ‘Was machts du hier?’ he whispered. ‘Es ist nicht zeit, nicht zeit.’

  It was not me he spoke to. ‘Es ist Frauchen,’ I said desperately. ‘Kennst du nicht?’

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move on the other side of the encampment; and at the same moment, as though some spell had been broken, Albert blinked and put his hand up to his brow in a bewildered way. When he put the hand down again, he looked at me and saw me, and his eyes were his own, blue, beautiful, all-seeing.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ he said. ‘My mind was far away. Dearest little one, what brings you here? Not trouble at home, I hope?’

  ‘No, not at all, only I missed you so,’ I said, stammering a little. ‘I could not wait to see you.’

  ‘Ah, that’s so good,’ he said, smiling. He took my hands and lifted them, one and then the other, to his lips and kissed them. ‘Will you take luncheon with me in the heather? Dare I hope?’

  I joined in the play, only too relieved to have him back. ‘If there are potatoes, I will stay and eat.’

  He laughed. ‘There are potatoes. In Scotland there are always potatoes! Did you bring nothing with you? Improvident Queen! Suppose we had not been here, you would have starved.’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said loftily. ‘Brown would have shot a deer or caught a fish.’

  He chuckled – a lovely sound, better than music to me. ‘Ah, but not even Brown could have dug potatoes out of this hillside! Kennst du das Land, wo die Kartoffeln blühn?’ he sang, paraphrasing Goethe. I laughed, and he tugged at my hand. ‘Come, then, little darling, let us see what we have that’s fit for a Queen.’

  It was a lovely luncheon, cooked there in front of the bothy and consumed out on the open hillside, at a cloth spread for us in the heather. Before us a view all purple and rose-brown in the foreground, emerald and indigo and breathtaking steel-blue in the distance; no sounds but the cry of the blackcock and a little domestic chumbling from the bees in the heather. We had excellent boiled potatoes and cold beef, cheese and oat-bread, and a cold tart of cranberries, very good, which Löhlein had baked that morning. He opened a bottle of claret, too, and one of Seltzer-water, and we spent so long over luncheon that we drank both; and then Grant made tea, and offered us whisky with it, which Brown brought to us, carrying away the claret bottle between finger and thumb with a scornful look that made us both laugh. And while we ate, we talked, about everything and nothing in the most comfortable way, and the years seemed to roll back, and we were our young selves again, before the cares of State and family had bent our shoulders.

  After luncheon Albert wrote on a piece of paper that we had been there, our names and the date, and put it into the Seltzer bottle and buried it on the spot – something we had been doing for some time now, whenever we had a particularly delightful visit to a place. When we were old, he said, we would come back and dig them up, and relive the happiness.

  When that was done, we fell silent for a while, as the afternoon sun grew softer and the shadows less dense.

  ‘So,’ I said at last, a little archly, ‘are you glad now that I came up here after you?’

  ‘Very glad,’ he said – he was holding my hand and thoughtfully turning my wedding ring round and round on my finger. ‘But why did you?’

  ‘I felt so very lonely without my dear master,’ I said.

  ‘I was only to be away for two days. Other people are often separated for a few days.’

  ‘We are not other people. Habit could never make me get accustomed to it. Without you everything loses its interest. It will always be a terrible pang for me to be separated from you even for two days – and I pray God never to let me survive you.’

  He looked at me curiously. ‘Why did you say that?’

  I felt nervous. ‘Because I could never live without you,’ I said. I knew that was not what he had asked, but I could not answer the other thing.

  ‘But you could,’ he said gravely and firmly. ‘You always underestimate your powers, Victoria. You could manage very well without me because you have a great strength to hold on with. But I – if anything were to happen to you, it would be all up with me. I could not go on without you.’

  Now I felt shy as well as nervous. ‘You?’ I said in a sort of incredulous tone, and he pressed my hand as though to silence me.

  ‘You know – you must know – it is not in my nature to be able to express my feelings. Sometimes I can write them down – but even then the words are poor, cold things, shadows of what I really feel. But to say – to speak – to tell you face to face all that is in my heart—’ He stopped, looking away from me, a spot of red in each cheek. It enchanted and touched me that this man to whom I had been married all these years could still blush in front of me. ‘I wish I could tell you, darling little one, that you are everything to me. You are my safe place. You are my castle. Do you know?’

  I could not speak at once, which was perhaps just as well; but I pressed his hand fervently, and he squeezed mine in reply. And then he said in a very quiet voice, looking away across the valley, ‘So you must be generous, as I know you are, and not ask me to outlive you. If you love me, you must let me go first.’

  ‘Oh no, no,’ I cried, and bit my lip to keep it from trembling. When I had control I said, trying to speak lightly, ‘You promised me we would grow old together. You said we would walk together on the terrace at Osborne when we were old, and have our grandchildren frolic round us.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, smiling as if he were looking at that charming scene, though it was a heathery slope in front of him.

  ‘We must grow old together. Surely God would never part us!’ I cried.

  ‘Surely He would not,’ said Albert. He was silent for a while; and I – I dared not speak, for my heart was too full. Then he said quietly, ‘But life here, you know, in this world, is only the beginning. Whatever happens here, we must not forget that it is but a preparation for the life to come.’

  I nodded; and swallowed and managed to say, ‘Shall – shall we be together there?’

  He turned to look at me, and seemed amazed at the question. ‘But of course we shall! Don’t you believe it?’

  ‘Yes – yes. But I
wasn’t sure you did.’ I had half expected his view of Heaven to be too austere to encompass such gentle joys.

  ‘We don’t know in what state we shall meet again; but that we shall recognise each other and be together in all eternity I am perfectly certain,’ he said with emphasis. He took my hand and gazed at me earnestly. ‘That is why I don’t fear death. Do you think I could die gladly if I thought I would be leaving you for ever? The God of Love could not inspire us with a longing to be together if we were not ultimately to be so. That would be too cruel! I could not worship a cruel God.’

  His warm, living hand was pressing mine, and the light of enthusiasm which burned in his beautiful blue eyes fired me as it always did. ‘No,’ I said, agreeing as best I could; there was a part of what he said I could not quite consent to. It was a great comfort to know that he believed so firmly in the afterlife, as I had always done, but I felt he valued the beforelife too lightly. I loved his soul and his mind, but I loved his body too, and I wanted our eternal life together in Heaven to come after a long life together here on earth. I did not want him to ‘die gladly’ until we were both old and frail, and I could die gladly very soon afterwards and follow him.

  31st October 1900

  IS THERE no end to the shocks of this year? The dreadful news have come from Pretoria that our darling Christl has died of malaria and enteric fever. He was only twenty-three – a gay, brave, warm-hearted boy – and we were all so proud of his brave exploits. Why is it that God takes the best so young? It is cruel, cruel! In only three weeks more he would have been with us again – he wrote so happily to Lenchen about coming home and seeing all his friends and relatives and his dear dogs again. Thora, poor child, is almost numb with grief – he was her favourite brother, and they were very close. She loved him more than anything on earth. Poor Lenchen bears it very well, but I know what a blow it is to her. She was so proud of him – we all were – oh God, this wretched, wretched war! Well do they call it the Dark Continent! I can’t believe he is gone.

  Yesterday little Maurice came to me, his eyes red with crying, his little face so solemn. ‘Gangan,’ he said, ‘I have decided that as soon as I am old enough I shall join Christl’s regiment. I want to be as good a soldier as he was.’ I was so moved I could not say anything. He admired his cousin so much, and his ambition for years past has been to go into the Army, but since he is haemophilic, I cannot suppose it will ever be possible. But one cannot wish to suppress honourable feelings like those.

  How many more blows can one take? I am feeling so very low and wretched, my appetite indifferent, and this curse of insomnia throwing all my routines into chaos. And yet even in the darkest hours there are gleams of relief. At Crathie church on Sunday the ‘meenister’ (as dear Brown used to call him) prayed very solemnly to God to send down His wisdom on Her Majesty’s Government, ‘because they sorely need it, oh Lord!’ Our Maker gave us a sense of humour as His last gift to mankind, to help us through the trials of this world – which are so many, and so heavy.

  I must go on with my story. I have come now to feel almost a compulsion to get it down – the legacy perhaps of Lehzen’s training, that what one starts one must finish. I don’t know how much time is left to me. Well, well, one never does, not the youngest and strongest of us. Oh God, poor, poor Christl! And like our dearest Liko, he fell not to the enemy, but to the hideous spectre of disease! And poor Affie gone. And poor Vicky – the acute attack has passed, but she is still too ill to write to me, only sends her love through Sophie. Oh where will it end? No, I must turn my thoughts in another direction. I must write, write.

  It was an odd thing about Lord Palmerston. I found him very fascinating when I was young, in my Lord M. days – and even before, for I sometimes encountered him as a dinner guest before I became Queen, and found him most entertaining and informative to talk to. But as Foreign Secretary he was a crown of thorns, treating the office as his own private kingdom, pursuing his private prejudices, and embroiling us in embarrassment after embarrassment by acting on his own without authority and often contrary to the decisions of the rest of the Cabinet.

  But when it came to the Crimean War, we simply had to have him as Prime Minister, firstly because the country demanded it – no one but ‘Pam’ could win it for us, they thought – and secondly because no-one else could command enough support to form a government. God knows I tried to find an alternative, battling for days, travelling back and forth from Windsor to London in the most appalling weather (this was January and February of 1855) to interview every statesman I thought might have a chance – Derby, Lansdowne, Russell – but it would not do. Even Derby said, ‘It must be Palmerston,’ though he said perfectly frankly that at seventy-one Pam was past his best. He was half blind, more than half deaf, inefficient and erratic. His supporters called him the Whiskered Wonder; Disraeli in his colourful way called him ‘the old painted pantaloon’. But once he was Prime Minister, and hemmed in by good reliable men so that he could not get up to mischief, I found I grew very fond of him again. Albert and I agreed that of all the Prime Ministers we had, the poor old sinner gave us the least trouble, was the most amenable and the most ready to adopt suggestions. Taken out of foreign affairs, and put in charge of the whole, he was sensible and clear-headed, and we were always confident that he had the honour and interests of the country at heart.

  I was very much against the war to begin with, but the country was amazingly for it, and ‘war fever’ was rife. It seemed that the young men – and some not so young ones – were all burning to go out and fight the foreigner, and I don’t think it mattered very much who. There was talk of ‘glorious hostilities’ and fulminations in the press against the peacemongers, as if war were some delightful activity going on abroad that everyone else was getting their share of except us. I came at last to feel that it was better to have the war and get it over with, rather than make do with a patched-up peace which would lead to a worse war later; that if Russian aggression was not nipped in the bud, it would turn into a monstrous flower much less easy to prune.

  In that, at least, I feel I was right. I have never trusted the Bear, and Tsar Nicholas (though he had many good qualities, and I had quite liked him when he paid his unexpected visit to England in 1844) was quite mad and not at all clever – a dangerous combination. His sudden death in March 1855 (they say his heart was broken by our victories at Inkerman and Balaclava, which by the logic of numbers and supplies the Russians ought to have won) took the thrust out of the war for the Russians; but from our point of view I fear there was never any chance of doing more than smacking the Bear’s paws and sending him back to his cave. No-one could ever conquer Russia – it is too big, too cold, and the population too scattered (and indeed if it were possible, what could one do with it when one had it? It is not a country I would care to have to rule). But the Crimean War ended as unsatisfactorily as it began, for after the long and costly siege it was to the French that Sebastopol finally fell; and I found it hard to bear that the peace should come before our brave soldiers had had a chance to secure the brilliant final victory they so much deserved, and which they had paid for in advance with so many lives. But the French army by then was too riddled with sickness to fight on, and peace was made in March 1856. Palmerston won my admiration for battling tooth and nail to improve the conditions of the peace; and the Russians were at least pushed back out of the Black Sea and Constantinople was kept from their hands.

  One good consequence of the war was the spur it gave to the development of the techniques of photography, and to its widespread use, which has been to everyone’s advantage. It was the first time ordinary people back home had been able to see exactly what it was like at the Front, and the photographs and reports shocked the nation, and led to an improvement in the lot of the common soldier. This in turn improved his morale and thus his fighting qualities. (The Duke would probably turn in his grave to hear me say that! But it is demonstrable that enabling a serving man to send home part of his pay to his family,
for instance, makes him a better soldier, for if he knows his loved ones are being taken care of, he has less desire to desert and go home.) The improvement, too, in hospital nursing was of great benefit to everyone, for it spilled over into civilian hospitals, and the introduction of fresh air and proper sewerage alone must have saved hundreds of lives. I must say I still sometimes feel qualms about women being involved with nursing, but it has become such a commonplace now that one takes it for granted most of the time; and as long as they are married women of the decent working classes, there can be no serious objection, I suppose. I met Miss Nightingale several times, and was apprehensive beforehand as to the effect her experiences must have had on her, but I found her a delightful person, sensible and clearheaded but not at all ‘mannish’, really quite shy, very gentle and perfectly lady-like. But she was a very remarkable person and I fear one could not rely on every unmarried girl to keep her head and her modesty in such conditions, and therefore I think it is not a good idea in general for young ladies to nurse.

  When the war was over I felt every member of the Government must be aware of the great part Albert had played in it. It had made endless extra work for him, and without his clear thinking, strong principles, and immense grasp of detail, I don’t know how we would have got through, for government departments were worse then even than they are now for idleness and inefficiency. Granville said that Albert had a better grasp of the management of government departments than the ministers in charge of them; Lansdowne said that Albert had kept the Government out of innumerable scrapes; and Clarendon (who was Foreign Secretary during the war) said that Albert had ‘rendered the most important services to the Government’ and had ‘written some of the ablest papers he had ever read’. Even Palmerston (who I have learned since had no great opinion of Albert before the war, they being of such different temperaments and habits of mind) said afterwards that he thought Albert a great man of extraordinary qualities, and that it was fortunate indeed for the country that the Queen had married such a Prince.