by Roland Perry
When things settled down, the tutor had the difficult task of explaining to the child that he would one day become king. Bertie found it hard to grasp. He had an older sibling. Why wouldn’t she become the monarch? After all, his mother was queen. Bertie asked Victoria about this apparent conundrum. It was left to her to explain the intricacies and irrationality of males taking precedence over females. Bertie was confused. His elder sister Vicky dominated the little boy and he found it hard to imagine that he would one day be in a superior position to her.
Bertie might have decades to come to terms with a future he did not necessarily want. His father’s approach had too much of the mechanical ‘information in, information out’ mentality. There was no manual for bringing up any child let alone a prince, and typically Albert was putting his mind on it his way. But his ‘plan’, as Victoria called it, did not allow for fun, a sense of independence, or any right for the child to do what his heart desired.There was no chance for a roll in the mud in the horse stables, or for running off into the fields or woods with friends to experience a sense of freedom. Albert and his tutors pummelled him with God and Christ, morality and responsibility. Life was blocked out as ‘good and righteous’ or ‘bad and sinful’. But Bertie could never muster his father’s self-righteous, god-fearing disciplines. He was more like his mother, who disliked the over-pious and was sceptical about the hierarchies of all religions. She had been bred to have a visceral hate for Catholics but disliked them being persecuted and restricted. In private she expressed a greater distaste for Protestants. If Bertie were to develop like his mother, he would be more ‘of the flesh’ and all its human strengths and weaknesses. If so, his over bearing father was pushing his son’s carefree Hanoverian spirit in an unnatural direction. It was a recipe for eventual rebellion.
Bertie was taken to the magnificent Great Exhibition, the brainchild of his inspired father. It was a ‘festival of work and peace’ housed in the Crystal Palace, a domed building of glass designed by Joseph Paxton, the creator of Chatsworth conservatory. An amazing and wide-ranging number of works of art, invention, engineering and architecture were on display. Bertie was mesmerised by many things he saw. He raved about waxwork models of ‘the murderous thugs of India’. He wrote with enthusiasm about them in his diary, which his father, and sometimes Stockmar, read to make sure his mind was on a pure, pristine track. The adults were shocked that, despite all their guidance, urging and reinforcement, his thoughts were deviating so ‘alarmingly’. Stockmar reminded the little lad that he had been ‘born in a Christian and an enlightened age in which such atrocities are not even dreamt of’. Bertie was made to feel guilt for the excitement he felt about the vigorous, tough-looking Indian brutes. He was left in anguish and confusion.
Bertie craved friends his own age, but had none. If he had been sent to Eton or Harrow he would have had classmates to play with every day. Albert tried to address this by inviting young Etonian sons of peers to tea on Sunday. But he always supervised the event.The young boys were intimidated by the rigid husband of the queen. It was not the environment for boys to be boys, especially when a parent with a holier-than-thou attitude was standing over them inspiring nothing but nervousness, even dread.This experiment failed too. Bertie was left disgruntled, resentful and friendless.
20
CAVIAR AND CONVERSATION
Albert needed all his developing diplomatic skills and more in 1848 to meet the tide of insurrection surging over Europe. Sensitivities to privilege, class and wealth were peaking with revolution in France where the monarchy was overthrown. King Louis Philippe and his wife had escaped from the Tuileries by the back door. They were forced into exile in England. The Austrian chancellor, Prince Metternich, 74, had lived for decades in fear of upheaval. He made a rushed exit from his country and also ended up in England. Royal families everywhere felt threatened. The ideas of a radical German economist, Karl Marx, were spreading. There was ferment and revolution in the kingdoms of Hanover, Bavaria, Naples and Prussia. Countless small duchies (including Schleswig, Holstein and Leiningen) were under pressure. Even tiny Coburg and Gotha were in danger. Ireland was in a rebellious mood. Terrible poverty had been brought on by a potato famine made worse by insensitive landlords evicting tenants. Irish activists were talking civil war as their country’s population dropped alarmingly due to starvation and a mass exodus to the United States. Just three countries seemed to be holding firm against this tidal wave of change: England, King Leopold’s Belgium and the tsar’s Russia. But there were no guarantees of survival. In Russia, the tsar was a despot, repressing his people and any opposition. In England,Victoria and Albert were taking no chances of bitterness being incited against them. They would be seen to be doing the right thing at every opportunity. When wheat was in such short supply that only the rich could afford it,Victoria reduced the royal kitchen to making a half-kilogram of bread a day and decreed that only secondary flour was to be used.
Her world was being tipped upside down. So-called ‘Chartists’ in England were making six major demands: a vote in elections for every male aged 21;the right to a secret vote;the right for those without property to be elected to parliament; payment for members of parliament (making democratic representation semi-professional at least and attractive to all levels of society); equal electoral districts; and annual elections. These points marked a watershed in British history as six million signatures were gained in support of them and presented to parliament after a huge meeting on London’s Kennington Common. The Chartists had formed due to a confluence of working-class grievances beginning with the Reform Bill crisis of 1831–32, when the middle class, but not the working class, could join the parliament. Chartism was a national movement. It was strong in the textile towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire. It had solid support in the East Midlands and the Black Country.
Victoria’s concern about these changes slipped over into the chatter at lunches and especially at longer dinner engagements on a Friday at Buckingham Palace. One such night in February 1848, when heavily pregnant, she entertained eighteen guests, including Elphinstone and an ailing 69-year-old Lord Melbourne. Elphinstone was seated opposite her at a long dining table decorated with large, low vases of red geraniums and a vast silver candelabra. Gloved footmen served an eleven-course dinner, beginning with light caviar de starlet.
Discussion turned to the ungratefulness of an unsympathetic press, who seemed to the royal court to be giving too much store to the views of rebels and republicans at the expense of those of the establishment. Victoria was baffled by the lack of appreciation of her own sentiments about those less privileged than her.
‘When a young girl,’ she said with a fleeting glance at Elphinstone, ‘I saw all those sad workers in shocking conditions in towns in the north. I’ve worried about them ever since.’
‘You’ve never really overcome the substantial differences between the establishment and the lot of many of your poor subjects,’ Melbourne said with a soft, wheezing voice. ‘Have you, majesty?’
‘At that time, you disabused me of any compassionate views about those not so well off,’ Victoria said indignantly.
‘I always believed,’ Melbourne began with a cough, ‘it was better for you to remain ignorant of the pain and suffering of others, especially if they were unworthy—rebels, troublemakers, Irish and so on.’
‘But I have not, my lord,’ Victoria replied, ‘I feel for certain cases I have read about. I don’t like gypsies being abused. I hate dwarfs performing at circuses.’
That remark caused the guests to fall silent. Everyone was aware of her feeling of inferiority over her height
‘With respect, ma’ am,’ Lady Saddrington, interrupted, ‘you have always sympathised with the widows of workers—men who have been killed at palace work sites.’ The beautiful young widow understood this as no other guests did; her husband, a fine architect, had been killed while working at Windsor.
‘Thank you, Lady Saddrington,’ Victoria said with a sweet nod a
nd smile.
These were individual cases at which Victoria would suck in her breath or be irritated over, but then she would move on. She also reacted to the suffering brought on by the Irish famine that was ‘too terrible to think of’. She was upset at the prospect of the cost-cutting achieved by mass burials without clergy. In a previous era this reaction by a monarch with her sensitivities could have achieved something. But a frustrating sense of impotence drove her thoughts.
‘In the midst of all this,’ she told the other attentive guests, ‘the landlords appropriate the people’s corn! After all we have done to supply the needy with food! God alone can bring help, for no human means seem able!’
Elphinstone, with his more enlightened religious views, had layered her thinking beyond dependence on a deity’s whim. He smiled slightly when she remarked about the Irish famine:‘How stupid of the Church to call for a day of fasting to help God intervene over it, when man’s intervention with a day of feeding would have helped the Irish a fraction more.’
‘Old Testament superstition,’ Elphinstone said.
‘Yes, out of date,’ Victoria agreed.‘I am sceptical of preachers telling us that the famine is a result of collective Irish sinfulness.’
Despite these observations, which were a measure of her compassion, she refused to believe that protesting workmen had arguments of any merit. She stood fast in thinking they had been misled by professional agitators and the ‘criminals and refuse of London.’ Victoria had stooped to tokenism, having the odd group of wives from poor areas visit the palace for tea. This appeased on the surface any sense of guilt she may have had from not recognising an under-class and the dispossessed.
Discussion turned to the introduction into parliament of the Ten Hour Bill by Lord Ashley (later Lord Shaftsbury).
‘It demonstrates Ashley has a strong sense of noblesse oblige,’ Elphinstone remarked, ‘He wants to limit the hours of workers in factories and mills, many of them children. I congratulate him.’
‘Well I am against it,’Victoria said.
‘Why, majesty?’ Elphinstone asked.
‘Because it would deprive industry of seven weeks’ child-power a year.’
‘Is that not trivial, compared to compassion for children being used as slave labour?’
‘Trivial? No. The Bill will weaken England’s competitive foreign trade position, and then more people are thrown out of work than ever.’
‘But, majesty,’ Elphinstone said gently, ‘such lack of sensitivity over workplace iniquities from the business and industrial establishment, and the government, is clearly linked to growing unrest in the country.’
Everyone else fell silent again. No-one, with the possible exception of Albert, dared contradict Victoria this way.
‘Majesty,’ Albert chimed in, ‘I too am surprised by your attitude. You have mentioned many times to me how appalled you were at fifteen about the shocking working conditions of iron foundry workers in the north. Surely this Bill is a step towards changing such problems?’
‘I am not sure about that,’ she said,‘but I am haunted by Buckingham Palace being overrun as the French royal family’s home has been.’ Victoria looked as if she might cry. ‘I fear for you and my children. I am afraid for everyone at court. A revolution would see my family in trouble as a symbol of the establishment. The monarchy might well be obliterated.’
‘That will not happen, majesty,’ Elphinstone said, ‘especially if the crown is seen to be ready to accept progress.’
21
ON A HIGH WITH THE HIGHLANDERS
Victoria’s concerns over emerging revolutionaries did not put a brake on her fecundity. A little over a year after Helena’s birth, she was pregnant again. On 18 March 1848 and when the ferment of revolt was brewing in cities across the country, Victoria gave birth to Princess Louise. She was the biggest baby yet with a very white skin, which set her apart from the other five. It was once more a physical and mental ordeal for Victoria, whose nerves were on edge as she worried over trouble outside the palace walls. She seemed to have been in a state of perpetual pregnancy or recovery from it for approaching a decade. Not quite 29 years of age, the queen was resigned to her fate of child bearing and the pain and hormonal disruption associated with it. Yet perhaps through her stoicism at this dangerous time she was having a perverse pleasure in the experience, despite her earlier revulsion. (There was always the sex itself, which she never tired off. If anything she was hungrier now than when she had first met Elphinstone.) While the country was shaken by feverish revolutionary demands, Victoria was rocking a cradle once more, or at least directing that a governess do it. Zealots might be at the palace gates demonstrating, but the queen was preoccupied in propagating the ‘Royal Species’. Would-be republicans permitting, they would ‘rule’ Europe.
Those around the queen, including Albert and the prime minister, did not help her demeanour by suggesting that she decamp to Osborne House, two days before the biggest Chartists’ rally ever in London. Elphinstone was consulted. He thought it wiser to stay at ‘home’ at Buckingham Palace. He had already mustered a praetorian guard of sorts made up of friends from his military days and in the Horse Guards. They were close to the palace and would surround it if necessary to aid the police force. Elphinstone placed artillery in strategic spots on bridges and in the royal stables. He was the most unconcerned of court members and more than once in correspondence remarked that in most instances of crises there was ‘nothing to fear but fear itself’. His experiences in India had taught him this. But his advice to the royal court was ignored after it was learned that Lord Malmesbury on his country estate had armed five of his gamekeepers with double-barrelled guns. Other establishment figures were doing similar things.The queen and the palace might well become the focus for an act of insurrection. If that were the case, no amount of artillery and guns would hold a mob that could number hundreds of thousands.
The royal family retreated to the Isle of Wight. Not long afterwards the threat of revolution subsided.The Chartists were prevented from rallying. Instead their leaders walked alongside three cabs carrying the petition with its multi-million signatures to the parliament. There was no major riot. Rallies were peaceful. The ‘fortressing’ of parliament, government buildings and palaces in London had proved unnecessary, although some believed it had acted as a curb on any thoughts of violence.
A challenge to the monarchy of another kind emerged in the form of Victoria’s foreign secretary, the inimitable Irish-born Lord Palmerston, now 65 years old.There were clashes on how to handle political problems in Europe.Victoria, with Albert increasingly more than her mouthpiece, had differing views on how the carve-ups of new and old states should be handled. They saw it through the prisms of royal connections and relatives, to whom they wished to remain loyal. Palmerston viewed everything in terms of the might and power of Great Britain and its empire. The two positions were increasingly incompatible. On 20 August 1848,Victoria protested to him that a private letter addressed to her had been opened at the Foreign Office. She wrote to Palmerston with the same reverence to herself that she expected from everyone, particularly him: ‘The queen wishes Lord Palmerston to take care that this does not happen again.’
But Palmerston wasn’t listening. He offered to mediate in a dispute between Austria and Sardinia. It was declined by Austria, but Victoria was annoyed that he did not tell her of his offer. She protested again in a letter: ‘The queen is surprised that Lord Palmerston should have left her uninformed of so important an event.’
Albert was providing most of the thoughts in this tetchy correspondence as he and Victoria fought to hold vestiges of power for the monarchy, which would struggle to keep up with someone as autocratic (as seen from the palace) as Palmerston. He continued to act without her consent and this caused the royal couple much angst. Victoria wanted him dismissed. Prime Minister Russell resisted.
Victoria and Albert felt that disturbing events abroad and several incidents at home were causing st
rains that could be avoided by finding a hideaway. There had been more shocks from would-be assassins, or more correctly unstable individuals waving bulletless, home-made guns. Albert had tidied up Windsor Castle, creating a model farm and a dairy embellished like a church with stained glass windows, only to see it invaded by a gang of bold youths who stole a royal sketchbook.The Isle of Wight was not easily accessible and the climate was not always good. Brighton was rather too ‘popular’ for Victoria’s liking. She felt ‘invaded’ there. Elphinstone suggested they discover Balmoral. It was isolated and beautiful. Dr Clark endorsed this, mainly because of the plentiful fresh air.The royal court decided to visit there after Victoria and Albert made their first trip to Ireland in August 1849.
A happy, drunk George IV had been the last monarch to visit that parlous country 28 years earlier.Victoria was not prepared to become inebriated on the visit to overcome her dread of the place. Despite her earlier studies with Lehzen, she seemed prejudiced against the Irish more from ignorance than reason but Albert was more understanding. He comprehended some of the reasons for Ireland’s ‘misery and criminality’ and was proffering ideas for reform to help the country recover.
Victoria’s dread was unfounded. They ended up enjoying the stay and believed they had broken down the barrier between the Irish and themselves.They left for Scotland in a good mood, Albert in particular needing a break. He had lost the energy and looks that a decade earlier had seen his wife describe him as ‘beautiful’. His diligence in attending to issues, from great affairs of state to changing the awful Buckingham Palace toilet system above the royal bedchamber, had taken its toll. Albert had spent too much time hunched over his desk, planning and creating. He attended endless meetings. He worked over breakfast and three-course lunches.There was a formal dinner most nights, in which he indulged in four courses and a large daily intake of alcohol. This over-imbibing and overeating was due to a lack of discipline and was brought on by nerves and tension. Albert made no time for serious exercise. He still rode a horse, but once a month instead of every few days. His lean frame had become fat, especially around the hips and stomach. His hirsute cheeks were puffy.