QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History

by Christopher Hibbert

  When she appeared in the building she found 'the Nave was full of people, which had not been intended, & deafening cheers and waving of handkerchiefs continued the whole time of our long walk from one end of the building to the other'. Wearing a small crown, she had her husband on one side of her with the Princess Royal - who had 'a small wreath of pink wild roses in her hair & looked very nice' - and, on her other side, holding her hand, was the Prince of Wales in Highland dress. Trumpets blared, organs and orchestras played, a choir of six hundred voices sang, a military band played the march from Handel's Athalia as they approached the canopied dais, and the 'myriads of people filling the galleries and seats around cheered and cheered'.

  It was 'a day to live for ever', far more moving and exciting than her coronation. 'God bless my dearest Albert,' she wrote later. 'God bless my dearest Country, which has shown itself so great today! One felt so grateful to the great God, who seemed to pervade and to bless all.'

  There were moments to touch the heart as well as stir the emotions. She saw the two old warriors, the Duke of Wellington and the Marquess of Anglesey, walking up and down a trifle unsteadily, arm in arm between the exhibits; the Duke, over eighty now, bent with arthritis, Anglesey limping on his artificial leg, both talking in the loud voices of the deaf as they did so often in the House of Lords. The Queen also saw what she took to be a Chinese member of the diplomatic corps, looking most picturesque in blue tunic and black-and-red cap, approach the royal dais to kowtow beneath the canopy. It mattered not at all that the supposed oriental envoy was, in fact, the captain of a junk moored in the Thames who charged a shilling a head for people to look over his strange craft. His obeisance appeared quite as sincerely meant as the cheers of the French visitors who shouted, 'Vive la Reine!' and as those of the crowds who acclaimed her and the Prince when they appeared together on the balcony overlooking the Mall after their return to Buckingham Palace.11

  The Queen went back to the Exhibition time after time, clearly fascinated by the extraordinary variety of the thousands of exhibits from forty different countries, the engines of every description, the jewels, including the largest pearl ever found and the Koh-i-Noor diamond which she had worn at the opening ceremony, the electric telegraph, the Persian carpets, the Indian silks, the Spanish mantillas, the Swiss embroideries, the German porcelain, the French Sevres, Aubusson and Gobelins, the leather goods and textiles, the china, glass and cutlery, the assorted clocks and watches, a knife with three hundred blades, a garden seat made of coal, a doctor's walking stick with the equipment for an enema in the handle, a machine which could turn out fifty million medals a week, another machine that printed 10,000 sheets an hour, a stuffed frog holding an umbrella, a collapsible piano, an alarm bed that threw its occupant out at the chosen time, a fine arts section displaying the works of living artists and of those who had died within the past three years.

  Unusually for a monarch, the Queen took a particular interest in the machinery. 'Some of the inventions were very ingenious,' she wrote, 'many of them quite Utopian.' The Exhibition, she concluded, 'has taught me so much I never knew before - has brought me in contact with so many clever people I should never have known otherwise, and with so many manufacturers whom I would scarcely have met unless I travelled all over the country and visited every individual manufactory which I never could have done.'12

  By the time the Exhibition closed to the strains of the National Anthem on 15 October, over six million people had visited it, including a woman of eight-four who had walked from Cornwall; and enough money had been made for the purchase of some thirty acres of land in South Kensington on which were built those museums, colleges and other institutions, including the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal Albert Hall, on and near to Exhibition Road, of which the Queen was to have due cause to be proud.

  The whole enterprise had been 'a complete and beautiful triumph,' she observed with the utmost pleasure and pride, 'a glorious and touching sight, one which I shall ever be proud of for my beloved Albert and my Country ... The absurd reports of dangers of every kind & sort, set about by a set of people - the "soi-disant" fashionables & the most violent protectionists - are silenced.'13

  On 9 July that year the Lord Mayor and the Corporation of the City had given a ball to celebrate the continuing success of the Great Exhibition. On their way to the Guildhall, the Queen and Prince were cheered as loudly as she and her children had been on their way to Hyde Park on the opening day; and, on their return from the Guildhall, they were greeted again by crowds of people who had waited for hours for their reappearance. 'A million of people,' the Prince told Stockmar, 'remained till three in the morning in the streets and were full of enthusiasm towards us.'14

  Some five years before, having opened the new Royal Exchange, the Queen had assured King Leopold of her popularity: 'They say no Sovereign was ever more loved than I am (I am bold enough to say), & this is because of our domestic home, the good example it presents.' Now her beloved husband was at last taking some of his own share of the popularity which the monarchy enjoyed.

  Chapter 28

  'SCENES'

  'If you are violent I have no other choice but to leave you.'

  The Queen's happiness in her marriage was still on occasions darkly clouded by quarrels with her husband. No one doubted that she still adored him, that the tired-looking man, paunchy and pale though only thirty-two years old when the Great Exhibition closed, remained for her the paragon of beauty and goodness she had married. Yet she could fly into sudden rages with him, accuse him of all manner of faults and selfishness, of being indifferent to the distress and pain and disgusting degradation which she, as a woman, had to endure when bearing and giving birth to babies and which he, as a man, evaded.

  Pregnancy followed pregnancy and with the pregnancies there came bouts of depression. Her 'poor nerves', so she had told King Leopold shortly before the arrival of Princess Alice in April 1843, 'were so battered last time' that she 'suffered a whole year' from it. Still, she had continued stoically, 'those nerves were incidental and I am otherwise so strong and well, that if only my happiness continues I can bear everything else with pleasure'.1

  An exceptionally violent altercation erupted soon after the birth of her fourth son and eighth child, Prince Leopold, on 7 April 1853. The birth itself had been rendered relatively easy by the presence of Dr John Snow, a Yorkshire farmer's son who had made a name for himself in London by his improvements in the methods of administering ether and chloroform as anaesthetizing agents. The Queen, who surprised medical opinion as expressed in the Lancet by agreeing to make use of so unconventional an anodyne, found 'that blessed chloroform ... soothing and delightful beyond measure'; and, when her next and last child, Princess Beatrice, was born in April 1857, she insisted that Dr Snow should again attend her.[xxxiv]

  Soon after Prince Leopold's birth, however, as so often in the past, she suffered from post-natal depression and an agitation of nerves as upsetting as any she had undergone after previous births. The baby was not strong, so delicate, indeed, that his baptism had to be postponed: it was later discovered that he was suffering from haemophilia, a rare hereditary disorder characterized by a tendency to uncontrollable haemorrhaging after even the slightest injury.[xxxv]

  Anxiety about the baby exacerbated the Queen's distress which her husband himself increased by treating her as though she were a wilful child. It was, in fact, as 'Dear Child' or 'dear, good little one' that he often addressed her in writing her one of those long letters, partly in German, mostly in English, which, having retreated from her presence, he composed when her hysterical outbursts became as insupportable to him as his infuriating Olympian calm was to her.

  Dear Child [he wrote to her on 2 May 1853]. Now it will be right to consider calmly the facts of the case. The whole offence which led to a continuance of hysterics for more than an hour, and the traces of which have remained for more than 24 hours more, was: that I complained of your turning several times from inattention t
he wrong leaves in a Book which was to be [used] by us as a Register ... of prints ... This miserable trifle produced the distressing scene ... in which I am accused of making things worse by my false method of treatment. I admit that my treatment has on this occasion as on former ones signally failed, but I know of no other ... When I try to demonstrate the groundlessness and injustice of the accusations which are brought against me I increase your distress ... But I never intend or wish to offend you ... If you are violent I have no other choice but to leave you ... I leave the room and retire to my own room in order to give you time to recover yourself. Then you follow me to renew the dispute and to have it all out... Now don't believe that I do not sincerely and deeply pity you for the sufferings you undergo, or that I deny you do really suffer very much, I merely deny that I am the cause of them, though I have unfortunately often been the occasion ... I am often astonished at the effect which a hasty word of mine has produced ...

  In your candid way you generally explain later what was the real cause of your complaint ... It appears now that the apprehension that you might be made answerable for the suffering of the Baby (occasioned by the milk of the Wet nurse not agreeing on account of your having frequently expressed a wish to have a Nurse from the Highlands of Scotland) was the real cause of your distress which broke out on the occasion of the Registration of the prints ...2

  Over the years such quarrels would suddenly erupt. Months passed in complete harmony; and during these months the Queen would congratulate herself on her 'great progress', her efforts in 'trying energetically to overcome' her faults. How could she thank her dearest Albert for his unchanging love and wonderful tenderness? She had to acknowledge that she had 'little self control'. 'I feel how sadly deficient I am,' she confessed, 'and how over-sensitive and irritable, and how uncontrollable my temper is when annoyed and hurt... Have I improved as much as I ought? I fear not... Again and again I have conquered this susceptibility [to irritation] - have formed the best of resolutions and again it returns [to the] annoyance of that most perfect of human beings, my adored Husband.'3

  After months of harmony, generally without warning and usually on some trivial pretext, there would be a furious outburst. The Prince would retreat; the Queen would follow him from room to room, upbraiding him; the Prince would find sanctuary at last; the Queen would be filled with remorse; letters between them would be exchanged. At such times, Sir James Clark felt 'uneasy'. 'Regarding the Queen's mind,' he wrote, 'unless she is kept quiet, the time will come when she will be in danger ... Much depends upon the Prince's management. '4

  Alternately lecturing her as a father might have done, drawing attention to her faults and follies, and congratulating her on weeks of 'unbroken success in the hard struggle for self control', the Prince's letters charted the volcanic upheavals in a generally placid and contented relationship.

  He considered it a 'pity' that she could 'find no consolation' in the company of her children, that she had a mistaken notion that 'the function of a mother [was] to be always correcting, scolding, ordering them about and organizing their activities'. It was 'not possible to be on happy, friendly terms with people you have just been scolding'. She must try to control her 'fidgety nature' which made her 'insist on entering, with feverish eagerness', into details and orders which, in the case of a queen, are commands to whomever they may be given. 'Like everyone else in the house', he made 'the most ample allowance for her state' when pregnant; but he could not bear her 'bodily sufferings for her': she must 'struggle with them alone - the moral ones [were] probably caused by them'. It would be better if she were 'rather less occupied' with herself and her feelings and took 'more interest in the outside world'. She must not make a display of her sufferings before him as if to say 'This is all your work'. Such accusations were not calculated to make him wish to take any steps 'towards reconciliation'.

  He was not yet ready to forgive, that was not how he felt, he told her in one of their quarrels; but he was ready to 'ignore all that [had] happened, take a new departure', and 'try in future to avoid everything' which might make 'her unhappy state of mind worse'. He was trying to keep out of her way until her 'better feelings' returned and she had 'regained that control' of herself which she had 'again lost quite unnecessarily'. He had not said a word which would wound her, and had not begun the conversation, but she had followed him about and continued it from room to room. It was 'the dearest wish of [his] heart to save [her] from these and worse consequences, but the only result' of his efforts was that he was 'accused of want of feeling, hard heartedness, injustice, hatred, jealousy, distrust etc, etc.'

  'I do my duty towards you,' he wrote in yet another letter, 'even though life is embittered by "scenes" when it should be governed by love and harmony. I look upon this with patience as a test which has to be undergone, but you hurt me desperately and at the same time do not help yourself.'

  When one of these scenes was over and all was quiet and contented again, his letters would strike a different note: he had not realized the extent to which her nerves were shaken; he promised never in future to 'express a difference of opinion' until she was better; he had noticed 'with delight' her efforts to be 'unselfish, kind and sociable' and her success in being so. His 'love and sympathy' were 'limitless and inexhaustible'.

  Chapter 29

  CRIMEAN WAR

  'I regret exceedingly not to be a man and to be able to fight in the war.'

  A few weeks after the birth of Prince Leopold, there was a riot in Bethlehem where a fight over custody of the Church of the Nativity had broken out between monks of the Roman Catholic Church supported by France, and monks of the Orthodox Church supported by Russia. Bethlehem was at that time within the immense and crumbling Turkish empire which, stretching from the Adriatic to the Persian Gulf, from the Black Sea through Syria and Palestine to the deserts of Arabia, was ready for conquest and division.

  Turkish police, Tsar Nicholas I complained, had connived at the murder of those Orthodox monks who had been killed in the rioting; and within a matter of days a Russian army was marching towards the Danube on a crusade to protect the Holy Places from Islam. Notes, memoranda, despatches and threats flew from St Petersburg to Paris, from Constantinople through Vienna to London, and crackled uncertainly over the electric telegraph.

  By October 1853 Turkey was at war with Russia. England for the moment remained neutral. And then on 30 November the Russian Black Sea fleet under Admiral Nachimoff sailed out of Sebastopol, found a Turkish flotilla off the south shore of the Black Sea at Sinope and sank its every ship. Nearly four thousand sailors were lost, and many of them, so it was widely reported in the press, were shot by Russian gunners as they floundered in the water.

  British opinion was outraged by what was commonly referred to as a 'massacre' and a massacre perpetrated by a Russian fleet when Britannia ruled the waves. Those voices previously crying caution and restraint were stilled by shouts for the destruction of Sebastopol. No one listened to talk of Turkish atrocities any more.

  Lord Aberdeen, who had taken over as Prime Minister after the resignation of Lord John Russell's successor, the Earl of Derby, did not want war. Nor did Lord Clarendon, his Foreign Secretary. But Lord Palmerston, now Home Secretary and a more influential man than either of them, was a strong Russophobe; and Lord Aberdeen felt obliged to give way to Palmerston's views which were shared by The Times, by the country at large, and by the Queen who, a few weeks earlier, had doubted that England ought to go to war for the defence of 'so-called Turkish independence', but who concluded that she was now bound to do so.

  On 27 March 1854 war was therefore declared on Russia, France having done so the previous day; and British soldiers went marching down to Portsmouth with their bands playing and the shouts and cheers of the crowd in their ears, while the Queen, with Prince Albert and their children, stood on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, appearing 'much affected', bowing and smiling 'most graciously', waving them goodbye.

  But in the xenophobia
which so frequently attacks countries upon declaration of war, the popularity which Prince Albert had briefly enjoyed at the time of the Great Exhibition was swept away. All the old prejudices against his stiff formality, his foreign clothes and rigid handshake, his prudish morality, his supposed misogyny, his Germanic tastes, his assumption of regal authority, his unwarranted interference in military affairs, were once more aired in the press and in the houses not only of the rich and aristocratic, but increasingly in those of the middle classes. It was said that he was sympathetic towards the Russians, that he attempted to persuade the Queen to be so too, and that he adopted a highly unconstitutional role at the audiences with Ministers which he regularly attended with her. It was even rumoured that he was involved in some traitorous activity for which he was to be sent to the Tower. Lord Derby said thousands of people gathered there to watch His Royal Highness go in, while some said it was certain he would have been sent there had not the Queen announced her intention to go with him.

  It was also rumoured that the Prince spoke German more often than English and that he and the Queen always conversed in his native tongue, a story that she strongly denied. 'The Prince and Queen speak English quite as much as German,' she protested, and she went on to deprecate 'that continual and unbounded dislike (in England) of foreigners and everything foreign which breaks out continually, and is very painful to the Queen - whose Husband, Mother and all her dearest relations and friends are foreigners'. Both she and her husband took these aspersions on the Prince 'greatly to heart'.1

  'In attacking the Prince, who is one and the same with the Queen herself,' she wrote to the Prime Minister, 'the throne is assailed, and she must say that she little expected that any portion of her subjects would thus requite the unceasing labours of the Prince.'