QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History

by Christopher Hibbert

  At dinner in St George's Hall - before which the Empress's high-spirited ladies could be heard laughing and shouting to each other through their open doors and across the corridors - the Emperor lost no time in bringing up the subject of his proposed visit to the Crimea, blaming his generals for their reluctance to assume the responsibility which he would take when he got there. But what a long way to go from France, the Queen observed, and what of the dangers when he arrived? As to that, he replied, there were dangers everywhere.

  Dinner was followed by a ball in the Waterloo Chamber, tactfully known that evening as the Picture Gallery. And how it excited the Queen to think that she, 'the granddaughter of George III, should dance with the Emperor Napoleon, nephew of our great enemy, now my nearest and most intimate ally!'5 Making one of his rather heavy jokes, Prince Albert had said that he would have to see that the necessary precautions were taken in the crypt of St George's Chapel in case, upon the arrival of a Bonaparte as guest at Windsor, George III should turn in his grave.6

  Over the next few days there were concerts and operas and military reviews, drives in the sunshine through the London streets to cheers for the Queen and cockney shouts of "Vive le Hemperor!', and a ceremony at which Prince Albert seemed to take 'longer than usual' to tie the Garter round the leg of the Emperor, who put his wrong arm through the Order's ribbon. With every hour she spent in his company, the deeper the Queen fell under the insinuating charm of her seductive guest. It had to be conceded that his appearance was far from prepossessing; his head was too big for a very short body; a small, black, rather disconcerting tuft of hair grew beneath his lower lip, a style of beard already known as imperial. Yet he went out of his way to please her, to flatter her, to address her in an excitingly bewildering manner that stopped just carefully short of outright flirtation. It was 'very extraordinary and unaccountable', she told Lord Clarendon with naivety, that he seemed to know so much about her. 'He even recollects how I was dressed,' she said, 'and a thousand little details it is extraordinary he should be acquainted with.' On hearing this, Clarendon said to himself, 'Le Coquin! He has evidently been making love to her.'7 His 'lovemaking was of a character to flatter her vanity without alarming her virtue'.8

  The Emperor's voice was 'low & soft', his manner 'easy, quiet and dignified', 'so very good natured and unassuming and natural'. There was 'something fascinating, melancholy and engaging' about him which drew you to him. He made her feel that she was physically attractive to him in a manner to which she was quite unaccustomed; yet, at the same time, she felt that she could say anything she liked to him because, as she put it, 'I felt - I do not know how to express it - safe with him.'9

  He was, indeed, she was soon to decide, a 'very extraordinary man with great qualities ... wonderful self-control, great calmness, even gentleness' and a 'great power of fascination... as unlike a Frenchman as possible, being much more German than French in character'. She might almost say he was 'a mysterious man ... possessed of indomitable courage, unflinching firmness of purpose, self-reliance, perseverance and great secrecy; to which should be added a great reliance on what he called his star and a belief in omens and incidents as connected with his future destiny'.10 He observed, for example, that the initials of his host and hostess and their guests spelled NEVA, the river that flows through St Petersburg, but what exactly this was intended to indicate he did not say."

  The Queen was much taken also by the Empress, a 'charming lovable creature', so 'lively & talkative', so good-looking, so demure, so graceful, so elegant in her crinoline that even Albert admired her. 'Altogether I am delighted to see how much he likes and admires her,' the Queen wrote, 'as it is so seldom I see him do so with any woman."2 The Empress and the Queen found they could talk to each other in the friendliest way, so the Queen was able to bring up the vexed question of the Emperor's proposed command in the Crimea and to suggest, as she already had suggested to the Emperor himself, that his life should not be endangered by such an adventure. She was able to make the same point at a meeting at Buckingham Palace following one at Windsor attended by Prince Albert, the French and British Ambassadors and various Ministers and generals, all of whom, as Lord Panmure said, 'seemed to arrive at one opinion as to the inexpediency of the Emperor's going' to the Crimea.

  A few days later, after his return to Paris, the Emperor wrote to thank the Queen for her kindness and to tell her that 'in view of the difficulties' which he found there, he was on the point of abandoning his plans to take over the command of his army. He added that he was looking forward to welcoming the Queen and the Prince to Paris in August during the Paris Exhibition.

  The Queen, too, was looking forward to this visit. Since the Emperor's departure, she confided in Stockmar, she had been able to 'think and talk of nothing else other than his visit to England'. He was such a 'wonderful and remarkable man ... The Prince, tho' less enthusiastic than I am, I can see well, shares this feeling. It is very reciprocal on the Emperor's part.'13

  The Queen and the Prince and their two elder children, the Prince of Wales, then aged thirteen, and the Princess Royal who was fourteen, arrived in Paris at the Gare de Strasbourg on the evening of 18 August 1855, two days after the French army, acting independently of the British, had decisively defeated the Russians on the banks of the Tchernaya. The streets from the railway station to the Champs Elysees were lined with thousands of soldiers, amongst them a regiment of Zouaves in their splendid uniforms with baggy red trousers, friends, so the Queen noted, of her 'dear Guards'. As the crowds shouted their welcome, bands played and cannon roared in the darkening distance. The Queen felt 'quite bewildered but enchanted'. It was 'like a fairy tale, and everything so beautiful'.14

  She was driven to the royal chateau of Saint Cloud, where the rooms prepared for her use had been redecorated in white and gold and the legs of a table which had been made for Queen Marie Antoinette had been specially cut short so that she could sit at it comfortably. There were Gobelin tapestries on the walls; beneath her balcony fountains played in the garden. She was 'delighted, enchanted': Paris was more 'beautiful' than any other city she had seen.15

  She was taken to the Tuileries, the Palais de l'Elysee, the Hotel de Ville, to the Sainte Chapelle and Notre Dame, Malmaison, the Palais de Saint Germain and to the Louvre, marching from one treasure to the next, for once untroubled by the heat which made a member of the Emperor's suite declare that he would give everything, everything 'la Venus de Milo incluse, pour un verre de limonade'. Her determination to miss nothing led Lord Clarendon, the Foreign Secretary, to observe resignedly that no royal personage ever known to history rivalled her 'indefatigability'.16

  She was taken to Versailles to luncheon at the Petit Trianon, that delightful little pavilion of honey-coloured stone designed for Madame de Pompadour, King Louis XV's entertaining mistress. She was driven through the city incognito in a fiacre, passing houses and cafes outside which people sat drinking and talking in the sunshine. She heard a voice cry out 'Celle-la ressemble bien a la Reine d'Angleterre', and was quite put out that she was not recognized. 'They do not seem to know who I am,' she said rather huffily. There was no mistaking her, though, despite the black veil that covered her face. As in Brussels, so in Paris, she was dressed as if in defiance of fashion. On occasions she wore an unsightly gown with a straw bonnet perched on her head, carrying a huge handbag, 'a voluminous object like one of our grandmother's', as General Canrobert described it, 'made of white satin or silk on which was embroidered a poodle in gold'. 'When she put her foot on the steps she lifted her skirt which was very short (in the English fashion I was told) and I saw that she had on small slippers tied with black ribbons which were crossed round her ankles.' At other times she appeared in a 'shocking toilette', a white flounced gown topped with 'a crude green' mantle, and, 'in spite of the great heat, a massive bonnet of white silk ... with streamers behind and a tuft of marabout [sic] feathers on top ... Her dress was white and flounced; but she had a mantle and sunshade of a crude green wh
ich did not go with the rest of her costume."7

  The Emperor, however, contrived to appear quite impervious to the Queen's dowdiness. At a grand ball at Versailles at which the Empress appeared, tall and radiant in a white crinoline brilliant with diamonds, he went up to the Queen and murmured admiringly 'Comme tu es belle!' He danced a waltz with her, so she said, 'very quietly'. It was an extraordinary evening. There were flowers everywhere, hanging from the ceilings, draped across the looking-glasses, covering the music stands of the hundreds of musicians. The fireworks display, the most brilliant the Queen had ever seen, had for its finale a set piece of the towers and walls of Windsor Castle exploding into light. At the splendid supper afterwards, 'The whole stage was covered in,' the Queen recalled, 'and four hundred people sat down at forty small tables.'18

  A most moving scene was enacted in the Hotel des Invalides where the ashes of Napoleon I, brought back from exile on the island of St Helena, lay in a coffin in the Chapel of St Jerome awaiting burial in the crypt. As thunder roared and rain poured down in the Place Vauban outside, the Queen was deeply moved by the solemnity of the occasion. She told the Prince of Wales to kneel down by the coffin; and the sight of the small boy paying homage in the candlelight to his country's former enemy as a band played 'God Save the Queen', brought tears to the eyes of the French generals in attendance. 'Strange and wonderful indeed,' commented the Queen. 'It seems as if in this tribute of respect to a departed foe, old enmities and rivalries were wiped out, and the seal of Heaven placed upon that bond of unity, which is now happily established between two great and powerful nations.'19

  The Prince of Wales had never enjoyed himself more, even though Lord Clarendon, who had been instructed to keep an eye on him and tell him how to behave, thought his mother's severity was 'very injudicious'.20 Certainly the boy was constantly asking questions while rarely giving his full attention to the answers; but his manners and behaviour were perfectly respectable, though on occasions rather pert and opinionated. One day, as they were riding together in a carriage, Clarendon had been obliged to contradict something the Prince had said; but the Prince, quite unabashed, had riposted, 'At all events that is my opinion.' To this Clarendon had sharply replied, 'Then your Royal Highness's opinion is quite wrong.' The rebuke had seemed to surprise the Prince a good deal.21

  For most of the time, however, the Prince had been serenely happy, intoxicated by the sight of a city he was to grow to love, the pretty, beautifully dressed ladies in the Tuileries, the brilliant fireworks at Ver sailles. He hero-worshipped the romantic and mysterious Emperor to whom he had confided one afternoon, 'You have a nice country. I should like to be your son.'22 He adored the Empress Eugenie, too, and pleaded with her to let him and his sister stay behind in Paris for a few days on their own. The Empress replied that she was afraid that the Queen and Prince Albert could not do without them. 'Not do without us!' the Prince protested. 'Don't fancy that, for there are six more of us at home, and they don't want us.'23

  When it was time for them to leave, the Contesse d' Armaille noticed the way the Prince looked intently all around him at the Gare de Strasbourg 'as though anxious to lose nothing' of his last moments in the city. As for the Queen, she had also relished every minute of the visit, obviously 'delighted, enchanted, amused and interested' in all and by all that she had seen and done. She had made sure that it was a great diplomatic success, while returning to England with 'feelings of real affection for and interest in France'. Skittishly, she told the Emperor that she would come back next year as an ordinary traveller. Bag in hand, she would jump out of the train, catch a cab and arrive at the Tuileries in time for dinner.24

  The Princess Royal also had much enjoyed herself and, like her brother, she had conceived a passion for the Empress who was so elegantly dressed by the English-born fashion designer, Charles Frederick Worth; and, having seen for herself on her earlier visit to England that Queen Victoria had no dress sense, the Empress had had a number of dresses sent to Windsor for Vicky to wear in Paris, all made to the measurements of a life-size doll belonging to the Princess, and sent in parcels to Windsor addressed to the doll. Before Vicky left, she was given a bracelet of rubies and diamonds containing strands of the Empress's hair. The Princess, sent into 'ecstasies' by the present, burst into tears.25

  Chapter 31

  THE PRINCESS ROYAL

  'I felt as if I were being married over again, only much more nervous.'

  'I must write down at once what has happened - what I feel & how grateful I am to God for one of the happiest days of my life!' the Queen wrote at Balmoral on 29 September 1855, soon after her return from Paris.1 For days past she had been expecting to hear the news which so much excited her, since on the twentieth of the month Prince Frederick William of Prussia had asked Prince Albert if he might propose to the Princess Royal. The Queen had feared he might not do so, that he would not find her daughter sufficiently attractive: as Lord Clarendon said, she was 'always finding fault with her daughter's looks, and complaining of her being ugly and coarse'.2

  Prince Albert had no hesitation in giving his permission for the proposal to be made. Long harbouring a distrust of France, he had consistently advocated closer ties with what he hoped would one day soon be a liberal Germany, unified under the leadership of Prussia. Besides, Prince Frederick - Fritz, as he was known in the family - was a pleasant, well-intentioned young man, 'unaffected and amiable' in the Queen's words and moreover (always a strong recommendation to her) handsome, as well as tall and broad-shouldered. Of course, Vicky could not marry until she was at least seventeen and that would not be for another three years; but there could be no harm in an engagement. Prince Frederick was twenty-four and had, he said, hoped that he would be able one day to marry Vicky ever since he had first seen her when she was no more than ten. At Balmoral that autumn of 1855, having made his hopes formally known to her parents, he said that his 'great wish' was to belong to their family by a marriage to their 'so sweet and charming, so clever and natural' eldest child. The Queen, overcome with emotion, could only squeeze Prince Frederick's hand, while Prince Albert assured him that they would give their child to him with 'complete confidence'.3 For the moment nothing was to be said publicly, only a few members of their families being told and no Ministers officially being informed other than Lord Palmerston and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Clarendon, both of whom warmly approved of a union which they thought 'politically of great importance'. The London newspapers and periodicals did not, however, all agree with them when the engagement became known. Prussia, a relatively insignificant power, and the Hohenzollerns, one of many 'paltry German dynasties', were unworthy of an English Princess.4 Moreover, Prussia had close ties with Russia and had shown no sympathy for England over the war in the Crimea. The Princess Royal might well find herself in a position in which devotion to her husband might be treason to her country. Punch wrote of a 'very suspicious looking eagle', a 'bird of ill-omen', having been seen hovering about Balmoral and having an eye on Her Majesty's dovecote.5

  The eagle had fluttered rather than swooped down upon the dove during a ride on ponies to Craig-na-Ban. Fritz declared his love for Vicky, after having picked her a sprig of white heather which he said was an emblem of good luck. 'He began to speak of Germany', the Queen was told, 'his hope that she would come there and stay there ... She answered that she would be happy to stay there for a year; he added he hoped that always, always - on wh. she became very red - he continued, he hoped he had said nothing which annoyed her - to which she replied "oh! no," - he added might he tell her Parents, wh. she then expressed a wish to do herself. He then shook hands with her - said this was one of the happiest days of his life'.6

  When Vicky rejoined her parents, Fritz, so the Queen said, 'gave me a wink, implying that he had said something to Vicky, and she was extremely agitated and nervous'. Later, in her room, the Queen asked Vicky if she felt the same about Fritz as he did about her. "Oh, yes," she said eagerly, with an indescribably happy look ... "I
am very fond of the Prince." ... Albert came in to say that Fritz was there - & I took her in. She was nervous but did not hesitate or falter in giving her very decided answer ... He kissed her hand twice and ... she threw herself into his arms, & kissed him with a warmth which was responded to by Fritz again and again & I would not for the world have missed so touching and beautiful a sight ... It is his first love! Vicky's great youth makes it even more striking but she behaved as a girl of 18 would ... To witness that dear child's innocent joy - to see the happiness of two such dear, pure young Beings - is more happiness than I cd. ever have expected.'7

  Prince Frederick's happiness was somewhat marred, however, by the Queen's insistence that when he and the Princess Royal were alone together - and this did not often happen - she herself should sit in the next room and the door between them should be left open. She later decided that perhaps she had been 'severer than she ought to have been'.8

  While the Royal Family were at Balmoral that September, a telegraphic despatch arrived with news from General Simpson, who had succeeded to the command of the British Army in the Crimea on the death there of Lord Raglan. The message read, 'Sevastopol is in the hands of the Allies.'