QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History

by Christopher Hibbert

  I have been shamefully deceived about Affie [she complained to Vicky]. It was promised me that the last year before he went to sea, he should be with us, instead of which he was taken away and I saw but very little of him, and now he is to go away for many months [in the frigate Euryalus to the West Indies by way of the Cape of Good Hope] and I shall not see him God knows when!, and Papa is most cruel upon the subject. I assure you, it is much better to have no children than to have them only to give them up! It is too wretched ... I look forward with horror to the separation ... Two children in one year. It is horrible.8

  The Queen found relief in her sadness at Prince Alfred's departure in the arrangements she was busily, not to say officiously, making for the birth of her first grandchild. She insisted that the prospective mother's layette as well as her nurse must be British. So must the nursemaids and the child's nanny, Mrs Hobbs being chosen for this post.

  The Princess must also have British doctors, since, while 'German Oculists & even Surgeons were cleverer than British, there was 'not a doubt that in the particular line of childbirth & women's illnesses the English are the best in the World, more skilful & much more delicate'.9 The Queen therefore arranged for Sir James Clark to go to Germany, followed by another of her own physicians, Dr Edward Martin, as well as an English midwife, Mrs Innocent, having already required that her daughter's German physician, Dr Wegner, should be sent to England to be present at the birth of her own last child, Princess Beatrice, on 14 April 1857, so that he could see how well things were managed there.

  If only she could be there herself, she told her daughter; she only wished she could 'go through' it all on her behalf and save her 'all the annoyance'. Now that she had got used to the idea she was, she said, delighted by the thought of being a grandmother at only thirty-nine: 'to look and feel young [was] great fun'. Yet, even so, the thought that she could not herself be in Germany to see her daughter through her confinement drove her 'almost frantic'. All she could do was give advice, which she did in letter after letter, urging her not to talk to her ladies about her condition and its consequences; they would only alarm her; but, of course, there was no need for alarm; she must not 'dread the denouement'; there was no need for that.10

  As well as advice came parcels of medicines and baby clothes, camphor lozenges for insomnia, tincture for toothache, details of her own confinements, complaints about the selfishness of men 'who would not bear for a minute what we poor slaves have to bear', and warnings not to indulge in 'baby worship', 'since no lady, and still less a Princess is fit for her husband or for her position if she does THAT.' 'With your great passion for little children (which are mere little plants for the first 6 months) it would be very natural for you to be carried away by your pleasure in having a child.'11

  As her pregnancy advanced, the Princess felt sure it was not progressing as it should. The experienced Mrs Innocent thought so too. But Dr Wegner disagreed with them, though he was scarcely in a position to judge since his patient was too embarrassed to discuss her symptoms with him, communicating with him through her husband.12

  Sir James, whose opinion might well have been considered unreliable in view of his faulty diagnoses years before in the case of Lady Flora Hastings, agreed with Wegner. So did another German doctor in attendance, Professor Eduard Arnold Martin.

  The baby, a boy, the future Kaiser Wilhelm II, was born on 27 January 1859 in the Kronprinzenpalais, Unter den Linden, after the agonizing labour of a breech birth which necessitated the rotation of the child in the birth canal. Quantities of chloroform, administered by Clark, made the pain suffered by the eighteen-year-old mother scarcely more bearable. 'Vicky's pain, as well as her horrible screams and wails, became ever more severe,' the Crown Prince reported to his mother-in-law. 'However, whenever she was granted a respite from her suffering she would ask for forgiveness from everyone for her screaming and impatience, but she could not help herself. When the final stages of labour began, I had to try with all my might to hold her head in place, so that she would not strain her neck over much. Every contraction meant a real fight between her and me, and even today [29 January] my arms still feel quite weak ... With the strength of a giant, she was at times able to hold off 2 people, & thus the awful torture escalated until the moment of birth was so near that complete anaesthesia with chloroform was undertaken ... Vicky was laid at right angles on the bed; she let forth one horrible long scream, & was then anaesthetized.'13

  The life of the child 'lay in the balance' for a time as he was slapped and slung about by the German midwife, Fräulein Stahl, who, in her own opinion, 'saved the Prince from the grave for which he had been intended' by ignoring court etiquette and the grumbles of the shocked doctors and slapping the child 'first softly then more vigorously, slap, slap, slap', until at last 'a weak cry escaped his pale lips'.14 Later it was noticed that his 'poor little left arm', which was to remain withered for the rest of his life, 'hung helpless at his side'.15

  'My precious darling, you suffered more than I ever did,' the Queen wrote to her daughter, having received a report from Sir James Clark. 'How I wish I could have lightened [the pain] for you! '16

  'I am so happy, so thankful he is a boy,' the Princess wrote in reply. 'I longed for one, more than I can ever describe ... You need not be afraid I shall be injudiciously fond of him, although I do worship him ... and I feel he is my own and he owes me so much, and has cost me so much. '17

  By May, Princess Frederick had recovered sufficiently to make the journey to Osborne to see her parents who had missed her so much ever since she had left home. 'I can assure you,' her mother had written to her a few months before, 'that there is not an hour in the day, not a picture or any object of any kind which I look at - when I do not think of you. '18

  The Princess was 'so very happy' to be at Osborne once again. When in Germany it had made her cry to think of the 'dear view out of the windows, the darling Swiss cottage', her little garden, the trees she had planted. And 'such happiness' it was, too, for her mother to have her daughter back at home for a time, 'to be at last together again'.19

  In September 1860, eighteen months after the birth of her first grandson, the Queen and her husband went to Germany for a holiday. Overwhelmed by work and worry, the Prince had not been able to spare the time to go before, though he was longing to see his daughter again. He would also be able to see his grandson, Wilhelm, and another grandchild, Wilhelm's sister, Charlotte, who had been born without complications two months before. Moreover, he would have an opportunity of discussing the disturbing state of European affairs with his much missed mentor, old Baron Stockmar, who had recently left England for the last time and had settled in retirement in Coburg.

  The Queen could hardly speak, she 'felt so touched' at the sight of her daughter who was in deep mourning for the Prince Consort's stepmother, the Dowager Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, who had died the day before.

  'Our darling grandchild was brought,' the Queen wrote. 'Such a little love! He came walking in at Mrs Hobbs's hand in a little white dress with black bows, and was so good. He is a fine, fat child, with a beautiful white soft skin ... and a very dear face ... He has Fritz's eyes and Vicky's mouth and very curly hair ... such a darling, so intelligent ... We felt so happy to see him at last.'20

  A week later the Prince Consort, having gone out shooting, left his wife and daughter sketching near the Kalenberg castle while he returned to Coburg, making the excuse that he had people to see. Before he reached Coburg, however, the horses drawing his carriage bolted and were careering towards a closed railway crossing when he saw his danger and threw himself from the carriage, cutting his nose, arms and legs and suffering bruises. He was, however, not injured so badly that he was unable to go to help the coachman, to whose wounds he told the doctors to attend when they were hurriedly brought to the scene. The Prince's equerry, Colonel Henry Ponsonby, went to report the accident to the Queen who, carrying her sketches, was walking back towards Coburg with Vicky, much amused by a bo
ssy peasant woman who told the Princess the skirts of her dress were getting dusty and why didn't she pick them up. The Queen rushed home and hurried up to her 'dearest Albert's rooms and found him lying quietly on [his valet's] bed with lint compresses on his nose, mouth and chin. He was quite cheerful, had not been in the least stunned.' But 'oh! God! What did I not feel!' she wrote that evening. 'I could only, and do only, allow the feelings of gratitude, not those of horror at what might have happened, to fill my mind ... I must thank God for having preserved my adored one! I tremble now on thinking of it ... The escape is very wonderful, most merciful! God is indeed most gracious.'21

  Although he had not been badly injured, the Prince's nervous system, as his brother, Ernest, the Duke of Coburg, observed, was far more shaken than the Queen realized. When Baron Stockmar saw how deeply despondent the Prince had become, he said to the Duke, 'God have mercy on us! If anything serious should ever happen to him, he will die.'22

  The Prince himself had a premonition of death. Ten days after his carriage accident he went for a walk with his brother in the countryside outside Gotha and, 'in one of the most beautiful spots, Albert stood still and suddenly felt for his pocket handkerchief.' The Duke 'went up to him and saw that tears were trickling down his cheeks ... He persisted in declaring that he had been here for the last time in his life.'23 He had expressed a similar despondency to the Queen at Osborne after planting some saplings which, he said, he would never see grow into trees. Why ever not, she had protested: he was only forty and that was not 'so very old'. No, he persisted mournfully, 'I shall never see them grow up.'

  His melancholy persisted on his return home in November 1860. At Balmoral in early December he was 'seriously unwell'; and on the 5th the Queen reported in her journal that he was 'very weak'. The next day he wrote to tell Vicky that he had felt too ill and 'too miserable' to hold his pen the day before, suffering from violent sickness and bouts of shivering.24 When he had recovered sufficiently to go back to his work, he told his daughter that he had been suffering from what he called 'the real English cholera'.25

  Scarcely had he recovered from that than he was ill again with swollen glands, 'inflammation of the nerves of the upper part of the cheek', and dreadful toothache which his dentist said was the severest attack he had ever known. His sufferings he described as 'frightful' and two operations performed by the dentist afforded no relief.26 The Queen told Vicky that she wished she could bear it all for him, since, as she often said, women were born to suffer and bore it 'so much more easily'. 'Our nerves,' she said, 'don't seem so racked, so tortured as men's are.'27 It was 'a most trying, wearing and distressing time', for she 'could not bear to see him suffer so much and to be so despondent and weak and miserable'. Nor could she disguise from her daughter her occasional exasperation with the gloom into which his concern for his health was inclined to sink him, the irritability to which overwork reduced him, as when, for instance, reading documents, letters and newspapers spread before him on a table after breakfast, he would dismiss any interruption with a curt, 'Store mich nicht, ich lese das fertig ('Don't disturb me. I am busy reading').'28

  Dear Papa never allows he is any better or will try to get over it, but makes such a miserable face that people always think he's very ill. It is quite the contrary with me always; I can do anything before others and never show it, so people never believe I am ill or even suffer. His nervous system is easily excited and irritated and he's completely overpowered by everything ...29 You say no one is perfect but Papa. But he has his faults too. He is often very trying -in his hastiness and over-love of business - and I think you would find it very trying if Fritz was as hasty and harsh (momentarily and unintentionally as it is) as he is!30

  Chapter 34

  DEATH OF THE DUCHESS

  'I kissed her dear hand and placed it next my cheek.'

  On 15 March 1861 the Queen went to see her 75-year-old mother at Frogmore where she had been suffering from intermittent attacks of erysipelas for several months. Her close friend and secretary, Sir George Couper, who had brought order to the chaos in which Sir John Conroy had left her affairs, had died a fortnight before and the Duchess was not expected to survive him for long.

  She and her daughter had long since overcome the antagonism of earlier years. 'Poor woman,' Lord Holland had written at the beginning of the Queen's reign. 'The importance of her actions and opinions are gone by. She will count for little or nothing in the new court.' This was true and she had much resented it. She had often been told that her daughter was too busy to see her. 'This was neither a happy nor a merry day for me,' she had written on Victoria's birthday in 1837. 'Everything is so changed.' Her apartment at Windsor was 'very far from the room' to which her daughter had moved. There had been constant grumbles, 'unhappy scenes', 'extraordinary letters'. Lord Liverpool had told Stock-mar, 'It is a hard and unfair trial for the Queen, whose mind and health should not be exposed to such absurd vexation and torment... Although I should be very sorry to see Mother and Daughter separated, yet anything I am sure is better than the present state of things.' Her mother had 'seemed delighted', the Queen thought, when she had told her that she was to marry Prince Albert; but she had, in fact, complained bitterly that she had not been informed about the engagement earlier - why, even the Prince's valet had known before she did! This was not true, said the Queen. Then the Duchess had grown extremely grumpy when told she could not move into Buckingham Palace with her daughter and nephew, and had expressed her dissatisfaction with Ingestre House in Belgrave Square which the Queen had taken for her at £2,000 a year and which, so she complained, was too small. Upon the death of George Ill's daughter, Princess Augusta, she had grudgingly accepted not only Clarence House, St James's but also Frogmore House at Windsor.1

  Since then, relations between mother and daughter had slowly improved. The Queen had written to her when Sir John Conroy died in 1854 to say:

  I quite understand your feelings on the occasion of Sir John Conroy's death... I will not speak of the past and of the many sufferings he entailed on us by creating divisions between you and me which could never have existed otherwise, they are buried with him. For his poor wife and children I am truly sorry. They are now free from the ban which kept them from ever appearing before me!2

  'Yes,' the Duchess had replied, 'Sir John Conroy's death was a most painful shock. I shall not try and excuse the many errors that unfortunate man committed, but it would be very unjust if I allowed all the blame to be thrown on him. I am in justice bound to accuse myself ... I erred in believing blindly, in acting without reflexion... I allowed myself unintentionally to be led to hurt you, my dearest child, for whom I would have given at every moment my life! Reflexion came always too late, but not the deserved punishment] My sufferings were great, very great. God be praised that those terrible times are gone by and that only death can separate me from you My beloved Victoria.'3

  Now death for the Duchess was coming and her daughter gave way to that heartrending, almost hysterical grief which her family and attendants had learned to dread. She had been overwhelmed with grief when King Leopold's Queen Louise died in 1850;4 the sudden death of Prince Albert's Private Secretary, George Anson, 'almost the only intimate friend he had in this country', made her 'wretched'.5 When Sir Robert Peel - a 'very bad and awkward rider', in Charles Greville's opinion - had died in July 1850 after falling from his horse on Constitution Hill, the Prince felt the loss 'dreadfully', while she herself deeply lamented the passing of 'our truest friend and trustiest counsellor'.6 The death of the Duke of Wellington in September 1852 had distressed her even more; and as the coffin of the 'GREATEST man this country ever produced', rolled by on its immense and unwieldy black and gold funeral car towards St Paul's, while bands played dirges chosen by the Prince, she 'wept unrestrainedly'; and she wept again when she saw the Duke's old groom leading his horse beneath the Palace balcony, a pair of Wellington boots reversed hanging from its side.7

  But no death yet had called forth lamentatio
ns quite as desperate as her mother's. 'Oh, what agony, what despair was this,' she wrote, having knelt before her as she lay, breathing heavily, on a sofa in her room.

  I kissed her dear hand and placed it next my cheek; but, though she opened her eyes, she did not, I think, know me. She brushed my hand off ... I went out to sob ... I asked the doctors if there was no hope. They said, they feared, none whatever ...

  As the night wore on into the morning I lay down on the sofa, at the foot of my bed. I heard each hour strike. At four I went down again. All still - nothing to be heard but the heavy breathing, and the striking, at every quarter, of the old repeater, a large watch in a tortoiseshell case, which had belonged to my poor father, the sound of which brought back all the recollections of my childhood.8

  Feeling faint and exhausted she went upstairs again and lay down 'in silent misery'. At half past seven she returned to her mother's room where she sat on a stool to hold her hand. The breathing grew fainter and fainter. 'At last it ceased ... The clock struck half past nine at the very moment ... The dreaded terrible calamity has befallen us, which seems like an awful dream ... oh God! how awful ... The constant crying was a comfort and relief ... But oh! the agony of it.'9

  For days on end her emotions were in turmoil as she abandoned herself to 'fearful and unbearable outbursts of grief with an alarming intensity. 'It is dreadful, dreadful to think we shall never see that dear kind loving face again,' she wrote, 'never hear that dear voice again ... The dreadful thing, as I told Albert yesterday, is the certainty that the loss is irrevocable.' The day of her death was 'the most dreadful day' of her own life.10 She felt 'so stupefied', 'stunned'. 'The relief of tears' was great: they came 'again and again everyday.' 'I do not want to feel better,' she told the Crown Princess Frederick. 'I love to dwell on her ... and not to be roused out of my grief.'11 Lord Clarendon thought that she was actually 'determined to cherish' it. 'She never ceases crying,' he told the Duchess of Manchester, '& always went morning and evening, to Frog-more [where her mother was buried] as if it was a satisfaction to feed her grief.' 'I hope this state of things won't last,' he added, 'or she may fall into a morbid melancholy to which her mind has often tended and which is a constant source of anxiety to P[rince] A[lbert].'12