QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History

by Christopher Hibbert

  She wrote gratefully of the 'admirable' sermons of her 'dear friend' and chaplain the Revd Norman McLeod, listening to which she would sometimes nod in agreement and approval. 'Every one came back delighted,' she wrote after one service conducted by McLeod whose prayers, she said, 'gave me a lump in my throat. How satisfactory it is to come back from church with such feelings. '12

  She was equally impressed by another sermon, preached the following year by the Revd John Laird, parish minister of Errol, who 'electrified all present by a most admirable and beautiful Sermon, which lasted nearly an hour, but which kept one's attention rivetted.'13 This was in 1855. It was very rarely thereafter that she would sit patiently through a sermon half as long. She did not, as Queen Elizabeth I was known to do, interrupt the parson's discourse; but she would make it quite clear from her expression when he had said enough.

  Chapter 39

  PRINCESS ALEXANDRA

  'May he be only worthy of such a jewel, there is the rub.'

  Although she had been reluctant to depart from the place where her beloved husband lay awaiting his funeral, the Queen left for Osborne five days after his death. She looked utterly miserable during the crossing, according to her lady-in-waiting, the Duchess of Atholl, who described the 'desolate look of that young [42-year-old] face in Her Widow's cap! for somehow the Queen looked like a child'. She held the Duchess in a 'passionate embrace'; and the older woman thought 'What was there that I would not do for her.'1

  At Osborne she tried to deal with papers and despatches, determined, as she said, to do her duty, struggling to understand the difficulties which the Prince would so carefully have explained to her, the words seeming to swim before her eyes. As at Windsor and, later at Balmoral, she could not escape from the fear that she might go mad.

  She felt she could not bear to see her Ministers alone; and she told the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, that they would have to conduct their business either through Princess Alice or General Grey, George Anson's successor as the Prince's Private Secretary and now her own.

  When the Prime Minister pressed her to accept the fact that this method of conducting business was impossible she gave way with clearly stated reluctance. But she insisted that she was not up to the strain of attending meetings of the Privy Council. In this difficulty a strange compromise was reached. The recently appointed Clerk of the Council was Arthur Helps, an astute, cultivated and tactful man whom the Queen came to like and to trust; and it was agreed that he and the requisite number of councillors should stand in one room while the Queen should sit in the next with the door between them open. She would then authorize Helps to give her consent to the matters laid before the councillors for their approval.

  She was to be a similarly remote presence on the occasion of the Prince of Wales's marriage to Princess Alexandra which was to take place on 5 March 1863.

  In the months immediately following her husband's death, the Queen had made no bones of her conviction that - as she said to Lord Hertford one day - the Prince Consort had been 'killed by that dreadful business at the Curragh'.2 She asked Vicky to tell Stockmar so: 'There must be no delusion about that - it was so; he was struck down ... Oh! that cross.'3

  She found it impossible to look at her eldest son 'without a shudder'. She could scarcely bear to be in the same room with him, she confessed to her daughter, the Crown Princess. 'He does not know that I know all - Beloved Papa told him that I could not be told all the disgusting details ... Tell him [the Crown Prince Frederick, who had made an appeal to the Queen on his brother-in-law's behalf] that I try to employ him, but I am not hopeful.'4

  The Prince Consort's friend, Colonel Francis Seymour, encouraged the Queen to believe that the Prince of Wales's 'fall' was, in reality, no more than 'a youthful error that very few young men escape', that it was 'almost impossible' to hope that the Prince would be one of them, and that the father's 'extraordinary pureness of mind' had led him to exaggerate the seriousness of what most other men would consider a venial fault. But the Queen would not be persuaded, and when the Crown Princess urged her not to be so hard upon the boy - to accept the fact that he knew he was 'neither like you nor Papa'; he could not help it - she replied:

  All you say about poor Bertie is right and affectionate in you; but if you had seen what I saw, if you had seen Fritz struck down, day by day get worse and finally die, I doubt if you could bear the sight of the one who was the cause; or if you would not feel as I do, a shudder. This dreadful dreadful cross kills me!5

  Her distress was made all the more difficult to bear because the contemplation of her son's future enjoyment of his young and attractive wife made her own loss so painful to remember. She confessed to her daughter that Bertie's 'prospect of opening happiness of married life' wrung her 'poor heart' which seemed 'transfixed with agonies of longing!' 'I am alas! not old,' she wrote to her, 'and my feelings are strong and warm; my love is ardent.'6

  The Prince did what he could to heal the breach between himself and his mother, writing letters for her, letting her know that he shared her grief for the loss of 'one of the best and kindest fathers'. But it was all to no avail; and relations between mother and son became so bad that the Prime Minister came to see the Queen to tell her that the country was 'fearful [they] were not on good terms'. The Prince was so much away from home there was talk of a serious estrangement. The Queen protested that this was not so and the Prince was 'a very good and dutiful son'. Certainly he was much away from home, but this was 'unavoidable, as Bertie's living in the house was not a good thing'.

  In writing to her daughter, the Queen was more open. Contact with her son was 'more than ever unbearable' to her, she admitted. She had decided it would be best if he left the country again for a time. His father had planned that his education ought to be completed by a tour of Palestine and the Near East, and now was a suitable time for him to embark upon it.

  So, in February 1862, accompanied by General Bruce, he set out for Venice by way of Vienna. The 'poor Boy' was 'low and upset' when he wished his mother goodbye. So was she; and he returned for a moment after he had left her room, close to tears. He had felt his father's death far more deeply that she had supposed, and was distressed to leave her, knowing that in her misery she had almost grown to hate him.

  The Q: and the P: of W: are as bad as ever if not worse [Lord Clarendon told the Duchess of Manchester on the authority of King Leopold shortly before the Prince's departure]. And all his efforts to improve them have been fruitless - it seems an antipathy that is incurable but quite justifiable - it is entirely her fault as the poor boy asks nothing better than to devote himself to comforting his Mother & with that object would be delighted to give up his foreign expedition but she wouldn't hear of it & seems only to wish to get rid of him. The Q:'s conduct in the matter is hardly sane but, as we know, it has never been otherwise, the eccentricity cannot be attributed to her misfortune but if it goes on & she lives it will produce a most painful state of things.7

  On his return from his tour in June 1862 the Prince was profoundly relieved to find that his mother appeared to have overcome those feelings of deep resentment and dislike which had so distressed him at the time of his father's death. Indeed, she seemed actually glad to have him home again. She confessed that she was at first 'much upset at seeing him' because 'his beloved father was not there to welcome him back'. But he was so much improved, she thought, looking 'so bright and healthy' and being 'most affectionate: the tears came into his eyes' when he saw her. His time away had 'done him so much good', his mother continued a few days later; and he went on 'being as good, amiable and sensible' as anyone could have wished. Improved 'in every respect', he was 'so kind and nice to the younger children, more serious in his ways and views'. She was especially pleased to note that he was 'very distressed about General Bruce' who, having contracted a fever in the marshes of the Upper Jordan, had died soon after his return to England in his sister's rooms in St James's Palace.

  The Prince was now twenty-o
ne years old and his mother was anxious that there should be no further delay in his marriage. He, too, she was thankful to say, seemed 'most anxious' to make his formal proposal to Princess Alexandra, for whom he had bought a 'number of pretty things' on his travels. The Queen, however, thought that before any proposal was made, Princess Alexandra's family should be told that the Prince of Wales was a 'mauvais sujet'. So the Crown Princess was instructed to let the Princess's mother, Princess Christian, know that 'wicked wretches' had led the 'poor innocent Boy into a scrape' which had caused his parents the 'deepest pain'. She was told to add that both his parents had 'forgiven him this (one) sad mistake', that his mother was very confident that he would make 'a steady Husband', and that she looked to his wife 'as being HIS SALVATION'.8

  This message was accordingly passed on to Princess Christian who was further assured, without too strict a regard for accuracy, that the Prince was 'very domestic and longed to be at home'. So arrangements for the marriage went ahead, and the Queen meanwhile used a journey to Coburg to revisit the places where her husband had lived as a child as an excuse to meet Princess Alexandra and her parents at King Leopold's palace at Laeken.

  She was immediately taken with her proposed daughter-in-law whom she found as lovely as the Crown Princess had said she was, 'with such a beautiful, refined profile and quiet lady-like manner'. The Queen was accordingly gratified to receive a letter from her son saying that he had proposed to her.

  She immediately said yes [the Prince reported] ... I then kissed her hand and she kissed me. We then talked for some time and I said I was sure you would love her as your own daughter and make her happy in the new home, though she would find it very sad after the terrible loss we had sustained. I told her how very sorry I was that she could never know dear Papa. She said she regretted it deeply and hoped he would have approved of my choice. I cannot tell you how happy I feel.9

  'May he be only worthy of such a jewel,' the Queen commented apprehensively. 'There is the rub!' She let it be known that, although they were engaged, there must be no question of their being left alone together, except 'in a room next to the Princess's mother's' and then 'with the door open and for a short while'. This is how her own courtship had been conducted after she herself had proposed to the Prince's father. Also, Princess Alexandra must come over to England by herself before the marriage so that she could be warned 'not to use her influence to make the Prince a partisan in the political questions now unhappily in dispute' between her country and Germany, since this would 'irritate all the Queen's German connections and create family feuds - destructive of all family comfort and happiness'.

  The Princess was reluctant to come, not wanting it to appear that she was being summoned on approval and 'terribly frightened' of being left alone with the Queen for long. Both the Prince of Wales and the King of the Belgians tried rather diffidently and wholly unsuccessfully to persuade the Queen not to subject the Princess to such embarrassment; but the Queen was adamant. 'I should see the girl,' she said, 'so that I could judge, before it is too late, whether she will suit me.'10

  So, while the Prince was sent abroad again, Princess Alexandra came to England and listened to the Queen's lectures with tactful acquiescence. She concealed the resentment which she subsequently admitted she had felt that her father, who had brought her over to England, had - for want of an invitation to stay at Osborne - been obliged to put up at a hotel; and that her mother, from whom she had never been parted before, had not been asked to come to England at all. She was polite, charming, understanding, affectionate; and the Queen was more delighted with her than ever, particularly when, after listening to many stories about the Prince Consort, the Princess burst into tears at an account of his death. 'How He would have doted on her and loved her,' the Queen wrote, paying her the highest compliment she could.11

  She certainly adored her now herself. 'I can't say how I and we all love her!' she told the Crown Princess. 'She is so good, so simple, unaffected, frank, bright and cheerful, yet so quiet and gentle that her [companionship] soothes me. Then how lovely!'12

  When Princess Alexandra, now known as Alix, returned to England three days before the wedding it was clear, however, that the sad memories aroused by what was to take place in St George's Chapel were to cast their gloom over what the Queen professed would be 'the only ray of happiness in her life since her husband's death'. She was too 'desolate' to come down to dinner, which she had served to her and a lady-in-waiting in a different room; and was 'much moved' when, to show her sympathy with the Queen's distress, 'Alix knocked at the door, peeped in and came and knelt before [her] with that sweet, loving expression which spoke volumes.' The Queen kissed her 'again and again'.13

  Princess Alexandra was 'much moved' herself, so the Queen recorded, when, the day before the wedding, she took the bride and bridegroom to the mausoleum at Frogmore. 'I opened the shrine and took them in ... I said, "He gives you his blessing!" and joined Alix's and Bertie's hands, taking them both in my arms. It was a very touching moment and we all felt it.'14

  The Queen, 'very low and depressed', according to Lady Augusta Bruce, remained preoccupied with thoughts of her husband even on the day of the wedding. She had herself photographed sitting down in front of the bridal pair, looking at neither of them but gazing instead at a marble bust of the Prince Consort.

  She had decided that she could not bring herself to take part in the procession to the chapel, nor to discard her mourning for the day. She would continue to wear the black streamers of widowhood and her black widow's cap with a long white veil. She put on the badge of the Order of the Garter that her 'beloved one had worn' and a miniature of 'his noble features.' She proceeded to the Chapel from the deanery by a specially constructed covered way and entered directly into the high oak closet on the north side of the altar which Henry VIII had built so that Catherine of Aragon could watch the ceremonies of the Order of the Garter.15

  Sitting in this closet, she was 'agitated and restless', Lady Augusta Bruce recorded, moving her chair, putting back her long streamers, asking questions of the Duchess of Sutherland. Her expression was 'profoundly melancholy'. When the organ played the first anthem and Jenny Lind sang the chorale which had been composed by Prince Albert, she looked across at the new East window and reredos which the Dean and Canons had erected in his memory and seemed 'transfixed', suffering indescribably. Charles Kingsley, one of the Queen's Chaplains in Ordinary, who was 'exactly opposite to her the whole time', saw her throw back her head and look 'up and away with a most painful' expression on her face. Norman McLeod, Dean of the Chapel Royal, who was standing next to Kingsley, touched him on the arm, and, with tears in his eyes, whispered in his 'broad Scotch', 'See, she is worshipping him in spirit!'16

  In the congregation below the Queen's closet, her daughters were in tears; the Archbishop of Canterbury made rather heavy weather of announcing the bride's six Christian names; the bridesmaids were, in Lady Geraldine Somerset's opinion, 'eight as ugly girls as you could wish to see'; the Knights of the Garter hurried down the aisle in a kind of gaggle instead of proceeding decorously two by two; and Benjamin Disraeli was seen to receive a frigid glance from the Queen for having raised his eye-glass in the direction of her closet: he 'did not venture', so he told a friend, to use his glass again.17 There was only one really embarrassing moment, however; and that was when the bridegroom's four-year-old nephew, the future Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was wearing Highland dress, decided to enliven the proceedings by trying to throw the cairngorm from the head of his dirk across the choir. He had already caused great consternation by hurling his aunt's muff out of the carriage window and by addressing the Queen familiarly as 'Duck'.18 He now created further disturbance by turning on his uncles, Prince Alfred and Prince Leopold, who tried to restrain his bad behaviour in the chapel, and by biting them both as hard as he could on their legs.

  After the ceremony a luncheon was held for the royal guests, but the Queen did not attend it, again preferring to eat alone. Aft
erwards, at about four o'clock, from a window in the Grand Corridor, she watched the bridal carriage set off for Windsor station. She then walked down the path to the mausoleum at Frogmore, to pray alone, 'by that blessed resting-place'.19

  On their return to Windsor after a week's honeymoon at Osborne, the Queen was pleased with the look of them both. 'Alix looked so sweet and lovely at luncheon,' she recorded the day they arrived back at the Castle, 'and Bertie so brightened up.'

  She was not pleased with either of them, however, when they, like most people in the country, made clear their support of Denmark in that country's quarrel with Germany over the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein which had been ruled for years by the Kings of Denmark but which the Germans considered they had every right to annex. The problem was an extremely complicated one, so complicated, in fact, that Lord Palmerston observed in a celebrated comment that there were only three people who had ever understood it, the Prince Consort, who was dead, a German professor who had gone mad, and he himself who had quite forgotten what it was all about. What was certain, at least, was that the Queen, having regard to the fact that the inhabitants of the Duchies were of largely German stock, supported German claims, as she had no doubt Prince Albert would have done. Indeed, she had recently declared that the 'German element' was the one which she wished 'to be cherished and kept up' in the 'beloved home' which she had shared with her husband; and she had told her daughter, the Crown Princess, that she much regretted that the Prince of Wales never wrote to Princess Alexandra in 'anything but English'. 'I hope,' she wrote to her daughter after the Prince of Wales had visited her in Berlin, 'that you have Germanized Bertie as much as possible.'20