QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History

by Christopher Hibbert

  The Queen found him 'very agreeable, with a pleasant voice and manner'. He thought her 'strangely shy', so he told his sister-in-law, Georgina, 'and like a girl in manner'.5

  Chapter 64

  FAILING HEALTH

  'After the Prince Consort's death I wished to die, but now I wish to live and do what I can for my country and those I love.'

  Towards the end of July 1900 the Queen received the news that her second son, Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, who had succeeded his uncle as Duke of Coburg seven years before, had died at the Rosenau. An alcoholic, he had been suffering from cancer of the tongue and for some time had been estranged from his wife whom he blamed for the death of their son, 'Young Affie', an unsatisfactory young man who had contracted syphilis and, suffering from 'nervous depression', had shot himself after a furious quarrel with his mother. The Queen felt 'terribly shaken and broken' on hearing of her 'poor darling' second son's death, and at first she 'could not realize the dreadful fact'. Following upon the deaths of her youngest son, Prince Leopold, of Princess Alice's little daughter, May, and of Princess Alice herself, who died of diphtheria at the age of thirty-five on 14 December 1878, the seventeenth anniversary of her father's death - a lamentable loss which occasioned a letter from her eldest sister to their mother of thirty-nine pages[lxxxii] - the Duke of Edinburgh's death was the loss of a 'third grown-up child' which the Queen had had to bear. She had also lost 'three very dear sons-in-law' - Vicky's husband, Fritz, Beatrice's husband, Prince Henry of Battenberg ('beloved, noble "Liko"') who had died of malaria while serving in the Ashanti expedition in 1896 - 'causing such grief in the house', the Queen 'crying and sobbing much'[lxxxiii] - and Princess Alice's widower, Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, 'so dear and joyous - so loving and so young for his age', who had died after suffering a stroke in 1892. It was 'hard at eighty-one' to have to accept yet another death in the family.

  It was all the harder to accept the death of the 'dear, lovable' Louis of Hesse, since it had come within a matter of weeks of that of the Prince of Wales's son and heir. Prince Albert Victor (Prince Eddy), Duke of Clarence, had died at Sandringham in January, six days after his twenty-eighth birthday, while his father was still recovering from his involvement in a scandalous court case in which it was revealed that he had been gambling at baccarat at Tranby Croft, a country house in Yorkshire, with a man accused of cheating. 'Poor poor parents,' lamented the Queen who had expressed the hope that the Tranby Croft case would prove a salutary 'shock to Society'. 'Poor, poor parents ... A tragedy too dreadful for words ... The Queen's impulse yesterday was to go to Sandringham but Dr Reid and all - said she must not run the risk of cold & fatigue etc.... Poor May to have her whole bright future to be merely a dream.'1

  In fact 'poor May', daughter of Francis, Duke of Teck, was not really to be pitied. Her marriage to Prince Eddy had been due to take place on 27 February that year and no one who knew the young man could suppose he would have made a good husband. He was pleasant enough, the Duke of Cambridge conceded, but 'an inveterate and incurable dawdler, never ready, never there'.2 He was also weak-willed and impressionable, leading what the Queen had described in a letter to the young man's mother as a 'dissipated' life, a comment which prompted the Prince of Wales's Private Secretary, Sir Francis Knollys, to write to Sir Henry Ponsonby, 'I ask again who it is tells the Queen these things?' There was so little that escaped her notice. Prince Eddy had wanted to marry Princess Helene d'Orleans, an attractive warm-hearted girl. Although she was a Roman Catholic whose father, the Comte de Paris, disapproved of the match, the Princess of Wales undertook to help her son overcome the difficulties which stood in the way of it. Rightly supposing that, as Princess Helene was prepared to renounce her religion, Queen Victoria's affection for Prince Eddy, and the romantic appeal of young lovers in distress, would lead her to support a marriage which prudence frowned upon, the Princess of Wales urged her son to go to see his grandmother at Balmoral.3 He quailed at the prospect of such an interview. 'You can imagine what a thing to go through,' he told his brother, George, 'and I did not at all relish the idea ... I naturally expected that grandmama would be furious at the idea, and say it was quite impossible etc. But instead of that she was very nice about it and promised to help us as much as possible, which she is now doing ... I believe what pleased her most was my taking Helene into her, and saying we had arranged it entirely between ourselves without consulting our parents first. This as you know was not quite true but she believed it all and was quite pleased.'4

  The Comte de Paris, however, proved resolute in opposition to his daughter marrying a Protestant young man of whom he had heard no good reports; and Prince Eddy was, therefore, compelled to look elsewhere for a bride. Having fallen in love with Lady Sybil St Clair Erskine and having failed to win her also, he had complaisantly agreed to marry the far more suitable Princess May of Teck, who was 'quiet and reserved' in the Queen's opinion, 'the reverse of oberflachlich [superficial]' and with 'such good manners wh. in the present day [were] not too frequent'.

  Greatly distressed by Prince Eddy's death before this marriage could take place, his father made the highly extravagant claim that such a tragedy had 'never before occurred in the annals' of their family. Yet he knew in his heart that his lethargic and dandiacal elder son, whose mind, as his tutor had once put it, was 'at all times in an abnormally dormant condition', had been hopelessly ill-qualified for the position for which his birth had destined him and that his younger brother, Prince George, the future King George V, who obligingly agreed to marry Princess May in his brother's place, was far better suited to kingship. He was also, in his grandmother's opinion, 'so nice, sensible, & truly right-minded, & so anxious to improve himself.'[lxxxiv]

  In the years before and after Prince Eddy's death, the Queen had to mourn the loss of several other members of her family, as well as dear friends and ladies and gentlemen of her Household. General Grey and Sir James Clark had both died in 1870. Lady Augusta Stanley had died, five years before her husband, in 1876. Two years later, to what she said was her 'profoundest grief, Sir Thomas Biddulph contracted a fatal illness in Scotland. Gerald Wellesley, Dean of Windsor, followed Dean Stanley to the grave in 1882. 'Dear kind' Sir Henry Ponsonby never recovered from the paralytic stroke which incapacitated him in 1895. Sir William Jenner, whose ill health necessitated his retirement in 1890, died eight years later. Both Prince Alexander, 'Sandro', of Battenberg and the Prince Consort's brother, Ernest, Duke of Coburg, died in 1893; Augusta, the old Duchess of Cambridge in 1889, 'the last one gone,' as the Queen commented, 'who had a right to call me Victoria!' One of her favourite grandsons, Princess Helena's elder son, Christian Victor, Prince of Schles-wig-Holstein, died in 1900 of enteric fever while serving with the 60th Rifles in South Africa.

  'I could not believe it,' she wrote of this last death. 'It seemed too dreadful and heart-breaking, this dear, excellent, gallant boy, beloved by all, such a good as well as a brave and capable officer, gone.' She was 'dreadfully shaken and upset' as her ladies testified. Lady Lytton recalled the tears pouring down her cheeks as she squeezed her hand, silently acknowledging her sympathy; and Marie Mallet told her husband:

  Words fail me to describe the pall of sorrow that hangs over this house [Balmoral], the Queen is quite exhausted by her grief and that dear unselfish Princess Thora [Prince Christian Victor's sister] just heart-broken ... When the Queen breaks down and draws me close to her and lets me stroke her dear hand I quite forget she is far above me and only realize she is a sorrowing woman who clings to human sympathy and hungers for all that can be given on such occasions. I feel thankful for my unreserved nature and power of showing what I feel, for I believe it is a comfort to her, just a little ... She is quite angelic, and does her best to keep up, but the effort is very great ... The curious thing is that she said to me, 'After the Prince Consort's death I wished to die, but now I wish to live and do what I can for my country and those I love.' Do not repeat this but it is a very remarkable utterance for a woma
n of eighty-two, and this is not the first time she has made the same remark.5

  Mrs Mallet was worried by the deleterious effect the Queen's sorrow might have upon her health which was naturally not as robust as it had been, particularly in very hot weather. A stifling summer's day was 'quite dreadful for me, who love cold,' she had said years before, '& am always poorly & stupified in hot weather'. From the early 1880s she had been troubled with rheumatism in her legs, a complaint which Princess Louise, always ready with eccentric prescriptions, proposed should be treated by boiling the painful members in whisky every night. Temporarily the Queen had lost the use of her legs altogether in the emotional distress caused by the death of John Brown, as she had also done when the Prince Consort died. Then, as her eyesight began to fail, she also complained in frequent notes to Dr Reid of sciatica, neuralgic headaches, a husky voice, pain between her shoulders and in her hip, lumbago, gastric pain, nausea, trouble with her false teeth, occasional indigestion and what, in her hypochondriacal way, she supposed was heart disease.6 Additionally, she suffered from bouts of insomnia for which she was prescribed doses of chloral, Dover's powder, ammonium bromide and tincture of henbane.[lxxxv]

  After grumbling about her very bad night [Reid recorded in one of many such comments] she said that perhaps after all she had more sleep than she thought, as, except once, she did not think she remained awake longer than five or six minutes at a time! Every time she wakes, even for a few minutes, she rings for her maids, who of course don't like it, and naturally call the night a 'bad' one. She has got into the habit of waking up at night, and I fear it may not be easy to break this habit. Meantime I shall go on with Bromide and Henbane, and give no opium.7

  Fussy as she was about her health, and regularly as she called upon her doctors for treatment, any reports that she was ill annoyed her intensely; and she had been known in her old age to go out of her way to fulfil some public duty, even coming down from Balmoral to do so, rather than allow it to be supposed that she was really unwell. She could not, however, disguise the fact that she was becoming increasingly lame: she found it more and more difficult, and in the end impossible, to walk without a stick or the help of someone's arm, and eventually she took to being wheeled about in a chair.

  Yet she did not allow her infirmities to interfere with her enjoyment of life; nor did they prevent her from contriving to seem almost agile when making an appearance in public. As late as the summer of 1900, at a garden party at Buckingham Palace, the 'dear old lady' was described by Lady Monkswell as being 'vivacious'. She 'wagged her head about and looked this way and that through her spectacles'. Lady Monkswell was 'sure nothing escaped her'. 'When I thought of her immense age I felt I ought to kneel as she passed ... Off she went back to Windsor - we heard the crowd cheering her as she drove up Constitution Hill. I was glad to notice that although she wanted a good deal of help she was able to walk for herself and was not carried.'8

  Marie Mallet's letters are full of references to the Queen's cheerfulness and vivacity in these last years of her life. But by the end of the century her general health had begun seriously to fail. On coming into waiting at Osborne in February 1900, Marie Mallet's heart sank since Her Majesty looked 'so much older and feebler'. She had a bad cough and could not be kept awake when her ladies read to her in the evenings, rustle the pages, wriggle in their chairs, and drop their fans as they would. Also her digestion was becoming 'defective after so many years of hard labour'. 'If she would follow a diet and live on Benger's Food and chicken all would be well,' Mrs Mallet thought. 'But she clings to roast beef and ices! And what can you then expect? Sir James [Reid] has at last persuaded her to try Bengers and she likes it and now to his horror, instead of substituting it for other foods she adds it to her already copious meals ... And of course when she devours a huge chocolate ice followed by a couple of apricots washed down with iced water as she did last night [25 July 1900] she ought to expect a dig from the indigestion fiend.'9

  When she returned to Balmoral for a further spell of waiting, towards the end of October 1900, Mrs Mallet found the Queen looking 'very old and feeble'. 'She has grown very thin,' she wrote, 'and there is a distressing look of pain and weariness on her face ... She is far from well ... and yesterday we had thick fog worthy of London, which made her perfectly miserable.'10

  On her return to Windsor from a 'wretchedly gloomy and dark Balmoral' in November, she was a little better but a large luncheon on the 14th and the need to shout to make herself heard by the deaf Princess of Wales exhausted her, and she was 'in pain and very feeble ... She resents being treated as an invalid and as soon as she feels a tiny bit better she overtires herself and collapses.' Marie Mallet's husband, Bernard, who was at Windsor that month, feared that 'it must be the beginning of the end'.

  The Queen's brief entries in her journal this month and the next make pathetic reading:

  Felt very poorly and wretched, as I have done all the last days. My appetite is completely gone, and I have great difficulty in eating anything [5 November] ... I still have disgust for all food [9 November] ... Had a shocking night... pain kept me awake. Felt very tired and unwell when I got up, and was not able to go to church, to my great disappointment [11 November] ... Had a very restless night, with a good deal of pain. Got up very late, and when I did felt so tired I could do nothing, and slept on the sofa [28 November] ... After a very wretched night, I passed a very miserable day, and could neither go out nor leave my room [2 December] ... Saw Sir Francis Laking [who] encouraged me by saying he thought I should in time get over this unpleasant dislike of food and squeamishness ... and recommended my taking a little milk and whisky several times a day [11 December] ... Had a very bad night and scarcely slept at all [18 December].11

  That day the Queen left Windsor for the last time; but for once she was not looking forward to Christmas at Osborne. She was sleeping more fitfully than ever, despite the large doses of chloral she took with her Bengers; and she felt guilty that her unconscionable sleepiness in the daytime prevented her from attending properly to her work and corre spondence. On Christmas Eve she went into the Durbar Room where the Christmas tree was traditionally kept according to the Prince Consort's wishes; but her eyes were so dim she could scarcely see the candles. 'I feel so very melancholy,' she wrote, 'as I see so very badly.' The next day, Christmas Day, she learned with great distress that her dear friend Lady Churchill, her companion in those happy, long-gone holidays in Scotland and for almost fifty years a most valued member of her Household, had died of heart failure in the night. 'The loss to me,' she said miserably, 'is not to be told ... and that it should happen here is too sad.'12

  Chapter 65

  DEATH

  'She kept looking at me and frequently gasped, "I'm very ill." '

  'Another year begun,' the Queen's first diary entry for 1901 recorded, '& I am feeling so weak and unwell that I enter upon it sadly.' A fortnight later her journal came to a close. The day after the last entry was written she saw Field-Marshal Lord Roberts, Wolseley's successor as Commander-in-Chief, and she talked to him about the war in South Africa which, like the strain of her visit to Ireland the previous year, had, so she believed, been largely responsible for her present ill health. She had conferred the Order of the Garter on Lord Roberts the week before and he had then observed how frail and ill she looked. On this later occasion she spoke to him for an hour; but she was far from as incisive as she usually was. The day before Reid had described her as being 'rather childish and apathetic'. On 16 January he reported:

  The Queen had rather a disturbed night, and was very drowsy all forenoon, and disinclined to get up, although she kept saying in a semi-confused way that she must get up. I saw her asleep in bed in the forenoon, as I was rather anxious about her, and the maids said she was too drowsy to notice me. This was the first time I had ever seen the Queen when she was in bed. She was lying on her right side huddled up and I was struck by how small she appeared ... She did not get up till 6 p.m. when she had a dress
loosely fastened round her and was wheeled into the sitting-room ... At 7.30 I saw her and she was dazed, confused and her speech was affected.1

  The next day Reid concluded that the Queen had had a slight stroke. On Saturday 19 January it was publicly announced that Her Majesty had not lately been in her usual health. Her children had been summoned. So had Randall Davidson who had recently been translated from Rochester to the bishopric of Winchester; and, in case his feelings were hurt, the Queen suggested that the Rector of Whippingham should also be sent for. Without any encouragement from his family in England, the Kaiser left for Osborne as soon as he heard how ill his grandmother was.

  Early on Monday morning she asked the doctor, 'Am I better at all? I have been very ill.'

  When he assured her she was, indeed, better, she said, 'Then may I have Turi?'

  The small Pomeranian dog was placed on her bed; but he did not like it there and jumped to the ground. The Queen appeared not to notice his departure; and not long afterwards she lost consciousness. Intermittently she regained it later and when the Prince of Wales approached her bed and bent over her she recognized him and said, 'Bertie.' But when Sir James Reid returned to her bedside, she seemed to think it was her son and she kissed the doctor's hand repeatedly. Mrs Tuck, her chief dresser, realizing her confusion, asked her 'if she still wanted the Prince of Wales, and she said, "Yes". The Prince returned to her bedside and spoke to her and she said to him, "Kiss my face."'