Shooting Victoria (87 page)

365:   “I think it has been the most sickening piece of experience which I have had during near forty years of public life”: Guedalla 1:304.

365:   … a nasty abscess on her arm, which the eminent surgeon Joseph Lister was called north to lance: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 2:157.

365:   … the Queen's “repellent power which she so well knows how to use has been put in action toward me on this occasion for the first time since the formation of the Government”: Roy Jenkins,
Gladstone
347.

365:   Gladstone had been long contemplating just such a role: Magnus 111; St. Aubyn,
Edward VII
206.

366:   In New York in 1857, the society that would soon be known as the Fenians came into being: Ó Brion 1; Nowlan 92–93.

366:   The next year, the American Fenian leaders exported their society to Dublin: D'Arcy 12.

366:   Chester: For the Chester Castle raid, the attack on the Manchester prison-van, and the Clerkenwell outrage, see Quinlivan and Rose throughout.

367:   Six people lay dead in the ruins; six later died. A hundred and twenty were injured.
Times
22 May 1869, 11.

368:   The Government dispatched soldiers to the Palace and ordered plain-clothed police to keep a close eye upon passengers boarding trains in Perth and Aberdeen: St. Aubyn,
Queen Victoria
373.

368:   “Too foolish,” the Queen thought about the whole affair: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 2:466.

368:   … two guards armed with revolvers were set to shadow her at a discreet distance: Stanley 324.

368:   Lord Monck, the governor-general of Canada, sent a telegram that two ships had left New York carrying eighty Fenians “sworn to assassinate the Queen”: James Murphy 160.

368:   “Crimes such as these contemplated … cannot easily be perpetrated in crowded thoroughfares”: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 1:477–78.

368:   Victoria refused to leave, thinking a show of fear “injudicious as well as unnecessary”: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 2:479.

369:   … at Osborne extra police were posted; a pass system put into effect; some warships patrolled offshore while others were sent to intercept the Fenian ships: Hibbert,
Queen Victoria
425; Longford 361.

369:   The Queen was again annoyed by the fuss, considering herself “little better than a State Prisoner”: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 2:484.

369:   … “one begins to wish that these Fenians should be lynch-lawed and on the spot”: qtd. Quinlivan and Rose 133.

369:   The bullet ricocheted off of the rear clip of Alfred's suspenders through his ninth rib, missing his spine by an inch: Tavers 20. Tavers provides a full history of O'Farrell's attempt on Alfred and its aftermath.

369:   O'Farrell's attempt led to a witch hunt to root out the Fenians of New South Wales: Tavers 54–79.

369:   O'Farrell, with a history of mental problems and an obsession with avenging the Manchester Martyrs, had acted alone: Lyons and Nairn; Tavers 60.

369:   Alfred's tour was curtailed while he recovered, attended to by two nurses trained by Florence Nightingale, and he returned home that summer: Kiste; Tavers 117.

370:   … “poor dear Affie is so entirely unconnected with anything political or Irish”: qtd. James Murphy 168.

370:   … many had been freed—in the face of the stiff opposition of the Queen: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 1:628.

370:   The Prince of Wales, on the other hand, traveled north to drink his contaminated water: For the Prince of Wales's illness from typhoid fever, see Hibbert,
Royal Victorians
127–31; Magnus 113–14; St. Aubyn,
Edward VII
214–16.

370:   Many besides Bertie became ill:
Times
1 December 1871, 5.

371:   When she did come to him, in the audacity of his illness he accused
her
of infidelity: Hibbert,
Royal Victorians
128.

371:   In tears she returned to what seemed his deathbed:
Times
9 December 1871, 9.

371:   … “remedies of the most mad kind”: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 2:176.

371:   … “The feeling shown by the whole nation is quite marvellous and most touching and striking”: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 2:176.

371:   “Oh! Dear Mama, I am so glad to see you. Have you been here all this time?”: Hibbert,
Royal Victorians
130.

371:   About Bertie himself, according to his mother, “there is something quite different”: Victoria and Victoria,
Darling Child
28.

372:   … he had to deal with hecklers and scuffles during all his subsequent appearances: Nicholls 53.

372:   … Dilke's appearance in Bolton precipitated an even worse riot: Nicholls 54.

372:   He had heard that the Princess of Wales desired a national day of thanksgiving for her husband's recovery: Kuhn 150.

373:   “Nothing could induce her to be a party to it”: qtd. Herbert John Gladstone 333–34.

373:   … “such a display” she considered “false and hollow”: qtd. Herbert John Gladstone 333.

373:   … “the whole nation has taken such a public share in our sorrow”: Lee 323.

373:   “… it gives
too much
weight to it,” she complained: qtd. Guedalla 1:330.

373:   The Queen wished to progress in “half-state”: Kuhn 153.

373:   They haggled about the number of tickets for admission to the Cathedral: Kuhn 154.

373:   … “this dreadful affair at St. Paul's”: Victoria and Victoria,
Darling Child
30.

374:   “The Queen is looking with much alarm to the Ceremony of the 27th”: qtd. Guedalla 1:336.

374:   … Napoleon III, ex-emperor of the French, stood with his wife Eugénie at an eastern window of Buckingham Palace: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 2:194.

374:   … their “wonderful enthusiasm and astounding affectionate loyalty”: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 2:194.

374:   The white detailing of her black dress:
Daily News
28 February 1872, 5.

374:   … their reception “so gratifying that one could not feel tired”: Victoria and Victoria,
Darling Child
31.

375: People cried, the queen said; Bertie cried. Victoria admitted to a lump in her own throat: Victoria and Victoria,
Darling Child
31; Victoria
Letters
(second series) 2:195.

375:   The service at St. Paul's, attended by the upper ten thousand, was far less exciting for the Queen: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 2:195.

375:   … Newgate (“very dreary-looking,” wrote the Queen): Victoria
Letters
(second series) 2:196.

375:   “Could think and talk of little else”: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 2:197.

Chapter 20: Leap Day

376:   …
the distinctively elliptical and domed Royal Albert Hall, which Victoria, overwhelmed with emotion, had opened on a bitterly cold day last March:
Times
30 March 1871, 9.

377:   … hadn't his great-grandfather changed his name from Conner to O'Connor to proclaim that lineage to the world?: Livesey.

377:   Arthur O'Connor went to France in 1796 to negotiate the landing in Ireland of a French army of liberation: Livesey.

377:   … Arthur O'Connor had been appointed a general of the French army by the great Napoleon himself: Read and Glasgow 11.

377:   Francis Burdett O'Connor … in 1819 set out with two hundred Irish volunteers to liberate South America from the imperial Spanish yoke: Dunkerley.

378:   … the “fustian jackets, the blistered hands, the unshorn chins”: Read and Glasgow 62.

378:   They carried banners declaring him to be their savior: “He lived and died for us”: Read and Glasgow 144.

378:   Arthur lived with his family—nine in all—on the verge of starvation in a single room of a dilapidated Aldgate tenement, at the edge of Seven-Step Alley, one of the worst Irish rookeries in London:
Daily News
1 March 1872, 5.

379:   He had worked for a firm of printers for four years:
Daily News
1 March 1872, 5.

379:   … a pigeon-breasted, scrofulous rail of a boy:
Daily News
1 March 1872, 5.

379:   O'Connor was “of the order from whose plentifulness some physiologists forbode a deterioration of the human race”:
Daily News
2 March 1872, 5.

379:   … sending him to King's College Hospital, where he had a toe amputated:
Times
12 April 1872, 11;
Daily News
1 March 1872, 5.

379:   … he was “passionately Irish,” as he later wrote: Arthur O'Connor, letter to Queen Victoria 11 June 1873, TNA PRO HO 144/3/10963.

379:   He would kill Queen Victoria:
Times
12 April 1872, 11. According to Thomas Harrington Tuke, who examined O'Connor in prison, killing Victoria was the original plan. O'Connor himself later denied this (TNA PRO HO 144/3/10963).

380:   … he finally acknowledged the flaw:
Times
12 April 1872, 11.

380:   … he was sure that all around her would be “paralyzed with horror”:
Times
12 April 1872,11.

380:   “I, Victoria, Queen by the grace of God, do make the following declaration”: O'Connor's declaration, in full, appears in the
Times
2 March 1872, 9–10.

381:   He had spotted it in the window of a jeweler's near his workplace—a flintlock:
Times
2 March 1872, 10.

382:   … the clerk told him he would have to pick up a piece of flint from the road and cut it to proper shape.
Times
2 March 1872, 10.

382:   At some point a greasy red rag found its way into the barrel:
Times
1 March 1872, 9.

382:   He helpfully brought pen and ink:
Daily News
2 March 1872, 5.

382:   He pocketed … a long, thin, open knife of his father's:
Manchester
Weekly Times
2 March 1872, 5;
Times
12 April 1872, 11.

382:   … the cathedral was abuzz with activity:
Daily News
28 February 1872, 8.

382:   Nevertheless, somehow he got in—“by a stratagem”:
Times 12
April 1872,11.

382:   He had tracked mud on the otherwise clean carpets to his hiding place; a verger discovered him and turned him out:
Daily News 12
April 1872, 6; Geary 125.

383:   He returned home, put the pistol, the knife, and the declaration under his pillow, and slept until 8:00: For O'Connor's movements between 27 and 29 February, see the
Times
12 April 1872,11.

383:   His mother asked him where he had been. To St. Paul's, he said—but he “had not gained his object”:
Times 12
April 1872, 11.

383:   … he took his nine-year-old brother out to gaze at the brilliant thanksgiving illuminations:
Pall Mall Gazette
11 April 1872, 8–9.

383:   … he awoke weary and jaded, according to his father:
Times 12
April 1872, 11.

384:   … he was a hemophiliac and had suffered from early childhood his mother's stifling overprotection: Rigg, “Leopold.”

384:   … the sentry at the gate staring forward, poised to present arms, O'Connor bolted[, r]unnning unperceived to the point where the edge of the Palace's eastern fence meets the northern wall:
Daily
News
1 March 1872, 6;
Times 2
March 1872,10.

384:   Somehow, he managed to keep his low-crowned, wide-brimmed wideawake hat on his head:
Belfast News-Letter
1 March 1872, 3;
Birmingham Daily Post
1 March 1872, 5. The wideawake was a style worn by nineteenth-century Quakers, and remembered today as the headgear of the Quaker Oats man.

384:   O'Connor took cover behind a pillar near the gatekeeper's lodge:
Leeds Mercury 2
March 1872, 8, qtd.
Evening Telegraph
.

385:   The gatekeeper, an old man “rather past work,” spied him and shouted “what mischief do you want here?” Victoria and Victoria, Darling Child 33; Bristol Mercury 2 March 1872, 8; Glasgow Daily
Herald
1 March 1872, 5.

385:   … they imagined him to be a gardener's boy:
Times 2
March 1872, 9.

385:   … he … timidly muttered something about the Fenian prisoners: According to the
Glasgow Daily Herald
, 1 March 1872, 5, he said “I demand the release of the Fenian prisoners, or I will…”

385:    Victoria thought at first that he was a footman come to remove her blanket: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 2:197.

385:   Arthur heard his words: “Take that from a Fenian”: RA VIC/MAIN/ QVJ/1872, 29 February 1872.

385:   “Involuntarily, in a terrible fright, I threw myself over Jane C.”: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 2:197.

385:   … John Brown, who had chased O'Connor around the carriage, with one hand grabbed O'Connor's body and with the other clamped the scruff of his neck:
Times
2 March 1879, 10.

386:    … they yanked off the boy's necktie and gave him a violent throttling:
Leeds Mercury
2 March 1872, 8.

386:   Sergeant Jackson removed knife and declaration from O'Connor's pockets:
Times
12 April 1872, 11.

386:    “an extraordinary document,” she called it: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 2:198.

386:   He complained about the damage done to his necktie, and demanded his hat be returned to him before he would answer any questions:
Leeds Mercury
2 March 1872, 8;
Birmingham Daily Post
2 March 1872, 5.