Victoria Victorious: The Story of Queen Victoria (72 page)

There was an uncanny tension in the air. The papers reminded their readers that the Prince Consort had died on the fourteenth, and it seemed that everyone was waiting for the fourteenth to dawn.

There was a fatalistic notion that on that date Bertie was going to die. Special prayers were said all over the country, and Alexandra attended those in Sandringham Church. Alfred Austin, our poet laureate wrote the banal lines that were quoted against him for long after:

It was wonderful to have Alice with us. She moved about the sickroom with a quiet efficiency. She was a good nurse having had some practice during that terrible time which Bismarck had forced on Europe. Alexandra was indeed a devoted wife; and she loved Bertie in spite of the way he had treated her. I wondered whether I should have been so loving to a husband who had been notoriously unfaithful to me. I doubted it. But never in any circumstances could I imagine Albert unfaithful!

I remember vividly the thirteenth of December.

Bertie was worse.

We had heard that both Lord Chesterfield and the groom whose name was Blegge had died. Alexandra had made certain that Blegge had the best attention—so we all feared the worst.

The fourteenth was close. That would be the day.

Sir Henry Ponsonby said that he must recover, because it would be too much of a coincidence if he died on the same date as his father.

I clung to hope, but I greatly feared. I prayed incessantly that my son might be spared.

The dreaded fourteenth arrived. The whole country was waiting; and Bertie lay battling for life.

And then… the miracle happened. He came through the crisis. The fourteenth slipped into the fifteenth. The day of sorrow had passed.

The next day I saw him and he recognized me.

He smiled at me and kissed my hand. “Dear Mama,” he said, “I am so glad to see you. Have you been here all the time?”

“Oh Bertie, Bertie,” I cried, and I could not restrain my tears.

All past differences were forgotten. He was alive.

I
SAID THERE
must be a thanksgiving service at which the whole country could rejoice.

I had a letter to the people published in which I thanked them for their concern. We were very popular. I wondered what that odious Charles Dilke was feeling now. His horrible schemes for destroying us had come to nothing—beaten by typhoid! We would show him and his kind that whatever he might think, the people still loved the monarchy. The concern that had been shown for Bertie proved that.

By the end of February, Bertie had recovered sufficiently to take part in the ceremony of rejoicing. I sat beside him in the carriage and it was heartwarming to see the people and hear their shouts.

“God bless the Queen! God bless the Prince of Wales.”

They were pleased with us because they had come near to losing Bertie.

It was a miracle, said the doctors. Few could have been so sorely smitten with the disease and come through. It had been God's will. He had listened to the people when they had cried, “God save the Prince of Wales.”

At Temple Bar the crowd was most dense. It halted the carriages and I took Bertie's hand in mine and kissed it. There was a brief silence and then the cheers rang out.

As we went on to St. Paul's I thought of Gladstone's prophecies. This would show him that the monarchy had a deeper hold on the affections of the people than he was aware of. But it had taken a near-tragedy, such as this which had happened to the Prince of Wales, to show them how much a part of their lives we were.

But it was very gratifying all the same.

As Albert would have said: Often great joy comes out of suffering.

O
N THE FOLLOWING
day a very alarming incident took place.

I was riding in the carriage with Arthur. Brown was on the box, and I was thinking of how well the thanksgiving service had gone off and hoping that Bertie's terrible experience might have had some effect on his character. Alexandra had been so unswerving in her devotion to him. I hoped he would realize that he owed it to her to give up those fast women who had such attraction for him and to devote more time to his beautiful and virtuous wife.

It amazed me how fond Alexandra was of him, and his children were the same. I had seen them romping around him, not showing the least respect; and he was free and easy with them. In a way it was quite pleasant to watch, but I was not sure whether it was good for the children. Albert had been so different.

Then suddenly I saw a young man by the carriage…very close. He was looking straight at me and in his hand was a gun.

Everything seemed to stand still. It was not the first time I had looked death in the face—and in very similar circumstances.

In a flash Brown had leaped from the box; he was grappling with the young man and had thrown him to the ground. Arthur also had leaped from the carriage. He was grasping the man whom Brown had already overpowered.

I felt shaken. People were rushing up. The man who had wanted to shoot me was taken away.

Brown looked at me anxiously. “You all right, woman?”

“Oh, Brown,” I said. “You saved my life.”

Brown grunted and the carriage drove me back to the Palace.

I
WENT TO
bed. They said I must. I was thinking that this was the sixth time someone had tried to kill me. Each time they had been foiled. Of course they had not all intended to kill me. But the shock was the same. I wondered about this latest young man. What was his motive?

It was not long before Mr. Gladstone arrived.

The man was Arthur O'Connor, an Irishman, and this had not been a serious attempt on my life as the pistol had not been loaded.

I said, “That does not make the prompt action of John Brown any less commendable.”

Gladstone bowed his head.

“What loyalty!” I went on. “What service!”

“O'Connor said he wished to frighten you into releasing Fenian prisoners. He was not going to shoot, he said. Only to frighten you.”

After Gladstone had gone I thought fondly of John Brown and I wondered how I could show my gratitude. I decided I would give him a medal to commemorate the occasion and an extra twenty-five pounds a year.

When this was known, Bertie—who like the rest of the family did not care for John Brown—said that Arthur had also leaped from the carriage and grappled with O'Connor.

“After John Brown had him in his grasp, yes.”

“Arthur acted bravely and he seems to be getting no recognition. It all seems to be going to that fellow Brown.”

“Certainly it is not. I shall have a gold pin made for Arthur so that he will know how much I appreciate his efforts to save me.”

“Well,” said Bertie, “that is something. Not to be compared with a gold medal and twenty-five pounds a year, but something.”

“What would Arthur want with a medal and twenty-five pounds a year! I have worked hard to get him his annuity. You children are a little ungrateful at times and I do not understand why you are all so unkind to poor Brown. He gives me much more care and attention than I get from my family.”

Bertie raised his eyes to the ceiling and said, “Good John Brown! Not a word against him.”

Bertie was becoming quite unmanageable. All the care and attention he had when he was ill, all that adulation afterward had gone to his head.

Gladstone came to tell me that O'Connor had been sentenced to a year's imprisonment.

I was rather alarmed.

“One year!” I cried. “What when he comes out? What if he tries again? I should like to hear that he has been transported. It is not that I want him more severely punished; I know that he is mad. But I do not want to think of him here in this country.”

Gladstone made one of his speeches about the points of law and how the court's sentence could not be changed. However, because I felt so strongly and they understood my fears, O'Connor was offered his fare to
another country so that he could leave England instead of serving his sentence.

This he accepted with alacrity. When he left I felt safer because he was out of the country.

I
RECEIVED A
very sad letter from Feodore. She begged me to come and see her for she feared that if I did not come soon she would never see me again.

“I am very ill,” she wrote, “and something tells me that I have not long to live. I want to see you before I go. I want to say goodbye.”

When I told Mr. Gladstone that I proposed visiting Baden-Baden he shook his head and made one of his long speeches.

Recent events, he pointed out, such as the Prince's illness and the O'Connor attack, had increased our popularity. We must hold on to it. We must see that we did not lose what we had gained. We must do nothing to diminish it.

I said, “My sister is very ill. I am going to see her.”

And I went.

My dear Feodore! How she had changed from that bright and beautiful girl who used to sit in the garden while I watered the plants and she conducted her love affair with Cousin Augustus.

She had grown rather fat; she had lost her bright color; and I saw at once that she was indeed very ill.

“I am so glad I came,” I said.

She became very sentimental talking of the past. She said, “You were such a dear little child—so warm, so loving, so innocent. I was delighted with my little sister.”

It was a sad visit because we both knew we should not meet again. So we talked of the past, which was the best way of not looking into the future.

“My Uncle George was very interested in you,” I reminded her. “
You
might have been Queen of England. I believe you could have been if Mama had wished it.”

“Mama wanted that role for you.”

“Yes,” I said. “She wanted to rule through me, whereas she would never have been able to had you been Uncle George's Queen.”

“Does it ever strike you, little sister, what hundreds of possibilities there are in our lives? If you did this…if you did that at a certain time the whole course of your life could be changed.”

I admitted that I had thought of it.

The days sped past; we drove out in the carriage now and then. Feodore was not strong enough to walk or ride. She said I must not spend the whole time with her.

“Dear sister,” I replied, “that is what I have come for. You have no idea what black looks I received from my Prime Minister when I told him I was coming. But I was determined to come all the same.”

“You are not happy with Mr. Gladstone. He is highly thought of here. They think he is a very strong man.”

“Strong he may be, but I find him most uncomfortable and difficult to talk to. How I wish people had had the sense not to send Mr. Disraeli away.”

Then I made her laugh with an imitation of Gladstone and his speaker's manner. “I always feel like the audience at a meeting when he holds forth. His wife is quite a pleasant creature. I often pity her for having such a husband.”

“Perhaps she is fond of him.”

“Oddly enough, she seems to be.”

“People seem different to different people.”

Dreamy days they were. Sometimes I would forget how ill she was. She insisted that I do a little sightseeing and she arranged for me to see something of the place. I was shown the haunts of some of the worst characters of both sexes in Europe; but what I remember most was an instrument of torture that was used by the Inquisition. It was called the Iron Virgin—a case lined with knives into that those who were called heretics were thrust, and, as they said, embraced by the Virgin.

I had never seen anything like it—and I shall never forget it.

The time came for me to say goodbye to Feodore, and I took leave of her with protestations of affection. We both knew it would be our last meeting and we tried to be brave about it. We embraced with great affection. We had always been such good friends. The only difference we had ever had had been at the time of that awful Schleswig-Holstein business when she had wanted my support for her daughter's husband and I had been unable to give it.

These beastly wars that made rifts in families!

But any rift between us was now healed, and with poignant tenderness we said our last farewells.

When I arrived back it was to find Mr. Gladstone in a tutorial mood. He came and talked, standing before me, rocking on his heels,
expounding his views. He thought the Prince of Wales should be seen doing some work. It would please the people.

“What sort of work?” I asked.

Mr. Gladstone thought that, as his father had been interested in art and science, they might be fields to explore. “The Prince Consort had a knowledge of architecture,” he added.

“The Prince of Wales is not the Prince Consort,” I said. “If only he resembled his father more I think we should have less cause for concern.”

“Perhaps philanthropy would be good for him,” Mr. Gladstone went on, rocking on his heels and discussing philanthropy as though I had never heard of it. He really was the most exhausting man I had ever met.

Finally, I said, “I can see no point in planning for the Prince of Wales. I am told he is a good ambassador. Let him do what is asked of him, but the idea of forcing him into art, science, or philanthropy, I think is hopeless. He would never give his mind to any of these.”

Mr. Gladstone seemed to be in agreement, only he could not say so simply. And it was decided that for the moment we should leave Bertie alone.

D
EATH
! I
T
NEVER seems to strike singly. Poor Feodore died, as I knew she must. Napoleon passed on at Chichester. How sad that he who had such grandiose plans should have ended in exile.

One of the saddest deaths was that of the Countess of Beaconsfield. Poor Mr. Disraeli was heartbroken. He was such a
feeling
man. He wrote long letters to me and I wrote back expressing my sympathy. None knew better than I what the loss of one's partner meant. I could understand as few could; I sensed the depth of his feeling, his desolation.

He told me that she had been eighty-one. Well, it was a great age. He himself was sixty-eight. “I knew she had to go before me,” he wrote. “But that does not soften the blow.” Poor,
poor
Mr. Disraeli, my heart bled for him.