13

“If I hadn’t you to encourage me, I don’t know how I could have got through it! Really, Albert, I felt so irritable when I saw him come into the room, and when he stood in front of me and pointed his feet again I could have screamed!”

Victoria swept aside the skirts of her dress and made room for Albert to sit near her in the window seat. She had just come back from her interview with Sir Robert Peel, but this time she had received him in one of the less formidable state rooms. At the Prince’s suggestion Peel had been spared that long, nerve-racking walk down the White Drawing Room, with its unpleasant memories of that other meeting two years earlier.

Melbourne’s Government had resigned and the Tories were in power. Albert was thankful for the assistance of Stockmar and Anson in persuading the Queen to welcome Peel and his associates as gracefully as possible. He had never appreciated how difficult she could be, or how hard-pressed Melbourne must have felt at times. Her refuge from anything she disliked was her own impregnable position as Queen; whatever the electorate decided, she was able and determined to show that she did not approve of its choice, and to make the sweets of office very indigestible to the men who were unable to govern without her. That was her privilege, and it took hours of patient argument and tactful pleading to dissuade her from exploiting it to the utmost.

Peel was a worthy and honest man, most anxious to earn her trust and forgiveness for past mistakes. Any hint that she had been in the wrong or that she had no real alternative but to be nice to him would have been disastrous, and the combined efforts of the Prince and her advisers had soothed her resentment into polite hostility. Albert sat beside her and patted her hand.

“I know what an effort it was for you, dearest; but I do hope it went off well.”

“Yes, I think it did,” she admitted. “I didn’t say anything disagreeable, and I avoided staring at his feet.” She smiled at the memory. “I think you would have been proud of me, I was so controlled. Perhaps I may be able to tolerate him after a time. But he’ll never be as pleasant as Lord M.”

“Pleasantness isn’t the most important quality in a Prime Minister,” Albert said. Melbourne must be banished from her mind as well as her sight. Stockmar had been so emphatic on that point that Albert couldn’t allow the comparison to pass unchallenged. Melbourne was already writing long letters to her, which he, as a member of the opposition, had no right to do, and that would have to be stopped.

“No, but it is a help,” Victoria sighed. “Especially since I am in this condition again.”

She was not at all pleased to be pregnant again so soon, and her attitude had shocked Albert. He felt it was not quite womanly and proper to enjoy the privileges of married life so heartily and so obviously for their own sake. A woman’s noblest function was to bear children: it raised her above the coarse appetites of men. He looked into the small face turned up toward him and decided that it was unfair to criticize her mentally. Or to envy her, he thought with a flash of insight, because she was so uncomplicated and so sure of herself.

“What did Sir Robert say?”

“Oh, the usual things: how he hoped to serve me as well as his predecessor—he said that the last time and I gave him such a snub! But now I just said I hoped so too; and he assured me the new Government had every intention of widening our trade with other countries because he believed that was the only way to bring true prosperity, and he gave me the impression that he would probably repeal the Corn Laws, too, after an interval.

“Much as I dislike him, I do believe he’s quite able. I noticed that as soon as he stopped trying to make courtly speeches and shifting from one leg to the other in case he said something tactless, he had a very shrewd grasp of affairs. And he never mentioned my ladies. Thanks to you, my love.”

She reached up and kissed Albert impulsively on the cheek. The question of the Whig ladies remaining in her service had been neatly resolved; the Prince had earned general approval by his conduct of the negotiations with Sir Robert. The question must not be raised because the Queen would not concede any of her rights. Nevertheless it was tacitly agreed that the principal members of her household would resign and make way for the wives and daughters of the Tory peers.

“It was nothing,” he said. “Peel was very reasonable.” He liked Peel. It was odd, because the man was as cold and awkward socially as he was himself, but he felt more in sympathy with him than he had ever done with Melbourne. Polished manners never made Albert feel at ease; they only pricked him with the suspicion that he was being treated with familiarity, or, worst of all, that he was being laughed at secretly. He had no such fear with Peel.

Conversation with Melbourne and Grey and Lord John Russell was always liable to degenerate into a discussion of trivialities or an exchange of banter, which they treated as humor although to him it seemed as if they were insulting each other. Palmerston’s remarks would have made any self-respecting German call him out. He would never, never understand or like them, and unfortunately their kind predominated at his wife’s Court. And the common people were appalling: dirty and drunken and undisciplined. Nothing was further from the clean, orderly little Coburg village than the sprawling, smelly city of London or the hideous industrial towns which were springing up like patches of black eczema over the English countryside.

Only the middle classes seemed to have those virtues Albert respected and longed to find in his intimates. They were sober and serious and led very methodical lives; but like the burghers and shopkeepers in his native Germany, they were separated from their betters by an unbridgeable social gap.

Yet Peel’s ancestors came from that level of society; they had traded in calico and made a fortune. And only in a country as mad as England could their descendant rise to the leadership of the party dedicated to the interests of the aristocracy, while blue-bloods like John Russell and the abominable Palmerston expended their energies and passions on behalf of the inferior masses.

“Darling Albert, the credit for the whole affair is entirely yours.” Victoria’s voice recalled him to the present.

“And there’s no question of that man being reasonable—he knew very well that he had to be! But you did it all so well, my darling, and you saved me all the trouble of settling it myself. What a boon that was! I shall see that everyone knows what a service you did to those wretched Tories, and I hope they feel ashamed for having cut down your allowance.”

Really, she never forgave, her husband thought, half-listening while she began a fresh eulogy of his tact and cleverness. She had an infinite capacity for feeling, both affectionate and hostile, that left him quite exhausted. She hated or she loved. Lord Melbourne, the roué, was her “dearest friend”; Peel, whom most men respected, was “that wretched man” … God knew if anything would persuade her to change her opinions about either. And the venerable Bishop of Exeter was a fiend, if he remembered her description rightly, and likely to wear horns and tail in Victoria’s sight for the rest of his life.

In spite of everything, Albert felt suddenly depressed. Their life was led in perfect harmony, because Victoria studied his wishes and conceded to him on every point. He was in a unique position, as Stockmar pointed out, exulting, almost every day. He was no longer powerless and excluded. As far as his wife was concerned, he could play as large a part in her government of England as he wished, and whether her subjects liked him or not, he was safe from their contempt.

Everything had turned out admirably, and yet that knowledge only made it harder to admit that he was still unhappy. Sometimes, as at this moment, he felt as if the tiny, loving, eager little woman at his side was suffocating him, and that the mountain peaks of duty and achievement he had set himself to scale would be as bleak at the top as at the slope.

“Now don’t let’s talk about Peel and tiresome things any more. Come, Albert darling, we have a whole half an hour to ourselves before we must change for dinner. Let’s go to the music room. I feel so gay, now the interview’s over! Perhaps I shall manage with the Tories in the end. Come, Albert. Come, darling.”

“I do hope you’ll forgive this intrusion, my lord.”

George Anson coughed; he had never felt so uncomfortable in his life. This was not the first visit he had paid to Brocket, Melbourne’s magnificent country house. In the days when he was Melbourne’s secretary the two men had passed many pleasant hours together, shooting or hunting, and then conducting their business almost as an afterthought, with a decanter of port on the table.

Melbourne leaned back in his chair and smiled. “You could never do that, my dear fellow. I’m always delighted to see you; come and sit down.”

He watched Anson, and noticed the dispatch case under his arm and the careful way he placed it by his chair. The man looked very solemn and rather ill at ease. He thought with amusement that secretaries and dogs soon began to look like their masters; when Anson had worked for him he had had quite a fashionable air.

The library was a large, beautiful room. The sunshine of late autumn poured through the long windows, and there was a faint smell of old leather from the hundreds of books. Melbourne spent most of his time there when he came to Brocket.

He poured Anson a glass of wine; it was a rather good Burgundy he had been sipping while he read in preparation for his commentary on the life of St. John Chrysostom. As his old friend Anson knew, he had often complained that politics left him no time for serious pursuits. Anson agreed with him, and said quickly that he must be glad of the rest in the country after the busy social life he had been leading in the past few months.

Melbourne smiled again. “I have been visiting all my friends and having a very amusing time, my dear Anson. I had quite forgotten how to enjoy the pleasures of society. Her Majesty left me very little leisure.”

Actually he had gone to a great many balls that season, and left them feeling more tired and disinterested than ever. He had stayed with the Leicesters and the Duke of Bedford, and with Palmerston, who had at last married his sister Emily. How typical of Palmerston to regulate a love affair of many years and present himself with impish enjoyment as a respectable husband. He had dined with Lady Holland and listened to all the scandal and intrigue; he had deceived everyone into thinking that he enjoyed himself and did not miss the Queen.

He had even begun seeing Caroline Norton again, because he was too listless to resist her overtures, and now that his connection with Victoria was severed, he had no need to guard his reputation. But it was all empty and futile; he lived in a vacuum, eating and sleeping badly, making conversation out of habit, and living only for the letters which came regularly from the palace. He often took them out and reread them when he was alone.

“How is the Queen?” he asked at last.

“In very good health,” Anson answered.

“And Prince Albert? I hope he’s well?”

“I think so. He works very hard.”

“Yes,” Melbourne said, “I’m sure he does. I’m sure he’s invaluable to her. I wouldn’t have rested easy for a moment if I’d thought she was going to be left alone. How is she with Peel? I feared fireworks there, you know, Anson, but I hear from her from time to time, and she seems to have accepted him.”

“As a matter of fact …” Anson hesitated. The truth was going to hurt Melbourne, but it had better be said. “As a matter of fact the Queen has completely changed toward Peel. She speaks very well of him now.”

“Does she?” He hid the pang of jealousy so well that Anson went on, relieved.

“The Prince likes him very much. It’s strange, isn’t it: you wouldn’t think they’d have anything in common. The Prince is still very shy, and I thought it would be the devil working with Peel, he’s so awkward-mannered. But they understand each other perfectly, and the Prince has won the Queen over to his opinion of him.”

“I’m very glad to hear it. But she does me the honor of asking my advice occasionally, even so.”

“I know.”

Anson picked up the dispatch case and opened it on his knees. He took out a thick envelope and held it out to Melbourne.

“I’m afraid that’s why I’ve come, sir. Baron Stockmar asked me to give you this. It’s about your correspondence with the Queen.”

It was a long letter, and the Baron had pointed out in the most painstaking detail why Lord Melbourne should not give the Queen political advice. He was out of office, his party was in opposition, and it must seriously damage her good name if it were known that she consulted him behind her Prime Minister’s back. He felt sure that Lord Melbourne realized how wrong his conduct was, and that it was his duty to ignore the Queen’s requests. In any case, she only made them out of habit. At last he put the letter down; Anson saw that his hands were trembling.

“This is a very decided opinion. Quite an apple-pie opinion!”

Anson steeled himself against the note of bitter sarcasm and against those shaking hands. “The Baron thinks it is even worse, considering the attack you made on the Government in the Lords a few days ago.”

“God eternal damn it!”

Melbourne sprang up, and Stockmar’s letter scattered on the floor. The old man was quite white with anger; in all the years they had been associated, Anson had never seen him lose his self-control as he did then.

“Flesh and blood can’t stand this! Am I to give up my position in the country? Am I to submit my speeches to the Baron for approval, and ignore my Sovereign when she writes to me because he thinks I should? Good God, sir, how dare you come down on an errand like this?”

“The Baron isn’t thinking of you, nor is the Prince,” Anson said quietly. “I’m very sorry, very sorry indeed, but you’ve no idea how worried they are in case some of Sir Robert’s party get to hear of this. Think what it would mean to the Queen if it were brought up in Parliament! She’d be open to public rebuke for dishonest political dealing, and you’d be entirely responsible for it. Make what speeches you like, but all the Baron and the Prince want is that you should not involve the Queen.”

“Involve the Queen? Damnation, Anson, you know I’d die rather than bring any harm to her!”

“Then stop writing to her on politics, sir. I’ve told you she’s gaining confidence in Peel every day. Leave her alone and let her trust her judgment, or the Prince’s, instead of yours.”

“Oh God above!”

Melbourne sat down suddenly. He covered his face with his hands, and the impetus of rage went out of him. He was cornered and he knew it. The correspondence had been wrong, but it was all he had to live for. He had seen the Queen only once since his resignation, and then in his excitement he knew he had talked too much and rather embarrassed her. She was so cool and happy in her new life, and he had sensed that his display of feeling had seemed incongruous. In spite of the letter he wrote apologizing, she had not asked him to visit her again.

But she had written; out of habit, as they said—how that phrase had hurt him—asking him about appointments and discussing the moves Peel intended making, and he had spent hours thinking out the best advice to give her. Now that was to be stopped. The Prince and the Baron considered it dangerous, and they had cocked their pistols at his heart by saying he would get her into trouble.

After a long pause he raised his head and looked wearily at Anson.

“How you’ve changed,” he said. “How you’ve changed from the days we used to work together. But then, everything is changing. All my old friends are dying, too. I feel less and less at home among all of you. You can tell His Royal Highness and Baron Stockmar that they need not worry any longer. I shall stop my correspondence with the Queen.”

“They’ll be very glad to know it,” Anson said hastily. “Thank you for seeing me, sir.”

“It was a pleasure.” Melbourne had leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “Now be a good fellow and leave me alone.”

November came, that gray month when the winds stripped the last burnished leaf from the trees and the new phenomenon of fog covered London and the industrial towns up and down the country. It was a bleak and bitter month for most of the subjects of the Queen; a month when the damp and rickety houses of the poor let in the cold and the squalls of driving rain, and the foul drains flooded up into the streets. It was a time when hunger gnawed more cruelly, and the wretches who worked in the factories and attic workshops for fourteen hours a day hardly ever saw the daylight.

In the summer, at least, the children under twelve had often fallen asleep on the roadside, worn out from hours of grinding mechanical work, too tired to drag themselves to the pile of rags which served most of them for a bed and too tired to eat the miserable diet of crusts and bone stew on which their families lived. But in November it was far too cold to sleep out; those who did quickly caught chills and died a little sooner.

November was the month when all the countless sufferers from tuberculosis, that ravening disease which the romantics called consumption and attributed in novels to disappointed love, coughed and coughed in a racking chorus up and down the country. The grinders, the weavers, the pottery workers and seamstresses and lacemakers, the miners whose lungs were caked with dust—November was a dreadful month for them, and they knew December would be even worse.

But with the coming of cold weather the epidemics had died down; cholera and typhus had stalked the stinking slums, bred in the refuse and excrement emptied into the open streets, and thousands had died, as they died every year. That was the only comfort which the winter brought the poor of Her Majesty’s kingdom.

The wealthy settled into their comfortable houses and prepared to amuse themselves for the winter, or to travel abroad to kinder climates. The routine of life continued as it had done for generations. There were house parties and balls in the great houses, laughter and scandal and love affairs, but the general tone was muted to an echo of the riotous exciting past, when the example of high living came from the Court itself.

But now royal debts and mistresses and indiscretions were as out of fashion as the high-busted, transparent styles of the Regency. The ghost of Prinny and his disreputable ancestors was laid once and for all by the sedate figure of the Queen in her simple gowns, playing and singing sentimental German lieder at the piano, while her husband stood by and turned the pages. At Windsor and Buckingham Palace life was calm and ordered; the days were filled with duties and improving relaxations like music or reading aloud, and visits to the nursery, where the little Princess Royal enchanted her parents by her good behavior.

She did none of the disagreeable things associated with babies. As if she knew how offended her mother and father would be if she cried or was sick, the child was always smiling and sweet-tempered, and Albert thought her perfect. So did Victoria, who called her Pussy and wrote about her in her journal, and thought comfortably that when Albert had a son—this time the baby was certain to be a boy—he would not make quite such a fuss over his little daughter. It would be such a pity if Pussy were to receive too much attention from her father and get spoiled …

On November 9 Her Majesty in tones of resignation announced to her Mistress of the Robes that she felt unwell and had better go to bed. A few hours later, Albert Edward, heir to the throne of England, was laid for a moment in Victoria’s arms. The dear child. Her dear little son; what a pity newborn babies looked so red and ugly and made such a noise. What a big nose he had. Darling Albert seemed so pleased, so proud of her. Really, it was worth the awful nuisance of it all just to see her husband’s face and have him bend down so gently and kiss her forehead. And now that the baby had been taken away she could lie back and sleep.

In that bleak month of November the light of domestic joy shone out from the palace like a beacon. The slave-driven poor blinked wearily without understanding, the aristocracy were amused and faintly contemptuous, but the rising middle classes basked in its radiance. The homely little Queen with her two children and her serious young husband symbolized the households of the new rich, where the wives of the drapers and corn merchants and tool manufacturers found themselves installed in large houses with staffs of servants who were only a degree lower than themselves.

Sophistication, the prerogative of the well-born, was unknown in the class which still bore the stigma of “trade.” There was no place for them in the world of fashionable society, and their new wealth had dug an enormous chasm between them and the laboring community. The middle classes were becoming rich as England’s trade expanded. Fortunes were being made by people who had the traditions of prudence and sobriety bred into them, and now had no niche in the sphere where money had always pertained by right.

In that year 1842, with the birth of the Queen’s second child, the bourgeoisie beheld a royal family whose life and habits appeared the mirror of their own. The Queen went to bed early, dressed plainly, frowned upon any form of immodesty, either in speech or reputation, went to church every Sunday, and, in spite of her exalted position, was properly subject to her husband. Life at Windsor and Buckingham Palace was very like life at the newly built Lodge. The prolific middle-class Mama could point to the Queen as her example, with two children in two years, and ignore the pretensions of great ladies who preferred hunting to pregnancy.

In spite of the discontent among the industrial and agricultural classes and the agitation of the Chartists still pressing for parliamentary reform, trade was swelling in volume, new veins of riches were being discovered every day waiting for exploitation, and from the nation’s heart there beat a steady pulse of energy, thrusting more strongly toward power and profits.

There were bright gleams of humanitarianism, stirrings of conscience and ideas, bitter conflicts between those who wished to stop the rush of progress for fear that they and their way of life would be submerged and those who could not let it flood out fast enough. Though an army straddled Ireland, and troops were busy suppressing rebellion in the colonies, the West Indies, and the Cape, England had begun moving forward through industrial expansion to that point where, in the person of a homely little woman, she would dominate the world.