Queen Victoria: A Personal History. Christopher Hibbert

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      She delighted in walking with her husband in the grounds of Buckingham Palace when he would tell her the names of the trees and flowers. She obviously loved it when he would display his affection for her as he came into her room, as Lady Lyttelton, a Lady of the Bedchamber, saw him do one day, his cheeks flushed after riding in the Park, taking her hand in his. She was so pleased that he always got up from the dinner table as soon as he could, requiring the other gentlemen to follow him presently, having finished their wine. He then joined her in the drawing room where he would play and sing duets with her, or occupy himself with double chess, leaving her to talk to Lord Melbourne. Sometimes they would all play games together. One evening the whole court ‘took to playing spillikins and puzzling with alphabets’; another evening they ‘learnt a new round game’, and they ‘all grew quite noisy over it’ – it was called main jaune and they liked it better than mouche. When they played vingt-et-un or Pope Joan the stakes were never high, and it was rather tiresome always to have to remember to carry new coins so that court etiquette should not be broken by passing used money to the Sovereign, but the maids-of-honour, ‘all wearing their badge of the Queen’s picture surrounded with brilliants on a red bow, looked so cheerful when they were gambling and a haul of even threepence excited them.’²⁰

      Once they played a letter game in which Melbourne was given the word ‘pleasure’ to guess. The Queen gave the Prime Minister a hint: it was a common word, she said. But not, said the Prince, ‘a very common thing’. Melbourne suggested, ‘Is it truth or honesty?’ They burst out laughing.²¹

      Prince Albert could not fully share his wife’s contentment. He confided in Baron Stockmar that he considered her ‘naturally a fine character but warped in many respects by wrong upbringing’. She was wilful and thoughtless, and while kind at heart, given to outbursts of temper and moods of sulky pettishness. There could be no doubt that he loved her; but he was deeply concerned not only to be denied her confidence in what he termed the ‘trivial matters’ of the running of their households, but also by her strong disinclination to allow him to take any part in political business. He was not asked into the room when she was talking to the Prime Minister; nor did she discuss affairs of state with him, changing the subject when he tried to talk to her about political matters. Nor did she allow him to see the state papers which were sent to her by the various government departments, whereas he learnt from his brother that Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Kohary, the husband of Maria da Gloria, Queen of Portugal, was King Consort and as such vetted all her visitors before they were allowed to see her and then to do little more than to kiss her hand. The English, however, so Victoria reminded her husband, were ‘very jealous of any foreigner interfering in the government of this country’.²²

      ‘My impression,’ Lord Melbourne told George Anson, ‘is that the chief obstacle in Her Majesty’s mind is the fear of difference of opinion and she thinks that domestic harmony is more likely to follow from avoiding subjects likely to create difference.’²³ A greater obstacle, no doubt, was her reluctance to share her authority with anyone, even her adored husband.

      ‘The Prince ought in business as in everything to be necessary to the Queen,’ King Leopold advised, ‘he should be to her a walking dictionary for reference on any point which her own knowledge or education have not enabled her to answer. There should be no concealment from him on any subject.’²⁴ There was concealment, though; and there was much resentment when Prince Albert presumed to offer his advice. When, for example, a box of official papers arrived labelled tersely, ‘sign immediately’, he suggested she show her displeasure at receiving such peremptory instructions by not signing for a day or two. She signed at once.²⁵

      She was, in fact, prepared to limit the Prince’s role as partner to what she herself ingenuously called a little ‘help with the blotting paper’. He told his friend, Prince William of Löwenstein, ‘In my home life I am very happy and contented; but the difficulty in filling my place with the proper dignity is that I am only the husband, and not the master of the house.’²⁶

      There were other problems, too. He could not share his wife’s passion for excitement, merriment and late nights. He preferred the peace of the countryside to the bustle of the town, and he liked to go to bed early. He told his brother that he sometimes wished he were back at Coburg ‘in a small house’ instead of living the life that his sense of duty had imposed upon him.²⁷

      When he was feeling tired or particularly frustrated, he became irritable over matters of little importance. Often he was seen to be asleep in the evening, and then the Queen would nudge him to wake him up, as Guizot, the French Ambassador, noticed her do at a concert soon after their marriage: ‘Prince Albert slept. She looked at him, half smiling, half vexed. She pushed him with her elbow. He woke up, and nodded approval of the piece of the moment. Then he went to sleep again.’²⁸ He was often bored in the evenings, constantly disappointed that he was unable to fulfil his ambition to bring scientific and literary people about the Court, to make it a more general reflection of the life of the country.²⁹

      He was far from being a morose man: he did take pleasure in life, but his pleasures were far more restrained, less hectic than hers. He found it difficult to get used to the food and the climate in England, and a strain to have to speak English most of the time. The ordinary people of the country seemed quite happy to accept him; but the upper classes remained extremely wary of him, while several members of the old Royal Family were still openly antagonistic, the Duke of Cambridge making a ridiculous fuss when his Garter banner in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, was moved a few inches to make way for that of the ‘young foreign upstart’. The Duchess of Cambridge went so far as to remain seated when the Prince’s health was drunk at a dinner.

      The quarrel between the Duchess of Cambridge and the Prince became more heated than ever when her son, that ‘odious’ boy as the Queen had described him, was rumoured to have made Lady Augusta Somerset pregnant. Prince George of Cambridge was a highly flirtatious though rather timid young man and Lady Augusta, eldest daughter of the Duke of Beaufort, a ‘very ill-behaved girl, ready for anything that her caprice or passions excite her to do’. So there were some grounds for the rumour, false though it was, and Prince Albert firmly believed it to be true. Both he and the Queen refused to speak to Lady Augusta when she appeared at Court and ordered the ladies there not to do so either. And when solemnly assured that the stories were unfounded, the Prince’s reply – that he supposed, therefore, ‘they must believe that it was so’ – left the Cambridges ‘by no means satisfied’ and the Beauforts ‘boiling with resentment and indignation’.³⁰

      The Prince was now more unpopular with the aristocracy than ever. His prudery, his obvious cleverness, his enterprise on the hunting field, his graceful accomplishment on the ballroom floor and as a skater on frozen lakes, his vigour as a swimmer, his talents as a musician and singer, all aroused dislike and jealousy rather than admiration. At dinner parties his competence, his conscientiousness, his intelligence and his honesty would alike be grudgingly conceded but then, as Baron Stockmar remarked, someone would be sure to add, ‘Look at the cut of his coat, though, and the way he shakes hands’ with his elbow held stiffly at his side. Even the way he rode a horse appeared determinedly, even arrogantly, German. With women, it was often observed, he was particularly ill at ease, concealing his shyness СКАЧАТЬ