The Queen and Lord M

Chapter XIV UNEASY PREPARATIONS

It was necessary for Albert and his brother to return to Coburg. Albert must make his arrangements for leaving the home of his birth, and preparations for the wedding must go forward at once if it was to take place in February. There was so much to be settled and the Queen urged Lord Melbourne to forge ahead with these matters.

In the first place there was Albert’s position at Court to be considered, which was an affair of precedence of course; and then there was the question of his allowance. He would have to be naturalised too, for it was unthinkable that a foreigner should be the Queen’s husband.

Lord Melbourne worked with all his might to meet the Queen’s wishes but the Tories always opposed him and his tottering Whigs and as the Prime Minister had often explained to the Queen, it was often very difficult to get Bills passed because of this.

Uncle Ernest declared that he would not give precedence to a little Coburg Prince even if he was the Queen’s husband. The Tories supported him and the other Royal Dukes who had followed him in protest, and the Queen was furious.

She raged against the Tories. ‘I always hated them,’ she declared. ‘As for Sir Robert Peel I have always known that he was a low hyprocrite. But I expected better of the Duke of Wellington. I shall certainly not ask him to my wedding.’

Lord Melbourne begged her to be calm.

‘Calm!’ she cried. ‘When they behave so to my dearest Albert. That angel to be treated so by monsters.’

The Queen saw things in distinct shades of black and white, pointed out Lord Melbourne patiently. In Her Majesty’s opinion people were either angels or devils, which was not true in this case. It was all a little more subtle than that.

‘I should like to punish those Tory monsters,’ she insisted.

‘It is fortunate for them that we have a Constitutional Monarchy,’ said Lord Melbourne wryly.

‘Everything is too slow,’ said the Queen. ‘You politicians don’t work hard enough.’

Then Charles Greville, her Clerk of the Council, discovered that she could settle Albert’s status by Royal Prerogative. This delighted her. Albert should take precedence over all Royal Dukes so that little matter was settled.

He was to be called the Prince Consort.

‘The Prince Consort,’ she cried. ‘Surely the husband of a queen should be a king!’

‘Not if he is a prince,’ explained Lord Melbourne patiently.

‘But his marriage will make him a king.’

‘No, that is not so,’ was the Prime Minister’s reply. ‘We should need a special Act of Parliament to turn a Prince Consort into a King Consort.’

‘Then let us bring in this special Act.’

Lord Melbourne shook his head. ‘It would be most unwise to give a Parliament the power to make a king; it would be a precedent. If it was as easy to make a king or queen, it would be as easy to unmake one.’

Victoria was thoughtful. Anything that was a threat to her Crown could not be ignored.

Albert should remain the Prince Consort.

It was necessary, Lord Melbourne told her, to make a formal announcement of her decision to accept Prince Albert as her husband and for this she returned to London and summoned her Privy Council to the Palace.

The Duke of Wellington, who had shortly before suffered from a stroke, was just well enough to be present. Her anger against him melted when she saw how ill he looked. The right side of his mouth was twisted a little and he could not use his arm. Poor old man, thought the Queen. How sad to be old and almost finished with life.

She had dressed herself in a plain gown and wore a bracelet to which had been attached a portrait of Albert.

She bowed to the councillors and begged them to be seated and then she read the speech which Lord Melbourne had written for her.‘It is my intention to ally myself in marriage with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. Deeply impressed with the solemnity of the engagement which I am about to contract, I have not come to this decision without mature consideration, nor without a feeling of strong assurance that, with the blessing of Almighty God, it will at once secure my domestic felicity and serve the interests of my country.’

When she had finished reading she noticed that Lord Melbourne was looking at her with tears in his eyes.

Dear, dear Lord Melbourne. How often had she seen those eyes fill with tears for her!

That day she left the Palace for Windsor. Crowds collected to see her as she left. Now she could not complain of a lack of loyal cheers.

Lady Flora was forgotten. So was the Bedchamber Affair. Their young Queen was going to be a bride and her people were once more delighted with her.

But if the people were pleased at the prospect of a royal wedding the Tories had not forgotten the Queen’s insult to Sir Robert Peel and her unconcealed animosity towards them which had been so obvious during the time of the Bedchamber Crisis. They seemed determined to make everything as uncomfortable for her as possible, and as it was difficult to attack the Crown the best way to annoy the Queen was to cast slurs on Albert.

There had been too many Germans in the royal family, was their opinion, since the accession of George I when the royal family had branched from the Stuarts to the Guelphs. The country was heartily sick of Germans. And now the Queen was proposing to bring this young one over and marry him and had even tried to make him a King Consort. That had been satisfactorily stopped, but it did not take the Prince’s detractors long to find a stick with which to beat him. In the Queen’s announcement of her betrothal to her Privy Councillors, the text of which had been published, there had been no mention of the Prince’s religion. This could mean one thing. The Prince was not a Protestant. Was the Queen trying to bring a Catholic to share her throne?

The King of Hanover, Victoria’s Uncle Ernest, who had always coveted the throne and had in fact been suspected of sinister actions towards the young Princess Victoria, was believed to be behind the plots to disqualify the Prince and prevent the marriage. But for Victoria, Ernest would have been King of England; it had always been a sore point with him that he had been younger than Victoria’s father and so cheated of the throne by a mere girl. He had never ceased to hope that Victoria would die and he be called over to take the Crown. That she had been so healthy had infuriated him; and now the thought of her marrying and having children who would come before him in the line of succession and so put the throne out of his reach for ever was more than he could bear.

And so his spies were ordered to put rumours in motion and the aggrieved Tories were not slow to make use of them.

The Queen was furious, far more angry than she would have been at an attack on herself. Her Uncle Ernest was an old wretch and the Tories were odious. How dared they attack her beloved! One day they should all be punished.

Lord Brougham, that old enemy in the Lords, made a pronouncement which was widely quoted.

‘There is no prohibition to marriage with a Catholic. It is only attended with a penalty, and that penalty is merely the forfeiture of the crown.’

‘Oh, how dare he!’ cried the Queen. ‘That man is a traitor!’

She was amazed that the Duke of Wellington did not hesitate to side with his Tory friends, and he actually led the attack on Albert in the Lords.

The Queen raged with Lord Melbourne. Why was nothing done? What were her ministers doing if they could allow the Queen to be so maligned? Were the Tories so foolish that they thought she did not know her own Constitution? Did they think she would ever marry anyone who was a Catholic?

‘The noble Duke knows that the Prince is not a Catholic,’ declared Lord Melbourne in the House of Commons. ‘He knows he is a Protestant. The whole world knows he is a Protestant.’

Finally Baron Stockmar who had arrived back in England made a public statement that the Prince was a Protestant who could take communion in the English church, and that the only difference was that he was a Lutheran.

‘So that matter is settled,’ said the Queen.

These were difficult weeks. She missed Albert; she fretted for him; she made exciting plans about the wedding, and then she waited for letters from him and was miserable when they did not come.

The Tories and her other enemies were taking all the joy out of her betrothal. She was beginning to be irritable and bad tempered again.

‘Never mind,’ said Lord Melbourne. ‘These matters have to be settled.’

There was worse to come. Albert was not a rich man; he had only an income of £2,500 a year and a small estate in Coburg.

‘The fellow’s a pauper,’ said the Tories. ‘He must not be allowed to get above himself.’

Lord Melbourne discussed the matter of the income which would be settled on the Queen’s husband.

‘He will be in a similar position to Prince George of Denmark who married Queen Anne,’ said Lord Melbourne. ‘She was the reigning Queen and he was a Prince of Denmark. The Parliament of the day settled £50,000 a year on him. The same amount was given to William III (only he was a king in his own right) and your Uncle Leopold was given a similar sum when he married Princess Charlotte. I think we should ask for the same for Prince Albert. We will get Parliament to agree to that I’m sure.’

Even so Lord Melbourne secretly feared that the Tories would oppose this; and he was right, they did. £50,000 was too large a sum, they said. They would agree to £30,000.

When Lord Melbourne came to convey this information to the Queen he knew he would have to face a termagant.

He was right.

She raged and stormed. She would never speak to the Duke of Wellington again. She would take her revenge on Sir Robert Peel. They were saying that her clever, her divine Albert was not worth so much as foolish old Prince George of Denmark. How dared they insult her beloved Albert!

She turned on Melbourne. ‘You should have arranged this better. You are the Prime Minister.’

‘Ma’am, it is not in a Prime Minister’s power to say this shall be done.’

‘I know my own Constitution.’

‘Then Your Majesty will know that these matters have to be decided by Parliament.’

‘They shall be made to pay him £50,000 a year. He shall not be insulted.’

‘The state of the country at the moment is not good. There have been riots in various places. The Chartists are making a fuss. There is a great deal of unemployment. The Tories know this and if there is much of a storm about this money – which would seem untold wealth to some of Your Majesty’s hungry subjects – we could have a very ugly situation breaking out in the country.’

She was solemn. ‘Riots! Hungry people!’

He looked a little sheepish. He had never wanted their happy relationship spoilt by these unpleasant matters. He had laughed at those ardent reformers, the Earl of Shaftesbury and the Duchess of Sutherland. ‘Oh,’ he had said, ‘little children enjoy working in the mines.’ And: ‘Little boys have great fun climbing up chimneys.’ ‘People who are lazy go hungry.’ It was such a pleasant theory and she had been only too ready to believe him.

Now he realised he had been wrong. He should have made her see the facts. Looking back he saw so many things that he might have done. It was as it had been with Caroline … oh no, not such a disaster as that. Victoria was going to be a great Queen and his epitaph would be that he had helped to make her so.

She was grave at once.

‘The people are unemployed. They are hungry. We must do something. I will talk to Albert about it when we are married.’

She looked at Lord Melbourne and she thought: It is not his fault. He has been led astray by others and all this political jangling. It will be different with Albert because Albert wants to be good and Lord Melbourne only wants to be clever, witty, amusing and comfortable.

She said soberly: ‘I am angry that Albert should be insulted, but I see that he must accept this £30,000. When we are married I will explain to him and we will work together to help our people.’

The inevitable tears were in Lord Melbourne’s eyes. She was slipping away from him as he had known she must in time and he thought of the years ahead when he would still serve her perhaps, but it would never be the same. Those years to come looked bleak and empty.

How difficult life was, thought the Queen. She had been so blissfully happy when she contemplated her union and was finding the details which had to be settled so depressingly tiresome. Lord Melbourne was different; vaguely she understood why. Nothing is changed between us, she told herself; he is still my Prime Minister and very dear friend. But that was not quite true. Lehzen, too, was prickly. ‘Now you will not have need of me,’ she had said in that hurt, sad voice which was so distressing. ‘Nonsense, Daisy,’ she had replied briskly. ‘I shall always have need of you.’

Oh why must they be so tiresome! She loved Albert beyond everything – but she was affectionate by nature and certainly was not going to forget her old friends just because she had found the great love of her life.

There were faint disturbances even from that quarter. Dearest Albert did not altogether understand what it meant to be a queen. She hated to have to remind him but sometimes she feared it was necessary.

Albert wrote that he longed for their marriage and he thought that when the ceremony was over they should retire to Windsor for a week or so where they could be absolutely alone. He was going to insist that they do this.

Insist. Dear Albert, he would have to learn that he could not insist.

How delightful of him, though, to want to be alone with her all that time and to think of such things. She was glad that he had; but he could not insist of course … to the Queen. Obviously he did not understand what being Sovereign of a great country entailed. How could he, the darling? He was only a Prince of little Coburg. She had to see her Prime Minister frequently. She had quantities of documents to go through and sign. How did she know what crisis was going to arise when her Government had such a tiny majority and were in some ways at the mercy of the wicked Tories led by that monster Sir Robert Peel in the Commons and that traitor the Duke of Wellington in the Lords. She wrote tender but chiding:‘You forget, my dearest love, that I am the Sovereign, and that business can stop and wait for nothing. Parliament is sitting, and something occurs almost every day, for which I may be required, and it is quite impossible for me to be absent from London, therefore two or three days is already a long time to be absent.’

A silence greeted this letter and she began to grow anxious. But in due course Albert replied. He was affectionate but never quite so demonstrative as she was and the honeymoon was not mentioned.

Another distressing contretemps had arisen. Albert had heard of the Bedchamber Affair and it was impossible to be with Victoria for very long without discovering her dislike of the Tories and her partisanship for the Whigs. Albert wrote that he believed a Monarch should be impartial. In a Constitutional Monarchy the Government was the Government of the people and the Sovereign should stand aloof. He hoped that his household would not be composed entirely of Whigs as her own was.

Victoria was dumbfounded when she received the letter. She took it at once to Lord Melbourne.

‘And what does Your Majesty think of this?’ asked the Prime Minister.

‘That, dear Albert has a great deal to learn. Tories in my household! He has never understood, poor darling, what those monsters are like.’

‘Your Majesty will see,’ pointed out the Prime Minister, ‘that there should not be two separate households. This would lead to impossible rivalries. Look what happened with your mother’s household and your own. The Prince should have a private secretary and as this is the most important position I suggest my own secretary, George Anson, who is a man of skill, tact and outstanding ability.’

‘It is good of you, dear Lord Melbourne, to pass him over to Albert.’

‘Oh, settling into a new country as the Queen’s husband is a ticklish business. I can see it will have to be handled with care. Anson can serve us both, and that will prevent a great deal of misunderstanding.’

‘I’ll write to Albert and tell him not to worry his head about these matters and that we will settle them for him.’

When Albert received the Queen’s letter he was both hurt and angry. It was clear that the Queen and her Prime Minister were going to make a puppet of him. He wrote to Leopold and told him that he was rather uneasy because he felt that he was going to be of no account whatever in his new life.

He must write to Victoria and tell her that he did not wish the Prime Minister’s secretary to be his too. How could he have any independence if he were going to share the Prime Minister’s secretary? He would refuse to accept this. He and Victoria must come to some understanding about his position before the marriage. Delightful, affectionate and charming as she was, she was demanding too big a sacrifice of a man by asking him to jettison his freedom of thought and his independence for the price of marriage.

He was secretly aghast at what he thought of as the licence of the Court. A certain amount of scandal was whispered. The affair of Flora Hastings was disgraceful. It was true that Flora was not pregnant but in a moral Court – as Albert saw it – the subject of pregnancy should never have been mentioned. He had seen some of the truly disgusting lampoons and items of gossip in the press. And for the Queen to have been involved, shocked his Lutheran soul to the core. Then there was the Bedchamber Affair. It was most undignified and it showed him clearly that Victoria’s advisers were at fault to allow her to become involved in such a matter.

And this man Anson. He might be a good secretary but Albert had heard that he stayed up half the night dancing. He did not think he wished for a secretary who was noted for his dancing. The Queen, he knew, loved to dance. She would stay up half the night performing what seemed to Albert a somewhat pointless exercise. Albert liked to retire early to bed and rise at dawn. That was the best time for work for he grew very drowsy after ten o’clock. He could wean Victoria from her dancing – and other things – he had believed; but if she were going to behave all the time as though he were a humble subject and she was the Queen, how could he hope to do this?

He wrote to the Queen. He would like to appoint his own secretary and he thought that in their household a balance of Whigs and Tories would be a happy combination. He would like to appoint a man for the very important post of secretary who was of the highest moral standards.

The Queen received his letter at the same time as one from Leopold, in which were veiled criticisms of her treatment of Albert and advice on how to conduct their relationship. He and Princess Charlotte, he wrote, if ever there was a difference between them, never let the sun go down on their anger. It was a good rule and one of the most important for a happy marriage. He thought she should remember this in her relationship with Albert. He was surprised that he heard so little from her on the subject. She knew how dear both she and Albert were to him and he hinted as he knew them both so well and had been as a father to them, it was to him he expected them to turn for advice.

How distressing! She did not feel angry with Albert. That would have been impossible. The darling only had to learn. But Uncle Leopold was being rather tiresome.

She wrote to Albert:‘Regarding your wishes about your gentlemen, my dear Albert, I must explain to you quite frankly that it will not do. You may rely upon me absolutely to see that the people who will be about you will be pleasant people of high standing and good character …I have today received an ungracious letter from Uncle Leopold. He appears to be disgruntled because I no longer ask for his advice, but dear Uncle is inclined to believe that he must be in command everywhere …’

When he received this letter Albert’s melancholy increased.

There were further difficulties. Victoria was eager that dear Albert should receive the Order of the Garter without delay; she had written to him on the subject of Anson. Her letters to Albert were written half in English and half in German. To write in German was to show her devotion to him for although she spoke that language fluently it was naturally not so easy to express herself in it as it was in English. Thus she tried to explain the Anson controversy. She fully understood his feelings but it was absolutely imperative that he had an Englishman at the head of his affairs; and therefore although she would not force Anson upon him, she asked him whether it was not better to take a man whom the Queen could personally recommend than a stranger of whom she knew nothing.

Albert, realising that he must concede, accepted Anson (perhaps temporarily, he promised himself) but he did write and complain of the manner in which the Garter had been sent to him.

Surely his position as the Queen’s future husband warranted a little more respect? He had to tell his dear and splendid Victoria that she should have sent a worthy envoy and that his father was anxious – and Albert understood this anxiety perfectly – because he feared people – especially in Berlin – would think he was being slighted.

The Queen was all contrition. Of course dear Albert was right. She could only blame those people who were handling the affair. She had no idea that anything had been done to hurt Albert and his father and the last thing in the world she would allow was that her dear Albert should be slighted.

That was a little better, thought Albert. Perhaps a firm hand was needed. His dear little wife-to-be was in the hands of her Ministers. That was something he would have to change. She was of course far too friendly with Lord Melbourne; there had been unpleasant rumours of which the two people concerned were no doubt unaware. They were without foundation of course but very unpleasant. Melbourne should never have been given apartments in the Palace. Albert could see that there was much work waiting for him; he would have to teach his dear little Victoria to be the docile wife that all good women should be – were they queens or commoners. When he had achieved this he was sure that great good would come of their marriage, to her, to him and to England.

But that was not the end of trouble. It seemed that whichever way they turned there was a difference of opinion.

Albert thought it very necessary that a more moral tone should be brought into the Court and that he and Victoria must in future set an example. Victoria had sent him a list of the bridesmaids chosen by her and Lord Melbourne, and was astonished when Albert wrote that he did not think them all suitable. For instance one was the daughter of Lady Jersey and that woman’s reputation was notorious. Not only the bridesmaids themselves but their parents must be without reproach.

When Victoria received this comment she sent for Lord Melbourne without delay.

‘The latest from Albert,’ said Lord Melbourne, scanning his comment. ‘But this is astonishing.’

‘Dear Albert, he is so good himself, that he expects everyone else to be the same.’

‘A notable characteristic of the good,’ said Lord Melbourne. ‘Now the bad rarely proselytise in the same way. They are perfectly content to enjoy their wickedness while others tread the path of virtue; the good wish others to suffer their self denials.’

The Queen tapped her fingers on the table impatiently; Lord Melbourne was a little odd nowadays, and if it were not for the fact that she used to delight so much in his company, and being not quite so enraptured by it now felt a little sorry for him, she would often have been much more short with him than she was.

‘Of course,’ went on Lord Melbourne, coming back to the business in hand, ‘your bridesmaids will be chosen according to their rank.’

‘I shall have to explain to Albert.’

‘One should only take note of the characters of the lower classes,’ said Lord Melbourne. ‘You cannot do it with people of rank.’

‘So then,’ said the Queen, ‘there is one law for the rich and one for the poor.’

‘Certainly there is one law for the monarchy and one for commoners. Consider if we began to judge the Sovereigns of the past on their morals.’

Victoria agreed there were very few who would pass the test of morality.

Lord Melbourne looked at her earnest young face and his sentimental emotions gushed forth. She intended to be good. As for Albert, he was a puritan. But one could never be sure of what went on in puritanical minds in private.

He speculated on the future. Victoria would keep Albert in order – and how would Albert succeed in imposing his will on this rather pleasure-loving girl?

‘I shall write to Albert to explain,’ said the Queen rather sadly. ‘Oh dear, it is rather sad constantly having to write and say No.’

Another rap over the knuckles for poor Albert, thought Lord Melbourne.