The Queen's Husband (44 page)

Besides, she did feel wretched at the beginning of her pregnancies and this, together with the knowledge that she was to part with Albert, made her desolate.

But for Albert’s sake she tried not to show her feelings. He was delighted about the child. He longed for a boy this time and the thought of the new arrival, she knew, did a good deal to cheer him, so perhaps it was selfish of her to dread the coming ordeal so much.

Aunt Louise came to Windsor and it was wonderful to show her the children and confide to her about the one that would make its appearance some time during the month of August.

On a bleak March day Albert left for Coburg.

‘Write to me, darling,’ begged the Queen, and Albert promised he would. True to his word he wrote as soon as he reached Dover and a few days later there was another letter from Cologne.

‘Your picture has been hung everywhere so you look down on me from the walls … Every step takes me farther away from you – not a cheerful thought.’

He had met Uncle Leopold on his journey through Belgium and he understood this dear kind uncle was making his way to England to join his wife and comfort Victoria.

Victoria read the letters through again and again. Only this absence could make her realise the extent of her love for her husband. She was a little jealous of his devotion to his family, which was wrong of her, she admitted. Even the children could not compensate her. When she was in the nursery she was sad because Albert was not there to crawl round with Vicky on his back and bounce Fat Alice on his knee and shake his head over Bertie’s shortcomings.

Albert has become
everything
to me, she thought.

His brother Ernest came to meet Albert when he arrived in Gotha. The two brothers embraced.

‘It is good to see you, Ernest,’ said Albert. ‘Alas, that it should be in such sad circumstances.’

Ernest was always philosophical. ‘We mustn’t regret too much. He would have been an invalid if he’d lived. You can imagine how he would have felt about that. It was the best thing possible.’

Albert replied that if they could look upon it in that way, it would be an immense relief.

‘But, my dear brother, it is the only way because it is the truth.’

Ernest was a little worldly and Albert wondered what sort of life he was leading. He took after their father in his interest in women. Albert stopped himself thinking ill of the dead.

‘Ernest, you are the Duke now. You will have your responsibilities.’

‘But I won’t be nearly as important as you are, Albert. Uncle Leopold tells us that in all but name you are the King of England.’

‘Victoria is a good loyal wife. We are very happy.’

‘I knew you’d do it. She dotes on you. You are very good-looking, Albert. And that moral rectitude of yours … well, I suppose it really works.’

‘You are teasing, Ernest. I suppose it takes our minds off dear Papa.’

Albert’s step-mother looked pathetic in the long black veil worn by German widows. She was staying at Albert’s grandmother’s house and they greeted each other affectionately for they had always been fond of each other. His grandmother almost swooned with joy at the sight of him.

‘Oh, my little Alberinchen!’ she cried and clung to him.

They all wanted to hear about his life in England and temporarily the purpose of his visit was forgotten while he talked to them of Victoria and the children and how devoted they all were to each other and how each day Victoria deferred more and more to him.

‘It was not always so,’ he explained. ‘At the beginning she had evil advisers, but once I had cleared them off we became very very happy together.’

His grandmother and step-mother could not hear enough of the children. The cleverness of little Vicky was his main theme.

‘Alberinchen with a daughter!’ cried Grandmother Saxe-Coburg. ‘And she nearly four years old! Why you will soon be finding a husband for her, Albert. Some handsome German Prince, eh?’

Albert agreed that the time would soon pass.

‘And a son too! Tell us of little Bertie.’

‘He is strong and quite handsome but not as sharp as his sister.’

‘That’ll come,’ said Grandmama Saxe-Coburg wisely.

He gave them the presents Victoria had sent for them and as soon as he was alone he was writing to her:

Could you have witnessed the happiness my return gave my family you would have been amply repaid for the sacrifice of our separation. We spoke much of you. So many questions are put to me that I am scarcely able to answer them …

Farewell, my darling, and fortify yourself with the thought of my speedy return. God’s blessing rest upon you and the dear children.

He felt a little complacent. He was greatly loved by his family and he returned to them as an important person. In England he might be thought to be merely the queen’s husband, but they all believed – and there was a great deal of truth in this – that he was virtually the King. Moreover Victoria’s loving letters were arriving constantly. She was never one to hide her feelings.

She was desolate, she wrote, longing for his return.

He could smile. He had achieved a great victory. Never again would he be shut out from her confidence. Never would the Queen forget that she was the wife.

He owed his success to following the advice of Stockmar and of course to his own calm God-fearing nature.

Stockmar must come back to England. He must consult him about Bertie. The boy who was to be King of England must be disciplined.

It gave him a certain feeling of chagrin that the child who could scarcely string a sentence together (and Vicky could chatter away at his age) and when he did stuttered, should one day be King of England, while he, Albert – handsome, clever, so beloved, could never be anything but the Prince. Even Victoria, for all her devotion, could not change that.

Perhaps that was why Bertie irritated him mildly.

He dismissed such a thought; it was unworthy of the man Albert believed himself to be. After all Bertie was his son. In bringing Stockmar to advise, in imposing a strong discipline, he was giving Bertie the best possible upbringing.

Soon he was on his way back to Windsor. Victoria was in a fever of excitement.

It was six o’clock in the evening when he arrived and she was watching for him. She flew to meet him and flung herself into his arms.

‘Albert! You are indeed back. What happiness to see you again.’

Albert kissed her, called her his dear little wife, told her how much he had missed her.

‘Oh never, never, never let us be parted again!’ cried the Queen.

The next morning Albert wrote in his diary:

‘Crossed on the 11th. I arrived at six o’clock in the evening at Windsor.
Great joy
.’

Soon after his return it was Victoria’s twenty-fifth birthday.

‘What a truly great age!’ she cried. Seven years since she had ascended the throne! More than four years a wife and three children in the nursery and another soon to be born. What a great deal had happened since she was eighteen! Birthdays made one think back over the past. She would write to poor Lord Melbourne to let him know that she had not forgotten him. Was it only six years ago that she had looked upon him as a god? What a foolish girl she had been! But then she had not had Albert to guide her.

Albert had given her as a birthday present a beautiful portrait of himself.

‘There is nothing,
nothing
I could have liked better,’ she cried. ‘Oh, Albert, it is
just
like you. You look so serious and so manly. I shall always love it and remember the day you gave it to me.’

Her eyes full of tears, she studied the picture with the group of angels in the background holding a medallion on which were the words
Heil und Segan
.

‘Health and blessing,’ she murmured. ‘Oh, Albert, my darling, may you always enjoy them both.’

Before the end of May the Emperor of Russia caused a great deal of consternation by announcing that he was paying a visit to England – and was on his way. ‘But we have made no preparations,’ cried the Queen.

‘We will take care of him,’ replied Albert calmly. ‘I wonder what his motive is. You can be sure it is political.’

‘I am grateful to have you and Sir Robert at my side at such a time,’ said the Queen fervently.

‘Good relations between this country and Russia can do nothing but good,’ said Albert; so the Queen was sure this was so.

The Emperor was a little eccentric, as might be judged from his rather unceremonious arrival. First he went to the house of the Russian ambassador and there spent a night, but it was not long before he was installed in Windsor Castle. A magnificent edifice, he called it, and one of which the Queen must be justly proud. ‘It is worthy of you, Madame,’ he told her, for he was very gallant.

In spite of the fact that he was given one of the finest bedrooms in the castle he sent his valet down to the stables to procure hay and when this was brought a leather sack (which he had brought with him) was stuffed with it. He slept on this sack wherever he was and it always accompanied him on his travels.

He was very good-looking and in his youth had been reckoned to be one of the most handsome men in Europe. But there was something a little odd in his face.

Discussing this with her children’s governess, Lady Lyttleton, the Queen decided that it was because he had light eyelashes and his eyes were so large and bright.

‘They have no shade,’ said Lady Lyttleton.

‘Exactly,’ agreed the Queen.

‘And occasionally one can see the white above his eyeball which makes him look savage.’

‘I believe he got that from his father, Emperor Paul. I have heard it mentioned.’

‘He looks somewhat autocratic.’

‘Yet sad, and he does not smile much. All the same he is most friendly and the Prince says that it is a good thing that he should come and visit us in this way.’

It was Albert who guessed at the Emperor’s reasons.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘it is because we visited the King of France recently, and he does not wish us to be too friendly with the French.’

Sir Robert Peel, who had had many conversations with the Emperor, confirmed this. The latter had also wished to discuss the question of Turkey, which appeared to be on the verge of collapse.