Victoria (14 page)

8 August

This journal will not hold together if I keep tearing out pages and burning them. But I have been so overtired, with all my cares and studies, with never enough time to compose myself. There are always more guests to see, and they are hardly ever young people.

We shall soon leave for our holiday at Ramsgate, and I shall have more time to write there, perhaps. It will be difficult to hold to my resolve against sadness, however. It will be our last visit with Uncle Leopold for a very long time.

8 September
East Cowes, Isle of Wight

It is v strange once more to have my treasure, my diary. I thought it gone forever. When we left Kensington for our last holiday with Uncle Leopold, I entrusted it to Lehzen, for she alone could pack it privately. But the portmanteau suitcase it was packed in went astray before we reached Ramsgate. We were all v surprised when it arrived here at Norris Castle yesterday, all these weeks later, on the packet with the mail and newspapers.

So I take it up again, to record my days. There is much to love and admire in the world, but much that I fear I shall never understand. There is much that causes regret and sorrow.

Now I sit beside the sea on this beautiful Isle of Wight. Dear Lehzen is sitting near me, and Mamma and Sir John Conroy are farther up the strand, where the palm trees grow. It is so unusual that they flourish on English soil – I should like to paint them. Only not just now.

As I write, my Uncle William IV is most likely in his golden carriage on his way to Westminster Abbey to receive the Crown of St Edward the Confessor.

Unless dear Aunt Adelaide has a child, I shall be the next to wear that Crown. I should be at London with Uncle Billy for this solemn day. Even with all his cares and duties of office, I am sure he feels this in his heart as plainly as I do.

Yet, here I sit, as the sun goes in and out behind the clouds and the seabirds caw. They sound so lonely, up there so high.

I cannot write more, for my tears will melt the words.

Besides, here come Mamma and Sir John.

14 September

It is not my good Uncle's fault I was not at his Coronation.

Uncle Billy is a good King, and tries to see both sides. He thought it would be best to honour the old first, and then the new – meaning me. I know that is what he wanted.

I have known for some time now that the People are actually v fond of me. The day I was with Aunt Adelaide when Uncle went to open Parliament, she set me up on the garden wall to watch the procession pass by. And those who had been cheering, “The Queen! The Queen!” began to cry out, “Hurrah for BOTH Queens!” In that moment, I was very, VERY joyous that I am English, and that I shall never have to leave Britain and live elsewhere.

They do not cheer my Uncle Cumberland, though – usually they call rude names. So it would have been v improper for me to be directly behind His Majesty in the procession, so that we'd have cheers, and then have my other uncles behind us, so the cheers would stop or turn mean. I understand this. And Uncle Sussex does not deserve that, and he would be with Uncle Cumberland.

But when Sir John and Mamma learned where I was to be in the line,
they
chose to be insulted over MY precedence being slighted.

Parliament has already granted me a HUGE increase in my income – I will now receive 16,000 pounds of my own each year. (One of the newspapers made a joke about it. A new Bishop of Derby must be named soon, and he will get only 11,000 pounds. They said rather than Heiress Presumptive, it would have been less expensive to make me the Bishop of Derby!)

Since we are finally well set, though, Mamma and the Captain decided to get even with Uncle Billy by not letting me attend the Coronation. I still can hardly credit the cruelty and impertinence of this.

I asked Lehzen to post my letter to Uncle Billy, so he will not think it my doing. Really, I hope he knows that already. I love him and Aunt Adelaide with all my heart. It saddens me greatly, to be kept away from them.

Uncle Leopold, too – a cross the sea in Belgium, so very, very far away. If it were not for my beloved Lehzen, I should be entirely alone with my sadness. No one else understands.

Later

Now I've written that, I see it is not quite true. I am blessed to have as many people about me as I do, who love me and
try
to understand.

I was moaning and complaining to the Reverend Mr Davys about how fearful I am of all the demands placed upon me by – well, I never like to say to him by whom. He knows Certain Persons are harder than others.

Moreover, I said, “What can I do, when those I love keep leaving?”

He said then, “Your Royal Highness, shall I recommend the closure of the Gospel of Matthew? Our Lord said, ‘Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.'”

Well, Belgium is, at least, not the end of the Earth. I shall remind myself of that.

My last evening together with Uncle Leopold I was weeping, and he took my hand in both of his and held it to his heart.

“I will tell you, now, something I have never revealed to you before,” he said. “It is something Count Esterhazy told me long ago, that I have kept to myself all this time, lest the mystery and power of it should be dispelled. Perhaps your mamma knows, I cannot say.

“Esterhazy told me that it has long been common knowledge among the Gypsies in Hungary that there was a Gypsy at Gibraltar when your Father was there, who read his fortune for him. She told him three things.

“First – that he would never be King. Second – that he would attain supreme happiness, and would die soon thereafter.”

I sobbed when he said that, but I managed to say, “I am glad he was happy.”

“The third prediction was the most important, “Uncle then said gently. “The Gypsy told your Papa he would have a daughter who would be a very great Queen, of a very great nation.

“And, you see – the good woman will turn out to have been right.”

I was looking out at the sea as he said that, as I am now. For a moment – for one moment only – I saw how the sea is always touching all the lands of the earth, and how it separates England from other lands, and is also the way we go to get to them. And I saw how heaven bends down and touches the earth and sea, so gently we can scarcely feel sure it is there. But the same sky rises over all, filled with stars by which we may chart our course.

I am a modern princess. Should I believe what a Gypsy may have said so many years ago?

I simply cannot say.

I think, now, I shall go and practise painting those palm trees. Dear Mr Westall will see that I am trying to improve myself.

Epilogue

Scarcely a month after her eighteenth birthday, on Tuesday, June 20, 1837, Princess Victoria wrote in her real diary:

 

I was awoke by Mamma who told me that the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham were here and wished to see me. I got out of bed and went into my sitting room (only in my dressing gown) and alone, and saw them. Lord Conyngham (the Lord Chamberlain) then acquainted me that my poor Uncle, the King, was no more, and had expired at 12 minutes past 2 this morning and consequently that I am Queen.

 

Because William IV had outlived her childhood, Victoria never required a Regent to rule for her. The ambitions of Sir John Conroy were dashed, and the young Queen steadfastly held herself apart from his influence from that day forward.

Victoria showed herself to be a poised, confident, energetic ruler. Educated in matters of State by Lord Melbourne, her first Prime Minister, and counselled by King Leopold and his old friend, Baron Stockmar, she became the first modern monarch of the United Kingdom. Political reform was promising to raise the fortunes of the common working people, and Victoria's personal virtues and idealism helped restore confidence in the Royal tradition. As a single, attractive Queen, she led a life filled, not only with government and world affairs, but also with dazzling social events, art, and music.

Then, when her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, came to visit, Victoria fell in love. Albert had also been a protégé of Leopold and Stockmar. He was well educated, philosophical, interested in science, as passionate about music and art as Victoria herself – and very handsome. They married on February 10, 1840.

As the “Victorian Era” began to blossom, Her Majesty's lively young family set the fashion for home life rather than courtly elegance. Victoria and Albert had nine children: Victoria (“Vicky”), the Princess Royal; the Prince of Wales, Albert Edward (“Bertie” – later, King Edward VII); Alice; Alfred (“Affie”); Helena (“Lenchen”); Louise; Arthur; Leopold; and Beatrice (“Baby”). The family spent a good deal of time away from London, at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, and at Balmoral Castle in the Scottish Highlands. A visitor wrote of their lives away from Buckingham Palace:

 

They live not merely like private gentlefolks, but like very small gentlefolks, small house, small rooms, small establishment. There are no soldiers, and the whole guard of the Sovereign and the whole Royal Family is a single policeman… The Queen is running in and out of the house all day long, and often goes about alone, walks into the cottages, and sits down and chats with the old women…

 

The Baroness Lehzen had retired from her role as Victoria's chief confidante once Prince Albert proved himself a strong husband and helpmate. Victoria came to rely on his insight and executive abilities to help her through the hundreds of messages and decisions required of her each day.

Victoria's early ties to the Whig (Liberal) party gave way, bit by bit, to a sense that the Crown should be a strong, continuous influence for good and stable values, “above” partisan politics, no matter which party was in power. Although always a staunch supporter of the (Protestant) Church of England, Victoria attempted to be fair and realistic about the contributions and rights of other religious groups. In 1837, before she'd ruled for even a year, she dubbed Sir Moses Montefiore the first Jewish Knight of the United Kingdom.

The Corn Laws, against imported grain, caused great harm in Catholic Ireland during the potato famine. When Prime Minister Robert Peel sacrificed his career to obtain their repeal, Victoria backed him. Though preoccupied with her frequent pregnancies and many little children, she had her own opinions. She supposed Ireland ought to be treated more like Scotland, where she and Albert felt quite at home, and she would not abide anti-Catholic preaching.

With all their hard work, Victoria and Albert still made time for art and music. Their frequent gifts to each other of paintings and sculpture “made” many artists' careers. Victoria took drawing lessons from nonsense poet and artist Edward Lear. The composer Felix Mendelssohn, too, was a guest at the palace. He said afterward that Prince Albert played the organ so “…that it would have done credit to any professional,” and that Her Majesty sang “…really quite faultlessly, and with charming feeling and expression … as one seldom hears it done.”

But sadness was too soon to lay claim to Victoria's contentment. In the early winter of 1861, Prince Albert, generally healthy but overworked, contracted typhoid fever. (It is now thought he may also have suffered from stomach cancer.) His death, when they were both only forty-two years old, left Victoria changed forever by shock and sorrow. She never entirely recovered from the loss of the friend, husband, partner, and “dearest Master” she would always consider the most perfect of men.

Our most enduring image of Victoria is of Her Majesty in the black mourning clothes she wore for the remaining forty years of her life. For three entire years, in fact, she made almost no public appearances. The genuine grief of her subjects, meanwhile, gave way to impatience and disapproval; the people wanted their Queen to show herself strong despite her loss. Victoria could not do it, until the combined persuasion of her Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, and Albert's and her old friend, their Scottish manservant, John Brown, convinced her that returning to a full and useful life was the best way to honour the dead. From that time on, Victoria earned her reputation as “the Grandmother of Europe” by counselling and arranging marriages for her own children, nieces, and nephews among the Royal Families all across the Continent. She became more engaged than ever in extending British power and influence in international affairs. In 1875, Disraeli managed to have Parliament add to her other official titles, “Empress of India.” With characteristic energy, Victoria took up the study of the Hindustani language, with tutoring from Abdul Karim, her private secretary, or munshi.

From the time she was thirteen, she kept a personal journal, writing sometimes ten pages in a day. She also managed to read and write an enormous number of letters. In 1868 and 1884, selections from her journal were published in book form. Unfortunately, she left instructions that when she died, her daughter, Princess Beatrice, was to go through her private papers and destroy anything inappropriate for publication. The princess, a Victorian of the most discreet and “proper” sort, destroyed a treasure of intelligent, sensitive historical commentary the likes of which we can only imagine.

By the end of her long life, Victoria was beloved and revered, not only in her own realm, but around the world. Her fiftieth anniversary as Queen was celebrated with a Golden Jubilee in 1887, followed by a Diamond Jubilee in 1897 – the only time she ever put off her widow's black and wore a white gown.

Victoria died on January 22, 1901. The poet Robert Bridges wrote, “It seemed as though the keystone had fallen out of the arch of heaven.” In Parliament, Lord Salisbury said:

 

She has been the greatest instance of government by example and by love, and it will never be forgotten how much she has done for the elevation of her people, not by … giving any command, but by the simple sight and contemplation of the brilliant qualities she exhibited in her exalted position… She bridged over the great interval separating old England and new England. Other nations have had to pass through the same ordeal, but they seldom passed it so peacefully, easily, and with so much prosperity.

 

And British statesman, A J Balfour, observed, “She passed away, I believe, without a single enemy in the world, for even those who love not England love her.”