Shooting Victoria (11 page)

Other rumors held Oxford to be a creature of the left, not the right. After all, in the years leading up to 1840, the greatest threat to the constitution through political violence came from the working-class Chartist movement, a movement that had only grown stronger with the weakened economy of the early 1840s,
a movement whose agitation had burst into violence in July of the year before, when the national convention of Chartists in Birmingham devolved into riots, violence that culminated in an attempted insurrection in Newport in November. Oxford's Birmingham working-class origins helped fuel this theory. The
Northern Star
, the leading Chartist newspaper, attempted energetically to dispel the rumor that “the diabolical deed was a premeditated act of a band of Chartists”—floating the counter-rumor that Oxford had acted in collusion with the police.

Most concluded that Oxford was a pathetic madman, and that shooting at the young and innocent Queen offered on the face of it solid evidence for his insanity. Even then, however, he may not have acted alone: rumors persisted (helped by reports of police investigations) that the Young England documents were not written in his hand, and that he was the “tool” of a “designing villain”—one either taking political advantage of Oxford's insanity, or perhaps someone equally deranged. Oxford's own mother for a time believed that some malefactor must have goaded her son into this act.

Victoria however, simply could not accept the idea that Oxford was a part of conspiracy of any stripe, for in accepting such a belief, she would have to acknowledge a life-threatening opposition to her among a portion of the British public, and thus relinquish the trust she had in her people, and lose the absolute trust she was certain they had in her. Trust in her subjects was instinct to her, and that instinct ruled her actions after Oxford's attempt, though she would be shaken, after every attempt to follow. Oxford was an aberration, apart from and antithetical to her public, and she refused to allow him to change her relationship with them. In shooting at her, Oxford forced the nation to contemplate what might have been. The
Morning Chronicle
stated that had Oxford succeeded, “We should have been at this moment the vassals of a now foreign potentate. We should have been breathing in the dominions of King ERNEST of Hanover! … The oppressor would
soon have been abroad, and close on his track the insurgent whom the oppressor makes and infuriates.” Victoria, in response to Oxford's threat, over the next few days provided the public with every opportunity to celebrate what was. After the worst had almost happened, she demonstrated to the nation that
nothing
had happened. She refused to hide or allow any visible sign of heightened security. She and Albert repeatedly exposed themselves to danger, to show that no such danger existed. In this way Victoria successfully (and virtually singlehandedly) converted an act of public discord into a new concord.

And the public responded enthusiastically, realizing that it had dodged a bullet just as its monarch had: if she labored to demonstrate her trust for them, they demonstrated their trust in her and their personal joy in her preservation. Throughout the country, organizations submitted addresses to the Queen protesting their loyalty and deploring Oxford's act. Theatres altered their programs to honor the Queen. At Her Majesty's Theatre, the night after the attempt, the entire troupe assembled for the opening curtain. “The effect was electrical; and the ‘God Save the Queen' that broke forth was responded to by enthusiastic shouts of approbation from her Majesty's lieges.” At Drury Lane Theatre, a lead singer, “to the warmest welcome and applause,” sang a revised version that reflected the recent event: “God
Saved
the Queen.” And at dinner at the Middle Temple on Thursday, when the usually “unostentatious” toast to the Queen was made, “one simultaneous burst of cheering arose, and then the members … gave a round of nine times nine in loyal testimony of their heartfelt pleasure for the escape of the Queen from the shot of the assassin.” A similar scene occurred at Gray's Inn, the enthusiasm there helped along by a much larger allowance of wine than usual.

And Londoners, in huge numbers, gathered about the Palace over the next few days, both to see the scene of the crime and to have “oracular demonstration of the well-being of their Sovereign.”
Constitution Hill was of course thronged, as all there exchanged the latest news and rumors, and all gathered around to hear the accounts of several witnesses (and, surely, several pretend witnesses) to Oxford's attempt. The wall to the Palace gardens was a particular focus of attention, as everyone (including the Dukes of Cambridge and Wellington) squeezed in between the police officers, still busy seeking, in vain, balls from Oxford's pistols.

On the day after the shooting, at about ten o'clock, much of the crowd shifted to the gates of the Palace, where a new show was beginning. The appropriate time for visiting the Palace had arrived, and a seemingly unceasing stream of carriages drove up throughout the morning and afternoon, filled with aristocracy and gentry who came to leave their cards, to sign the Palace register, and to inquire after the health of the Queen. (They were invariably and reassuringly told that she suffered from no ill effects whatsoever.) It was an unprecedented show of loyalty to the Queen by the social elite. Among these carriages were those of Victoria's family, of members of the Queen's government, of a number of foreign ministers and high church officials; throughout the day Victoria and Albert met personally with these.

By the afternoon, Victoria somehow made it clear to the masses outside that she and Albert would take their usual airing by carriage.

The Queen and the Prince were careful to give this ride the appearance of all their other rides: they would have the same number of attendants they had had the day before—two outriders ahead, two equerries behind—in the same low, very exposed carriage, and without any discernible increase in police presence (although most certainly the officers of A Division were on their guard). Soon after six, the outriders trotted through the gates and Victoria and Albert emerged into a deafening sea of humanity that “all but impeded the progress of the royal party.” The Queen bowed repeatedly, and Albert doffed his hat. A spontaneous procession of riders formed behind the royal carriage and followed in a parade
up Constitution Hill and to Hyde Park. A reporter from the
Times
was waiting there, and described the scene:

The loyalty of the English was never more finely exhibited than it was during the afternoon of yesterday.… About 6 o'clock it was evident that the Royal party were approaching, and upon one of the Royal outriders appearing through the gateway leading from Constitution-hill to Piccadilly, the cheers within the park were plainly heard. In an instant after an open carriage and four was driven through the archway containing Her Majesty and her Royal Consort, followed by a numerous cavalcade of ladies and gentlemen. The cheers of a vast assemblage of British subjects instantly burst forth with an animation and sincerity we have seldom witnessed—every hat was waved, and every heart seemed gladly to beat on seeing their Sovereign apparently in good health and spirits still among them. From the highest to the lowest there seemed to be but one feeling, and we can hardly imagine a much greater punishment of the wretch whose attempt was so providentially frustrated than to have seen how joyous the multitude were that his effort was not successful. Both the Queen and Prince looked exceedingly well. They drove twice round the Park—on the first occasion being loudly cheered all the way round, and on the second having every hat raised to them. The scene was one of deep and affecting interest.

On the next day, Friday, the Queen and Albert were prevented from riding as both Houses of Parliament paraded from Westminster to the Palace to present a congratulatory address. Three to four thousand spectators gathered before the Palace gates, and a substantial detachment of police from A Division was needed to clear a space before the Marble Arch. The Members set out from
Parliament in a parade of 190 carriages, the first of which reached the Palace gates before the last had left Westminster. The Commons arrived formally dressed: in court clothing, or, if they had them, full regimentals, red and blue Windsor uniforms, or uniforms of deputy lord-lieutenants; members of the bar wore wigs and gowns. The Speaker, who led the procession, wore the state robes. “Never on any previous occasion in our recollection,” stated the
Times
, “has such a brilliant array of the Commons of England attended the presentation of an address to the throne.” The Lords—in their various formal uniforms—followed behind the Commons, in order of ascending hierarchy: barons first, then bishops, earls, marquises, dukes—and finally Victoria's uncles Cambridge and Sussex, and the Lord Chancellor in his state carriage. It was a formal display of Parliamentary unanimity and a complete repudiation of the partisanship the Queen had herself shown months before in wishing to exclude the Tories from her wedding. The crowd outside the Palace, on the other hand, displayed a strong sense of party spirit, showing its hostility to the beleaguered Whig government: Lord Melbourne, on leaving the Palace, was hissed “loud and deep,” while the Duke of Wellington was cheered, and Robert Peel's carriage was followed and “cheered until out of sight.” That the crowds could hiss the Queen's ministry while cheering the monarch reveals a sea change in attitude toward the Queen: she was no longer “Mrs. Melbourne,” a Whig Queen: she had turned away from the partisanship she, and her uncles and grandfather before her, had always exhibited. Victoria was anticipating Albert's ideal of a neutral monarchy—before Albert had had a chance to promote it.

Saturday and Sunday were quieter days, though the crowds continued to assemble, and the royal couple continued to ride in public. On Monday, however, Westminster once again burst into celebration, as Victoria and Albert departed Buckingham Palace by carriage for Windsor. Inhabitants of every suburb and village on the route—Kensington, Hammersmith, Brentford, Hounslow, Colnbrook, and Windsor itself—set out flags, pealed church bells,
and assembled along the route to cheer the Queen's cortege. She and Albert set out with Albert's brother Ernest in one carriage, followed by three others. The crowds assembled on Constitution Hill were said to match in number those who had assembled for the Queen's coronation; they made the route nearly impassable. And the crush of well-wishers was equally great at Kensington. Victoria ordered her postilions to drive slowly through it all, as she and Albert, as exposed as ever, bowed from the Marble Arch to Windsor. “The reception of the royal party from the assembled thousands was,” according to one reporter, “the most enthusiastic we have ever witnessed.”

*
The Millais' brush with Edward Oxford obviously became an important part of their family mythology, and, as family myths will do, this one inflated with time: In his later account of the attempt, William Millais claimed that his father had personally seized Oxford and held him until the police came. No contemporary account of the shooting supports this story.

*
Oxford's darkness—and his sister's, as grandchildren or great-grandchildren of a black man, was noted by the newspapers of the day, but only incidentally. When, however, the American abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, arriving late on a ship for the Anti-Slavery Conference that Prince Albert chaired, read an account of the shooting to his fellow passengers, he claimed his British auditors went wild when they learned Oxford was a man of color: “they yelled like so many fiends broke loose from the bottomless pit… swore that Oxford ‘ought to be strung up, without judge or jury, and cut in pieces,' in true Lynch-law style—the whole ‘nigger race' made to suffer for so foul an act, ay, and all those who are disposed to act as their advocates! I have seldom seen so horrid an exhibition of fiendish exultation and murderous malignity” (Garrison 2:364).

five

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T
he abuse she had received at the hands of her husband, as well as years of difficult parenting, and more than one failed business, had rendered Hannah Oxford a fragile, highly-strung woman; her family doctor, James Fernandez Clarke, went so far as to claim she was “most eccentric, if not insane.” After recovering from the initial shock of her son's arrest, however, she developed an iron and indefatigable resolve to save him from the death penalty at any cost; it was she more than any other who laid the groundwork for Edward's legal defense. Arriving in London from Birmingham on the day after his arrest and not knowing that her son had been transferred to Newgate, Hannah rushed from Euston Station to the A Division police station. She had at this time heard enough about Young England to believe that her son must have been a pawn serving the interests of others, as he could not have come up with the plan to assassinate the Queen on his own. She was certain that if she could speak
with him—alone—he would reveal his accomplices to her. At A Division, she learned that since Oxford was to face trial for High Treason, she could not visit him at Newgate without first obtaining an order from the Home Office. The next day, Friday, accompanied by her daughter and her brother Edward Marklew, Hannah spoke with the permanent undersecretary there, Samuel March Phillipps, and received qualified permission to see her son: of the family, only she could speak with him, and would have to do so in the presence of Newgate's governor. From Whitehall, the family rushed to Newgate, and arrived at six in the evening—to find the governor gone, and the jailer on duty refusing them admittance until the next morning.