Shooting Victoria (45 page)

Pate's attack, just like every attack upon the Queen, became, in the words of
The Times
, the “absorbing topic of conversation” throughout London. But Pate's monopoly on the public attention was short-lived: during this last week of June 1850, all-absorbing topics followed hard upon one another.

There was the continuation of the Don Pacifico debate in the House of Commons: two more nights of engrossing oratory that recommenced even before Pate had struck the Queen. William Gladstone spoke that Thursday evening, attacking Palmerston's brutal nationalism with a visionary appeal to a brotherhood of nations, all holding to principles “consecrated by the universal assent of mankind.” He derided Palmerston's analogy between modern Britons and ancient Romans as primitive: the Romans had recognized no civilization besides their own, holding down all other peoples with the “strong arm of power,” and according themselves rights that they denied to all others. Gladstone's oration should have been a powerful corrective to Palmerston's self-defense, but the spell Palmerston cast upon the House on Tuesday was strong; Gladstone was interrupted often by Palmerston's enthusiastic supporters, as were all of Palmerston's opponents.

On Friday, the last night of the debate, public excitement reached its peak. Crowds crammed the avenues outside the entrances to the House. Three parliamentary heavyweights were to speak, and John Roebuck noted that “the House and country only wish to hear Peel, Lord John, and Dizzy; all others are only bores.” The most exciting and most heartily cheered speech of the night, to the surprise of everyone, was not by any of these three, but by Alexander Cockburn, Queen's Counsel and the successful defender of Daniel McNaughtan seven years before. Cockburn deftly and with legal precision deflected Gladstone's attack, defending item by item Palmerston's actions in Greece and throughout Europe. He sat to vociferous cheers as his colleagues converged to congratulate him. It was the speech of his career. Palmerston himself thought it the best speech he had ever heard. Cockburn's timing could not have been better: the position of Solicitor General had just opened up. If John Russell had been considering Cockburn for the post before this, Cockburn's speech guaranteed he would get it.

Robert Peel, torn between his duty to speak out against Palmerston's reckless aggression and a sincere reluctance to see Russell's government fall, managed to chide Palmerston's policy and yet conciliate the Whig government. Despite his kind words for them, and his praise for Palmerston's speech,
he made clear that he had to vote against Roebuck's motion on principle, and thus reiterated the point that he had made so forcefully in abolishing the Corn Laws, four years before: he would always value principle over party.

John Russell, speaking next, had an easy job of it, largely deferring to Palmerston and Cockburn for the factual argument, and pleading with the conservatives to respect his government's foreign policy, as he had always respected theirs in the past. Benjamin Disraeli's speech was the last of the debate. He stood up early Saturday morning, a tired man before an exhausted house—and he failed to impress. In a speech containing little of his trademark wit, he explained why he would vote as Peel did, for the diametrically opposed reason: putting party over principle. He only spoke, he made clear, out of duty to his colleagues the Protectionists; the House of Commons should reject Roebuck's motion approving of the government's foreign policy, he exhorted them, out of respect for the opposing motion in the House of Lords—put forward by Lord Stanley, leader of his party.

After a few words from Roebuck, the House divided: 310 ayes; 264 noes—a majority of 46. Russell's government survived—and Palmerston was more secure in the Foreign Office than ever. He would remain Victoria's and Albert's political
bête noir
for another year and a half. At a celebratory dinner held a few weeks after the debate, 250 supporters would enthusiastically sing the national anthem and cheer vociferously the lines “Confound their politics, “Frustrate their knavish tricks,” the knaves in this case completely different from the knaves in the minds of Covent Garden opera-goers the night of Pate's attack. Palmerston would resist Victoria's and Albert's attempts to remove him. Albert would make the first of these two weeks after the debate, rather foolishly resurrecting for Lord John Russell a sordid episode from Palmerston's past, when during the morally more relaxed time at Windsor around the time of Albert's arrival in 1840, one of the Queen's ladies in waiting found that an enamored Palmerston had crept into her bedroom one night. As Albert melodramatically put it, he “would have consummated his fiendish scheme by violence had not the miraculous efforts of his victim and such assistance attracted by her screams, saved her.” An embarrassed Russell could only point out that this had happened ten years before and that at sixty-five years old, Palmerston would not likely behave that way again. Albert and Victoria, with the help of Stockmar, tried again a month later, setting out in a memo for Palmerston the behavior they expected in a foreign minister. Russell thought the memo so humiliating that Palmerston would have to resign rather than accept it, but Palmerston agreed to it, and met with Albert, tearfully promising him he would mend his ways. He then ignored the Queen's instructions completely. In September, he would embarrass the government
by insulting General Haynau, a reactionary Austrian guest to the country. A year later, he would similarly embarrass his government by welcoming the Hungarian revolutionary Lajos Kossuth to England. He finally went too far in December 1851. When in France Louis Napoleon overthrew the French National Assembly in a coup d'état, and the British government committed itself to strict neutrality in the matter, Palmerston warmly congratulated the French Ambassador for Louis Napoleon's actions. Louis Napoleon was hardly a hero in Britain, and Palmerston's behavior for once would hardly earn him popular acclaim. John Russell, realizing this, demanded Palmerston's resignation—and Palmerston was out.
*
When the House voted in the early hours of 29 June 1850, however, he was invulnerable, and by far the most popular politician in Britain.

Commons adjourned that morning at four, and as John Roebuck walked out of the House and into the sunrise with his friend Sir David Dundas, he saw Peel ahead of them, making his way home to Whitehall Gardens. “I consider that man to be the happiest in England at this moment,” Roebuck told Dundas, “for he has just voted with his party, and yet also in accordance with his own feelings and opinions.”

Happy Peel might have been, but also tired and preoccupied: this Saturday morning he would devote to the service of Prince Albert and the Great Exhibition. After a short sleep, he breakfasted alone. His wife Julia was feeling unwell and so she remained in bed, reading a newspaper account of his speech. Impressed, she sent down to Peel a note with her congratulations. Peel then left to consult with Lyon Playfair. Playfair, a noted chemist and Peel's protégé of sorts, had been appointed upon Peel's recommendation Special Commissioner for the Exhibition, to serve as a liaison
between the Commission and the provincial committees and as a general workhorse and problem-solver. Peel and Playfair discussed ways to overcome the obstacles that suddenly threatened to halt the project altogether. At around 11:00, Peel rode to the Palace of Westminster for a meeting of the Royal Commission. Prince Albert had arrived ahead of him and was showing the Prince of Prussia the not-yet-completed Houses of Parliament. Albert and Peel then joined Russell, Gladstone, and the other members of the Committee for a short but tense meeting. They discussed the mounting opposition to the Hyde Park site, and resolved that they would hold the Exhibition there or nowhere. Peel agreed to champion the site in Parliament and appeared to relish the prospect of applying pressure to his colleagues. “Depend upon it,” he said, “the House of Commons is a timid body.”

They discussed as well a dramatic alternative to the Building Committee's plans for a building to house the Exhibition. Several weeks before, as opposition to Brunel's plan grew, Joseph Paxton—head gardener of the Duke of Devonshire, designer of the Duke's spectacular greenhouse at Chatsworth, and a self-made press and railway tycoon—approached Henry Cole with a revolutionary idea for the Exhibition building: an enormous structure of glass set on an iron skeleton. Although the competition for a building was over, Cole suggested that he quickly draw up plans and submit them. Three days later, bored in the middle of a railway director's meeting in Derby, Paxton created the most famous doodle in history: the first sketch of his grand design, on blotting paper. Within a week, he had drawn up full plans. He returned with these to London on the twentieth and threw himself into a self-promotional blitz. On the train from Derby he had run into the engineer Robert Stevenson—of the Building Committee—and quickly gained his support. He met with the vice-chairman of the Commission, Earl Granville, who promised to submit the plan to the Commissioners. He met with Albert, and wrote afterwards “I believe nothing can stand against my plans,
everybody
likes them.” He also forwarded
a set of plans to Peel. Peel warmly approved of the plan, and said so at this meeting. Had the Commission approved of Paxton's plans then and there, they would have, in a stroke, done much to ensure the Exhibition's popularity. They agreed instead that the Building Committee should decide the matter, and they referred Paxton's plans to them.

The Commission adjourned at 1:15. Peel returned home to work in his study. At around 5:00 he kissed his wife good-bye and set off with his groom for his customary ride around the Parks. The horse he mounted was new to him—an eight-year-old which a friend had purchased for him two months before, from Tattersall's. It later transpired that the horse had a long history of unruly behavior. Peel's coachman was suspicious about the horse, and had recommended Peel not ride it, but Peel disregarded him: he had ridden the horse for weeks now with no problem.

Peel and his groom passed through St. James's Park and stopped at Buckingham Palace, where Peel signed the visitor book, adding his name to the hundreds congratulating the Queen for weathering Pate's attack. Peel and his groom then remounted and rode to the top of Constitution Hill. Near Hyde Park Corner, next to the Palace garden wall, Peel stopped to greet two young ladies whom he knew. The ladies' groom rode a skittish mount. Peel's horse, unnerved, shied and then began to kick and buck violently. Peel flew forward over the horse's head and slammed face first onto the ground. Although he instantly lost consciousness, his reins remained wrapped around his hands and he yanked his horse toward him and onto him; one of the horse's knees crashed down upon Peel's shoulders and his back, smashing his collarbone, breaking a rib—and driving it into one of his lungs.

Two passersby ran to Peel and sat him up: his face, ashen and abraded, was unrecognizable. One man ran to the adjacent St. George's Hospital for medical assistance as several more came running up, among them two doctors, one of these Sir James Clark, the Queen's physician.

Peel began to come to. One of the men clustering about him, the Reverend Henry Mackenzie, flagged down an open carriage; the two ladies inside instantly offered it up to carry Peel back home. Peel was lifted into the carriage. The two men who had sat him up, as well as the two doctors, now supported Peel as the carriage slowly trundled down Constitution Hill, through St. James's, and to Whitehall Gardens. During the trip Peel suddenly became agitated and tried to stand up; the others in the carriage restrained him. He then sank into a stupor. At home, he revived again, enough to walk into his house, with assistance. Lady Peel was distraught. Overcome by pain, Peel fainted. He was brought into the downstairs dining-room and placed on a sofa; later, his doctors deciding he should not be moved, a patent hydraulic bed was set up in the same room.

Five doctors assembled to treat him. At 7:00 they released a bulletin: “Sir Robert Peel has met with a severe accident by falling from his horse. There is severe injury of one shoulder, with a fracture of the left-collar-bone. There is great reason to hope that there is no internal injury.” They suspected a broken rib, but Peel's extreme pain made it impossible for them to investigate thoroughly.

Word of the fall spread quickly and London soon had a new all-absorbing topic of conversation. Albert and the Prince of Prussia rushed to Whitehall Gardens as soon as they heard of his fall. The next day Victoria, writing to Leopold, acknowledged that Peel's dire injury completely eclipsed Pate's assault upon her: “We have, alas! now another cause of much greater anxiety in the person of our excellent Sir Robert Peel, who, as you will see, has had a most serious fall, and though going on well at first, was very ill last night; thank God! he is better again this morning, but I fear still in great danger.” “I cannot bear even to think of losing him,” she added.

Peel knew the injury was fatal. Although his doctors were optimistic, Peel told them on the day of the accident that his injury was worse than they realized, and that he would not survive it. He lingered in agony for three days. Friends and colleagues called at
the house regularly, among them the Duke of Wellington, as well as Prince George of Cambridge—whose own father, all now knew, was dying. Outside, the carriages of the rich clogged the streets, while, even more touchingly, the poor in great numbers showed that they had not forgotten that Peel was their champion, giving them cheap bread with the repeal of the Corn Laws. They took up a quiet vigil in Whitehall Place, “always there,” according to the
Illustrated London News
, “night and day”:

That silent, solemn crowd betokened the unknown depth to which love and reverence for the great practical statesman had sunk in the minds of humble English men and women. Unknowing the significance of their own appearance, these poor folk were, in reality, the guard of honour accorded to the last hours of Sir Robert Peel—by the People.