Shooting Victoria (78 page)

154:   … a “perfect crush”:
Times
27 May 1842, 6.

154:   Admission to this ball had been pricey:
Times
11 April 1842, 1.

155:   Two weeks before this ball, the British nobility had had their own chance to display their wealth when the Queen threw at Buckingham Palace a glorious, invitation-only
bal masque
or costume ball: For details of the Plantagenet Ball, see the
Times
13 May 1842,
6–7;
14 May 1842, 6;
Illustrated London News
14 May 1842, 7–9.

155:   The latest in Victorian technology—530 jets of naphthalized gas—spotlit the thrones:
Caledonian Mercury
16 May 1842, 4.

155:   The gold lace of Albert's tunic was edged with 1,200 pearls, and Victoria wore a pendant stomacher valued at 60,000 pounds:
Times 9
May 1842, 6.

156:   … on 14 May 1842, the
Illustrated London News
—the first fully illustrated newsmagazine—published its very first issue:
Illustrated London News
14 May 1842, 7–9.

156:   … the year of the worst industrial recession of the nineteenth century: Hilton 23.

156:   A series of bad harvests, dating back to the thirties, had raised food prices and the overall cost of living: T. A. Jenkins 105; Martin 1:75.

156:   Crime rates and pauperism skyrocketed: Dodds 84; Cole and Post-gate 305.

156:   … the Chartists had, with banners and bands and great hope, trundled an immense petition through the crowd-lined streets of London to Parliament: Chase 205.

156:   … 3,317,752—well over a tenth of the entire population of Britain: Chase 205. The population of Britain and Ireland, according to the
petition itself, was around 26 million in 1842, a number that almost matches that of the 1841 Census. “The People's Charter—Petition”; Hilton 6.

156:   In their petition, the Chartists claimed that the current misery facing working people was the direct consequence of a corrupt Parliament: For details of the Chartist Petition of 1842, see “The People's Charter—Petition.”

157: This crushing of hopes, coupled with sheer hunger, bore bitter fruit: by the time the Queen attended the ball at Her Majesty's, riots were already erupting in the Midlands and the North:
Times
5 May 1842, 6; Chase 211.

157:   … Parliament released its first report on the employment of children: Children's Employment Commission.

157:   The popular satirical magazine
Punch
bitterly contrasted the “purple dress” of the reveling rich with the “cere-cloth” or shroud of the destitute:
Punch
2:209.

157:   “The most detested tyrant whose deeds history hands down to posterity, set fire to Rome”:
Northern Star
4 June 1842, 3.

158:   … the economic forces unleashed by the Industrial Revolution had strangled their trade nearly to the point of extinction: Veder 266.

158:   Charles Dickens a few years later described the under-and unemployed weavers of Spitalfields as “sallow” and “unshorn”: Dickens and Willis 25.

159:   … “the weavers dine for a day or two”: Dickens and Willis 25.

159:   The organizers of the ball at Her Majesty's Theatre hoped for a more lasting support:
Times
25 May 1842; Kean 44.

159:   As the
Times
put it, the ball at the theatre was an occasion in which the Queen associated “publicly and personally with her subjects in promoting a common object”:
Times
27 May 1842, 6.

160:   … as one of his first acts as Prime Minister, Peel appointed Albert president of the Fine Arts Commission: Bolitho 121; Hurd 236.

160:   Victoria later said that Albert found a “second father” in Peel: St. Aubyn,
Queen Victoria
157.

160:   He once told Victoria “all depends on the urgency of a thing. If a thing is very urgent, you can always find time for it; but if a thing can be put off, well then you put it off”: Hibbert,
Queen Victoria
87.

160:   … he attended the
bal masque
, dressed as a figure from a van Dyck painting:
Caledonian Mercury
16 May 1842, 4.

161:   It was a budget informed by his growing belief in free trade, calculated not simply to redistribute wealth—but to
create
wealth: Read 146.

161:   The crowd, however, watched not the dancers but the royal pavilion, as with “mute up-gazing curiosity” they observed Victoria perform the rituals of state:
Morning Chronicle
27 May 1842, 6.

162:   Five years before, she was accompanied by her mother and attended to by John Conroy and Lady Flora Hastings; her uncle the Duke of Cumberland was seen to be “very constant in his attention” to his Royal niece:
Times
2 June 1837, 5.

162:   Cumberland was now king in Hanover, his despotic ways finding much grater favor among the Hanoverians than among the British: Palmer.

162:   … Conroy—an exile in Berkshire: Hudson
176–77
.

162:   … his power implicit in the enormous jackboots he wore:
Morning Chronicle
27 May 1842, 6.

163:   By the end of 1841, she regularly used the term “we” in setting out her opinions: St. Aubyn,
Queen Victoria
151.

163:   … the Prince hurried from Victoria's side to lead the Privy Council in her stead: St. Aubyn,
Queen Victoria
152.

163:   Victoria found him indispensable in dealing with government business during her confinement and recovery: Woodham-Smith,
Queen Victoria
217–18.

163:   He became, according to his own secretary Anson, “in fact, tho' not in name, Her Majesty's Private Secretary”: Woodham-Smith,
Queen Victoria
218.

163:   At both Buckingham Palace and Windsor by this time, their desks were joined so that they could work as one: St. Aubyn,
Queen Victoria
152.

164:   He attended all ministerial meetings, read his wife's correspondence, and conducted an extensive political correspondence of his own: Gill 174.

164:   … Albert confronted Lehzen, through Anson, about not reporting to him that a certain Captain Childers was stalking the Queen with “mad professions of love”: Woodham-Smith,
Queen Victoria
215. Such lovelorn lunatics stalking the Queen were legion, particularly in the early years of her reign.

164:   She was to him “
die Blaste
”—the hag, the “Yellow Lady” (a reference to her jaundice), “a crazy, stupid intriguer, obsessed with the lust of power, who regards herself as a demi-God”: Charlot 194; St. Aubyn,
Queen Victoria
168; Woodham-Smith,
Queen Victoria
229.

165:   Anson noted her “pointing out and exaggerating every little fault of the Prince, constantly misrepresenting him, constantly trying to
undermine him in the Queen's affections and making herself appear a martyr”: St. Aubyn,
Queen Victoria
, 168.

165:   On the evening of 3 December 1840, palace servants were startled to discover an unkempt young man hiding under a sofa in the Queen's dressing room—a sofa upon which just hours before the Queen had been sitting: Paul Thomas Murphy. Jones, after breaking into the palace three times, was forced to become a sailor; he served in the Royal Navy for at least six years, and then faded into obscurity.

165:   He claimed that he “sat upon the throne, saw the Queen, and heard the Princess Royal… squall”:
Times
5 December 1840, 4.

165:   … “the absence of system, which leaves the palace without any responsible authority”: Von Stockmar 2:125. For a detailed memorandum of the household dysfunction, see Von Stockmar 2:118–25.

166:   … servants, for example, regularly sold off the day's unused candles for their own profit: Feuchtwanger 65.

166:   Albert, in going over Palace expenditures, discovered a weekly charge of 35 shillings for guards at Windsor who hadn't actually served since George III's day: Jerrold,
Married Life
221–22.

166:   … she “lets no opportunity of creating mischief and difficulty escape her”: Woodham-Smith,
Queen Victoria
228.

166:   … Stockmar called them back; the Princess Royal was seriously ill—thin, pale, and feverish: St. Aubyn,
Queen Victoria
171; Gill 182.

167:   “All the disagreeableness I suffer,” he wrote, “comes from one and the same person.” Woodham-Smith,
Queen Victoria
230.

167:   He and Victoria had the worst argument of their married lives, the Queen accusing Albert of wishing to kill their children, and screaming that she wished they had never married: St. Aubyn,
Queen Victoria
171; Gill 183.

167:   “Dr. Clark has mismanaged the child and poisoned her with calomel and you have starved her”: Woodham-Smith,
Queen Victoria
230.

167:   “… the welfare of my children and Victoria's existence as sovereign are too sacred for me not to die fighting rather than yield them as prey to Lehzen”: Woodham-Smith,
Queen Victoria
229.

167:   One reporter empathized with the fatigue Victoria must feel, when she and her court had to rise, turn, and curtsey with the arrival of every one of her many honored guests:
Morning Chronicle
27 May 1842, 6.

168:   … “amidst loud cheering and clapping of hands” the royal party returned to their carriages and to the Palace”:
Morning Chronicle
27 May 1842.

168:   … he shut up shop and returned to Titchfield Street, crept up the two flights to his room, and broke open a locked box containing all of his roommate's possessions:
Times
1 June 1842, 7.

168:   “What have you been about?” Foster asked him. “I suppose you know what I have come here for?”:
Times
1 June 1842, 7.

169:   … flintlocks missing flints, and with rusted screw barrels:
Times
18 June 1842, 7–8.

169:   Francis chose the smaller of the two, one seven inches long:
Morning Chronicle
31 May 1842, 5.

169:   “It appeared to be all he had in the world,” Street later told police: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.

169:   The clerk told him they rarely sold flints:
Times
18 June 1842, 7–8.

170:   Francis paid for the flint with two halfpennies:
Morning Chronicle
18 June 1842, 7.

170:   While the police learned about all of these purchases, however, they could never prove that Francis bought a bullet for his pistol: TNA PRO MEPO 3/18.

170:   Francis found shelter at yet another coffee-house:
Times
11 June 1842, 6; Post Office London Directory, 1841, 195.

Chapter 10: A Thorough Scamp

171:   … under the shade of the magnificent elm trees: Heron 443–44.

171:   … Victoria and Albert attended the sermon of the Bishop of Norwich at the Chapel Royal:
Times
30 May 1842, 5.

171:   Pearson had only recently arrived in London from Suffolk to work at his brother's printing business as a wood engraver:
Times
1 June 1842, 6.

172:   The youth didn't fire:
Times
18 June 1842, 7.

172:   Then John Francis crossed the Mall and disappeared through the gate and into Green Park:
Times
1 June 1842, 7.

172:   … wondering whether what he had seen was a joke:
Times
1 June 1842, 6.

173:   Then, he turned and slowly walked away, toward Piccadilly:
Times
11 June 1842, 6.

173:   He then asked the boy for his name and address: Martin 1:121;
Times
1 June 1842, 6.

173:   The gentleman, whoever he was, must have had the questionable pleasure of reading about himself in the newspapers a few days later,
when he was excoriated for not raising an alarm or reporting the crime:
Times 2
June 1842, 5.

173:   George's brother, Matthew Flinders Pearson, was a good fifteen years older than he, a respectable businessman in Holborn:
Morning Chronicle
28 December 1842, 2.

174:   Thomas Dousbery, a boot and shoe retailer, dabbled in radical thought and was the secretary of the Cordwainer's benevolent fund; … he would know what to do:
Morning Chronicle
2 June 1842, 6; Dousbery 2:109.

174:   Dousbery was sure that Laurie trusted in him, and would not see Pearson's account as a “trumped up tale”:
Morning Chronicle 2
June 1842, 6.

174:   He stammered so badly, Laurie wrote in his diary, “that his brother who was with him had to repeat a statement he had made to him when he was not excited or afraid”: Laurie 101. Laurie obviously knew Thomas Dousbery less than Dousbery knew him, mistakenly calling him “Dandbury” in his diary.

174:   Laurie considered that Pearson should take his account straight to Buckingham Palace:
Times
1 June 1842, 6.

174:   Laurie, a man well known for his egotism: McConnell.

174:   … Murray had just sat down to dinner at the Queen's table, and could not—“on any pretence”—be spoken with until bed time:
Times
1 June 1842, 6.

175:   He wrote about the assault to his father the next day: Martin 1:121.

175:   Victoria later wrote to her Uncle Leopold “Thank God, my angel is also well; but he says that had the man fired on Sunday, he must have been hit in the head”: Victoria
Letters
(first series) 1:399.

176:   … all was quiet; the crowd had dispersed, “satisfied with having seen the Queen”: Martin 1:121.

176:   Albert, wishing Arbuthnot to maintain “profound secrecy,” asked him to communicate what had happened to four people only: Martin 1:121.

176:   Upon hearing of the attempt, Peel rushed to the Palace: Aubyn,
Queen Victoria
162; Martin 1:121; TNA PRO MEPO 3/18. Albert claims the “Head of Police” was the man accompanying Peel, but Col. Rowan, the Commissioner most involved with the case at its early stages, did not meet with Albert directly on this day—and his account suggests that the other Commissioner, Mayne, was not there either.