We Two: Victoria and Albert

PRELUDE TO A MARRIAGE

PART   ONE
     
The Years Apart
                      
VICTORIA: A FATHERLESS PRINCESS

CHAPTER 1
      
Charlotte and Leopold

CHAPTER 2
       
Wanted, an Heir to the Throne, Preferably Male

CHAPTER 3
      
The Wife Takes the Child

CHAPTER 4
      
That Dismal Existence

CHAPTER 5
      
The Kensington System

CHAPTER 6
      
Fighting Back

CHAPTER 7
      
Victoria, Virgin Queen

ALBERT: A MOTHERLESS PRINCE

CHAPTER 8
       
The Coburg Legacy

CHAPTER 9
       
A Dynastic Marriage

CHAPTER 10
      
The Paradise of Our Childhood

CHAPTER 11
      
Training for the Big Race

PART   TWO
       
Together

CHAPTER 12
      
Victoria Plans Her Marriage

CHAPTER 13
      
Bearing the Fruits of Desire

CHAPTER 14
      
Whigs and Tories

CHAPTER 15
      
Dearest Daisy

CHAPTER 16
      
Albert Takes Charge

CHAPTER 17
      
The Court of St. Albert’s

CHAPTER 18
      
Finding Friends

CHAPTER 19
      
A Home of Our Own

CHAPTER 20
      
The Greatest Show on Earth

CHAPTER 21
      
Lord Palmerston Says No

CHAPTER 22
      
Blue Blood and Red

CHAPTER 23
      
French Interlude

CHAPTER 24
      
The Prussian Alliance

CHAPTER 25
      
Father and Son

CHAPTER 26
      
Problems in a Marriage

CHAPTER 27
      
“I Do Not Cling to Life as You Do”

CHAPTER 28
      
Mourning a Prince

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTES

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

LL AFTERNOON QUEEN VICTORIA HAD BEEN EXPECTING THE ARRIVAL
of her cousin Albert, and she was getting edgier by the minute. Louis XIV had never had to wait, yet here she was, monarch to an empire that put the Sun King’s France to shame, cooling her heels until some third-rank German princes arrived and she could go in for dinner. As all the courts of Europe knew, Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, dutifully chaperoned by his elder brother, Ernest, was coming to Windsor so that the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland could look him over and decide if she wanted to marry him. How dare that young man be late?

Victoria had in fact been waiting for her Coburg cousins for more than a week, and she was no longer accustomed to interference with her schedule. People nowadays waited for her, and she for her part made a point of being punctual. It was true that her initial invitation to the Coburg cousins had been less than gracious, and then, at the last minute, she had written asking them not to come until after the September meeting of her Privy Council. This request was a shade peremptory, perhaps, but more than reasonable, given the weight of her ceremonial and constitutional duties. However, the cousins had taken it badly. Albert replied in a huff that he and his brother could not see their way to leaving Coburg before October 3. Thereupon the princes crept north through Germany, lingered at the court of their uncle King Leopold in Brussels, and dallied again at the Belgian coast, waiting in vain for a calm day to embark. Victoria knew that for her
male Coburg relatives, Calais and Dover might just as well be called Scylla and Charybdis, but she had little sympathy with their dread of the sea. She herself was hardly ever sick.

On finally receiving word from Uncle Leopold that Albert and Ernest were taking the overnight packet boat from Ostend, Victoria at once dispatched equerries to meet the princes at the Tower of London and bring them to Windsor posthaste. Such considerate arrangements made their lateness all the more unaccountable. It was now after seven in the evening. The Coburg party still had not been spotted heading up to Windsor Castle, and the Queen was hungry.

Victoria was trying to lose weight. At 125 pounds, she was heavy for a tiny, small-boned young woman, and she was not feeling her best. Over a stressful summer, her complexion had lost its glow and an ugly sty broke out on her eye. Her dressers were kept busy letting out the new gowns sent over from Paris by Victoria’s elegant French aunt, Queen Louise of the Belgians. The royal doctors were recommending that Her Majesty limit lunch to a light broth, while Prime Minister Lord Melbourne urged the Queen to take more exercise.

Such advice made the Queen testy with maids and ministers alike. Always ready to get out for a good, brisk canter on one of her beloved horses, Victoria hated to walk. Pebbles kept getting into her shoes, she complained. As for food, her appetite reminded old men at court of her uncle King George IV, a legendary trencherman of vast girth. The Queen could put away three plates of soup before tucking into her regular menu of fish, fowl, and meat dishes, vegetables, fruits, pies, cakes, jellies, nuts, and ices. In 1836 when the Duc de Nemours, the tall, dainty second son of the French king Louis Philippe, came to Windsor with an eye to marrying the then Princess Victoria, he was shocked at the way she lit into her lamb chops. Nemours made a rapid exit, and Victoria did not regret him.