Albert had persuaded the Queen not to go to the ship. ‘It will be too heartrending,’ he said. ‘You will not be able to contain your grief.’
She knew that it was true. So Albert would take Bertie and Alfred with him and the rest of the party.
In the audience room the Duchess of Kent, in tears, with the rest of the family, was waiting. It was so hard to say goodbye. Mother and daughter clung together.
Albert said: ‘We must go now.’ And he whispered to the Queen: ‘I shall soon be back with you. It grieves me to see you like this.’
So to the sound of bands the party set off and the Queen ran to her room and throwing herself on the bed wept afresh.
It had started to snow. How dismal it was to stand at the window and look out on the falling flakes; the sky was heavy with more snow to come. But not as heavy as my heart, thought the Queen.
Alice brought little Beatrice to see her but even the baby could not comfort her mother.
‘Yesterday,’ cried the Queen, ‘Vicky was playing with her.’
In due course Albert came back with the boys, and told her that he had waited to see the ship sail.
They tried not to speak of Vicky but their thoughts were filled with her.
It was Albert who said: ‘We have our child. She is not lost to us. Why, soon she will be preparing to visit us. What a day that will be!’
‘Of course,’ said the Queen; and took Albert’s hand. ‘I can bear anything,’ she added, ‘while I have you.’ Albert went to his room and wrote to Vicky:
My heart was very full when yesterday you leaned your head on my breast and gave free vent to your tears. I am not of a demonstrative nature, and therefore you can hardly know how dear you have always been to me and what a void you have left behind in my heart; yet not in my heart, for there assuredly you will abide henceforth, as till now you have done, but in my daily life which is evermore reminding my heart of your absence.
Chapter XXVI
BERTIE’S PROGRESS
With Vicky married the pressing problem was the future of the Prince of Wales.
‘Ah,’ sighed Albert, ‘if only Bertie had half the brains of his sister!’
‘The trouble with Bertie is that he refuses to work,’ replied the Queen.
There were continual complaints from Mr Gibbs. Bertie would not ‘concentrate’. He seemed to ‘set up a resistance to work’. ‘Could do so much better,’ was the continual report.
Baron Stockmar, who was back in England, was consulted. People who would not work must be made to work, was his verdict, but it was not easy to whip a young man of almost seventeen into submission.
Perhaps it was time to change Bertie’s mode of education. He should no longer have a tutor but a Governor. A stern disciplinarian would be the best choice; someone who would stamp out the inherent frivolity of Bertie’s nature. A course of study should be planned for him which would give him no opportunity of wasting time.
Having mapped out a stringent course for the Prince to follow, Stockmar declared that he must return to Coburg. His health, which had always been one of his major concerns, and the care of which had given him great enjoyment, was failing fast and he felt he must go back to his family to be nursed.
When Bertie heard that the old man was going, he was wild with joy. His immediate reaction was to seize Alice and dance round the room with her.
‘You had better not let Papa see you do that,’ she warned.
‘What does it matter? Everything I do is wrong in Papa’s eyes, so this can’t be much worse than anything else.’
He would no longer have those cold eyes on him criticising everything he did, planning great working programmes (to complete which satisfactorily he would have to be a mathematician, theologian, historian and goodness knows what else), commenting on the way he did everything, discovering that he had a violent temper (what about Mama’s?) and that he was in every way an unsatisfactory person.
It was all really a waste of time because his parents knew that already. But lots of people did not think so. His sisters and brothers for instance; some of the members of the household too, and old Lord Palmerston had winked at him once when his mother was telling him how her eldest son had failed to do this or that; and he had heard the Prime Minister say that he was of the opinion that the Prince of Wales was a very intelligent young man.
But of course it was those in authority over him who counted and it was very pleasant to contemplate that the disagreeable old Baron was about to depart.
Bertie watched him go with great glee while his parents wept and embraced the old fellow and told him how they would miss him. He must write regularly, said Albert; which made Bertie groan inwardly for he realised that Stockmar could be a menace from afar. Still he could do less harm in Coburg than in Buckingham Palace and Bertie had learned to be grateful for small mercies.
His seventeenth birthday arrived. Surely a day for celebrations. But not for him, it seemed; there on the table was a long account of the changes which would be taking place in his life. Mr Gibbs was going and Colonel Bruce was replacing him. The Colonel was known as a martinet and Bertie would have to report to him before he even left the palace; it would be like being under military command without any of the fun of being in the Army.
The long list of requirements ended with the words: ‘Life is composed of duties. You will have to be taught what you may and may not do.’
Bertie was experienced enough to see that he was jumping out of an irritatingly restricting frying-pan into fire which was planned to envelope him like a straitjacket.
As if they had not enough to worry them without Bertie’s intransigence there was trouble as ever at home and abroad. When Orsini had attempted to assassinate the French Emperor and Empress and it was discovered that the grenades had been manufactured and the plot hatched in England, a great wave of hostility swept across France towards their new ally. To placate them Palmerston introduced a bill making it a felony to conspire to murder and on this the government was defeated and Lord Derby, with his henchman Mr Disraeli, returned to office. Orsini was executed in Paris but one of his confederates, tried in London, was acquitted. An uneasy situation prevailed between England and France which was so disappointing after the great friendship the Queen had felt for the charming little Emperor and his beautiful wife.
The Derby Ministry was of short duration. When they tried to introduce an amendment to the Reform Bill they were defeated. A new difficulty presented itself when both Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston were contending for the premiership and the Queen had no alternative but to send for Lord Granville. Fortunately he was unable to form a ministry and very soon Lord Palmerston, having suceeded in doing so, was back at the helm.
‘It is comforting to know that we have a strong man at the head of affairs,’ said the Queen.
But there was no real comfort.
Almost immediately after her marriage Vicky had become pregnant.
In the midst of all this political activity the Queen’s mind was constantly with her daughter. No sooner had she discovered that she was pregnant than she was writing long letters of advice. She commiserated with Vicky, saying that now that Vicky had actually experienced marriage they could talk frankly as two women. Vicky was very quick to experience the ‘shadow side’ of the relationship between the sexes. It was wonderful to have children, and although they were quite ugly at birth they quickly grew charming (she must tell Vicky the latest sayings of Baby Beatrice who was a great comfort to them just now) but at the actual birth human dignity was lost and women were more like cows or dogs and their poor nature became quite animal.