‘Quite a number of subjects are so, I fear, but often when one gives them an airing and looks at them from various angles one grows accustomed to them and familiarity breeds not always contempt as they say, but acceptance.’
‘I am very young as yet.’
‘You are the Queen.’
‘And therefore should not be obliged to do what I do not wish.’
‘Providing it is outside the interest of the State, of course.’
‘And this …’
‘Is a State matter. But let us look at it from another angle. You are unhappy in your ménage. You are an unmarried girl. You must have some sort of chaperone and who is reckoned to be better for that kind of post than a girl’s own mother? You would like to escape from that particular chaperone. How could you do this? By marriage. You have noticed that owing to this unfortunate affair …’
‘That nasty creature!’
‘Exactly, but the people see her as a wronged heroine and they love wronged heroines. Your role has shifted a little. How could we restore it? There is nothing to appeal to the people like romantic love.’
‘Could you so describe a State marriage?’
‘State marriages are always so described.’
‘But that is invariably quite false.’
‘But we are discussing how such marriages are described, not what they are. A young queen, a husband whom she loves … a royal wedding! These are the things which would drive that “nasty creature’s” martyrdom from their minds and it would rid you of your unwanted custodian.’
The Queen was thoughtful. ‘I see that you think it is my duty.’
‘Well, it is bound to come sooner or later.’
‘You know that Uncle Leopold is pressing for me to marry my cousin Albert. They are planning to send him over in the autumn.’
‘And your mother? What does she feel about this?’
‘I think she would welcome it too.’
‘I daresay,’ said Lord Melbourne significantly, ‘she would welcome her own nephew. They might become very friendly. Do you think cousins are very good things?’
‘Well, they might think the same in many ways …’
‘The Coburgs are not very popular abroad.’
‘Everyone speaks highly of Albert. When I saw him I thought him … admirable.’
‘And yet you do not seem very eager to see him again.’
‘So much has happened since we last met him. Then I was very young.’
‘And Coburgs …’ Lord Melbourne made a wry face and shook his head. ‘The Duchess is a Coburg.’
‘Oh, the men are different.’
‘Perhaps the English are not very fond of foreigners.’
‘You mean the people would like me to marry an Englishman … that would mean a commoner.’
‘Which might not be satisfactory,’ Lord Melbourne agreed.
‘Is it necessary for me to marry just yet? There is plenty of time. I like to have my own way as you know.’
‘I have gathered that,’ said Lord Melbourne, and they both laughed.
‘You know my temper.’
‘I know it well.’
‘It would not be good if a husband roused it, would it?’
‘It is not good when anyone rouses it.’
‘But really do you not think that we could wait for a year or two?’
‘Well, you have just said that you like your own way and I will say that if the Queen decides that she will wait three or four years then she will wait. But in the meantime perhaps it would be advisable for her to give consideration to the matter. It will take her mind from other things.’
She nodded smiling. He was thinking: Yes, from other things, from the possible defeat of Your Majesty’s Government from which it would inevitably follow that these encounters which mean so much to us both may well soon be at an end.
Lord Melbourne was very uneasy. It seemed almost certain that in a few weeks he would cease to be the Prime Minister. He was thinking of the Queen. For the last two years they had seen each other every day. He knew she regarded him as a necessary part of her life, but, highly experienced in the ways of the world as he was, he understood their relationship far better than she did. Dear child, he thought, how innocent she is!
He knew that he had taken the place in her affections of Leopold. Was it due to the fact that she had never known her father that the father figure was glorified in her mind as the ideal to which she must give loyalty unlimited, and enduring affection. Had Edward Duke of Kent lived, it seemed possible that there might have been little differences between him and his imperious daughter, just as they had arisen between her and her mother; but he had died when she was a baby; therefore she had always felt the need for a father. She was a Hanoverian, and therefore overflowing with sentiment.
She loved him and he loved her. But this was a love affair with a difference. When she had shown her jealousy of Lady Holland and the Duchess of Sutherland he had been a little alarmed. When she had asked him pointedly whether he thought this or that woman beautiful he recognised the signals. He knew exactly to what they pointed. Had I been forty years younger – her own age – it would have been different, he thought. What arrant nonsense! Had he been forty years younger the situation would never have occurred. It was only as Her Majesty’s Prime Minister that he had been admitted to her confidence and how could he have been in that position at the age of twenty? Pitt the younger was twenty-four. He was no Pitt and he was sure Victoria would have disliked that earnest young man. Pitt, who at seven had known he wanted to ‘speak in the House of Commons like Papa’, would never have taken time off from politics to study human nature which was exactly what William Lamb had done.
Oh yes indeed, their relationship was an extraordinary one which few people but himself would understand. He loved the Queen; he was moved by her. The tears which she so often noticed in his eyes were genuine enough. She was so young, so innocent, so unformed, and it had been his task to form her. Thus he had felt about Caroline … and what disaster that had brought her to. When he had found himself vis à-vis with the Queen he had seemed to grasp at a second chance, to mould a young female creature, to guide her, to introduce her to queen-ship with a similar mocking tolerance and tenderness to that with which he had tried – and failed – to make Caroline into a happy woman. If to love a woman meant that she was the centre of his life then undoubtedly he loved Victoria. Without her life would be blank, dull, meaningless. It was significant that now he did not so much care that his Government was going to be defeated but that he was going to lose his intimacy with the Queen.
And she, in her open innocent way, loved him too. She would be content to spend the days with him; she asked no other companion. When she had first met that cousin of hers, she had been enchanted by him, he had heard, for Albert was a pretty boy. Now she did not wish to discuss marriage or even think of marriage. Marriage was distasteful to her. Why? Because it would interfere with her friendship with Lord Melbourne.
‘It could not go on, William,’ said Melbourne sadly to himself. ‘It had to come to an end.’
Not yet though. Perhaps in three or four years’ time, when she married.
No doubt it would be better to tell her by letter. Yes, he felt that would be safer. He would break the news gently.
On that dismal April day, for any day must be dismal when news of this nature must be broken, he took up his pen and wrote:‘Lord Melbourne presents his humble duty to Your Majesty and begs to inform Your Majesty that the result of the Cabinet has been a decision to stand by the Bill as we have introduced it and not to accede to Sir Robert Peel’s proposal. The Bill is for suspending the functions of the Legislative Assembly of Jamaica and governing this island for five years by a Governor and Council. If Sir Robert Peel should persist in his proposal, and a majority of the House of Commons should concur with him, it would be such a mark of want of confidence as it will be impossible for Your Majesty’s Government to submit to.’