She herself agreed to this. Something must be done. General Booth and his Salvation Army were making people aware of conditions in the poor districts like those of St Giles’.
She read The Bitter Cry of Outcast London and wept.
She discussed it with the Prime Minister and she wondered why men who were so concerned with religion and the vote seemed to think that the distressing housing conditions and starvation of the poor was of less moment. She even felt a little drawn towards Sir Charles Dilke.
‘I begin now,’ she said, ‘to understand his concern for poor people.’
There was worse to follow. General Gordon had reached Khartoum where he was besieged by the Mahdi and his men.
‘He must be relieved at once,’ insisted the Queen.
Mr Gladstone’s Ministry was as usual dilatory; his government, he said, had no desire to be involved in a war in Egypt.
The people were with the Queen and they deplored the government’s neglect of those men fighting the Empire’s battles far away. Then before the relief arrived General Gordon was killed at the storming of Khartoum; she was furious with her government and at the same time very sad. She could not honour his family enough and fell back to her usual method of showing respect by having a bust made and placing it in Windsor Castle.
But in spite of the fact that relieving forces eventually arrived the Sudanese expedition was far from an unqualified success and she brooded on the fact that had Lord Beaconsfield been in command it would have been very different.
Of all her children the Queen had perhaps relied most on Beatrice since Albert’s death. Beatrice had then been ‘Baby’ and her quaint doings and sayings had diverted the Queen in her misery. As the youngest, Beatrice – still sometimes known as Baby – had been more constantly with her mother than any of the others. She was now the only one left; she was twenty-seven and the Queen had told herself that Beatrice would never marry. For one thing she was very shy; she disliked going to dinner-parties unless she was certain who her neighbours at the table would be and they were old friends. So naturally the Queen had imagined that she would always have Beatrice with her.
Her dismay was great when Beatrice came to her and said: ‘Mama, I have fallen in love and want to get married.’
The Queen almost fell off her chair. ‘In love!’ she said. ‘What nonsense, dearest child. How could you fall in love?’
‘It was not very difficult, Mama, and I am sure you will agree with me, when you know it is Henry.’
‘Henry. What Henry is this?’
‘Prince Henry of Battenberg.’
‘It’s quite impossible.’
‘Oh no, Mama, quite possible … if you give your consent.’
‘I should never allow you to be so foolish. My dearest child, you were so desolate when darling Leopold died. And this … Henry came along and you imagined you wished to marry him. Everything will settle down in time. Don’t worry.’
Poor Beatrice! Gone were the days of childhood when her quaintness had made it permissible to disagree with Mama.
She grew pale, wan and listless. She was obedient, but her conversation was dull and confined to ‘Yes, Mama’ and ‘No, Mama’ which was quite boring.
‘What is the matter with you, child?’ demanded the Queen. ‘And don’t talk to me about this foolish matter of Henry of Battenberg.’
‘Then there is nothing to be said, Mama,’ replied Beatrice.
Of course the Queen could not stand by and see poor Baby growing pale and thin. She supposed she would have to give way.
At length she said, ‘I had better see this Henry of Battenberg.’
He came; he was charming; he was devoted to Beatrice and to see the change in that dear child made the Queen weep.
Henry said he did understand her reluctance to part with such a treasure and they would reside in England so that their marriage would make little difference to the Queen.
She embraced them both and wished them well; and referred to herself in a letter to Vicky as ‘Poor shattered me.’
Of course it was not a grand marriage and Vicky would not approve of that; but the Queen wondered whether Vicky’s, which had been grand, had brought her much happiness. Beatrice was radiant; and the Queen reproached herself for ever trying to keep such joy from her dearest child.
She embraced her warmly but when Prince Henry and his new wife left for their honeymoon she shivered a little. She hoped poor Beatrice would not suffer too much from the ‘shadow side’ of marriage.
A great scandal had broken on London. A Mr Donald Crawford M.P. was suing for divorce and whom should he name as co-respondent but Sir Charles Dilke.
The Queen was very interested when she heard. ‘Oh, these radicals!’ she said to Beatrice. ‘They are so concerned for the rights of this and that, so anxious to look into the purses of other people, when all the time they themselves are not beyond reproach.’
But almost immediately she was anxious on account of Bertie. He did seem to have a habit of being mixed up in public scandals. She would never forget that dreadful Mordaunt case; and then there was that horrible Aylesford affair. And he was a friend of Sir Charles Dilke.
Happily Bertie was not involved in this one; and it was a great relief that he was not for it was the most shocking of them all.
The Dilke case was the great cause célèbre of the 1880s. It seemed that everyone from the Queen to her humblest subject was following the details as they emerged. The situation was one which could not fail to appeal. The dignified celebrated politician caught up in a very sordid affair and shown in the worst possible light. It appeared that Mr Crawford had received an anonymous letter advising him to ‘Beware of the Member for Chelsea!’ – the Member for Chelsea being Sir Charles Dilke. He had been inclined to think that this was the work of a practical joker until he received a second unsigned letter:
‘The first person who ruined your wife was Sir Charles Dilke. She has passed nights in his house and is well known to his servants.’
Such a letter could not be ignored and when Crawford confronted his wife with it she said that it was her mother who had sent it.
The Crawfords and Dilkes were connected by marriage and had been on visiting terms for years so the fact that Sir Charles called now and then at the Crawford house was not a matter to arouse comment. Mrs Crawford, however, was a somewhat frivolous woman and she had been rather friendly with a Captain Forster of whom her husband had been mildly jealous. If the Captain had been accused of being her lover he would not have been surprised, but this accusation levelled at Sir Charles seemed to him incongruous and when his wife admitted that Sir Charles had in fact been her lover, he was astounded.
Furious, he began divorce proceedings and it was then that incredible codes of conduct were revealed which put Sir Charles in the worst possible light.
There were suggestions that Mrs Crawford’s mother had been Sir Charles’s mistress; and Mrs Crawford claimed that when Dilke had taken her to a house in Tottenham Court Road, a young woman, who had once been a servant in Dilke’s house, joined in their sexual activities.
Sir Charles was not called to the witness box but since Mrs Crawford had confessed, her husband obtained his divorce. However, the case against Sir Charles was dismissed because it could not be proved. The mysterious servant who had joined the Tottenham Court Road frolics could not be found, and there was only Mrs Crawford’s word to go on; but the fact that the divorce had been granted meant that Dilke, although not proved guilty because no one had been found to come forward to testify against him, was not proved innocent.