I was receiving dispatches from London. The papers were saying that I should abdicate and hand over the throne to the Prince of Wales. These articles were read in Scotland and I am glad to say that all the Scottish papers came out in my defense.
Dr. Jenner protected me magnificently. The sting in my arm was an abscess; it gave me a great deal of pain and I found it very difficult to rest at night. I was also suffering from gout and rheumatic pains. The gout prevented my walking and John Brown had to carry me from sofa to bed.
It was a most depressing time. Alfred came down to see me and immediately there was trouble between him and John Brown. Alfred gave me almost as much concern as Bertie. He had Bertie's tendency for flirtation—and worse. He was not so affable as Bertie and had a great sense of his own importance. He deliberately and pointedly ignored John Brown whom I liked to be treated not as a servant but as a friend; and when Alfred ordered some fiddlers to stop playing for the servants' reels, John Brown countermanded the order. Alfred was incensed but Brown was his imperturbable self.
Then there was another unpleasant scene that involved Vicky's daughter Charlotte who had come to stay with us at Balmoral.
Brown came into the room and I told Charlotte to say, How do you do? to him and shake hands.
Charlotte said, “How do you do? But I cannot shake hands with a servant. Mama says I must not.”
Vicky and I had a bitter disagreement about the behavior of her children. She insisted that Charlotte had been right to refuse to shake hands with a servant. I said Brown was no ordinary servant and servants were human in any case. “Indeed,” I added, “I have had more consideration from them quite often than from people in high places.”
Vicky was firm and did not mince her words. She thought Brown had too important a place in the household. Did I forget that people had talked of him … and of me?
It was all very unpleasant.
But there was this trouble with Alfred and the fiddlers.
Brown did apologize—I think because he knew the affair was worrying me. I thanked him and said, “Prince Alfred is now satisfied.” “Well, I am satisfied too,” was his typical comment, which even in that state of discomfort and harassment made me smile.
Who would have children? I thought. Their entrance into the world reduced their unfortunate mothers to the state of an animal; they might be interesting and amusing as Baby had been in her early days—and then they grew up, some of them to be a continual source of anxiety.
A pamphlet was brought to my notice. It was the work of a Liberal Member of Parliament, and it was headed: “What does she do with it?”
The article was referring to the £385,000 a year from the Civil List and other legacies which the writer estimated to be somewhere in the region of another £200,000 a year. The impertinence of people was shocking!
At the end of September I was better, but still limp and suffering from vague rheumatic pains all over my body. I had lost twenty-eight pounds in weight and I felt rather gratified about this. It would show the people that I was not malingering.
Just as I felt I was improving, I heard that a certain Sir Charles Dilke had spoken at Newcastle and made a really vicious attack on me. He had told his audience that I had failed completely in my duty. Since the death of the Prince Consort I had rarely been seen in public. What was the use of the monarchy? It should be abolished and a republic set up. It would be cheaper than a queen in any case.
It was indeed dangerous talk.
I thought that Dilke should be repudiated by his party.
While all this was happening a blow was struck from another direction. We were approaching the time of year which was always especially somber to me. December! It was on the fourteenth of that dismal month that Albert had passed away.
Then came this message; Bertie was ill and the doctors had diagnosed typhoid. Typhoid! The dreaded disease that had killed Albert. And now it had stricken Bertie!
I took the train to Sandringham. Brown was with me—more brusque than ever. The dear man knew how anxious I was and he was anxious too… for me.
Sandringham was full of people. I was glad Alice was there. She was often with us. Poor Louis had not been a great catch when she married him and owing to that villain Bismarck she was in very poor circumstances now.
She was a great comfort to Alexandra who was a sad tragic figure. She told me that Bertie had been to Lord Londesborough's place in Scarborough. Lord Chesterfield had also been a guest and was now ill, so it seemed there must have been something wrong with the drains at the Londesboroughs.
It was like living it all over again. The weather was cold as it had been then; there was snow at Sandringham. The news grew more and more alarming and I heard that one of the grooms who had accompanied Bertie to Scarborough was now ill with typhoid.
I went in to see Bertie. He did not look much like the jaunty Prince of Wales. His face was scarlet, his eyes over-bright; he was babbling something I could not understand.
I thought: Very soon it will be the fourteenth of December.
Now the whole nation was waiting for news of Bertie. From a profligate rake, a seducer, cowering behind royal privilege, he had now become a hero, the jaunty, jolly Prince was the People's Prince.
Strange how a virulent disease could transform a sinner into a saint!
He had the very best of doctors. My own Dr. Jenner was there, of course, and Alexandra had called in Doctors Gull, Clayton, and Lowe to help him.
Bertie was delirious. He was calling out the names of people… women some of them. He clearly thought he was the King of England, so that could only mean that I was dead! He was quite exuberant, laughing a rattling horrible kind of laughter. It was quite distressing to listen to him.
The doctors insisted that there be a screen between me and the sick bed. It was a horrible and infectious disease.
He recovered and then grew worse.
The papers reported nothing else but the state of “Good old Teddy's” health. He was known as Teddy for he was Edward not Albert to the people. They did not want an Albert for their King. He was to be another Edward—the Seventh.
There was an uncanny tension in the air. The papers reminded their readers that the Prince Consort had died on the fourteenth, and it seemed that everyone was waiting for the fourteenth to dawn.
There was a fatalistic notion that on that date Bertie was going to die. Special prayers were said all over the country, and Alexandra attended those in Sandringham Church. Alfred Austin, our poet laureate wrote the banal lines that were quoted against him for long after:
Flashed from his bed the electric message came
He is not better; he is just the same.
It was wonderful to have Alice with us. She moved about the sickroom with a quiet efficiency. She was a good nurse having had some practice during that terrible time which Bismarck had forced on Europe. Alexandra was indeed a devoted wife; and she loved Bertie in spite of the way he had treated her. I wondered whether I should have been so loving to a husband who had been notoriously unfaithful to me. I doubted it. But never in any circumstances could I imagine Albert unfaithful!
I remember vividly the thirteenth of December.
Bertie was worse.
We had heard that both Lord Chesterfield and the groom whose name was Blegge had died. Alexandra had made certain that Blegge had the best attention—so we all feared the worst.
The fourteenth was close. That would be the day.
Sir Henry Ponsonby said that he must recover, because it would be too much of a coincidence if he died on the same date as his father.
I clung to hope, but I greatly feared. I prayed incessantly that my son might be spared.