“I am so glad I came,” I said.
She became very sentimental talking of the past. She said, “You were such a dear little child—so warm, so loving, so innocent. I was delighted with my little sister.”
It was a sad visit because we both knew we should not meet again. So we talked of the past, which was the best way of not looking into the future.
“My Uncle George was very interested in you,” I reminded her. “You might have been Queen of England. I believe you could have been if Mama had wished it.”
“Mama wanted that role for you.”
“Yes,” I said. “She wanted to rule through me, whereas she would never have been able to had you been Uncle George's Queen.”
“Does it ever strike you, little sister, what hundreds of possibilities there are in our lives? If you did this…if you did that at a certain time the whole course of your life could be changed.”
I admitted that I had thought of it.
The days sped past; we drove out in the carriage now and then. Feodore was not strong enough to walk or ride. She said I must not spend the whole time with her.
“Dear sister,” I replied, “that is what I have come for. You have no idea what black looks I received from my Prime Minister when I told him I was coming. But I was determined to come all the same.”
“You are not happy with Mr. Gladstone. He is highly thought of here. They think he is a very strong man.”
“Strong he may be, but I find him most uncomfortable and difficult to talk to. How I wish people had had the sense not to send Mr. Disraeli away.”
Then I made her laugh with an imitation of Gladstone and his speaker's manner. “I always feel like the audience at a meeting when he holds forth. His wife is quite a pleasant creature. I often pity her for having such a husband.”
“Perhaps she is fond of him.”
“Oddly enough, she seems to be.”
“People seem different to different people.”
Dreamy days they were. Sometimes I would forget how ill she was. She insisted that I do a little sightseeing and she arranged for me to see something of the place. I was shown the haunts of some of the worst characters of both sexes in Europe; but what I remember most was an instrument of torture that was used by the Inquisition. It was called the Iron Virgin—a case lined with knives into that those who were called heretics were thrust, and, as they said, embraced by the Virgin.
I had never seen anything like it—and I shall never forget it.
The time came for me to say goodbye to Feodore, and I took leave of her with protestations of affection. We both knew it would be our last meeting and we tried to be brave about it. We embraced with great affection. We had always been such good friends. The only difference we had ever had had been at the time of that awful Schleswig-Holstein business when she had wanted my support for her daughter's husband and I had been unable to give it.
These beastly wars that made rifts in families!
But any rift between us was now healed, and with poignant tenderness we said our last farewells.
When I arrived back it was to find Mr. Gladstone in a tutorial mood. He came and talked, standing before me, rocking on his heels, expounding his views. He thought the Prince of Wales should be seen doing some work. It would please the people.
“What sort of work?” I asked.
Mr. Gladstone thought that, as his father had been interested in art and science, they might be fields to explore. “The Prince Consort had a knowledge of architecture,” he added.
“The Prince of Wales is not the Prince Consort,” I said. “If only he resembled his father more I think we should have less cause for concern.”
“Perhaps philanthropy would be good for him,” Mr. Gladstone went on, rocking on his heels and discussing philanthropy as though I had never heard of it. He really was the most exhausting man I had ever met.
Finally, I said, “I can see no point in planning for the Prince of Wales. I am told he is a good ambassador. Let him do what is asked of him, but the idea of forcing him into art, science, or philanthropy, I think is hopeless. He would never give his mind to any of these.”
Mr. Gladstone seemed to be in agreement, only he could not say so simply. And it was decided that for the moment we should leave Bertie alone.
DEATH! IT NEVER seems to strike singly. Poor Feodore died, as I knew she must. Napoleon passed on at Chichester. How sad that he who had such grandiose plans should have ended in exile.
One of the saddest deaths was that of the Countess of Beaconsfield. Poor Mr. Disraeli was heartbroken. He was such a feeling man. He wrote long letters to me and I wrote back expressing my sympathy. None knew better than I what the loss of one's partner meant. I could understand as few could; I sensed the depth of his feeling, his desolation.
He told me that she had been eighty-one. Well, it was a great age. He himself was sixty-eight. “I knew she had to go before me,” he wrote. “But that does not soften the blow.” Poor, poor Mr. Disraeli, my heart bled for him.
He wrote so beautifully, so poignantly. He brought back memories of my own loss. I wrote and told him of my feelings, how similar were our losses.
The death of his wife seemed to bring Mr. Disraeli closer to me.
But these were all expected deaths and there was one that was the most tragic of all.
How I suffered with the dearest of my daughters, my Alice. She had seven children, which I had always said was too many, but Alice loved them all dearly and did not mind so much as I had those months of pregnancy and the births. She accepted these pains and discomforts, thinking them worthwhile.
When I heard what had happened I could scarcely believe it. She had gone into the courtyard and her little Frederick William, who was about three years old, saw her and called out to her. He leaned out too far and fell onto the cobbles below.
A little later he died. Alice was heartbroken. How I suffered with her. I thank God that she had the others.
She had been dogged by ill luck since her marriage, poor girl. Louis had never been a great match—unlike Vicky's with the Crown Prince of Prussia—and Louis had lost a lot of what he had at the time of his marriage—thanks to that arch-villain, Bismarck.
Alice and I had not been quite so close since her marriage. There had been one or two upsets. I had remonstrated with her because she would nurse the children herself. A wet nurse would have been so much more suitable. The business was distasteful reducing one to the level of a cow, I thought. A very crude joke of Nature. But Alice insisted. She said she had saved the children from dysentery. Then I thought she had had too many too quickly, and it was quite clear that she resented my interference in this matter. She had more or less told me that it was entirely her affair.
Sometime before she had forgotten Vicky's birthday, which upset Vicky very much, and I had not invited Alice to England when Vicky was there because I feared a coldness between them.
I believed too, that she and Alfred had put their heads together and made plans to draw me out of my seclusion. So although I never forgot that in the past Alice was the one who really came first in my affections, that had changed a little since her marriage.
Alfred, like Bertie, seemed destined to cause trouble. He must marry, of course, but he did seem to make the most unsuitable choices. Sometime previously he had contemplated marriage to Frederika, daughter of my blind cousin George, who had been driven from his throne of Hanover.
I had firmly quashed that. As her father was blind I said there was a possibility of that malady descending through his daughter, and as Alfred was not very determined that happily passed over. Then there was an involvement with a commoner. I feared that I was going to have even more trouble with Alfred than I had had with Bertie.