The people who had played the biggest part in my life and claimed my affection, have all been men: Uncle Leopold, Lord Melbourne, dear Albert, Lord Beaconsfield and John Brown… always men. That is surely significant. I think I am a woman who must be dominated by men. It put me in a somewhat incongruous position because I was higher than anyone else in the land: The Queen, the Sovereign, and they my subjects… every one of them …even Albert.
I have always been of a sentimental nature and perhaps always a little naive, and looking back I wondered whether that clouded my vision a little. Albert had molded me and in my mind the conception of him was the perfect being, the incomparable one. But was he perfect, and had our union been quite that most happy of marriages? Suddenly I was remembering the storms—which always seemed to be my fault, or at least that was how I was sure Albert saw them… and made me see them. But was it always so? Had Albert become the saint since his death—and with that our marriage become the perfect union?
These were disloyal thoughts.
Albert had been perfect. It was I—always I—who was at fault in those little skirmishes between us.
But they had existed. I had forgotten those over the years. I had been jealous because at times I had thought that he cared more for Vicky than for me. I had despised myself for that. But Albert had been jealous of Bertie, because he was the Prince of Wales and stood higher in the land than the Prince Consort could ever be.
Over the years came the sound of Bertie's crying when Albert had beaten him, and although he always said it hurt him more than it hurt Bertie, did it?
I am indeed old. I am getting foolish. How could I ever see Albert as anything but perfect?
If I did, all the years of mourning would lose their poignancy, their meaning.
No, I wanted to suppress those thoughts. Why did they come to me now that I am old and it is all over?
We have moved into a new century. What will it bring forth? I shall never know.
And now it is time for me to lay down my pen.