The Widow of Windsor

Chapter XVII DEATH, A BETROTHAL AND THE RETURN OF DIZZY

The Queen had grave news from her stepsister Feodora, whose health was far from good.

‘Dearest sister,’ wrote Feodora, ‘how I long to see you. Sometimes I feel that there may not be many more opportunities.’

Such sentiments touched the Queen deeply.

Mr Gladstone thought it was not the time to leave the country. Royalty was enjoying a wave of popularity occasioned by the Prince’s recent illness and the action of Arthur O’Connor.

Both Queen and Prince could have been lost to the nation and since they had not been, they were appreciated. Now was the time to enhance that popularity.

How unsympathetically expressed! How unfeeling! Poor Mrs Gladstone, how could she cope with marriage to such a man! How different was dear Mr Disraeli, who was looking so forlorn these days! She knew the reason. His dear wife was growing more and more ill every day and he knew it.

He told the Queen of Mary Anne’s sufferings and how she tried to hide them from him. ‘I know, M’am, with your great heart, you will understand why I wish to spend so much time at Hughenden.’

‘I understand perfectly,’ replied the Queen. ‘Oh, I wish there was something I could do. Please tell her how much I think of her and of you.’

‘That will cheer her very much,’ said Mr Disraeli.

She could sympathise. Had she not suffered it all when her Dear Saint had been so ill. She knew how poor Mr Disraeli felt for his. And now her sister was ill, dying she feared, and Mr Gladstone thought that she should ignore the dear soul’s wishes and not make the journey to Baden Baden.

‘It would be an action quite contrary to your Majesty’s nature,’ said Mr Disraeli.

Oh, why were the people so foolish as to deny her the services of such a man as her Prime Minister and give her Mr Gladstone instead?

The Queen left for Baden Baden where she found Feodora wan and very ill.

They embraced tearfully and Feodora said: ‘I knew you’d come. I knew I shouldn’t ask in vain.’

The Queen tried to cheer her sister by talking of the past. ‘How beautiful you were!’ she said. ‘I was so proud of you for I knew I could never be so pretty.’

‘My dear modest little sister. You had a charm and dignity with which I could not compete. You always behaved like a little Queen.’

‘Do you remember Uncle King and how he cast his eyes on you and I am sure wanted to marry you?’

Feodora remembered.

‘I always loved Uncle King,’ went on Victoria. ‘He was my favourite uncle. But of course he was too old for you. That was why you were hustled out of his sight. Oh, I remember your wedding day and how Uncle George was going to give you away and didn’t come and Uncle William had to do it.’

‘How it brings it all back,’ said Feodora. ‘I could almost feel young again talking to you.’

They talked often, for Feodora was not able to go out much. Sometimes, though, they took a little carriage drive together but she tired easily and Victoria was very careful of her.

They took a tender farewell and the Queen was so pleased that she had made the visit. Particularly as later that year Feodora died.

At the same time the Queen heard that the Countess of Beaconsfield had passed away. Poor, poor Mr Disraeli! How sad and wan he looked. The Queen hastily sent her condolences.

‘But,’ she said to Brown, ‘he will have the satisfaction of knowing that he did everything for her.’

At Hughenden Disraeli brooded on his loss. Mary Anne had been eighty-one – a great age, but bright and devoted to the end. He himself was sixty-eight – an old man, but with Mary Anne he had felt young. He had always known what an emptiness her going would leave, but even so he had not believed it could be so great. There was nothing very much to life for him now, he supposed. Whatever ambitions were realised, there would be no one to share them with him. He knew that his triumphs had been doubled because he could come home and talk of them to Mary Anne over iced champagne and cold chicken; he knew that adversity would be greater without her to share it.

Life had certainly lost its savour.

He forced himself to sort out her papers and among them he found a letter addressed to himself.

She wanted them to be buried in the same grave, she wrote. She told him that he had been the perfect husband.

‘Do not live alone, dearest. Someone I earnestly hope you may find as attached to you as your own devoted Mary Anne.’

Never! thought Disraeli. Did she not know that for him though he searched the whole world, there could never be another like Mary Anne, whom he had made his Countess of Beaconsfield.

It was a tragic year. Shortly before the death of Feodora and the Countess of Beaconsfield there had been terrible news from Hesse Darmstadt. Alice had seven children. Really she had had too many far too quickly following on one another. The Queen was always deploring what women were expected to suffer in what she called the ‘shadow side’ of marriage. Her daughters did not seem to regard it as such and thought that the inconvenience and humiliation of birth was compensated for a thousand times by the children they produced. What Vicky had suffered over Wilhelm was amazing. She was constantly trying to find cures for his poor arm and the Queen believed that one of the reasons for his arrogance was that he was not disciplined enough.

And now poor Alice wrote in such distress. She had been in the courtyard of the Palace and little Frederick William, aged three, had suddenly appeared at the window. He had shouted to his mother and before Alice could call to the nurse he had leaned too far out of the window and fallen on to the cobbles.

‘My heart seemed to stop beating,’ wrote Alice. ‘Poor child! What a dreadful calamity!’

And now the child had died from his injuries.

How sad that one’s children had to grow out of their happy childhoods and live tragic lives of their own.

The Queen wrote long loving letters to Alice and was relieved that Dearest Albert was at least spared this terrible tragedy.

There was no end to family troubles. Bertie was growing plump and well; and as he lost his wan looks so he did his feelings of repentance. He was with his old companions again and there was scandal about the wild parties which were once more taking place at Sandringham. Stories reached her which she would rather not have heard. For instance, it was whispered that Bertie and Alfred were looking for a house where they could entertain their actress friends. They were too fond of the company of actresses. Bertie’s friends were men of questionable morals. In spite of that unsavoury Mordaunt affair Sir Frederick Johnstone was still constantly in his company; his greatest friend was Lord Hartington – Devonshire’s heir – known among his acquaintances as Harty-Tarty. Not without some importance in the political world, Harty-Tarty was a very unusual man; he pretended to be rather stupid, which might have been to call attention to the fact that he was really rather clever. One of the richest men in the country, he liked to go about looking like a tramp. Worst of all, of course, was his liaison with the Duchess of Manchester, a young German of great personality who had married the Duke of Manchester. Manchester was hardly a suitable husband for any young woman and Countess Louise von Alten, as the Duchess had been before her marriage, was not the woman to make the best of such a union. She had immediately selected Hartington as a more congenial companion; his political aptitude and his eccentricity appealed to her. They had been together for many years so that their affaire was almost a marriage; but of course it was rather shocking and the Queen had often warned Alix about being too friendly with the Duchess of Manchester. Poor Alix, as though she had any say in the matter!

Bertie had taken a long holiday convalescing after his illness but the better he grew the more he invited scandal. He was as at home in Paris as he was in London and he had a wide circle of friends there – aristocratic, elegant, extravagant and, the Queen feared, immoral.

There was no controlling Bertie – and Alfred was as bad without having half his brother’s charm and good nature.

Children were a trial; and not only children! Poor Napoleon had died at Chislehurst and many of his adherents had come over to attend his funeral. They had tried to work up enthusiasm for a protest against the new republic and Bertie behaved tactlessly in his good-hearted generous way by inviting several of the agitators to Sandringham, because he said they were friends of his. Mr Gladstone was most put out and very critical. The Prince’s sense of political decorum was sadly lacking, he said.

So life was becoming as difficult as it had been before Bertie’s typhoid attack. And now Alfred was set on marrying the Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna, the daughter of the Czar of Russia. The Queen did not like the idea of a match with Russia. She knew that Bertie and Alix were in favour of it because Alix’s sister Dagmar was married to the Czarevitch and Marie Alexandrovna was consequently connected to them by marriage.

It was all so distressing and what sort of a husband would Alfred make the young woman after the kind of life he had led? At least if Bertie was gay that had come mainly after marriage – so she believed. Of course there had been that disgraceful affair at the Curragh Camp.

Alfred, however, was set on the marriage, and negotiations with the Russians were by now well ahead so she supposed she had better see the girl. In accordance with her custom she would invite her to Balmoral that she might inspect her and make sure that she would be a suitable wife for Alfred.

The Czar’s reply was that he had no intention of sending his daughter on approval; and the Queen must meet them somewhere midway between Russia and England. The Queen was indignant. Was she – the Queen of England – expected to run after these Russians! Alice, who had been taken so tenderly into the maternal embrace since the death of her little son, wrote that as Alfred was so eager for the match, couldn’t Mama make the journey, say, to Cologne? That would be such a help and a kindly gesture in a way.

Really, her daughters could be very arrogant at times. How dared little Alice, who lived somewhat humbly, one must admit, in Hesse Darmstadt, attempt to dictate to the Queen of England. She wrote one of her vehement letters scattered with italics. Did the dear child think she should tell her mother, the Queen of England, what she should do. She would remind Alice that she had been twenty years longer on the throne than the Emperor of Russia, and was, she believed, the Doyenne of Sovereigns and a reigning Sovereign which the Empress at least was not.

Bertie invited the Czarevitch and his wife Dagmar to come to England with their children, who were quite charming, particularly the eldest boy, so that the Queen forgot her animosity to the Russians and found them quite pleasant, which paved the way to her acceptance of Marie Alexandrovna.

Soon she was telling herself that alliance with Russia was a good thing because it might have the excellent effect of increasing friendship between England and Russia.

She had a serious talk with Alfred.

‘I hope you will lead a different life now you are about to be married,’ she told him. ‘It would never do to be on such terms with fast women as I know you have been.’

Alfred was rather sullenly silent, refusing to discuss past misdemeanours, which boded little good for his marriage, for it seemed hardly likely that his attitude would have been such if he had decided to turn over a new leaf.

Mr Gladstone was being his difficult self. He had made one of the longest speeches of his career – it lasted three hours – on his Irish University Bill. Many Irish families would not allow their sons to attend the Protestant Dublin University and Gladstone wanted to form a new centre of learning for Catholics. The expense would have been great and as the Bill was not even supported entirely by Irish Catholics, Mr Gladstone found himself unable to carry it through. It was rejected by 287 votes to 284 and to the Queen’s great delight Gladstone had no alternative but to resign.

Gleefully she sent for Mr Disraeli, but he was too clever to take office in the circumstances; he knew full well that he must wait for that triumph. Gladstone must battle on. Disraeli wanted office after a general election when he felt sure he would be in with a big majority.

Bravely Gladstone continued in office. He reduced income tax from sixpence to threepence in the pound and held out hope that he would be able to abolish it altogether.

The Queen laughed. A bait, she said, to catch electors, which she was certain would fail.

She was right. At the general election the Conservative party was returned with a majority of 46.

With what joy did the Queen await the arrival of her new Prime Minister. He bowed over her hand; he kissed it lingeringly; tears filled the Queen’s eyes and she was happy to note they glinted in those of her new Prime Minister.

‘This is a very happy day,’ she told him.

‘M’am,’ he replied, ‘I feel alive again.’

It was a reference of course to the death of Mary Anne. He had come back to serve the Queen in the highest capacity and that was to be his great consolation. How well she understood!

‘Mr Disraeli,’ she said, ‘pray sit down.’ It was the great honour. Gladstone had always been obliged to stand, but that had not made him cut short his long addresses. Now she could savour the joy of pleasant human contact and no longer be treated as a public meeting; she would have that sweet sympathy and understanding which was so important to her.

‘This is a day, Mr Disraeli, that I always regard as a very special one in my life.’

Of course Mr Disraeli knew to what she referred. He would never be found wanting in such a point.

‘I remember the date well, M’am. His Royal Highness looking so splendid in his uniform, inspiring us all with hope for the future by his very nobility of countenance. And Your Majesty so young yet so dedicated.’

Of course Mr Disraeli would remember that it was the anniversary of her wedding day.

And how typical of him on such an occasion to shelve tiresome politics and talk of personal things – the last days of Mary Anne’s life and most of all her own sufferings, the virtues of her dear dead Saint and the noble manner in which she had continued to serve her country though in seclusion.

With Mr Disraeli she could view the future in a much happier frame of mind.