The Widow of Windsor

Chapter XXIX THE END OF AN ERA

This was the dawn of a new century – the twentieth. She would not have believed she could have lived to see the end of the 1800s. More than eighty years had passed since she had been born in Kensington Palace and there had been that momentous christening in the cupola room when Uncle King had refused to allow her to be called Elizabeth or Georgiana. ‘Victoria,’ he had said. And they had been angry because Victoria was not a Queen’s name. So they had said then; they could not have said that now, for for there had never been a more queenly name and she had made it so.

How tired she was and old now, how old! So stiff with the rheumatic pains that she could not move without her stick and often had to be wheeled about the Palace. She smiled to think of her Diamond Jubilee when she had been wheeled onto the balcony because the loyal crowds would not be satisfied without a glimpse of her.

‘Go it, old Girl!’ someone had shouted. So blunt, yet so loving. It reminded her of faithful John Brown.

Now she was the head of a large family. She had lost three children – Alice, Leopold and so recently Alfred. Dear Vicky she feared was very ill and some of the doctors had hinted at the dreaded cancer, in this instance of the spine. Such sorrow for a mother of over eighty to have to endure! There were so many grandchildren all with their own problems, all with their own complicated lives to be lived.

Dear Mary of Teck, May’s mother, had died soon after the Jubilee, a sad blow; she had always loved big Mary with her rather careless attitude to life and her kind heart. Poor Alix felt her loss deeply for they had always been such friends and now the marriage of George and May had made that bond even closer.

And the next year had seen the passing of Mr Gladstone. It was about time, of course, for he was a very old man.

‘I cannot say that I think he was a great Englishman,’ she had said. ‘Clever he was, talented, but he had no notion of the honour and prestige of the Empire. I shall never forget that he gave up the Transvaal and the way in which he abandoned that great patriot General Gordon at Khartoum. He started a kind of class war. I fear he did a great deal of harm. I am always sorry for poor Mrs Gladstone!’

All the same she was rather glad she had shaken hands with him just before his life ended. It was the first time he had ever received such a favour from her.

Then of course there had been that terrible conflict with the Jameson Raid when Wilhelm had behaved so disgracefully and sent a telegram to President Kruger congratulating him on keeping his independence in spite of the British Imperialists. How angry they had been with Wilhelm whose hatred of the British Empire and in particular of Bertie was intense. Had she felt stronger she would have liked to summon this recalcitrant grandson to tell him how his arrogance displeased her and how hurt and angry his beloved dead sainted Grandpapa Prince Albert would have been had he been alive, and that she could be almost glad that he was not since thus he was spared the grief he would have been made to suffer by such an ungrateful grandson. The Jameson Raid was one of the causes she was sure of that terrible Boer War when everything seemed to go against them and in favour of those horrid, cruel, over-bearing Boers. It was said that the whole world was on their side; and a dreadful thing had happened to Bertie and Alix who after visiting Alix’s father were in the train at Brussels when a mad youth tried to shoot them. It was true the crowd on the platform would have torn the boy to pieces had not Bertie stepped out of the train and begged them not to harm him. A court of law was where he should be taken, said Bertie; and such was his presence and his way with the people that although they were foreigners and he a representative of the most hated country in the world (at that time) they obeyed him. Of course the boy turned out to be an anarchist and in the service of the Boer supporters, but it was a horrible incident and did show how very unpopular Britain had grown.

The fatal 14th of December had come and she had visited the mausoleum at Frogmore and thought as she always did on the occasion of her wedding day and in contrast that dreadful 14th when she had sat at his bedside and been too stunned to realise the truth.

Then she travelled down to Osborne, the house he had loved and designed; and she thought of his pride when they had gone there for the first time and he had shown her how his ideas had been carried out; and how the whole household had gathered together and he had sung the German hymn about blessing the house.

She was not ill, but tired. Her rheumatism had grown worse and she could scarcely see to read – which was most trying of all. She had had at last to agree to wear spectacles for reading, but they were tiresome and not much good.

On the 15th of January she took a drive. She felt happier about the situation in South Africa where Lord Roberts had done so well and Lord Kitchener was proving so effective; but when she returned from her drive she felt so weak that she decided to go to bed.

Her doctors thought that the family should be sent for; they came, the sons, the daughters, the grandchildren. Bertie was in tears; he could not believe that his mother, who had dominated his life, was about to die. There had been so many differences between them but the family bond had grown strong with the years. They had at last learned to understand each other.

Wilhelm arrived, even his arrogance subdued; he waited humbly in the corridors hoping for a chance of seeing his grandmother before she died.

In the streets bulletins were issued; a solemn hush had fallen over everything.

‘The Queen is dying,’ said the people.

It could not be; she was the great figure-head, the symbol. The Queen had always been on the throne as long as they could remember. More than sixty years she had reigned over them. She could not be going now.

She lay in her bed. She could not remember exactly where she was. Sometimes she thought she was walking in the gardens of Kensington Palace with Lehzen, a bright, plump little girl who had just discovered that she might one day be Queen. ‘I will be good,’ she had said. Good Queen Victoria! ‘Victoria is not a Queen’s name’ her mother had said. It was now. The great Queen’s name – as great as Elizabeth. But that Queen had not always been good. Perhaps Victoria had not been but she had always tried to be.

She thought of storms with Mama whom she had later learned to love and understand; and Albert, dearest beloved Albert, who had guided her and made her what she was before he left her desolate. She hoped no one would mourn her as long and bitterly as she had mourned Albert.

All the figures of the past filed slowly through her mind – gay, solemn, good and bad. Mama, Lehzen, dear Lord Melbourne, Flora Hastings (Oh, the nightmares that woman had given her!), Sir Robert Peel, Disraeli, Mr Gladstone, honest John Brown, Annie MacDonald so recently lost, Alice, Leopold, Alfred, those babies whom she had nursed and her darling Albert whom she had never ceased to mourn.

He would be waiting for her. She knew he would. He would take her hand as he had on their wedding day and he would smile at her. ‘Gutes Frauchen,’ he would say.

‘It is the end,’ whispered Bertie and he covered his face with his hands and wept.

Her favourite doctor, Dr Reid, supported her on one side. Wilhelm on the other.

Her children and her grandchildren waited to be summoned to say farewell, but she was past knowing them. She lay half conscious, her eyes glazed, far far away in the past, waiting to step into the future.

Slowly life left her. A faint smile touched her lips; she was calm and her face seemed suddenly to grow young again.

At half past six in the evening she died.

A pall had settled over the nation. ‘The Queen is dead,’ the cry went up. The nation had suffered a great disaster. The indomitable little figure, the great Queen and Empress, was dead; and with her, it was believed, she had taken something of great value.

All had been well while she remained at the helm – the legendary figure who could subdue the country’s enemies, who could castigate the tiresome Russians, who could call her mischief-making German grandson to order, who could reduce Bertie to the state of a naughty boy in the nursery. But now the great Queen was no more.

‘We have lost our beloved Mother,’ was the cry. ‘The Queen is dead. Nothing will ever be the same again.’