The Widow of Windsor Read online

  ‘It was all for my own good,’ Bertie told himself. It was the best he could think of.

  The choir were singing the opening sentences of the burial service. Outside in the Long Walk minute guns were firing.

  The ceremony progressed.

  At last they had placed the coffin at the entrance of the royal vault where it would remain until the mausoleum at Frogmore was ready to receive it. The funeral of the Prince Consort was over.

  Chapter II

  BERTIE MUST MARRY

  The Queen had decided that Albert’s wishes should be carried out as though he were still with them; his rooms naturally should remain as though he occupied them; his clothes should be laid out every evening; she was determined to keep his memory fresh.

  His greatest concern before he had died had been for the welfare of his son and he had thought that a visit to the Holy Land might have a sobering effect on Bertie. The Queen had agreed. Did she not agree wholeheartedly with all Albert’s plans for the children? And never before, in spite of his very difficult childhood, had Bertie shown such need for guidance and care as he did at this time.

  Alice was with her constantly. What a dear devoted daughter! So pretty too. Albert had said she was the beauty of the family. Her marriage should take place as arranged, which would be later in the year, though what a travesty it would be without her father’s presence!

  Alice was sympathetic and gentle – far more so than Vicky had ever been; but Vicky was now a woman of the world; and it was only to Vicky, of all her children, to whom she could talk of Bertie’s deficiencies. Vicky, alas, was far away in Berlin, with problems of her own; but she did not shirk her duty and wrote constantly to her sorrowful mother. Perhaps Vicky more than any understood her grief and shared it to some extent, for Vicky had loved her father more than any of the others, as he had her. But Vicky now had her Fritz, who was kind and gentle, and her children Wilhelm and Charlotte. Darling little Wilhelm with his poor sad arm! His shoulder had been dislocated at his birth and he would carry that deformity through life, she feared. Not that it affected the dear child, who was bright and clever and, as Vicky said, so full of his own importance. Vicky also had to contend with a certain amount of hostility at the German Court. She was the foreigner there just as her precious father had been when he came to England. How many times had the Queen been hurt and angered by the constant references to him in the Press as ‘The German’. So Vicky was her confidante at this time and to her she wrote of her distress over Bertie.

  Vicky replied that while she was horrified by Bertie’s misdemeanour, she believed that he should not be judged too harshly. He would know that dearest Papa had died and that one of the last things he had done was to visit him, his eldest son, to remonstrate with him over his disgraceful behaviour in Ireland. Bertie must feel heartbroken because of this.

  Heartbroken! thought the Queen. Bertie’s feelings were too facile for heartbreak. He was not like the rest of the family. He was far more inclined to enjoy life than take it seriously.

  Vicky believed that Bertie should continue with the tour of the Holy Land which Papa had mapped out for him, and while he was away the Queen would not be tormented by thoughts of his wicked conduct and travel could have a good influence on Bertie. One thing that had occurred to Vicky was that Bertie needed to be married.

  Vicky spoke from the experience of her married status. Bertie, she said, was clearly not capable of great restraint and it might well be that if he remained unmarried there would be other escapades. The influence of a good wife could work miracles; and Mama would remember that dearest Papa had been considering this before he died.

  He had, it was true. He had compiled a list of suitable princesses – not that there were many, for they must be worthy and Protestant, and preferably German of course. He had so relied on Vicky’s judgement that he had asked her to keep her eyes open for a suitable bride for Bertie; and Vicky, good daughter that she was, had taken a journey through Europe visiting different capitals and had carried out her father’s instructions. None of the princesses was entirely suitable for Bertie who would, in Vicky’s opinion, need a beautiful and charming wife if he were going to be kept on a straight moral course.

  Did Mama remember Countess Walburga von Hohenthal – but of course Mama remembered dear Wally. She was Vicky’s very favourite lady-in-waiting because she was so gay and witty, fun to be with, and more English than anyone at the Prussian Court. As a matter of fact she had married Augustus Paget, the Minister to Denmark, and was now English by marriage. When she had gone to Denmark to marry him she had seen the family of Prince Christian, and Alexandra, his eldest daughter, was the most delightful Princess Wally had ever seen. Wally had thought at once what a good wife Alexandra would be for Bertie.

  And, emphasised Vicky, it was imperative to get Bertie married.

  So, thought the Queen, first a visit to the Holy Land and then marriage for Bertie.

  Alice was peeping round the door, holding Baby Beatrice by the hand.

  Four-year-old Beatrice was the only one who could comfort the Queen – although she would not admit to being comforted at all, which seemed sacrilege to Albert’s memory – but Alice had seen her eyes light up at the sight of the child.

  Beatrice ran forward and climbed on to her mother’s lap.

  ‘Oh, Mama,’ she cried, ‘you are still wearing your sad sad cap.’

  ‘Yes, my love,’ said the Queen.

  ‘Take it off, Mama,’ said Beatrice.

  ‘Mama cannot do that.’

  ‘But it is a sad cap.’

  ‘Mama is sad.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Papa has gone away.’

  ‘Perhaps he’ll come back.’

  The Queen’s eyes filled with tears.

  ‘He will if Baby wants him to,’ said Beatrice confidently.

  ‘Oh, my love, and Baby wants her dear papa.’

  Beatrice was thoughtful. ‘Baby wants Mama to take off her sad cap,’ she announced.

  ‘Mama, would you like me to take her away?’ asked Alice.

  But the Queen shook her head.

  * * *

  Bertie was delighted to leave England and escape the sombre atmosphere which the Queen created about her. How could he endure the reproachful looks which came his way?

  Why couldn’t his mother understand that he had only acted as thousands of young men did; in fact what he had done was taken as a matter of course by worldly people. A young man had to sow his wild oats; and how ever much he was restrained was certain sooner or later to find a way of breaking out.

  He was going to be married fairly soon and he was not displeased by the idea. They were considering Alexandra of Denmark and if she passed the stringent test his mother would insist on, it was almost certain that she would be his bride.

  She was unusually pretty. Vicky had arranged a meeting. Trust Vicky. She had always liked to command him and in the days of their childhood had had plenty of opportunities of doing so. He might have been Prince of Wales but Vicky had been Queen of the Nursery. She had always been so much brighter and cleverer than he was; and because she was his father’s favourite had been his mother’s also. He thought Alice much more charming than Vicky really, and clever too, but not in such a flamboyant way. Alice was always reading – he himself hardly ever read anything unless he was forced to; she knew quite a bit about painting and architecture, and what Bertie thought of as ‘things like that’; but because she was quiet and didn’t call attention to herself they had tended to overlook her type of cleverness.

  Now Vicky was planning and plotting with Mama and the two of them wrote at great length to each other. Mama had always been a great letter writer. There was her Journal too; she was happiest now with a pen in her hands.

  So matchmaking Vicky had arranged that he and Alexandra should meet ‘by accident’. Last September she had invited him to visit her. What a contrived meeting!

  Vicky had said he must see some of the German cathe
drals which were very grand.

  ‘Not too many,’ he had wailed. ‘In fact none at all.’

  ‘Bertie, don’t be so unintellectual,’ Vicky had scolded. ‘In any case there is one you simply must see. Speier. It’s magnificent.’

  Bertie grumbled but he could see by Vicky’s conspiratorial air that something was afoot, so in spite of the fact that he was heartily sick of being led this way and that and was, as he had confided to some of the few friends he had managed to know at Cambridge, ‘in a straitjacket’, he decided that there might be something more in this visit to Speier Cathedral than he had at first imagined.

  He was right. There was. They drove out to Speier; and as Vicky led her brother in by the south door and was pointing out the intricate elegance of the moulding, at the north door the Princess of Denmark entered with two girls.

  They greeted each other with just too great a show of surprise so that Bertie knew clever Vicky had arranged this; one of the girls was Princess Dagmar and the other Princess Alexandra. There was no doubt about it, they were two extremely pretty girls, which was surprising, for the beauty of princesses was often exaggerated, disastrously so from the point of view of the princes who had no choice but to marry them.

  Alexandra? Yes, he could be quite interested in her; for what was almost as pleasant as her good looks was a certain sense of fun which to fun-starved Bertie was a great asset indeed.

  It was quite clear that they took an immediate liking to each other, which would most certainly be reported back home by the vigilant Vicky.

  So, in the not far distant future, marriage; and in the meantime, the Holy Land.

  Of course he could not expect too much pleasure. He would have to be very solemn – or try to be. But his recent visit to Canada and America had given him a taste for travel and meeting people. It was something he was rather good at. He had an air of jollity which the people seemed to like as certainly as his parents had disliked it. He had what he had heard called ‘the royal gift’. He could remember people whom he had met some time before, and could usually call them by their right names too. Although in his parents’ presence he had been tongue-tied and inclined to stammer, when he was meeting the people he was affable and voluble. The fact was though Bertie in private family life might be a dismal failure, in public life he was a success, and he could not help being thoroughly delighted that this was so. Now with his father it had been the opposite. The saintly Albert, revered by the Queen and the master of his family, had been definitely disliked by the people. Bertie would not have been human if he had not been gratified on those occasions when they had appeared together to notice how the people cheered him, the Prince of Wales, and ignored his father – and sometimes made hostile comment – wickedly gratifying but unavoidably so.

  He had to be accompanied by a set of guardians naturally, and, before his death, his father had arranged that the Rev. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley should be of the party. Therefore nothing would satisfy the Queen than that this gentleman should be included.

  The Prince groaned. The Rev. Arthur would no doubt be puritanical, otherwise his father would not have chosen him. Also in the party would be General Bruce, that martinet who had had charge of him for some time, Major Teesdale, and Captain Keppel. It was not a large party considering the way royalty usually travelled and that was hopeful.

  The journey was exciting. The Rev. Arthur turned out to be a warm and sympathetic character, and General Bruce was no longer the stern governor he had once been.

  After all, thought Bertie, I am almost of age. The Queen was always talking of lying beside his father in the mausoleum which was being erected at Frogmore and when she did, Bertie would be King of England, so naturally those about him must remember this.

  How pleasant to visit the Pyramids, to stand close to the Sphinx, to ride on camels over the sand and later to journey on to Palestine.

  The Rev. Arthur said that it was an important occasion because it was the first time since the fourteenth century that an English heir to the throne had visited Jerusalem. Here, Richard Coeur de Lion and Edward I had come to fight their crusades.

  ‘Most inspiring,’ said Bertie; he would tell the Queen about it on his return.

  He felt quite drawn towards Stanley, perhaps because he had turned out so much better than he had expected, and when news reached them that Stanley’s mother had died Bertie was very sympathetic. His easy manner of getting along with people was a great comfort to his new friend and Stanley was deeply touched when Bertie passed on to him a copy of East Lynne by Mrs Henry Wood which Bertie thought so entertaining that it would take his mind from his trouble. It was scarcely the type of literature with which Dr Stanley was in the habit of passing his leisure hours, but he appreciated the thought behind the offer.

  They spent Easter Sunday at Lake Tiberius and from there journeyed to Damascus, Beirut, Tripoli, Constantinople and Athens. It was exciting travelling through these exotic places; and the more he travelled the more apparent became the Prince’s flair for behaving in a manner which was acceptable to the people. He had a natural charm; the stammering Bertie whom his parents had deplored had become the garrulous, charming young man, invariably affable and with a very natural interest in beautiful women. Bertie began to realise that this failure to please his parents had in fact been his complete difference from his father.

  He thought affectionately of the family at home – the sisters and brothers – and whenever he could find exotic articles, the sort of things they wouldn’t have seen before, he bought them to take back to them. Vicky was interested in flowers; these he collected for her and dried them so that she would have some sort of idea of the kind of flowers that grew in far-off places.

  During the tour poor General Bruce fell ill and it soon became clear that he was suffering from a fever which he had contracted in some foreign place.

  The Queen was most concerned because Albert had chosen him to be Bertie’s mentor and therefore she regarded him as the best possible choice for the role.

  Bertie was less concerned; he remembered what life had been like under General Bruce, not always very pleasant, and although the General had changed his attitude towards him a little as he was growing older, Bertie had very much resented the restraint he had put on him.

  * * *

  He was finding that little had changed while he had been away. His mother was as mournful as ever. He had hoped that a lapse of time would have lessened her grief. But not so; it was as fresh as ever and her presence in her black mourning garment and widow’s cap made gaiety impossible.

  The children were delighted with the gifts he had brought. They shrieked with delight as they dressed up in the strange garments he had brought for them. Alice smiled quietly and when their mirth grew too noisy she reproved them gently.

  ‘Don’t let Mama hear you laughing so much.’

  So it was a rather grim home-coming.

  Alice was a little unhappy because Prince Louis could not provide her with a home just at first. There was some wrangling going on about finding a palace for the pair which, considering he was heir to the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, was, said the Queen, remarkable. However, it did mean that Alice would not have to leave her immediately; but she would be a wife and that would change her a little. With a husband beside her she would have less time to devote to her stricken Mama.

  ‘Lenchen will do all for you that I have done,’ Alice consoled her. ‘She is growing up fast.’

  ‘Dear child! She tries hard. But there is no consolation for me, Alice. It lifts my spirits a little, though, to realise what satisfaction it must be to you to know how much dear Papa enjoyed your reading to him only a little while before he was taken from us. Do you remember the day when nothing would please him … not even Sir Walter Scott?’

  Oh dear, thought Alice, she will go on talking about scenes from the past and work herself into such a state of misery that she will be ill.

  ‘I remember, Mama,’ she said; and began to talk about
the possibility of Bertie’s marrying.

  But it was so easy for the Queen to lead the conversation back to the happy days of her married life and the terrible loss and the certain knowledge that there could never again be any joy in her life.

  * * *

  Then there was more sorrow when General Bruce died.

  The Queen felt this to be a terrible blow.

  ‘Poor Bertie. What will he do now? Where will he turn? He has lost the dearest of fathers and now that good and honest man who was chosen to care for him and advise him has gone. He has sacrificed himself for Bertie for if he had not accompanied him on his travels he would never have caught that dreadful fever. Another death! Another valued life gone!’

  ‘Now,’ she confided to Alice, ‘there will be the task of finding a new governor for Bertie. Oh, if your dear father were here how easy it would be. What a burden he took from my poor shoulders. Every day I realise more and more the tragic depth of my loss.’

  * * *

  Alice’s wedding day was approaching.

  ‘Is it a funeral or a wedding?’ the Prince of Wales asked his favourite sister.

  ‘Poor Mama,’ said Alice. ‘She cannot forget Papa’s death even on my wedding day.’

  ‘The people won’t like it … a private wedding with no processions and no rejoicing!’

  ‘Bertie, how could we have rejoiced so soon after dearest Papa’s death?’

  Bertie smiled at her affectionately. Poor Alice! She had borne the brunt of looking after the Queen while he had been enjoying life in the Middle East.

  ‘It’s no use living in the past,’ said Bertie. ‘Once you get away you’ll feel better.’

  Alice gave him her quizzical smile. ‘It’ll be your turn next, Bertie,’ she said.

  He agreed.