‘Well,’ said Lord Melbourne, ‘there is a possibility that he will conform to that type.’

The Queen stamped her foot. ‘That is a slanderous remark, Lord Melbourne.’

The Prime Minister looked startled.

‘And,’ said Victoria, the corners of her lips drawn down, her manner coldly regal, ‘I expect you to say that you were talking foolish nonsense.’

Lord Melbourne replied that he was talking of a type.

‘And you thought Albert might conform to this type?’

‘I am sure that was a misapprehension,’ said Lord Melbourne tactfully. And he added with one of his sly looks which Victoria was too put out – contemplating the possibility of Albert’s infidelity – to notice: ‘Albert is unique.’

‘Of course Albert would not be like that. He is too dignified and too loyal. He will realise what it means to be married to the Queen.’

‘Oh, yes, he will soon realise that,’ said Lord Melbourne significantly.

‘Albert is reserved, except with those he loves,’ said Victoria tenderly, ‘and he will always be like that.’

‘The Queen will command it,’ said Lord Melbourne with a courtly bow.

‘He is not in the least like the Grand Duke of Russia.’

‘Ah, there was a man whom Your Majesty admired very much.’

‘He has had so many love affairs.’

‘An affair before marriage is nothing,’ said Lord Melbourne. ‘As long as he doesn’t do it afterwards.’

‘I would never marry a man who had loved another woman,’ declared the Queen.

‘You wouldn’t think of that if you were in love with him.’

‘I should.’

‘Then all is well for there is no question of your reserved and gallant Prince having so indulged.’

‘There is no question at all,’ said Victoria, her happiness restored.

There was so much to talk over with Lord Melbourne. Sometimes she would think of something at odd times and would summon him to her.

Dear Lord Melbourne! What would she do without him?

Once she sent for him in the evening. He was to come to her at once, was her message to him. He came in a very strange costume – light white and grey calico trousers; and she knew that he had been in bed and had been awakened to come to her.

She was full of remorse. She feared that in her newly found happiness she had neglected this friend.

‘But you were sleeping,’ she said tenderly.

He denied this, but she didn’t believe him.

‘I only wished to discuss some item about the wedding,’ she told him.

‘A most important subject,’ he said with a smile.

‘Dear Lord M,’ she said. ‘I fear I may have been a little short with you lately. It is all this excitement coming after that wretched time. But Lord Melbourne, always remember that I love you more than any of your other friends do.’

He did not look at her and she saw that his eyes were full of tears.

Her own gushed forth.

‘My dear, dear friend,’ she murmured.

And she thought: My overwhelming love for my divine Albert does not make me love this dear friend less.

Chapter XIV

UNEASY PREPARATIONS

It was necessary for Albert and his brother to return to Coburg. Albert must make his arrangements for leaving the home of his birth, and preparations for the wedding must go forward at once if it was to take place in February. There was so much to be settled and the Queen urged Lord Melbourne to forge ahead with these matters.

In the first place there was Albert’s position at Court to be considered, which was an affair of precedence of course; and then there was the question of his allowance. He would have to be naturalised too, for it was unthinkable that a foreigner should be the Queen’s husband.

Lord Melbourne worked with all his might to meet the Queen’s wishes but the Tories always opposed him and his tottering Whigs and as the Prime Minister had often explained to the Queen, it was often very difficult to get Bills passed because of this.

Uncle Ernest declared that he would not give precedence to a little Coburg Prince even if he was the Queen’s husband. The Tories supported him and the other Royal Dukes who had followed him in protest, and the Queen was furious.

She raged against the Tories. ‘I always hated them,’ she declared. ‘As for Sir Robert Peel I have always known that he was a low hyprocrite. But I expected better of the Duke of Wellington. I shall certainly not ask him to my wedding.’

Lord Melbourne begged her to be calm.

‘Calm!’ she cried. ‘When they behave so to my dearest Albert. That angel to be treated so by monsters.’

The Queen saw things in distinct shades of black and white, pointed out Lord Melbourne patiently. In Her Majesty’s opinion people were either angels or devils, which was not true in this case. It was all a little more subtle than that.

‘I should like to punish those Tory monsters,’ she insisted.

‘It is fortunate for them that we have a Constitutional Monarchy,’ said Lord Melbourne wryly.

‘Everything is too slow,’ said the Queen. ‘You politicians don’t work hard enough.’

Then Charles Greville, her Clerk of the Council, discovered that she could settle Albert’s status by Royal Prerogative. This delighted her. Albert should take precedence over all Royal Dukes so that little matter was settled.

He was to be called the Prince Consort.

‘The Prince Consort,’ she cried. ‘Surely the husband of a queen should be a king!’

‘Not if he is a prince,’ explained Lord Melbourne patiently.

‘But his marriage will make him a king.’

‘No, that is not so,’ was the Prime Minister’s reply. ‘We should need a special Act of Parliament to turn a Prince Consort into a King Consort.’

‘Then let us bring in this special Act.’

Lord Melbourne shook his head. ‘It would be most unwise to give a Parliament the power to make a king; it would be a precedent. If it was as easy to make a king or queen, it would be as easy to unmake one.’

Victoria was thoughtful. Anything that was a threat to her Crown could not be ignored.

Albert should remain the Prince Consort.


* * *

It was necessary, Lord Melbourne told her, to make a formal announcement of her decision to accept Prince Albert as her husband and for this she returned to London and summoned her Privy Council to the Palace.

The Duke of Wellington, who had shortly before suffered from a stroke, was just well enough to be present. Her anger against him melted when she saw how ill he looked. The right side of his mouth was twisted a little and he could not use his arm. Poor old man, thought the Queen. How sad to be old and almost finished with life.

She had dressed herself in a plain gown and wore a bracelet to which had been attached a portrait of Albert.

She bowed to the councillors and begged them to be seated and then she read the speech which Lord Melbourne had written for her.‘It is my intention to ally myself in marriage with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. Deeply impressed with the solemnity of the engagement which I am about to contract, I have not come to this decision without mature consideration, nor without a feeling of strong assurance that, with the blessing of Almighty God, it will at once secure my domestic felicity and serve the interests of my country.’

When she had finished reading she noticed that Lord Melbourne was looking at her with tears in his eyes.

Dear, dear Lord Melbourne. How often had she seen those eyes fill with tears for her!

That day she left the Palace for Windsor. Crowds collected to see her as she left. Now she could not complain of a lack of loyal cheers.

Lady Flora was forgotten. So was the Bedchamber Affair. Their young Queen was going to be a bride and her people were once more delighted with her.


* * *

But if the people were pleased at the prospect of a royal wedding the Tories had not forgotten the Queen’s insult to Sir Robert Peel and her unconcealed animosity towards them which had been so obvious during the time of the Bedchamber Crisis. They seemed determined to make everything as uncomfortable for her as possible, and as it was difficult to attack the Crown the best way to annoy the Queen was to cast slurs on Albert.

There had been too many Germans in the royal family, was their opinion, since the accession of George I when the royal family had branched from the Stuarts to the Guelphs. The country was heartily sick of Germans. And now the Queen was proposing to bring this young one over and marry him and had even tried to make him a King Consort. That had been satisfactorily stopped, but it did not take the Prince’s detractors long to find a stick with which to beat him. In the Queen’s announcement of her betrothal to her Privy Councillors, the text of which had been published, there had been no mention of the Prince’s religion. This could mean one thing. The Prince was not a Protestant. Was the Queen trying to bring a Catholic to share her throne?

The King of Hanover, Victoria’s Uncle Ernest, who had always coveted the throne and had in fact been suspected of sinister actions towards the young Princess Victoria, was believed to be behind the plots to disqualify the Prince and prevent the marriage. But for Victoria, Ernest would have been King of England; it had always been a sore point with him that he had been younger than Victoria’s father and so cheated of the throne by a mere girl. He had never ceased to hope that Victoria would die and he be called over to take the Crown. That she had been so healthy had infuriated him; and now the thought of her marrying and having children who would come before him in the line of succession and so put the throne out of his reach for ever was more than he could bear.