And so his spies were ordered to put rumours in motion and the aggrieved Tories were not slow to make use of them.

The Queen was furious, far more angry than she would have been at an attack on herself. Her Uncle Ernest was an old wretch and the Tories were odious. How dared they attack her beloved! One day they should all be punished.

Lord Brougham, that old enemy in the Lords, made a pronouncement which was widely quoted.

‘There is no prohibition to marriage with a Catholic. It is only attended with a penalty, and that penalty is merely the forfeiture of the crown.’

‘Oh, how dare he!’ cried the Queen. ‘That man is a traitor!’

She was amazed that the Duke of Wellington did not hesitate to side with his Tory friends, and he actually led the attack on Albert in the Lords.

The Queen raged with Lord Melbourne. Why was nothing done? What were her ministers doing if they could allow the Queen to be so maligned? Were the Tories so foolish that they thought she did not know her own Constitution? Did they think she would ever marry anyone who was a Catholic?

‘The noble Duke knows that the Prince is not a Catholic,’ declared Lord Melbourne in the House of Commons. ‘He knows he is a Protestant. The whole world knows he is a Protestant.’

Finally Baron Stockmar who had arrived back in England made a public statement that the Prince was a Protestant who could take communion in the English church, and that the only difference was that he was a Lutheran.

‘So that matter is settled,’ said the Queen.

These were difficult weeks. She missed Albert; she fretted for him; she made exciting plans about the wedding, and then she waited for letters from him and was miserable when they did not come.

The Tories and her other enemies were taking all the joy out of her betrothal. She was beginning to be irritable and bad tempered again.

‘Never mind,’ said Lord Melbourne. ‘These matters have to be settled.’

There was worse to come. Albert was not a rich man; he had only an income of £2,500 a year and a small estate in Coburg.

‘The fellow’s a pauper,’ said the Tories. ‘He must not be allowed to get above himself.’

Lord Melbourne discussed the matter of the income which would be settled on the Queen’s husband.

‘He will be in a similar position to Prince George of Denmark who married Queen Anne,’ said Lord Melbourne. ‘She was the reigning Queen and he was a Prince of Denmark. The Parliament of the day settled £50,000 a year on him. The same amount was given to William III (only he was a king in his own right) and your Uncle Leopold was given a similar sum when he married Princess Charlotte. I think we should ask for the same for Prince Albert. We will get Parliament to agree to that I’m sure.’

Even so Lord Melbourne secretly feared that the Tories would oppose this; and he was right, they did. £50,000 was too large a sum, they said. They would agree to £30,000.

When Lord Melbourne came to convey this information to the Queen he knew he would have to face a termagant.

He was right.

She raged and stormed. She would never speak to the Duke of Wellington again. She would take her revenge on Sir Robert Peel. They were saying that her clever, her divine Albert was not worth so much as foolish old Prince George of Denmark. How dared they insult her beloved Albert!

She turned on Melbourne. ‘You should have arranged this better. You are the Prime Minister.’

‘Ma’am, it is not in a Prime Minister’s power to say this shall be done.’

‘I know my own Constitution.’

‘Then Your Majesty will know that these matters have to be decided by Parliament.’

‘They shall be made to pay him £50,000 a year. He shall not be insulted.’

‘The state of the country at the moment is not good. There have been riots in various places. The Chartists are making a fuss. There is a great deal of unemployment. The Tories know this and if there is much of a storm about this money – which would seem untold wealth to some of Your Majesty’s hungry subjects – we could have a very ugly situation breaking out in the country.’

She was solemn. ‘Riots! Hungry people!’

He looked a little sheepish. He had never wanted their happy relationship spoilt by these unpleasant matters. He had laughed at those ardent reformers, the Earl of Shaftesbury and the Duchess of Sutherland. ‘Oh,’ he had said, ‘little children enjoy working in the mines.’ And: ‘Little boys have great fun climbing up chimneys.’ ‘People who are lazy go hungry.’ It was such a pleasant theory and she had been only too ready to believe him.

Now he realised he had been wrong. He should have made her see the facts. Looking back he saw so many things that he might have done. It was as it had been with Caroline … oh no, not such a disaster as that. Victoria was going to be a great Queen and his epitaph would be that he had helped to make her so.

She was grave at once.

‘The people are unemployed. They are hungry. We must do something. I will talk to Albert about it when we are married.’

She looked at Lord Melbourne and she thought: It is not his fault. He has been led astray by others and all this political jangling. It will be different with Albert because Albert wants to be good and Lord Melbourne only wants to be clever, witty, amusing and comfortable.

She said soberly: ‘I am angry that Albert should be insulted, but I see that he must accept this £30,000. When we are married I will explain to him and we will work together to help our people.’

The inevitable tears were in Lord Melbourne’s eyes. She was slipping away from him as he had known she must in time and he thought of the years ahead when he would still serve her perhaps, but it would never be the same. Those years to come looked bleak and empty.


* * *

How difficult life was, thought the Queen. She had been so blissfully happy when she contemplated her union and was finding the details which had to be settled so depressingly tiresome. Lord Melbourne was different; vaguely she understood why. Nothing is changed between us, she told herself; he is still my Prime Minister and very dear friend. But that was not quite true. Lehzen, too, was prickly. ‘Now you will not have need of me,’ she had said in that hurt, sad voice which was so distressing. ‘Nonsense, Daisy,’ she had replied briskly. ‘I shall always have need of you.’

Oh why must they be so tiresome! She loved Albert beyond everything – but she was affectionate by nature and certainly was not going to forget her old friends just because she had found the great love of her life.

There were faint disturbances even from that quarter. Dearest Albert did not altogether understand what it meant to be a queen. She hated to have to remind him but sometimes she feared it was necessary.

Albert wrote that he longed for their marriage and he thought that when the ceremony was over they should retire to Windsor for a week or so where they could be absolutely alone. He was going to insist that they do this.

Insist. Dear Albert, he would have to learn that he could not insist.

How delightful of him, though, to want to be alone with her all that time and to think of such things. She was glad that he had; but he could not insist of course … to the Queen. Obviously he did not understand what being Sovereign of a great country entailed. How could he, the darling? He was only a Prince of little Coburg. She had to see her Prime Minister frequently. She had quantities of documents to go through and sign. How did she know what crisis was going to arise when her Government had such a tiny majority and were in some ways at the mercy of the wicked Tories led by that monster Sir Robert Peel in the Commons and that traitor the Duke of Wellington in the Lords. She wrote tender but chiding:‘You forget, my dearest love, that I am the Sovereign, and that business can stop and wait for nothing. Parliament is sitting, and something occurs almost every day, for which I may be required, and it is quite impossible for me to be absent from London, therefore two or three days is already a long time to be absent.’

A silence greeted this letter and she began to grow anxious. But in due course Albert replied. He was affectionate but never quite so demonstrative as she was and the honeymoon was not mentioned.


* * *

Another distressing contretemps had arisen. Albert had heard of the Bedchamber Affair and it was impossible to be with Victoria for very long without discovering her dislike of the Tories and her partisanship for the Whigs. Albert wrote that he believed a Monarch should be impartial. In a Constitutional Monarchy the Government was the Government of the people and the Sovereign should stand aloof. He hoped that his household would not be composed entirely of Whigs as her own was.

Victoria was dumbfounded when she received the letter. She took it at once to Lord Melbourne.

‘And what does Your Majesty think of this?’ asked the Prime Minister.

‘That, dear Albert has a great deal to learn. Tories in my household! He has never understood, poor darling, what those monsters are like.’

‘Your Majesty will see,’ pointed out the Prime Minister, ‘that there should not be two separate households. This would lead to impossible rivalries. Look what happened with your mother’s household and your own. The Prince should have a private secretary and as this is the most important position I suggest my own secretary, George Anson, who is a man of skill, tact and outstanding ability.’

‘It is good of you, dear Lord Melbourne, to pass him over to Albert.’