Book Two: Constitution Hill Part Four: The First Winter Characters
Chapter Twenty
Twenty-One
Prince Albert. London, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Wednesday, 26 August 1840.
The reign she did not have became a durable object of American imagination. The long constitutional monarchy that her accession seemed to promise, personally inspiring as well as institutionally useful, was the great unrealised possibility of the century, and it recurred in political rhetoric and in fiction as the standing counterfactual of the Crown: what the monarchy might have been had the young queen lived to make it.
He woke at five, as he always did, and lay for a moment in the grey light without remembering what day it was; and then remembered, and lay a while longer.
He was twenty-one. He had been born at the Rosenau, in the house above the valley of the Itz, and his mother had held him up to the window, so the story went, to show him the river. He had heard the story every birthday of his childhood, from his grandmother, who had been at the Rosenau on the day and had written to everybody about it; and she had been dead for nine years, so that there was nobody left who told it. He thought about that, lying in the bed in Belgrave Square with the grey light coming in over the plane tree; and about his mother, whom he did not remember either, and who had been sent away from Coburg when he was five and had died in Paris when he was twelve, and whom he had not been allowed to mention in his father’s house. He thought that it was a strange thing to have come to the end of one’s minority, by the law of England, with so few people left who had been there at the beginning of it.
Eos lifted her head from the foot of the bed and looked at him, with her long black nose, to see whether it was time; and he said gleich, gleich, and got up.
Cart had laid out the black, as he did every morning. He stood by the washstand with the razor and the towel and said, in his Vaud French, that he wished His Royal Highness many happy returns of the day; and then, because he was a Swiss and could not leave a thing at that, that he wished them all happier than this one. Albert thanked him, and sat down to be shaved.
He had decided in the night how the day was to be got through, as he decided everything now, in advance, in pieces, as one plans a long march: a walk; letters; work; the piano for an hour; luncheon in his room; a ride in the afternoon, if it did not rain, in the Park, the far side, by the Serpentine, not the near side; dinner with the Duchess at seven; bed. It was the kind of plan that he had made every day since the funeral and that had got him through every one of them, and he was rather proud of it, in a dry way. He thought that if he had been asked in February what he was best at, he would have said music, or perhaps natural history; and that the true answer turned out to be getting through days.
He walked in the square garden at six, with Eos, while the gardener raked the gravel. It was cool, and very still, and the houses round the square had all their blinds down, because everybody who lived in Belgrave Square was in the country in August, or abroad, or at the sea; and the plane trees were going brown at the edges of their leaves in the dust, and a thrush was singing on the railings. He walked round twice. On the second time round he found that he was counting his steps, and stopped, and stood under a plane tree with his hands behind his back until he had made himself stop, and then went in.
The letters had come up while he was out, and were on the table by the window in a pile, with the newspapers beside them, which he had told Cart to bring every morning and which he read every morning, all of them, from the first column to the last.
He read the letters first.
His father had written from the Rosenau, in German, four sides, in the warm thick generous voice that came out of his father’s pen exactly as it came out of his mouth, and meant every word of it as long as it lasted. His father wished him joy of his majority. His father reminded him that he was now a man in the eyes of every law in Christendom and could no longer be advised by anybody, though his father hoped he would still allow himself to be advised by his father; and his father touched, very delicately, at the end of the third side, on the question of money. There were debts at Coburg. There were always debts at Coburg. The Duke would not for the world trouble his son with them at such a time, and only mentioned them because his son had been so good, in the spring, and would understand that a father did not mention such things lightly. Albert read the third side twice, and put the letter down, and looked out of the window for a while.
Ernest had written from Coburg, a page and a half, in his scrawl, saying that he was sorry, and that he did not know what to say, and that he had been to the Rosenau and stood at the window at the top of the house at six in the morning, because Albert would not be able to, and looked at the river, and thought of him; and that he would come to England whenever Albert wanted him, today, tomorrow, at once, and that Albert had only to write. Albert read that twice too, and found that he could not see it very well the second time, and put it down.
Uncle Leopold had written from Laeken, in French, a page, beautifully, with the right sentiments in the right order, and good advice, and the assurance of his constant affection; and Stockmar had written from Coburg, in German, in his small crabbed hand, three sides, without sentiments of any kind, telling him to eat, and to ride every day, and to sleep with his window open, and to read nothing in the evenings, and above all to undertake nothing, decide nothing and ask the King for nothing until the winter, when Stockmar would write again at length. Albert smiled at that, for the first time that day. It was exactly what Melbourne had said, sitting in that chair by the window eleven days ago, with his hands on his stick; and he thought that it was a strange thing, and rather comforting, that a Whig Prime Minister and a Coburg doctor who disliked each other very much should give him the same advice in the same month, and that he should be going to take it.
There were others. The Duke of Sussex had written, in his large uneven hand, a very kind letter, full of underlinings, and a postscript about his health. The Duke of Cambridge had written, three lines, warmly, in German, with Gott segne Dich at the end. Queen Adelaide had sent a book, with a note in her plain small hand. The Archbishop had written; Lord Melbourne had written, four lines, saying nothing, perfectly. Anson had left a note to say that he would call at eleven.
There was nothing from St James’s.
He had not expected anything. He went through the pile again all the same, slowly, from the top, as he did with his accounts when they would not come right, and turned over every cover, and looked at every seal; and there was nothing. It was nine weeks since the King had taken his hand in the old cold room at St James’s and said, in German, God keep you; and in nine weeks the King had not sent to him, or written to him, or asked after him, or spoken his name, so far as Albert could learn, to any living soul. On his birthday the King had not remembered him, or had remembered him and chosen not to. Albert did not know which. He sat at the table by the window with the letters in their pile in front of him and thought that it did not matter which, and that he would think about it at intervals for the rest of the day nevertheless, and that there was nothing to be done about that either.
At eleven Anson came, and they did the accounts.
That was what they did, every Wednesday, and he had told Anson on Monday that they would do them today as on every Wednesday, and Anson had looked at him and said yes, sir. Anson was a good young man. He had been Melbourne’s secretary, and been given to Albert in January, against Albert’s will, as a kind of spy; and he had turned out to be nothing of the kind, but a quiet, sensible, honest, tactful young Englishman who did what he was asked and told the truth when he was asked for it, and Albert had come in four months to depend on him and in ten weeks more to be fond of him. They sat at the table with the books between them and went through the household: the wages, the stables, the bills from the tradesmen in Mayfair, the rent the Duchess would not let him pay her and the sum he paid her anyway, under another name; the thirty thousand a year from the Treasury, by the quarter, which went on coming, as Melbourne had said it would, as if nothing had happened.
“There is one other thing, sir,” Anson said, when they had done, and shut the book. “I had it from the Lord Chamberlain’s office yesterday. Not officially. His Majesty has given orders for the household at Buckingham Palace to be reduced. The rooms on the north side are to be shut up, and dust-sheeted, and the late Queen’s servants found places elsewhere, or pensioned. I thought you would wish to know.”
“Her rooms,” said Albert.
“Yes, sir.”
He sat for a moment with his hand flat on the account book. He thought of the rooms on the north side: her sitting room, with the window over the garden; the bow room on the ground floor, where she had lain for nineteen days; the little room off his dressing room where the organ was, which he had left behind because there was nowhere in Belgrave Square to put it. He thought of the dust-sheets going over everything, the piano and the sofas and the writing table, as they had been going over things on the morning he left, room by room, with the servants moving quietly from one to the next. He thought of the organ under a dust-sheet, in the dark, with the shutters closed.
“Thank you, Anson,” he said. “Is there anything to be done?”
“No, sir. I am afraid not.”
“No,” said Albert. “I thought not.” And he got up, and went to the window, and stood there; and Anson, who was a good young man, put the account books under his arm and went away without being told.
He played for an hour in the afternoon, because it was in the plan.
The piano was a Broadwood, square, not very good, that the Duchess had hired with the house and had had moved up to his sitting room on the second day, without asking him, and had had tuned, also without asking him; and he had been grateful, and had not told her so, and had played it every afternoon since, for an hour, because it was the only hour of the day in which he was not obliged to think in English. He played Bach. He played Bach because it was the only music he had found that did not mean anything, or not anything that could be said; it went where it went, in its own order, voice after voice, and arrived where it had always been going to arrive, and asked nothing of him except that he keep the time. He played the preludes from the second book, one after another, slowly, with Eos asleep on the hearthrug and the window open on the garden and the plane tree; and he did not open the other music, the music in the portfolio on the top of the piano that had come from the Palace with his things, the Mendelssohn songs, the duets, the Italian things she had liked to sing with him after dinner in her small clear true voice, which was better than his. He had not opened that portfolio since July. He did not open it today. He played the fugue in E major twice, because he had made a mistake in it the first time, and then shut the piano and went riding.
He rode in the Park, the far side, as he had planned, along the north bank of the Serpentine and back by the Kensington Gardens wall, alone except for the groom; and people looked at him as he went by, as they always did, the nursemaids and the soldiers and the old gentlemen on the benches, and some of them took off their hats, and he touched his own, and did not stop. A woman by the water called out something to him that he did not catch. It might have been God bless you, sir. It might have been anything. He did not look round.
He did not go near the corner. He had not been near it since the twenty-ninth of June, when he walked up it behind the hearse in the dark. He did not intend to go near it for the rest of his life, if he could arrange it; and he could, he had found, quite easily, by a little care with the routes, as one arranges never to pass the house of a person one has quarrelled with.
The Duchess had dinner at seven, as she always did, in the dining room on the ground floor, the two of them at the end of a table that would have seated twenty, with the candles lit although it was still light outside, and two footmen, and the soup.
She had come down in her black with her hair done, and a little more colour in her face than usual, which was rouge; and she had a parcel beside her plate, done up in silver paper with a black ribbon, and when he had sat down she pushed it across the cloth to him without a word, and looked at her soup.
He opened it.
It was a drawing, in pencil, in a narrow gilt frame, no larger than his hand. A child of about ten, in a white frock with a sash, sitting very upright on a garden seat with a portfolio on her knees and a pencil in her hand, looking out of the picture with large, pale, serious eyes, as if somebody had just told her to sit still and she was considering whether to obey. The drawing-master at Kensington had made it, the Duchess said, in the summer of ‘twenty-nine, in the garden, under the trees; and she had kept it on her own table ever since, in every house she had lived in. That was all she said. She did not say the name. She took up her spoon again, and he saw that her hand was shaking.
He sat and looked at it.
He had never seen her at ten. He had first seen her at sixteen, at Kensington, in May of ‘thirty-six, when his uncle had sent him and Ernest over to be looked at; a small plump lively girl in a blue dress who laughed at everything and danced till three and had been, he had thought at the time, rather silly. He had not liked her very much, that first summer. He had told Ernest so. And then he had come again in October of last year, and she had come to the top of the stairs at Windsor to meet them; and he had looked up, and she had been standing there, at the top of the stairs, in the light. He had not seen her at ten. He had not known there had ever been this child, sitting so straight on a garden seat with her portfolio, considering whether to obey.
“Thank you,” he said, in German. “Thank you, Aunt. I shall keep it always.”
The Duchess nodded, and did not look up, and said that the soup was cold, which it was not.
They talked about Coburg.
That was what they did, at dinner, every night; he had not noticed it at first, and then had noticed, and then had understood that she was doing it on purpose and that he was doing it too. She had been born at the Ehrenburg, in the old town, fifty-four years ago, the daughter of the Duke his grandfather; she had grown up in the same rooms that he had, and walked in the same gardens, and been taken to the Rosenau on summer afternoons in a carriage by the same road, and had left it at seventeen to be married, and had been back since only for visits. So they talked about Coburg. They talked about the Ehrenburg, and the Rosenau, and the Callenberg, and the Veste on its hill, and the market place on a Saturday, and the people they both knew there, and the people who had died there since she left. She told him about his grandmother as a young woman, and about a ball at the Ehrenburg in 1801, at which she had danced with a Russian grand duke who trod on her feet; and he told her about the woods above the Rosenau in October, and the beech leaves, and the boar; and they talked in German, quickly, the soft Franconian German of the place, which nobody else in the house could follow, until the footmen had cleared the soup and the fish and the cutlets, and the pudding came.
They did not talk about her. They had not talked about her once, since he came to the house, at this table or anywhere else. He did not think they ever would. They were, so far as he knew, the only two people left in England who had loved her without any reason to, and they had each other, and nobody else; and they could not do it. If either of them had once said her name at this table, he thought, the other would have broken down, and then they would both have broken down, and then the footmen would have had to take them upstairs, and it would never have been possible to sit down to dinner together again. So they talked about Coburg, every night, carefully, the way two people who are crossing a frozen river talk about the far bank; and the drawing lay on the cloth between them, in its narrow gilt frame, face upward, where they could both see it, and neither of them looked at it.
At nine she got up, and kissed him on the forehead, and said in German, Gute Nacht, mein lieber Sohn, which she had never called him before; and went up to bed.
He sat in his own room afterwards with the window open and the candles not lit, in the long blue end of the August evening, with Eos asleep across his feet and the drawing on the table in front of him, and let himself think about it, because it was the end of the day, and the plan was finished, and there was nothing left to get through.
He thought about what it would have been.
He had not let himself do that before. He had found in the first week that it was the one thing he could not afford, and he had shut it away, and kept it shut, with the portfolio of music and the corner of the Green Park and the rooms on the north side under their dust-sheets. Tonight he let it out, a little, as one lets a little water through a sluice to see how much pressure is behind it.
The child would have come in November. He had known that since April; she had told him, crossly, in her sitting room, walking up and down, and he had said the wrong thing, and she had cried, and then laughed, and then made him promise that it would be a girl, because she said that a boy would only be put over her by everybody, and a girl would be on her side. A girl, then, in November. And he would have been there; and Stockmar, and Locock, and the Archbishop and the Privy Council waiting in the next room, as the custom was, to see that the child was hers. And then the winter. And then the long years after it, all of them, which he could see quite clearly, now that he let himself look: himself at the table in her sitting room, every morning, with the boxes, reading them before she did, so that he could tell her what was in them; learning English law, and English history, and English politics, in which he was a child; learning to be of use, slowly, against all of them, against Melbourne and Lehzen and the Tories and the Whigs and her own temper, until there was nobody in England who could say that he was not; and the children, more of them, as many as she would put up with, in the nursery at Windsor; and the work, the long patient work of years, of making the Crown into something that could be respected again by sensible men, something steady and diligent and decent that did its duty and did not need to be talked about; and her beside him at it, growing older, and stouter, and crosser, and wiser, and laughing still at things that were not funny, at the end of a long reign, an old woman, his wife. He could see all of it. He could see it as clearly as he could see the plane tree in the garden. It had been there in front of them, the whole of it, on the morning of the tenth of June, at breakfast; and at six o’clock in the afternoon a boy had stood up by the railings, and it had gone.
He sat quite still in the dark and let it all go through him, the whole of it, from beginning to end; and found, at the end, that he was still there, and still breathing, and that Eos was still asleep on his feet. That was something. He had not known whether he would be.
He thought, too, about the King, who had not written; and about the old man in the cold room at St James’s, with one eye, who had said that he had knelt to her first of them all, at Kensington, when she was a little girl. He thought that the King had no more idea than a horse what it was that the country had lost on the tenth of June, and that it would take the country a long time to find out, and that when it did, it would not be the King’s fault, exactly, and it would be blamed on him nevertheless. He did not wish the King ill. He found that he did not wish him anything at all, which surprised him. He only wished, very much, that the King had sent a note.
Then he thought about going home.
Not yet. Melbourne said not yet, and Stockmar said not yet, and he thought they were both right. In the winter, then; with the King’s leave, asked for and given, in the proper form; as her husband, and not as a man who had run away. He would go home to Coburg and be a younger son again, with thirty thousand English pounds a year and nothing to do with them, and his father would want some of them; and he would try to be of use there, as he had meant to try to be of use here, in a smaller country, with smaller things. That was not nothing. He told himself that it was not nothing. He thought that he might very well believe it, by the winter.
He picked up the drawing and held it in the last of the light. The child on the garden seat looked back at him with her large pale serious eyes, considering whether to obey.
“Twenty-one,” he said to her, aloud, in English. “Both of us.”
Then he put it down on the table, face upward, where he would see it in the morning when he woke; and lit one candle; and wrote a letter to his brother, three pages, in German, saying that he was well, and that he was going to stay in England until the winter, and that he thanked him for going to the window at the Rosenau, and that it had been the best present of the day, except one; and went to bed.