* * *

Albert had become very excited at the prospect of a great Exhibition to be set up in Hyde Park. This, said Albert, would be a great boon to industry, it would provide work for many people and he could see nothing but good coming from it. There would be a great deal of work to be done and they would need a year to do it, but he believed that the whole of Europe would be talking of it and it would be remembered as the greatest spectacle as yet to have been staged.

The Queen caught his enthusiasm and listened to his talk of projects.

Dear Albert, he was as excited as a child. He had called in Paxton, the great planner of gardens, and between them they were considering an idea to build a big house of glass – a kind of conservatory – no, more than that. It should be the centre of the Exhibition. A glass palace, one might say.

The Queen caught his excitement. She was sure it would be a very good thing. How much better if the ministers could plan this kind of thing instead of always being at each other’s throats on some issue or other.

But even about this project they had to argue and try to spoil it. Albert and his committee had decided that the great exhibition should be held in Hyde Park and several of the Members of Parliament were arguing against this. Poor Albert was in despair when The Times too came down against it.

‘It’s such folly,’ groaned Albert. ‘If we are turned out of the park, the work is done for.’

But such a terrible tragedy occurred that all the thoughts of the Exhibition were driven temporarily not only from the Queen’s mind but from Albert’s too.

On the 28th of June Sir Robert Peel was riding in Constitution Hill when his horse suddenly shied and he was thrown to the ground. He was so badly injured that he could not move and lay on the ground until some people passing in a carriage saw him, pulled up and recognising him, took him home to his house in Whitehall Gardens.

He could not be taken to his room but was put on a sofa in one of the downstairs rooms and there he remained for four days until he died.

The Queen was very upset; so was Albert.

‘He was a great man,’ said Albert. ‘I shall never forget what he did for me in the days when I was so bitterly misunderstood.’

The Queen thought with remorse of those meetings with Sir Robert when she had believed he was about to replace Lord Melbourne. She had been so beastly to him and had called him ‘the dancing master’. But that was when she had been so blind and looked upon Lord Melbourne as a sort of god, so that anyone who dared to attempt to replace him must seem like a monster.

She wrote condolences to heart-broken Lady Peel. How sad! There was so much trouble. Poor Aunt Sophia had died two years ago; Aunt Gloucester was behaving very oddly and was clearly feeble in the mind, for at Louise’s christening she had forgotten where she was and, leaving her seat in the middle of the service, came to the Queen and knelt before her. It had all been very distressing and she had managed to coax Aunt Gloucester back to her seat but not before everyone present had noticed such odd behaviour. And now Uncle Cambridge was very ill and it seemed likely that he would not be long for this world. All the aunts and uncles were slowly going, dropping off the tree of life like over-ripe fruit. Then came the news from Belgium that dear Aunt Louise, who had suffered so terribly when her family were driven out of France, was herself ill and incurable, which hurt Victoria most of all, for Uncle Leopold’s wife was dearer to her than any of the old aunts and uncles.

The Queen said that she and some of the children must go to visit Uncle Cambridge, who was very ill, and they must do their best to cheer him up. So with Bertie, Alfred and Alice and one lady-in-waiting, she set out. Uncle Cambridge was too ill for them to remain long and on their way back she was telling the children about the days when she lived in Kensington Palace. As they were turning in at the gates of Buckingham Palace the crowd came very close to the carriage. In view of those occasions when she had been shot at, the Queen felt a little nervous and was leaning forward to protect the children if necessary when suddenly a man stepped close to the Queen and lifting his heavy-handled cane brought it down with great force on her head. The fact that she was wearing a bonnet may well have saved her life. Before she lost consciousness she saw Bertie’s face flush scarlet and a bewildered Alfred and Alice staring at her in dismay.

Almost immediately she recovered from the faint and heard her lady-in-waiting say: ‘They’ve got him.’

People were crowding round the carriage. She cried: ‘I’m all right. I’m not hurt.’

This was not true; she was badly bruised and it was clear that the padded bonnet had saved her from great injury.


* * *

She had arranged to go to the Opera that evening and declared that she would not be put off by a few bruises delivered by a madman. Her reception at the Opera was such that it almost made it all worth while. Her forehead yellow and blue, a black eye and a throbbing headache could be forgotten in the loyal demonstrations of the people.

Her assailant turned out to be a certain Robert Pate, a man of good family whose father had been High Sheriff of Cambridge, and who himself had held a commission in the Army for five years. He was sentenced to seven years transportation. It was rather an alarming incident because it seemed without motive and Pate had shown no sign of insanity on any other occasion. Many people had often seen him strolling in the park, a dandy who swaggered somewhat but otherwise was normal.

The Queen did not believe he was insane, and she thought it was horrid that defenceless women should be so exposed. An attempt to kill her because of some imagined grievance or antagonism to monarchy would have been understandable, but to strike a defenceless young woman on her head with a cane was brutal and inhuman.

She shrugged the incident aside and thought of that unhappy wife, Lady Peel, and when she contemplated what widowhood meant she could not grieve long because of a knock on the head.

Uncle Cambridge died as they had expected he would and that was sad. She wrote to tell Uncle Leopold of it and added:

Poor dear Peel was buried today. The sorrow and grief at his death are so touching, and the country mourns over him as over a father. Everyone seems to have lost a personal friend … My poor dear Albert, who has been so fresh and well when we came back from Osborne, looks pale and fagged. He has felt, and feels, Sir Robert’s loss dreadfully. He feels he has lost a second father.

It was true. Albert was very depressed. He did get depressed rather easily. And what with this terrible attack on her, Uncle Cambridge’s death, the people who were so dreadfully carping about the proposed Exhibition and now the loss of Sir Robert, he thought the outlook was very gloomy indeed.

‘There were so many we could have spared more easily,’ he said; and she knew he was thinking of all those short-sighted people who were trying to foil his plans – and of course Lord Palmerston.


* * *

There was no doubt about it, Lord Palmerston was very trying.

For instance the affair of General Haynau was dreadfully mishandled by him. It was true that the General had come to England uninvited after being involved in the suppression of the Hungarian rising, during which he had become notorious for his excessive cruelty. There were rumours of his conduct which in the hands of the press were exaggerated no doubt, thought the Queen. In any case he was said to have hanged soldiers whom he captured, to have burned people alive in their houses and gone so far as to flog noblewomen. The cruelty practised by this man was an echo of mob behaviour during the French revolution.

Cartoons of him appeared in the press. Although these were caricatures the General had several distinguishing features (tall and thin, deep-set eyes and bushy brows) which were accentuated and he was immediately recognizable when one day he visited Barclay’s Brewery which he wanted to inspect. Unfortunately he wrote his name in the visitors’ book and this coupled with his rather striking appearance made it clear to the brewer’s employees that he was the notorious General. They were incensed and decided to show their disapproval and one man threw a load of straw down on his head which sent him sprawling in the yard.

There was a cry of: ‘Down with the Austrian butcher!’ and the workmen seized him and rolled him in the dirt; they let him get up and as he ran they ran with him; he escaped into a public house and ran upstairs, but the mob caught him and chased him down to the river’s edge and were about to throw him in when he was rescued by a police launch.

When the Queen heard what had happened she discussed it with Albert.

She was horrified, she declared. Whatever the man had done he was a visitor to these shores and he had been treated most inhospitably.

To ill-treat such a personage as the General was an insult to Austria and an apology must be sent without delay.

The Foreign Secretary was fully aware of this and when the Queen sent for him he took with him the draft of the apology. He arrived at the palace urbane and smiling, bowed to the Queen and gave that rather insolent greeting to the Prince which was almost a nod.

‘A very regrettable incident,’ said the Queen.

‘Very, Ma’am,’ agreed Palmerston. ‘And lucky it was for the fellow that the police came along, otherwise …’ Palmerston smiled almost with relish.