Chapter 1 Windosr 1885

Windsor 1885

 

The crossing from Calais to Dover was far worse than anyone could have anticipated.

 

Which to be fair wasn't quite true because many people had anticipated it, the captain, the crew and the entire royal party. The morning of departure the captain demanded to see the Queen's private secretary. Armed with maps and weather charts he demonstrated in no uncertain terms how foolhardy it would be to make this crossing. 

“And you wish me to convey this to her Majesty?”

 

“I certainly do. We will attempt the crossing as soon as the winds and the currents alter.”

 

“and you wish me to convey this now?”

 

“Of course now, we are scheduled to leave are we not?”

 

“Then I had better do it” replied Mr. Hawthorne, a somewhat overweight, elderly man with more hair on his face than covering his head.  He dithered by the desk and fiddled with the charts, ”and I should take these with me?”

 

“If you think it would help”. The captain was beginning to get irritated with this spineless, ineffectual  ball of wool  unraveling as he spoke. .

 

“Then I'll go” he said not moving.

 

“And I will wait here as I expect you won't be long.” The captain pursed his lips in an attempt to be courteous but it came across as a sneer.

 

Mr. Hawthorne cleared his throat, fixed his tie and rearranged his suit as he got to the door he remembered he had forgotten the charts. He then went back to the desk picked up the paperwork, rearranged them and re-folded them.

 

“I'll go then” he left the room as if he were about to face a firing squad and returned no less than 15 minutes later clutching the charts.

 

“If it's life-threatening”

 

“I never said life-threatening, just rather unpleasant”

 

 

“Unpleasant, but not life-threatening.”

 

“Extremely unpleasant, horribly unpleasant, miserable, most distressing in its unpleasantness, on a scale of unpleasant, I would put this ……………..”, emphasized the captain.

“But not life-threatening.” Interrupted the secretary

 

“Unfortunately,  ………………….no.”

 

“Then we leave within the hour,”

 

The diiminutive figure seated in the back of the carriage, her mood as black as her gown, was not amused. Queen Victoria had made a promise to her granddaughter,, Victoria, that she would be there at the birth of her first child and nothing was going to stop her.

 

When her granddaughter first told her the welcome news that she was pregnant,  the Queen’s mind was made up. She told her ‘you will have the baby at Windsor Castle in the tapestry room in the same bed where I was born, and you will call the baby, Alice’.

 

So Victoria and her husband Louis had uprouted their lives in Darmstadt Germany and towards the end of the pregnancy made their way to Windsor., in southern England.

 

The miserable crossing, with its torrential rain and turbulent waters had succeeded in eliminating all three of Queen Victoria's ladies in waiting. None of them felt well enough to continue the journey to Windsor. Her Majesty had no patience to wait and decided to proceed alone. She ignored protests of protocol and felt that the journey was more important, she certainly didn't need to entertain the contents of anyone's stomach while the carriage rumbled along the rugged roads and in bumpy hills. If she were truthful, she needed time alone, she relished the opportunity to think.

 

Her first thoughts were of her beautiful daughter lost to her many years ago from an illness that she contracted from one of her children. Alice, her third child was more like her darling Albert,  than any of her other children. Even her rotten son, Edward, had remarked at her funeral ‘it should have been me, she was much more worthy of the Crown than I ever will be’. It gave Victoria little solace to know that even that selfish spoilt man was capable of clarity in the midst of devastating loss.

 

Albert’s death of pneumonia had come so swift and sudden and Victoria would always blame this tragedy on her Playboy son. News having reached them, that Edwards had disappeared from his Army post to jaunt off for several days of drunkenness and debauchery with unsuitable women, had caused Albert to run off in search of him and bring him to heal. He got stuck in a rainstorm, caught pneumonia, and three days later he was dead. It was so sudden, she had lost the love of her life and for what? She had taken to her bed for almost 2 years, too devastated to focus  on anything as meaningless as the empire and the day-to-day running of her country and her palace. And who was there? Taking on every point of business that she could no longer look at, Alice. So competent so smart so like her darling father. She had given up her life to step in to the enormous footsteps which he had left. She had single-handedly saved mother and the empire. The Queen felt very emotional at this point, she refused to cry anymore there were no more tears left.  And why was she crying? Tears of loss or just guilt. Yes guilt. She had to admit things had not gone smoothly between mother and daughter. She had become rather angry with her daughter, for getting married, or having children and forging what seemed to be a rather happy life. How could she be happy, when her mother was so miserable? And Alice's attitude to motherhood, that was something that Her Majesty would never understand. When you have a child, you give it to a wet nurse and then a governess to raise. You see them at supper after they had been washed and dressed, what was Alice thinking with her hands-on approach? She wanted to be with them, to nurse them dress them and feed them. And the straw that finally broke the camel's back, was breast-feeding! It was a horrible, horrible, horrible image. After the misery and pain of childbirth, how would any right-thinking woman want that screaming, puking, bloody mess anywhere near her person? So they fell out and did not speak for many years. And it was because of this hands on nursing approach to motherhood that she had lost her life and the Queen lost a child that could never be replaced in her heart, as she lay now right next to her father. Now Alice's daughter, Victoria was pregnant, maybe now she would have an opportunity to make amends, to find her again, to make things right.

 

Queen Victoria controlled and conspired with her granddaughter, she knew exactly how the situation would transpire, the castle, the room, the baby, and the sex. It shocked her that she had no control over the weather. When her granddaughter went into labor, she was the other side of the channel and determined to get back. She was told that the weather was bad, the current, the swell, the crossing would be difficult, perhaps it would be better to leave it for a few days. But as her granddaughter had gone into labor and it was imperative that she be there, the weather was not an issue and the Queen set sail for Windsor and now traveled in an uncomfortable carriage in the pouring rain determined

 she would not miss the birth of her great-granddaughter.

 

Princess Victoria had a long and difficult labor and the day before the baby was born the Queen appeared in the bedroom. She was so grateful she had made it she looked lovingly at Louis and how he had supported his wife through these tortuous ordeal you are so lucky she told Victoria love him always.

 

Victoria tried to smile but she felt like she had run a marathon in hundred degree heat and she had nothing left to give. Louis wet her head, and allows her to sip water. Queen Victoria held her granddaughter's hand the young couple looked at her with gratitude. She was the benefactor to most of her children and grandchildren and the sun around which most planets circled.

 

The Queen went very quiet for a long time, as she took in the atmosphere of the room, then quietly she spoke on  ‘I hate this room she said it reminds me of my mother.’