The christening was a great success. Pussy behaved very well and did not cry as the Queen had feared she might. She appeared to be fascinated by the lights and the uniforms and everyone commented on her intelligence.
The old Duke of Wellington stood proxy for the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as one of the sponsors; Leopold was another. Queen Adelaide with the Duke of Sussex and the Duchesses of Kent and Gloucester made up the rest.
After the ceremony, which took place in Buckingham Palace, at six p.m. there was a dinner-party over which the Queen presided.
Beside her was her dear Lord Melbourne and she told him that she was reminded of the old days when he dined almost every evening at the palace and indeed had an apartment there.
She noticed that tears filled his eyes and she was deeply touched.
‘You will always be my dear friend,’ she said warmly, ‘and none of your other friends will be as fond of you as I am.’
‘Your Majesty once told me that before. I have never forgotten, nor shall I ever.’
‘Dear Lord M.’ She touched his hand briefly and then, because it was such an emotional moment, she changed the subject by asking what he had thought of the ceremony.
‘It went off perfectly,’ said Lord Melbourne, ‘and I could not help but be impressed by the chief performer.’
‘You mean?’
‘The Princess Royal. She looked about her, conscious that all the stir was for her. This is the time that character is formed.’
The Queen laughed aloud and repeated Lord Melbourne’s remark to the rest of the company.
She remembered how in the old days a dinner-party was always gay and amusing when Lord Melbourne was present, and rather dull when he wasn’t. It was different now of course that there was Albert.
Albert was sneezing violently.
‘Oh, dear,’ said the Queen, ‘I hope your ducking is not going to make you ill.’
‘It’s only a cold,’ replied the Prince. He looked at her fondly. ‘I shall never forget how promptly you saved me.’
‘I didn’t save you. You saved yourself.’
‘You showed great presence of mind. Different from your attendants. I was proud of you.’
‘Oh, Albert, I can’t describe my terror when I saw you disappear.’
‘My love, there was no real danger. The lake is not deep and in fact the ice was quite firm except at that one small spot.’
‘I thought of so many things in the space of those few moments,’ she said. ‘I thought of them carrying you into the palace … dead, and I knew then that if that had been so I should want to die too.’
Albert kissed her tenderly.
‘My dear love, we are happy are we not?’
‘Completely, Albert.’
‘We must try always to keep it as it was during that moment when I disappeared and you came out on the ice to rescue me.’
‘We will, Albert,’ she cried fervently. ‘We will.’
All Albert suffered from the skating incident was a severe cold. Victoria insisted on making sure that he did everything to rid himself of it. Having suffered that moment of intense fear when she had thought of losing him she realised how much she loved him.
She was blissfully happy for a few weeks. Then she made a discovery.
She was once more pregnant.
‘It can’t be,’ she moaned. ‘It is much too soon.’
Albert was delighted, but inwardly she was resentful. As she had remarked to Uncle Leopold, men seldom understood what child-bearing meant, that terrible ordeal being quite beyond their comprehension.
Lehzen grumbled that it was far too soon. Victoria should have had a year in which to recover from Pussy’s birth, she said, implying that Albert had been inconsiderate in forcing this new pregnancy upon her. Even the Duchess of Kent expressed the desire that there should have been a longer interval, although there was not a hint of criticism of Albert from her.
Victoria was even more difficult than she had been during the first months of Pussy’s gestation. She began finding fault with everyone and her ladies were beginning to dread approaching her. The famous temper flared up at the slightest provocation, and the atmosphere was quite different from that which had prevailed at Windsor during Christmas.
She was anxious too about the government. Trade was bad and the finances of the country were weak. When Lord Melbourne came to see her he was quite clearly uneasy and she felt that he tried to keep this from her. She could guess what it meant. The Opposition was being difficult again and the idea of losing her Prime Minister with the ordeal of childbirth looming ahead of her angered her.
Her pretty pink and white complexion faded during those months; she looked pale, even sallow. Her nose looked longer, her eyes less blue and her mouth sullen. I’m quite plain, she thought, and Albert is beautiful.
She noticed then how pretty some of her ladies were. How foolish she had been to choose them because she liked the look of them. If she did, other people might – people like Albert, for instance.
Albert had always disliked the society of women and she had at times been a little critical of his awkwardness with them, but she fancied that this was changing.
She had heard him chattering away with Miss Spring-Rice in German. That very pretty young lady spoke the language quite well and gave herself airs because the Prince naturally liked to talk in his native tongue.
‘I trust you enjoyed your conversations with the young lady,’ said the Queen after she had listened to them as she said ‘going on and on’.
‘It was very interesting,’ replied the Prince. ‘Her accent is not at all bad. She has an amusing way with her verbs which I have to correct.’
‘And there is something I have to correct. I don’t care to hear you giggling with that silly frivolous creature.’
‘We talked in German,’ said the Prince. ‘I do not think that could be described as giggling.’
‘I describe what you were doing as such,’ said the Queen haughtily and left him. In her room she looked into her mirror.
‘I was never pretty,’ she said, ‘but being pregnant has certainly not improved my looks.’
Lehzen said that when a woman was going to have a child nature did something to her, put an aura around her, gave her special attractions.
‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ snapped the Queen. ‘Where is this aura? Show it to me.’
‘It is something you can’t point to.’
‘No, it is something to pacify me. It doesn’t exist. Sometimes, Lehzen, I think you imagine I am a child in the nursery. This is no longer so, and please remember it. I will not be treated as though I’m a querulous child.’
Lehzen looked so sad that Victoria cried: ‘Oh, Lehzen, I’m sorry. I’ve become terrible lately. And what’s worse I quarrel all the time with Albert.’
‘Well, as he’s responsible for your condition, he must understand.’
‘He does. He is an angel.’
She must try to be reasonable; she must make Albert see that it was this violent temper of hers and the fact that she was so soon to have another baby which was affecting her.
She was charming to Albert for a few days and he, the dear good angel, behaved as though nothing unusual had happened, and then she began to be jealous because he seemed to enjoy the company of Miss Devereux who was really very beautiful and dignified and rather like Albert in temperament.
‘It’s the first few months that are the worst in a pregnancy,’ comforted Lehzen. ‘After that you’ll settle down and become quite serene as you did last time.’