We Two: Victoria and Albert (59 page)

Napoleon III was more than satisfied by the warm relations he and his wife had managed to develop with the English royal family, and he pressed his advantage by issuing an invitation to Queen Victoria to come to Paris in late August. Victoria was pleased, especially since her delightful new French friend assured her that Prince Albert would be given the same precedence on French soil as in England. With rather less enthusiasm, the cabinet, which had a war to manage, agreed to sanction the visit. A large diplomatic party, headed by Foreign Secretary Lord Clarendon himself, was deputed to accompany the Queen and ensure that she and the prince made no unilateral policy moves.

In the eyes of all Europe, Queen Victoria’s state visit to Paris in 1855 was very big news. England and France had been rivals since the Middle Ages and enemies on several continents during the eighteenth century, with wars that culminated in the great Napoleonic campaigns. The last time an English monarch had officially set foot on French soil was in 1520, when Henry VIII met Francis I at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The visit was also a personal challenge for the Queen. The French were known to be making the most elaborate preparations, and the eyes of the world’s press would
be trained on the English royal couple. Paris was the fashion capital of the world, and Victoria would need to look her best. Even Albert was of the opinion that economy was not in order on so solemn and important an occasion. By good luck, the Queen was not pregnant, and for two weeks at Os-borne she devoted unusual time and thought to her wardrobe.

At the outset, things did not bode well for Queen Victoria as England’s fashion ambassadress. General Canrobert, the emperor’s cousin who had recently resigned as commander in chief of the French army in the Crimea, watched Victoria make her triumphal entry into Paris and was appalled. “In spite of the great heat,” he wrote, the Queen “had on a massive bonnet of white silk with streamers behind and a tuft of marabou feathers on top … Her dress was white and flounced, but she had a mantle and a sunshade of crude green which did not go with the rest of her costume. When she put her foot on the steps she lifted her skirt, which was very short (in the English fashion, I was told) and I saw she had on small slippers tied with black ribbons which were crossed around her ankles. My attention was chiefly attracted by a voluminous object which she carried on her arm; it was an enormous reticule—like those of our grandmothers,—made of white satin or silk, on which was embroidered a fat poodle in gold.” If Prince Albert, in his capacity of fashion adviser, was consulted about the tossing stork feathers or the gold poodle (apparently the work of a royal daughter), we might wonder if he was trying to make his wife look ridiculous.

Fortunately, both the French and the English press were anxious to promote good relations, and the Queen of England’s dubious taste in clothes did not make the front pages. Flattered outrageously by the emperor, showered with delicate attentions and gifts by the empress, gloriously sure that she had never looked so attractive, Queen Victoria enjoyed every second of her visit to Paris.

She was indefatigable, refusing to allow even the intense heat to get the better of her. She wore out her French hosts, her English ministers, her ladies-in-waiting, her servants, and her husband. Apart from the many social events and tourist opportunities scheduled by her French hosts, Victoria dragged Albert and maid of honor Mary Bulteel along for an incognito sortie in an open carriage to the Jardin des Plantes and the Grands Magasins du Louvre. How odd it was, she chirped, that in Paris people ate outside on the street, that knives in French cutlery shop windows were arranged in a circle, and that no one saw through her incognito and shouted “Vive la Reine.” On a visit to the Hôtel des Invalides, the Queen made her son the Prince of Wales kneel in homage at Napoleon I’s tomb, which pleased Napoleon III immensely and made old French soldiers weep.

When the imperial party arrived at the emperor’s box at the opera house for a command performance, the national anthems boomed and hundreds of curious faces turned upward in anticipation. The Empress Eugenie, a picture of beauty and elegance despite her pregnancy, held back timidly for a moment. Queen Victoria, who had been doing this kind of thing since she was eighteen and two months, swept forward, greeted the crowd with a broad smile and a practiced wave, and then sat down without a backward look. The crowd was impressed. Experts on protocol emerged to note in the French press that only a real queen never looks to see if her chair is in place. Effervescing with amusement, Queen Victoria won the hearts of the French and got rave reviews in newspapers all over the world.

THE EXCHANGE OF STATE
visits between the French and British rulers in the summer of 1855 was royal diplomacy at its best. A political and military alliance between Great Britain and France represented a shift in the balance of power and was watched with rapt attention in all European capitals. Given all that was at stake for France and Great Britain in the ongoing struggle with Russia in both the Crimea and the Baltic, it was important for both governments to have the chance to coordinate strategy at the highest levels of command, find common ground, and begin to trust each other. But the new relationship with the imperial couple was also the catalyst for important changes in the private lives of Queen Victoria and her family.

For several days after her return to England, the Queen could talk and write of little else but France. How exciting it had been to dance in the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles and go out to see a fireworks display that ended with the outline of Windsor Castle sparkling in the sky. Victoria was determined to return to France when she could, if possible incognito so she could meet more interesting people and have more fun.

The hours spent with the emperor had reminded the Queen pleasurably of the time before her marriage when she had ridden out with her attractive German cousin Alexander Mensdorff and danced the mazurka with the tsarevitch. Victoria was very much a man’s woman, delighting in male society, and in Napoleon III she found the first man since Lord Melbourne who both liked her as a woman and valued her as a monarch. On her last night in Paris, she remarked to Lord Clarendon: “It is very odd; but the Emperor knows everything I have done and where I have been since I was twelve years old; he even recollects how I was dressed, and a thousand little details it is extraordinary he should be acquainted with.” Clearly, Queen Victoria was not accustomed to getting this degree of personal appreciation. To her
diary she confided, “I should not fear saying anything to him [Napoleon III]. I felt—I do not know how to express it—safe with him.” The word
safe
is very significant here: It is the word Victoria often uses to describe her relationship with her husband.

Unlike his wife, Albert was not unhappy to be back in England. The prince’s appetite for late nights and other men’s magnificence had never been large, and the rich French cuisine played havoc with his digestive system. He felt well and happy only when he was on his own estate, and even there less and less. State visits reopened the chasm in status between a British queen regnant and a Coburg second son, and even on private occasions Albert found himself eclipsed by his wife. The prince cut a distinguished figure in his uniforms and dress clothes, but he had none of the Queen’s infectious charm and ready enthusiasm. His heavily accented French was stilted, while his wife could chat as idiomatically in French as she could in English and German.

As for royal diplomacy, in the public events and even in counsel, the Queen had held the limelight even though her voice was rarely heard. Just to have a woman’s presence in a counsel of war was a statement. The emperor gallantly allowed it to be known that it was the Queen herself who had persuaded him not to go to the Crimea to lead his troops in battle personally. Albert was far less sure that he had achieved any real influence over the French ruler. In Albert’s early private conversations with Napoleon III in Boulogne, the emperor had listened attentively to all that the prince had to say, but it was far from clear that he had changed his policies. The state visits had offered no opportunities for manly tête-à-têtes. Victoria was the focus of the emperor’s attention. She was the one who counted.

If Napoleon III effected a tiny breach in the united front of the royal English marriage, he also gave a significant nudge to the relationship evolving between Victoria and Albert and their eldest children. At Windsor, Emperor Napoleon and Empress Eugenie went out of their way to make friends with Vicky and Bertie, and they urged the Queen and the prince to allow both children to come to Paris for the state visit.

For the Prince of Wales, almost fourteen, Paris was a revelation. Bertie had little in common with his father. He cared for sensations, not ideas and facts; for pleasures, not principles and morals; for suits and boots and uniforms, not books and memoranda and protocols. In France he found what he wanted, what had hitherto been systematically denied him. Leaving his loathsome tutor Gibbs in England and supervised by the urbane Lord Clarendon, the Prince of Wales saw enough of Paris to conceive a lifelong love. Here the women were chic and flirtatious, the men elegant and
debonair, the cuisine incomparable, the wine superb, the atmosphere deliciously decadent. What a contrast to the dyspeptic, straitlaced court his father had created in England!

Permitted, in a daring move, to drive out alone with the Emperor Napoleon, Bertie expressed the naive wish that he could be the emperor’s son. He and his sister begged Empress Eugenie to allow them to stay on a few more days. When she politely said this was impossible, as their parents could not do without them, the Prince of Wales blurted out: “Not do without us! Don’t fancy that, for there are six more of us at home, and they don’t want us.” Like his mother, the Prince of Wales was depressed to get home. He too determined to return to France as soon as possible for new pleasures and new discoveries. In 1855 the seed was sown of the chubby, elegant, bon viveur boulevardier Prince of Wales who makes cameo appearances as an acquaintance of Swann, the Jewish financier and aesthete, in Marcel Proust’s great novel.

For Vicky too the visit to Paris was a door opening onto an enticing world. For her, unlike her brother, that door immediately clanged shut. When Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie came to Windsor, the Princess Royal was allowed for the first time to attend dinners with the grown-ups. She developed a huge crush on the tall, slender, elegant empress, and Eugenie, sincerely grateful for the girl’s admiration, was very nice to her.

As the queen of chic in the world’s capital of fashion, Eugenie could see that her new friend the Queen of England chose the wrong clothes, not only for herself but for the teenage daughter who looked so much like her. There was nothing to be done for Victoria, so completely in thrall to her husband’s idea of fashion, and obliged to have clothes made by British dressmakers from British fabrics. But the empress devised a plan to help young Vicky realize her dream of coming out in style. Before leaving England, she took the measurements for a life-size doll of Vicky, and she then sent a set of exquisite Paris outfits as a gift “for the doll.” Here was diplomatic tact and womanly sympathy of the first order, and Queen Victoria understood it as such. Vicky, with her mother’s approval, rapturously wore the doll’s wardrobe in Paris.

Eugenie made other thoughtful preparations for Vicky’s visit. At home Vicky and her younger sister Alice always shared a bedroom, and the two girls were usually confined to a small room at the top of the house. In Paris, Vicky found that a whole suite had been prepared for her, on the reception floor at the Palace of Saint-Cloud with a glorious view. Again at the request of her hosts, the Princess Royal was allowed to attend the great final ball in
the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. There she danced with the emperor himself and had an eager crowd of young men waiting to claim her hand. It was every young girl’s dream.

Victoria, Princess Royal, was still three months short of her fifteenth birthday, but it was now apparent that she had become a woman. She was physically mature (her first period came in the spring of 1855), prettier than her mother had been at the same age, a little taller, her features better, her complexion clearer, her smile less gummy, her bosom fuller. Her formidable intellect, restless curiosity, and strong will were hidden behind the mask of blushing maiden modesty.

None of this was lost on her parents. They knew that Vicky had always been precocious and that she liked to have her own way. Ever since her infancy, it had been a struggle to discipline her and plane down her square edges to fit the round female hole. Now, almost overnight, she had entered the danger zone for young princesses, and it was obvious that she liked male company. Her father saw that the time had come to settle Vicky’s future before sexual desire could lead her astray. Luckily he had a husband already picked out for her: twenty-four-year-old Prince Frederick (Fritz) Hohen-zollern, son to the heir of the King of Prussia.