A Magnificent Obsession by Helen Rappaport

Author:Helen Rappaport
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2012-03-13T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

‘A Married Daughter I Must Have Living with Me’

In the spring of 1863 the British public resolutely shook off its gloom and enjoyed a few days of unprecedented national rejoicing. Its monarch might still be in self-imposed retirement, but a new and enchanting personality was about to shine a ray of light on the beleaguered royal family. On Thursday 7 March Princess Alexandra of Denmark arrived at Gravesend. Bertie was there to meet her and together they made their way across Kent by train, past cheering crowds and flags flying from every haystack and cowshed. Enormous numbers gathered in London for a glimpse of the Princess and something of the royal pageantry of old. The Corporation of London had spared no expense in anticipation of this precious respite from continuing royal despondency: £40,000 had been allotted for massed bands, decorated triumphal arches of evergreens and orange blossom, bunting and illuminations along the route. The windows and balconies of private houses too were festooned with flags, and some residents rented out their windows and balconies for large sums of money. The press took a vigorous interest in the story, whipping up public excitement at the prospect of seeing Bertie and his beautiful fiancée’s royal progress. This ensured that their journey across London was witnessed by huge crowds, strung out across seven miles of streets, from the rather prosaic rail terminus on the Old Kent Road to Paddington, via London Bridge, Pall Mall, Piccadilly and Hyde Park. The crush was appalling, the journey interminably slow, the carriages laid on for the procession somewhat shoddy and, in the opinion of John Delane of The Times, ‘unworthy of the occasion’.1But through it all Alexandra smiled warmly and bowed graciously ‘as all those thousands of souls rose at her, as it were, in one blaze of triumphant irrepressible enthusiasm; surging round the carriage, waving hats and kerchiefs, leaping up here and there and again to catch sight of her; and crying Hurrah’.2Darkness had fallen by the time the couple arrived at Windsor station, where they were again enthusiastically greeted by patient crowds frozen from standing for long hours in the driving rain.

Victoria’s greeting inside the castle had been warm and affectionate, but her self-absorption was such that she could not disguise how low and depressed she felt at what was to come, and she did not join the couple for dinner. Indeed, with undisguised bitterness she expressed her ‘surprise’ that the public had given such a warm ovation to the future wife of the Prince of Wales, ‘when none was offered to the husband of the Queen’ in his lifetime.3She had wanted the Prince of Wales’s wedding to take place on her own wedding day of 10 February, but everyone had feared a repetition of Alice’s funereal ceremony and she had been persuaded to postpone it to March. She overrode objections to it taking place in Lent, as she was determined to be rid of all her guests before Alice gave birth to her first baby – at Windsor, as she, Victoria, had ordained.

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