Crowned by Music

CHAPTER ONE 1882-1

CHAPTER ONE

1882The Earl Granville, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, arrived at Windsor Castle not looking forward with any enthusiasm to his appointment with Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

As he was very popular with the equerries and other members of the Windsor Castle staff, he was greeted with obvious pleasure on his arrival.

He was politely offered something to drink after his journey from London.

The Earl refused and said that he could not stay too long as he had so much work to do at his office, but could he please see Her Majesty as quickly as possible.

An equerry hurried away and some twenty minutes later he returned to say,

“Her Majesty is in a good temper and so will be pleased to see you, my Lord.”

“I am very glad to hear that,” the Earl remarked, “because I am not sure when she does see me if she will be as pleased as she obviously is now.”

Other members of the staff, who were listening to this conversation, laughed.

“She is always good-tempered with you, my Lord,” one of them said. “It is when the Prime Minister comes that she is in a temper before he can even walk up the stairs!”

It was indeed well known to the Earl that the Queen disliked Mr. William Gladstone.

She had clashed violently with him in earlier years and at one time she had threatened to abdicate if he did not do what she wanted.

When Mr. Gladstone came back for a second term as Prime Minister, it had been only natural that those in attendance on Her Majesty were determined to keep him away from her as much as possible.

Unfortunately, as matters were becoming so tense in Europe and the Russians were behaving in what the Queen thought was a despicable manner, both the Prime Minister and his Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the Earl Granville, were practically daily visitors at Windsor Castle.

In fact when the Earl had said that he was visiting the Queen today, the equerry on duty had groaned almost noisily.

“I only hope, my Lord, that you don’t bring Her Majesty bad news,” he said, as he escorted the Earl up the stairs.

“I am afraid that Her Majesty will not be pleased at what I have to tell her,” the Earl replied to him, “so you can prepare yourself for a fairly gloomy evening.”

“We have those far too often,” the equerry retorted. “If it is to do with the Russians again, I think we will bolt up the gates and refuse your Lordship and any of your staff admittance!”

The Earl laughed as he was meant to do.

At that moment they reached the passage that led to the Queen’s Private Apartments.

“I will do my best not to make you as apprehensive as you are at the moment,” the Earl said, as they walked towards another equerry standing expectantly at the far end of the corridor.

The Earl reached him. He bowed and greeted the Earl,

“Good afternoon, my Lord, it is very good to see you again.”

“Now that is the sort of greeting I like to have when I arrive,” the Earl replied. “But they are full of gloom and doom downstairs and expect I will be about to upset Her Majesty and that will be the end of her good mood.”

“I think I know why you have come,” the equerry replied, “and all I can say, my Lord, is that you will be very lucky if you receive an elegant answer to the question you are going to put in front of Her Majesty.”

“I am crossing my fingers and hoping for the best but expecting the worst,” the Earl answered lightly.

The two equerries laughed as if they could not help themselves.

One of them opened the door and then ushered the Earl inside.

He returned almost immediately to say,

“Her Majesty is waiting to see you, my Lord.”

He opened the door and the Earl went in.

The Queen, dressed in black mourning which she had worn ever since her beloved Prince Albert had died all of twenty years ago, was sitting near the window.

Sunshine was streaming in through the windows of the room and it seemed to envelope her.

The Earl, after bowing to her deeply, walked slowly towards her.

She appeared to be relaxed in a way that made her much less awe-inspiring than she usually was to those who visited her on affairs of State.

“Good morning, my Lord,” she greeted the Earl. “I would be most pleased to see you if I could not guess why you have made this particular visit.”

“As you know we are always sorry to do anything to upset Your Majesty,” the Earl replied. “But, alas, there are many important matters that the Prime Minister and I cannot decide for ourselves.”

He paused before he continued,

“Therefore we have to trouble Your Majesty even though we have no wish to do so.”

The Queen smiled,

“I am always pleased to see you, my Lord, in any other capacity and I am always anxious to hear how your family is. So please let us get through the official business as quickly as possible.”

The Earl gave a sigh of relief.

Her Majesty was indeed in an excellent humour as he had already seen and so perhaps things would not be as difficult as he expected they might be.

“What I have to tell Your Majesty,” he began, “and, I know it has been said very often, is that another of the Principalities in the Balkan States is in desperate need of Your Majesty’s help.”

“I guessed that was why you had come,” the Queen answered. “But I told you the last time you were here with the Prime Minister that I have no more relations to help the Principalities and they must look elsewhere for protection against those meddlesome Russians.”

“If that were possible I am quite certain they would do as Your Majesty wishes,” the Earl assured her. “But unfortunately the only country that the Russians have any fear of or at least any respect for is ours.”

He knew as he spoke that it was impossible for the Queen to forget that it was entirely through her sending four Battleships through the Dardanelles that had halted the entire Russian Army when they were only within six miles of Constantinople.

Because they dared not fight against Great Britain, they had turned back in disarray.

As General Gorchakov had said at the time, it had cost them the lives of fifty thousand picked men and many millions of money for nothing.

After that Her Majesty was quite certain that they would not attempt to conquer Constantinople again or even make bellicose threats to Turkey.

But the Earl and the Prime Minister had discovered that they were still causing as much dissension and unrest in the smaller Principalities of the Balkans as they possibly could.

And the only way the Balkan Rulers could defend themselves was to take an English bride and fly the Union Jack to warn off the Russians or else the full might of the British Army and Navy would be thrown at them.

Queen Victoria was being called the ‘Matchmaker of Europe’ by everyone in diplomatic circles.

She had set many of her relations on thrones and saved them from invasion by the Russians and despite this the Russians themselves were behaving very badly.

They sent spies into the Principalities pretending to be salesmen of anything that country might want.

Once they were established they caused revolutions and uprisings, which had never happened before.

The Prince of every small Principality was terrified of a Russian invasion except when he was able to fly the Union Jack beside his own flag.

The Queen, who was violently against Russia, had taken a stand from the very beginning by proclaiming that she would help any Principality that she possibly could.

But unfortunately, as the Earl knew only too well, she had now run out of brides of Royal Blood, who were prepared to sit on a throne even though they knew from the beginning that it was very precarious.

Because the Queen was quick-witted and disliked wasting time when it was unnecessary, she said now and her voice sharpened,

“Who is asking for my help this time? I suppose I must listen to a tale of woe even though, as you know, my Lord, I am quite incapable of doing anything about it.”

“That is exactly, Your Majesty,” the Earl replied, “what the Prime Minister said to me only yesterday when unexpectedly we received a visit from Count Yuri Unkar from Samosia.”

The Queen knitted her brow.

“Samosia?” she quizzed him. “Where is that?”

“It is quite a small Principality, ma’am,” the Earl answered. “But, as Your Majesty will doubtless remember it is low down in the Balkans and nearer to the Aegean. It was where Your Majesty sent the British Battleships which successfully turned back the Russian Army.”

“Of course I remember,” the Queen answered him sharply. “But, as I have told you already, my Lord, I have no more brides for the Principalities and they must learn to fight for themselves.”

There was silence for a moment and then the Earl said slowly,

“That is exactly what Mr. Gladstone said to me last night. But on thinking it over, because I am so sorry for the young Prince Ivor, who I happen to like very much, I suddenly remembered someone Your Majesty has clearly forgotten.”

The Queen looked at him in surprise.

“Someone I have forgotten,” she repeated. “But I have gone through all my relations and, of course, those of my dear husband most carefully. I really cannot find one more who would be ready to sacrifice herself to save a Balkan Prince.”

“All the same, ma’am” the Earl said quietly, “it was nearly dawn when I suddenly thought of someone we had all forgotten.”

The Queen looked at him again.

He knew that Her Majesty was intrigued and that she was waiting for him to say more.

He deliberately took his time before he spoke again,

“Of course Your Majesty was very young when it happened and I daresay if your mother spoke of it at all it was not in your presence.”

“Who are you talking about?” the Queen asked him firmly.

At the same time the Earl realised that she was now very interested and in fact intrigued.

He therefore took his time before he continued,

“I am sure as a little girl nothing that could hurt or upset you was spoken of in your presence. Certainly not anything that caused a great deal of chatter and disapproval at the time.”

Now the Queen was obviously thinking back into her childhood.

After what was almost a poignant silence she said,

“You have aroused my curiosity, my Lord, but I must admit that I cannot understand what you are trying to say.”

“I am quite sure that Your Majesty has never given a thought to it since you became Queen,” the Earl went on. “But then the older members of Your Majesty’s family will surely recall the tremendous commotion and upset there was when your cousin, a handsome young man of twenty-seven, married beneath him and was then, to all intents and purposes, thrown out of the family.”

Her Majesty drew in her breath.

Then she gave a little cry.

“Now I know who you are talking about. It is my cousin Prince Vladimir of Leiningen you are talking about, is it not?”

“I am indeed, ma’am,” he confirmed, “and while Your Majesty has not seen Prince Vladimir since he left the family in disgrace, I can tell you that he is a very happy man and his marriage has been a very successful one.”

The Queen looked at him as if she could hardly believe what he was saying.

Then, in a very different voice from the one she had used previously, she said scathingly,

“To an actress, to a woman who performs in public, that is impossible!”

“Sometimes in life, ma’am,” the Earl replied, “the impossible becomes the possible. In this case I have never known a man as happy as Prince Vladimir. I know that neither he nor his wife have ever regretted that they were brave enough to snub Society and be married despite the fact that they would be isolated.”

“You say that the marriage has been a success?” the Queen asked curiously.

“A complete and absolute success. If Your Majesty would look back and perhaps talk to someone who was alive at the time, you will remember that Prince Vladimir’s wife was not, as was presumed at the time, a common girl, who wished to portray herself on the stage merely because she was pretty enough to please the men watching her.”