Shooting Victoria (24 page)

Not quite. Francis still had two purchases to make. He struck out north, toward Whitehall, and within minutes entered a small oilman's shop on Charles Street. He needed a flint. The clerk told him they rarely sold flints, but he looked anyway, and found one among some old stock. Francis showed him the pistol; the clerk noticed it had no leather to tie a flint on, rooted around his shop
until he found a strip, and with it tied the flint to the pistol. He also noticed that the pistol seemed to have no trigger, but Francis pulled back the cock, and the trigger sprang out. Francis paid for the flint with two halfpennies.

He made one more purchase later that night; the police later found a shopkeeper across town who thought—but could not swear—that Francis bought gunpowder from him. The location of his shop, deep in Marylebone, makes this unlikely, but Francis clearly did buy gunpowder someplace—a small quantity, but enough to load the pistol through its muzzle. While the police learned about all of these purchases, however, they could never prove that Francis bought a bullet for his pistol, although they made an exhaustive attempt to do just that.

To sleep, and to hide away until Sunday, Francis found shelter at yet another coffee house: St. Ann's, at the very end of Oxford Street. Since this place was just doors away from his parents' home, he likely knew the owner, Mr. Goodman, and possibly was able to defer his payment for a little time. A little time was all he needed. This was one Sunday when he would not be returning home for dinner; his family never knew how close Francis was to them as he lay low and awaited his opportunity.

ten

A T
HOROUGH
S
CAMP

I
t was easy, in 1842, to catch sight of the Queen on Sundays while she was in residence at Buckingham Palace, since she regularly attended service at the Chapel Royal at St. James's Palace. It was of course the shortest of walks from Buckingham Palace to St. James's—less than a quarter-mile—but the Queen rode from palace to palace with her household, in a series of carriages. On either side of the Mall, under the shade of the magnificent elm trees, bystanders watched the short parade come, and, after the service, return. While Victoria and Albert attended the sermon of the Bishop of Norwich at the Chapel Royal during the early afternoon of Sunday 29 May, a crowd outside awaited their return to Buckingham Palace. Among that crowd, standing on the Mall directly across from the southeastern entrance to Green Park, stood a sixteen-year-old boy by the name of George Pearson. Pearson had only recently arrived in London from Suffolk to work at his brother's printing business as a wood engraver. This Sunday
he was exploring the wonders of the metropolis and had come to St. James's to see the greatest wonder of all, the Queen.

Pearson was a shy boy and betrayed that shyness with an acute stammer, one that amounted to verbal paralysis when he felt fear or stress. It was two in the afternoon when the crowd stirred upon seeing the activity on Stable Yard Road. The train of closed carriages emerged from there, turned right for the Palace, and approached the boy. The crowd cheered, all eyes fixed on the last carriage, the one carrying the royal couple. Albert sat to the right, Pearson's side, with his equerry Colonel Wylde riding beside him; Victoria's equerry Colonel Arbuthnot rode apace on the Queen's side. Victoria bowed to those on her side of the Mall while Albert acknowledged those around Pearson. They passed Pearson and trotted on. He turned to watch the backs of the footmen standing on the back of the Queen's carriage.

He froze. Three or four yards in front of his eyes, a dark-complexioned youth, his back against the rails of St. James's Park, stood with arm extended, clutching a small pistol and pointing it toward the carriage. The youth didn't fire, Pearson thought.
*
He seemed confused and angry with himself as he returned the pistol to the breast of his black surtout coat. Pearson heard him mutter “They may take me if they like, I don't care—I was a fool not to shoot.” For some moments—as long as a minute or two—the two young men stood still, indecisively. Then John Francis crossed the Mall and disappeared through the gate and into Green Park.

Pearson, immobilized by agitation, watched him go, wondering whether what he had seen was a joke, and wondering if he had really seen what he thought he had: no one else in the now-dispersing crowd seemed to. But then he saw next to him a tall, white-whiskered old man, whose startled face showed he had obviously witnessed what Pearson had. “What a remarkable thing it was!”
he said to Pearson: he “never knew such a thing in his life!” Then, he turned and slowly walked away, toward Piccadilly. Pearson quietly followed him: perhaps the man was on his way to report the attempt to the police, in which case Pearson too should come forward as a witness. The old man walked on, Pearson following, to St. James's Street, where he stopped and turned to the boy, again commenting on the remarkable scene the two had just witnessed. He then asked the boy for his name and address; Pearson haltingly articulated them, and the old man carefully wrote them down. The two then walked together down Piccadilly. The man turned and left Pearson on the corner of Duke Street. Pearson watched him amble slowly away—and never saw him again. In the coming days, the police (with Pearson's help) exerted an enormous amount of energy attempting to find the old gentleman—to no avail. The gentleman, whoever he was, must have had the questionable pleasure of reading about himself in the newspapers a few days later, when he was excoriated for not raising an alarm or reporting the crime.

Pearson continued on east, to his brother's home in Holborn. He assumed that the old man was reporting the attempt to the police, and supposed that the police might come to him soon. They never came. When he spoke with his brother, he was calmer, able to tell him what he had witnessed without his stammer defeating him.

George's brother, Matthew Flinders Pearson, was a good fifteen years older than he, and a respectable businessman in Holborn. He was genuinely alarmed by his brother's account, and knew that they could not leave reporting the crime to the old gentleman, or wait for the police to come. Indeed, he mistrusted the very idea of reporting to the police, considering it unlikely that they would give the tale of a semi-articulate country boy much credence, and fearing the consequences of public alarm: he considered that the attempt should be kept as secret as possible. That need for secrecy was the opinion shared by everyone who learned of the attempt in the next twenty-four hours. Matthew decided therefore to report the attempt to a political authority, and the brothers Pearson set
off on an odyssey that would bring them overnight to the presence of the highest powers in the kingdom.

Matthew brought George to a Holborn friend he knew to be politically inclined. Thomas Dousbery, a boot and shoe retailer, dabbled in radical thought and was the secretary of the Cordwainer's benevolent fund; he was acquainted with a number of political figures, and he would surely know what to do. With Matthew translating, George haltingly told Dousbery his story. Dousbery believed George's account demanded serious attention, and recommended the three speak with the most highly placed city official he knew: Alderman Sir Peter Laurie—the same Sir Peter who had taken such an interest in Oxford's case, and, incidentally, was still taking an interest in his official capacity as President of Bethlem Hospital. Dousbery was sure that Laurie trusted in him, and would not see Pearson's account as a “trumped up tale.”

At six that evening, then, Dousbery and the Pearsons were received by Laurie at his ornate mansion on aristocratic Park Square: surroundings guaranteed to overawe young Pearson and hopelessly tie his tongue: He stammered so badly, Laurie wrote in his diary, “that his brother who was with him had to repeat a statement he had made to him when he was not excited or afraid.” Laurie considered that Pearson should take his account straight to Buckingham Palace. He doubted the discretion of the police and the Tory Home Secretary, James Graham, believing that if Pearson went there his account was likely to make “noise” and to become public. Best to speak with a royal official. Laurie therefore wrote them a letter of introduction to Charles Augustus Murray, the Master of the Queen's Household—a letter which Laurie, a man well known for his egotism, later claimed saved the Queen's life.

From Laurie's mansion adjacent to Regent's Park, the three hurried south to Buckingham Palace to find themselves stymied by royal protocol. Upon presenting their letter at the door, they were curtly informed that Murray had just sat down to dinner at the Queen's table, and could not—“on any pretence”—be spoken with
until bed time. Rather than wait until then, and rather than argue that the matter was of sufficient importance to interrupt Murray, they decided to bring the letter to Murray in the morning, and returned to Holborn. The Queen, they thought, would have to wait to hear about her assailant.

Victoria, however, already knew. For besides George Pearson and the mysterious old man, there was one other witness to Francis's attempt: Prince Albert. Albert, watching the crowd from his carriage, had seen the “little swarthy ill-looking rascal” aim the flintlock at his face, and had spent the entire afternoon certain that he had nearly been killed. He wrote about the assault to his father the next day:

… when we were nearly opposite Stafford House, I saw a man step out from the crowd and present a pistol full at me. He was some two paces from us. I heard the trigger snap, but it must have missed fire. I turned to Victoria, who was seated on my right, and asked her, “Did you hear that?” She had been bowing to the people on the right, and had observed nothing. I said, “I may be mistaken, but I am sure I saw some one take aim at us.”

As far as Albert was concerned, the swarthy ill-looking rascal was aiming directly at him and not at the Queen; Victoria later wrote to her Uncle Leopold “Thank God, my angel is also well; but he says that had the man fired on Sunday, he must have been hit in the head.”

Albert was deeply distressed after this attempt—distressed at the attempt itself, and at the amazing fact that no one around him had seen what he had. He asked his footmen if they had noticed anyone stretch a hand toward the carriage. (He didn't mention the pistol, thinking that best be kept secret.) They had seen nothing. He then ran out onto the palace balcony to see if there was a commotion on the Mall: surely, if anyone else had seen the assailant,
there would be an outcry, and hundreds would have converged on the perpetrator. But all was quiet; the crowd had dispersed, “satisfied with having seen the Queen.” Albert then spoke with the Queen's equerry, Colonel Arbuthnot—who, riding on the Queen's side of the carriage, also saw nothing. Albert, wishing Arbuthnot to maintain “profound secrecy,” asked him to communicate what had happened to four people only: the two Commissioners of the police; the Home Secretary, James Graham; and the Prime Minister, Robert Peel.

Upon hearing of the attempt, Peel rushed to the Palace and listened to Albert's tale as the two walked in the palace gardens. With a member of the police, Peel took down Albert's statement in writing, taking special note of Albert's description of Francis. He then acquainted the Home Secretary with the situation. Sir James Graham walked to Scotland Yard to call on the elder and the more military of the two police commissioners, Colonel Charles Rowan: from the start, Graham envisioned something like a military operation to catch the would-be assassin. Rowan was out, but he returned between five and six and hurried around the building to the Home Office, where Graham showed him Albert's statement. Both men then reported to the Palace. Peel was there, and the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary left Rowan to confer with the Prince. The three agreed that they should limit the knowledge of the assault to a very few—the Prince, Peel, Graham, Rowan, the two equerries, and the two police inspectors attached to the Palace—while at the same time launching a major police operation to catch the assailant. The Queen in the meantime would not present herself as a target by going out in her carriage until she absolutely had to—that is, not for three days, until Wednesday, when she was to attend a royal levee at the Throne Room at St. James's. That was the plan that Rowan took from the Palace, anyway. Whether Peel, Graham, and particularly Albert were fully aware of the same plan, agreed upon in two separate conversations, is unclear. And the Queen herself had not agreed to anything. The subsequent confusion put Victoria in grave danger.

Rowan left Buckingham Palace at 7:30, quite possibly crossing paths obliviously with the Pearsons and Dousbery on their way in. At Scotland Yard, Rowan established a plan to capture the assailant. Rowan believed that, failing in his first attempt, the assailant would likely soon show up in the neighborhood of the palace hoping for another opportunity to shoot at the Queen. He thought he had three days to work with. Rowan thus ordered his detective (in all but name) Inspector Pearce to join the inspectors assigned to the Palace and patrol Green and St. James's parks in plain clothes, watching for anyone who fit the description Albert had given.

The next morning at nine, the Pearsons and Dousbery came to Buckingham Palace to call on the Master of the Household. This time Murray saw them, and patiently listened to the boy's excruciatingly drawn-out tale. Murray, with less of a sense of imminent danger than Laurie had shown, or perhaps an awareness of Sir James's work schedule at the Home Office, wrote the three a letter for Graham and told them to call on the Home Secretary that afternoon between two and three. He then brought the Prince the welcome news that his story was corroborated: “There was no longer any doubt,” Albert wrote with relief to his father.

At two on Monday afternoon, then, a good twenty-four hours after the attempt, George Pearson was finally able to tell his story to the police, the Home Secretary calling in Colonel Rowan to take the boy's statement. George Pearson's tale did not come more easily with the retelling, his stammer if anything worse in the magisterial precincts of Whitehall. “I was present,” Rowan wrote with exasperation, “during a very long Examination of the Lad who saw the pistol presented made tediously long by the impediment in his speech.”