Shooting Victoria (8 page)

Oxford would soon meet Courvoisier, and Gould as well.

As Oxford sipped his coffee and perused the newspapers at Lovett's, other customers must surely have noticed the handles of his two pistols, bursting out from his bulging pockets. They were hard to miss: a servant at West Place noticed them, and so did the landlady, who commented to Mrs. Oxford on her son's want of economy: what use had he of
two
guns, after all? The locks of the pistols—carefully protected with rags between hammer and percussive caps, to prevent Oxford from shooting himself in the foot—rubbed so relentlessly against the Gambroon fabric of his trousers as to create a noticeably worn patch within a few weeks. Oxford's life in
public centered upon his guns; he haunted London's shooting galleries for hours each day. He shot regularly at a local one, attached to the baths on Westminster Bridge, and frequented as well William Green's “pistol-repository and shooting gallery” in Leicester Square. He also reportedly shot at a gallery elsewhere in the West End, as well as one in the Strand. He might have spent some of his time at these places flourishing the scimitar-shaped sword he had obtained during these weeks—but he certainly spent most of his time practicing marksmanship, with his own pistols and with the gallery's rifles. His habit, it seems, was to spend a shilling each visit, for a few shots with pistol and with rifle. He claimed that he was a better shot with rifle than with pistol, but apparently was a fairly miserable shot with either: at one point he bet that he could hit within six inches of his target—and he lost. “He was more fit to shoot at a haystack than at the target,” noted one companion. Oxford apparently did not mind the terrible shooting; more important to him, his restless perambulations to a number of galleries suggest, was to be
seen
shooting, to mingle with all varieties of men: “he associated,” as the
Morning Chronicle
put it, “alternatively with the higher and lower classes of society.”

As May became June, Oxford began to vary his trips to the shooting galleries with trips to his old haunts, looking up his few old friends and hobnobbing with his former workmates. His only friend from childhood—the only person who visited him in his home, according to Oxford's sister—was a butcher's son, John Lenton. The two spent a great deal of time together at this time, Oxford sharing his obsession with his pistols with the boy: coaxing him into accompanying him to the Lambeth shooting gallery to see him take six shots at a target, and later boasting to him that he had since been to a “much better” gallery across the river. He looked up his old places of employment as well, bringing another well-dressed acquaintance (very likely Lenton) to the Shepherd and Flock, and at another time returning to the Hog in the Pound to seek out a more recent friend he had made, a boy by the name
of Thomas Lawrence, a Bond Street perfumer's assistant and a regular at that pub.

With another motive than friendship in mind, Oxford sought out an old schoolmate and neighbor. J. J. Gray worked in the shop of his father, an oilman (or grocer) at 10 Westminster Bridge Road, Lambeth, a few houses down from lodgings that Edward had lived in with his mother eight or nine years before. The shop stood close to the south bank of the Thames, in the shadows of Astley's equestrian theatre. On the 3rd of June, Oxford went there to make a final necessary purchase. Gray recognized Oxford the moment he entered the shop, but had no interest whatsoever in renewing whatever relationship once existed between them, and pretended not to know him. Oxford was persistent, asking him if he had ever heard of anyone named Oxford—and revealing himself as the Oxford with whom Gray had attended school. The conversation then turned to guns. Oxford needed more percussion caps and gunpowder for his pistols. Gray had both; Oxford drew one of his ubiquitous pistols from his pocket, and the two tested the fit of the cap. It did, and Oxford bought fifty. Gray's shop only sold gunpowder in a large canister, too large for Oxford, who only wanted a quarter-pound. Gray recommended a gunsmith just across the river.

Leaving Gray's shop, Oxford crossed Westminster Bridge, passed the newly rising Houses of Parliament,
*
and to Parliament Street, where he waited while the proprietor molded him two dozen bullets, and sold him a quarter-pound of gunpowder.

He was ready.

*
“The prisoner's father was a mulatto, and his grandfather was a black.”
Morning Chronicle
12 June 1840, 7; “Oxford's great grandfather was a black man, but how he came to England none of the family can tell, which is no doubt extraordinary.…”
Caledonian Mercury
, 18 June 1840, 4.

*
Roubaix, according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Eigen).

*
The Houses of Parliament had burned down six years before; rebuilding had just commenced.

three

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SCAPE

W
ednesday the 10th of June 1840 was fine and bright: perfect weather for an outing in Hyde Park. Edward Oxford dined with his sister early in the afternoon. His mother was still with her family in Birmingham; his brother-in-law was at work at the soda manufacturer. Perhaps Edward and Susannah talked about their father; it was his birthday that day. When they were done, Edward geared himself up just as he had over the past few weeks: he carefully placed his two pistols, loaded with powder and wadding, in his gray Gambroon trousers, and carefully placed red rags between hammer and cap. He also equipped himself with a knife. He was off to the shooting gallery, he told his sister—and on the way he would buy some linen for shirts, and some tea from Mr. Twining's shop in the Strand.

He stopped first at Lovett's, to take coffee and glance at the newspapers, as usual. If he followed habit and looked over the employment advertisements, he did so ironically; he knew now that pulling pints of ale was not in his future. He might have glanced at the Court Circular, to reassure himself that the Queen was in residence and following the usual routine. She was. Yesterday, she had met with her aunt Adelaide, the Queen Dowager; she had gone for an airing with Albert late in the afternoon; in the evening, she and Albert had attended the opera—Rossini's
Barber of Seville
—with her half-brother, the Prince of Leiningen. Lovett, the proprietor, saw Oxford sitting there, but didn't see the pistols bulging in his pockets: Oxford's coat hid them. Oxford left, abruptly, without paying. He would never be coming back.

Oxford doubled back past his home and past Bethlem, up Westminster Bridge Road, across the river and past Parliament and Whitehall, into the green heart of the metropolis: St. James's Park, Pall Mall, and the Gates of Buckingham Palace, with Green Park and Constitution Hill in the distance. He joined the crowd milling about the Marble Arch—then in its original position as the front gate to Buckingham Palace
*
—everyone there hoping to catch a glimpse of the Queen or her Consort. Albert had left the Palace in the morning, visiting, as he had a month before, Woolwich Dockyard. The Queen was scheduled to go with him, and a royal salute had been planned, but on this morning she felt ill—quite possibly from morning sickness—so she stayed, and Albert went as her representative.

Albert was taking his first steps into public life. He had chaired, and given his brief speech to, the Anti-Slavery Society nine days before; writing it in German, translating it with Victoria's help, and practicing it repeatedly and nervously before her. In the end,
Exeter Hall was filled beyond its capacity of four thousand, and Albert's slightly accented words were received with “tremendous applause.” Albert made a great success of his trip to Woolwich, as well: three thousand inhabitants of the town were on hand to cheer his coming. With his genuine interest in industry and manufacture—an interest that only grew with time, and would lead to the enormously successful Great Exhibition, in 1851—Albert was fascinated by the construction of a new warship, the 120-gun HMS
Trafalgar
, speaking with laborers and watching them at work. After an “elegant
dejeuné
” with the supervisor of the yard, he left to the “three hearty cheers” of the workmen, and was now riding in a carriage back to the Palace. The Queen had spent a quiet day in the Palace, her only engagement seeing Lord Melbourne in the morning; she awaited Albert's return so that the two could go for their daily airing in Hyde Park. Oxford was there to see Albert's carriage sweep up the Mall and through the palace gates. He knew who was in the carriage, and knew from whence it had come.

At around four o'clock, Oxford walked around to the north side of the Palace, a couple hundred yards up Constitution Hill. Invariably, when they took their regular airing, Victoria and Albert left the front gates of the Palace, turned sharply left, and traveled up the Hill, with the walls to the Palace gardens on their left, and the palings to Green Park on their right, in order to reach Hyde Park. The crowd was not as numerous on the hill as it was at the gate. Oxford paced back and forth beside the road, his hands inside his jacket, each gripping a pistol up under his armpits, giving him a bulging breast and a Napoleonic stoop. A number of bystanders saw him in this curious pose, but apparently thought little of it; they, like he, were focused on the gate down the Hill, from which they expected the little Queen and her Consort would soon emerge.

At six, the gates opened and the procession emerged: two outriders, the Prince and the Queen in a droshky, a very low carriage that rendered the royal couple sitting alone fully visible to all. Two pair of horses pulled the carriage; riders sat upon the horses on the
left side, responsive to Albert's commands. Two equerries followed behind. The procession trotted out of the front gate of the Palace and up Constitution Hill, joined by many of the crowd at the gate, who were eager to lengthen their view of the royal couple. Few saw Oxford as the carriage approached—although one witness watched the odd, pacing figure, and watched Oxford stare at the carriage and “give a nod with his head sneeringly.” Among those on the path that day was the young artist-to-be John Everett Millais, then just eleven, and only months away from being the youngest student ever accepted to the Royal Academy Schools. He was there with his father and his older brother, John. The boys doffed their caps to the royal couple, and were delighted to see the Queen bow to them in response.

At that moment, Albert saw a “little mean looking man” six paces away from him, holding something that the Prince couldn't quite make out: it was Oxford, pointing his pistol at the two, and in a dueler's stance, firing a shot with a thunderous report that riveted the attention of all. Victoria, according to the Prince, was looking the other way at a horse and was stunned, with no idea why her ears were ringing. (She later told Lehzen that she thought someone was shooting birds in the park.) “I seized Victoria's hands,” Albert wrote later, “and asked if the fright had not shaken her, but she laughed at the thing. I then looked again at the man, who was still standing in the same place, his arms crossed, and a pistol in each hand.” The carriage moved on several yards, and then stopped. Oxford looked around him to see the impression he was making and then turned back to the Queen and the Prince. He drew the pistol in his left hand from his coat, and adopted the highwayman's pose he had been practicing for weeks, steadying his left hand on his right forearm, and taking careful aim at the Queen.

If he had expected the royal reaction to be sublime terror, he was mistaken. Victoria had not yet realized what the noise was, and Albert, writing to his (and Victoria's) grandmother after the shooting, claimed that Oxford's “attitude was so affected and
theatrical it quite amused me.” Oxford later declared that he was equally amused with Albert, stating “when I fired the first pistol, Albert was about to jump from the carriage and put his foot out, but when he saw me present the second pistol, he immediately drew back.” Oxford cried out, “I have another here.” Now, the Queen saw Oxford and crouched, pulling Albert down with her, thinking to herself “if it please Providence, I shall escape.” Oxford fired a second time.

For an instant, silence; the carriage had stopped, and the crowd and the royal couple took a moment to register what had just happened. Then, shouts and screams. Oxford's position made obvious by the smoke of the exploding percussion cap, the crowd converged upon him, some crying “Kill him!” The equerries and postilions stopped, and awaited a command. The Queen spoke to Albert, who called out to the postilions to drive on, and they did.

Victoria's whispered command turned near-tragedy into overwhelming personal triumph. The decision to move forward—on to Hyde Park and the completion of their ride—and not to follow the instinctive impulse to go back and seek safety in the palace, was entirely Victoria's, with her husband's full agreement. The royal couple was surrounded by an escort of equerries, and the Metropolitan Police had stationed a number of officers at and around the Palace, three of whom ran immediately to Oxford at the sound of the first shot. But the royal couple had nothing like the police protection offered the monarch and other heads of state today, in which at the first inkling of an assassination attempt the protectors take charge and take steps to isolate their charges.