Shooting Victoria (90 page)

430:   … his brother offered no financial support, and instead reminded Roderick of his mental weakness, and recommended he seek restraint:
Reynolds's Weekly
23 April 1882,1.

430:   His brothers were wealthy: one had a good business in London, and the other had married into wealth:
Daily News
4 March 1882, 5.

430:   He vowed that he would go to London to enforce his rights:
Hampshire Telegraph
4 March 1882, 8.

430:   He also engaged in another topic of conversation while at Mrs. Sorrell's: Queen Victoria:
Hampshire Telegraph
4 March 1882, 8.

431:   His odd questions confirmed Sorrell's and Hucker's opinion that Maclean was “soft”:
Hampshire Telegraph
4 March 1882, 8.

431:   Around midday, Maclean walked into a pawnbroker's on Queen Street, Portsmouth: For details about Maclean's purchase of a pistol, see
Times
20 April 1882,11.

431:   It was a cheap pistol: a six-shooter of Belgian make:
Times
20 April 1882, 11; Leeds Mercury 20 April 1882, 7; Birmingham Daily Post 4 March 1882, 5.

431:   … it was formidable-looking enough for witnesses later to mistake it for a Colt revolver:
Times
3 March 1882, 5.

431:   … his name was Campbell, he told the shopkeeper, and he needed the pistol because he was about to join the South African Cap Mounted Rifles:
Times
20 April 1882, 11.

431:   … by the end of the first one he gave Mrs. Sorrell notice:
Daily News
4 March 1882, 5.

432:   Maclean knew himself to be a brilliant actor:
Times
20 April 1882,11.

432:   He would leave on Thursday morning, the twenty-third, to go to London and find employment in Harris's troupe:
Times
4 March 1882, 10.

432:   She sent him another postoffice order, and pleaded with him to stay where he was and take on any job he could—even take up a broom and sweep street-crossings:
Daily News
4 March 1882, 5;
Times
4 March 1882, 10.

432:   Mrs. Sorrell gave him a couple shillings in return for his concertina and a scarf he owned:
Glasgow Herald
4 March 1882, 5.

432:   That day, Maclean returned to the pawnbroker's, paid the remainder on the pistol, and took it away wrapped in an old piece of white linen:
Reynolds's Weekly
23 April 1882, 1.

432:   He returned as well to the gunsmith's and bought as many pin-fire bullets as he could for a shilling:
Times
20 April 1882,11.

432:   Mrs. Sorrell gave him a final gift of a better hat and pair of shoes than his own:
Daily News
4 March 1882, 5.

432:   Maclean collapsed outside of Maclachlan's garden gate in what Maclachlan was certain was an epileptic fit:
Times
20 April 1882, 11.

433:   … at 3:00 on that afternoon—Saturday 25 February—he arrived in Windsor:
Reynolds's Weekly
, 23 April 1882, 1.

433:   Maclean found accommodation at 84 Victoria Cottages:
Daily News
, 4 March 1882, 5.

433:   He did by one account have a single eccentricity:
Daily News
4 March 1882, 5.

434:   “I should not have done this crime”:
Times
4 March 1882,10.

434:   “Did you know this is a first-class waiting room—not the place for you?”:
Times
20 April 1882, 11.

435:   … he had been careful to ensure his good fortune by loading only four of them:
Daily News
3 March 1882, 5;
Times
3 March 1882, 5.

435:   The daughter next in age, Louise, was far too free a spirit for Victoria to consider as a companion: Hibbert,
Queen Victoria
394.

436:   … Beatrice had done much of the chaperoning:
Times
1 March 1882, 3.

436:   But she wore another color as well, as was also usual on state occasions:
Times
2 March 1882, 8.

437:   “What nerve! What muscle! What energy!”: St. Aubyn,
Queen Victoria
428.

438:   … “I plight my troth to the kindest of
mistresses”
: Weintraub,
Disraeli
521.

438:   … he flattered the Queen ceaselessly and shamelessly, laying it on, as he famously observed, “with a trowel”: St. Aubyn,
Queen Vic
toria 427.

438:   … she preferred to see him as “full of poetry, romance and chivalry”: Matthew and Reynolds.

439:   “You have it, Madam,” he declared to her: Weintraub,
Disraeli
544.

439:   More than once he favored and sponsored legislation that she wanted and his Cabinet did not: Most notably the Public Worship and Regulation Act of 1874 and the Royal Titles Act of 1876. Weintraub,
Disraeli
529, 550.

439:   Disraeli, according to Victoria, had “right feelings,” and “
very large ideas
, and
very lofty views
of the position this country should hold”: Matthew and Reynolds; Weintraub,
Disraeli
547.

439:   … Victoria's concern for his own health was dictated “not so much from love of me as dread of somebody else”: Guedalla 2:7.

440:   … a righteous rage against Turkish atrocities in the Balkans reanimated him, forcing him once again into the political spotlight: Matthew.

440:   … Gladstone made his case against Disraeli not to Parliament, but to the people directly, in rousing orations at mass meetings: Matthew.

440:   … “like an American stumping orator, making most violent speeches”: St. Aubyn,
Queen Victoria
442.

440:   Her anger was mixed with more than a hint of jealousy: Hibbert,
Queen Victoria
487; St. Aubyn,
Queen Victoria 442
.

440:   She would rather abdicate, she wrote her private secretary, “rather than send for or have any
communication
with that
half-mad
firebrand”: Weintraub,
Disraeli
625.

441:   She kept him, as he noted, at “arm's length”: Guedalla 2:39.

441:   He spoke to her, she said, as if she were a public meeting: St. Aubyn,
Queen Victoria
384.

441:   Victoria had feared that the coming Liberal government would be a “calamity for the country and the peace of Europe”: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 3:73.

441:   Of all her governments, she told Vicky two years later, this one was “the worst I have ever had to do with”: Hibbert,
Queen Victoria
369.

442:   The first two attempts … were thwarted when bystanders jostled the would-be assassins' arms: Burleigh 34; Radzinsky 177,199.

442:   Alexander himself thwarted the third would-be assassin, a man named Alexander Soloviev: Burleigh 45.

442:   … they tried to kill the royal family as they ate, secreting a good three hundred pounds of dynamite in a trunk below the dining room of the Winter Palace: Radzinsky 332–33.

443:   Finally, People's Will planned an apocalypse from which Alexander would never escape: For accounts of Alexander II's assassination, see Burleigh 50–51; Radzinsky 411–16.

443:   Sundays in St. Petersburg, Alexander would usually drive a mile from the Winter Palace and back in order to review his troops: Hingley 113.

443:   “A fine one!”: Radzinsky 414.

443:   … with one arm he helped carry Alexander's body while with the other he held the briefcase containing the explosive: Radzinsky 416.

444:   “Feel quite shaken and stunned by this awful news”: Victoria,
Letters
(second series) 3:202.

444:   The bombers had obviously chosen the site for its symbolic value: Short, 50; K R M Short offers a fully-detailed study of the Fenian bombing campaigns in his
The Dynamite War
.

445:   Rossa's hatred of the British had been born when his fatherless family was evicted during the worst of the Great Famine: Edwards.

445:   The British government might protest, but the U.S. government—hungry for Irish votes—did nothing to stop him: Burleigh 3–4.

445:   Rossa's politics—his refusal in particular to work with Parnell and the parliamentary nationalists—proved too militant for the largest body of the Fenians in the United States, the Clan-na-Gael: Gantt 132.

445:   … Rossa's bombers targeted London, placing a cruder device—fifteen pounds of blasting powder lit by a fuse—in a niche outside Mansion House: Short 55.

446:   … the discovery by police … of eight more “infernal machines”—slabs of dynamite with clockwork detonators: Short 69.

446:   Guiteau, a failed lawyer, evangelist preacher, newspaper editor, lecturer, writer, and insurance salesman: Clark 1–2, 11, 18–19; Ackerman 134–5.

447:   … Guiteau leapt to the conclusion that his speech alone was responsible for Garfield's election: Clark 38.

447:   He preferred to become Minister to Austria; he would be happy with the consul-generalship in Paris; at the very least, he would accept a consulship in Liverpool: Clark 40.

447:   Soon after Garfield's inauguration, Guiteau arrived in Washington, D.C. with a single shirt and five dollars: Clark 37.

447:   He managed once to thrust a copy of his speech into Garfield's hands and once to speak to him; another time he slipped into a White House reception and had a conversation with Mrs. Garfield: Clark 37, 41–2; Ackerman 268.

447:   … “Never speak to me again on the Paris consulship as long as you live”: Ackerman 338.

447:   As he lay in bed one night, the disappointed office-seeker had a burst of inspiration: Ackerman 346–47.

448:   Within two weeks, he realized that his inspiration was divinely inspired: Ackerman 346.

448:   But in the end he opted for economy, choosing a $9 wood-handled, .44-caliber five-shot snub-nosed revolver with a powerful kick, stamped “British Bulldog”: Ellman 165–66 supports his claim that the handles were wood with a photograph; Clark 49, and Ackerman 355, claim that he actually bought the pearl-handled model. Despite its name, the pistol was probably not British, but a cheap American knockoff of the well-known pistol produced by the British firm Webley: Ellman 165–66.

448:   A novice with a gun, Guiteau spent time the next day practicing shooting on the banks of the Potomac: Ackerman 355.

448:   “The President's tragic death was a sad necessity”: Ackerman 374.

448:   At 8:30 that morning, he took up a position in the ladies' waiting room of the station: For accounts of Garfield's assassination, see Clark 56–63; Ackerman 375–380.

448:   … Guiteau shot twice, the first bullet grazing Garfield's arm and the second plunging into his back, above his waist and four inches from his spine: Clark 58, 110.

448:   The fifteen or so doctors who examined him, however, ensured that he would die: Clark 69.

449:   Victoria, who had sent at least six messages expressing her concern during Garfield's long decline and death, immediately ordered her Court to go into mourning for a week: King, ed. 417–18.

Chapter 23: Worth Being Shot At

451:   From their saloon car behind the Queen's own, the members of the household—Victoria's private secretary Sir Henry Ponsonby, her two equerries James Carstairs McNeill and Viscount Bridport, her current lady-in-waiting Lady Roxburghe, and her maids of honor—emerged:
Illustrated London News
11 March 1882, 228.

451:   Ponsonby offered the Queen his arm:
Pall Mall Gazette
3 March 1882, 8.

452:   Their head, Chief Superintendent Hayes, stood at the verge of the yard, ready to signal to his sergeant:
Times
4 March 1882, 10.

452:   … he had let down the carriage stairs and was ready to hand her warm wraps for the short journey:
Daily News
4 March 1882, 5.

452:   … he was stouter and suffered several chronic illnesses: Cullen 165–8.

452:   … Victoria enjoyed the cheers of the crowd, the shouting of the boys from Eton, she thought, drowning out the rest: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 3:265.

453:   … about forty feet away from her:
Times
20 April 1882, 11.

453:   Victoria heard the sharp report; she thought it had come from a train engine: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 3:265.

453:   Chief Superintendent Hayes, who was nine feet away from him, was the first to reach him, shouting “scoundrel!” and grabbing him by the neck:
Times
4 March 1882, 10; 20 April 1882, 11.

453:   Two of the Eton boys, armed with umbrellas, belabored Maclean over his head and shoulders with zeal but indiscriminate aim,
smacking in the process at least one of Maclean's captors:
Times
20 April 1882,11.

453:   Victoria … “saw people rushing about and a man being violently hustled”: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 3:265.

453:   The carriage sped up the hill, the other two carriages following: According to more than one account, Ponsonby and the equerries, about to enter the second carriage, dashed to the spot where Victoria's carriage had been, and reassured themselves she was uninjured before continuing on to the Castle. How they could possibly ascertain Victoria's state by examining the place she had vacated, however, is left unexplained:
Daily News
3 March 1882, 5;
Times
3 March 1882, 5.

453:   The crowd—and particularly the Eton boys—wanted to lynch Maclean on the spot:
Aberdeen Journal
3 March 1882, 4.

454:   … “Don't hurt me; I will go quietly”:
Times
4 March 1882, 10.

454:   … he declared “that man fired at your Majesty's carriage”: Victoria
Letters
(second series) 3:266.

454:   Victoria immediately ordered McNeill back to the station to see if anyone had been hurt:
Times
3 March 1882, 5.