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lessen his ability to do good to poor artists and intellectuals.
    Then, there was the question of Albert’s precedence: a serious question, given the many official appearances that Albert would be expected to make, with and without the Queen, over the next decades. Victoria felt deeply that her husband should take precedence over all except for herself, as monarch: take precedence, in particular, over her living royal uncles. While her uncles Cambridge and Sussex at first agreed with her, her wicked uncle Cumberland would have none of it—and he bullied his royal brothers into taking his side. The Tories, and particularly the Duke of Wellington, also objected—holding that the consort had precedence over all except the monarch and princes of the Royal Blood. Victoria responded with partisan, Jacobean rage: “this wicked old foolish Duke, these confounded Tories, oh! May they be well punished for this outrageous insult! I cried with rage.… Poor dear Albert, how cruelly are they ill-using that dearest Angel! Monsters! You Tories shall be punished. Revenge! Revenge!”
    That Victoria fumed about Albert’s rank might suggest that she foresaw that Albert, after the marriage, would be her political equal. But nothing could be further from the truth. Two disagreements that the two had, in making arrangements for the wedding and their life together, demonstrate clearly that Victoria saw the business of ruling as belonging to her alone. When Albert suggested that the two spend at least a week after the wedding away from business, on a true honeymoon, Victoria responded patronizingly to him, in a way that made it clear that there were strict political limits to their shared life: “You forget, my dearest Love, that I am the Sovereign, and that business can stop and wait for nothing. Parliament is sitting, and something occurs almost every day, for which I may be required, and it is quite impossible for me to be absent from London; therefore, two or three days is already a long time to be absent. I am never easy a moment, if I am not on the spot, and see and hear what is going on.…”
    Just as serious was the question of the composition of Albert’s household. Victoria, with the support of Lord Melbourne, believedthat Albert’s household staff should, in composition, politically reflect her own staff; anything less would suggest a political difference among the couple—and could even suggest a political opposition within the Court. That meant a fully Whig household, of course; Melbourne attempted to soften the effect by appointing “non-political” Whigs—that is, Whigs not currently serving in Parliament. And he suggested as Albert’s private secretary his own secretary, George Anson. Albert disagreed with Melbourne completely. He already saw himself as a stranger in a fairly strange land, and would very much have preferred to surround himself with a number of old (and of course German) acquaintances. Moreover, he disagreed vehemently with his betrothed and her prime minister on principle: he had already seen the reputation-damaging effect of the Bedchamber Crisis, and held as a bedrock belief that the monarch and the monarchy must remain above party. It would be a principle that would eventually triumph and reshape Victoria’s reign and every reign that followed hers. But now, Albert was powerless: “As to your wish about your gentlemen, my dear Albert, I must tell you quite honestly that it will not do,” Victoria wrote him. Anson became Albert’s secretary, and Victoria made it clear that her political autonomy in the marriage was to be total.
    Albert returned to England on the 8th of February, after a horrendous sea crossing—and to enthusiastic crowds from Dover to Buckingham Palace. Cheering crowds were always to be a barometer indication of the health of the relationship between monarch and public, and she was well aware of the crowds during