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and after her wedding, as promising a marriage and a reign that was blessed. “I never saw such crowds of people,” Victoria wrote, as she had seen in the park between Buckingham Palace and the Chapel Royal at St. James. And then the glorious ceremony, less glorious to Victoria because of the red, gold, and white trappings of the ceremony (with which Hayter was faithfully festooning his state painting) than because of the perfect man with whom she was exchanging solemn vows. Victoria was in ecstasy about the match in every respect,including the physical. Victoria was neither a prude, as traditionalists have it, or an erotic firecracker, as the revisionists do. But she was an extremely affectionate and physical being, and she was a woman extremely attracted to male beauty, truly believing Albert to be the most beautiful man, physically, she had ever seen. Her joyful journal entries after her marriage express repeated awe at Albert’s body. The morning after the wedding, she waxed ecstatic about Albert’s—throat: “He does look so beautiful in his shirt only, with his beautiful throat seen … He had a black velvet jacket on, without any neckcloth on, and looked more beautiful than it is possible for me to say.”
    After their marriage, unanswered questions about Albert’s role in the monarchy continued to strain their relationship. Socially, he and the Queen were one: riding together in the afternoons, cheered at the theatre or dancing together in the evenings. But for someone raised for duty, eager to take on the responsibilities of government, Albert was thwarted at every turn. He still helped the Queen with the blotting paper when she signed official documents, but that was as close as he got to them. He was not allowed to see the contents of the state boxes. When Victoria saw her ministers, she saw them alone—as she had, on principle, from the first day of her reign. Even the running of the household was closed to him: all of Victoria’s personal expenses were handled not by the Prince, but by Lehzen. Indeed, Lehzen’s deep personal loyalty to Victoria now acted as a gall to the Prince: something that he saw as standing between the two of them. By May, he was writing complainingly to a friend that he was “the husband, not the master of the house.”
    He did find ways to take on a greater role in the monarchy. For one thing, there were the personal appearances as Victoria’s representative; this was the reason he was in Woolwich now. He would soon be involved in non-partisan, charitable organizations: he had accepted the presidency of the Anti-Slavery Society; he was slated to give his first public speech in England for that organization on the first of June. And, of course, there was the coming event thatwould change the nation and reform his relationship with Victoria: within weeks of the wedding, Victoria knew she was pregnant; now, at three months, her “interesting condition” was becoming more obvious to the world, and certainly to the perceptive artist who sketched her.
    At six that evening, Albert returned to her. Before she married, Victoria had regularly exercised on horseback, but soon after her marriage—and perhaps because of her pregnancy—she stopped, preferring to take her airings with her husband, in an open carriage. While in residence in London, the two regularly rode out in the late afternoons; their rides regularly reported in the Court Circular, published in every newspaper. Their rides were regular enough so that crowds outside the Palace gathered to cheer them. This evening was no exception: soon after Albert’s return, the two emerged, accompanied by their equerries, for their regular airing up Constitution Hill and in Hyde Park.

    * “Young England” happens to be the same name that young Benjamin Disraeli and his companions would choose for their quasi-feudalistic movement within the Tory party, two years after