On 27 June, 1850, at this site—Cambridge House on Picadilly, a stone’s throw across Green Park from Buckingham Palace—Queen Victoria suffered the only successful assault upon her. Robert Pate on that day waited for Victoria’s carriage to emerge from the “Out” gate of the mansion; the Queen had come to Cambridge House to visit her dying uncle. As the carriage stopped to turn on to busy Picadilly, Pate raised his cane and slashed at Victoria, blackening her eye and raising a walnut-sized welt.
Though she was mortified and genuinely hurt by the attack, Victoria—then as after every assault upon her—refused to seclude herself from the public, and instead turned minor tragedy into major triumph: three hours later she attended an opera at Covent Garden, and showed off her shiner to the vociferous cheers of the audience.
