[Pg 1]

LIFE OF HER MAJESTY
QUEEN VICTORIA.

BY

MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT.

BOSTON:

ROBERTS BROTHERS.

1895.

Copyright, 1895,
By Roberts Brothers.

All rights reserved.

University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.

It would have been impossible, within the limits of this little book, to narrate, even in barest outline, all the events of the Queen’s long life and reign. In attempting to deal with so large a subject in so short a space, I have therefore thought it best to dwell on what may be considered the formative influences on the Queen’s character in her early life, and in later years to refer only to political and personal events, in so far as they illustrate her character and her conception of her political functions. Even with this limitation, I am fully aware how far short I have come of being able to produce a worthy record of a noble life. I will only add that I begun this little book with a feeling towards Her Majesty of sincere veneration and gratitude, and that this feeling has been deepened by studying more closely than I had done before the ideal place of the Crown in the English Constitution, as a power above party, and the important part the Queen has taken now for nearly sixty years in making this ideal a reality. It is not too much to say that, by her sagacity and persistent devotion to duty, she has created modern constitutionalism, and more than any other single person has made England and the English monarchy what they now are.

A list of the books referred to will be found after the chronological table. Among them it is almost unnecessary[Pg 6] to say that I am especially indebted to “The Early Years of the Prince Consort,” by General Grey, and to “The Life of the Prince Consort,” by Sir Theodore Martin. I also desire to express my respectful thanks to H. R. H. Princess Christian, for help very graciously and kindly given in the selection of a portrait for this little volume.

MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT.

[Pg 8]

HER MAJESTY, QUEEN VICTORIA.

Every now and then, on the birth of a male heir to any of the great historic kingdoms of Europe, the newspapers and the makers of public speeches break forth into rejoicing and thanksgiving that the country in question is secured from all the perils and evils supposed to be associated with the reign of a female Sovereign. It is of little importance, perhaps, that this attitude of mind conveys but a poor compliment to our Queen and other living Queens and Queen Regents; but it is not a little curious that the popular opinion to which these articles and speeches give expression, namely, that the chances are that any man will make a better Sovereign than any woman, is wholly contrary to experience; it is hardly going too far to say that in every country in which the succession to the Crown has been open to women, some of the greatest, most capable, and most patriotic Sovereigns have been queens. The names of Isabella of Spain, of Maria Theresa of Austria, will rise in this connection to every mind; and, little as she is to be admired as a woman, Catherine II. of Russia showed that she thoroughly understood the art of reigning. Her vices would have excited little remark had she been a king instead of a queen. It is an unconscious tribute to the higher standard of conduct queens have[Pg 10] taught the world to expect from them, that while the historic muse stands aghast at the private life of the Russian Empress, she is only very mildly scandalized by a Charles V. or a Henry IV., thinking, with much justice, that their great qualities as rulers serve to cover their multitude of sins as private individuals. The brief which history could produce on behalf of Queens, as successful rulers, can be argued also from the negative side. The Salic law did not, to say the least, save the French monarchy from ruin. How far the overthrow of that monarchy was due to a combination of incompetence and depravity in various proportions in the descendants of the Capets from the Regent Orleans onwards towards the Revolution, is a question which must be decided by others. Carlyle’s view of the cause of the Revolution was that it was due to “every scoundrel that had lived, and, quack-like, pretended to be doing, and had only been eating and misdoing, in all provinces of life, as shoeblack or as sovereign lord, each in his degree, from the time of Charlemagne and earlier.” Women no doubt produced their share of quacks and charlatans in the humble ranks of this long procession of misdoers, but not as sovereigns, because, with the superior logic of the Gallic mind, the French people not only believed the accession of a woman to the throne to be a misfortune, but guarded themselves against the calamity by the Salic law. The fact affords a fresh proof that logic is a poor thing to be ruled by, because of the liability, which cannot be eliminated from human affairs, of making a mistake in the premises. The English plan, though less logical, is more practically successful. We speak and write as if a nation could not suffer a greater misfortune than to have a woman at the head of the State; but we do nothing to bar the female succession, with the result that out of our five[Pg 11] Queens Regnant we have had three of eminent distinction as compared with any other Sovereign; and of these three, one ranks with the very greatest of the statesmen who deserve to be remembered as the Makers of England.

Something more can be claimed than that the Salic law did not prevent the overthrow of the French monarchy. It is probable that the female succession to the throne did save the English monarchy in 1837. Failing the Queen, the next heir would have been the Duke of Cumberland, and from all the records of the time, it does not suffice to say that he was unpopular, he was simply hated,—and with justice. He appears to have conceived it to be his function in Hanover “to cut the wings of the democracy;” if he had succeeded to the English throne and adopted the same policy here, he would have brought the whole fabric of the monarchy about his ears. He was equally without private and public virtues. The Duke of Wellington once asked George IV. why the Duke of Cumberland was so unpopular. The King replied, “Because there never was a father well with his son, or husband with his wife, or lover with his mistress, or friend with his friend, that he did not try to make mischief between them.”

The political power which has in various countries devolved on queens calls to mind one thing that ought to be remembered in discussions upon the hereditary principle in government. Within its own prescribed limitations it applies the democratic maxim, la carrière ouverte aux talents, much more completely than any nominally democratic form of government, and thus has repeatedly given, in our own history, a chance to an able woman to prove that in statesmanship, courage, sense of responsibility, and devotion to duty, she is capable of ruling in such[Pg 12] a way as to strengthen her empire and throne by carrying the devoted affection of all classes of her subjects.

Twice in the history of England have extraordinary efforts been made to avert the supposed misfortune of a female heir to the throne; and twice has the “divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will,” decreed that these efforts should be in vain, and the dreaded national misfortune has turned out to be a great national blessing. Mr. Froude tells us that five out of Henry VIII.’s six marriages were contracted in consequence of his patriotic desire to secure the succession to the throne in the male line. But when the feeble flame of Edward VI.’s life was extinguished, four women stood next in the succession, and England acquired at a most critical moment of her history, in the person of Elizabeth, perhaps the greatest Sovereign who has ever occupied the throne of this country.

The second occasion was after the death of the Princess Charlotte in 1817. George III., with his fifteen children, had not then a single heir in the second generation. It would not be correct to say that the Royal Dukes were then married by Act of Parliament, no Act of Parliament was necessary; but political pressure was brought on them to marry, and Parliament granted them extra allowances of sums varying from £10,000 to £6,000 a year, and in May and June, 1818, the marriages took place of the Duke of Cambridge to the Princess Augusta of Hesse, of the Duke of Clarence (afterwards William IV.) to Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, and of the Duke of Kent to Princess Victoria, daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, widow of the Prince of Leiningen, and sister of Prince Leopold, the husband of Princess Charlotte. The marriage of the Duke of Kent is the only one of these that immediately concerns us. As[Pg 13] the fourth son of George III., his children would, under ordinary circumstances, have had but a remote prospect of succeeding to the throne. But of his elder brothers, the Prince Regent had, in consequence of the death of Princess Charlotte, become childless, the Duke of York was also childless, the Duke of Clarence, whose marriage was contracted on the same day as that of the Duke of Kent, 13th June, 1818, took precedence of him as an elder brother, and if he had had legitimate heirs they would have succeeded to the throne. The Princess (afterwards Queen) Adelaide was not childless. She bore two children, but they died in their infancy; and thus the only child of the Duke and Duchess of Kent, the Princess Alexandrina Victoria, became heiress-presumptive of the English throne. The Duke of Kent took the strongest interest in his baby girl’s chances of the succession. Before the birth of the child he urged upon his wife, who was then resident at Amorbach in Bavaria, that the possible future King or Queen of England ought to be born on English soil, and then she consented to remove to Kensington; it is said he was so keenly anxious for her safety that he drove her carriage the whole of the land journey between Amorbach and Kensington with his own hands. At the present day we should perhaps say that the chances of safety lay with the professional rather than with the amateur coachman; but the Duke proved his efficiency in handling the reins, and brought his wife in safety to London, where, on the 24th May, 1819, the baby was born who is now Queen of England. It should be noted that the Duchess was attended in her confinement by a woman, following the custom of her own country in this matter, and that the same accoucheuse, Madam Charlotte Siebold, attended a few months later upon the Duchess of Coburg when she gave birth to the[Pg 14] child who in after years became Prince Consort. There are several little anecdotes which illustrate the Duke of Kent’s appreciation of the important place his little girl was born to fill. He wanted the baby to be called Elizabeth, because it was the name of the greatest of England’s Queens, and therefore a popular name with the English people; there were, however, godfathers, Royal and Imperial, who overruled him as to the naming of the child. These were the Emperor of Russia (Alexander I.) and the Prince Regent, and it was therefore proposed to call the baby, Alexandrina Georgiana. But George, Prince Regent, objected to his name standing second to any other, however distinguished. His brother, on the other hand, insisted that Alexandrina should be the first of the baby’s names. In consequence of this dispute the little Princess was so fortunate as to escape bearing the name of Georgiana at all; when she was handed to the Archbishop at the font the Prince Regent only gave the name of Alexandrina. The baby’s father, however, intervened, and requested that another name might be added, with the result that, as a kind of afterthought, her mother’s name was, as it were, thrown in, and the little Princess was christened Alexandrina Victoria. It was in this way that the name Victoria, then almost unknown in England, was given to the baby, and has since become familiar in our mouths as household words. The Duke declined to allow the congratulations that were showered on him at the birth of his child to be tempered by regrets that the daughter was not a son. In reply to a letter conceived in this vein from his chaplain, Dr. Prince, the Duke wrote at the same time that “I assure you how truly sensible I am of the kind and flattering intentions of those who are prompted to express a degree of disappointment from[Pg 15] the circumstance of the child not proving to be a son instead of a daughter. I feel it due to myself to declare that such sentiments are not in unison with my own, for I am decidedly of opinion that the decrees of Providence are at all times wisest and best.” As this was addressed to a clergyman and a Doctor of Divinity, it may be inferred that Her Majesty’s father was not without a sense of humor. Another story of the Duke is that, playing with his baby when she was a few months old, he held her high in his arms and said, “Look at her well, for she will be the Queen of England.” It must be remembered, however, that at this time there was no certainty that the children of the Duke and Duchess of Clarence would not survive the perils of infancy; moreover, if the Duke of Kent had lived to have a son, the boy would have become the heir in preference to his sister. The Duke’s strongly marked feeling of fatherly pride and affection is almost the only trait in his character by which we are able at this distance of time to conjure him up out of the mists of bygone years.[1] This feeling was soon to receive a melancholy illustration. The Duke and Duchess, with their baby daughter, removed from Kensington to Sidmouth to spend the winter of 1819-20. Returning home on a January day, with boots wet with snow, the Duke caught a severe chill from playing with his baby, instead of changing his boots.[2] The illness developed into acute pneumonia, of which he died in January, 1820, leaving his wife a stranger in a strange land, hardly able to speak the[Pg 16] English language, sole guardian of England’s future Queen. The Duchess of Kent must have been a woman of considerable strength of character and power of will. She was in an extremely lonely and difficult position. Pecuniarily, her chief legacy from her husband consisted of his debts, which the allowance made then by Parliament was not sufficiently ample to enable her to pay.

Her brother, then Prince Leopold, widower of Princess Charlotte, and afterwards King of the Belgians, supplemented her income from his own purse. The Duchess and her children (she had two by her first marriage) were frequently his guests at Claremont and elsewhere, and the Queen speaks of these visits as the happiest periods of her childhood. After a few years the death of the children of the Duke and Duchess of Clarence made it practically certain that the Princess Victoria would become Queen. The Court of George IV. was not one which the Duchess of Kent could frequent with any satisfaction; she was on bad terms with him, and he often threatened to take her child away from her. His character made him quite capable of doing this; he was equally heartless and despotic. Matters were not greatly improved as to personal relations between the Sovereign and herself when William IV. became King; the Princess Victoria did not even attend his coronation. There was a strong feeling of antagonism between the Duchess of Kent and William IV., which occasionally broke out into very unseemly manifestations, especially on the King’s side. His was not a character which could claim respect, and still less evoke enthusiasm. As Duke of Clarence, he had lived for more than twenty years with Mrs. Jordan, the actress, by whom he had ten sons and daughters. His affection for them showed the best side of his[Pg 17] character. He did not disown them; they bore the name of Fitz Clarence, and as soon as he was able he provided liberally for them. Greville says that his sons, with one exception, repaid his kindness with insolence and ingratitude. His affection for them did not prevent his desertion of their mother. He separated from her without any apparent cause, and endeavored to bring about a marriage between himself and a half-crazy woman of large fortune. The Prince Regent is said to have been the main plot of this scheme, which was never carried out. During the earlier part of his connection with Mrs. Jordan, the Duke of Clarence made her an allowance of £1,000 a year. At the suggestion of George III. he is said to have proposed by letter to Mrs. Jordan to reduce this sum to £500. Her reply was to send him the bottom part of a play-bill, on which were these words, “No money returned after the rising of the curtain.” When he was a young man on active service in the navy and in command of a ship, he had twice absented himself from foreign stations without leave, and the Admiralty were at their wits’ end to know how to deal with him.

The death of the Princess Charlotte in 1817, and later the death of the Duke of York, gave political importance to the Duke of Clarence’s existence, and he was one of the batch of Royal Dukes who married, as we have seen, in 1818, not without unseemly haggling with the House of Commons as to the additional allowance to be voted for his support. The £10,000 a year proposed by the Government was cut down to £6,000 by a vote of 193 to 184. Lord Castlereagh then rose and said that “Since the House had thought proper to refuse the larger sum to the Duke of Clarence, he believed he might say that the negotiation for the marriage might be considered at an end;” and on the[Pg 18] next day his Lordship announced to the House that “the Duke declined availing himself of the inadequate sum which had been voted to him.” However, as the only practical reply to this was a vote by the House granting £6,000 a year to the Duke of Cambridge, and declining any grant at all for the unpopular Duke of Cumberland, the Duke of Clarence appears to have thought better of his refusal of the grant, and the marriage accordingly took place. But there can be no surprise, under the circumstances, that such a union and the character it revealed awakened no popular interest. It should be said, however, that when he became King it was generally remarked that his elevation improved him. He became, Greville says, “most composed and rational, if not more dignified in his behavior.” People began to like him, if not for his virtues, at any rate on account of the contrast he presented to his predecessor. His best qualities were frankness and honesty, and he also had the real and rather rare generosity of not bearing a grudge against those who had baffled or defeated him. Thus the Duke of Wellington had, when Prime Minister, removed the Duke of Clarence from the office of Lord High Admiral; but though exceedingly angry at the time, he never bore any grudge against the Duke of Wellington, or wreaked vengeance upon him in any way when he had the power to do so. On the contrary, when he became King he gave the Duke his fullest and most cordial confidence, retained him as Prime Minister, and took an early opportunity of publicly showing him honor by dining at Apsley House. It is the more pleasant to recall this instance of magnanimity on the part of William IV. because the annals of the time are full to overflowing of stories to the discredit of nearly all the sons of George III. The character of George IV. is well known. His[Pg 19] quarrels with his wife and attempt to pass an Act of Divorce against her are notorious. In ghastly contrast to the pageantry of his coronation, in which it was said £240,000 were spent, those who were present speak of the thrill of horror which ran through the assembly when Queen Caroline was heard knocking at the door of the Abbey for the admittance which was refused her. “There was sudden silence and consternation; it was like the handwriting on the wall.” George IV. was almost equally contemptible in every relation of life. His Ministers could with difficulty induce him to give attention to necessary business. “Indolent, cowardly, selfish, unfeeling dog” are the words by which he is described by the clerk of his Council. He delighted in keeping those who had business to transact with him waiting for hours while he was chatting about horses, or betting, or any trivial matter. Greville, after many years of close knowledge of George IV., says of him: “The littleness of his character prevents his displaying the dangerous faults that belong to great minds; but with vices and weaknesses of the lowest and most contemptible order it would be difficult to find a disposition more abundantly furnished.” It is probably not too much to say that no one loved him living, or mourned him dead. Of his funeral Greville says in his cynical way: “The attendance was not very numerous, and when they had all got together in St. George’s Hall, a gayer company I never beheld.... Merry were all, as merry as grigs.” The King’s brothers were not a very great improvement on the King. The Royal Dukes seemed to vie with each other in unseemly and indecorous behavior. On one occasion, in July, 1829, they attacked each other violently in the House of Lords, that is, “Clarence and Sussex attacked Cumberland, and he them very vehemently, and they used[Pg 20] towards each other language which nobody else could have ventured to employ; so it was a very droll scene.” With such brothers-in-law the position of the Duchess of Kent must have been one of great difficulty and loneliness, and she was, consequently, thrown, more perhaps than she would otherwise have been, to rely for advice and companionship on her own brother, Prince Leopold. This Prince and his confidential secretary and friend, Stockmar, afterwards Baron Stockmar, were the trusted counsellors of the Duchess of Kent with regard to the education of Princess Victoria and her preparation for the difficult and responsible position she was afterwards to occupy. The quarrels and disputes that constantly arose between the Duchess of Kent and William IV. may have been attributable to faults on both sides; but the most innocent and indeed laudable actions of the Duchess, with regard to her daughter’s training, seem to have been made the excuse for all kinds of complaint and acrimony on the part of the King. For instance, the Duchess felt that it was proper that her daughter, in view of the position she would hereafter occupy, should see as much as possible of the places of interest and importance in the kingdom she would be destined in time to reign over. Accordingly, she took the young Princess about to the chief manufacturing centres, as well as to places of historic interest, and localities where the rural beauty of England was to be seen in its greatest perfection. In this way she visited Birmingham, Worcester, Coventry, Shrewsbury, Chester, Lichfield, and Oxford, as well as Malvern, Brighton, Tunbridge Wells, Kenilworth, Powis Castle, Wynnstay, Anglesey, and the Isle of Wight. It appears, however, that these apparently praiseworthy proceedings gave great offence at Court. The Duchess was supposed to seek more[Pg 21] attention than her position justified her in demanding. A Council was summoned at Windsor on one occasion (in 1833) for the sole purpose of checking the manifestations of loyalty which the appearance of the Duchess and her daughter provoked. The King was devoured by spleen on hearing that salutes had been fired at the Isle of Wight in honor of these progresses of the heiress-presumptive and her mother. After absurd negotiations on the subject between the King and his sister-in-law, when neither had the good grace to give way, the fleet was commanded, by Order in Council, not to salute the Royal Standard unless the King or Queen was on board. On another occasion, offence seems to have been taken by the King where none was intended, because an address, received by the Duchess in 1835 at Burghley, alluded to her daughter as “destined to mount the throne of these realms.” It was an additional offence that Sir John Conroy, the Duchess’s controller of the household, “handed the answer, just as the Prime Minister does to the King.” With every action, even on the part of others, thus misinterpreted, it was no wonder that the Duchess could have no cordial feelings towards her husband’s family. George IV. openly showed his dislike for her, the Duke of Cumberland never lost an opportunity of aggravating the unfriendliness of their relations. When William IV. succeeded, the Duchess of Kent wrote to the Duke of Wellington, as Prime Minister, to request that she might be treated as a Dowager Princess of Wales, with an income suitable for herself and her daughter, for whom she also asked recognition as heiress to the throne. These requests met with a positive refusal, at which the Duchess expressed considerable vexation. Afterwards, when a Regency Bill was brought forward to provide for the event of the death of the King while[Pg 22] the Princess Victoria was still a minor, although the right thing was done, and the Duchess was named Regent, the old feeling of hostility was not removed between herself and the King and his brothers, and during nearly the whole of William IV.’s seven years’ reign there were constant bickerings and disputes between Windsor and Kensington. Matters were made worse by William’s love of making speeches, in which he set forth, with more vigor than dignity, his grievances, or what he considered such. Greville says he had a passion for speechifying, and had a considerable facility in expressing himself, but that what he said was generally useless or improper. An instance in point is to be found in the “Life of Archbishop Tait,” who wrote in his diary, December 4th, 1856, that Dr. Langley told him that when he did homage to William IV. on his first appointment as Bishop, no sooner had he risen from his knees than the King suddenly addressed him in a loud voice thus: “Bishop of Ripon, I charge you, as you shall answer before Almighty God, that you never by word or deed give encouragement to those d——d Whigs, who would upset the Church of England.” Even when proposing the Princess Victoria’s health and speaking kindly of her, he could not resist the public announcement that he had not seen so much of her as he could have wished (Aug., 1836). On another occasion he loudly and publicly expressed to the Duchess his strong disapprobation of her having appropriated apartments at Kensington Palace beyond those which had been assigned to her, and spoke of what she had done as “an unwarrantable liberty.” A still worse outbreak shortly followed. At his birthday banquet in 1836, in the presence of a hundred people, with the Duchess of Kent sitting next to him and the Princess Victoria opposite, he expressed with[Pg 23] more vigor than delicacy the hope that he might live nine months longer, so that the Princess might attain her majority, and the regency of the Duchess never come into operation. He referred to the Duchess as “a person now near me who is surrounded by evil advisers, and who is herself incompetent to act with propriety in the station in which she would be placed.” A great deal more in the same style followed; “an awful philippic,” Greville calls it, “uttered with a loud voice and excited manner.” The King’s animosity against the Duchess was extended to, and may perhaps have been provoked by, her brother. He had given offence by calling on Queen Caroline after the conclusion of the evidence against her in the House of Lords. He appears himself to have thought the action required an excuse, and says, “But how abandon entirely the mother of Princess Charlotte, who, though she knew her mother well, loved her very much?” George IV. was furious, and never forgave his son-in-law. William IV. shared his brother’s sentiments in regard to Leopold, and invariably treated him with coldness, and sometimes with rudeness that amounted to brutality. After he had become King of the Belgians, Leopold visited William IV. at Windsor, and during dinner made an innocent request for water. The King asked, “What’s that you are drinking, sir?” “Water, sir.” “God d—— it!” rejoined the other King, “why don’t you drink wine? I never allow any one to drink water at my table.” The King of the Belgians must have felt like a man living among wild beasts, and it is not surprising to read that he did not sleep at Windsor that night, but went away in the evening. There was not a subject on which they were agreed. William IV. was a Tory of the Tories; Prince Leopold was a Whig. King William’s chief political interest was the preservation[Pg 24] of the slave trade; Prince Leopold was deeply interested in its abolition. The same antagonism between them ran through all subjects, great and small.

These anecdotes of the coarseness and brutality of the Queen’s immediate predecessors have been recalled for the purpose of illustrating the extreme difficulty of the position in which the Duchess of Kent found herself from the time of her husband’s death to that of her daughter’s accession. It also serves to explain an expression used in after years by the Queen in reference to her choice of the name of Leopold for her youngest son, where she says, “It is the name which is dearest to me after Albert, one which recalls the almost only happy days of my sad childhood.” But if the Princess Victoria was unfortunate in some of her uncles, her uncle Leopold went far to redress the balance. At one time the prospect before him, as husband of Princess Charlotte, had been identical with the position afterwards occupied by Prince Albert. He had become a naturalized Englishman, and he had given great thought and study to English Constitutional history, and particularly to the duties and responsibilities of a Constitutional monarch. He had strong personal ambition, disciplined by ability and conscientiousness. In 1817 the death of his wife dashed the cup of ambition from his lips. A contemporary letter speaks of him as Adam “turned out of Paradise without his Eve.” From the important position of husband of the Heiress Apparent he sunk in one day to that of a subordinate member of the Royal Family, necessarily, as we have seen, out of sympathy with them and aloof from them. “Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not,” was the lesson of 1817 to him. With great power of personal abnegation, his disappointment did not imbitter him, his ambition did not turn sour. He transferred[Pg 25] it and all his plans and all his interest in English constitutionalism to a little niece and nephew who were born respectively on the 24th of May and 26th of August, 1819. The little Victoria at Kensington and the little Albert at Coburg were destined by their uncle Leopold almost from their birth to play the part that would have been filled by the Princess Charlotte and himself but for her early death. He had, of course, no absolute power to bring this marriage about, but he earnestly desired it, and prepared the way for it by every means at his command. He won, as he deserved to win, the Princess Victoria’s most ardent affection. She has told us herself how she “adored” her uncle. He took his mother, the Duchess Dowager of Coburg, a very able woman, into his confidence. She wholly shared his views and hopes. From the time he was three years old Prince Albert was accustomed to the idea that when he was old enough he was to marry his cousin, Princess Victoria of England. The first mention of Prince Albert as a husband was made to the Queen by her uncle Leopold. The education of both children was conducted with this end in view. This was no doubt a chief bone of contention between Prince Leopold and his sister the Duchess of Kent on the one hand, and the King and his party on the other. For William IV. highly disapproved of the proposed union, and did everything in his power to stop it, proposing in succession no fewer than five other marriages for the young Princess. It throws a light too on his resentment at the degree to which the Princess Victoria was withdrawn from his Court, so that hardly any influence could reach her antagonistic to that of her uncle Leopold. William IV.’s explosions of rage against the Duchess of Kent are illustrative of this; they are those of a stupid man, nominally in a position of[Pg 26] authority, but baffled and outwitted, and consequently furious. It was well for the Princess Victoria and for England too that he was not the predominant influence in her education; but it is not difficult to understand his wrath. The game of cross purposes was constantly going on, and the King was constantly being worsted. The Duchess of Kent selected as her daughter’s tutor the Rev. George Davys. The King objected that the education of the heiress-presumptive to the throne should be under the care of some distinguished prelate. The Duchess acquiesced, and, while retaining the services of Dr. Davys, intimated that there would be no objection on her part to his receiving the highest ecclesiastical preferment. A very extensive knowledge of human nature is not needed to know that this sort of thing is to the last degree irritating, nor that the fact of the Duchess and her brother being generally in the right, and the King generally in the wrong, was not soothing to the latter.[3]

In this too stormy atmosphere the heiress of England was reared. Her naturally happy disposition and healthy physical constitution carried her through with less disadvantage than other less happily endowed natures would have sustained. Among other relatives who were uniformly kind and considerate to the young Princess special mention should be made of the Duke of York, whom she loved like a second father. His death, in 1827, was her first real sorrow as a child. Queen Adelaide also was uniformly kind and loving to her niece. Her own two baby girls had died in their infancy, and she transferred a good deal of motherly tenderness to Princess Victoria. A meaner[Pg 27] nature would have resented the place of her own child being filled by another; but Queen Adelaide showed none of this littleness, and welcomed her niece with cordiality to her rightful place beside the throne. When the second of Queen Adelaide’s own little girls died, she wrote to the Duchess of Kent, “My children are dead, but yours lives, and she is mine, too!” The simple words give the note of a truly noble nature. In 1831, when King William prorogued his first Parliament, Queen Adelaide and Princess Victoria watched from the windows of the Palace the progress of the Royal procession. “The people cheered the Queen lustily, but, forgetting herself, that gracious lady took the young Princess Victoria by the hand, led her to the front of the balcony, and introduced her to the happy and loyal multitude.”[4] On several other occasions Queen Adelaide showed a noble, queenly, and motherly spirit towards the young Princess. In 1837 and onwards, Queen Victoria was able, by a number of little nameless acts of kindness and of love, to cheer and soothe the declining years of the Queen Dowager.

[1] The Duke of Kent was chiefly known in the army for his extreme insistence in military etiquette, discipline, dress, and equipments. He was, however, the first to abandon flogging, and to establish a regimental school.—Dictionary of National Biography.

[2] In reminiscences contributed by the King of the Belgians, as an appendix to “Early Years of the Prince Consort,” it is stated that the Duke’s fatal cold was caught when visiting Salisbury Cathedral.

[3] It should be remarked that whatever the faults and shortcomings of William IV. may have been, the Queen herself never refers to him but in terms of affection and gratitude.

[4] G. Barnett Smith, “Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria.”

The previous chapter dwelt upon some serious drawbacks to the Queen’s happiness as a child. But if she was unfortunate in living in an atmosphere too highly charged with contention, her childhood was in another respect remarkably fortunate. Very few heirs to the throne have been brought up from infancy with an education carefully designed as a preparation for their future exalted station, combined with almost all the simplicity and domesticity of private life. But this unusual combination was secured for the Queen by the circumstances of her childhood. At the time of her birth the chances were decidedly against her succession. Even down to the last few months of his life, William IV. continued to speak of her as “Heiress Presumptive,” not as “Heiress Apparent” to the throne. He never probably completely relinquished the hope of having a child of his own to succeed him. In 1835 there had been rumors, which seemed well authenticated, that Queen Adelaide was about to give birth to a child. The absence of absolute certainty in the Princess Victoria’s prospects of the succession, the reluctance of her uncles and of Parliament to establish her and her mother with an income suitable to their rank and her future position, all worked together, in combination with the good sense of her mother, to secure for the little Princess a childhood free from much of the pomp, formality, and flattery from which an heir to the throne seldom even partially escapes.

While she was thus protected from many of the disadvantages[Pg 29] associated with her rank, its advantages were not neglected. The Duchess of Kent gathered about her at Kensington Palace a great many of the representatives of the foremost minds of the day in literature, science, and in social reform. Nearly all the memoirs of distinguished men and women of that period contain some mention of their gracious reception at Kensington Palace by the Duchess, and the interest they had felt in seeing the little Princess. Among those who were received in this way may be mentioned Sir Walter Scott, Wilberforce, and Mrs. Somerville.

The Duchess of Kent made the suitable education of her child the one absorbing object of her life; and she seems to have realized that education does not consist in merely learning facts or acquiring accomplishments, but should also aim at forming the character and disciplining the whole nature, so that it may acquire conscientiousness and the strength which comes from self-government. Keeping this end ever in view, and aided, no doubt, by a responsiveness in the child’s own nature, the little Princess was trained in those habits of strict personal integrity which are the only unfailing safeguard for truthfulness and fundamental honesty in regard to money and other possessions. All observers who have been brought into personal relationship with the Queen speak of her as possessing one of the most transparently truthful natures they have ever known. The Right Hon. John Bright, with his Quaker-bred traditions as to literal exactitude in word and deed, said that this was the trait in her character of which he carried away the most vivid impression. An anecdote is given in “The Life of Bishop Wilberforce,” illustrative of the Queen’s truthfulness as a child. Dr. Davys, Bishop of Peterborough, formerly preceptor to Princess[Pg 30] Victoria, told Dr. Wilberforce that when he was teaching her, one day the little Princess was very anxious that the lesson should be over, and was rather troublesome. The Duchess of Kent came in and asked how she had behaved. Baroness Lehzen, the governess, replied that once she had been rather naughty. The Princess touched her and said, “No, Lehzen, twice; don’t you remember?”

The financial side of truthfulness is honesty; and here again the Queen has instituted a new order of things in English royalty. We are so accustomed to the sway of a Sovereign who regards it as dishonest to owe more than she is ready and willing to pay, that we have almost forgotten that this was very far from being the case with her predecessors. Even the highly respectable Prince Leopold could not live within his income of £50,000 a year, and was £83,000 in debt when he became King of the Belgians in 1831.

Great attention was given to exactitude with regard to money in the Queen’s early training. There are many stories of the little Princess visiting shops and relinquishing some desired purchase because she had not money enough to pay for it. One of these anecdotes is preserved at Tunbridge Wells, and tells how the Princess Victoria, not having money enough to buy some greatly desired toy, so far went beyond her accustomed self-control as to ask the shopkeeper to reserve it for her till she had received a fresh instalment of her allowance for pocket-money, and that the child came on her donkey as early as seven o’clock in the morning to claim possession of the object she had set her heart on, the very instant she had the money to pay for it. Perhaps these lessons had their source from the frugal German Court of Coburg; but whatever their origin, they have stood the Queen in good[Pg 31] stead, and have enabled her to set a perpetual good example to her subjects of the blessedness of obedience to the injunction, “owe no man anything.” It must not be forgotten, too, that she was not, throughout her girlhood, without an object lesson in the disagreeable consequences of extravagance. Her father had died in debt, and unless his creditors differed from the race of creditors in general, they did not fail during the seventeen years which elapsed between the Duke’s death and his daughter’s accession to remind his widow of the fact. One of the first acts of the young Queen on ascending the throne was to pay her father’s debts, contracted before she was born.

The scrupulousness with regard to money which was enjoined on her as a child has been one of the Queen’s many claims to the loyalty of her people. Miss Martineau, in her “Thirty Years’ Peace” (written about 1845), speaking of this aspect of Her Majesty’s education and character, has said, “Such things are no trifles. The energy and conscientiousness brought out by such training are blessings to a whole people; and a multitude of her more elderly subjects, to this day, feel a sort of delighted surprise as every year goes by without any irritation on any hand about regal extravagance—without any whispered stories of loans to the Sovereign—without any mournful tales of ruined tradesmen and exasperated creditors.”

A trifling circumstance may here be mentioned illustrative of the Queen’s economy in personal expenditure. A Paris dressmaker, of world-wide fame, recently (1893) brought an action against a rival who was trading under the same name. In the course of evidence given at the trial the celebrated modiste stated that he had made dresses for every Royal lady in Europe except Her Majesty the Queen of England. Indeed, every one who has seen the Queen, either in[Pg 32] public or private, will agree that she is not indebted either to the dressmaker or milliner for the regal dignity which undoubtedly marks her bearing.

Of the Queen’s personal appearance as a child and young woman we have many contemporary records. Some of these speak in enthusiastic terms of her extreme loveliness as a child. One lady writes of a recent visit to the widowed Duchess: “The child is so noble and magnificent a creature that one cannot help feeling an inward conviction that she is to be Queen some day or other.” Other writers speak of her lovely complexion, fair hair, and large expressive eyes. Greville is less complimentary; but he was writing of a later period. Speaking of a child’s ball given at Court for the little Queen of Portugal in 1829, he says: “It was pretty enough, and I saw for the first time ... our little Victoria.... Our little Princess is a short, plain-looking child, and not near so good-looking as the Portuguese.” It was when this ball was first talked of that Lady Maria Conyngham gave dire offence to George IV. by saying, “Do give it, sir; it will be so nice to see the two little Queens dancing together.” There is no necessary inconsistency in these different accounts of Princess Victoria’s appearance. It is possible that a lovely infant may have become a plain child at ten years old. Of her appearance as she approached womanhood, Mr. N. P. Willis, an American, writing in 1835, describing his visit to Ascot, says: “In one of the intervals I walked under the King’s stand, and saw Her Majesty the Queen (Adelaide) and the young Princess Victoria very distinctly. They were leaning over the railing, listening to a ballad-singer, and seeming to be as much interested and amused as any simple country folk would be.... The Princess is much better looking than any picture of her in the[Pg 33] shops, and for the heir to such a crown as that of England, quite unnecessarily pretty and interesting.”

Victoria Aug: 10^th 1835.

Carlyle, in a private letter to his brother (April, 1838), gave a vivid picture of the girl-Queen as he saw her then:—

Writing of a later period, Baroness Bunsen, describing the scene in the House of Lords at the opening of Parliament in 1842, says:—

These last words exactly describe Her Majesty’s bearing in age as well as in youth; and it is this, her intellectual grasp of the situation she fills as the highest officer of the State and the wearer of the crown of the Plantagenets, Tudors, and Stuarts, that renders her dignity so entirely independent of mere trappings and finery. It has been remarked that on the occasion of her public appearances, the Queen may have been the worst-dressed lady present, and have had by her side or in the immediate background a[Pg 34] galaxy of fair women dressed with all the art that Paris or London could command, and yet she has looked every inch the Queen, and they have looked milliner’s advertisements. She has over and over again proved that the saying, “Fine feathers make fine birds,” is not universally true.

In those portions of the Queen’s Journals which have been published, evidence is not wanting of that pride of race which, if we have interpreted it aright, is the true source of Her Majesty’s dignity of bearing. On one of her journeys through the Highlands, General Ponsonby reminded her that the great-great-grandfathers of the men who were showing her every possible mark of loyalty and affection, had lost their heads for trying to dethrone the Queen’s great-great-grandfather. “Yes,” adds the Queen, “and I feel a sort of reverence in going over these scenes in this most beautiful country which I am proud to call my own, where there was such devoted loyalty to the family of my ancestors; for Stuart blood is in my veins, and I am now their representative, and the people are as devoted and loyal to me as they were to that unhappy race.”

Returning to the subject of the influence of the Queen’s early education and character, the remarkable degree to which her natural conscientiousness was developed is noticeable in a great variety of directions. Her extreme punctuality is an instance in point. She never wastes the time of others by keeping them waiting for her. Punctuality has been described as “the courtesy of kings,” and it is a courtesy in which the Queen is unfailing. Her care for her servants and household is another manifestation of her conscientiousness. Her “Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands,” and the subsequent book, “More Leaves,” are full of little touches[Pg 35] illustrative of the Queen’s care for those dependent upon her, and her readiness to acknowledge the value of their services. Sir Arthur Helps, writing the introduction to the first of these volumes, draws attention to this feature of the Queen’s character. He says: “Perhaps there is no person in these realms who takes a more deep and abiding interest in the welfare of the household committed to his charge than our gracious Queen does in hers, or who feels more keenly what are the reciprocal duties of masters and servants.”

In one of the Queen’s letters to Dean Stanley, on the occasion of the death of a valued servant of his, she says: “I am one of those who think the loss of a faithful servant the loss of a friend, and one who can never be replaced.” In 1858, on their first journey to Prussia, to visit the Princess Royal after her marriage, the Queen and Prince heard of the sudden death of a valuable servant of the latter, who had been with him since his childhood. The Queen wrote in her Journal: “I turn sick now in writing it.... He died suddenly on Saturday at Morges of angina pectoris. I burst into tears. All day long the tears would rush every moment to my eyes, and this dreadful reality came to throw a gloom over the long-wished-for day of meeting with our dear child.... I cannot think of my dear husband without Cart! He seemed part of himself. We were so thankful for and proud of this good, faithful old servant.... A sad breakfast we had indeed.”[5]

The Duchess of Kent made the education of the Princess her one end and aim during the minority of the latter. She was hardly ever out of her mother’s sight, sleeping in her mother’s room, having her supper, at a little table, by the side of her mother at[Pg 36] dinner. She was instructed in the usual educational subjects, besides, what was then unusual for a girl, Latin, Greek, and mathematics. From an early age she spoke French and German with fluency; the latter indeed was almost another mother tongue. All her life she has shown delight in languages, and her subjects, especially those in Asia, were very interested to hear that, even in old age, she had begun to make a systematic study of Hindustani. From an early age she acquired considerable proficiency in drawing and music, and developed in youth a pleasant mezzo-soprano voice. One of Mendelssohn’s letters to his family describes his visit to the Queen and Prince Consort at Buckingham Palace in 1842. She offered to sing one of his songs, and he handed her the album to choose one. “And which,” writes Mendelssohn, “did she choose? ‘Schöner und schöner schmäckt sich’!” The exclamation mark is due to the fact that this song was not by Mendelssohn at all, but by his sister Fanny. Germany in the forties would have been scandalized by a woman’s name on the titlepage even of a song, so that Mendelssohn’s album of songs was enriched by those which had been composed by his sister. The letter continues: “She [the Queen] sang it quite charmingly, in strict time and tune, and with very good execution. Only ... where it goes down to D and comes up again chromatically she sang D sharp each time.... With the exception of this little mistake, it was really charming, and the last long G I never heard better, or purer, or more natural from any amateur. Then I was obliged to confess that Fanny had written the song (which I found very hard, but pride must have a fall), and begged her to sing one of my own also.”

In the Queen’s early childhood the knowledge that she was the probable heir to the throne was carefully[Pg 37] kept from her. In Lockhart’s “Life of Scott” the following entry is given from Scott’s Journal, May 19th, 1828: “Dined with the Duchess of Kent. I was very kindly received by Prince Leopold, and presented to the Princess Victoria, the Heir Apparent to the crown, as things now stand.... This little lady is educating with much care, and watched so closely that no busy maid has a moment to whisper, ‘You are heir of England.’ I suspect if we could dissect the little heart we should find some pigeon or other bird of the heir had carried the matter.” The Queen has given her own authority for saying that this very natural surmise was mistaken, and has allowed the publication of the following letter from Her Majesty’s governess, Baroness Lehzen, which contains one of the most interesting anecdotes of the Queen’s childhood.

The Regency Bill, which made the Duchess of Kent Regent in the event of the death of William IV. without direct heirs while the Princess was still a minor, was passing through Parliament in 1830, and the occasion suggested to the governess that the time had come when her little charge should be made aware of her prospect of succeeding to the throne. Baroness Lehzen wrote in a letter to the Queen, dated 2nd December, 1867:—

This anecdote gives the key-note to the Queen’s character. Her childish resolve, I will be good, has been the secret of her strength throughout her reign. She has never shrunk from anything which has presented itself to her in the light of a duty. When she became Queen she did not go through her business in a perfunctory way, giving her signature without question to whatever documents were placed before her. She required all the State business explained to her to such a degree that Lord Melbourne, her first Prime Minister, said laughingly that he would rather manage ten kings than one queen. On one occasion, in the early years of her reign, the Minister urged her to sign some document on the grounds of “expediency.” She looked up quietly, and said, “I have been taught to judge between what is right and what is wrong, but ‘expediency’ is a word I neither wish to hear nor to understand.” Another word which she objected to was “trouble.” Mrs. Jameson relates that one of the Ministers told her that he once carried the Queen some papers to sign, and said something about managing so as to give Her Majesty “less trouble.” She looked up from her papers, and said, “Pray never let me hear those words again; never mention the word ‘trouble.’ Only tell me how the thing is to be done and done rightly, and I will do it if I can.” This has been her principle throughout her reign: to do her work as well as she knew how to do it, without sparing herself either trouble or responsibility.

It is not only the larger questions of State policy that she follows now, after more than fifty years of sovereignty, with all the knowledge which long experience gives, but she bestows close attention to the[Pg 39] details of organization in the different departments of the Government. If any change is proposed of which she does not see the bearing or the necessity, she requires to have the reasons which prompted it laid before her, and would withhold her sanction unless her judgment were convinced. She is a constant and indefatigable worker, and those in attendance upon her have frequently expressed their surprise at her continuing at her work late into the night, and yet being almost unfailingly at her post again in the early morning. The child raising her little hand, and saying, “I will be good,” has been in this and in many other ways the mother to the woman. The solemn words of the Coronation Service have not been profaned by her as so many monarchs have profaned them. The Archbishop, delivering the Sword of State into the Sovereign’s hand at the Coronation, says: “Receive this kingly sword, brought now from the altar of God, and delivered to you by the hands of us, the servants and bishops of God, though unworthy. With this sword do justice, stop the growth of iniquity, protect the holy Church of God, help and defend widows and orphans, restore the things that are gone to decay, maintain the things that are restored, punish and reform what is amiss, and confirm what is in good order; that doing these things you may be glorious in all virtue, and so faithfully serve our Lord Jesus Christ in this life that you may reign forever with Him in the life which is to come.” All through the Queen’s reign these words have been turned into actions; they have inspired her to do her duty faithfully and courageously and with unfailing self-sacrifice of her own inclinations and wishes. By so living she has revived the feeling of personal affection and loyalty to the throne on the part of her subjects which her immediate predecessors had done much to destroy.[Pg 40] When we reflect upon the contrast which the pure-minded, pure-hearted girl presented to them we shall be able to understand something of the keen emotion of joyful loyalty which was evoked at her accession. But this will be the subject of the next chapter.

[5] Life of the Prince Consort, vi. 280, 281.

It is not easy to realize that in the lifetime of our own fathers and mothers there was in England a plot to change the succession and secure the crown for the “wicked uncle,” to the exclusion of the rightful heir. The whole story savors of romance, or at any rate of a much earlier period in our history, when John Lackland or Richard the Hunchback cheated their young nephews of crown and life. Yet the evidence of history on this point is unmistakable. In 1835 a plot was discovered and laid bare in Parliament, mainly by Joseph Hume, which had for its aim to secure the crown for the Duke of Cumberland and set aside the claims of Princess Victoria. The Duke, to do him justice, does not seem to have supposed that his personal merits and attractions would cause him to be made king by acclamation. But he appears to have thought he could ride in on the top of a wave of fanaticism got up over a No-popery cry. The passing of Catholic Emancipation in 1829 by the Tory Government of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel was not accomplished without a great deal of real terror and misgiving that this act of plain justice to their Roman Catholic fellow-subjects was a breaking down of the barriers against Papal aggression, and that it was merely a step towards undoing the work of the Reformation. Orange Lodges, which up to that time had little vigorous existence out of Ireland, spread all over England, and were formed even in the army. The Duke of Cumberland, a precious champion[Pg 42] for any sort of religion, was their grand master. But he was not inconsistent: he had his own personal aggrandizement in view, and appealed to fanaticism, bigotry, and ignorance to help him to attain it. If he was acting a part, he understood his own character, and was not acting out of it. But he and the Orange Lodges too completely misunderstood the nation they were living in. The saying of Charles II. to his brother, afterwards James II., might have shown them their mistake: “They will never kill me to make you king.” When hard pressed by political necessity, the English people have not shrunk from revolutionary changes in their constitution; but they would never have embarked on a revolution with the object of placing Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, on the throne. The ridiculous plot was rendered still more ridiculous by the assertion made by the conspirators that they feared the Duke of Wellington intended to seize the crown for himself;[6] that the Iron Duke, the most sternly upright and devotedly loyal of subjects, meant to depose William IV., set aside the little Princess Victoria, and become Emperor of the English, as Bonaparte had become Emperor of the French. The assertion had only to be made, and made publicly, to be drowned in the ridicule it excited. However, the plot of the Orange Lodges, the Duke of Cumberland’s association with it, the unveiling of the scheme in the House of Commons by Joseph Hume, and Lord John Russell’s masterly dealing with the whole matter, was a nine days’ wonder in 1835. An address to the King was unanimously agreed to, praying him to dissolve the Orange Lodges; even the Orangemen in the House assented to this, and Greville says Lord[Pg 43] John’s dignified eloquence melted them to tears. The Duke of Cumberland, seeing which way his cat had jumped, hastened to assure the Home Secretary that the dissolution of the societies of which he was Grand Master had his entire approval and acquiescence, and the whole of the foolish business appeared at an end.

But this was not so. The elements of disturbance were quite genuine, and had not been removed even by a resolution of the House of Commons: these were the Duke of Cumberland’s treachery and his No-popery nightmare. The original scheme had been to depose William IV. on the pretext that his giving the Royal Assent to the Reform Bill of 1832 was a symptom of insanity; the next step, the setting aside of the claims of Princess Victoria, was rendered attractive to the Duke of Cumberland by the fact that she was a girl, and young; when, therefore, in 1837, William IV. was removed by death, another futile attempt was made to raise the No-popery cry against the accession of the Queen. Her uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians, had recently married Louise, daughter of Louis Philippe, a Roman Catholic Princess. Another member of the Coburg family, Prince Ferdinand, cousin of Prince Albert, had also, quite recently, made a Roman Catholic marriage with Maria, Queen of Portugal. This at any rate showed that the Coburg family, who were known to have great influence with Princess Victoria, were not so exclusively Protestant as the Royal Family of England. But high as party feeling ran at the time, the bare suspicion that any treachery was intended to the young Queen caused a popular outburst of passionate loyalty such as had not been seen since the House of Brunswick had reigned in England. The warmth of this feeling in the curious warp and woof of human affairs was increased by the fact that to be ardently devoted[Pg 44] to the young Queen was to be ardently opposed to all the works and ways of the Duke of Cumberland, to be in favor of religious liberty and toleration, to support the Reform Bill and the abolition of slavery. It was Whig to be loyal to the Queen, Tory to be, if not disloyal, full of doubts and fears, imagining that with a young girl at the helm, known to be in sympathy with Whig principles, the ship of State was bound to split on anarchy and popery. These fears very soon disappeared as the Queen showed she had a mind and will of her own, and was no mere puppet in the hands of her Ministers. If at the outset of her reign she showed strong Whig tendencies, she was not long in grasping the fact that, as Sovereign, she was Queen of the whole people, and not the mere head of a party.

There was, however, enough of revolutionary storm in the atmosphere to justify the Times in endeavoring to allay the fears of the ultra-Protestant party by reminding them that for the Queen to turn Papist, “or in any manner to follow the footsteps of the Coburg family” in marrying a Papist, “would involve an immediate forfeiture of the British Crown.” This situation of affairs had the rather curious result of making the Irish among the most intensely loyal of the young Queen’s subjects. O’Connell’s stentorian voice was heard leading the cheers of the crowd outside St. James’s Palace on the day she was proclaimed Queen. He declared later, in a public speech, that if it were necessary he could get “five hundred thousand brave Irishmen to defend the life, the honor, and the person of the beloved young lady by whom England’s throne is now filled.” Mr. Harry Grattan, son of the famous orator of the Irish Parliament of 1782-1800, thought the Tories so bent on the Queen’s destruction that “If Her Majesty were once placed in the hands of the Tories, I would not give an orange-peel for her[Pg 45] life.” The expression “orange-peel” was, no doubt, a reference to the soubriquet his Irish opponents had bestowed upon Sir Robert Peel on account of his stanch Protestantism.

These extraordinary ebullitions of party feeling would be hardly worth recording but for the explanation they afford of subsequent events relating to the establishment of Prince Albert, and for the curious contrast they offer to the feelings of political parties at the present time. They also explain why quiet, peace-loving people, taking no special interest in party politics, were so devoutly thankful that the operation of the Salic law in Hanover separated that kingdom from the Crown of England and enabled us to get quit of the Duke of Cumberland. No paper and no party ever pretended to regret him; indeed, it must have become abundantly obvious that his departure was, in a special degree, advantageous to his own party. He could be nothing but a source of weakness to them. “A man’s foes are those of his own household” is even more true of political than of private affairs. The anxiety of the Tories to get rid of the Duke of Cumberland is well illustrated by one of Greville’s anecdotes. When the late King (William IV.) had evidently only a few days to live, the Duke of Cumberland consulted the Duke of Wellington as to what he should do. “I told him the best thing he could do was to go away as fast as he could. ‘Go instantly,’ I said, ‘and take care you don’t get pelted.’” He did go instantly, and his first act as King of Hanover was to suspend the constitution of the country and turn out of their chairs in Göttingen University seven distinguished professors for the crime of holding Liberal opinions. No wonder the Duke of Wellington felt this sort of Toryism would manufacture Liberals and Radicals by the thousand in England.

[Pg 46]

The story has often been told of how the Queen received the news of her accession, and of the extraordinarily favorable impression she produced by the youthful dignity and grace with which she presided at her first Council.

William IV. expired at Windsor about 2.30 A. M. on Tuesday, June 20th, 1837. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Howley, and the Lord Chamberlain, the Marquis of Conyngham, almost immediately “set out to announce the event to their young Sovereign. They reached Kensington Palace at about five; they knocked, they rang, they thumped for a considerable time before they could rouse the porter at the gates. They were again kept waiting in the courtyard, then turned into one of the lower rooms, where they seemed to be forgotten by everybody. They rang the bell, and desired that the attendant of the Princess Victoria might be sent to inform H. R. H. that they requested an audience on business of importance. After another delay, and another ringing to inquire the cause, the attendant was summoned, who stated that the Princess was in such a sweet sleep she could not venture to disturb her. They then said, ‘We are come to the Queen on business of State, and even her sleep must give way to that.’ It did; and to prove that she did not keep them waiting, in a few minutes she came into the room in a loose white nightgown and shawl, her nightcap thrown off, and her hair falling on her shoulders, her feet in slippers, tears in her eyes, but perfectly collected and dignified.”[7] Another account states that the Queen’s first words to the Archbishop on hearing his announcement were, “I beg your Grace to pray for me,” and that her first request to her mother after she had learned that she was Queen was that she might be left for two hours quite alone. On the[Pg 47] same day, about eleven o’clock in the morning, she held her first Council; and it may be noted that in Miss Wynn’s account of this ceremony it is stated that the first of her subjects who paid her homage was the Duke of Cumberland, who knelt and kissed her hand. “I suppose,” says Miss Wynn, “he was not King of Hanover when he knelt to her.” The Diarist goes on to mention that the next to offer homage was the Duke of Sussex; but the young Queen would not allow him to kneel, but rose herself and kissed him on the forehead. This, however, differs slightly from Greville’s account of the Queen’s first Council, which must be now quoted:—

[Pg 49]

Greville then describes the young Queen’s thoughtful consideration for everything that could soothe and cheer the Queen Dowager, and adds:—

In this vivid personal description by an eye-witness we see in the grave dignity of the young girl the same dutiful child who, at eleven years old, had said, when she learned her future destiny, “There is much splendor, but there is more responsibility,” and, lifting her little hand, added, “I will be good.”

Greville describes the impression made by the young Queen within the Palace upon her Ministers and servants. Miss Martineau, another contemporary, describes the impression produced outside the Palace, on the crowd in the streets who came to witness the ceremony of the proclamation. She refers to the intense joy of whatever was sound and wholesome in the nation, that the ill-doing sons of George III. no longer occupied the throne, and that it was filled instead by a young girl, prudent, virtuous, and conscientious, reared in health, simplicity, and purity. She says even exaggerated hopes were awakened by the change; people seemed to expect that the fact of having a virtuous Sovereign, strong in the energies of youth,[Pg 50] was in itself a guarantee that all was to go well: “That the Lords were to work well with the Commons, the people were to be educated, everybody was to have employment and food, all reforms were to be carried through, and she herself would never do anything wrong or make any mistakes.”

Those who represented that it was an injustice to the Queen to expect her to work miracles—

The young Queen’s character came out in everything she did. Reference has already been made to her tender consideration towards the Dowager Queen Adelaide. The Queen addressed a letter of condolence to her on her husband’s death, and addressed it to “Her Majesty the Queen.” It was pointed out to her that the correct address would be “Her Majesty the Queen Dowager.” “I am quite aware,” said Queen Victoria, “of Her Majesty’s altered character, but I will not be the first person to remind her of it.” She placed Windsor Castle at the disposal of Queen Adelaide for as long as it suited her health and convenience. But while yielding with the utmost grace on various little matters in which her doing so might serve to soothe and console the Queen Dowager, the young Queen showed a knowledge of her own position and what was due to it in substantial privilege, no[Pg 51] less than on points of etiquette, that quite astonished her Ministers. Thus when she went for the first time after her accession to visit the Queen Dowager at Windsor, she told Lord Melbourne that as the flag on the Round Tower was half-mast high, it might be thought necessary to elevate it on her arrival, and she desired Lord Melbourne to send orders beforehand that this should not be done. Melbourne “had never thought of the flag or knew anything about it, but it showed her knowledge of forms, and her attention to trifles.”

The numerous children of the late King resigned into her hands their various appointments, and the pensions that had been allowed them. She accepted these resignations to show her right to do so, and afterwards reappointed them, behaving with the greatest kindness and liberality. Greville speaks over and over again of the remarkable union she presented of womanly sympathy, girlish naïveté, and queenly dignity. He says every one who was about her was warmly attached to her, “but that all feel the impossibility of for a moment losing sight of the respect which they owe her. She never ceases to be a queen, but is always the most charming, cheerful, obliging, unaffected queen in the world.” The tears which she shed at her proclamation were due to the intense emotion awakened by her position; they by no means betokened a morbid or hysterical temperament. The records of the early years of the Queen’s reign constantly speak of her gayety and good spirits. At her coronation, in 1838, she is said to have looked as radiant as a girl on her birthday.

The demise of the Crown necessitated a dissolution of Parliament. A general election took place in August, 1837, in which the Whigs were again returned to power, but by a reduced majority.

[Pg 52]

Lord Melbourne was again Prime Minister, and continued to act as the Queen’s chief adviser and counsellor, not only in public affairs, but also on every personal matter in which she felt she needed the advice of an experienced man of the world. There were some who regretted the Queen’s extreme reliance on Lord Melbourne, looking upon him as a man of an essentially frivolous and volatile nature; those who held this opinion appear to have misjudged him, but the mistake was one for which Lord Melbourne himself was chiefly responsible. He deliberately put on an affectation of foolish frivolity on many of his appearances in public. He would blow a feather about or toy with a sofa-cushion when he was receiving a solemn deputation, with apparently the express object of producing the impression that he was incapable of giving serious attention to serious things. He had to be found out, detected in earnestness as rogues are detected in dishonesty, by close and careful watching when he believed himself unobserved. Sydney Smith was one of those who unmasked him, and showed that with all his air of being hopelessly idle and trivial, he really was an honest and diligent Minister. In his important position as Prime Minister to the girl-Queen, he showed tact, discretion, and devotion, and won her complete confidence and friendship. Until the Queen’s marriage, he virtually combined the functions of Private Secretary to the Queen with those of Prime Minister. He was much more her intimate friend than a Prime Minister had ever been to a Sovereign before. He saw her every day, dined with her constantly, and sat next her at table, and had the art of explaining all the business of State without boring her with sermons and long speeches. He never treated her, as Mr. Brett has said, as if she were a public meeting. He had first made a very favorable impression[Pg 53] upon her on the occasion of the last of the unfortunate disputes which took place between William IV. and the Duchess of Kent. Early in June, 1837, Princess Victoria, having then attained her majority, the King offered to settle £10,000 a year on her. The Duchess wished that £6,000 of this should be for herself, and £4,000 for the Princess. There were the usual unseemly squabbles, and neither would give way. Melbourne conducted the business on the part of the King, and although he must have known that the Princess Victoria would be Queen in a very short time, he yet defended his master’s views and interests with a warmth and tenacity which proved him to be no time-server. It is equally to his credit and to that of the young Queen that this circumstance was the foundation of the full confidence and esteem which she afterwards placed in him. Greville describes their relations as being almost like those of father and daughter. “I have no doubt he is passionately fond of her, as he might be of his daughter if he had one, and the more because he is a man with the capacity for loving, without having anything in the world to love. It is become his province to educate, instruct, and form the most interesting mind and character in the world.... It is a great proof of the discretion and purity of his conduct and behavior that he is admired, respected, and liked by the whole Court.”

If Melbourne was, in the eyes of the world, the Queen’s tutor in statesmanship, there was another behind the scenes no less assiduously devoting himself to her instruction. Shortly before the late King’s death, Peel had expressed a hope that Leopold would not come over immediately on his niece’s accession, as his influence and interference would cause jealousy and heart-burning. Leopold did not come, for the[Pg 54] excellent reason that he was there already in the person, alter ego, of the faithful friend and trusted servant, Baron Stockmar. Stockmar, though at one time somewhat doubtful whether Prince Albert would prove the right Consort for the Queen of England, had by this time thoroughly identified himself with the realization of Leopold’s dream of reproducing in Victoria and Albert the loves and hopes and ambitions which had been so cruelly crushed at Claremont in 1817. Charlotte and Leopold were to live again in Victoria and Albert. But in order that the dream should come true, it was necessary that Stockmar and Leopold should have their hand on the “very pulse of the machine,” the hearts and the characters of the two young people themselves. King Leopold had Prince Albert with him in Brussels for ten months, from June, 1836, while Stockmar proceeded to Kensington to be with the Princess immediately she attained her majority, to aid her by his counsel and advice. Her accession, which followed within less than a month, found him still with her; and from henceforth until her happy marriage in 1840 his time was spent with one or other of the young people. To the end of his life he spent much time with them, and remained their intimate friend and most trusted counsellor in all matters, both public and domestic.

Stockmar, besides his share in bringing about the marriage of the Queen with her cousin, had an extremely important political influence on her, in thoroughly grounding her in the principles of constitutional monarchy. Although no Englishman, it was a case of plus royaliste que le Roi. He was more English than the English in his grasp of, and devotion to, our system of government. He wrote to the Prince in 1854: “I love and honor the English Constitution from conviction; ... in my eyes it is the foundation-corner-cope-stone[Pg 55] of the entire political civilization of the human race, present and to come.” He was untiring in impressing upon the Queen, and later on the Prince, that the Sovereign belongs, or should belong, to no party. She must be equally loyal to her Ministers, to whatever party they may belong. Her experience at the head of the State will enable her to detect among her statesmen those who have the good of their country sincerely at heart, while differing, as human beings must differ, as to the means by which that good is to be attained. There will be some in all parties who make the honor and welfare of their country their first object, and there are some in all parties who are wishing to dishonor and injure their country, if they think they perceive party advantage to be gained by doing so. To the first of these the Sovereign’s confidence should be given, irrespective of party differences.

Leopold and Stockmar between them formulated the position of a constitutional monarch much more definitely than it had ever been formulated before. Their pupils were the Queen and her husband, towards whose union events were now rapidly tending.

[6] In 1829 the Duke of Cumberland had tried to excite George IV.’s jealousy of the Duke of Wellington by habitually speaking of him to his royal brother as “King Arthur.”

[7] Diaries of a Lady of Quality, by Miss Wynn.

[8] This is evidently in reference to the general belief that the Queen was a strong partisan of the Whig party.

The first important political event of the Queen’s reign was the insurrection in Canada, which broke out in the late autumn of 1837. The Queen has herself told us that, notwithstanding all King Leopold’s and Stockmar’s instructions, she was at this time an ardent Whig in her political sympathies; but the history of the Canadian insurrection, while ultimately showing the value of colonial self-government as a safeguard against rebellion, demonstrated the wisdom of their maxims that it was the duty of a constitutional Sovereign to keep aloof from party, and also was one of a series of events which revealed to the Queen the real character of many of the able statesmen of both parties by whom she was surrounded. The first effect of the policy of the Whig Government in Canada was disastrous to them as a Ministry. The Earl of Durham, whom they had appointed High Commissioner, with very large powers to deal with the insurrection, showed a masterly grasp of principles, combined with a total want of judgment in detail. His failure in details was at first all that was apparent; he went far beyond his large legal powers; his ordinances were disallowed by Parliament, and he resigned his office, publishing, before he left his official residence at Quebec, a proclamation attacking the Government which had appointed him. Almost the only group of politicians who supported him at home were the Radicals, who, in or out of Parliament, were influenced by J. S. North.

[Pg 57]

In the House of Lords the ultra-Liberal Brougham joined with the ultra-Tory Lyndhurst in scathing attacks on Lord Durham and the Government. It was soon evident that Brougham rejoiced in any national calamity in Canada or elsewhere if it afforded him means of damaging the party of which he was a former member. The Duke of Wellington, on the other hand, had a single eye to his country’s welfare. The Canadian insurrection placed her in difficulty and danger; and his first thought was how to get her out of the difficulty, and avert the danger. He entirely sunk all party considerations in national objects, and as even his enemies were obliged to confess, “that man’s first object is to serve his country, with a sword if necessary, or with a pickaxe.” In the first debate in the Lords on Canada, Brougham “delivered a tremendous philippic of three hours. The Duke of Wellington made a very noble speech, just as it befitted him to make at such a moment, and of course it bitterly mortified and provoked the Tories, who would have had him make a party question of it, and thought of nothing but abusing, vilifying, and embarrassing the Government.” On the next occasion, when another party field-day was arranged in the House of Lords, the Duke was expected to make some amends to his party, and explain away the moderation of his former speech; but he made a second speech quite as moderate as the first. Greville’s mother told the Duke how angry his party were with him for what he had said, and his only reply was, “Depend upon it, it was true.” This was the course invariably pursued by the Duke; in times of danger he dropped all party considerations, and thought of nothing but how to serve his country. When the China War broke out in 1840, when the Whigs were in office, he supported the Government in the House of Lords with all the[Pg 58] strength he could command. Greville told him that his own party were to the last degree annoyed and provoked by his speech. He replied: “I know that well enough, and I don’t care one damn.... I have not time not to do what is right.”

Peel had shown the same spirit during the general election that followed the Queen’s accession. Certain low Tories of the baser sort had not hesitated to make party capital out of the unpopularity of the New Poor Law, passed by the Whigs in 1834. Peel would have nothing to do with this; for though the Act could not but be unpopular in certain quarters, he was convinced of its necessity, and wholly discountenanced the attacks upon it.

These two incidents in the political warfare of the first months of her reign must have had a considerable influence in forming the young Queen’s judgment on men and parties. Events framed themselves into a sort of new version of the judgment of Solomon, and enabled her to distinguish between the real and false patriots, between those statesmen who really loved their country and acted on conviction, and those who only pretended to love, and acted from self-interest.

A very brief review of the chief political events of 1837-40 will serve to show of what an absorbing nature they must have been to the Queen. The Anti-Corn Law agitation was just beginning to show its great importance; in antagonism with this, and parallel with it, was the more or less revolutionary Chartist movement, associated in these early years of the reign with riots at Birmingham, Manchester, and Newport, Monmouthshire. The country was in a very disturbed state; the Government was weak, and inspired no confidence; moreover, the perennial trouble in Ireland was just then in a more than usually acute stage.

[Pg 59]

Besides these larger political interests, there were others of a character more personal to the Queen herself, which must for a time have occupied and interested her almost to the exclusion of even more weighty matters. The gorgeous ceremonial of the coronation took place in June, 1838. The cheers of the Londoners in honor of Marshal Soult on that occasion, curiously enough, did something to produce a more friendly feeling between France and England, and paved the way for an alliance between the two countries. There are such a number of graphic accounts by eye-witnesses of the coronation that it is unnecessary here to attempt to reproduce them. As usual, the spectators saw what they brought with them the capacity to see. One gives a detailed account of the pageant, the floods of golden light, illuminating gold and jewels and velvety robes; another sees a young life dedicating itself to the public service. Lord Shaftesbury was one of these latter; the note in his diary on the coronation is: “It has been a wonderful period, ... an idle pageant, forsooth? As idle as the coronation of King Solomon, or the dedication of his temple.”

A purely domestic affair, in 1839, must have caused the Queen much anxiety and trouble. One of the ladies attendant on the Duchess of Kent, Lady Flora Hastings, was accused of being with child; and she was ordered not to appear at Court till she could clear herself of the imputation. Subsequent medical examination proved the entire innocence of the unfortunate lady, who was suffering from a disease of which modern surgical skill has very largely reduced the perils. At that time, however, it was supposed to be beyond all human aid, and the poor lady died within a very few months after the humiliation to which she had been subjected. There was naturally an intensely[Pg 60] strong feeling of commiseration for her. No one was to blame exactly in the matter; one can quite understand the determination of those who felt themselves the natural protectors of the young Queen, to guard her Court from the scandals and disgraces of a loose standard of conduct; but it was generally felt that a little more tact, a little more kindness, even supposing the poor lady to have been guilty, would have prevented the report being blazoned all over London and England in the way it was. This scandal very much weakened the Ministry in the estimation of the country, rather unjustly as it seems to us now; for the whole matter was one relating to the Queen’s private establishment, and not to her political advisers. It was a delicate matter which ought to have been dealt with by an experienced woman, possessed of good feeling and good sense. But Lord Melbourne was blamed, and people said, “What is the use of the Prime Minister being domiciled in the Palace, unless he is able to prevent the shame and mortification of such blunders?”

Another of the incidents of 1839 was as much domestic as political. The famous Bedchamber question excited the Houses of Parliament and the country to a degree which it is difficult now to understand. It was one of Life’s little poems that the course which events took in this matter led the Whigs to champion Tory principles, and vice versa. Lord Melbourne’s Government was virtually defeated on his Jamaica Bill, in May, 1839. Lord Melbourne resigned, and advised the Queen to send for the Duke of Wellington. His opinion had been expressed on a former occasion, that he and Peel would not make good Ministers to a Sovereign who was a young girl. “I have no small-talk,” he had said, “and Peel has no manners.” The sturdy old lion had yet to learn that a woman could[Pg 61] appreciate something beyond small-talk. When he saw the Queen after Melbourne’s resignation, she told him she was very sorry to lose Lord Melbourne, who had been almost like a father to her since her accession; the Duke was greatly pleased with her frankness, but excused himself from serving her, on the grounds of his age and deafness. He also said that the Prime Minister ought to be leader of the House of Commons, and advised her to send for Peel, which she accordingly did. The want of manners proved more serious than the want of small-talk, for Sir Robert Peel, mainly through a misunderstanding, presently found himself involved in what almost amounted to a personal quarrel with the Queen about the appointment of the ladies of her household. She thought he wanted to dismiss all her old friends, and even her private attendants. She imagined that it might be proposed to deprive her of the services of her former governess, Baroness Lehzen, who had now become one of her secretaries. She felt bound to make a stand against what she considered an encroachment on her independence. The Duke of Wellington and Peel saw her again together, but made no impression on her. If they had explained that Peel only wished to remove the ladies who held the offices that are now recognized as political, the dispute would never have arisen; but as it was there was a deadlock. The Queen wrote to Melbourne: “Do not fear that I was not calm and composed. They wanted to deprive me of my ladies, and I suppose they would deprive me next of my dressers and my housemaids; they wished to treat me like a girl, but I will show them that I am Queen of England!” Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell advised the Queen that she was quite right, and supported her in her determination not to give way; so that the Whigs found themselves[Pg 62] defending the principle that the will of the Sovereign is paramount over the advice of her Ministers and public considerations; while the Tories were defending the opposite doctrine. Angry discussions took place in both Houses; Lord Brougham in the House of Lords opening the sluice-gates in a three hours’ speech that Greville calls “a boiling torrent of rage, disdain, and hatred.” The end of it was that Sir Robert Peel declined to undertake to form a Government, and Lord Melbourne was recalled; he had been in a very weak position before; but he was still further weakened by the events that had just taken place.

In after years the Queen, with her accustomed generosity, took the whole blame upon herself. Curiously enough, it was Lord John Russell, who had, in 1839, encouraged the Queen in the line she took on the Bedchamber question, who asked her in 1854, if she had not been advised by some one else in the matter. “She replied with great candor and naïveté, ‘No, it was entirely my own foolishness.’”

These events excited the whole country to an extraordinary degree, and it is not astonishing that they were intensely absorbing to the Queen, and that she therefore, for the time, dismissed from her mind all thoughts of marriage. Indeed, she wrote to her uncle Leopold in July, 1839, stating very strongly her intention to defer her marriage for some years. To Stockmar also the Queen expressed the same intention. These diplomatists do not appear to have argued the matter with Her Majesty; but they thought they knew how to shake her resolution. She had only once seen her cousin Albert, when he had come over to England with his father and his elder brother, Ernest, for a few weeks’ visit to the Duchess of Kent, in 1836. He was then a boy, very stout, as the Queen[Pg 63] herself has told us, but amiable, natural, unaffected, and merry. He had now (1839) greatly improved in appearance and developed in character, and Leopold determined on sending him to England again on a second visit to his cousin. After his first visit the Princess, as she then was, had written to her uncle Leopold in a strain which showed that she thought her future marriage with her cousin Albert was a practical certainty; she begged her uncle “to take care of the health of one now so dear to me, and to take him under your special protection;” and she added she trusted “all would go prosperously and well on this subject, now of so much importance to me.”

The Prince wrote immediately on the Queen’s accession to congratulate his “dearest cousin,” and to remind her that in her hands now lay “the happiness of millions.” But he said nothing of his own happiness; nothing was settled, and the correspondence between the cousins was suffered to drop. The Queen generously blames herself for this. A memorandum made by Her Majesty to “The Early Years of the Prince Consort” is very characteristic. “Nor can the Queen now,” she writes, “think without indignation against herself of her wish to keep the Prince waiting for probably three or four years, at the risk of ruining all his prospects for life, until she might feel inclined to marry! And the Prince has since told her that he came over in 1839 with the intention of telling her that if she could not then make up her mind, she must understand that he could not wait now for a decision, as he had done at a former period when their marriage was first talked about.”

It is probable that no one but the Queen herself thinks she was to blame in the matter. She had seen her cousin only when he was a boy of seventeen, and she a girl of the same age. She had acquiesced in[Pg 64] the wish of her closest advisers that she should regard him as her future husband, but she had at the time of her accession no strong personal feeling in the matter. She did not feel then, as she felt afterwards, that the happiness of her whole future life was involved in this union; and absorbed as she must have been in the intense interest of being the centre of the inner circle of politics, and in learning the duties and going through the ceremonials of her new position, it is no wonder that for a time she dismissed all thoughts of marriage. Indeed, the happiness of what she so often called her “blessed marriage” might have been marred had she not waited till her heart spoke.

The Prince Consort’s was a singularly pure and disinterested nature. As a child he possessed a remarkable degree of beauty, and a natural disposition almost without flaw. All the associates of his youth agree in speaking of his perfect moral purity, combined with gayety and courage; but he was not one of those preternaturally perfect children who hardly exist out of books, and even these are generally destined to an early grave. His childish letters and diaries record that he fought with his brother and cried over his lessons like other little boys. When he was only five years old his father and mother separated, and were afterwards divorced. He was henceforth separated entirely from his mother, who died in 1831. Prince Albert resembled his mother in person and mind, and although so early taken from her, he retained through life the strongest feeling of affection for her, and one of his first gifts to the Queen was a little pin which had belonged to his mother. She was beautiful, intelligent, and warm-hearted, and had a great fund of drollery and power of mimicry, which her younger son inherited from her.

Two very affectionate grandmothers, or rather a[Pg 65] grandmother and a step-grandmother, did what in them lay to supply the mothering of which the Prince and his elder brother were deprived through the unfortunate difference between their parents. The two children were fortunate in possessing as a tutor a Herr Florschutz, of Coburg, one of those men who have something of the woman’s tenderness for little children. He was often seen playing the part more of a kind nurse than that of a tutor, and carrying the little Albert in his arms.

The greatest care was bestowed upon Prince Albert’s education; his grandmother and his uncle Leopold kept constantly before their eyes and in their hearts the destiny for which they intended him. He pursued his studies of mathematics, jurisprudence, and constitutional government partly under tutors, but also at Brussels under his uncle’s own immediate supervision, and later at the University of Bonn. When it was decided that his education should be carried on in a somewhat wider atmosphere than the little Court of Coburg could afford, Berlin was not selected because it was both “priggish” and “profligate;” Vienna was rejected on account of its peculiar relations towards Germany; the choice fell on Brussels, because he could here study the constitutionalism which would afterwards be such an important factor in his life as husband of the Queen of England. As early as 1836 Stockmar congratulated Leopold that the young Prince was beginning to acquire “something of an English look.”

When Princess Victoria became Queen in 1837, her marriage with her cousin began to form a topic of gossip; and in order to divert attention from it, King Leopold sent Prince Albert and his brother for a prolonged tour over South Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. In 1838 King Leopold had a long conversation[Pg 66] with his nephew on the subject of the projected marriage, and found that he looked at the whole question from the “most elevated and honorable point of view.” “If I am not mistaken in him,” wrote the King to Stockmar, “he possesses all the qualities required to fit him for the position which he will occupy in England. His understanding is sound, his apprehension clear and rapid, and his heart is in the right place.” The young Prince said he was quite ready to submit to any delay in the marriage which the Queen might desire, but that he felt that he had a right to demand some definite assurance from her as to her ultimate intentions. He had no fancy to play the ridiculous part so often forced upon Queen Elizabeth’s numerous suitors, of hanging about her for years, having his matrimonial prospects talked of all over Europe, in order at the end to learn that the lady had never had the least intention of marrying him.

It was either to obtain this definite assurance from the Queen herself, or to withdraw entirely from the whole affair, that he came to England, again accompanied by his brother, Prince Ernest, on October 10th, 1839. On the 15th he was the Queen’s betrothed husband. All the Queen’s reasons for desiring the postponement of her marriage with her cousin vanished in his presence; they were overwhelmed by the irresistible feeling inspired by the Prince. In the memorandum by the Queen previously quoted in part, she had stated that no worse school for a young girl, or one more detrimental to all natural feelings and affections, could be imagined than that of being Queen at eighteen. Very few persons are qualified to express an opinion on the point, but it is quite certain that being Queen at eighteen had neither destroyed Her Majesty’s capacity of loving, nor her power of inspiring love. The letters of the two young lovers to their[Pg 67] friends, to announce their engagement, are full of the music of overflowing happiness. They both wrote to Stockmar. The Queen said: “Albert has completely won my heart, and all was settled between us this morning.... I feel certain he will make me very happy. I wish I could say I felt as certain of my making him happy, but I shall do my best.” The Prince’s letter says: “Victoria is so good and kind to me that I am often puzzled to believe that I should be the object of so much affection.... More, or more seriously, I cannot write. I am at this moment too bewildered to do so.

“Das Auge sicht den Himmel offen,
Es schwelgt das Herz in Seligkeit.”[9]

The Queen’s position made it necessary for her to offer herself in marriage to her cousin, not to wait till he sought her love. In her letter to her uncle Leopold, she tells him, “My mind is quite made up. I told Albert this morning of it. The warm affection he showed me on learning this, gave me great pleasure. He seems perfection, and I think I have the prospect of very great happiness before me. I love him MORE than I can say, and shall do everything in my power to render this sacrifice (for such, in my opinion, it is) as small as I can.... The last few days have passed like a dream to me, and I am so much bewildered by it all that I know hardly how to write, but I do feel very happy.... Lord Melbourne, whom I have of course consulted about the whole affair, quite approves my choice, and expresses great satisfaction at this event, which he thinks in every way highly desirable. Lord Melbourne has acted in this business, as he has[Pg 68] always done towards me, with the greatest kindness and affection. We also think it better, and Albert quite approves of it, that we should be married very soon after Parliament meets, about the beginning of February.”

King Leopold’s answer applied to himself the words of old Simeon, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.” The dearest wish of his heart was as good as accomplished.

The Prince avowed his engagement to his grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Gotha, in these words: “The Queen sent for me alone to her room a few days ago, and declared to me in a genuine outburst of love and affection that I had gained her whole heart, and would make her intensely happy if I would make the sacrifice of sharing her life with her, for she said she looked on it as a sacrifice; the only thing that troubled her was that she did not think she was worthy of me. The joyous openness of manner in which she told me this quite enchanted me, and I was quite carried away by it. She is really most good and amiable, and I am quite sure Heaven has not given me into evil hands, and that we shall be happy together. Since that moment Victoria does whatever she fancies I should wish or like, and we talk together a great deal about our future life, which she promises me to make as happy as possible.” In these letters one feels that her tone is more generous than his. The Queen’s letters, then in the first blush of love, and always wherever her husband is concerned, breathe the spirit of Elsa’s self-dedication, “Dir geb’ ich Alles, was ich brie!”

She had then, and preserved to the end of their happy life together, unbounded belief in him and pride in him. To her he was the most beautiful, the wisest and best of human beings. He was always to[Pg 69] her “my precious Albert,” “my incomparable Albert,” “my beloved Albert, looking so handsome in his uniform.” Sometimes, even in very happy marriages, the King of the fireside has to descend from his throne when the babies arrive; the wife becomes less the wife and more the mother. This was never so in the case of the Queen; her husband was always first and foremost in her heart. She wrote after many years of marriage, during one of the Prince Consort’s short absences from home, “You cannot think how much this costs me, nor how completely forlorn I am and feel when he is away, or how I count the hours till he returns. All the numerous children are as nothing to me when he is away. It seems as if the whole life of the house and home were gone.” King Leopold had read her rightly, when he wrote immediately after her engagement, that she was one to whom a happy home life was in a special degree indispensable. The cares and anxieties of her political duties made it more necessary for her happiness than even for that of most women, to have her home hallowed by the sympathy, support, advice, and affection of the husband who never ceased to be her lover.

Most women can sympathize with what the Queen must have felt when she had to announce to her Council her intended marriage. This took place on November 23d 1839. There was a large attendance, eighty Councillors being present. Greville describes the scene in his usual graphic manner: “The folding-doors were thrown open, and the Queen came in, attired in a plain morning gown, but wearing a bracelet containing Prince Albert’s picture. She read the declaration in a clear, sonorous, sweet-toned voice, but her hands trembled so excessively that I wonder she was able to read the paper which she held. Lord Lansdowne made a little speech, asking her permission[Pg 70] to have the declaration made public. She bowed assent, placed the paper in his hands, and then retired.”[10]

The Queen describes the same scene in her Journal; it will be seen she confirms Greville in every particular. “Precisely at two,” the Queen writes, “I went in; the room was full, but I hardly knew who was there. Lord Melbourne I saw looking kindly at me, with tears in his eyes, but he was not near me. I then read my short declaration. I felt my hands shake, but I did not make one mistake. I felt most happy and thankful when it was over. Lord Lansdowne then rose, and in the name of the Privy Council asked that this most gracious and most welcome communication might be printed. I then left the room, the whole thing not lasting above two or three minutes.” She adds that the Prince’s picture in her bracelet “seemed to give me courage at the Council.” The Prince, with the Queen’s entire approval, determined to take no English title, thinking that bearing his own name would more distinctly mark his individuality and independence. At this time he felt, as he expressed it in one of his family letters, that whatever changes were in store for him, he should always remain “a true German, a true Coburg and Gotha man.” However sincere and natural this feeling may have been, he learned later thoroughly to identify himself with the country of his adoption, and that the true realization of his personality lay in sinking his own individual existence in that of his wife.

[9]

Heaven opens on the ravished eye,
The heart is all entranced in bliss.

Schiller: Song of the Bell.

[10] Greville Memoirs, vol. i., 2d series, p. 247.

The proverbial troubles that mar the course of true love were not realized in the case of the Queen and Prince Consort, at least so far as their personal relations were concerned. But there were some difficulties and annoyances in store for them from outside influences. A foolish attempt was made to circulate the report that the Prince was a Roman Catholic. When the announcement of the Queen’s intended marriage was made to Parliament, it contained no reference to the Prince’s religious faith, and the omission was severely commented on in both Houses. The Queen thought her subjects were as well informed as she was herself upon the history of the House of Coburg, and believed that the attachment of the Prince’s family to the principles of the Reformation was notorious. In the susceptible state of the public mind at that time, and in the light of current events, it was perhaps an error of judgment not to mention the Prince’s Protestantism in the announcement of the marriage. Even when it was demonstrated that the Prince was Protestant to the backbone, the Ministry were soundly accused of suppressing all mention of the fact in order to retain the support of the Irish Roman Catholic members in the House of Commons. The Whig Government was tottering to its fall, and Lady Holland’s witty description of the political situation was that in the coming appeal to the country they had “nothing to rely on but the Queen and Paddy.” Even the Duke of Wellington, who usually[Pg 72] kept his head when other people lost theirs, moved and carried an amendment in the House of Lords to insert the word “Protestant” in the address in reply to the Queen’s speech announcing her intended marriage, “thus showing the public,” he said, “that this was still a Protestant State.”

This little outbreak was only a temporary vexation; but there appeared to be serious cause for alarm in another quarter. There was, about 1839, a remarkable outbreak of real disloyalty in the Tory party; it arose partly, no doubt, from the Queen’s known sympathy with the Whigs; but one cannot help suspecting that it was augmented by the elements of social corruption which had flourished in the atmosphere of the two previous reigns. When Prince Albert’s household were being selected, the only conditions which he insisted on were that it should not be formed exclusively of one party, and that it should consist of men of rank, “well educated and of high character.” This limited the range of choice, more perhaps than the young Prince was aware of, and did not increase his popularity among those who were excluded.

A non-gambling, non-drinking, pure-hearted, and clean-living young couple would have against them much that had enjoyed the sunshine of Court favor under the son of George III. The hounds of the “Great Goddess Lubricity” were in full cry against the Court. The undeserved humiliation suffered by poor Lady Flora Hastings gave them an advantage they were not slow to make the most of; it gave them the cover they run best in.

Added to this source of unpopularity which had in it nothing of a party character, there was another of a strictly party nature. The Bedchamber question, the Queen’s dislike of Peel, and her desire to keep Lord Melbourne in office, still further aggravated the situation,[Pg 73] and, towards the end of 1839, Tory members of Parliament broke out into speeches containing violent personal attacks upon the Queen. One of these, “Victorippicks,” delivered at a Conservative dinner at Canterbury, Greville describes as “violent and indecent,” “a tissue of folly and impertinence;” it was, however, received by the assembled company with shouts of applause. The chief offender on this occasion, Mr. Bradshaw, was called out by Mr. Horsman, a strong Whig and M.P. for Cockermouth; but matters were made worse, as far as the Tory party were concerned, by the fact that Bradshaw’s second was Colonel Gurwood, the confidential friend and secretary of the Duke of Wellington. Another striking manifestation of Tory disloyalty was given about the same time at Shrewsbury, when at a public dinner the company present refused to drink the health of the newly appointed Lord Lieutenant because he was the husband of one of the Ladies of the Bedchamber, the Duchess of Sutherland, with whom the Queen had refused to part when Sir Robert Peel was endeavoring to form a Government in 1839. Stockmar, Greville, and other observers of the current of English politics marked with alarm the decay of loyalty in the party whose traditional principles led them in an exactly contrary direction.

These fears were augmented by events in the House of Lords and House of Commons, relating to Prince Albert’s position and establishment. In the House of Commons, Lord John Russell proposed on the part of the Government an allowance from Parliament for Prince Albert of £50,000 a year. This was the sum which had been voted for Prince Leopold on his marriage with Princess Charlotte. Prince George of Denmark, husband of Queen Anne, had enjoyed this income, and the same sum had been voted for a succession[Pg 74] of Queens Consort. It seems to have been overlooked that the circumstances of the present case were not quite parallel to these. The Civil List had been readjusted at the beginning of the Queen’s reign, not in the direction of increasing it, but on a scale that was believed not only to be ample, but to allow an ample margin for all contingencies; in Prince Albert’s case no separate establishment would be needed, and only a very moderate household. Moreover, even if no account were taken of the exceptional commercial distress prevailing at the time,[11] the Ministry would have done well to realize that the time had gone by when the passing of huge sums for the Royal Family would go through as a matter of course. But the Government did not take heed of any of these things, nor did they take the precaution of consulting the leaders of opposition as to their view on the matter; on the contrary, Lord John Russell insisted on going on even when he knew he would be beaten, and irritated the Tory party by taunting them with disloyalty. When the vote of £50,000 was proposed, Mr. Hume moved to reduce to £21,000. This was negatived, but an amendment by Colonel Sibthorpe to reduce the vote to £30,000 was supported by Sir Robert Peel and other leading members of the Tory party, and carried by 262 to 158. It was not a strictly party division, for the majority was composed in part of Whigs and Radicals, as well as Tories. Still it was anticipated that the division would set the Prince against the Tory party. This, however, was not the case. His vexation on hearing of the vote was based on the fear that it indicated that his marriage with the Queen was unpopular in England, and when he[Pg 75] learned that this was not the case, he did not allow the matter to disturb him in any way, although, as will be seen later, he did not forget it. It will be seen that the fact that Sir Robert Peel had taken a prominent part in reducing the vote did not prejudice the Prince against that statesman. When the time came, eighteen months later, that Peel was called on again to form a Cabinet, he was rather uncomfortable in meeting the Prince. But he found not a single trace of any personal soreness in his demeanor. “On the contrary, his communications were of that frank and cordial character which at once placed the Minister at his ease, and made him feel assured that not only was no grudge entertained, but that he might count henceforward on being treated as a friend.”

The curious in such matters will here note a parallel between the foundation of the Queen’s esteem for Melbourne (page 53) and the Prince’s esteem for Peel.

The Queen was much more seriously annoyed by what took place in the House of Lords on the question of the Prince’s precedence. This is one of the matters in which it is impossible for the masses to understand the classes. It is like the pea and the real princess in Andersen’s tale. Either you feel it or you do not feel it; but if you do not feel it, you are not a real princess. Questions of precedence appear absolutely unimportant to those who are not born with a natural gift for thinking them important. The Duke of Wellington, even though he was an aristocrat by birth, never acquired the power of grasping the enormous importance of precedence and etiquette. When the Earl of Albemarle, who, as Master of the Horse, was extremely sensitive about his right of riding in the Queen’s carriage on State occasions, made himself rather troublesome on the subject, the Duke, who was appealed to, said: “The Queen can make Lord Albemarle[Pg 76] sit at the top of the coach, or under the coach, behind the coach, or wherever else Her Majesty pleases.” The Bill for the Prince’s naturalization contained a clause enabling the Queen to give him precedence over all other members of the Royal Family. The King of Hanover furiously raged, together with some of his Royal brothers. Objections were raised in the House of Lords. The Duke of Wellington thought it was unnecessary to settle the Prince’s precedence by law, and that the Queen could settle it by placing the Prince next herself on all occasions. This common-sense view would have been sufficient for ordinary people; but the fact that the House of Lords allowed the precedence clauses of the Naturalization Bill to drop seems to have caused no little trouble and annoyance. The Queen has added a note to the “Life of the Prince Consort,” in which she says: “When I was first married, we had much difficulty on this subject, much bad feeling was shown; several members of the Royal Family showed bad grace in giving precedence to the Prince, and the late King of Hanover positively resisted doing so.” The law of England has provided for the precedence of a Queen Consort, placing her above all other subjects, and giving her rank and dignity next her husband; moreover, relieving her of the legal disabilities of a feme-covert; but the law takes no cognizance of the possible existence of a husband of a Queen Regnant. As far as his legal position was concerned, the Queen’s husband had no rank except what belonged to him as second son of the Duke of Coburg. Greville looked up the authorities, and wrote a pamphlet on the subject, urging that the husband of the Queen ought to have precedence over all other persons. He thought the Tory party had made a serious mistake in the line they had taken in the matter. It was calculated, he[Pg 77] said, to accentuate the Queen’s dislike of them as a party, and he also felt that it was ungracious to give the Prince so uncordial a reception. It will render him, he said, “as ironical to them [the Tories] as she is already.” In this prediction events proved him to have been mistaken. Both the Queen and the Prince were hurt at what had taken place, but neither of them was imbittered. He first heard of the cutting down of his annuity in the House of Commons, and the lapsing of the Precedence Clauses in the Lords accidentally on taking up a newspaper at Aix, where he stopped for a few hours on his way to England for his marriage. “We came upon it,” he wrote to the Queen, February 1st, 1840, “in a newspaper at Aix, where we dined. In the House of Lords, too, people have made themselves needlessly disagreeable. All I have time to say is, that, while I possess your love, they cannot make me unhappy.”

The events just narrated received an importance they did not in themselves deserve, from the fact that they showed a weakening and disintegration of the monarchical principle in the party most bound by their professions to maintain it. Revolutionary doctrines were almost everywhere making way; a few years later, in 1848, they shook almost every throne in Europe. Aided by the experience and foresight of their friend and mentor, Baron Stockmar, the young Queen and her husband set themselves definitely, consciously, and earnestly to the task of strengthening the hold of the monarchy by basing it on the affections of the people, and also by making the crown a real power, above all party, seeking only to increase the welfare of the masses of the people, and uphold the power and dignity of the Empire. This object is expressed over and over again in the numerous letters and memoranda which passed between the Prince and[Pg 78] Stockmar in anticipation of the marriage, and in the years which immediately succeeded it. The Prince was convinced that the dignity and stability of the throne could only be based on the affection and respect of the nation; to earn that affection and respect, the domestic life of the Sovereign must be pure and blameless; that moreover the Sovereign must be the partisan of no party, but have a single eye to the true welfare of her whole people. We learn incidentally not only that “Melbourne called this ‘nonsense,’”[12] but that he said, “This damned morality is sure to ruin everything.”[13]

But this only illustrates anew that the wisdom of the man of the world is often mere foolishness.

In speaking of the Queen’s childhood, attention was drawn to the peculiarly fortunate circumstances which withdrew her very largely from the influences of Court life and gave her much of the quiet simplicity of a private station. If she was fortunate in her childhood she was still more fortunate in her marriage; not only were she and her husband life-long lovers, but she found in him a character and will as strong as her own; he was a sagacious counsellor, a fearless critic, a far-seeing friend, strengthening her throne by pursuing with her the ends of a worthy ambition. The warning which they both received from the events related in this chapter may have been fortunate too, if they emphasized the resolve they had formed to strengthen the monarchy by making the throne a throne of justice and purity.

[11] In 1840 wheat was 81s. a quarter; wages were low, and trade depressed; the revenue was steadily falling; deficits were chronic; and Chartist riots were common occurrences.

[12] Life of the Prince Consort, vol. i. p. 244.

[13] Memorandum by Stockmar, Life of the Prince Consort, vol. ii. p. 550.

The Queen was married to Prince Albert with every possible circumstance of pomp and magnificence on February 10th, 1840, in the chapel of St. James’s Palace. There was a drenching downpour of rain in the morning, so her subjects, although the sun shone later in the day, did not learn the expression “Queen’s weather” as early as 1840. Any doubts the Prince may have entertained as to the popularity of the marriage with the English people were dispelled by the hearty reception he met with from the crowd on his landing at Dover, and afterwards in London. A letter from the Dowager Lady Lyttelton, then a Lady in Waiting, descriptive of the ceremony, says: “The Queen’s look and manner were very pleasing, her eyes much swollen by tears, but great happiness in her countenance; her look of confidence and comfort at the Prince, when they walked away as man and wife, was very pleasing to see.”

Another account mentions a rather pretty incident: as the Prince and his bride were returning in their carriage to Buckingham Palace, he held her hand in his, but in such a way as to leave the wedding-ring visible to the assembled crowd.

The good effects of the Queen’s marriage soon began to make themselves felt. The Duchess of Kent had been, almost immediately after the accession, not without the pang of feeling that her occupation was gone, and that the child to whom she had devoted herself unceasingly for eighteen years was taken from[Pg 80] her; the Queen was surrounded by councillors not of her choosing, and was sailing away to regions of thought and activity where she could not follow. Her daughter’s marriage and her son-in-law’s thoughtful kindness did much to soothe these feelings and restore happiness and satisfaction to her heart.

The Prince quickly made a favorable impression upon those with whom he was brought in contact. The most penetrating observer could detect in him no trace of coldness or resentment towards those who had taken an active part in the events detailed in the last chapter. He was particularly courteous to the Duke of Wellington, who was charmed by him, and said he had never seen better manners.

Although he bore the rebuffs referred to with perfect good breeding, he did not forget them. Fourteen years later, after he had been on terms of the closest intimacy and friendship both with the Duke and Peel, he brought up the subject in a letter to Stockmar on the probable causes of an outbreak of hostility against himself, which was very noticeable in 1854. After enumerating the causes of his unpopularity with the Protectionists and the Horse Guards, he adds:—

There can be no doubt as to the difficulties of his position: the least indiscretion, the least appearance of the usurpation of an authority he did not legally[Pg 81] possess, would have been both exaggerated and bitterly resented. He was emphatically the wife’s husband, a position which, it appears, requires more than an average share of magnanimity for a man to occupy with dignity and ease. His position was one very frequently occupied by a woman, but very rarely by a man. A bishop’s wife, for instance, may be a Mrs. Proudie, and goad the most gentle of human beings into insult and revolt by her arrogant assumption of power; or she may be her husband’s helper and confidential adviser, and his right hand in all his work, making friends and winning over enemies in all directions; to do this needs a good heart, good sense, and tact. These qualities stood the Prince in good stead; he was, moreover, strengthened by the aim which he had ever before him, of establishing the English monarchy on a foundation so firm that the coming storms of revolution would be unable to shake it.

Politically his position was analogous to that of the Queen’s private secretary. Previous Sovereigns had had private secretaries of their own appointment, and the Queen had an absolute right to appoint whom she chose. It was for her happiness and also for the good of the nation that she chose her husband, who was also her bosom friend; no one else could have discharged the duties of the post with so much efficiency.

His firmness, resolution, and self-control would have been remarkable at any age, but they were especially notable in so young a man. It must not be forgotten that at the time of his marriage he was six months under twenty-one. A question arose whether, being under age, he could be sworn to the Privy Council. But boy as he was in years, he showed a firmness of character, a grasp of the principles which should rule his conduct, and a persistence in following[Pg 82] them which could not have been excelled at any age. It was a time, perhaps, when age was less afraid of youth than it is at present. Delane became editor of The Times at four-and-twenty. It is only by persistent effort that we can bring ourselves to believe that two generations earlier Pitt was really Leader of the House of Commons and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and had declined to be Prime Minister at three-and-twenty, and became Prime Minister at five-and-twenty, and held the post uninterruptedly and with unparalleled power for the next eighteen years. This miracle has been explained by saying that Pitt was phenomenal; his tutor called him “Mr. Pitt” when he was seven—he was born old; he did not acquire caution and judgment, as other people do, with years; he was gifted with them from his cradle. People have sometimes asked themselves whether Prince Albert was not “born old” too. It is true we are told that he had a great fund of drollery in his nature, and a considerable power of mimicry and a turn for drawing caricatures; we also hear of one thoroughly boyish prank which he played in 1839, on the very eve of his engagement—stooping in his travelling carriage when it stopped to change horses in a little village, so that the inhabitants who had assembled to see the Prince, saw nothing but his greyhound, Eôs, looking out of the window. This is exactly what any boy might do; but he was on the eve of a crisis in his life which caused all boyishness to be put away. Just as under the weight of a solemn purpose Hamlet disencumbers himself of all the “trivial fond records” of his youth, that

“My commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter,”

so the Prince, under the immense responsibilities of his position and his sense of the difficulty of discharging[Pg 83] them, acquired in one stride, as it were, the qualities which most men arrive at, if they reach them at all, only after years of experience and effort.

Reference has already been made to his convictions upon the necessity of preserving the purity of the young Queen’s Court. This was no effort to himself personally, for he was one of the natures born with a strong preference for whatsoever things are pure. But in the light of the scandals of former reigns, he knew the importance, not only of being free from taint, but of preventing the invention and circulation of scandalous stories relating to himself and his associates. His first request about the gentlemen selected to form his household was that they should be men of good character. He and the Queen always stipulated for this in regard to those household appointments which were part of the political patronage of successive Governments. We hear of this from Greville in his account of the filling of the household appointments in Sir Robert Peel’s Administration of 1841: “As to the men, she,” the Queen, “had said she did not care who they were, provided they were of good character.” A side-light is thrown on the efficacy of this stipulation by an extract from Lord Shaftesbury’s Journal, where we read that Peel pressed a household appointment on the then Lord Ashley, on the express ground that he must fill these places with men of unblemished character. Lord Ashley grimly records that Lord ——, the hero of a recent scandal, who had himself remarked, “Thank God, my character is too bad for a household place,” had received a similar compliment from Peel. Therefore, notwithstanding the express wishes of the Queen and Prince, it is evident that the aim they had set before themselves was by no means easy of accomplishment.

In order, not to protect himself, but to protect the[Pg 84] throne from the breath of scandal, the Prince laid down for himself a line of conduct which must have been very irksome through the degree to which it infringed his personal freedom. He never went anywhere alone. He was always accompanied by his equerry. He felt he must not only be irreproachable, but be able to produce witnesses, if necessary, to prove that he was so. Mr. Anson, the Prince’s secretary, says that it was remarked to him in 1842, “by a keen observer of character and by no means a good-natured one” (possibly Greville), “that it was most remarkable that the Prince should have been now nearly two years in his most difficult position, and had never given cause for one word to be said against him in any respect.”

The idle apprentice very often has something to say not altogether to the credit of the industrious apprentice; and men have to be forgiven their good qualities almost as often as their bad. There were not wanting those who were ready to say that the Prince was—if not a milksop—at any rate wanting in manliness; and it is rather amusing to find that he did himself (1843) more good, as far as popularity in society was concerned, by proving himself a bold rider to hounds, in the Leicestershire country, than he had done by years of prudence, caution, and self-effacement.

The difficulties of the Prince’s position were minimized by the generous confidence and unbounded affection with which the Queen regarded him. He at once became, and remained till death parted them, what she herself called her “dearest Life in Life.” She associated him with herself in all State business that was not strictly ceremonial. The courtiers quickly appreciated the significance of the fact that the Queen delighted to honor and elevate him. Her partiality for the Whigs became a thing of the past.[Pg 85] She dissociated herself from party predilections. Politically, as well as personally, her husband came first, and it was “staff o’ his conscience” with him that the Sovereign should be loyal to her Ministers to whatever party they might belong. Sir Robert Peel, who became Prime Minister in 1841, formed a very high opinion of the Prince’s strong practical judgment and sagacity, and did much to encourage the active part which he took in all State business. Peel and his Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, were credited with being Prince Albert’s tutors, in political affairs, and with having first introduced him into public life. They remarked with satisfaction how modestly he exercised his ever-increasing authority, and never gave a decided opinion without first consulting the Queen. By the end of the Peel Administration the Prince’s association with the Queen in all State business had become definitely established. It was a complete partnership; the Ministers always saw the Queen and Prince together, and “both of them always said We—‘We think, or wish, to do so-and-so; what had we better do?’” &c.

This union was equally close domestically and politically. We have already seen that to be parted from her husband, even for a day or two, was a serious trial to the Queen. The Prince went to Liverpool for a couple of days in 1846, and the Queen wrote to Stockmar in her husband’s absence, “I feel very lonely without my dear master; and though I know other people are often separated for a few days, I feel that it could not make me get accustomed to it.... Without him everything loses its interest.... It will always be a terrible pang to me to separate from him, even for a few days, and I pray God never to let me survive him. I glory in his being seen and loved.” The pathos of the words in the light of after events[Pg 86] needs no emphasis; but no one who has loved and been loved as she has, should be called unhappy. It was also to Stockmar that the Prince confided his own most sacred feelings upon the priceless treasure his marriage had brought him. Writing to his trusted friend to pour out his grief on the death of his father, the Duke of Coburg, in 1844, the Prince says: “Just such is Victoria to me, who feels and shares my grief, and is the treasure upon which my whole existence rests. The relation in which we stand to one another leaves nothing to desire. It is a union of heart and soul, and is therefore noble, and in it the poor children shall find their cradle, so as to be able one day to insure a like happiness for themselves.”

When Prince Albert’s political influence first began to be felt, he was generally supposed to be a Tory; Greville repeatedly speaks of him as if he were a Tory; but from the wider knowledge which the publication of his correspondence has given, it is clear that his mind was on many subjects far in advance of even the Whig statesmanship of the day; for instance, he was a convinced Free Trader at the time when Melbourne was declaring that the repeal of the Corn Laws was the most insane proposal that had ever entered the human brain. He was ardently in favor of the reform of university education so as to bring the universities more closely into touch with the needs of modern life. He foresaw that German unity was the necessary condition of German greatness,[14] and urged the necessity of the smaller German princes making the sacrifices requisite to the attainment of[Pg 87] this great end, which was not achieved till nearly ten years after his own death. The Prince was thoroughly imbued with the sound principle that in politics reform is the best, indeed the only, safeguard against revolution. His mind, politically, was not unlike that of Sir Robert Peel, presenting a combination of Liberal opinions with extreme caution in regard to the time and method of giving effect to them.

His opinions on matters bearing on religion were wholly free from narrowness and bigotry. He presented an example of that deepening, softening, and strengthening of character which modern writers have described as the special fruit of the Reformation among those peoples which have really assimilated its principles.[15] His deeply religious nature was apparent from very early years; in December, 1839, he wrote from Coburg to the Queen that he was about to take the Sacrament, and he adds: “God will not take it amiss, if in that serious act, even at the altar, I think of you; for I will pray to Him for you, and for your soul’s health, and He will not refuse us His blessing.” All through the married life of the Queen and Prince, it was their custom when they received the Sacrament to reserve the day for quietude and privacy. His sympathies in Church matters were decidedly with the party which has since been called “Broad.” His influence was always exercised in support of religious toleration.

In this, as in other matters, the husband and wife were in perfect accord. In later years her most trusted and confidential friend and adviser, among Churchmen, was Dean Stanley; and she fully sympathized with his interpretation of what a National Church ought to be. Highly as the Queen and Prince[Pg 88] appreciated the simplicity and dignity of the services of the Church of Scotland, they never professed or practised any approach to Scottish Sabbatarianism. Dr. Wilberforce (afterwards Bishop of Oxford, and later of Winchester) had attracted the notice of the Prince by a powerful anti-slavery speech, and he was appointed one of the Royal Chaplains. Writing from Windsor, after preaching before the Court on Sunday, February 9th, 1845, he notes in his diary, “Chess evening, which I regret, not that my own conscience is offended at it one jot, but that capable of misconstruction.” The views of the Bishop and the Prince became, as time went on, very widely divergent on matters relating to religion and Church government; but earlier in their intercourse they found many subjects in which they were in hearty accord. The Prince’s views on the functions of the Bishops in the House of Lords were set forth at length in a remarkable letter to Dr. Wilberforce, the Dean of Westminster, dated 1845. His opinion was that the Bishops should not take part in purely political questions, but should come forward when questions of humanity were at stake, such as negro emancipation, education, sanitation, recreation, prevention of cruelty to animals, and factory legislation. “As to religious affairs,” the Prince added, “he” (the Bishop) “cannot but take an active part in them; but let that always be the part of a Christian, not a mere Churchman; let him never forget the insufficiency of human knowledge and wisdom, and the impossibility of any man, or even any Church, to say, ‘I am right, I alone am right.’ Let him therefore be meek and liberal, and tolerant to other confessions.... He ought to be a guardian of public morality.... He should likewise boldly admonish the public, even against its predominant feeling, if this be contrary to the purest standard[Pg 89] of morality.... In this way the Bishops would become a powerful force in the Lords, and the country would feel that their presence there supplies a great want, and is a great protection to the people.”

A letter like this, accompanied as it was by expressions modestly excusing himself for offering an opinion, is a sufficient revelation of his character, and of his grasp of principles. It was indeed mainly by his character that he was able to exercise the influence he did. Dr. McLeod, in speaking of him after his death, said: “His real strength lay most of all in his character, or in that which resulted from will and deliberate choice, springing out of a nature singularly pure, by God’s grace, from childhood.” It was this which gradually caused him to stand well with both parties, as the singleness of his aims and life became apparent. The feeling manifested against him in both Houses of Parliament before his marriage was changed after closer acquaintance to one of confidence.

When it was known that the Queen was about to give birth to a child, a Bill naming the Prince as Regent, in the event of her death leaving an infant heir, was passed without difficulty, the only dissenting voice being that of the Duke of Sussex, who felt that the dignity of the Royal Family would be best promoted by another arrangement. The Prime Minister assured the Queen that the practical unanimity of Parliament in naming the Prince as Regent was entirely owing to his own character. “Three months ago they would not have done it for him.”

Perhaps the smooth passage of the Regency Bill was promoted by another circumstance. In June, 1840, as the Queen and Prince were driving up Constitution Hill, in a low carriage, Her Majesty was twice fired at by a young miscreant named Oxford;[Pg 90] neither shot took effect; the Queen and Prince behaved with admirable courage. She ordered the carriage to drive at once to the Duchess of Kent, in order to anticipate any rumor of the attempt which might otherwise have reached her mother. She then continued her drive in the park, escorted now by an immense crowd on horseback and on foot, who gave the most vociferous expression to their feelings of devotion and loyalty. The Queen behaved then, as always, with perfect courage and self-possession, which naturally increased the mingled feelings of admiration and sympathy for her, and anger for the perpetrator of the outrage. One other thought, however, quickly succeeded these; it was this: If Oxford’s aim had been well directed, and the fair young life laid low before she had given heirs to England, there was nothing between the nation and the succession of the Duke of Cumberland, now King of Hanover, to the throne of England. The knowledge of the escape the country had had, as well as admiration for the beautiful courage of the young wife, caused a great wave of enthusiastic loyalty to herself and her husband, and the practical result of Oxford’s shot was that the Regency Bill passed through both Houses without a dissentient voice, except that of the Duke of Sussex.

It was remarked just now that the Prince’s influence was due mainly to his character; it must not be inferred from this that he was not also an extremely able and accomplished man. As he came into close relations with the Queen’s successive Prime Ministers, they one and all acknowledged the power of his intellect, the extent of his knowledge, and his grasp of principles. Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert Peel, Lord John Russell, Lord Aberdeen, Lord Derby, and Lord Palmerston, all formed the highest opinion of the Prince’s capacity for statesmanship. With one of[Pg 91] them, Lord Palmerston, the Prince was at one time, as is well known, in sharp conflict with regard to his conduct as Foreign Secretary, and this makes his testimony to the Prince’s ability of all the greater value. In 1855, when Palmerston was Prime Minister, one of his political friends, calling on him, expressed a high opinion of the abilities of Napoleon III. Palmerston concurred, but said: “We have a far greater and more extraordinary man nearer home,” referring to the Prince; he then added, “The Prince would not consider it right to have obtained the throne as the Emperor has done; but in regard to the possession of the soundest judgment, the highest intellect, and most exalted qualities of mind, he is far superior to the Emperor.”

The Prince made an equally favorable personal impression on statesmen of the Tory party. When Lord Derby was Prime Minister for ten months in 1852, Lord Malmesbury was Foreign Secretary, and in that capacity was brought much in contact with the Queen and her husband. He wrote of the latter, “I never met a man so remarkable for his variety of information in all subjects, ... with a great fund of humor quand il se déboutonne.”

It was not only in statesmanship that his ability was shown.[16] He was a good musician, and excelled as a performer, especially on the organ; Peel was not[Pg 92] long in discovering that the Prince was an enthusiastic admirer of early German art and literature. His interest in the arts and in industry was demonstrated by the Great Exhibition of 1851, which was really his creation. As a country gentleman he had not that absorbing delight in killing animals which then, perhaps, even more than now, was considered essential to his position; he appears never to have become a really good shot, and to have enjoyed deer-stalking and other sport more for the sake of the fine air and exercise they brought him, than with exclusive passion of the real sportsman. As a set-off to this, he took the liveliest interest in agriculture and in stock breeding, and was a frequent visitor at agricultural and cattle shows. He showed considerable skill as a landscape gardener, and the beautiful surroundings of Windsor were still further beautified by him, while the gardens of Buckingham Palace, Osborne, and Balmoral are, to a large extent, in their present form, his creation. In social matters he anticipated a good deal of what has been done in more recent years in the direction of the improvement of workmen’s dwellings, and in his interest in education and sanitary legislation. Early in his career in England he gave special attention to the suppression of duelling, and proposed, as a substitute, the establishment of courts of honor in the army, where charges could be made and evidence heard in cases which had formerly led to a personal encounter. The courts of honor were never established; but the influence of the Prince undoubtedly discouraged the practice of duelling in England. Up to this time, it had been not at all uncommon, even between civilians; and there were few of the leading politicians in either party who had not been “out,” at one time or another, with a political opponent.

[Pg 93]

The narrative of the succeeding chapters will further illustrate the Prince’s character and his multiform activities. Those who had the opportunity of knowing him intimately never failed to appreciate his really great qualities; but it is only since his death, and the publication of his private letters and memoranda, that the general public have really learned to know him and to understand how he devoted all his powers to the country of his adoption.

[14] In this respect his political views were far in advance of those of his English tutors. Greville records a conversation he had in 1849 with Lord Aberdeen about the Prince’s politics. “Aberdeen spoke much of the Queen and Prince, of course with great praise. He says the Prince’s views were generally sound and wise, with one exception, which was his violent and incorrigible German Unionism” (Greville, vol. vi. p. 305).

[15] Kidd’s Social Evolution, chap. x.; Marshall’s Principles of Economics, vol. i. pp. 34, 35.

[16] In Lady Bloomfield’s Reminiscences, she records a conversation she had with the Prince shortly before his death. “He said his great object through life had been to learn as much as possible, not with a view of doing much himself,—as, he observed, any branch of study or art required a lifetime,—but simply for the sake of appreciating the works of others; for, he added, without any self-consciousness or vanity, ‘No one knows the difficulties of a thing till they have tried to do it themselves; and it was with this idea that I learnt oil-painting, water-color, etching, fresco-painting, chalks, and lithography, and in music I studied the organ, pianoforte, and violin, thorough-bass, and singing’” (vol. ii. p. 110).

From the time of the Queen’s accession, the power of the Whig Government under Lord Melbourne had been steadily going down. It sank to zero when they resumed office, in 1839, after Peel had failed to form a Government in consequence of the dispute over the Ladies of the Bedchamber. They had been beaten in the Commons and were in a permanent minority in the Lords; and it was said with justice that they were holding on, in office but not in power, simply to please the Queen. It would have been a discreditable position for any Government, but it was particularly damaging to a Whig Government from the fact that their party was specially identified with the principle of ministerial responsibility and a resistance to personal government.

The result of their position was that they were powerless to pass their measures. They knew they had lost the confidence of the country, and that the House of Lords could therefore veto the Government Bills with a light heart. Perhaps this was not altogether painful to Lord Melbourne. The saying by which he is chiefly remembered by the present generation, “Why can’t you let it alone?” is not indicative of the ardent spirit of the reformer. He may have found consolation in the assistance given by the House of Lords to letting things alone.

Given his position and all its difficulties, Melbourne behaved loyally and generously to the Queen and to his successors. He knew the days of his own Government[Pg 95] were numbered, and that Peel would succeed him, and he did his best to bring about a more cordial personal feeling between the Queen and Peel and the Tory party. The Queen tells us that to her his word constantly was, “Hold out the olive-branch to them a little;” with Peel, he tried to induce the shy, proud man to put on a little of the courtier and the man of the world. At a Court ball in 1840, “Melbourne went up to Peel and whispered to him with the greatest earnestness, ‘For God’s sake, go and speak to the Queen;’ Peel did not go, but the entreaty and the refusal were both characteristic.”

When the long-anticipated fall of the Melbourne Administration came, and the election of 1841 resulted in the return of the Tories to power with a majority of over 80, Melbourne, who had worked unceasingly to reconcile the Queen to the impending change, did not desist from his good offices with her new Ministers.[17] He could not approach them directly, but he took the opportunity after Peel’s Government had been formed of giving them a few hints, through Greville. He met Greville at a dinner-party and took him on one side and said: “‘Have you any means of speaking to these chaps?’ I said, ‘Yes, I can say anything to them.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think there are one or two things Peel ought to be told, and I wish you would tell him. Don’t let him suffer any appointment he is going to make to be talked about, and don’t let her hear it through anybody but himself; and whenever he does anything, or has anything[Pg 96] to propose, let him explain to her clearly his reasons. The Queen is not conceited; she is aware there are many things she cannot understand, and she likes to have them explained to her elementarily, not at length and in detail, but shortly and clearly; neither does she like long audiences, and I never stayed with her a long time. These things he should attend to, and they will make matters go on more smoothly.’” Greville conveyed the message, which was taken in exceedingly good part, and from 1841 onwards till his death the relations between Sir Robert Peel and the Queen were all that could be desired. Her former antipathy was changed into cordial respect and admiration; when he lost his shyness and reserve, and was able to show himself in his real character, she soon appreciated the very fine qualities of the man, far transcending in real worth those of the Minister whom in the beginning of her reign she had so strongly preferred. When Peel’s Ministry had been in office a few months, Greville asked Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, how they were going on with the Queen. He said, “Very well. They sought for no favor, and were better without it. She was very civil, very gracious, and even on two or three little occasions, she had granted favors in a way indicative of good will.” He said that they treated her with profound respect and the greatest attention. He made it a rule to address her as he would a sensible man, laying all matters before her, with the reasons for the advice he tendered, and he thought this was the most legitimate as well as judicious flattery that could be offered to her, and such as must gratify her, and the more because there was no appearance of flattery in it, and nothing but what was right and proper—so right and proper that it is not easy to see where the flattery comes in. The way of explaining business to[Pg 97] a sensible woman must be much the same, one would imagine, as the way of explaining it to a sensible man; but this simple view of the facts was by no means perceived intuitively in 1841, but was only arrived at by demonstration from actual experiment. However this may be, when Peel and his colleagues learned their lesson, they learned it thoroughly. In this second series of interviews between the Queen and the leaders of the Tory Party, when a new Ministry was being formed in 1841, all passed off most satisfactorily. Peel said the Queen behaved perfectly to him; he was more than satisfied with her bearing towards him. To the Duke of Wellington she was equally gracious. She reproached him for not taking office himself, and he assured her that his one object was to serve her and the country in every way he could, and that he thought he could do this more effectually by making way for some of the younger men. It is true that there was still some talk about Peel’s shyness making the Queen shy; and Greville has a little hit about Peel, after dinner at Windsor, talking to the Queen in the attitude of a dancing-master giving a lesson, and says that the Queen would like him better if he would keep his legs still; but this gossip probably reflects Greville’s sentiments rather than the Queen’s. Her respect for Peel and attachment to him grew with her growing knowledge of his character and powers. In 1843 the Queen wrote of him to her uncle, the King of the Belgians, as “undoubtedly a great statesman, a man who thinks but little of party, and never of himself.” In February, 1846, Lady Canning, who was then in Waiting on the Queen, notes in her journal, “The Queen is very keen about politics, and has an immense admiration for Sir Robert Peel.”

Before the end of his Administration, she not only[Pg 98] loyally supported him in the face of his growing unpopularity with his own party, but showered every honor upon him that a Sovereign could bestow upon a Minister. She and the Prince visited him at his house at Drayton. She became godmother to his grandchild, and would have given him the Order of the Garter, but that Peel, with the characteristic pride of humility, intimated his desire that it should not be offered him. He said that if his acceptance of the honor would increase his power of serving the Queen he would not hesitate to accept it; but he could not believe this was the case. Personally, he would prefer not to accept it; he was a man of the people, and the decoration in his case would be misapplied. “His heart was not set upon titles of honor or social distinctions. His reward lay in Her Majesty’s confidence, of which by many indications she had given him the fullest assurance; and when he left her service the only distinction he coveted was that she should say to him, ‘You have been a faithful servant, and have done your duty to your country and to me.’”

When Peel’s Ministry came to an end in 1846, both the Queen and the Prince expressed the hope that his leaving office would not interrupt the cordial relations that had been established between them. His tragic death, from a fall from his horse, in 1850, was bitterly mourned in the Palace. The Queen wrote at the time: “Peel is to be buried to-day. The sorrow and grief at his death are most touching. Every one seems to have lost a personal friend.” The Prince on the same day wrote to the same correspondent: “Sir Robert Peel is to be buried to-day. The feeling in the country is absolutely not to be described. We have lost our truest friend and trustiest counsellor, the throne its most valiant defender, the country its[Pg 99] most open-minded and greatest statesman.” The Queen offered a peerage to Lady Peel after her husband’s death, but she declined the honor, acting in accordance with what she knew had been his wishes. The Duke of Wellington, in the tribute he paid to Peel in the House of Lords, spoke with tears streaming down his face; the chief part of his panegyric on his friend and leader was based on his unswerving love of truth. It was this quality, together with his political sagacity, caution, and courage, that had endeared him to the Queen. No Prime Minister has ever had a more remarkable history. The election of 1841 was fought on the Corn Laws, and resulted in the return of Peel with a majority of eighty pledged to Protection. In four years from that time, after a career of brilliant success as a Minister, he repealed the Corn Laws which he had been returned to support, amid the execration of the great bulk of his own party and even that of a considerable number of his former opponents;[18] and yet those who knew him best loved him chiefly for his absolute integrity and love of truth. The explanation lies in the hard logic of facts. Peel and his immediate followers became convinced they were wrong in their protective policy; in ordinary times the only right thing for them to have done would have been to declare their change and its grounds, resign office and appeal to the country. Some of the Peelites, as they were called, took this course, so far as was possible, as private individuals; they declared their change and resigned their seats. Lord Shaftesbury, then Lord Ashley, was one of these.

[Pg 100]

He had been returned as a Protectionist and became a Free Trader, and therefore, quite rightly, resigned his seat, appealing to his constituents unsuccessfully for re-election. He notes in his diary, “I shall resign my seat and throw up all my beloved projects for which I have sacrificed everything that a public man values, all that I had begun and all that I have designed. Nearly my whole means of doing good will cease with my membership of Parliament.” He refused an offer of £2,000 from the then Whip to enable him to fight his seat, because he would not jeopardize his independence. He was very poor, and he fought and lost. But to lose like that is to win. Why could not Peel have done the same? The answer is: The Irish Famine. Just as the Emperor Nicholas during the Crimean War said that he relied most of all on his Generals January and February, so Peel’s scruples were conquered by the Famine. In Ireland in 1845-6 there were millions of people within measurable distance of death from starvation; the measures of relief could, under the best of circumstances, only be partially successful; they would have been terribly hampered by the continuance, even for another few months, of the import duties on corn. The aim of the Corn Laws was to make bread dear; the pressing necessity of the moment was to make it cheap, and pour in food supplies to starving Ireland. Peel’s feeling may have been, “Better endure the charge of dishonesty rather than add to the fearful total of those who will die of starvation in Kerry and Connemara.” As the alarming accounts from Ireland came pouring in, his first desire was to deal with the matter by opening the ports by an Order in Council (November, 1845). This would have been by far the best course; it would have secured a supply of cheap bread without delay, and the war of words over it in Parliament[Pg 101] could have been protracted to any extent without practical mischief; but his Cabinet would not agree to it. Then he resigned office (December, 1845), and left with the Queen a paper, to be given to his successor, stating that he would give every support to the new Minister to effect a settlement of the question of the Corn Laws. The Queen sent for Lord John Russell, who, however, failed to form a Government, because Lord Grey refused to take office if Lord Palmerston were at the Foreign Office, and Lord Palmerston refused to take any other place. Peel was therefore recalled. It was thus through the absolute necessity of the moment that he repealed the Corn Laws which he had been elected to support. In the House of Commons he confessed the error of his former opinions, and maintained the duty and dignity of owning one’s self to have been wrong rather than pretending by casuistical hair-splitting that there had been no change of opinion when there was so striking a change in conduct; he bore with magnanimity the reproaches of those who still shared the error which he had abandoned, and finally appealed to the facts of the situation, the national calamity of impending famine in Ireland; he claimed that as the Government were responsible for the lives of millions of the Queen’s subjects in the sister country, they felt it impossible to take any other course than that of repeal. The great bulk of the Tories accused him of dishonesty, but he took with him the flower of his party, both in regard to intellect and character, while he earned the enthusiastic gratitude and respect of the great bulk of the nation, and of the men led by Cobden and Bright and the Hon. Charles Villiers, who had devoted themselves to the cause of repeal. Their favorable verdict has been confirmed by posterity. Peel’s change was an honest change, and he was[Pg 102] forced to give effect to it when he did by the inexorable necessities of famine. He did not make a volte face for the sake of place and power. But notwithstanding all that can be urged in his justification, he shattered his party. The Tories had a majority of eighty in the general election of 1841; they never secured a similar victory till 1874. They had short tenures of office in 1852, and again in 1858-9, and in 1866-8; but on each occasion they had to govern as best they could with a minority in the House of Commons. They were in the wilderness thirty-three years, and never regained the Canaan of politicians, except by the aid of the new electorate called into existence by the Reform Bill of 1867.

When Peel went out of office he requested the Queen, as a personal favor to himself, never to ask him to form a Government again. He was not defeated in his great measure; his majority was ninety-seven in the House of Commons, and forty-seven in the House of Lords. But the day on which the Corn Bill passed its third reading in the Lords, the Ministry were defeated in the Commons on a Protection of Life in Ireland Bill, introduced on account of an outbreak of midnight murders and murderous attacks, such as are now known by the name of “moonlighting.”

For modesty, dignity, simplicity, and sincerity, Peel’s figure stands out conspicuous for greatness among the statesmen of this century. Cobden said of him that he had lost office and saved his country.

His other great achievement was that of reorganizing and simplifying the fiscal arrangements of the country. It was this that first so highly recommended him to the Queen and Prince. They were good economists in their own private affairs, and wished for good order in national revenue and expenditure also.[Pg 103] When Peel succeeded Melbourne, huge deficits were of constant occurrence; the revenue was falling, and the expenditure was increasing. Peel evolved order out of this chaos. He inaugurated the era of financial reform. In 1845 import duties were levied on no fewer than 1,142 separate articles. Peel and his pupil and successor, Mr. Gladstone, reduced the number to about five, and Peel was the first to discover the productiveness and utility of the income tax, as a means of raising revenue. The Queen most cordially supported him in his financial reforms, and authorized him to announce in the House of Commons that she did not wish to be exempted from the operation of the income tax. We owe to him more than to any other of the Queen’s Prime Ministers that the national accounts almost invariably show a balance on the right side. Peel was a man of whom it was said that it was necessary to know him intimately to know him at all; and this intimate friendship existed between him and the Queen and her husband from the time he became Prime Minister, in 1841. It was an inestimable advantage for the Royal couple that their political tutor (if one may use the expression) in the early years of the reign was changed from the kindly but frivolous and complaisant Melbourne to the earnest and strenuous Peel, a man gifted beyond most with what Matthew Arnold has called “high seriousness,” a quality without some portion of which no character has any solid foundation. Peel’s Premiership was a national blessing from his political and economical achievements while he held the reins of power; and it was also a blessing from its effect on the Queen’s political education.

[17] This generosity was thoroughly in keeping with his character. After Melbourne’s death, Greville tells how he occupied his room at Brocket, and, “poking about” to see what he could find, came upon several MS. books of the late Prime Minister. In one of these was recorded Melbourne’s settled determination “always to stand by his friend,” and his conviction that it was more necessary to do so “when they were in the wrong than when they were in the right.”

[18] Lord Melbourne, to whom in 1839 Repeal of the Corn Laws had been “the maddest of all mad projects,” and who became a Free Trader, for party purposes, in 1841, spoke of Peel’s change of view at a dinner party at the Palace with vehemence which even the presence of a lady, and that lady his Sovereign, could not restrain. “Ma’am, it’s a damned dishonest act” (Greville, vol. v. p. 359).

One of the strongest influences, personal and political, in the Queen’s earlier life was that of Baron Stockmar. This remarkable man attained, simply by dint of character, the position of being one of the chief of the unseen political forces of Europe. Without any official political position, he was the friend and confidant of statesmen and princes, and acquired extraordinary influence by his clearness of view and tenacity of purpose in political concerns, joined with personal honesty and disinterestedness, and also in a remarkable degree with a singularly firm grasp of “the inexhaustibly fruitful truth that moral causes govern the standing and falling of States.”

The formative influences on his character had been the political misfortunes of Germany under the first Napoleon, in the early part of the century. As a youth he witnessed the bitter humiliation of his country, and later the downfall of her oppressor; and from henceforth the bed-rock of his character was the belief in the existence of a moral power ruling over the fate of nations and individuals. His son and biographer narrates an event which influenced Stockmar deeply. During the Napoleonic tyranny in Germany, he formed one of a group of enthusiastic young Germans, some of whom broached the possibility of delivering their country by murdering her oppressor. An old Prussian officer who was present reproached the lads for their folly: “This is the[Pg 105] talk,” he said, “of very young people;” and he went on to express his firm confidence that the rule of the French in Germany was in its very nature evanescent, and must come to an end. His counsel was: “Trust in the natural course of events,” and be ready to take advantage of them. Things that are rotten and hollow decay; those that are sound and healthy flourish and grow. Stockmar saw the crumbling to dust within a few years of what then appeared the overwhelming strength of Napoleon, and never forgot the lesson he had learned. All through his life he really believed what most people profess to believe, that the wages of sin is death.

From this standpoint of a belief in moral causes as governing the standing and falling of States, he sought to understand the source of the political humiliation of Germany, and he found it in the petty jealousies and childish narrow-mindedness of the little German States. Once convinced of this, long before the unity of Germany came within the sphere of practical politics he labored earnestly to bring it about. He was not slow to perceive that the arrogance of Napoleon and the shame and despair of Germany brought with them the germ of a better state of things. In the first place, Napoleon reduced the number of small German States from something like three hundred to thirty. This in itself was no small step towards national unity. In the second place, the anguish and humiliation endured in common by the German populations animated them with a common purpose to throw off the yoke of their oppressor. This was a beginning of a new national life. As Stockmar expressed it, “The people had come to know that hitherto they had had no Fatherland; and from that hour they cherished the resolve to have one.”

[Pg 106]

Stockmar never believed that bad morals could be good politics. It was his creed that wrong-doing brings with it its own inevitable retribution. Immediately after the Coup d’état in December, 1851, he said that out of the elements with which its success had been secured, the devil only could form a stable Government, and that he did not believe in the possibility of a permanent rule for his black majesty. His biographer, writing early in 1870, remarks that it yet remained to be seen whether Stockmar’s prediction would be fulfilled. Within a few months all doubt on the subject was ended by the cannon of Sedan and the downfall of the Second Empire.

A character like Stockmar’s, with a fixed political and wholly impersonal end in view, is never lacking in self-confidence; he never for a moment swerved from his aim, though after 1848 he realized that he would never probably live to see it accomplished. The fact that practical statesmen thought his dream of German unity under the leadership of Prussia a “bee in his bonnet,” did not in the least disturb him. He went on diligently “laying the seed corn,” as he himself described it, in other minds, quietly, almost secretly, knowing that once planted it would grow. After the downfall of the hopes of German unity in 1848, Stockmar was not discouraged, nor would he allow discouragement in others. He used to say, “The Germans are a good people, easy to govern; and the German Princes who do not understand this, do not deserve to rule over such a people. Do not be frightened, for younger ones are quite unable to estimate how great is the progress which the Germans have made towards political unity. I have lived through it, and I know this people. You are marching towards a great future. You will live to see it, not I; but then think of the old man.”

[Pg 107]

Stockmar’s policy was constantly directed towards:—

1. German unity under the headship of Prussia; and subsidiary to this:—
2. A cordial understanding and alliance between England and Germany;
3. The harmonizing of democracy with the throne through constitutional monarchy.

An apparent accident enabled him to obtain a place in the world of European politics, from which he could work for these ends. Born in 1787, the son of a lawyer in the little German town of Coburg, nothing could have appeared less likely than that Christian Friedrich Stockmar would have any weight in settling the affairs of nations. But having been trained for the medical profession, and having distinguished himself for courage and organizing capacity as an army surgeon, he was appointed physician in the household of Prince Leopold on the occasion of his marriage to Princess Charlotte in 1816. This introduced him to political personages in England. From henceforth we have flashes from the bull’s-eye lantern of Stockmar’s letters on the great world of English politics. Nothing escaped his notice, and he gives a series of vignettes of the Royal circle very different in tone from the formal adulation which often characterized such productions. The Mulatto countenance of the Queen-mother, Queen Charlotte; the hideous face of the Duke of Cumberland, with one eye turned quite out of its place; the quiet kindliness of the Duke of Kent; the erect figure, with black hair simply cut, immense hawk’s nose, tightly compressed lips, strong, massive under-jaw of the Duke of Wellington, with his easy, simple, friendly manners, and his moderation at table, are all noted; so are Castlereagh’s bad French and not very good English; the Grand Duke[Pg 108] Nicholas (afterwards the Emperor Nicholas of the Crimean War), “a singularly handsome, attractive young fellow, ... very well mannered, with a decided talent for flirting.... When Countess Lieven played after dinner on the piano he kissed her hand, which struck the English ladies present as peculiar, but decidedly desirable.” Those who are apt to take alarm at the advent of “The New Woman” will perhaps learn with surprise that she is not so very new after all. Mrs. Campbell, Lady-in-Waiting to Princess Charlotte, “opposes everything she sees and hears, and meets everything that men can say or do with such persistent contradiction that we can tell beforehand what will be her answers to our questions. This lady, however, professed man-hater though she was, thought with the rest of the women that the Grand Duke Nicholas was charming.” Mrs. Campbell could not cease praising him. “What an amiable creature; he is devilish handsome. He will be the handsomest man in Europe,” &c. Stockmar notes the hoidenish manners, good heart, and strong will of Princess Charlotte. “Handsomer than I expected, with most peculiar manners, ... laughing a great deal, and talking still more.” He was, evidently, rather shocked by her want of decorum, but he noted with satisfaction the simplicity and good taste of her dress. He was devoted to his master, and predicts that the Princess’s impressionable, generous nature will develop and improve under his influence and that of a refined and affectionate home, which the poor child had never known. The Princess herself said to Stockmar: “My mother was bad, but she would not have become as bad as she was if my father had not been infinitely worse.” Stockmar was devoted to Leopold, and spoke of him in a private letter as “My glorious master, a manly prince and a princely man.”[Pg 109] Leopold, on his side, spoke of Stockmar as “the most valued physician of his soul and body.” In the Royal household at Claremont he was treated by both the Prince and Princess as a friend, and he fulfilled the duties of private secretary as well as physician to his master. His good sense made him decline to act as medical adviser to Princess Charlotte. This office should, he felt, devolve on an English doctor. This may have been either fortunate for himself or unfortunate for the poor Princess,—probably the latter; as there are reasons to believe that he would have prescribed a rational treatment in the place of the purging, bleeding, and general lowering of the system which caused her death within a few hours of the birth of her stillborn son. In that dark hour of the loss of all his hopes of domestic happiness and political ambition, Leopold leant on the firm devotion of Stockmar. He made Stockmar promise never to forsake him. Kneeling at the bed where his young wife lay dead, Leopold said, “I am now quite desolate. Promise me always to stay with me.” He promised. Again later the Prince reminded him of his promise, and asked him if he had considered all that it meant. He renewed the promise; but even in this moment of supreme emotion he was not carried away, for he did not promise unconditionally. “I said I would never leave him as long as I saw that he confided in me and loved me, and that I could be of use to him.” He added, in writing an account of all that had happened to his sister, “I did not hesitate to promise what he may perhaps claim forever, or, perhaps, even next year, may find no longer necessary to him.” Without building too much on his being permanently necessary to the Prince, he knew that he was necessary to him at the moment. No elder brother was ever more tender than Stockmar to Leopold at the time of[Pg 110] his bereavement. He never left him, he slept in his room; if the Prince woke in the night Stockmar got up and talked him to sleep again. He watched over him morally and physically, and devised remedies and occupations for him. He encouraged him to stay in England and to devote himself to the study of the English language and literature and constitutional history, and to interest himself in the social and political questions of the day. It is probably a universal experience that love and service go together. One never loves, either human beings or causes, till one has done something for them. Therefore the more Stockmar served Leopold the more he loved him; and the relation between them became almost unique in Royal annals.

He lived with Leopold almost continuously in England till 1831, when his master was chosen King of the Belgians; the limited monarchy of the Belgian Constitution was as much the work of Stockmar as that of the King. Stockmar returned to England as soon as the birth of the Belgian monarchy was safely accomplished, to wind up the affairs consequent on Leopold’s relinquishment of his English annuity; and when this was completed he retired to Coburg, in 1834. Stockmar had strongly advised Leopold on ascending the Belgian throne to give up the £50,000 a year which the House of Commons voted him on his marriage with Princess Charlotte. Leopold consented to do so, charging it, however, with his debts, amounting to £83,000, and with the keeping up of Claremont, the residue to be repaid to the Treasury. Greville’s comment on this arrangement is that the odds were none of it would ever reach the Treasury, and that Leopold would be back before the debts were paid. However, events proved that he had underestimated Leopold’s capacity, and the durability of the Belgian[Pg 111] monarchy. In the storms of 1848, the constitutional thrones of England and Belgium, both of them owing much to Stockmar’s political genius, stood firm and strong when nearly every other in Europe was shaken.

In 1834 it was Stockmar’s purpose to retire into private life at Coburg; however, we soon find him engaged in arranging a marriage between Prince Ferdinand of Coburg, a cousin of Prince Albert’s, and the Queen of Portugal; and in May, 1837, he returned to England to furnish help and advice to Princess Victoria immediately upon her attaining her majority. This event took place on May 24th, 1837, and Stockmar arrived at Kensington on the 25th. The King was even then very ill, and it was certain that the Princess would soon become Queen. Stockmar had known her intimately from her birth, and his presence in England was of the greatest use and assistance to her. George IV. and William IV. had both employed private secretaries. Stockmar arranged that no similar appointment should be made by the young Queen, having in mind that when the time came the proper private secretary would be found in the person of the future husband. The duties of private secretary were therefore divided, as had been seen, between himself, Lord Melbourne, and Baroness Lehzen, formerly the Queen’s governess.

Stockmar’s chief work at this time was that of political tutor to the Queen. He drilled her in the principles of constitutional monarchy. In this he was not helped, but was thwarted, by Melbourne, who, as a strong party man, desired to enlist the Sovereign as a partisan of the Whigs. Stockmar’s doctrine ever was that the Sovereign was chief, not of a faction, but of the whole nation; that her moderating influence should be brought to bear on successive party leaders,[Pg 112] who from time to time might be tempted to sacrifice national interests to party triumphs; that for “the perfect working of the English constitution, the Sovereign should not only set the example of a pure and dignified life, but should be potential in Cabinet and Council, through a breadth of view, unwarped by the bias, and undistracted by the passions, of party, and also, in the case of a long reign, through the weight of an accumulated knowledge and experience, to which not even the most practised statesmen could lay claim.”

It is needless to say that the eighteen-year-old Queen did not at once appreciate this lofty view of her position and functions. This was reserved for a later period, after she had learned from some of her own mistakes, and when she had associated with her as “permanent Minister,” Stockmar’s other pupil, the Prince to whom, in 1840, she gave her hand in marriage.

We know that Leopold had long ago settled who The Queen’s husband should be; but it is characteristic of Stockmar’s independence that he was at first by no means sure that his master had made the best choice. He had been so much away from Coburg that he did not know Prince Albert intimately. Leopold sent him as travelling companion to the young Prince on his journey to Italy in 1838, but Stockmar still had his doubts of Prince Albert’s strength and energy. He found in him a certain lethargy of mind, and disposition to spare himself both physically and mentally; a tendency to impulsiveness, without the continuous motive-force to carry through what he had conceived. He was startled to find in the future husband of the Queen of England an almost entire want of interest in politics; the Prince, in 1838, wished there was only one newspaper, The Augsburg Times; and he did[Pg 113] not even read that! Stockmar also found the Prince lacking in ease and grace of manner. He admitted the Prince’s many good qualities and great intelligence, but wrote, “All this, however, does not yet suffice. He must not only have great capacity, but true ambition and great strength of will.... I will watch him closely, and endeavor to become better acquainted with him. If I find that at all points there is sufficient stability in him, it becomes a matter of duty that the first step taken should be to explain to him all the difficulties of the undertaking.”

It is characteristic of Stockmar that even after he was convinced that he had at first underestimated the Prince, and that it would be impossible to make a better choice of a husband for the Queen, he did not allow politics did not exclude morals; the next step after a suitable education for the Prince was that he should win the affection of the Princess, so that the marriage should be founded on a stable basis of mutual love.

Nothing could be more erroneous than to suppose that Stockmar gained his great influence with the Queen and Prince by judicious flattery. Affection and admiration he had in abundance for both of them; the Prince especially he came to love as a son; but his rule of conduct with them and with all other Royal personages was to speak out fully and frankly what was in his mind, not at all to echo what he thought was in theirs. He did not in this nor in other things act so much by instinct as by settled rule. “If you are consulted by princes to whom you are attached,” he wrote to the Belgian Minister, M. Van de Weyer, “give your opinion truthfully, boldly, and without reserve. Should your opinion not be palatable, do not, to please or conciliate him, deviate for a moment from what you think the truth.” It was this absolute[Pg 114] sincerity which gave his advice its weight and value. His early letters to the Prince are characterized by sharp criticism, such as few young men in any position would take in good part; and it is very much to the credit of the Prince that he was able to do so; for instance, on leaving England in 1841, Stockmar wrote a long letter to the Prince, in the course of which he dwells on the tendency he had observed in him to be carried away “by impulses and predilections for men and things which spring from mistaken or perverted feeling. This tendency, which on a close self-scrutiny you will find to be the result either of weakness or vanity, should because of its very origin be most strenuously subdued. The same defect too often leads your Royal Highness, even in matters of moment, to rest satisfied with mere talk, where action is alone appropriate. It is, therefore, not merely unworthy of you, but extremely mischievous.”

Later, in 1847, although his affection for the Prince had grown greatly, and his confidence in his character still more, he calls him sharply to task for regarding the movement in German politics from a too exclusively dynastic standpoint, and also, with imperfect information, for expressing an opinion at all; he tells the Prince that he fails, from lack of knowledge and dynastic prejudice, rightly to grasp and appreciate the actual present condition and wants of the German people; that the current of opinion among thinking people in all classes in Germany was running strongly towards the conviction that the chief impediments to German national life were the dynastic sentiments, the pride and self-seeking of the numerous German princes; he declares that no men are so ignorant as the German princes of what was going on around them, and that their ignorance, arising from class prejudice, blinds them to their own true interests,[Pg 115] which really lay in the direction of the development of political liberty among their people. He implores the Prince not to come out with a ready-made plan for the regeneration of the Fatherland, which would only betray his ignorance of the vital facts of the situation, and show him to be out of harmony with the spirit and tendency of the age. Nothing could be more outspoken than the whole of the letter, which covers more than seven pages of the biography of the Prince Consort. It shows Stockmar at his best as political preceptor to the Prince, and the Prince at his best as pupil, accepting the lecture with frankness and humility, and without a trace of resentment.

It appeared from time to time that the Queen was extremely sensitive as to the precedence of the Prince, especially in relation to foreign Sovereigns, and that she desired to confer on her husband the title of King Consort. Stockmar was strongly opposed to this. On a report reaching him in Coburg in 1845, that the matter was about to be broached, he wrote to the Prince: “What can it be which has led to the reopening of that report?... Meanwhile on this head I write a word of warning and entreaty. Never abandon your firm, lofty, powerful, impregnable position in order to run after trifles. You have the substance; stick by it, for the good of your wife and children, and do not suffer yourself to be seduced even by the wishes of affection into bartering substance for show.” It was not till 1857 that effect was given to the wishes of the Queen, and the title of Prince Consort was conferred on her husband by Letters Patent. In the letter from the Prince conveying this news to Stockmar he remarks that for nearly nineteen years he has valued above all others his old friend’s judgment on matters concerning himself, and he had the satisfaction of learning that Stockmar’s objection to a change[Pg 116] in his title had been abandoned. Stockmar’s independence of Court forms and ceremonies was illustrated by his habit of slipping away after his numerous and prolonged visits to the Queen and her husband, without telling any one he was going or bidding farewell to his Royal hosts. They would come to his rooms to find him gone. The same disposition was also shown towards the close of his life by his entirely ceasing to reply to the Prince Consort’s constant letters. Stockmar, though not by any means very old, had many of the infirmities of age, and was disinclined to write; therefore he did not write, though the Prince frequently begs quite pathetically for “one little line.”

In the earlier years of the Queen’s married life Stockmar watched her development and that of her husband with eyes partly parental and partly pedagogic. He wrote to Bunsen in 1847:—

It was Stockmar’s habit, rarely departed from between 1840 to 1856, to spend the winter months of each year with the Queen and Prince, and the rest of the year with his own family in Coburg. His political activity and interests were vigilantly kept up from his own home, but he compares the outlook on politics[Pg 117] in Coburg and London with strong preference for the latter. London, he says, is a high watch-tower, from which he could command the whole of Europe, and Coburg, “a little hole in an old stove.”

He was equally at home in organizing a nursery establishment for the Queen and Prince, in directing the religious and general education of the Royal children, in planning and carrying out extensive reforms in the Royal household, in setting the private financial affairs of the Sovereign on a sound footing, and in far-reaching schemes of political development. He often combined the domestic with the political in a manner that was almost feminine. His chief political object in life was the unity of Germany under the leadership of Prussia, and secondary to this, the development of a good understanding between England and Prussia, and the spread of Constitutional monarchy all over the Continent. It was indirectly to serve all these ends that he strongly advised, on the birth of the Prince of Wales, that the King, Frederick William IV., of Prussia should be invited to England to be godfather to the young heir. The King of Hanover, we learn, was furious at this. But Stockmar hoped that the visit of the King of Prussia would promote friendly personal relations between the two Royal Houses; it is probable that he already had his eye on the little Princess Royal as the future bride of Prince Frederick William of Prussia; he also expected that the King of Prussia would be favorably impressed by the free political institutions of England, and become less averse to their establishment in his own country. Stockmar’s method of recommending Constitutional government to foreign princes was to use every suitable opportunity for having them invited to the English Court, so that the advantages of free institutions might insensibly commend themselves by[Pg 118] way of object lessons. Palmerston was also a great admirer of the free institutions of his country; but his way of recommending them to foreign governments was to write despatches from the Foreign Office in London to the English ambassadors in various capitals of Europe, with instructions that these documents were to be communicated to the respective governments to which the ambassadors were accredited, to say how vastly superior the English system of government was to that pursued by the benighted foreigner. To have the same end in view and to pursue it by diametrically opposite methods is an almost certain receipt for personal animosity; and it is not too much to say that Stockmar and Palmerston were actively hostile to each other all through the former’s participation in English political life. Yet Palmerston, along with other English statesmen, cordially acknowledged Stockmar’s absolute honesty and disinterestedness, and also his great political capacity. Palmerston spoke of Stockmar to Bunsen as the only perfectly disinterested character he had ever met with in the political world; and again on another occasion he said Stockmar had one of the best political heads he had ever met with. Stockmar did not return the compliment. He could not forgive Palmerston for pursuing good ends by wrong methods; he accused him of a narrow insularity, of being flippant and obstinate at the same time; one good quality he allowed him,—that he was not a Frenchman. The antagonism between these two opposing forces in the great world of politics had an important bearing on the personal history of the Queen and her husband, which will be the subject of a future chapter.

The courage of the Queen on the occasion of the attempt by Oxford upon her life was enhanced by the fact that it took place a few months before the birth of her first child. The Queen’s natural courage was perhaps fostered on this and other occasions by her having so much to do and to think of besides her own personal concerns. During the months when she was awaiting the birth of her first child, she was up to the eyes in politics. In 1840 there was a premonitory rumbling of the storm in the East, which has so frequently broken the rest of Europe. France was fractious, and imagined herself slighted by England, and in the summer and autumn of 1840 it looked several times as if the two countries were on the brink of war. The Queen, writing to her uncle, the King of the Belgians, said: “I think our child ought to have, besides its other names, those of Turco-Egypto, as we think of nothing else.” If it were true that home duties and political duties were incompatible, the Royal children would have had a sadly-neglected childhood; but it is a matter of experience that busy people are usually those who find time for everything, and the Queen and her husband were no exception to the rule. There is probably not a mother in England who has given more loving thought and care for her children’s welfare than Her Majesty has done. The children and her love for and pride in them are constantly mentioned in the Queen’s Journals. In the letters from Princess Alice to the Queen, published[Pg 120] as a memorial of the former, she repeatedly refers to her happy childhood and her desire to pass on a similar training to her own little flock. Under the date of January 1st, 1865, Princess Alice writes to her mother: “All the morning I was telling Louis” (her husband) “how it used to be at home, and how we all assembled outside your dressing-room door to scream in chorus ‘Prosit Neujahr,’ and to give to you and papa our drawings, writings, &c., the busy occupation of previous weeks.... Dear papa bit his lip so as not to laugh.”

The Princess Royal, now the Empress Frederick of Germany, was born at Buckingham Palace on November 21st, 1840. Prince Albert was then having a course of reading in English law with Mr. Selwyn; the tutor arrived on November 23d to continue his instructions. The Prince said: “I fear I cannot read any law to-day.... But you will like to see the little Princess.” He took the lawyer into the nursery, and, taking the little hand of the infant in his own, said, “The next time we read it must be on the rights and duties of a Princess Royal.” The Queen made an excellent recovery; then, as always, the Prince was her tender guardian and nurse. No one but himself ever lifted her from her bed to the sofa, and he always helped to wheel her on her bed or sofa to the next room. However occupied he was, “he ever came,” writes the Queen, “with a sweet smile on his face.” In short, his care of her was like that of a mother, nor could there be a kinder, wiser, or more judicious nurse.

At Christmas this year, Prince Albert naturalized the German custom of Christmas-trees in England; there is probably hardly a child in England who has not appreciated their introduction.

It may be imagined that Stockmar had plenty of[Pg 121] good advice to give the young parents. One of his wise saws was, “A man’s education begins with the first day of his life.” He undertook in the early years of the Queen’s marriage the organization of the nursery department. In one of his letters he says: “The nursery gives me more trouble than the government of a kingdom would do.” The Princess Royal was always the child nearest his heart. He had an immensely high opinion of her abilities. “I hold her,” he said, “to be exceptionally gifted, even to the point of genius.”

Curiously enough, Melbourne was also consulted (1842) by the Queen and Prince upon the organization of the nursery, and the choice of a lady to preside over it.

The Princess showed almost from the day of her birth a very remarkable degree of intelligence. Numerous anecdotes are given of her cleverness and droll sayings as a little girl. The refrain of most of the stories about the Royal children is the Princess Royal’s intelligence, and the merry, happy, affectionate disposition of the Prince of Wales. The little Princess was christened on the anniversary of her parents’ marriage, February 10, 1841, and received the names of Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa. Two days after this, the Prince had a narrow escape of a painful death, for, in skating on the lake in the gardens of Buckingham Palace, he broke through the ice into deep water. Fortunately the Queen, who was on the bank, did not lose her presence of mind, but did the right thing for affording the Prince the immediate assistance necessary.

The birth of the Prince of Wales followed very soon after that of the Princess Royal. On Lord Mayor’s Day, November 9, 1841, the Queen gave birth to her eldest son. Greville notes with some impatience that[Pg 122] the usual formalities were not observed upon this occasion. “From some crotchet of Prince Albert’s,” he writes, “they put off sending intelligence ... till so late that several of the dignitaries whose duty it was to assist at the birth, arrived after the event had occurred, particularly the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord President of the Council.” The Queen probably thought that this was one of the customs more honored in the breach than in the observance, and in this the majority of her subjects would agree with her. The Queen’s Diary records that on November 21, 1841, the Princess Royal’s first birthday, “Albert brought in dearest little Pussy (the Princess Royal) ... and placed her on my bed, seating himself next her, and she was very dear and good. And as my precious invaluable Albert sat there, and our little love between us, I felt quite moved with happiness and gratitude to God.” At Christmas time in this year the Queen’s entry is: “To think that we have two children now, and one who enjoys the sight” (of the Christmas-trees) “already, is like a dream.” And the Prince, writing to his father on the same occasion, says: “To-day I have two children of my own to give presents to, who, they know not why, are full of happy wonder at the German Christmas-tree and its radiant candles.”

It has been already noted how and why Stockmar urged the selection of the King of Prussia as one of the godfathers of the Prince of Wales, and that the King of Hanover was furious at being passed over. He did not easily forget it when he considered himself slighted, and when the Queen, very magnanimously, invited him to be godfather to Princess Alice in 1843, he vindicated his dignity by arriving too late for the christening. He further endeavored to balance the account between his niece and himself by being rude[Pg 123] to her husband. Greville says that one day at Buckingham Palace he proposed to Prince Albert to take a walk with him in the streets. It has already been mentioned why the Prince never went anywhere unattended, and the same reason rendered it undesirable that he should be unaccompanied except by the King of Hanover. He therefore excused himself, saying they would be inconvenienced by the crowd of people. The King replied, “Oh, never mind that. I was still more unpopular than you are now, and I used to walk about the streets with perfect impunity.” This little pleasantry was pointed by the fact that a feeling of antagonism against Prince Albert was growing up in certain sections of the community, which a few years later reached quite serious dimensions.

It may be mentioned here that the Queen has all through her life shown herself remarkably free from feeling implacable resentment even against those whose conduct she has at various times most strongly condemned, or against whom she may have been prejudiced. This characteristic, which will be illustrated later by her relations with Lord Palmerston, Lord Beaconsfield, Louis Philippe, and others, was demonstrated now by her magnanimity to her uncle Ernest, King of Hanover. He had plotted against her; had made things uncomfortable for her mother and herself before her accession; had refused, what she particularly valued, to yield precedence to her husband; had, in a dog-in-the-manger spirit, declined, after he became King of Hanover, to give up apartments in St. James’s Palace which were wanted for the Duchess of Kent; in short, had lost no opportunity of showing himself unfriendly and disagreeable; yet when her third child was born, Princess Alice, on April 25th, 1843, she invited this uncle, who was a personification of the wicked uncle of fairy tales, to be the new baby’s godfather.

[Pg 124]

In 1844, very soon after the birth of a fourth child, Prince Alfred, now Duke of Coburg, the Queen and Prince paid a visit to Scotland, taking the Princess Royal with them. After this the Royal visits to various parts of the kingdom were rendered doubly interesting to the Queen’s subjects by the presence of one or more of the blooming group of the rapidly growing family of children. The Prince wrote to his stepmother of this visit to Scotland: “Pussy’s cheeks are on the point of bursting, they have grown so red and plump; she is learning Gaelic, but makes wild work with the names of the mountains.”

The Dowager Lady Lyttelton was appointed governess to the Royal children. One of her letters to her own daughter, dated 1844, begins, “Dearest mine daughter, as the Prince of Wales would say.” On the third visit to Scotland, in 1847, the two elder children accompanied their parents. The Queen says, in “Leaves from a Journal in the Highlands,” “the children enjoy everything extremely, and bear the novelty and excitement wonderfully well.” On this occasion the Royal party visited the Duke and Duchess of Argyll at Inverary, and the Queen writes, describing their reception, “Outside stood the Marquis of Lome, just two years old, a dear, white, fat, fair little fellow with reddish hair, but very delicate features, like both his father and mother; he is such a merry, independent child.” This was the Queen’s first sight of her future son-in-law.

On Her Majesty’s first visit to Ireland,[19] in 1849, she took her four eldest children with her (many of us wish she had gone before and gone oftener). She received an intensely enthusiastic welcome. The[Pg 125] sight of the Royal squadron entering the magnificent harbor at Kingstown, and the loyalty of the reception of the Queen on landing, made a deep impression. The Times said:—

Almost every one has a sovereign remedy for Irish disaffection; but few are so easy of application as this. The Queen adopted the old lady’s suggestion; the child born next after the Irish visit, on the Duke of Wellington’s birthday, May 1st, 1850, was named Arthur after that great Irishman, and Patrick after Ireland’s patron saint; the Irish associations of his name were kept up by his taking the title of Duke of Connaught when he reached man’s estate.

Between the birth of her second and third sons, the Queen had had two more daughters, the Princesses Helena and Louise (now Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein and Marchioness of Lorne), born respectively on May 25th, 1846, and March 18th, 1848. The name selected for the elder of these two new daughters had a double significance. She was named Helena, not only after her godmother, the Duchess of Orleans, but also to remind English people of what they sometimes forget, that the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, through whom the Roman Empire was brought over to Christianity, was a British princess, daughter of Coel, King of Camalodaum (now Colchester). Prior to the birth of Princess Louise, the Queen had gone through a time of very[Pg 126] serious anxiety in regard to political affairs. The revolutionary movement of 1848 was at its height, and though England passed through it safely, yet no one could know at the time that it would do so, and especially that the Chartist movement would not develop in the direction of revolutionary violence. In the early months of this year the Queen had made ready all the rooms at Windsor to receive the fugitive Royal Family of France, who arrived one after another in so forlorn a condition that Her Majesty had to clothe as well as shelter them. The Prince’s step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Gotha, who had been almost a mother to him in his childhood, died just at this time. On every side there appeared trouble and misfortune in both public and private affairs. The Prince wrote on February 29th:—

It was in this depression that the courageous heart of the loving woman cheered and sustained that of her husband. As soon as she was able to write after the birth of the new baby, she wrote to her uncle Leopold:—

The letter in which the Prince announced to Stockmar the birth of Princess Louise contains an expression which invites criticism; he writes: “I have good news for you to-day. Victoria was safely delivered this morning, and though it be a daughter, still my joy[Pg 127] and gratitude are very great,” &c. The Prince is only responsible for the sentiment, not for the italics; but why should it be necessary to write in this way of the birth of a daughter even in the dark backward and abysm of time of 1848? Mr. George Meredith writes of one of his heroines that she had never gone through the various nursery exercises in dissimulation, and “had no appearance of praying forgiveness of men for the original sin of being a woman.” But here we have an even more perverted sentiment than that presented by a woman apologizing for being a woman; it is black ingratitude for one of the best gifts God gives to man when either father or mother begrudges a welcome to a new baby on account of its sex. The Queen, we gather, did not give little girls a grudging welcome to this world; on the birth of her first granddaughter, the Princess Charlotte of Prussia, in 1860, she wrote of the news that “Vicky had a daughter.” “What joy! Children jumping about—every one delighted.” The Prince, too, on this occasion wrote to the Princess Royal of her little daughter, as “a kindly gift from heaven,” and even says, “Little maidens are much prettier than boys. I advise her to model herself on her Aunt Beatrice.”

The birth of Prince Arthur, in 1850, has been already mentioned. He was a magnificent child, and the Queen took all a mother’s pride in his beauty and his rapid growth. When Lady Canning was in waiting she tells us of many private visits by the Queen to her in her room to talk about politics and to show the beauty of the latest new baby; and of Prince Arthur in particular she wrote on September 1st, 1850: “The children ... are grown very nice and pretty. Prince Arthur is a magnificent child, and the Queen is quite enchanted to find he is bigger than the keeper’s child at Balmoral of the same age, whose[Pg 128] measurements she carefully brought back. He has the Royal look I have heard grandmamma talk about, which I think she said was so remarkable in the Queen when a baby.”

The two youngest of the Queen’s nine children, Prince Leopold and Princess Beatrice, were born respectively on 7th April, 1853, and on 14th April, 1857. The Queen’s letter announcing Prince Leopold’s name to her uncle has already been quoted (see p. 24). She said it would recall the days of her childhood to hear “Prince Leopold” again; among his other names the little Prince was given that of Duncan, in “compliment to dear Scotland.” His delicate constitution was a source of anxiety from very early years. He was the only one of the flock of Royal children whose health was not good. It fell to the happy lot of the Princess Beatrice to be the special pet and plaything of her father during the last years of his life, and also, as we all know, to be the companion and solace of her mother in later years when all her other daughters had married and left her. There are numerous instances in the later volumes of the “Prince Consort’s Life” of his delight in his youngest daughter, “the most amusing baby we have had.” He constantly wrote about her droll ways and sayings to his married daughter in Berlin. Thus in July, 1859, he wrote: “The little aunt makes daily strides, and is really too comical. When she tumbles she calls out in bewilderment, ‘She don’t like it, she don’t like it!’ and she came into breakfast a short time ago (with her eyes full of tears) moaning, ‘Baby has been so naughty, poor baby so naughty,’ as one might complain of being ill, or having slept badly,” &c.

In the seventeen years from 1840 to 1857 the Queen had had nine children, all but one of good physical[Pg 129] constitution, all without exception of sound mind, and several very markedly above the average in intellectual vigor and capacity. She herself bore the strain of her confinements without any permanent deterioration of her natural vigor. The entry in the “Prince Consort’s Life” in reference to the Queen’s health after the birth of her children usually is, “The Queen made a rapid recovery, and was able within a few days to report her convalescence to her uncle at Brussels,” or, “The Queen’s recovery was unusually rapid.” Attention is drawn to these facts in order to controvert the view put forward by the late Mr. Withers Moore, Sir James Creighton Browne, and others, that intellectual activity on the part of women is to be discouraged because it is supposed to be incompatible with the satisfactory discharge of the functions of maternity. The Queen throughout the whole of her married life down to the present time, when she has considerably passed the proverbial three-score years and ten of the allotted span of man’s existence, has been immersed in political work, often involving decisions of first-rate importance; she has therefore preserved her vigor of mind and power of work unimpaired; and it is not unfair to conclude that old age has come upon her “frosty but kindly,” partly because she never was satisfied to regard her maternal duties on their physical side only. A cow, a dog, or a lioness has the physical functions and passions of maternity developed in all their beauty and perfection; but a human mother has to aim at being all that animals are to their young, and something more; if not, she is apt to get into the trough of the wave of mere animalism, and in this case her children will find, when they lose their babyhood, they lose their mother too. The Queen has always as a mother set the best example to her subjects in this[Pg 130] respect. Her motherhood has been no mere craze of baby worship. She has ever kept in view high aims for her children and grandchildren, encouraging them to accept nobly the responsibilities and duties of their position. In one of Princess Alice’s letters to her mother, written in 1870, she replies to a letter from the Queen upon the bringing up of the little family at Darmstadt; the letter is interesting as throwing a light upon the Queen’s own aims in the education of her children. The Princess writes:—

We are not, however, left to infer from the Princess’s letters what were the Queen’s views on the education of her children; the “Prince Consort’s Life” contains several memoranda written by Her Majesty herself on the subject. One of these, written in 1844, says: “The greatest maxim of all is—that the children should be brought up as simply and in as domestic a way as possible; that (not interfering with their lessons) they should be as much as possible with their parents, and learn to place their greatest confidence in them in all things.” The religious training of the children was given, as much as circumstances admitted, by the Queen herself; it was based on endeavoring to implant in the children a loving trust in God as their Father, avoiding all extreme views, and not entering upon the differences of creed. Her Majesty does not approve of the Athanasian Creed forming part of the Church service, and does not[Pg 131] suffer it to be read in her chapels. The Queen’s children were not taught to dwell on the supernatural features of the Christian religion, but rather upon the pure and comprehensive morality which it teaches as its essential and indestructible element; they were taught that the conditions of belief in the former may and did vary in various stages of human development, but that the latter was the bed-rock on which the whole structure was founded.

The Queen and Prince, like other parents, took the keenest and most intense delight in the evidence given from time to time that their children had gifts of mind which would have fitted them to excel in whatever position of life they had been placed. Frequent reference will be found in the following pages to their pride in the remarkable intellectual gifts of the Princess Royal, who was described while still a young girl as having “a statesmanlike mind.” Their boys were trained as carefully as if no royal road to distinction lay open to them. On returning from their first visit to their married daughter in Prussia in 1858, the Queen and Prince were met by the “delightful news that Affie” (Prince Alfred, aged 14) “had passed an excellent examination” (into the Navy) “and had received his appointment.” He met his father and mother at the private pier at Portsmouth “in his middle’s jacket, cap, and dirk, half blushing and looking very happy. He is a little pulled down from these three days’ hard examination, which only terminated to-day.... We felt very proud, as it is a particularly hard examination.”

[19] The Queen visited Ireland again in 1853 to open the International Exhibition in Dublin; and a third time in 1861, when the Prince of Wales was going through a course of military training at the Curragh.

It has already been remarked that the Queen throughout her reign has shown herself a thorough woman in being a good domestic economist. It was quite in accordance with this trait in her character that she and the Prince very early in their married life set themselves the almost Herculean task of the reform of the Royal Household. They found it in thorough disorganization, replete with confusion, discomfort, and extravagance. Various branches of the domestic service in the palaces were under the Heads of Government Departments; no one was responsible for the order and good administration of the whole. To give some idea of the prevailing confusion, Stockmar’s memorandum on the subject may be quoted where he points out that the Lord Chamberlain cleans the inside of the windows, and the Wood and Forests the outside. The degree of light admitted to the palace therefore depended on a good understanding between the two. Again, “The Lord Steward finds the fuel and lays the fire, the Lord Chamberlain lights it.... In the same manner the Lord Chamberlain provides all the lamps, and the Lord Steward must clean, trim, and light them.” If a pane of glass in the scullery had to be replaced, or a broken lock mended, a requisition had to be signed and counter-signed by no fewer than five different officials before the expenditure was finally sanctioned by the Woods and Forests, or the Lord Steward, as the case might[Pg 133] be. Some of the servants were under the Lord Chamberlain, some under the Master of the Horse, some under the Lord Steward; as neither the first nor second of these State officials had any permanent representative in the palace, more than two-thirds of the male and female servants were left without any master or mistress at all. They came and went as they pleased, and sometimes remained absent for hours, or were guilty of various irregularities, and there was no one whose duty it was to control them. There was no one official responsible for the cleanliness, order, and security of the palace; and if the dormitories where the footmen slept, ten and twelve in a room, were turned into scenes of riot and drunkenness, no one could help it. So little watch was kept over the various entrances to the palaces, that there was nothing to prevent people from walking in unobserved, and, as a matter of fact, shortly after the birth of the Princess Royal, a boy did walk into Buckingham Palace in this way, and was accidentally discovered at one o’clock in the morning under a sofa in the room adjoining the Queen’s bedroom. The stupidity, disorganization, and wastefulness of the whole thing were boundless; the only redeeming point was that there appeared to be no corruption. Her Majesty might find it impossible to get her dining-room warmed because of a coolness between the Lord Chamberlain’s and the Lord Steward’s departments; but she was not called upon to pay for fuel she had never received, or for services that had been discontinued since the death of Queen Anne. Some idea of the scale in which the housekeeping at Windsor is conducted may be gathered from the fact that in one year (1842), which does not appear to have been in any way exceptional, as many as 113,000 people dined there, so that there was a magnificent scope either for waste[Pg 134] or economy. The reform of the Household was carried out on lines suggested by Stockmar, but in a manner thoroughly congenial with English precedent. The three great State officers between whom the control of the Household was shared, were retained, but their duties were delegated to one official, the Master of the Household, who was always to be resident at Court, and who was made responsible for the good government of the Royal establishments. It is easy to mention in three lines that the thing was done, but its actual accomplishment was by no means easy. A good deal of opposition was encountered from the heads of both political parties, as well as from those more directly interested in the abuses of the old system, and the efforts of the Queen and her husband to introduce internal economy and order into their home were not crowned with success short of three years’ continuous effort, between 1841 and 1844.

The advantages of these reforms in household management could not but commend themselves to so good an economist as Sir Robert Peel. In 1844 the Queen had entertained at Windsor, on a scale of becoming magnificence, the Sovereigns of Russia and France; and Peel had the satisfaction of announcing in the House that the Royal visits had not added one farthing to the burdens on the taxpayer. In former times, during the visit, for instance, of the Allied Sovereigns in 1814, the country had to pay for the entertainment of the Royal guests; but this was now changed, and the Queen provided for her Royal and Imperial guests out of the Civil List.

The little glimpse that has been given of life in a palace, where the head of the house finds her housemaids under the Lord Steward, and her pages under the Master of the Horse, enables us to understand some of the satisfaction which the Queen enjoyed[Pg 135] when she became possessed of country homes, one in the Isle of Wight, and the other in Scotland, that were entirely her own. When the purchase of Osborne was just accomplished, the Queen wrote (March 25th, 1845) to her uncle at Brussels, “It sounds so pleasant to have a place of one’s own, quiet and retired, and free from all Woods and Forests and other charming departments, which really are the plague of one’s life.”

The purchase of the estate and the building of the house, costing something like £200,000, were met by the Queen without difficulty out of her income, so greatly had her resources been practically increased by good management and wise economy in the administration of the household. In the same spirit the estates of the Duchy of Cornwall, the property of the Prince of Wales, were carefully managed for his benefit, so that a very large property from them awaited him as soon as he attained his majority. The Prince Consort’s love for landscape gardening found ample scope both at Osborne and Balmoral. The work was for several years a constant source of recreation and delight to him. Of Osborne in particular, he felt that he could say that the gardens were his creation; there was hardly a tree in the grounds that had not been placed there by him. Lady Canning wrote from Osborne in 1846, in one of her private letters, “You will be pleased to hear of this rural retreat.... Whatever it is, it perfectly enchants the Queen and Prince, and you never saw anything so happy as they are with the five babies playing round about them.” The Royal children had at Osborne a place that was especially their own, a thing that all children love; thousands of country homes all over England have some Noah’s Ark or Pigs’ Paradise, where the boys and girls are masters of the situation, and may carpenter,[Pg 136] paint, cook, and cut their hands and burn their fingers without let or hindrance from nurses or governesses. The Royal children at Osborne had their Swiss Cottage. Here the boys had a forge and a carpenter’s bench, or learnt the art of war by making fortifications, and the girls had little gardens and kitchens and rooms for their special games and pastimes; there was also a Natural History museum which was a source of much interest and delight.

There is another feature of the gardens at Osborne which should be mentioned, an immense myrtle-tree which was struck from a sprig of myrtle from the wedding bouquet of the Princess Royal; every Royal bride in the Queen’s family carries a piece of this myrtle with her to the altar on her marriage-day. The Queen has twice sent sprays of this myrtle as far as St. Petersburg, once in 1874, for the bridal bouquet of her daughter-in-law, the Archduchess Marie, now Duchess of Coburg, and once in 1894, for the bouquet of her granddaughter, the Princess Alix of Hesse, now the wife of the Czar of Russia. On the former occasion the myrtle was intrusted to the care of Lady Augusta Stanley, and the Queen gave her special instructions how to revive it in tepid water.

Osborne was a harbor of refuge to which the Queen and Prince could run for a few days’ rest at any time when they felt their strength almost exhausted from the constant pressure of political work and responsibility; but they had an even more dearly loved holiday resort in their home in the Highlands at Balmoral. The Prince was always extremely sensitive to good air, and the smoky atmosphere of towns was peculiarly oppressive to him; he used to exclaim on reaching the pure country air, “Now I can breathe! Now I am happy!” The fine air of Dee-side was life and breath to him. In addition to the benefit to their health, the[Pg 137] Royal couple delighted in Scotland for other reasons, the chief of which was that they could enjoy there a degree of freedom to which they were strangers elsewhere. Highland loyalty is compatible with perfectly good manners, and the poor people round Balmoral did not demonstrate their affection for their Sovereign by staring at her as if she were a waxwork show, or dogging her carriage or her footsteps whenever she went beyond her own gates. The Highland servants combined perfect respect with independence of character. The Queen delighted in them, and found real friends in several of them. The Royal family could make little incognito expeditions in Scotland, and stay at small country inns as Lord and Lady Churchill and party, without any danger of being found out; or if they were found out, the people who made the discovery were too well bred to proclaim it, and showed their loyalty by respecting the wishes of their Sovereign to enjoy privacy. In the years before the Prince Consort’s death the Queen’s Ladies-in-Waiting, writing from Scotland, frequently speak of Her Majesty’s high spirits, her love of dancing, and her enjoyment of rapid driving.

Lady Canning wrote in the autumn of 1848 from Balmoral:—

Four years later, Lady Canning wrote again from Balmoral:—

[Pg 138]

Greville gives a description of the Royal Family at Balmoral, which deserves notice, especially as he had seen so much of Kings and Queens, and had no great affection for them; he was summoned to Balmoral for a Council meeting in 1849, before the present house, which is on a larger scale than the old one, was built; he writes:—

He then mentions an excursion in the afternoon in two pony carriages to the Highland gathering at Braemar, and that the evening wound up with a visit from a Highland dancing-master, who gave all the party, except himself and Lord John Russell, lessons in reels.

The Queen’s half-brother, Prince Charles of Leiningen, had been their companion on one of the very early visits of the Royal Family to Scotland. He died in 1856, and this loss was the first heart grief that the Queen had been called upon to endure. She was very tenderly attached to her half-brother and sister. The letters from the latter[21] in the “Prince[Pg 139] Consort’s Life” indicate that hers was a noble soul, one of those beautiful natures, strong in love and spiritual insight, who, whether born in the palace or the cottage, are as a sheet-anchor to those who are baffled by the waves of sorrow and suffering.

A rather curious incident in the Queen’s private life may here be mentioned. A perfect stranger to her, Mr. Neale, died in 1852, and left her a legacy of £200,000. Her Majesty, on hearing of this, at once declared that if he had any relatives she would not accept the money; but it appeared that he had none.

The various attacks that have been made on the Queen’s life belong more, perhaps, to her private than to her public life, for they have been the work of half-witted scoundrels rather than of political desperadoes. In Ireland, when a murder is neither political nor agrarian, it is sometimes described as “merely a friendly affair;” and there is an undoubted satisfaction in the fact that the shots fired at the Queen have had no political aim. The first attempt on her life has been already recorded. On the second occasion the Queen again displayed a very remarkable degree of courage, because she drove out alone with the Prince when she knew that very probably she would be the aim of an assassin’s bullet. It was in 1842, on Sunday, May 29, the Queen and Prince were returning from the Chapel Royal, St. James’s, in a carriage along the Mall, when the Prince distinctly saw a man step out from the crowd, present a pistol full at them, and pull the trigger. He was only two paces distant, and the Prince heard the trigger snap, so there was no mistake about it. Fortunately, the weapon missed fire, and at first the Prince thought that no one but himself had seen what had happened. However, the attempt had been seen by two persons in the crowd, a boy and an old gentleman; the old[Pg 140] gentleman did nothing, but the boy came the next day, and reported what he had seen at the Palace. The Home Office and the police were communicated with, and there was naturally a good deal of excitement on the part of the Queen and Prince. They at once determined not to shut themselves up, but to take their drive as usual, although they knew that the would-be assassin was at large. The only difference they made in her usual habits was that they went alone, without either a Lady-in-Waiting or a Maid of Honor in the carriage. They took the precaution of giving orders to drive faster than usual, and the Queen always drove fast, and two equerries on horseback accompanied the carriage. Nearly at the end of their drive, between the Green Park and the garden wall of Buckingham Palace, they were shot at again by the same man who had made the attempt the day before. When he fired he was only about five paces off. The shot, the Prince wrote, must have passed under the carriage. The fellow (John Francis) was immediately seized. He was not crazy, but just a thorough scamp, “a little swarthy, ill-looking rascal.” The same evening at dinner the Queen turned to one of her Maids of Honor, who had been rather put out at not being required to attend the Queen on her drive, and said, “I dare say, Georgy, you were surprised at not driving with me this afternoon, but the fact was that as we returned from church yesterday a man presented a pistol at the carriage window, which flashed in the pan, and we were so taken by surprise he had time to escape, so I knew what was hanging over me, and was determined to expose no life but my own.” The Queen’s uncle, Count Mensdorff, was very proud of his niece’s courage, and called her sehr müthig, which pleased her very much, coming, as the compliment did, from a soldier who had seen much service.[Pg 141] Greville’s comment on the Queen’s conduct is: “Very brave, but very imprudent.” A couple of months later, in July, 1842, another of these dastardly attempts was made on Her Majesty’s life, this time by a hunchback named Bean. Oxford had been treated as a lunatic, and sent to an asylum; Francis had been found guilty of high treason, and sentenced to death; but, at the Queen’s strongly expressed wish, the sentence had been commuted to transportation for life. This leniency had been made public only the day before Bean’s attempt, and the circumstance strengthened Her Majesty’s conviction that an alteration in the law was desirable. Up to this time it was only possible to deal with these outrages either as lunacy or as high treason, for which the penalty was death. After Bean’s attempt a Bill was immediately introduced, and carried, making such offences punishable, as misdemeanors, by transportation, imprisonment, or whipping. The substitution of an unromantic, but certain, punishment, for a dignified, but uncertain one, had the desired effect, and these scoundrelly attacks upon the Queen ceased to be fashionable in the criminal world. Feints at attempted assassination were made in 1849 by an Irish bricklayer, and in 1872 by a lad named O’Connor, who appears to have been a Fenian; but the weapons used by these worthies were not charged except with powder. In 1882 a man named Maclean fired at the Queen as she was entering her carriage at Windsor Station. He was found on trial to be insane. In June, 1850, she was struck on the face with a cane by a man named Pate, who had been a lieutenant in the army. The Prince Consort said this man was “manifestly deranged.” The chivalrous nature of Peel was strongly moved by the attacks of Francis and Bean, which took place while he was Prime Minister. After[Pg 142] Bean’s attempt he hurried up to town to see the Prince, and consult with him on what ought to be done. While he was in conversation with the Prince the Queen entered the room, and Peel’s emotion was so great that his habitual self-control left him, and he burst into tears. When it is remembered that only a few months earlier Greville had said, “Peel is so shy he makes the Queen shy,” it is impossible not to surmise that this touch of nature may have brought about the final breaking down of reserve and coldness between the Queen and her Prime Minister.

In various memoirs of the time, little pictures are given of “the Queen at Sea.” She is a good sailor, and thoroughly enjoys the element over which Britannia rules. She likes sailors, and understands them. Greville tells that nothing could be more easy and agreeable than her demeanor on board her Royal yacht, “conversing all the time with perfect ease and good humor, and on all subjects, taking great interest, and very curious about everything in the ship, dining on deck in the midst of the sailors, making them dance, talking to the boatswain, and, in short, doing everything that was popular and ingratiating.” He complains, however, that she was impatient, and always wanted to be going ahead, and to do everything quickly; whereas the genuine sailor has an unfathomable capacity for loafing. Lady Bloomfield, when Miss Georgina Liddell, attended the Queen as one of her Maids of Honor on a yachting cruise in 1843. She narrates how the Queen and her ladies settled themselves for reading and work in a very comfortable and sheltered place on deck, when they became aware that the position they had taken up was the subject of something like consternation to the captain and crew. The Queen laughingly inquired if there was about to be a mutiny? The captain in the same spirit replied[Pg 143] that he could be answerable for nothing unless Her Majesty would be graciously pleased to change her seat. The chairs of the ladies were blockading the grog cupboard! As soon as the Queen was informed of this, she consented to move her chair, on condition that she was to share the sailors’ grog. On tasting it she said, “I am afraid I can only make the same remark I did once before, that I think it would be very good if it were stronger!” The hint was taken, and the sailors were of course delighted by the Queen’s good-nature.

One more little home touch must conclude this chapter. Reference has already been made to the Queen’s reluctance to part from the Prince even for a few days. When it was necessary for him to leave her, he kept her constantly supplied with diary-letters, showing that his thoughts and heart were ever with her. On one of these absences, occasioned by the death of his father, the Duke of Coburg, in 1844, Prince Albert was away a fortnight. His own entry in his journal thus records his return: “Crossed on the 11th. I arrived at six o’clock in the evening at Windsor. Great joy.”

[20] The new house at Balmoral was not finished till 1855.

[21] The Princess Feodore of Hohenlohe.

The Queen’s first visit to a foreign country took place in September, 1843, when she and the Prince visited Louis Philippe and his family at Château d’Eu, near Tréport. It was not only the Queen’s first visit to France, but the first time since the Field of the Cloth of Gold that an English reigning sovereign had been in France; and even then the meeting of the two sovereigns had taken place on English territory near Calais. The Queen was enchanted with everything she saw. She had to the full all the keen and vivid interest which is almost invariably awakened by seeing for the first time all those innumerable little differences in every-day things which make a first foreign visit such a revelation. If she was delighted with France, she was no less so with her hosts, the King of the French and his family. She had been for six years Queen of England, and it was, perhaps, a refreshment to her to associate with those who were not her subjects, but her equals. She wrote in her journal, “I feel so gay and happy with these dear people.” Louis Philippe, on his part, was extremely anxious to make her visit agreeable to her. He highly appreciated the honor she was conferring on him. The representatives of the ancient monarchies of Europe did not view him with any cordiality. He was not king by divine right, but by the choice of the French people; the rightful King of France, in the view of the Emperors of Russia and Austria, was the exiled Comte de Chambord, Henry V. as they[Pg 145] called him. Hence Louis Philippe cordially welcomed the social prestige which he gained by receiving a visit from the Queen of England. The King expressed his obligations on this score to Prince Albert over and over again.

The Earl of Aberdeen, the Foreign Secretary of the day, accompanied the Queen and Prince to France. The English Foreign Office at this time regarded with apprehension a scheme which they believed Louis Philippe and his Minister, Guizot, had in view of strengthening French interests in Spain by marrying one of the King’s sons to the young Queen Isabella. Louis Philippe, on the occasion of the Queen’s visit, assured her most positively, and Guizot said the same thing to Aberdeen, that he had no wish or intention of the kind, that even if his son were asked in marriage for the Queen of Spain, he would not consent. The Queen of Spain and her sister the Infanta were then young girls of thirteen and twelve respectively. The French King’s assurances to our Queen went so far as a positive promise that even if one of his sons should eventually marry the Infanta, he should not consent to the union until after the Queen of Spain was married and had children. It is necessary to go at length into the wretched story. Louis Philippe and Guizot covered themselves with infamy. Through their influence a hateful marriage was forced on Queen Isabella, her consent to it being, it is said, wrung from her under the influence of intoxication; from this marriage it was hoped and believed that no children would be born. At the same time that this so-called marriage was announced, it was also made public that the Infanta would be married to the Duc de Montpensier, son of Louis Philippe. The two marriages took place on the same day, October 10th, 1846. Well might Stockmar write of this odious[Pg 146] transaction, as “a political intrigue which exceeds in immorality and vulgarity everything brought out in modern times on the theatre of politics; a part which would have shut out any one who had attempted to play it in the circle of private life from all respectable society.”

Our Queen was deeply incensed; her whole soul revolted from the wickedness of the scheme, and she had the added bitterness of feeling that Louis Philippe had been guilty of personal deception towards herself. It was he who introduced the subject when she visited him at Eu, and gave her assurances upon it, unsought by her, and lightly broken by him. His way of announcing the project to her did not mend matters. He was ashamed to broach the subject in a formal manner, and he got his wife to tell the Queen as a detail of family news in a private and friendly letter, speaking of it as if it were of no political importance, but simply an event that would add to the domestic happiness (“le seul vrai dans ce monde,” the poor Queen Marie Amélie was made to say) of the French Royal Family. Our Queen’s reply was exceeding dignified, severe, short, and self-restrained. It left no doubt as to her sentiments; and nothing is more indicative of Louis Philippe’s bad conscience in the matter than the fact, which he himself admits, that he sat up till four in the morning on three following nights composing a reply in which he endeavored in vain to justify himself.[22]

It is of course quite open to doubt whether the English Foreign Office had been justified in regarding[Pg 147] with apprehension the possible accession of a grandson of Louis Philippe to the troublous royalty of Spain. Cobden and the school he represented in England did not think it mattered a straw to England, from the political point of view, whom the Queen of Spain married. But the transaction could not be looked at as merely political. It was condemned throughout the length and breadth of England as grossly immoral, and the disgust it occasioned was all the greater on account of the pretensions to high motives and to religious principles assumed by the French King and his Minister.

Events soon confirmed the views of the Queen and Prince, so often inculcated by Stockmar, that sorrow will always be found dogging sin. The Spanish marriages took place in October, 1846: in fifteen months from that time Louis Philippe and the dynasty he hoped to found had been swept away; the little Spanish daughter-in-law whose son he had hoped might wear the crown of Spain was, with other members of his family, fugitive in England, indebted for shelter and even clothing to our Queen, who forgot all her resentment, and gave them a most kind welcome. Nothing came about as Louis Philippe had planned. The Queen of Spain had children; her grandson is now the baby King of Spain, and Louis Philippe’s great-grandson, exiled from France, is addressing futile[23] proclamations from English soil, to assure the French people that when they want him, which they show no sign of doing, he is ready to ascend the throne of his ancestors. It has been remarked that a strange fatality attended on many of the chief actors in the Spanish marriages. The French Minister at Madrid, M. Bresson, committed suicide in 1847. Louis Philippe and his dynasty were[Pg 148] overthrown in 1848. Queen Isabella was deposed in 1868. Her son, Alfonso XII., married his cousin Princess Mercedes Montpensier. She died, not without suspicions of poisoning, within a year of her marriage; and he died, while still quite a young man, before the birth of his only son by his second marriage. Before the accession of Alfonso XII., the question of a successor to Queen Isabella was the proximate cause of the French and German War of 1870-71.

Cobden, travelling in France very shortly before the outbreak of 1848, saw nothing which led him to expect any political disturbance; he believed the future to promise nothing but tranquillity and commercial development, and that Free Trade spelt “peace on earth.”

Stockmar was a Free Trader too, but he had learnt that that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. He did not look for spiritual results from purely material causes; and perhaps his vantage-ground on what he called the watch-tower of London, or even his position at the “hole in the stove” in Coburg, enabled him to gauge more correctly than Cobden the political forces of the time. He had foreseen the outbreak of revolution, as the result to be expected from despotism and bad government on the Continent, added to the misery and destitution of the great masses of the people. The storm of 1848 did not find him unprepared; and in England and Belgium, where the principles of constitutionalism, as understood and taught by him, had taken firm hold, were almost the only countries in Europe where revolution did not get the upper hand.

But although this was so, 1848 was a sufficiently serious time in England. In Ireland the misery of the people had amounted to actual famine, and notwithstanding[Pg 149] everything that lavish expenditure and devoted services, both by public servants and private individuals, could do, hundreds of thousands perished from starvation or its attendant pestilence. In the Union of Skibbereen nearly the whole population, 11,000 persons, perished. The shopkeepers of the little Kerry town of Kenmare told the writer of these pages in 1870 that during the worst months of the famine of 1847 they seldom took down their shutters in the morning without finding one or two corpses in the street, poor things who had been living in the mountains and had just had strength to crawl down into Kenmare to die. And what was famine in Ireland was the bitter pinch of scarcity in England and Scotland. In February, 1847, wheat was 102 shillings a quarter; added to this there was a general sense of alarm and absence of security, bringing with it want of capital, want of employment, want of wages. There was hardly a house, rich or poor, that was not suffering loss; but while to the rich the loss meant giving up luxuries which only custom had made seem necessaries, to the poor it meant actual want and privation;[24] when men are low and miserable, and feel they have nothing to lose, is the time when revolutionary propaganda works like wildfire among them. There was an avowedly revolutionary political party in Ireland, always ready to take advantage of any difficulty the Government might be in, foreign or domestic, in order to harass and thwart them. “Refuse us this” (repeal of the Union) O’Connell had said in 1840, when war with France hung in the[Pg 150] balance about the Eastern Question, “and then in the day of your weakness dare to go to war with the most insignificant of the powers of Europe.” In 1848, the mantle of O’Connell had fallen on John Mitchel, who, in his paper called The United Irishman, gave instructions for the successful carrying on of revolutionary street warfare; he recommended the covering of the streets with broken glass to lame the horses of the soldiery, and suggested that the citizens should provide themselves with missiles to throw from the houses; these, he said, could be used with great effect from the elevation of a top story, especially if forethought had been used to provide “boiling water or grease, or, better, cold vitriol if available. Molten lead is good, but too valuable; it should always be cast in bullets and allowed to cool.” This and a great deal of similar rubbish was poured forth day by day, or week by week, in the rebel papers. It would be harmless enough in an ordinary way; but amid the excitements of 1848, and addressed to such an excitable people, it might have proved a spark in a powder magazine. Mr. Mitchel proclaimed his intention of committing high treason, but he was arrested before he had had an opportunity of doing so. A deputation of Irish revolutionists was sent to the Provisional Government in Paris to demand “what they were sure to obtain, the assistance of 50,000 troops for Ireland.” The French Government absolutely declined the proposal, and said they were at peace with Great Britain, and wished to remain so. Mitchel was sentenced to transportation, and the heads of the deputation to Paris were found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death. Their sentences were, however, commuted to transportation, and then the fate which so often throws a ludicrous aspect over Irish revolutionary affairs overtook them; they denied the right of the[Pg 151] Crown to reduce the severity of their sentences, and demanded that they should either be set at liberty, or hanged, drawn, and quartered,—a request which it is needless to say was disregarded.

But Ireland was not the only source of anxiety; there was a threatening of riot and pillage in Scotland, and one very serious rising took place near Glasgow. It was suppressed through the personal and moral courage of the Sheriff of Lanarkshire, Sir Archibald Alison; but if it had been successful the whole of the manufacturing district of the West of Scotland would probably have taken fire. In England danger appeared to threaten from the Chartist movement. The Chartists gave notice that they intended to assemble at Kennington Common 500,000 strong, on the 10th April, 1848, and to march thence to the House of Commons, there to present their petition, which they said had received nearly 6,000,000 signatures. It is rather significant that Englishmen, even when they talk revolution, can, when it comes to action, think of nothing less constitutional than the presenting of a petition to Parliament. Sampson, the servant in Romeo and Juliet, is the typical English revolutionist. “Is the law on our side if I say—ay?” However, the Queen, the Ministry, and the whole country were alarmed. In London thousands of special constables voluntarily enrolled themselves, as a civil force, to help the military, if need were, to maintain order. The Duke of Wellington as Commander-in-Chief, directed special preparations for the defence of London; but with this usual good sense he took care that not a single extra soldier or piece of artillery was to be seen on the eventful day. The Admiralty, Horse Guards, and Treasury were strongly garrisoned and filled with arms; there were 800 men with cannon in Buckingham Palace, and steamers and[Pg 152] gunboats lay in readiness on the river. Country gentlemen garrisoned their London houses with their gamekeepers armed with double-barrelled guns. As everybody knows now, it all ended in smoke. The 10th of April, 1848, came and went; the Chartists met at Kennington, not 500,000, but about 25,000 strong; their petition contained not six million, but about two million signatures, a very large proportion of which were fictitious. About 8,000 men from the mass meeting walked in procession towards Westminster. On being met on the bridge by a police force, and informed they would not be allowed to cross in mass, they bowed to the inevitable, and sent their petition to Parliament in three four-wheeled cabs! In this humble and unromantic manner ended the English revolution of ‘48. The whole movement was overwhelmed with ridicule, from which it never recovered, and the ordinary law-abiding people felt ashamed that they had allowed themselves ever to believe in its seriousness.

Constitutional government was stronger than it knew itself to be. It was easy to be wise after the event; but before, many brave hearts had failed them for fear. The Queen was, of course, specially affected by events on the Continent, as the monarchs whose rule was being either overturned or threatened were in many instances her relations and friends. She wrote on the 6th March to Stockmar, “I am quite well, indeed particularly so, though God knows we have had since the 25th enough for a whole life,—anxiety, sorrow, excitement.” On the very day on which the Queen wrote, a mob had rushed to Buckingham Palace, breaking lamps and shouting, “Vive la République!” However, their leader, when arrested, began to cry! so that he could not be considered a dangerous revolutionist.

[Pg 153]

It was in the midst of all this excitement that Princess Louise was born, on March 18th, 1848. With all the fear caused by the anticipation of the Chartist movement on April 10th, it is not surprising that the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, strongly urged the removal of the Court to Osborne. It is not impossible that the three-weeks-old baby was even more persuasive than the Prime Minister. However this may be, the Queen left London for Osborne on April 8th, not without some criticism from Greville. Greville was nothing if not critical; he had blamed Sir Robert Peel for resigning in 1844, and thus causing a ministerial crisis when the Queen was near her confinement, and he now blamed Lord John Russell for advising the Queen to go to Osborne with her new-born infant, in anticipation of a Chartist riot in London on April 10, 1848.

There was an immense feeling of relief all over the country when the day passed off so quietly. The popular feeling in London was manifested by the cheers which greeted the Duke of Wellington when he turned out early the next morning to his post at the Horse Guards. The Prince wrote to his private secretary on April 11th, “What a glorious day was yesterday for England.... How mightily this will tell all over the world!” The utter inability of the revolutionary germ to thrive in the soil of constitutional liberty was the lesson of 1848. Repeated illustrations of the same fact have been given in more recent times. After the explosion in Greenwich Park in 1894, caused by the Frenchman Bourdin, the police seized an anarchist club near Tottenham Court Road, and caught a gang of eighty men representing the anarchist propaganda in London. Every man but one was a foreigner, and the solitary Englishman was a journalist who had come, not to revolutionize, but to get copy for his paper!

[Pg 154]

With characteristic conscientiousness the Queen and her husband did not rest content with the fact that the social peace of England was not endangered. They felt there never would have been even the anticipation of danger, unless there had been much in the condition of the poorer classes which called for redress. They had not been many days at Osborne before they sent for Lord Ashley (better known to this generation as Lord Shaftesbury), and asked his advice as to what could be done to render more happy the condition of the poor. This was a subject which, as is well known, was to Lord Ashley, not merely an occupation, but a passion. His whole life, from youth to old age, was given to it; almost his last words, at the age of 85, when he knew he was dying, were: “I cannot bear to leave the world, with all the misery in it.” The Prince could not, therefore, have sent for a better counsellor. They had a long conversation in the gardens at Osborne. The Prince asked for advice, and how he could best assist towards the common weal. “Now, sir,” replied Lord Ashley, “I have to ask your Royal Highness whether I am to speak out freely, or to observe Court form.” “For God’s sake,” said the Prince, “speak out freely.”

Lord Ashley then advised him to throw himself into movements to promote the social well-being of the masses of the people, and to show in public that he was doing so. On the Prince asking for more detail, Lord Ashley urged him to come and see for himself how the poorest people in London lived; to go into their houses, and he offered himself to conduct the Prince over houses in St. Giles, near Seven Dials. He also urged him to take the chair a month later at the meeting of the Laborers’ Friend Society, and (with the little bit of worldly wisdom that guileless people so often pride themselves on) to come in semi-state,[Pg 155] with several carriages, four horses, outriders and scarlet liveries. The Prince felt he ought not to consent to all this without asking Lord John Russell’s advice; but he gave a conditional consent. Lord John, however, was hostile, and offered strong opposition to the Prince acting on Lord Ashley’s advice. However, Lord Ashley stuck to his guns. He admitted that in any strictly political matter the Prince was bound to abide by the advice of the Prime Minister, but on a matter like this he advised the Prince to tell Lord John that “Your Royal Highness is as good a judge as he is.” Lord Ashley finally prevailed, and the Prince took the chair at the Laborers’ Friend meeting on May 18th, 1848. The outriders and the scarlet liveries were not omitted, and the Prince made a speech which Sir Theodore Martin says first fairly showed the country what he was, and gave a very important impulse to the manifold movements towards social improvement which have been so marked a feature of the present reign. Thus out of the “nettle, danger,” we were enabled “to pluck the flower, safety.”

[22] The poor excuse put forward by Louis Philippe was that the English Foreign Secretary, then Lord Palmerston, was manœuvring to bring about a marriage between a Coburg Prince and the Queen of Spain. There was no foundation for this charge; but Louis Philippe seems to have had a terror of Lord Palmerston which deprived him of all self-control, and capacity for judging of evidence.

[23] See Times, January 18th, 1895.

[24] Greville anticipated that the troubles of the time would affect him to the extent of the loss of half his income. He did not whine, but said, though he should not like it, he hoped and believed he could accommodate himself to the necessary change in his habits without repining outwardly or inwardly.

With none of her Ministers has the Queen ever been in sharper conflict than with Lord Palmerston. From his third Foreign Secretaryship in 1846 till his dismissal in 1852, the history of their relations was one long struggle.

Palmerston considered himself the political inheritor of Canning’s foreign policy, and that he was bound, as the representative of England to foreign Governments, to be the upholder of political liberty and the foe of tyranny and oppression all over Europe. In this he carried with him the whole-hearted sympathy of the mass of English public opinion. It was not with his opinions and views, but with his way of giving effect to them, that the Queen quarrelled. But the English people were not in a position at the time the conflict was going on to make the distinction. They knew that the Queen and Lord Palmerston were pulling different ways, and that Lord Palmerston was the friend of Hungary, and Poland, and Italy; and in proportion as they gave their sympathy to these countries and to Lord Palmerston, they were hostile to the Court. Now, as their personal loyalty to the Queen was very strong, they sought to find a reason for the Queen’s opposition to Lord Palmerston, and they found it, or thought they found it, in the person of the Prince. The Queen’s husband was supposed to be a power behind the throne thwarting the will of her constitutional advisers in the interests of foreign despots. The popular view was that the Prince ruled[Pg 157] the Queen, and that Stockmar ruled the Prince, and therefore that the policy of the court was not English, but German. That this was a complete misunderstanding, the publication of the “Prince Consort’s Life,” besides many other political memoirs and memoranda, has abundantly shown. But it was a very natural mistake, and from it arose, not altogether, it is to be feared, without the connivance of Lord Palmerston, a degree of hostility against the Prince which reached an extraordinary height during the early part of the Crimean War.

The question between the Queen and Lord Palmerston is no longer obscured by side issues; at no time was it based upon a divergence of political views. What the Queen, and the majority of Lord Palmerston’s colleagues in the Government, no less than the Queen, objected to, was his way of sending despatches, calculated seriously to embroil England with foreign Governments, either entirely without their knowledge and concurrence, going through the form of submitting despatches to them for their criticism and approval, and then actually sending off something entirely different. The despatches submitted by the Foreign Secretary to the Cabinet and to the Queen, and materially altered by them, would be sometimes recast by Palmerston in accordance with his original draft, and thus the Ministers and Sovereign were made to appear to have consented to that of which they had disapproved. At other times he would send important despatches to the Queen for her approval, allowing her quite an inadequate time to digest their contents, almost forcing the suspicion that he wished her to give her assent without knowing what they contained. When this practice was complained of by the Prime Minister, Palmerston excused himself by saying that the practice of sending off early copies of[Pg 158] despatches for the Queen’s perusal had been discontinued, owing to pressure of work in the office; “but if it shall require an additional clerk or two, you must be liberal,” he wrote to Lord John Russell, “and allow me that assistance.” This plea of economy came rather strangely from a Foreign Secretary who in 1841 had appointed five new paid attachés without the smallest necessity, and who in one year had spent £11,000 in coach-hire to convey messages to overtake the mails with his letters. The fact is that Lord Palmerston was the sworn foe of despotism everywhere, except in the Foreign Office, when he was Foreign Secretary. In the Foreign Office he reigned supreme and absolute, and would suffer no control either from his colleagues or his Sovereign. With all this, it was impossible not to like him. He had a jollity, a bonhomie, a complete absence of rancor against those who had wrestled with him and thrown him, an easy elasticity, a buoyant faith in himself and in England, which won the hearts of his countrymen. He made mistakes and went through humiliations that would have crushed or imbittered any other man, without losing a jot of his buoyancy and self-confidence. He pursued his own line of policy with incomparable nerve and tenacity. If he triumphed, he crowed; if he was defeated, no one would guess it from his demeanor; he would be cutting his jokes the next day as “game” as ever. No nature could have afforded a greater contrast to that of the Prince Consort; and while one from sheer force and vigor, and the other by position and character, were prominent among the leading politicians of their day, they were certain to be in sharp and almost perpetual conflict. He thought the Prince’s hope of German unity a mere dream, impossible of fulfilment, and an alliance between England and Germany, therefore, entirely useless to[Pg 159] ourselves. This brought them into political conflict just as their characters brought them into personal conflict. Two or three instances will suffice to illustrate what Palmerston was at the Foreign Office. In 1819, the Neapolitans being in insurrections against the infamous misgovernment under which they suffered, Lord Palmerston supplied them with war material out of the stores of the English Government without the knowledge or consent of his colleagues. Now it may be right or wrong to sympathize with insurgents; but for a Government of another country to supply them with arms is an act of war, of which no single Minister has the right to undertake the responsibility. On this occasion Palmerston was compelled to make a formal official apology to the King of Naples. A question asked in the House of Commons was the first intimation the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, had of what his colleague had done.

One of the special objects of Palmerston’s abhorrence was Austria; and it was a state of mind with which there was much sympathy in England. Neither in Italy nor in Hungary could the English people regard the Austrian Government otherwise than as a cruel and perfidious tyranny. This national feeling had burst out in England on the occasion of the visit to London in 1850 of the Austrian General Haynau. In Italy and Hungary the name of this man was associated with acts of barbarous cruelty in putting down the national movement. He was especially charged, and the charge was universally believed in England, with the responsibility of having ordered the flogging of women among the Hungarian insurgents. When in London he made a visit to Barclay’s brewery. The draymen and other employés got wind who their foreign visitor was; they gathered together in the[Pg 160] yard of the brewery, and rushed upon him with a torrent of abusive epithets; the general cry was, “Down with the Austrian butcher;” they dropped a truss of straw upon him, pelted him with small missiles, and tore his coat, and knocked his hat over his eyes. He and his friends fought their way out of the brewery, only to find an equally warm reception outside from the people in the streets; he was again pelted, struck, and dragged along the road by his mustache. He finally got shelter in the upper part of a public-house, and the police contrived his escape by the river. The general feeling in the country was “serve him right;” but the Queen was seriously annoyed, and dwelt, not without justice, on the cowardice of an attack by a whole mob upon a single unarmed man. At the desire of the Queen, Palmerston expressed in person to the Austrian chargé d’affaires the regret of the Government at the incident; but at the same time advised that no prosecution should be instituted by Haynau, as this would involve a minute recapitulation of the barbarities of which he was accused. Palmerston’s private opinion on the affair was expressed in a letter to Sir George Grey, the Home Secretary, in which he says: “The draymen were wrong in the particular course they adopted. Instead of striking him, ... they ought to have tossed him in a blanket, rolled him in the kennel, and then sent him home in a cab, paying his fare to the hotel.” It may be easily imagined that he did not cordially respond to an order to send a formal written apology to the Austrian Government, and there was a prolonged duel between Lord Palmerston on the one side, and the Prime Minister and the Queen on the other, upon the wording of it. As originally drafted by Palmerston, it contained a paragraph implying that it would have shown better taste on the part of General[Pg 161] Haynau to take his autumn holiday nearer home. This was corrected in the draft by the Prime Minister, and the correction was indorsed by Her Majesty; the amended despatch was then returned to the Foreign Secretary, who, in the mean time, had sent off to the Austrian Government the despatch as originally drawn by himself. Then began a regular pitched battle. Palmerston said he would rather resign than withdraw the despatch and substitute the one approved by the Queen and Prime Minister. Sir Theodore Martin says that Palmerston ultimately gave way. Greville says he never did. Mr. Evelyn Ashley says nothing. It is certain that the Haynau incident was for years considered enough to account for the hostility of Austria to England. It was for this that Austria alone of all the great Powers refrained from sending a representative to the Duke of Wellington’s funeral; and some people thought it was this that prevented her joining her forces to those of England and France in the Crimean War. But Palmerston was not long in giving Austria other items to add to her account against England.

When Kossuth was in England in 1851, he having been the leader of the unsuccessful Hungarian insurrection against Austria, he was received with tremendous enthusiasm all over England. The Austrians were furious, and their anger was intensified by the report that Lord Palmerston was going to receive him at the Foreign Office. Many politicians thought that this would be regarded by Austria as equivalent to a declaration of war. The Cabinet remonstrated, and Palmerston, to their relief and surprise, yielded. A day or two after this, Greville saw Lord John Russell and Palmerston at Windsor, “mighty merry and cordial, laughing and talking together. Those breezes leave nothing behind, particularly with Palmerston,[Pg 162] who never loses his temper, and treats everything with levity and gayety.” But Palmerston docile was more dangerous than Palmerston pugnacious. The next week he was receiving addresses at the Foreign Office from Finsbury and Islington, thanking him for the protection he had given to Kossuth, and for the sympathy he had shown to the Hungarian cause. In his reply he gave warm expression to his sympathy with Hungary, and spoke of the position of the British Government as that of the “judicious bottle-holder” during the conflict between Hungary and her foe. The phrase has been remembered after the occasion on which it was used has been forgotten. The people applied it to Palmerston himself, and liked him all the more for it. But the proceeding was strongly and formally censured in the Cabinet and by the Queen. Her Majesty’s anger was not appeased by those who told her that although the Emperor of Austria might be angry, the action of the Foreign Secretary was not unpopular with the English people. Her Majesty replied:—

Lord John communicated the Queen’s views to Lord Palmerston, and he was especially cautioned as to the future upon “the necessity of a guarded conduct.” Lord John writing to the Queen was sanguine enough to hope that this remonstrance would “have its effect upon Lord Palmerston.” The ink of his letter was hardly dry when like a clap of thunder came the news of the coup d’état in Paris; Louis Napoleon, then President of the Republic, had had his political opponents seized in the night and thrown into prison,[Pg 163] nearly 500 persons were shipped off to Cayenne without any form of trial, thousands were shot down in the streets, and the Prince President became first by military force and then by popular election Napoleon III. and Emperor of the French.

The Queen, true to her principles of non-intervention, at once wrote to the Prime Minister, instructing him to caution Lord Normanby, our ambassador in Paris, to observe strict neutrality, and to remain absolutely passive towards the new Government. Lord Palmerston accordingly sent a despatch to Lord Normanby in that sense. At the same time, however, that he was sending his despatch to Paris, he was seeing Count Walewski, the French ambassador in London, and expressing his entire approbation of the coup d’état and his conviction that the President could not have acted otherwise than he had done! On the 16th December he followed this up by a despatch to Lord Normanby, expressing his conviction that the action of Louis Napoleon was for the benefit of France and also of the rest of Europe. This despatch was sent off without the knowledge or approval of the Queen or the Prime Minister, and in contravention of their express wishes. This was the end. Lord Palmerston was dismissed, not at the instance of the Queen, but with her entire approval. Lord John Russell offered him, as a consolation, the Lord Lieutenantcy of Ireland and a British Peerage, both of which were curtly declined. The general opinion of the political world was that Palmerston’s career was over. Disraeli spoke of him in the past tense, as if he were dead. There was tremendous rejoicing over his fall in every stronghold of despotism in Europe, especially in Austria, where the heads of the Government took credit to themselves for his overthrow, and gave balls in honor of the event; a rhyme was current[Pg 164] in Austria at the time which expresses the feelings Palmerston had awakened:—

“Hat der Teufel einen Sohn,
So ist er sicher Palmerston.”[26]

In the debate in the House of Commons which followed these events, Lord John made a most successful speech, in which he showed the impossibility of working with a colleague who deliberately defied the express views of the whole Cabinet; he read the memorandum drawn up by the Queen for Lord Palmerston’s guidance on the occasion of a former dispute. In this paper Her Majesty had claimed her right to know distinctly what the proposals were to which she was asked to give her sanction, and, secondly, that, having once given her sanction to a despatch, it was not to be arbitrarily altered or modified by the Minister. She also claimed her right to be kept informed of what passed between the Foreign Secretary and the ambassadors before important decisions were taken, and to receive the despatches in good time, so that she could acquaint herself with their contents. Lord John Russell completely carried the House with him. It was felt that the demands of the Queen and the Cabinet had been strictly reasonable, and that it would be impossible to carry on the business of the country on any other basis. Lord Palmerston practically had no defence, and he abandoned any attempt to manufacture one. Of the Queen’s memorandum he said not a word. Greville says the effect of Lord John’s speech was prodigious, and that Palmerston’s reply was weak and ineffective. He had resigned the seals of the Foreign Office before Parliament met, and Lord Granville had been appointed his successor. He bore the whole position with admirable good temper. He[Pg 165] received Lord Granville with the greatest cordiality, spent three hours with him putting him in possession of the threads of his diplomacy, spoke of the Court without bitterness, and in strong terms of the Queen’s “sagacity,” and ended by offering to give any information or assistance that was in his power. He pursued the same line of conduct when in a few weeks Lord John Russell’s Government fell and was succeeded by Lord Derby’s; Lord Malmesbury becoming Foreign Secretary. Palmerston at once came to see him, and offered to coach him in Foreign Office policy. He gave the new Foreign Secretary a masterly sketch of the status quo in Europe, as well as general hints upon the principles by which English policy should be guided; the pith of these was, “Keep well with France.” By this means, though ousted from office, Palmerston remained practically the director of the policy of the Foreign Office.

All the contemporary records agree upon the main outward and visible facts; but they are provokingly silent upon Palmerston’s real motives. He was neither a hot-headed youth, acting on the impulse of the moment, neither was he “an old man in a hurry;” he was sixty-seven years old, about the prime of life for a statesman, and steeped to the lips in an absorbing interest in England’s foreign politics. His whole tradition had been to oppose despotism and support civil and political liberty against despots all over Europe. Why did he go out of his way to establish, so far as he could, a cordial understanding with a despot who was also an upstart, and whose Government was founded on violence, and carried on by crushing every vestige of liberty in France? Some have thought an answer could be found in his hostility to the Orleans family; but this does Palmerston less than justice. It is true he hated Louis Philippe, and[Pg 166] rejoiced in his fall, which he attributed to the King’s perfidy about the Spanish marriages. When the French King was fugitive in England, Palmerston had tried to prevent his receiving the shelter of Claremont, although the Government really had no business whatever to interfere, as Claremont had been settled for his life on Leopold, King of the Belgians, and if he chose to lend it to his father-in-law, no one else had any business in the matter. Louis Philippe died in 1850, and in 1851, although Palmerston said the Orleans Princes were plotting for a restoration, and if Louis Napoleon had not struck when he did, he would himself have been overthrown, the excuse was not a good one. Some contend that Palmerston was afraid of the red spectre in France, and thought Louis Napoleon the only man capable of laying it. But Palmerston was not afraid of the reds in any other European country. The real explanation of his conduct must be sought elsewhere. At the end of 1851, it required no superhuman power of prophecy, especially to one who surveyed Europe from the watch-tower of the London Foreign Office, to foresee that the time was approaching when England would have to face the alternative of either relinquishing her traditional policy of maintaining the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, or fight Russia in order to sustain it. Palmerston, it need hardly be said, was all for fighting; but the question was whether England would face Russia alone, or whether Russia would restore the Holy Alliance, and thus lead a combination of European powers against England; or whether, as a third possibility, England could succeed in isolating Russia and in obtaining an ally for herself. It is not extravagant to suppose that it was to make this third possibility a probability that Palmerston hastened to make friends with a man whom he could not[Pg 167] have trusted, and whose cruelty and despotism he must have loathed. It was impossible for England to look for any other ally. Russia, Austria, and Prussia were wild against England, regarding her as the great stronghold of constitutional principles, and believing that to her encouragement was due the revolutionary outbreak of 1848. The immunity of England herself from disorder did not open their eyes to see that it was their own misgovernment which had produced revolution. It only rendered them the more furious, as they believed that England had preached insurrection, while other Governments bore its penalties. It was touch-and-go in the first year of Napoleon III.’s reign whether he would try to put himself at the head of a European combination against us, or whether he would become our ally and fight one of the other Powers. He certainly believed that war was necessary in order to divert the attention of France from domestic politics, to conciliate the army, and thus on both sides to consolidate his own position. The almost universal feeling in England was that he was going to fight us. The common opinion was that the new Emperor’s first thought would be to avenge Waterloo. By 1853, however, Louis Napoleon had decided not to fight us, but to fight with us against Russia. This was due more to Palmerston than to any other Englishman.

Greville reports a conversation early in 1853 between himself and Comte de Flahault (afterwards French ambassador in London), who had just returned from Paris, where he had been in constant communication with the Emperor. Flahault said that the rancor and insolence against England on the part of Austria, Russia, and Prussia, were almost inconceivable; he added that Louis Napoleon had offered to him in the first year of his reign a position which it had been[Pg 168] the object of his uncle’s life to attain,—the leadership of a European league against us; that he decided to decline these flattering overtures, and to consolidate his alliance with England. Flahault went on to say that he had supported Louis Napoleon in this determination, and had represented to him that the Northern Powers had long withheld any recognition of his Imperial position; whereas England had at once recognized him, and that if she had not done so, probably the acknowledgment of the other Powers would have been still further delayed. Flahault represented to Greville that, greatly to his surprise, the Emperor had wholly concurred in this view.

It is needless to say that the importance of this conversation is not derived from its truth, but from its representing what Louis Napoleon wished to be believed in England in the spring of 1853. He was strongly desirous for his own purposes of the English alliance, and knew that it was the only one he could hope for at that time in Europe. So far from declining flattering proposals from the Czar, his vanity had just been bitterly wounded by the absolute refusal of the Russian monarch to greet him as “mon frère.”

There can be little doubt that Palmerston availed himself of the Emperor’s isolated position in Europe, and “captured” him as an ally of England. It was the wish to secure him more surely that made Palmerston endeavor in 1852-3 to promote a marriage between Louis Napoleon and the Queen’s niece, the Princess Adelaide of Hohenlohe. There was a definite proposal made to bring this about, the Emperor stating that his wish was to reserrer les liens entre les deux pays. The offer was declined by the Queen on behalf of her niece, on the ground of the latter’s youth and inexperience. In 1854, another matrimonial project between the two families was started with the[Pg 169] same object, between Princess Mary of Cambridge and Prince Jerome Napoleon. Malmesbury heard of it, and said he hoped it was not true, for the sake of the Princess; but it was strongly pressed by Palmerston on the Queen, and was only put an end to by the Princess’s absolute refusal to listen to it.

If Palmerston ever believed in the Emperor’s fidelity to the English alliance, he did not do so permanently.[27] All through the negotiations which finally led up to the Crimean War, Palmerston and his coadjutor at Constantinople, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, urged on his country, not only to war, but to immediate war. Palmerston knew his man. It was Louis Napoleon’s present purpose in 1853 and 1854 to fight on our side; England’s policy, in Lord Palmerston’s view, was to clinch the matter before he had turned against us.

When Palmerston was dismissed in 1851, his defence of himself in the House of Commons at the opening of the Session of 1852 was such a complete failure that people went about saying “Palmerston is smashed.” But the epithet was misapplied. The Government of which he had been the life and soul was smashed. In less than three weeks’ time from the debate on his dismissal, the Government was defeated, and the Russell Administration resigned. Palmerston wrote to his brother: “Dear William,—I have had my tit-for-tat with John Russell, and I turned him out on Friday last.” Lord Derby formed a Government which he invited Lord Palmerston to join. The offer was declined, but, as already pointed out, Palmerston continued practically to direct our foreign policy. The Conservative Government was of very short duration. Before the year was out, Mr.[Pg 170] Disraeli’s Budget was defeated, the Government resigned, and Lord Aberdeen became the head of a Coalition Government formed by a union of the Whigs with the Peelites. In this Government, Lord Palmerston was Home Secretary. Greville mentions that when the Queen went to Scotland in 1853, she desired that Lord Granville should be the Minister-in-Attendance, because she did not wish for the presence of the Home Secretary at Balmoral. But this feeling was not of long duration. Lord Clarendon, the new Foreign Secretary, labored diligently to change it. He told the Queen everything he could likely to make her regard Palmerston in a more favorable light, and showed her notes and memoranda by him calculated to please her. Lord Aberdeen also used his influence in the same direction. The Queen is never implacable, and always ready to recognize good service, and before the autumn was out Palmerston took his turn as Minister-in-Attendance on the Queen at Balmoral. An anecdote is told, illustrative of his continued absorption in foreign politics, although he was now Home Secretary. The Queen was much interested in some strikes and labor troubles that were taking place in the North of England, and asked Palmerston for details about them which, as Home Secretary, he might be expected to know. However, she found him absolutely without information. “One morning, after previous inquiries, she said to him, ‘Pray, Lord Palmerston, have you any news?’ To which he replied, ‘No, Madam, I have heard nothing; but it seems certain that the Turks have crossed the Danube!’” Palmerston was at the Home Office during the outbreak of cholera in 1854. His measures against it were said to have been conceived in the spirit of treating Heaven as if it were a Foreign Power.

Palmerston really directed the foreign policy of[Pg 171] England from the Home Office during the year which led up to the Crimean War. When the Government refused to take his view, he resigned, ostensibly because he did not like Lord John Russell’s Reform Bill; really because when the Turks refused to accept the Vienna note, the majority of the Cabinet wished to leave them to their fall. Palmerston took an exactly opposite line, and urged the entry of the allied French and English fleets into the Black Sea, which really amounted to an act of war. As soon as he got his own way he rejoined the Government. As some excuse was necessary to the outer world, he had said he was not prepared to sit out debates on the Reform Bill in the House of Commons at “his time of life.” Clarendon said that no one had ever before heard him acknowledge that he had a time of life.

The Queen went heartily with Palmerston in his war policy. She was convinced of the justice of the Russian War, and that it could not have been avoided. Her intense interest in its progress will be described in the coming chapter. It is sufficient here to say that her former feeling of hostility to Palmerston was very much softened by seeing the whole-hearted devotion with which he threw himself into the success of the British arms. As is well known, the events of the war made Palmerston Prime Minister. She gave him her entire confidence in that capacity. On the signing of the Treaty of Peace in April, 1856, she bestowed upon him the Order of the Garter, as a special and public token of her appreciation of his zealous and able services to his country.

There was no love lost between Palmerston and Lord John Russell. In 1857-58, there was great uneasiness in the ranks of the Whigs, lest these two should never be able to overcome their mutual hostility. Lady William Russell said of them at this time,[Pg 172] “They have shaken hands and embraced, and hate each other more than ever.” However, by degrees the stronger nature dominated the weaker, and from 1859 till 1865, when Palmerston died, Lord John may be said to have danced to Palmerston’s piping.

[25] Letter from the Queen to Lord John Russell, Nov. 21st, 1851.

[26]

If the Devil has a son,
Sure his name is Palmerston.

[27] See letter from Lord Palmerston to Lord Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 127, Ashley’s “Life of Palmerston.”

The year 1851 was memorable to the Queen, for it brought the opening of the Great Exhibition, the crown of success to prolonged efforts made by the Prince against all kinds of opposition and misrepresentation. When first the project was mooted, hardly any one had a good word to say for it. Members of Parliament in the House of Commons prayed that hail and lightning might be sent from heaven to destroy it; it was bound to be a financial failure; it would ruin Hyde Park; it would bring into London every desperado and bad character in Europe. Its actual success was beyond all anticipation, and was only heightened by the croaking which had preceded it. The Queen’s delight knew no bounds, for she felt not only that the whole thing was a magnificent success, but that it was owing to the Prince that it was so, and therefore was of the nature of a personal triumph for him. The Queen wrote about the opening ceremony as “the great and glorious first of May, the proudest and happiest day ... of my happy life.” In her journal she wrote:—

The only event with which she felt she could compare it was the coronation; “but this day’s festival was a thousand times superior.” The effect produced on her as the view of the interior burst upon her, she speaks of as—

[Pg 174]

It is interesting to compare this account by Her Majesty of her own emotion at the opening of the exhibition with an account of how she impressed a spectator. Dr. Stanley (afterwards Dean Stanley) wrote in a private letter:—

There were said to have been 34,000 people in the building on the opening day, and nearly a million on the line of route. The Queen, with her husband and eldest son and daughter, drove through this huge multitude with no other guard than one of honor and some policemen who were there, not so much to keep order as to aid the crowd to keep it for themselves. The Home Secretary reported to the Queen the next day that there had not been a single accident, nor had there been a single case of misconduct of any kind calling for the interference of the police. It was a magnificent object lesson on the advantages of order springing out of liberty. Foreigners present were deeply impressed by the good behavior of the crowd, and also by its loyalty. Jacob Ominum described a dispute he overheard between a German and a Frenchman as to whether in England loyalty was a principle or a passion. His own comment was that it was both,—a principle even when the Crown behaves badly; “but let it treat the people well, and this quiet principle[Pg 175] becomes a headlong passion, swelling into such enthusiasm as the Frenchman saw when he jotted down in his notebook, ‘In England loyalty is a passion.’”

The Duke of Wellington shared with the Royal Family the honors of the day. He was accompanied, according to Lord Palmerston, by a running fire of applause from the men, and of waving of handkerchiefs and kissing of hands from the women. It used to be said that people went to the exhibition as much to see the Duke of Wellington,[28] who was a frequent visitor, as for any other purpose. The total number of visitors to the exhibition during the time it remained open was more than 6,000,000. An old Cornish woman, Mary Keslynack, not wishing to trust herself on a railway, walked to London to see the exhibition and the Queen. Her Majesty notes in her diary the fact that the old lady’s wish was gratified. She “was at the door to see me,—a most hale old woman, who was near crying at my looking at her.”

But this “Peace Festival” could not avert the war-cloud that was hanging over England. It is no part of the scheme of this little volume to discuss the policy of the Crimean War, but only to relate the Queen’s part in it, and her intense interest in it. Even this can only be very briefly and inadequately sketched. Some idea of the labor devolving upon a conscientious Sovereign in times of national crisis[Pg 176] may be gathered from the fact that the papers at Windsor relating to the Eastern Question and the Crimean War, covering the period between 1853 and 1857, amount to no fewer than fifty folio volumes.

The Queen, it will be remembered, had entertained the Emperor Nicholas at Windsor in 1844, and a very favorable personal impression had been made on both sides. Nicholas had then had a conversation with Peel and Aberdeen on the condition of the “Sick Man,” as the Czar called Turkey, and the prospective disposition of his effects. The Czar and the English Ministers signed a memorandum favorable to the claims of Russia to protect Christians in Turkish dominions. Nicholas left England with the impression that he had considerably reduced the antagonism between England and Russia on the Turkish question. Aberdeen was now Prime Minister, and the Czar believed the moment to be favorable for translating into action the scheme which he had laid before the English Ministers in 1844. Moreover he was doubtless under the impression that England’s fighting days were over, and that, therefore, whether England liked the aggression of Russia in the East or not, she would never resist it by force of arms. During the negotiations which preceded the war, the Czar took the unusual course of addressing an autograph letter to the Queen, expressing surprise that any difference should have arisen between himself and the English Government, and calling upon the Queen’s “wisdom” and “good faith” to arbitrate between them. The Queen immediately sent the Czar’s letter to Lord Aberdeen, as well as a draft of her reply for his approval. Count Nesselrode was very desirous of learning from our ambassador in St. Petersburg if he knew the tenor of the Queen’s reply. He answered in the negative, but added, “These correspondences[Pg 177] between Sovereigns are not regular according to our constitutional notions; but all I can say is, that if Her Majesty were called upon to write upon the Eastern affair, she would not require her Ministers’ assistance. The Queen understands these questions as well as they do.”

The Cabinet were by no means united in their policy. Aberdeen believed in Nicholas, and was for peace; Palmerston believed in the Turks, and was for war.[29] Clarendon was the mediator between the two. At first the Queen and her husband were decidedly sympathetic with Aberdeen’s policy. They fully acknowledged that the “ignorant, barbarian, and despotic yoke of the Mussulman” had been a curse to Europe, and agreed with Lord Aberdeen that the Turkish system was “radically vicious and inhuman.” Against this view Palmerston exerted all his strength. Little by little the war fever, fanned by him and favored by events, grew fiercer and fiercer. It spared neither the palace nor the cottage, and presently there was hardly a voice raised in England for peace except those of Bright and Cobden; and their influence was weakened by the belief that they would be against all war under all circumstances. There was a very general impression in the country that if Palmerston had been at the Foreign Office no war would have been necessary. Certainly experience forces the conviction that the peace-at-any-price party, when in power, is almost certain to land the country in war; but in this particular instance it appears probable that Palmerston, having secured the French alliance, thought the moment for fighting favorable, and therefore forced on the war; and that he would have done so[Pg 178] equally from the Foreign Office as from the Home Office. His whole attention and interest were centred on foreign affairs, and there was an excellent understanding between him and Lord Clarendon, who was Foreign Secretary.

It is needless to say that the Queen was thoroughly convinced before war was declared that it could not have been avoided, that our cause was just, and that the claim of Russia to protect the Christian subjects of Turkey was a hypocritical cloak to her aggression and ambition, and that her real object was to seize Constantinople and the command of the entrance between the Black Sea and Mediterranean, with an eye ultimately to India and the possessions of England in Asia.

The Queen and Prince were exceedingly indignant with the King of Prussia for withholding his support and sympathy from England. He was a man of weak and excitable disposition, and very much influenced by his brother-in-law, the Czar. The King’s brother, however, then known as the Prince of Prussia (afterwards the Emperor William), and his son, Prince Frederic William (afterwards the husband of the Princess Royal), strongly sympathized with England; and this circumstance naturally strengthened the warm friendship already existing between them and the English Royal Family. How distant at this time must have seemed the realization of Prince Albert’s and Stockmar’s dream of a united Germany, and of a political alliance between England and Germany. The Prince, however, never lost sight of his goal. He wrote to his stepmother at Coburg, who was strongly Russian in her sympathies, “If there were a Germany and a German Sovereign in Berlin, this [the war] could never have happened.”

When once war was declared (March, 1854), the Queen threw her whole heart and soul into the cause.[Pg 179] She wished she had sons old enough to go, two with the army, two with the navy. Lord Aberdeen had sanctioned the setting apart of a Day of Humiliation and Prayer for the success of our arms by sea and land. The Queen very strongly and quite properly deprecated the use of the expression a Day of Humiliation. She condemned this as savoring of hypocrisy. She believed her policy to have been directed by unselfishness and honesty, and therefore felt the only appropriate prayer would be one expressive of our deep thankfulness for all the benefits we had enjoyed, and entreating the protection of the Almighty for our forces on sea and land. She equally objected to imprecations against our enemies, and suggested the use of a form already in the Prayer Book, “To be used before a Fight at Sea.”

As the war went on, the Queen and the elder Princesses stimulated the activity of other women throughout England in helping to supply comforts for the wounded, and various articles of warm clothing to be distributed among the troops. The Queen also took a keen maternal interest in the establishment of a fund, afterwards called the Patriotic Fund, to provide for the orphans of those who were killed in the war. She neglected no opportunity of showing her interest in her troops, giving them in person a hearty “Godspeed” on their departure, and a cordial welcome on their return, and decorating with her own hands the surviving heroes of the various engagements. Our soldiers fought with all the old British valor and tenacity, and were successful in every great engagement; but there was a most frightful breakdown in the commissariat and stores departments of the army, and in organization generally. No Wellington or Marlborough was discovered among our generals, and no Nelson or Duncan among our admirals.[Pg 180] The only notable personalities revealed to the nation by the Crimean War were those of Florence Nightingale and Dr. W. H. Russell, and the only new piece of military knowledge, the use of women and special correspondents in war time. Miss Nightingale and a band of other ladies, all trained nurses, were sent out at the instance of Mr. Sidney Herbert to Constantinople, and at once proceeded to take charge of the great hospital at Scutari; they arrived just in time to receive the wounded from the battle of Balaklava. Before their arrival all had been chaos and hugger-mugger, which Miss Nightingale’s “voice of velvet and will of steel” soon changed to order, and as much comfort and solace as were possible in such a place. Her gentle tenderness and compassion aroused a passion of chivalrous worship in the roughest soldiers. One of them said afterwards to Mr. Sidney Herbert, “She would speak to one and another, and nod and smile to many more, but she could not do it to all, you know,—we lay there in hundreds,—but we could kiss her shadow as it fell, and lay our heads on the pillow again, content.”

The regular red-tapists of the War Office of course opposed the sending out of Miss Nightingale and the other ladies; there is no record in the Prince Consort’s Life whether he and the Queen favored her mission at the outset or not. But it is certain that they, with the rest of the nation, very speedily recognized the value of the work she was doing. Her letters from the seat of war were among their sources of information, and were eagerly scanned by the Queen and her husband. After the war was over, in the autumn of 1856, she visited the Queen at Balmoral. The entry in the Prince’s diary is: “She put before us all the defects of our present military hospital system. We are much pleased with her; she is extremely modest.”[Pg 181] Is it captious to wonder what they had expected her to be, and if they were surprised to find that she was not a Madame Sans-Gêne?

The letters of Dr. W. H. Russell in The Times first revealed to the nation the frightful breakdown in our military organization. The special correspondent became, from the date of the Crimean War, a force to be reckoned with. Instead of the cut-and-dried official despatches, concealing often more than revealing the truth, and intended to lay before the public only just so much of the facts as the military authorities thought it good for them to know, the special correspondent publishes for all the world to read, a vivid daily narrative of facts in which blunders and incompetence, when they exist, are given quite as much prominence as good generalship and victory. If England was disappointed at the evidence given of her want of efficient military organization, Russia had much more cause to be so. Russia had put her whole strength into her armaments; she was nothing if not a great military power; but she was everywhere unsuccessful. One of the most dramatic incidents during the war was the death of the Czar, on March 2, 1855. It was said that his disease was influenza, followed by congestion of the lungs; but some people thought he might have been said to have died of a broken heart. Punch’s cartoon, “General Février turned traitor,” showing Death, in a general’s uniform, laying his icy hand on his victim, will long be remembered.

The war fever which had fired the whole of England at the beginning of the campaign perhaps led people to expect more than was possible from the army. There was a bitter cry of anger and disappointment that our military successes in the field were not quickly followed up and taken advantage of by our generals,[Pg 182] and especially that the sufferings of our soldiers were needlessly aggravated by the waste, incompetence, and utter muddle reigning over the distribution of the food and stores. Lord Aberdeen, the Prime Minister, was blamed; he had been dragged into the war, and never really cordially approved it, it was said. Mr. Gladstone was blamed; he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and thought it his duty to provide the war budget out of income; “penny wise and pound foolish” was the comment on this. War is one of the things that cannot be done cheap. These and other Ministers who were attacked could defend themselves in Parliament; but the phials of public wrath were more especially directed against the Prince, who for months bore every kind of imputation and false accusation poured out against him in the press, without having any opportunity of self-defence. Even before the outbreak of the war, it had been said that he was completely anti-English in his sympathies; that we, therefore, had a traitor in our midst, able and willing to use his position on the steps of the Throne to weaken and humiliate England. So diligently were these false reports circulated in the press and by word of mouth that they were the common topic of conversation all over England. At one time a report was current, and was actually believed, that the Prince had been impeached for high treason and sent to the Tower. Thousands of people assembled outside to see his entrance. If this had been the condition of the public mind before the war began, it is not difficult to imagine that the disease of suspicion and distrust broke out again after the beginning of hostilities, when there was so much to criticise in the organization of the War Department at home. The public wanted a victim, some one to wreak their anger upon, and the Prince served them for this purpose. Even[Pg 183] so well informed a politician, and so able a man as Mr. Roebuck, believed, and openly said to the Duke of Newcastle, the War Minister, that of course every one knew that there was a determination “in a high quarter” that the Crimean expedition should not succeed. The Duke thought that the expression, “a high quarter,” was directed against himself, and said so. “Oh, no,” answered Mr. Roebuck, “I mean a much higher personage than you; I mean Prince Albert.”

The Duke immediately endeavored to remove this entirely false impression, and asked Mr. Roebuck if he were not aware that the Queen had been ill with anxiety about her troops. The reply was that no one doubted the Queen’s devotion to her country; that when Lord Cardigan was at Windsor, one of the Royal children had said to him, “You must hurry back to Sebastopol and take it, else it will kill mamma.” Yet almost in the same breath Mr. Roebuck maintained that the Prince was working behind the Queen’s back against the efficient organization of the army, in order to prevent the success of her troops.

An expression made use of by the Prince in a public speech, towards the close of the Crimean War, June, 1855, has become historical. He contrasted the autocratic power of the Czar of Russia, characterized by unity of purpose and action, and when desirable by secrecy, with the Parliamentary Government of the Queen, where every movement of the army or navy, and every stage of every diplomatic negotiation are publicly proclaimed, and have to be explained and defended in Parliament; and he concluded by saying that “Constitutional Government was on its trial,” and could only come through it triumphantly if the country granted a patriotic and indulgent confidence to the Ministry. This was twisted by the Prince’s enemies into an attack on the principles of constitutionalism;[Pg 184] but it really was an appeal to the good sense and patriotism of the nation, on which, at bottom, Parliamentary Government must rest.

The Tory and the Radical Press must share the blame of the disgraceful attacks made upon the Prince. The Queen was bitterly wounded by them. Greville, no courtier, as many former extracts prove, said he never remembered anything more atrocious and unjust than these savage libels. That they had been fostered by the hostility between Palmerston and the Prince there can be no doubt. One of the lies in circulation was that there was a pamphlet giving authentic proofs of the Prince’s treachery to England, that the Prince had bought up all the copies but six, which were in Palmerston’s possession; whereupon the Prince had made his peace with Palmerston, in order to secure the continued suppression of the pamphlet. This called forth an authoritative denial in the columns of The Morning Post from Lord Palmerston. It is probable that one motive of the Queen in bestowing the title of Prince Consort upon her husband in 1857, was to give a practical reply to these slanders. It would have been well if this had been preceded by an action for libel against the most conspicuous of the Prince’s traducers; this would have given a chance of the real author of the libels being run to earth.

The alliance with France during the Crimean War led to the exchange of visits between the two Courts. The Queen and her husband were quite captivated by the loveliness and charm of the Empress Eugénie, and at first thought far better of the Emperor than he deserved. He laid himself out with considerable adroitness to please the Queen, and succeeded. The Emperor and Empress visited the Queen at Windsor in April, 1855. During their visit to England a grand fête was given in their honor at the Crystal Palace.[Pg 185] The Emperor lived in perpetual dread of assassination, and on this occasion he appears to have communicated some of his nervous apprehension to the Queen, who wrote in her diary:—

Her Majesty’s courage and its source are well exemplified in this passage.

The return visit of the Queen to Paris took place in the autumn of the same year. She was accompanied by her husband and the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal. Some characteristic incidents connected with the Queen’s visit to Paris ought to be mentioned, especially that, although overflowing with friendliness and good feeling to the Emperor, she thought it her duty to explain to him that nothing could shake her kindly relations with the Orleans family. She told him that she had been intimate with them when they were in power, and she could not drop them when they were in adversity. Possibly Louis Napoleon remembered this conversation in 1870, when he himself was an exile in England, and experienced the benefit of the Queen’s faithfulness to her friends when they were in trouble. In this same conversation he opened the subject of his confiscation of the property of the Orleans family, and the Queen gave frank expression to her own views on the subject. The Queen remarks in her diary:—

After these visits letters were frequently interchanged[Pg 186] between the two Sovereigns. In one of his, Louis Napoleon appears to have plumed himself on the advantages of an absolute monarchy, especially in conducting negotiations with other States, uncontrolled power of decision vested in the Sovereign alone, and so on. To which the Queen rejoined, “There is, however, another side to this picture, in which I consider I have an advantage which your Majesty has not. Your policy runs the risk of remaining unsupported by the nation,” and you may be exposed “to the dangerous alternative of either having to impose it upon them against their will, or of having suddenly to alter your course abroad, or even, perhaps, to encounter grave resistance. I, on the other hand, can allow my policy free scope to work out its own consequences, certain of the steady and consistent support of my people, who, having had a share in determining my policy, feel themselves to be identified with it.” Here, too, there was food for reflection on the Emperor’s part in after years.

The Royal children greatly enjoyed their visit to Paris, and it is said that when the time came for their departure the Prince of Wales begged the Empress to get permission for him and the Princess Royal to be left behind to prolong their visit. “The Empress said she was afraid this would be impossible, as the Queen and the Prince would not be able to do without them;” to which the boy replied, “Not do without us! I don’t fancy that, for there are six more of us at home, and they don’t want us.”

Very soon after the return of the Court to Balmoral (10th Sept., 1855) the Queen and Prince had the intense satisfaction of hearing of the fall of Sebastopol, an event which brought the end of the war within measurable distance. Peace was concluded in the following spring.

[Pg 187]

It was a source of great pride to the Queen to know that England was stronger at the end of the Crimean War than at the beginning. The country had learnt by its mistakes, and was not exhausted by its sacrifices. The Indian Mutiny, which quickly succeeded the Crimean War, found England more capable of dealing with it than if it had taken place earlier. This was fully recognized by the Prince Consort. If those who had accused him of an anti-English spirit could have read his private letters they would have had their eyes opened. He wrote to Stockmar August, 1857:—

The autumn of 1855 brought with it two interesting domestic events for the Royal Family. The new house at Balmoral was occupied for the first time; and, what was much more important, a visit from Prince Frederick William of Prussia resulted in his engagement to the Princess Royal. She was then under fifteen years of age, and it was thought best that there should be no formal betrothal, and no public announcement until after the Princess’s confirmation in the following spring. The first break into the child-life of a family, by the marriage of one of its members, is always an event that awakens many emotions. The Queen and Prince were thoroughly satisfied, and had cause to be, with their future son-in-law; but the prospect of parting with their eldest child was a bitter pill. The Prussian Prince was heartily in love, and went on year after year, till his tragic death in 1888, becoming more and more a lover and friend to his wife, whom he constantly spoke of[Pg 188] as “the ablest woman in Europe.” Lady Bloomfield, whose husband was, in 1855, English Ambassador in Berlin, gives an account of the announcement there by the King at a State dinner of the engagement between his nephew and the English Princess. Lady Bloomfield says that the Prince was in such high spirits, and looked so excessively happy, it was a pleasure to see him. On their arrival in Germany, shortly after their marriage, he telegraphed to the Queen at Windsor, “The whole Royal Family is enchanted with my wife.—F. W.” On the occasion of the Prince of Wales’s wedding, in 1863, the Prince of Prussia was overflowing with praise of his wife. Bishop Wilberforce noted in his diary on this occasion, “I was charmed with the Prince of Prussia, and the warmth of his expressions as to his wife. ‘Bishop,’ he said, ‘with me it has been one long honeymoon.’”

The story of the betrothal, and how it was associated with the giving and receiving of a piece of white heather, a proverbial emblem of good luck, is very prettily told by Her Majesty in “Leaves from the Journal in the Highlands.” The chief anxiety the parents had in the matter was on account of the Princess’s extreme youth; but her intellect and character were unusually developed, and she had, what so often accompanies fine intellect, a child-like innocence and purity of heart which specially endeared her to all in her home circle. Prince Albert wrote at once to Stockmar to tell him the news: “Victoria,” he wrote, “is greatly excited; still, all goes smoothly and prudently. The Prince is really in love, and the little lady does her best to please him.”

The engagement was not well received by an important section of the English Press. So little could the writer of the articles read the future, that Prussia[Pg 189] was sneered at “as a paltry German dynasty,” Prince Frederick William was described as being in “ignominious attendance” on his “Imperial Master” the Czar, and it was predicted that the Princess would become anti-English in feeling, and also, with not much consistency, that she would be sent back to England at no distant date, “an exile and a fugitive.” The ignorance of this attack robbed it of its poignancy. Prince Frederick William and his father were strongly in accord with the policy of England during the Crimean War, and consequently very much out of favor at their own Court and in St. Petersburg.

Prince Albert had always taken the keenest interest in directing the education of his eldest daughter, and the fact that she was probably destined to occupy in Prussia a position somewhat similar to his own in England, strengthened the already strong bonds of union between them. From the time of her engagement he worked with her daily at historical subjects, and spared no pains to equip her well for her future duties. She translated important political pamphlets from German into English under his direction, and he took undisguised fatherly pride in her capacity and in her widening interests in life. An accident, which might have had very serious consequences, happened to the Princess in 1856, which illustrated her self-control and reliance on her father. As she was sealing a letter she set fire to the muslin sleeve of her dress, and her right arm was very badly burned; the wound was terrible to look at, as the muslin was burnt into the flesh; it must have caused very severe pain, but the Princess never lost her presence of mind or habitual thoughtfulness for others. She did not utter a cry, and said: “Don’t frighten mamma, send for papa first.” Her marriage took place on January 25th, 1858. She was a very youthful bride, having[Pg 190] only lately completed her seventeenth year. Her first child, the present Emperor William II., was born on January 27th, 1859. His birth nearly cost the life of his young mother. The Queen’s daughter has not had a bed of roses in her adopted country, any more than the Queen’s husband had a bed of roses here. But in both cases cruel misrepresentation on the part of a section of the public was more than compensated by the loving appreciation and generous confidence which marriage brought them. The Princess Royal and the Prince Consort each had many a drop of bitterness in their cup; but while he lived, Prince Frederick William was her faithful worshipper, just as the Queen was and is of the Prince Consort.

On the day of the Princess Royal’s marriage the entry in the Queen’s Diary runs:—

Speaking of the ceremony in the Chapel Royal, St. James’s, Her Majesty adds:—

The Queen and the Prince Consort both recalled the series of important Royal marriages between German[Pg 191] Princes and English Princesses, beginning with the marriage of Princess Charlotte, heiress to the throne, to Prince Leopold in 1816, then their own in 1840, and, lastly, of their child to the heir to the throne of Prussia, in 1858. The Prince Consort wrote on the wedding-day to the faithful Stockmar:—

On a bitter winter day, February 2nd, 1858, the Queen and Prince bade farewell to their darling child on her departure for Germany. The bride’s exclamation had been, “I think it will kill me to take leave of dear papa.” Those who witnessed her departure through London and at Gravesend spoke of her floods of tears, and many a sympathizing thought went with the daughter of England to her new home.

[28] The Duke of Wellington died in September, 1852, deeply mourned by the Queen and her husband. The Queen wrote to her uncle, “You will mourn with us over the loss we and the whole nation have experienced in the death of the dear and great Duke of Wellington.... He was the pride, and the good genius, as it were, of this country, the most loyal and devoted subject, and the stanchest supporter the Crown ever had. He was to us a true friend and most valuable adviser.... We shall soon stand sadly alone. Aberdeen is almost the only personal friend of that kind left to us. Melbourne, Peel, Liverpool, now the Duke, all gone!”

[29] The only criticism ever made by Palmerston on the Turks was that it was impossible to expect much energy from a people who wore no heels to their shoes!

England had hardly drawn breath from the Crimean War when she was face to face with the Indian Mutiny. The first symptoms of the outbreak were observed in February, 1857. By the summer of that year it had attained appalling dimensions; but the gravity of the calamity brought out the tenacity of the English character, and it was gradually realized by the country that no effort and no sacrifice would be too great in order to preserve intact our hold upon India. The Queen realized this at a very early period, and urged upon the Prime Minister the undesirability of reducing our military establishments at a moment when India might require all our strength. No protracted diplomatic labors, as in the case of the Crimean War, were thrown upon the Sovereign by the Indian Mutiny. The Queen’s duty was discharged by keeping a keen look-out upon the development of the Mutiny, by encouraging the despatch of ample military reinforcements for India, by cheering the civil and military commanders there by her constant sympathy and appreciation of their services, and, above all, when the Mutiny was finally suppressed, by casting the weight of her influence and authority in the scale of mercy, and of the policy which gained for Lord Canning, the Governor-General, the nickname, intended in contempt, but remembered now as a true title of honor, of “Clemency Canning.”

Her Majesty wrote to Lord Canning fully approving of stern justice being dealt out to all who had been[Pg 193] guilty either of mutiny or of complicity in the terrible outrages against women and children, but strongly supporting him in his brave and determined opposition to vindictive fury against the natives at large, in which too many of the English in India were tempted to indulge.

When the worst of the Mutiny was over, August, 1858, and an Act had been passed transferring the Government of India from the East India Company to the Crown, the time had arrived for the issue of a Royal Proclamation to the inhabitants of India. The draft of this Proclamation reached the Queen when she was paying her first visit to her newly married daughter in Prussia. It will throw a little light on those who think that the function of a Sovereign in a Constitutional monarchy is simply to indorse everything submitted by the Ministers, to learn that the Queen on reading this draft felt that neither in spirit nor in language was it appropriate to the occasion. Her objections were set forth in detail to Lord Malmesbury, who was the Minister-in-Attendance, and the following letter was written by the Queen to the Prime Minister, Lord Derby:—

Lord Malmesbury’s memorandum which accompanied this letter goes more into detail. Referring to[Pg 194] the draft of which Her Majesty had disapproved, Lord Malmesbury remarks that she had specially objected to the expression that she had the “power of undermining” the Indian religions. “Her Majesty would prefer that the subject should be introduced by a declaration in the sense that the deep attachment which Her Majesty feels to her own religion, and the comfort and happiness which she derives from its consolations, will preclude her from any attempt to interfere with the native religions, and that her servants will be directed to act scrupulously in accordance with her directions.”

It is impossible to imagine a better example than this gives of the value of the influence of a truly womanly woman upon political affairs. The amended Proclamation gave great satisfaction to Lord Canning, and materially aided him in his difficult task of conciliation. He wrote:—

If a mere handful of Englishmen are to continue to hold the two hundred millions of the various native populations of India, they cannot do so by mere brute force, but only by convincing the leaders of the people that the English Government is actuated by feelings of “justice, charity, and kindliness” towards them. The Queen’s Proclamation produced the best effect in India. The Times correspondent, writing upon it, said: “Genuineness of Asiatic feeling is always a problem, but I have little doubt it is in this instance tolerably sincere. The people understand an ‘Empress,’ and did not understand the Company;” he adds that the general opinion among the masses was “that the Queen had hanged the Company!” We[Pg 195] have here an example of the informal use of the title “Empress,” the formal adoption of which caused so much excitement and opposition in 1876. It is possible, however, that from the time of the passing of the Government of India Act, 1858, Mr. Disraeli bore it in mind as an addition he would make to the Queen’s titles when a favorable opportunity offered. In 1858, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, he wrote to the Queen on the progress of the Government of India Bill through the House of Commons, and said, “But it is only the ante-chamber of an imperial palace, and your Majesty would do well to deign to consider the steps which are now necessary to influence the opinions and affect the imaginations of the Indian populations. The name of your Majesty ought to be impressed upon their native life.”

The immediate carrying out of the scheme here hinted at was rendered impossible in consequence of the change of Ministry which took place in the following year; but eighteen years later, when Disraeli was Prime Minister, he gave effect to this project as part of a large scheme for bringing home to the Sovereign and her people in every part of the world that England had ceased to be a “little world, a precious stone set in the silver sea,” and had expanded into a gigantic empire.

But the time for this had not come in 1858 and 1859, when affairs nearer home became again of engrossing interest.

The years which immediately succeeded the Crimean War are full of evidence of the growing distrust of Louis Napoleon felt by the Queen and her husband. He had succeeded at the beginning of their intercourse in producing the impression on them of perfect frankness; but by 1859 they had discovered that he was “born and bred a conspirator,” and that through all[Pg 196] the changes and vicissitudes of life he would ever be scheming and suspicious. Their eyes must have been opened to his real character by the quality of the people by whom he was served and surrounded. Throughout France, with very few exceptions, honest men and women held aloof from him. Greville speaks of the crowd which formed his Court as being more “encanaillées” than ever. The Prince Consort saw and lamented this, and endeavored to convince him that no Sovereign could be great without the aid of great Ministers. But great Ministers were not to be had for the asking. Louis Napoleon had so little confidence in his accredited representatives that in matters of first-class importance they were set on one side, and the business was conducted by the Emperor in person. This was not astonishing, as honest men mostly declined to serve him; he had to do as best he could with inferior material, and naturally could not rely on it in moments of emergency.

Little by little the true character of Louis Napoleon was revealed to the Queen, and under these circumstances it is easy to understand that though the social intercourse between the two Sovereigns was not abruptly cut short, yet it became very constrained and uneasy. The Queen and Prince paid two visits to Cherbourg: the first was in 1857, and was entirely private and informal; the Royal couple were accompanied by six of their children, and the main object of the visit was holiday-making: but their diaries and letters contain significant observations upon the great strength of the Cherbourg fortifications, and the Queen, with her habitual openness, said it made her “very unhappy” to see the enormous strength and size of the forts; while the Prince, in more diplomatic language, says the gigantic strength of the place had given him “grave cause for reflection.” They went[Pg 197] home very strongly impressed by the necessity of increasing our strength both by sea and land, so that it might not compare so very disadvantageously with that of our valued ally. Their second visit to Cherbourg was in the following year, 1858, and was a grand ceremonial; they were received by the Emperor and Empress in state, nine line-of-battle ships were drawn up along the breakwater, and all the ugly forts which dominate the harbor belched forth volleys of gunpowder in their honor, and also perhaps to demonstrate afresh the extent and strength of the fortifications. It does not seem to have been a gay visit; the Emperor was embarrassed, “boutonné and silent and not ready to talk” the Queen wrote, while the Prince observed, “Empress looks ill: he is out of humor.” When the inevitable time for speech-making came, and the Prince Consort had to return thanks for the toast of the Queen’s and his own health, Her Majesty writes that it was a dreadful moment, which she hoped never to have to go through again. “He did it very well, though he hesitated once. I sat shaking, with my eyes cloués sur la table.” The Emperor and Empress were both very nervous, and the Queen shook so she could not drink her coffee. The reception given to the Queen was magnificent and uncomfortable in the highest possible degree. One flight of rockets, a mere incident in a grand display of fireworks, was said to have cost 25,000 francs. From first to last, the fête was organized with regard to the highest possible degree of expense. The Queen and Prince were more than ever impressed that the strength of Cherbourg was a menace to England, and called the attention of their own Ministers, who were in attendance, to the obvious necessity for England to look more sharply to her coast and naval defences. How thankful Her Majesty must have been when the end[Pg 198] of each day’s festivity was reached! Even in the diary the mere words form a little oasis, “At twenty minutes to ten we went below, and read and nearly finished that most interesting book, ‘Jane Eyre.’”

The alarm felt by the Queen and Prince as to the hostile intentions of Louis Napoleon towards England were fully shared by the nation. After the attempt by Orsini, early in 1858, to assassinate the Emperor by the explosion of bombs under his carriage as it was approaching the Opera House, England was accused of having harbored the conspirators, and with having thereby encouraged their crime. It was true that Orsini had come direct from England, and though this did not make England responsible for him, yet some irritation on the part of France was quite excusable. This expression of irritation, however, passed all reasonable bounds. The Emperor received a large number of addresses from Colonels in the French army congratulating him on his escape; and these addresses, which were published at full in the official organ of the French Government, were, in many instances, full of clamorous demands for war with England. One of these effusions spoke of England as “the land of impurity, which contains the haunts of monsters which are sheltered by its laws;” another requested the Emperor to give the word, and the “infamous haunt in which machinations so infernal are planned”—that is, London—“should be destroyed forever.”

England’s answer was the Volunteer movement, and the dismissal from office of Lord Palmerston’s Government, because it was believed to have been too subservient to the demands of France.

The series of events of 1857 and 1858 were a very curious episode in our political history. The general election of 1857 had been in the nature of a personal[Pg 199] triumph for Palmerston. The cry had been “Palmerston, and nothing but Palmerston;” and he had carried everything before him. Within the ranks of the Liberal party all his leading opponents, Bright and Cobden representing the Manchester School, lost their seats. But in less than a year the seemingly all-powerful Minister was defeated because he had not maintained with sufficient dignity the honor and independence of England. “Old Civis Romanus,” as he had been nicknamed, was said to have retreated ignominiously; the British Lion was depicted with his tail between his legs. There was a strong outburst of dissatisfaction; for once Palmerston had not been sufficiently pugnacious: his Government was swept away, and was replaced by that of Lord Derby.

The Queen and Prince from the first took an immense interest in the Volunteers; they had always anxiously watched the relatively small military strength of England, and had urged on successive Governments the overwhelming importance of not allowing it to sink to a level incompatible with national security. The spontaneous growth of a great service for internal defence gave them, therefore, peculiar satisfaction, as affording evidence that at heart the spirit of the country was as sound as it had been in the days of the Armada. The Queen reviewed the English Volunteers in Hyde Park in June, 1860. The cheering was so tremendous that Her Majesty was quite overcome. She inaugurated the National Rifle Association in the following month; and she reviewed the Scottish Volunteers on Arthur’s Seat in August of the same year.

It was a splendid sight; 22,000 magnificent men, the flower of a hardy and spirited race; the surrounding amphitheatre of the hillside crowded with a cheering multitude: no wonder that the Queen was[Pg 200] thrilled with pride and thankfulness. The Duchess of Kent was with her daughter; the Queen writes that she was so delighted, “dear mamma could be present at this memorable and never-to-be-forgotten occasion.” It was the last time they were together at any public ceremonial.

Lord Tennyson interpreted the national feeling by his song, “Riflemen, form!” and the lines—

“True, we have got such a faithful ally
That only the Devil can tell what he means”—

exactly describe the sentiments of most Englishmen towards Louis Napoleon. It was said that a foreigner expressed surprise at the military spirit displayed at one of these Volunteer reviews, and said he had understood that the English were a nation of shopkeepers. A jolly countryman replied, “So they are, Moosoo; and these are the boys that keep the shop!”

The Volunteer movement has proved no mere flash in the pan, caused by a sudden explosion of passing irritation. It has grown and strengthened, and now, after twenty-six years of existence, it adds more than 200,000 men to the internal defences of the country. The annual meeting of the National Rifle Association has furnished proof to the world that the Volunteer force contains a body of skilled marksmen, who, under able generalship, might turn the scale in many a battle.

The year 1861 closed the book of the happy wedded life of the Queen. The hand of death lay heavy upon her, and took from her first her mother, and then her husband. The death of her mother was her first very great sorrow. Her half-brother, Prince Charles of Leiningen, had died in 1856; but his life and hers, during his latter years, had lain very much apart, and though she mourned him deeply and truly, he had not made part of her life, and his death could not be to her what the death of her mother was, who had watched over her from childhood, and with whom she passed part of almost every day; still less could it bring the loneliness and desolation in which the Queen was left by the death of her husband, “her dearest life in life,” as she had called him.

The Duchess of Kent died in March, 1861. There is no consolation in being told that such a loss is common. It is not common to the heart that has to bear it. The Queen felt, as all must feel when death takes from them a beloved parent, that part of her life was gone which nothing could restore. She wrote in the diary so often quoted:—

[Pg 202]

In a letter to her uncle, the King of the Belgians, now the last survivor of his generation, the Queen wrote that she felt “so truly orphaned.” The Queen was sustained in her sorrow by the tender sympathy of her husband and of her daughter, the Princess Alice, whose strong and beautiful character, already well known in her home circle, was to be revealed to the nation a few months later. The Princess was now entering on womanhood, and had recently been betrothed to Prince Louis of Hesse, nephew of the reigning Grand Duke. After her lamented death in 1878, a volume, with extracts from her letters to the Queen, was published as a memorial. In these she repeatedly recurs to the fact that when the Duchess of Kent died, the Prince Consort took his daughter by the hand and led her to the Queen, and told her she “must comfort mamma.” A few months later, when the place in the Palace of the husband and father was vacant, the Princess recalled these words, and accepted them as a sacred trust and bequest. She nobly justified the confidence her father had reposed in her. In this earlier bereavement it was her office to comfort and sustain the Queen, who wrote: “Dear, good Alice was full of intense feeling, tenderness, and distress for me; she, and all of them, loved ‘grandmamma’ so dearly.”

The Queen and Prince appreciated fully all that the former had owed to her mother,—the watchful vigilance and wisdom with which, from the date of her husband’s death, in 1820, the Duchess had devoted herself to the one object of preparing her baby daughter for the great future which awaited her. Stockmar had been her friend from the hour of her bereavement; it was from him that she learned that the illness of her husband could have no other than a fatal termination; he had stood by her through the long years of[Pg 203] her loneliness, surrounded as she was by difficulties, jealousies, and misrepresentations; he had always appreciated her warm heart and innate truthfulness. He wrote of her that “she was by sheer natural instinct truthful, affectionate, and friendly, unselfish, sympathetic, and even magnanimous.” All these testimonies to her worth were recalled now with gratitude and love by the sorrowing Queen. She was deprived of one solace which she might have had, the presence of her half-sister, Princess Feodore of Hohenlohe, the only other surviving child of the Duchess. She had recently been left a widow (April, 1860), and could not leave Germany.

Lady Augusta Bruce (afterwards Lady Augusta Stanley) had been one of the Duchess’s ladies-in-waiting, and had been almost a daughter to her in love, and more than her own daughter could be in tender, watchful service. The Queen now transferred Lady Augusta to her own household, nominally as Resident Bed-Chamber Woman, really as assistant secretary; and from this time a very strong bond of affection was established between them, which was unbroken until Lady Augusta’s death. The Queen also received help and consolation from the presence of her eldest daughter, the Princess Royal, who hurried to her parents on hearing of their loss. But notwithstanding all consolations, the Queen’s heart was very sore, and her faithful, tender nature is one which clings with tenacious gratitude to the memory of precious friends hid in death’s dateless night. Eleven years after her mother’s death, Her Majesty’s journal for the 17th August, 1872, has the following entry: “Beloved mamma’s birthday. That dear mother, so loving and tender and full of kindness! How often I long for that love!” The Queen did not attend her mother’s funeral. “I and my girls,” she[Pg 204] wrote, “prayed at home.” A special trial belonging to the position of Royalty must be its isolation. No subject can be on terms of equality with a Sovereign; crowned heads are therefore thrown almost wholly on their own immediate families for that life-giving sympathy and criticism which can hardly exist in perfection except between equals. To the Queen the loss of her mother, followed by the loss of her husband, brought the silencing of the only voices in the world who could say to her, in love, “You have been wrong, you have made a mistake.” Consider what it must be never to hear any language except that of homage and respect, never to listen to plain truths put plainly, never to be laughed at, seldom to be laughed with; and then imagine what it must be to lose the few who belong to that close inner circle for whom these formalities are non-existent.[30] One can only compare it to the position of a man on a desert island, who, having possessed a Bible or a Shakespeare, wakes one morning to find them destroyed or carried away by the tide. It has been sometimes said by English women that the Queen’s loss when she lost her husband was not greater than that of thousands and millions of women among her subjects; it has even been said that Her Majesty’s loss was not so great: some women, at one blow, by the death of their husbands, are face to face with the wolf of poverty and hunger for themselves and their children. No one can think lightly of such anguish; but if the inner history of[Pg 205] such lives could be told, would it not often be found that the curse was turned into a blessing, that the necessity to seek active work, the friends found in seeking it and in doing it, gave relief to the heartache, and that the rod of chastisement had been converted into the staff of strength?

“Get leave to work
In this world,—’tis the best you get at all;
For God in cursing gives us better gifts
Than men in benediction. God says, ‘Sweat
For foreheads;’ men say, ‘Crowns:’ and so we are crowned,
Ay, gashed by some tormenting circle of steel
Which snaps with a secret spring. Get work, get work;
Be sure ’tis better than what you work to get.”

The year preceding the death of the Prince Consort had been, perhaps, fuller than ever of public and private interests. In the autumn of 1860, the Queen and her husband met their daughter, Princess Frederick William of Prussia, with her two children, at Coburg. This was the first sight the Queen had of her grandson, “Dear little William, ... such a darling, and so intelligent; ... a very pretty, clever child.” During this visit to Coburg the Prince was in a serious carriage accident, from which, however, he escaped almost uninjured. The Queen’s thankfulness is more touching by the light of after events. She gave 1,200 florins to found an annual gift for apprenticing young men and women in Coburg, to be distributed every year on the anniversary of her husband’s escape. Tours had been arranged, and were taking place in 1860, for the Prince of Wales in Canada and the United States, and for Prince Alfred in Cape Colony; the parents constantly received the most gratifying news of the impression made by their sons, and the great loyalty their visits had called forth. Most courteous and cordial letters on the subject of the Prince of Wales’s visit were exchanged between the Queen and the[Pg 206] President of the United States. The Queen addressed the President as “My good Friend,” being the nearest approach which the circumstances admitted to the exclusively royal “mon cher frère.” Special and sympathetic reference was made in both letters to the young Prince’s visit to the tomb of Washington. Arrangements were made by the Prince Consort for the Prince of Wales’s residence on his return from America for a year at the University of Cambridge. Before this, for the ostensible purpose of allowing the Prince of Wales to attend the German military manœuvres, it was arranged that he should have the opportunity of making the acquaintance of the Princess Alexandra of Denmark. The Prince Consort notes with obvious satisfaction in his diary “that the young people seem to have taken a warm liking for one another.”

Plans were also made during this autumn for a visit by the Prince of Wales to the Holy Land.

The cares of a large family were particularly pressing on the Queen and Prince during this year. Prince Leopold, who was delicate from his birth, had a sharp attack of measles, which caused great anxiety. It was necessary to send him (aged only seven) to Cannes for the winter; and the choice of suitable people to take charge of the delicate little lad was necessarily an anxious one. Among the other engagements of this autumn was included a visit to Ireland, with a hurried excursion to the Curragh to see the Prince of Wales, who was going through a course of military training there.

With regard to public affairs, foreign politics were more than ordinarily absorbing. It was the year of the triumphal entry of Garibaldi into Naples, and of Victor Emmanuel into the Papal States. The Queen and Prince followed these events with more anxiety[Pg 207] and less sympathy than the Ministry or the nation. The Prince dubbed Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell, “the two old Italian masters.” The Court seems to have failed to appreciate the constructive greatness of Garibaldi, and could see in him little more than a kind of picturesque bandit. The fruit of his labors towards the unification of Italy was now, however, nearly ripe, and before the death of the Prince Consort the English Government had acknowledged the title of Victor Emmanuel as King of Italy. On the Eastern Question the Queen and Prince were troubled and perplexed by the tendency of Turkey to relapse into all her old vices of oppression and bad government, and by the evident hesitation of the French Emperor upon the question whether it would not be to his interest to throw over the English and form a Russian alliance.

At home the Queen and Prince were strenuously backing up the Government in their policy of increasing the naval defences of England and in protecting our southern coasts by extensive works of fortification. This policy was opposed by Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden, from the ranks of the independent Members of Parliament, and by Mr. Gladstone from within the Cabinet. Palmerston wrote to the Queen that Mr. Gladstone had threatened to resign if the new fortifications could not be paid for out of income; and the Prime Minister added, in a characteristic passage, “Viscount Palmerston hopes to be able to overcome his objection; but if that should prove impossible, however great the loss to the Government by the retirement of Mr. Gladstone, it would be better to lose Mr. Gladstone than to run the risk of losing Portsmouth or Plymouth.” Throughout this year, amid the constant pressure of work of both a public and a private character, and the deluge of despatches[Pg 208] that followed the Royal pair wheresoever they went, there are constant references to the failing health of the Prince Consort; his digestion was a perpetual trouble; the Queen kept back details of business from him if they were of an anxious nature, because she knew they irritated his delicate stomach. The death of the Duchess of Kent threw a good deal of extra work upon the Prince; he was left her sole executor, and masses of papers had to be dealt with without the aid of her secretary and controller of the household, who had predeceased his mistress by a few weeks. There was a visible failure of health and energy on the part of the Prince. “I have been far from well of late;” “my catarrh refuses to give way;” “yesterday I was too miserable to hold the pen,” are a few expressions taken at random from his private letters in the year preceding his death. He did not, however, relax his habit of diligent work. Summer and winter he rose at seven, and immediately attacked his correspondence, and the reading and writing of despatches for the Queen. They worked together, he writing, she correcting and amending. He would bring letters to the Queen and say, “Read carefully, and tell me if there be any faults in these” (he was never quite secure, it seems, about his English); or, “Here is a draft I have made for you. Read it; I should think it would do.” The last time he rose to work in the early morning in this way was on December 1, 1861, when he prepared a draft for the Queen on the Trent affair. Sir Theodore Martin gives it in facsimile in his fifth volume of the Life of the Prince. It stands in the Prince’s writing, with the Queen’s corrections. As he gave it to the Queen he said, “I am so weak I have scarcely been able to hold the pen.” It was a worthy piece of work to stand as a last memento of a noble life. It was the time of the[Pg 209] outset of the American Civil War. Great irritation had been produced between the Governments of England and the United States by the forcible seizure by the latter on an English ship, the Trent, of two envoys from the Southern States who were proceeding to Europe. It was an entirely unjustifiable piece of high-handedness, condemned by every rule of International law. The feeling in England was one of intense indignation, and Lord Palmerston, then Prime Minister, was not the man to soothe or subdue it. A despatch for communication to the American Government was sent by the Prime Minister to the Queen. If it had been delivered, as originally drafted, the peaceful settlement of the difference between the two countries would have been rendered extremely difficult, if not impossible. The Prince Consort virtually remodelled it in such a way as to maintain all the just demands of this country, but to leave to the Government of the United States an honorable path of retreat from the false step which had been taken. This one piece of work alone should keep the Prince’s memory green in both countries for many a long year. The news of the pacific settlement of the difference between England and America reached London on 9th January, 1862, less than a month after the Prince Consort’s death. The Queen, in communicating with Lord Palmerston on the subject, could not forbear reminding him that the peaceful issue of the quarrel was “greatly owing to her beloved Prince.” Palmerston, in his reply, cordially acknowledged that it was so, and added: “But these alterations were only one of innumerable instances of the tact and judgment, and the power of nice discrimination which excited Lord Palmerston’s constant and unbounded admiration.”

At the very outset of the Prince Consort’s last illness,[Pg 210] his spirits were greatly depressed by the death from typhoid fever of the King of Portugal, Don Pedro, at the early age of twenty-five, and also of his brother, Prince Ferdinand. They were the Prince’s cousins, and he was particularly attached to them, especially to the King, to whom he stood in almost a paternal relation. The King had married in 1857, with every apparent prospect of happiness, but his young wife had died of diphtheria in 1859, and now he and his brother were cut off by typhoid. The calamity produced an effect on the Prince Consort which he was unable to shake off. This and other anxieties of a private nature preyed upon his mind and deprived him of sleep. He noted in his diary of November 24th that for fourteen days his nights had been almost sleepless. It was the beginning of the end. Another sign of low vitality was that he had no strong love of life. He said to the Queen, not long before his fatal illness, “I do not cling to life. You do; but I set no store by it. If I knew that those I love were well cared for, I should be quite ready to die to-morrow;” and he added, “I am sure if I had a severe illness I should give up at once. I should not struggle for life. I have no tenacity of life.” The event proved that he was right. On Monday, November 25th, he paid a hurried visit to the Prince of Wales at Cambridge. He was then feeling far from well, and entered in his diary on his return, “Bin recht elend” (am very wretched). His last public appearance was on November 28th, at a review of the Eton College Volunteers. That it was a great effort to him to fulfil this engagement is proved by the short note in his diary, the last he ever made, “Unhappily I must be present.”

The gradually growing anguish of the Queen during the next fortnight can be traced day by day in the[Pg 211] pages of Sir Theodore Martin. At first she was “so thankful the illness was not fever;” then it became clear that it was fever,—typhoid fever,—with its accompanying exhaustion and wandering of mind. She was terribly alarmed, but still clung desperately to every favorable symptom. She tried to gather what the doctors really thought, less by what they said than by how they looked. When they looked grave and sad, “I went to my room and felt as if my heart must break.” When the doctors spoke frankly to her of the course which the fever must run before any improvement could be looked for, “My heart was ready to burst; but I cheered up, remembering how many people have fever.... Good Alice was very courageous, and tried to comfort me.” In the earlier days of the Prince’s illness he took pleasure in being read to, and in hearing music, and the little baby daughter, Beatrice, was brought in to say her new French verses, and he held her little hand in his. The Queen recalls with touching minuteness his tenderness and caressing affection, constantly manifested towards herself. “Liebes Fräuchen,” “gutes Weibchen” (dear little wife, good little wife), he would call her, stroking her face with his wasted hand. On December 11th the Queen’s diary records that she supported him while he took his beef-tea. “And he laid his dear head (his beautiful face, more beautiful than ever, is grown so thin) on my shoulder, and remained a little while, saying, ‘It is very comfortable so, dear child!’ which made me very happy.”

His mind often wandered back to the days of his boyhood at the Rocenau; but at times it would be as clear as ever, and he would speak to the Queen on public matters, or remind her of some important detail in connection with her despatches. On December 13th an alarming change for the worse was[Pg 212] noticed, but again he rallied, and again the almost despairing Queen was tempted to listen to the delusive voice of hope. The Prince of Wales was summoned by telegraph from Cambridge, by the Princess Alice acting on her own responsibility, and he travelled through the night, reaching Windsor at three in the morning of December 14th. Prince Alfred was at Halifax, in Nova Scotia; Prince Leopold was at Cannes;[31] and the Prince’s darling eldest daughter, the Princess Royal, was in Prussia, and could not be summoned in time. Little Princess Beatrice was too young to know what she was losing. But the other children were gathered round their father’s deathbed. About half-past five in the afternoon the Prince spoke to the Queen for the last time. He called her again, “Good little wife,” and kissed her with a sigh, as if he felt he was leaving her. Then he sank into a sort of doze, from which he never fully awoke; and the life so inexpressibly dear to the Queen, and so valuable to his children and to the nation, gradually ebbed. The end came at a quarter to eleven on Saturday night, December 14th, 1861. The booming of the great bell of St. Paul’s at midnight warned London of the calamity that had befallen the Queen and nation. But the sad news did not reach the general public till later. Few who were present at morning service on the following day will forget the thrill of awe and sorrow which ran through the church when the name of Prince Consort was omitted from the liturgy, and a long pause was made after the word “widows and orphans.” To many this was the first intimation of the Prince’s death.

[Pg 213]

One of the Queen’s chief titles to the love of her people is that she sorrows with their sorrows:—

“Queen as true to womanhood as queenhood.
Glorying with the glories of her people,
Sorrowing with the sorrows of the lowest.”

The whole nation now mourned with the Queen, and with many the bitter cup was not unmingled with remorse. The lamentations for the dead are often sorest when the accusing conscience joins its forces to those of natural grief. Injustice, misrepresentation, ungenerosity during life, add an almost intolerable torture to the pain of the mourner. Fortunately, from this worst anguish the Queen was wholly free. She could look back over the whole of her twenty-two years’ union with her beloved Prince, and could find nothing but an unbroken chain of confidence and love; it may safely be said that she had missed no opportunity of actively contributing to her husband’s happiness by every device which ingenious watchful affection could contrive. She therefore belonged to those mourners of whom it may be truly said that they are blessed, and shall be comforted. On the last anniversary of her wedding-day before her husband’s death, the Queen had written to the King of the Belgians to give renewed expression to the feelings awakened by the day. She spoke again of “our blessed marriage,” and “the incalculable blessing” it had brought; and added, “Very few can say with me that their husband at the end of twenty-one years is not only full of the friendship, kindness, and affection which a truly happy marriage brings with it, but of the same tender love as in the very first days of our marriage.” Death itself could not rob her of this enormous happiness. It was true he was gone, and she was left alone to bear the weight of the crown and sceptre unsupported except by his memory; but for[Pg 214] nearly twenty-two years he had been to her in her own words, “Husband, father, lover, master, friend, adviser, and guide.” Many will be disposed to murmur, “Happy woman, happy wife,” even in face of the crushing grief which now overwhelmed her.

[30] The Queen gave expression to this sense of isolation, as a necessary part of the position of a Sovereign, in a private letter to the Emperor of the French, dated August, 1857. She wrote, after thanking the Emperor for his expressions of favorable opinion about the Prince Consort: “In a position so isolated as ours, we can find no greater consolation, no support more sure, than the sympathy and counsel of him or her who is called on to share our lot in life; and the dear Empress, with her generous impulses, is your guardian angel, as the Prince is my true friend.”

[31] By a sad coincidence, the governor chosen for Prince Leopold, Sir Edward Bowater, died on the same day as the Prince Consort. The poor little boy, on hearing of his father’s death, is said to have exclaimed in the midst of his tears, “I must go to my mother. I want my mother.”

After the death of the Prince Consort the available materials for a life of Her Majesty are much less ample. It is true that in giving directions to Sir Theodore Martin for writing the Life of the Prince, Her Majesty’s desire was that only so much of her own life was to be revealed as was absolutely necessary for the continuity of the story; but the two lives were so completely one that it was impossible to write an account of one that was not almost equally an account of the other. They realized, as long as the Prince lived, the dream of Tennyson’s “Princess”:

“Everywhere
Two heads in council, two beside the hearth,
Two in the tangled business of the world,
Two in the liberal offices of life.”

Sources of information from political memoirs and biographies also became rarer, till they disappear altogether as we approach recent years. The burning political questions of the present day cannot be handled as those can that have been cooling for nearly half-a-century. Her Majesty’s published diaries and the Memoir of Princess Alice studiously exclude nearly all references to the multifarious and constant political duties and interests devolving on the Head of the State; it is only every now and then and, as it were, accidentally, that Her Majesty’s political activities, during the thirty-four years since her husband’s death, have been made known to the mass of her subjects; whereas, during the twenty-one years of her married[Pg 216] life, they have been set forth in full detail. There is, however, every reason to know that Her Majesty is fully as active, and certainly has been as efficient, in the discharge of her political duties since she has stood alone as she was when her “permanent Minister” was by her side.

When the blow of her husband’s death fell upon her, the effect on the Queen was overwhelming. She was stunned by it. In after years she could hardly remember those dreadful days of the first realization of her loss; the effect of her anguish was like that of a physical blow, producing insensibility, or at least the inability to record in the tables of the memory the sharp pangs she then endured. Her principal comforter and supporter was her daughter, Princess Alice. In a few days the young girl of 18 developed into a thoughtful, helpful woman. She was for a time the medium of communication between the Queen and her Ministers. Fears were entertained, especially by Leopold, King of the Belgians, that residence at Windsor would involve risk to the Queen’s health and even to her life, and he induced her Ministers to bring great pressure to bear on her to leave the castle and go to Osborne even before the funeral of the Prince Consort. At first, very naturally, the Queen entirely declined to entertain the idea; but King Leopold insisted, and it was finally through the persuasion of the Princess Alice that the Queen was induced to yield. Broken-hearted as she was, she did not forget the duty she owed to her country and family. In after years Princess Alice wrote that it was cruel and wrong to force her mother to leave Windsor at such a moment; but the motive, whether misplaced or not, was anxiety for the Queen’s health, and this was paramount over other considerations. The responsibility thrown on Princess Alice in two[Pg 217] directions, to support and console the Queen, and also as the medium of communication for a time with the Ministers, to understand and follow the political movements and events of the times, wonderfully developed the character of the young girl. To the end of her life she combined these two characteristics in a pre-eminent degree. She was one of those women who are born to seek that which was lost, to bind up that which was broken, and strengthen that which was sick; and she also took the keenest and most intelligent interest in politics, following the movements for the unity of Germany, the development of constitutional liberty in various countries, and the education and employment of women, not only with sympathy, but with practical knowledge and a constant wish to forward all these movements by personal exertions and sacrifices. She was very soon to leave her mother’s home for her husband’s. Her marriage with Prince Louis of Hesse took place on July 1st, 1862; but though her home was henceforth in Germany, the country of her birth remained the country of her heart: she loved England as the home of liberty and as the country which was leading the way of advancement both for men and women. It is a touching incident that, dying as she did at Darmstadt in 1878, her last request to her husband was that the Union Jack might be laid on her coffin.

Her devotion to the Queen in the hour of her desolation greatly endeared her to the English people; the memory of that sacred time of common sorrow made a special bond between the mother and daughter. It will not be forgotten that when, in 1871, the Prince of Wales had a desperate attack of the same illness (typhoid fever) that had been fatal to his father ten years earlier, the Princess Alice helped the Princess of Wales to nurse him safely through it; the anniversary[Pg 218] of the Prince Consort’s death, December 14th, was the day on which the illness of his son took a favorable turn. On the first anniversary of the turning point in the Prince of Wales’s illness, December 14th, 1872, Princess Alice wrote to the Queen that the day must always be one of mixed recollections and feelings, of thankfulness as well as of sorrow, and that in both respects it would always be “a day hallowed in our family.” Six years later it was on this very day, December 14th, 1878, that the beloved and gifted Princess breathed her last.

All the contemporary records speak of the Queen as having borne her terrible grief with courage. She is said to have been more outwardly composed than she had been after the death of her mother. She began after a few days to transact necessary business. On the 20th December, one of the family wrote from Windsor that she had signed some papers, and had seen Lord Granville. One of her political letters to Lord Palmerston, written in January, 1862, has been already quoted. It is entirely characteristic of her that her first public utterance after the death of her husband was an expression of tenderest sympathy with the wives and children of 204 poor men who were killed in the Hartley Colliery explosion in January, 1862. Her own misery, the Queen said, made her feel the more for them. A little later she received visits of sympathy and condolence from her uncle, King Leopold, and from her half-sister, Princess Feodore of Hohenlohe. To a nature like hers, work and the sympathy of loving friends are the best of all balms; but she was intensely forlorn; she had lost the source of joy and happiness, and nothing could bring it back. The joyous young woman, radiant with light-hearted happiness, ceased to exist on December 14th, 1861. Henceforward our Queen has[Pg 219] been a careworn woman, acquainted with grief. She has herself told how her sad and suffering heart was cheered by the solemn beauty of her beloved Highlands, and especially that she was taught many a lesson of resignation and faith by her faithful Scottish servants. One of these, John Grant, wheeling her chair, or leading her pony along the mountain paths, taught her that she must not look upon the days especially associated with her husband’s memory—his birthday, August 26th, or even the day of his death, December 14th—as days of mourning. “That’s not the light to look at,” he said, and helped her to feel that they were beloved and blessed days, because they were so full of the memories of the blessed past. In recording this the Queen writes, “There is so much true and strong faith in these good, simple people.” The lesson was not forgotten, and we find, by various notes in the diary, that the Queen keeps her husband’s birthday by trying to make it a happy day for those about her, celebrating it by giving presents to her children, ladies and gentlemen in attendance, and servants, so that all should feel they had been borne in mind, and had received some “remembrance of the dear day.” In the same spirit of gratitude for past happiness, Her Majesty’s note in her diary for October 15th, 1867, is, “Our blessed engagement day! A dear and sacred day—already twenty-eight years ago. How I ever bless it!” In contrast with this, we find the entry for her own birthday, May 24th, 1863, just three words, “My poor birthday!”

Chief among her Highland friends, the Queen had the good fortune to reckon Dr. Norman Macleod. His strong faith and his power of sympathy, combined with a wonderful gift of expression and indefatigable kindness, gave him a peculiar power in saying the right thing, and giving just the help and support that[Pg 220] the Queen wanted when she felt most forlorn. He had also the strong sense of humor which so often makes the crooked straight, and the rough places plain. The Queen felt she could talk openly to him about her sorrow; he helped her to look, not down, but up. When showing him a drawing of the Prince’s mausoleum, his exclamation was, “Oh, he is not there.” He would lead her away from her own grief, to realize, and help to soothe, the sorrows of others. He told her of a beautiful expression of a poor Scottish woman who had lost her husband and several of her children. The poor woman had said, referring to her husband’s death, “When he was ta’en, it made sic a hole in my heart that a’ other sorrows gang lichtly through.”

It is interesting to note that on October 3d, 1869, the Queen asked Dr. Macleod his opinion of the Marquis of Lorne. The Doctor assured her that he knew Lord Lorne well, and had prepared him for confirmation, and thought very highly of him,—“good, excellent and superior in every way.” Exactly a year from that day, October 3d, 1870, the Princess Louise became engaged to the Marquis of Lorne, and they were married on March 21st, 1871.

The Queen was greatly attracted by the simplicity and dignity of the services of the Scottish Church. She was present at the Communion Service at Crathie in 1871. The Journal says:—

Since 1873, this wish on the part of the Queen has been gratified, and she has joined in the communion at Crathie every autumn.

Although Princess Alice’s marriage in July, 1862,[Pg 221] had deprived the Queen of the constant companionship of this dearly loved daughter, yet the Princess continued to spend part of almost every year with her mother. She returned to England in November, 1862, and stayed with the Queen till after the birth of her first baby, in April, 1863. The Queen was a most tender nurse, and always took a special interest in the granddaughter and god-daughter who had been born under her roof. It was Princess Alice who encouraged the Queen to emerge a little from the seclusion to which she had clung since her widowhood. She promoted little mountain excursions, in which the Queen was induced to take part, in the autumn of 1863. She, and also the Princess Royal, accompanied the Queen in the same year to the ceremony of the unveiling of the Prince’s statue at Aberdeen. It is easy to understand what a trying ordeal this must have been to the Queen. There were dense crowds, loyal and kindly, but silent and full of mournful sympathy; there was no music even,[32] the bands having been forbidden to play,—such a contrast, as the Queen wrote, to “former blessed times.” No wonder that she was “terribly nervous, and longed not to have to go through this fearful ordeal.” The Queen had been present before this at family ceremonies, the marriages of Princess Alice in 1862, and of the Prince of Wales on March 10th, 1863; but the first of these had been of quite a private character, and in the second the Queen had taken no part, merely watching the service from the Royal Closet in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor; but this was her first appearance since her[Pg 222] husband’s death at a public ceremony. She “prayed for help.” But, however painful, she felt it was right that she should make the effort, and it helped her to overcome her extreme reluctance to take her part once more in the pageantry and glitter of royalty. Little by little she took up this burden also, helped and encouraged by her children, and from 1866 has from time to time opened Parliament in person, and taken her part as Sovereign in the public functions devolving on her position. There was at one time an undercurrent of rather mean resentment that she did not, after her widowhood, enter into social gayety and lead fashionable life as of old. The loss of her direct personal influence from the social world has been a very real one. But there are limits to human strength and endurance; and those who grumbled because the Queen absented herself from the world of fashion, were probably thinking more of the number and brilliancy of Court functions, and of the supposed benefit to trade accruing therefrom, than of the value of a pure-hearted woman’s influence at the head of society. Mr. John Bright in 1866 gave a trenchant rebuke from a public platform to one of these grumblers, who asserted at a meeting of working-men that the Queen was so absorbed in her own grief as to have lost all sympathy with her people. He said:—

The whole meeting responded to the simple, generous words, touching as they did the chord of universal human feeling.

[Pg 223]

The Queen’s love for Scotland and the Scottish people has made it easier for her to take part in ordinary social life in the neighborhood of Balmoral than in the crowded whirl of London. She has taken part in the torch-carrying on Halloween, in gillies’ balls, in marriages and christenings in Scotland, and made herself one with her people there in all their joys and sorrows. Her faithful Scotch servant, John Brown, was for many years a familiar figure, in his Highland dress, behind the Queen’s carriage. He served her with tact and fidelity, which she rewarded with grateful and unstinted appreciation. He died in 1883. The last words in “More Leaves from a Journal of a Life in the Highlands,” are a tribute to his memory; while the book itself is dedicated, “To my Loyal Highlanders, and especially to the memory of my devoted personal attendant and faithful friend, John Brown.” She attended the funeral service held in his mother’s house on the occasion of his father’s death, and stayed with the widow to soothe and comfort her when the funeral procession left the house. Only the heavy rain prevented her accompanying the other mourners to the grave. It is no doubt the freedom from formality, the genuine simplicity of the life around her at Balmoral, which makes it congenial to the Queen. There the gayeties are really gay; the mournings are really sad, dignified, and solemn, and not a mocking travesty of pretended woe. One of the luxuries the Queen allows herself in Scotland is the building of what may be called “pic-nic” houses in attractive situations in the neighborhood. These are little more than cottages, only just large enough for the Queen, and one or two of her children, and the necessary attendants and servants, generally built in wild and rather inaccessible spots among the hills. One of these, Altnagiathasach, was built before the[Pg 224] Prince Consort’s death. After her widowhood, the Queen felt she could not go there alone, and she built another at Glassaltshiel, the house-warming of which she celebrated in 1868. When the little festivity, with its reel-dancing and whiskey-toddy drinking, was over, the Queen’s Journal records, “The sad thought struck me that it was the first widow’s house, not built by him” (the Prince), “nor hallowed by his memory. But I am sure his blessing does rest on it, and on those who live in it.” Another of these little houses, a much smaller one, with only two rooms and a kitchen, is Glengeldershiel; it is within a short drive from Balmoral. In the neighborhood of these retired cottages the Queen could walk, accompanied by her friends, her children, and her dogs, without the fear of the tourist or the much-dreaded reporter before her eyes.

It must not, however, be represented that it was only in Scotland that Her Majesty found any means of social enjoyment. The following letter from Thomas Carlyle (first published in The Athenæum, in January, 1895) shows that this was not the case. It is too picturesque to be cut up; the ill-natured and unjust references to Lady Augusta Stanley and Mrs. Grote must be tolerated for the sake of the rest of the letter. It would not be characteristic of Carlyle if it were bowdlerized so as to leave the impression that he was in charity with all mankind. The letter is addressed to his sister, Mrs. Aitken:—

[32] It was nearly five years after her husband’s death before the Queen could bear to listen to music. In 1866, Princess Alice wrote to her mother: “I am really glad to hear that you can listen to a little music. Music is such a heavenly thing, and dear Papa loved it so much, that I can’t but think that now it must be soothing, and bring you near to him.”

Between 1858 and 1885 all the Queen’s nine children married; and every one knows that she took just as much delight and interest in their prospect of forming happy homes of their own as any other mother in her wide dominions could have done. In other words, politics and political responsibilities of the weightiest kind have not unsexed her. In arranging the marriages of her three elder children, Her Majesty had had the advantage of the knowledge and judgment of the Prince Consort. It can hardly be by accident that the brides and bridegrooms of our Royal House have not been brought up in the full blast of the hothouse atmosphere of Court life. We know that the Queen and Prince Consort looked upon this atmosphere as dangerous and pernicious, and kept their own children as much apart from it as was possible; their sons and daughters-in-law, with one exception, were selected from those who had not passed their earliest and most impressionable years as the children of reigning Sovereigns.

It has been already noted that the Queen did not allow her private inclinations, which would doubtless have been gratified by keeping the Princess Alice with her, to postpone the marriage which had been sanctioned by the Prince Consort. Prince Louis, indeed, thought that his betrothed wife would not have held to her engagement after her father’s death, seeing how her mother depended on her for comfort in her great sorrow; but he was mistaken, and the[Pg 228] marriage took place not long after the date originally fixed, July 1st, 1862. In the autumn of the same year the Queen, who visited her uncle, King Leopold, at Laeken, arranged to meet, for the first time, her future daughter-in-law, the Princess Alexandra of Denmark. Later, in 1862, the beautiful young Princess visited the widowed Queen at Windsor, and received a mother’s welcome from that warm, tender heart. All references to the Princess of Wales throughout the Queen’s journals and the Princess Alice’s letters are most loving and tender. “Dear, sweet, gentle Alix,” are among the many endearing epithets bestowed on her by her mother and sister-in-law. The marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales on March 10th, 1863, took place in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. It was a most magnificent ceremonial, and was the first Royal marriage celebrated in that Chapel since that of Henry I. in 1122. At the wedding Prince William of Prussia, aged four, was placed between his two little uncles, Arthur and Leopold, who were instructed to keep him quiet. Bishop Wilberforce says that he resented any interference, and bit his uncles on their “bare Highland legs” if they tried to control him.

The good feeling among the various members of the English Royal Family was soon after this put to a severe test. The Schleswig-Holstein quarrel between Denmark and Germany came to a head in 1864, and war was declared, with the inevitable result that the little kingdom of Denmark was completely beaten by her powerful opponents, the combined Powers of Austria and Prussia. The King of Prussia was father-in-law of our Princess Royal. She and Princess Alice, as wife of another German Prince, naturally espoused the German side in the quarrel; the Prince and Princess of Wales, as naturally, espoused that of[Pg 229] Denmark, and felt that the little kingdom had been unfairly browbeaten and bullied by its powerful neighbors. There was a very strong feeling in England in support of Denmark. Lord John Russell had undoubtedly led her on to suppose that in the event of war, she would receive the armed assistance of England. A powerful section of the Tory party was also in favor of war. Votes of censure were moved against the Government in both Houses; the vote was carried in the Lords, and only averted in the Commons by a narrow majority. In this crisis, it was the nearest thing in the world that England was not precipitated into war with Germany. The Emperor of the French was urging it, and offering his alliance. He had already begun to talk about the Rhine frontier being “an absolute necessity” for France, and would have liked nothing better than an alliance with England against Germany. The Queen averted the catastrophe, and we learn from Lord Malmesbury’s Memoirs that she “would not hear of going to war with Germany.” “No doubt,” he adds, “this country would like to fight for the Danes, and from what is said, I infer that the Government is inclined to support them also, but finds great difficulties in the opposition of the Queen.” Her immense knowledge of foreign politics and grasp of a continuous and definite line of action saved England from the enormous blunder of involving this country in war about the succession to the German Duchies. Probably very few people in England really understood the question at issue at the time; and it was the Queen’s knowledge and strong common-sense which saved us from a serious national disaster.

The family aspects of the quarrel called forth the good qualities of the woman, just as its national aspects had called forth those of the Queen. The war[Pg 230] and the crushing of poor Denmark left a feeling of soreness and resentment which did not subside for many a year. The war took place in 1864; it was not till 1867 that there was a friendly meeting between the King of Prussia and the Prince and Princess of Wales. Princess Alice wrote from Darmstadt in October of that year:—

Another marriage in the Royal Family still further complicated the Schleswig-Holstein question from the domestic point of view, for in 1866 Princess Helena, the Queen’s third daughter, married Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, the second son of the German claimant of the Duchies. The Queen gave her daughter away. The Princess and her husband have made their home in England.

It was in this year that the war between North and South Germany, headed respectively by Prussia and Austria, about the disposal of the Schleswig-Holstein Duchies, had the effect of bringing the Queen’s two sons-in-law, Prince Frederick William of Prussia and Prince Louis of Hesse, into the field of battle on opposite sides. This was a severe trial. The Princess Alice’s letters showed that it caused her intense anguish. She, like her father, longed for the unity of Germany under the headship of Prussia, and was quite ready to submit to the sacrifices this would entail on the smaller German Princes; but this war of brother against brother, and friend against friend, was a thing which she felt to be too fearful to contemplate. In this hour of great trial, the love and[Pg 231] confidence between the sisters and their respective husbands never wavered. Prince Louis went to Berlin, before the actual outbreak of hostilities, to see his brother-in-law, and he then made sure that though their respective allegiance brought them into conflict as soldiers, yet as men they would remain brothers and friends. North Germany under Prussia was, as every one knows, successful in the conflict, and the victorious Prussian army marched into Darmstadt just at the time of the birth of Princess Alice’s third daughter (July 11th, 1866). The newly made mother lay in bed hearing the shouts of her husband’s victors, at the very time knowing that he was still under fire, and that she was unable to get any news of his safety. The christening of the little Princess was put off till it could take place on the day on which the treaty of peace was ratified at Berlin; the baby then received the name of Irène, in commemoration of the event. The poor little Princess of peace had very warlike godfathers,—the whole of the cavalry brigade which had been commanded by her father in the late war. It is significant that just before this war Princess Alice had written to the Queen using the expression: “I long to ... know that your warm heart is acting for Germany.” That is the woman all over: to feel, is to translate feeling into action wherever power to do so is not lacking. The warp and woof of home and politics are ever conspicuous in the Princess Alice’s letters. When the Schleswig-Holstein question first began to threaten war, she wrote to the Queen, filling the first part of the letter with her speculations on the political situation, and then passing to her baby’s first tooth, “She makes such faces if one ventures to touch her little mouth;” and the Princess then goes on to mention some of her activities in trying to set the hospital at Darmstadt in good order, and to interest the[Pg 232] burgomaster and town councillors in the work, and the provision she was making for the safety and well-being of poor women in childbirth. She was indeed a very political woman, and a very womanly politician.

In 1870, when the Franco-German War broke out, the Queen’s sympathies, it is almost needless to say, went wholly with Germany; she had looked for the unification of Germany as steadily as old Stockmar and the Prince Consort, and the year 1871 saw this vision become an accomplished fact. King William of Prussia was proclaimed the German Emperor by the assembled German Princes in the banqueting hall of Versailles.

In 1868, when Prince Alfred was absent in Australia, he was shot at and wounded by a Fenian named O’Farrell. When telegraphic news of this was received in cipher at the Colonial Office, it was at first impossible to make out whether the Prince had been killed or only wounded. Another telegram on the following day set the worst anxieties at rest, and further despatches brought word that the ball had been extracted, and that the Prince was doing well; but it can easily be understood what a shock the event must have been to the Queen. Prince Alfred, who had been created a peer under the title of Duke of Edinburgh, married in 1874 the Grand-Duchess Marie, only daughter of Emperor Alexander II of Russia. In 1893, on the death of the Prince Consort’s brother, Duke Ernest of Coburg, the Duke of Edinburgh succeeded him, and is now the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. When Prince Alfred’s engagement to the Grand-Duchess Marie was impending, but not yet settled, he joined his sister, Princess Alice, on a tour in Italy, the Empress of Russia and her daughter being at Sorrento. Visits were made to them by the English Prince and Princess; the latter of whom[Pg 233] wrote to the Queen that the bride-elect had an attack of fever, and she added, “We remained at Rome a day longer on account of poor Alfred. He is very patient and hopeful.” This was in April, 1873. The betrothal took place in July of the same year, and the marriage in January, 1874, at St. Petersburg. This was the only one of the marriages of the Queen’s children at which she was unable to be present. All the others have married from their mother’s house. Dean Stanley attended the Duke of Edinburgh’s marriage, and performed the English part of the service, by the Queen’s express command.

It was in May, 1873, that the most terrible sorrow fell upon Princess Alice,—the sudden, violent death of her little boy, Prince Frederick William (Frittie), aged two and a half years. This dear child had been born during the Franco-German War; Prince Louis had parted from his wife to take the command of the Hessian troops in July, 1870. “Frittie” was born on 7th October, and the husband and wife did not meet again till the end of the war, March 31st, 1871. In the interval, Princess Alice had suffered great anxiety on account of the war, and the danger to which her husband was exposed; she also exerted herself far beyond her strength in nursing the sick and wounded. But this was not a time when a generous nature counts the cost of personal services. She was in the hospital every day, late and early, and besides this, nursed wounded soldiers in her own house. She faced typhus and small-pox, and on one occasion (mentioned by Lady Bloomfield) helped to lift a wounded man who had small-pox full out upon him. The child born during these months of mental and physical strain was delicate from his birth; he had a tendency to hemorrhage which was very alarming, and during his short life he had many illnesses and ailments.[Pg 234] He was, perhaps for this very reason, the special object of his mother’s love. On the May 29th, 1873, Princess Alice having lately returned from her tour in Italy, her two little boys, Ernie and “Frittie,” were brought to her room, before she was up, to bid her “Good-morning.” By her wish they were left in the room to play about. The elder of the two little boys having run into the adjoining dressing-room, his mother followed him; during her momentary absence, the younger fell out of the open window of the bedroom on to the stone terrace below: he was alive when he was picked up, but was insensible, and only survived a few hours. No one ever knew exactly how the accident happened, but the horror and anguish of the poor mother can be imagined. It was a blow from which she never really recovered. The Queen’s heart bled for her daughter. The poor Princess wrote to her mother in August, 1873, “Many thanks for your dear letter! I am feeling so low and weak to-day that kind words are doubly soothing. You feel so with me, when you understand how long and deep my grief must be. And does one not grow to love one’s grief, as having become part of the being one loved,—as if through this one could still pay a tribute of love to him to make up for the terrible loss?” All through this cruel anguish she relied with perfect confidence on her mother’s sympathy. In September, 1873, she wrote to the Queen, “You ask me if I can play yet? I feel as if I could not, and I have not yet done so. In my own house it seems to me as if I never could play again on that piano, where little hands were nearly always thrust when I wanted to play.... Mary Teck (Duchess of Teck) came to see me, and remained two nights, so warm-hearted and sympathizing. I like to talk of him to those who love children, and can understand how great the gap,[Pg 235] how intense the pain, the ending of a bright little existence causes.” The resemblance between the mother and daughter came out in their grief. After the Prince Consort’s death, the Queen’s chief comfort was to speak of him constantly to those who had known and loved him; and the Princess Alice’s letters continually dwell on her darling child whom she had lost in such a terrible way.

Several of the Queen’s daughters, notably the Empress Frederick and Princess Alice, have shown the greatest sympathy with what is known in England as the women’s movement. They have promoted by every means in their power improved opportunities of education and employment for women, and greater social liberty for them. The Queen, it must be confessed, has never shown that she sympathizes with her daughters in their attitude on this question. Princess Alice’s letters show that Her Majesty was rather anxious and nervous about the women’s meetings and associations promoted by the Princess, and not really pleased at the ceaseless activity of her daughter’s mind on these subjects. She inquired anxiously if Princess Alice took counsel with her mother-in-law, Princess Charles of Hesse, upon them; when the Princess was studying anatomy and physiology, she, as it were, apologized to her mother for her interest in them, and said it might even be useful to be not entirely ignorant on such things: she added that she knew her mother did not like such studies, but affirmed that for her own part, instead of finding them disgusting, they filled her with admiration to see how wonderfully the human body was made. Though, on the whole, the Queen has been very far from giving encouragement, except by the magnificent example of her own life and character, to the modern movement among women for sharing in political work[Pg 236] and responsibility, she testified her interest in their higher education by opening in person, in 1887, the palatial buildings of Holloway College. It was rather a singular coincidence that the year in which the Queen did this (which was also the year of her Jubilee) a young lady, Miss Agneta Ramsay, occupied the then unprecedented position of Senior Classic in the University of Cambridge. This made 1887, in a very special degree, a woman’s year.

Another of the modern women’s movements which the Queen has promoted is their entrance into the medical profession. In 1881, a medical missionary from India, Miss Beilby, was the bearer of a message from the Maharanee of Punnah to the Queen, telling Her Majesty of the terrible sufferings of Indian women from the want of duly-qualified women doctors. The Queen was deeply moved by the tale of unnecessary suffering, and of valuable lives thrown away or blighted by the want of skilful and properly trained women to attend native women in sickness. Lord Dufferin was not long after appointed Governor-General of India, and before he left, the Queen especially charged Lady Dufferin with the task of instituting a fund to promote a regular supply of fully trained women doctors for India. This fund was inaugurated by the Marchioness of Dufferin, and is known by her name, and it has since been under the special protection of each successive Governor-General’s wife.

During the later years of her reign, Her Majesty has suffered many bereavements of those near and dear to her. Her uncle, who had been a second father to her, King Leopold, died in 1865. He had remained very faithful to his love for England and English constitutionalism. Many small indications show how his heart clung to the memories of his first marriage.[Pg 237] The eldest daughter of the second marriage was named Charlotte, after his first wife (she afterwards married the unfortunate Archduke Maximilian, who assumed the title of Emperor of Mexico, and was shot by Juarez in 1867). When King Leopold knew he was dying, he desired that he might be buried at Windsor, by the side of the wife of his youth; but his wishes were not carried out.

The outbreak of diphtheria at Darmstadt in 1878, in which the Queen lost her dearly loved second daughter and one of her grandchildren, has been already referred to. In June, 1879, the Prince Imperial, only son of the exiled Empress of the French, was killed by the Zulus in a skirmishing expedition in South Africa. The Queen’s feelings of grief were all the harder to endure because the young Prince had been serving with her army. Her sensibility on the point of national honor was deeply wounded. She was ashamed that the lad had not been defended by the Englishmen who were with him; her heart bled for the mother who had lost her only child. The same autumn, with her usual thoughtful kindness, she induced the widowed Empress Eugénie to accept the loan of Abergeldie Castle, near Balmoral; and nothing was spared which it was possible to do to console and cheer her aching heart.

The next great sorrow was the death of Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, which took place, almost suddenly, at Cannes, in March, 1884. The Prince had been delicate from his youth, and more than once had hovered between life and death. The Princess Alice wrote after one of his illnesses in 1868:—

[Pg 238]

The Prince had seemed to gain strength with years, and in 1882 he married Princess Helen of Waldeck, sister of the present Queen-Regent of Holland. A little girl was born to him and his wife in 1883, named Alice, after the sister whose words of love have just been quoted; but a little son, born in 1884, did not see the light for some four months after his father’s death. The Queen’s loving, motherly tenderness protected and sustained her young daughter-in-law in her sorrow and loneliness.

Almost as much as for the death of her children, the Queen mourned the loss of the gallant General Gordon at Khartoum early in 1885. She wrote from Osborne to Miss Gordon in February of that year:—

A few weeks later, Miss Gordon presented her brother’s Bible (which he had constantly carried with him) to the Queen, and again Her Majesty wrote a letter, vivid with her grief and shame and high appreciation of the hero whose life had been sacrificed. This second letter was left by Miss Gordon to the nation, and may now be seen, one of the most interesting of the collection of royal autographs, in the British Museum. The well-worn Bible now lies open in an enamel and crystal case, called the St. George’s Casket, in the south corridor of the private apartments at Windsor.

[Pg 239]

The death of her dearly loved eldest son-in-law in 1888 was a real heart-sorrow to the Queen. Those who saw the Jubilee procession in 1887 retain a vivid recollection that among all that splendid retinue there was no figure more noble and impressive than that of the Prince Imperial of Germany. His tall figure, martial bearing, and bronzed, manly face, set off by the white uniform he wore, made him conspicuous among the crowds of Princes and notabilities. But a cruel disease had already laid hold of him, and almost exactly a year after his apparently magnificent physique had attracted universal admiration in the crowds collected for the Jubilee, he was gathered to his fathers, and his son, our Queen’s eldest grandson, William II, reigned in his stead. The Emperor Frederick reigned for three months only; his aged father, the Emperor William I., having died in March, 1888. Many noble hopes and ambitions died with the Emperor Frederick. He had been one of the chief authors of the unity of Germany, and was the constant representative in German politics of the principle of constitutional liberty. When he took his bride from England, on a bitter winter’s day in 1858, the little Princess cried bitterly at parting from her parents and her native country. Her tears were misinterpreted by the crowd, from whom a shout proceeded, “If he doesn’t treat you well, come back to us.” The implied distrust of the Prince was wholly uncalled for; he adored his wife, and those two shared the burdens and hopes and responsibilities of their position in a way that any husband and wife might envy. It had been from first to last a marriage of true minds.

The death of the Duke of Clarence, the eldest son of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and heir to the throne in the second generation, on January 14th,[Pg 240] 1892, was another heavy blow to the Royal House. The Duke had only lately become engaged to the Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, when all the preparations for the wedding were ended by the death of the bridegroom-elect. Influenza, followed by acute pneumonia, was the cause. The whole nation mourned with and for the Queen. The tragic circumstances of the unexpected transition from wedding to funeral, from the throne to the bier, called forth a genuine expression of deep feeling from all classes. But just as a discord sometimes serves to prepare the ear for the full sweetness of a harmony, so in this case one of the most touching expressions of sympathy was called for by the refusal of some boorish members of the Miners’ Federation at Stoke to pass a vote of condolence to the Queen on the death of her grandson and heir. There were women in the immediate neighborhood, widows of men who had perished in the Oaks Colliery explosion, twenty-six years earlier. They retained a lively recollection of the Queen’s sympathy with them in their bitter grief, and the aid she had given to the fund for their relief; and to think that any men connected with coal mining should now refuse to express sympathy with the Queen, was enough, they felt, to make the very stones cry out. Little accustomed as these poor women were to address letters to great personages, they sent the following to Her Majesty:—

[Pg 242]

To appreciate all that this touching letter from working-women to their Queen means, would be to understand the great national work which Her Majesty has accomplished by her life. The throne has become once more a living power for good in our national life mainly through the unceasing devotion to her duty, high character, and practical sagacity of its present occupant. Compare the warm human feeling of genuine affection and sorrow which breathes through every line of this letter with Greville’s description of the funeral of George IV.: “A gayer company I never beheld.... They were all as merry as grigs,” and so on. Two more such kings as George IV. would have run out the English monarchy. Mr. R. L. Stevenson said in one of his stories that the first service a patriot ought to render his country was to be a good man. Being a good woman underlies all our Queen’s services to her country, and it is this which has established her throne in righteousness.

Her Majesty was deeply touched by the many expressions of affectionate sympathy which reached her from every class and from her subjects all over the world. She replied by a letter to her people setting forth in strong and simple words her mingled feelings of grief for her loss, gratitude for the sympathy expressed by the nation, and her sources of consolation:—

The noble and touching words of the last sentence fitly recall the child of eleven years old who, on first learning that she was next in the succession, lifted her little hand and said, “I will be good.”

The Duke of York, Prince George of Wales, occupies, by the death of his elder brother, the next place in the succession after his father. The union, in 1893, of the young Prince with Princess Victoria Mary of Teck (Princess May, as she was generally called) resulted in the birth of a son in May, 1894. This baby, who bears the fine historic title of Prince Edward of York, is now the third in the direct line of the succession. Pictures of the four generations, the Queen, her son, grandson, and great-grandson, have ornamented all the illustrated papers, and have been looked at with loyal interest by millions of English men and women all over the world who have mingled with their good wishes to the Royal House a heartfelt prayer that it may yet be many a long year before the Crown of England passes to another head.

[33] Times, January 26th, 1892.

Reference was made in the last chapter to the celebration of the Queen’s Jubilee in 1887. It was kept with all kinds of appropriate festivals in every part of the British Empire. But the centre and kernel of the whole celebration was the beautiful and touching national ceremony in Westminster Abbey on June 21st. On the same spot where as a young girl the Queen had knelt and had sworn fidelity to the constitution of her kingdom, and to govern according to law, justice, and mercy, the aged Queen again appeared, followed by a troop of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, to return thanks to the Almighty for the blessings of her reign and the augmenting power, prosperity, and numbers of her people. In 1837 her people had looked to her with the enthusiasm of hope; in 1887 they looked upon her with the enthusiasm of gratitude, with the memory of fifty wonderful years behind them, griefs and joys in common, common pride in the greatness and glories of England, common shame for her shortcomings; but in spite of these a common faith that earth’s best hopes rest with England, and that her growing greatness promotes the happiness and well-being of mankind. In this national festival the Queen was felt to be the emblem of national unity, the one political power in the nation that is dissociated from party, with its petty squabbles and ignoble sacrifices. While statesmen too often stand merely for their party, and may be willing to sacrifice the true and obvious interests of the whole[Pg 245] nation to gain a party majority, the Queen is more and more felt to stand for the nation that is above and beyond all party. That was the real meaning of the Jubilee, compared to which personal congratulations to a lady who had filled an important position with credit for fifty years held only a very secondary place.

It may be claimed for the Queen that she has realized, as no other modern Sovereign of this country has done, and as only a section of the public dimly appreciate, the true value of the Crown as a power which is above party, and therefore representative of the whole nation. Her function has been to check Ministers who have been ready to make national sacrifices to promote party ends; constantly, for instance, to keep before the heads of successive Governments the importance of maintaining the efficiency of the national defences. How many Prime Ministers and Chancellors of the Exchequer may have been tempted to procure a surplus, and thus obtain for their party the popularity of a remission of taxation, by neglecting to build ships and keep up our naval supremacy, but for the unwearying attention given by the Queen to all matters connected with internal and external defence. When the records of the later years of this reign come to be fully written, innumerable proofs will be given to the public that when statesmen have from time to time disdained to seize a party triumph which would bring with it a national disaster, they have either been inspired by the direct counsels of the Queen, or have received from her, after the event, immediate proof that she has watched their course of conduct with sympathy and appreciation. All government, including party government, only exists for the welfare of the governed; that is, the whole nation. It is quite natural that party leaders should often forget this; it is the function of the Crown never to[Pg 246] forget it, and to exert all its influence to prevent the interests of the nation being sacrificed for the supposed benefit of a section of it.

The Queen fully realized, and has over and over again expressed, in the most definite way, the truth that in England the real ultimate power is the will of the people. They may decide wrong, but their decision is the ultimate authority. Her own private opinions on various political questions have no weight in opposition to the will of the people. A large number of her Ministers have left on record their experience of the Queen’s complete loyalty to this fundamental principle. She will never let her private feelings or opinions stand in the way of her duty as a constitutional Sovereign. This being so, an impression has gained ground in some quarters that a Constitutional Monarch is only a sort of Chinese mandarin, mechanically nodding assent to whatever is proposed by the Ministers. This is very far from being true. All the executive officers of the Crown are directly responsible to the Queen, and she keeps a watchful eye over their departments, requiring constant reports, and to have proofs of their efficiency submitted to her. Then in matters involving conflict between parties, she exercises a moderating influence, inducing the “outs” to use their position with a due sense of responsibility to national interests, and not to think that these may be sacrificed for the mere purpose of defeating the “ins.” In matters involving conflict between the Lords and Commons, the present Sovereign has again and again prevented matters coming to a deadlock, reminding the leaders of the House of Lords of the fundamental fact that the will of the people is the ultimate source of authority, and inducing the leaders of the House of Commons to act in a spirit of statesmanlike conciliation and moderation.[Pg 247] Two examples will suffice to show how invaluable the exercise of these functions may be, and how they serve to oil the rather cumbrous machinery of the constitution. After the election of 1859, Lord Palmerston was again returned to power, but with considerably reduced majority compared to that of 1857. The Conservatives had fought the election with immense vigor. Their leader, the Earl of Derby, had given £20,000 to the war-chest for the elections. When the new Parliament met, Lord Derby’s Government was only beaten on an amendment to the Address by thirteen, so the parties were very nearly balanced. The Conservatives had expected to win, and had made immense efforts, and were proportionately disappointed. The slashing vigor of Lord Derby’s eloquence had gained for him the title of the Rupert of Debate. The expectation was that he would lead repeated sallies against the Government; but, contrary to expectation, he was unusually moderate and pacific. The reason came out when the last volume of the Greville Memoirs was published, in 1887. The Queen sent for Lord Derby, when he had left office in 1859, and entreated him not to use the power he had, from the nearly balanced state of parties, to upset Lord Palmerston’s Government. She urged the great objections there were to constant changes, and that in the critical state of foreign politics nothing ought to be done to weaken the Government. Lord Derby entirely concurred, and promised to act in conformity with her wishes. Greville says, “He has entirely done so. Nothing could be more temperate and harmless than the few remarks he made on Tuesday night.” The circumstance brings out the value of having at the head of the State an officer who is neither nominated by, nor responsible to, party. It also gives a good illustration of the Queen’s power of subordinating[Pg 248] her own private inclinations to the national welfare; because, although her feelings were softened towards Lord Palmerston, they were hardly cordial, and she strongly dissented from the view which he represented with so much vigor on the questions then at issue between Italy and Austria.

An example of the success of the Queen’s efforts to prevent conflict between the two Houses of Parliament is given in full detail in the Life of Archbishop Tait. It will be within the recollection of many readers that the election of 1868 was fought mainly on the question of the Disestablishment of the Church in Ireland, and that an enormous majority was returned to the House of Commons favorable to its disestablishment. The House of Lords, by a large majority, were in favor of the Establishment. Here, then, was a fine field for a battle between the two Houses. The new Parliament was opened on February 16th, 1869. On that morning the Archbishop of Canterbury received an autograph letter from the Queen, expressing her anxiety on the subject of the proposed measure, and adding:—

She then pointed out the desirability of a conference between Mr. Gladstone and the Archbishop on the subject of the forthcoming Disestablishment Bill; she had already paved the way for this in conversation with the Prime Minister, and was confident that while he would strictly maintain the principle of disestablishment, there were many matters connected with the question which might be open to discussion and negotiation. The interview between Mr. Gladstone and the Archbishop took place almost immediately.[Pg 249] It is hardly necessary to draw attention to the sagacity which prompted the Queen to bring about this meeting before the introduction and publication of the Bill, rather than after. It is much easier to prevent an irreconcilable hostility by friendly negotiation, than to charm it away after it has once sprung into existence. Before seeing Mr. Gladstone, the Archbishop drew up a short memorandum of four points which he considered absolutely essential; after the interview he added a note to his MS. to the effect that he had not read it to Mr. Gladstone, “As the interview took the form of an exposition of his policy by Mr. G.” In fact he rehearsed to the Archbishop, on February 19th, 1869, the famous speech which he made in the House of Commons on March 1st. The Archbishop, however, heard with great satisfaction that the four essential conditions which he had noted down prior to the interview, were practically observed by Mr. Gladstone in his proposed measure. He immediately communicated this to the Queen, and expressed his satisfaction upon it, and his desire to aid by any means in his power a course of moderation and conciliation. The Bill passed through the House of Commons practically unaltered; all amendments were rejected by immense majorities; there was, in a word, every indication that the Bill was a practical expression of the national will. Then came its fate in the Lords to be considered; and again the Archbishop, by the Queen’s commands, put himself in communication with the Prime Minister on the subject, with the view of averting a collision between the two Houses. The Archbishop gave his strenuous support to the Lords adopting the policy of passing the second reading, and amending the Bill in committee. The ordinary Conservative majority in the Lords in 1869 was about sixty; and the practical question was[Pg 250] how many of the opposition could be induced either to abstain from voting or to support the second reading. Much, the Archbishop wrote to the Queen, would depend on Lord Granville’s time in introducing the Bill in the Lords. He ventured to suggest that Her Majesty should represent this to him. He also wrote to Mr. Disraeli, and begged him to influence his friends in the House of Lords to allow the Bill to pass a second reading, in order to amend it in committee. The Archbishop spoke in this sense in the debate in the Lords, but abstained from voting; Lord Salisbury, among other well-known Conservative leaders, voted with the Government in favor of the second reading, which was carried by a majority of thirty-three. The first danger to the Bill was thus safely passed; but the acute stage of the fight between the Lords and Commons occurred over the Lords’ amendments, which were both numerous and important. The Archbishop was again in almost hourly communication with the Queen, constantly urged by her that a spirit of moderation must be shown on both sides, in order to secure a successful issue. In one of his letters to the Queen, while the war on the amendments was being waged (July 8th, 1869), the Archbishop suggested that, rather than yield on one point connected with the endowments, it would be better to defeat the Bill and risk another year of agitation. The Queen immediately replied, deprecating this course, and expressing her fear that another year of political warfare would result in worse, rather than better, terms being forced upon the Church. She herself had all along favored the plan of concurrent endowment, but the majority in the House of Commons was strongly against it, and all the amendments in this direction introduced by the Lords were disallowed. Mr. Gladstone spoke with great vehemence in[Pg 251] the House of Commons against the whole of the Lords’ amendments. His unyielding language delighted his followers, and there was a corresponding feeling of exasperation among his opponents, especially in the Lords. But when the first heat caused by his speech had subsided, and the actual points of irreconcilable difference between the two Houses were calmly considered, it was felt that though Mr. Gladstone had spoken daggers, he had used none; the Government were, as a matter of fact, prepared to give way on the clause relating to the disposal of the surplus, to accord terms more favorable to the commuting clergy of the Disestablished Church, and to concur in the postponement of the date of disestablishment. On the other hand, they nailed their colors to the mast against concurrent endowment. This indicates the basis of the compromise ultimately arrived at, and without doubt it was largely due to the efforts made by the Queen to bring it about. The Archbishop wrote in his diary, July 25th, 1869:—

He then gives a narrative of his personal activity in bringing about the compromise, and his negotiations with Lords Salisbury, Cairns, Grey, and Carnarvon on the one side, and Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville on the other, and adds, “We have made the best terms we could, and, thanks to the Queen, a collision between the two Houses has been averted.”

Through the publication of the Archbishop’s life, a detailed account of the Queen’s activity in this matter has been given to the public; but in order fully to appreciate it, it should be borne in mind that the[Pg 252] circumstances just narrated are only a specimen of what is constantly going on of the Queen’s unwearying watchfulness over national interests, so that necessary changes take place without unnecessary friction and violence. There is a passage in one of the Queen’s letters to her uncle, published in the “Life of the Prince Consort,” in which Her Majesty expresses (in 1852) her weariness of political strife, and says, “We women are not made for governing.” As this passage meets the eye we can hardly forbear the remembrance that St. Paul wrote of himself, no doubt sincerely, as the chief of sinners. No Sovereign has ever shown more diligence, tact, and courage in the fulfilment of Royal duties than the Queen, and there can be no doubt, not only of her vast knowledge, but also of her intense interest in her work, and of its high utility to the nation.

There has been no space in this little book to dwell upon the colonial expansion of England during the Queen’s reign, nor yet upon the great development of man’s powers over the forces of nature during the same period, making the England of to-day more different from the England of 1819 than the England of 1819 was from the England of Elizabeth. Neither has space allowed even a reference to the wonderful social progress that has accompanied this material development. Disraeli was perhaps the first among statesmen to grasp the fact of what England’s Colonial and Indian Empire meant, and the new place it gave this country in the world. It should not, however, be forgotten that the conception of England as a great Imperial Power is as much due to the philosopher as to the statesman. Sir John Seeley, in the field of historical research, has contributed to it as much as the practical politician. He has pointed out that “the main fact of all facts is the expansion not only of[Pg 253] the English race, but of the English State all over the globe.” The English people, it has been said, have conquered and peopled half a world in a fit of absence of mind; and it required a Jewish statesman and a Cambridge professor to point out to them that there was anything noticeable in the achievement. Disraeli had not perceived it in 1852. In that year he, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote to Lord Malmesbury, as Foreign Secretary, “These wretched colonies will all be independent in a few years, and are a millstone round our necks.” What a change between this remainder biscuit of an effete doctrine of the Manchester School, and the Imperial statesman of later years! When his life is written it will be interesting to see when and how he developed the Imperialism with which his name is now associated. His passing of the Bill in 1876 which made the Queen Empress of India has been already referred to. The Queen valued him as a statesman and as a friend more than any Prime Minister since the days of Sir Robert Peel and Lord Aberdeen. Whether he derived his Imperialism from her, or she hers from him, will not be known till the history of both lives can be fully revealed. She honored him with her regard and friendship, entirely abandoning the distrust and suspicion with which at the outset of his political career she had regarded him. In Hughenden Church she placed after his death a memorial tablet with the following inscription, written by herself:—

To the dear and honored memory of
Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield,
This memorial is placed by
His grateful and affectionate Sovereign and Friend,
Victoria, R. I.
“Kings love them that speak right.”—Prov. xvi. 13.

She wrote at the time of Lord Beaconsfield’s death to Dean Stanley:—

[Pg 254]

The Queen’s words, “his one thought for the honor and glory of the country,” are illustrative of what Her Majesty most values in her counsellors; they also indicate her conception of Royalty as a means of representing the nation, and the fusion of party differences. With the wider and wider extension of the suffrage, the House of Commons stands in danger, by its very representative character, of representing only the people who vote for it, and these are only a handful in the great world of the British Empire. The Queen has 378,000,000 subjects; of these only about six millions vote for the Members of the House of Commons. There is danger of the six millions acting with something less than justice to the unrepresented 372,000,000. The Queen constantly watches against this danger, and her well-trained eye quickly detects those among the statesmen of both parties who are able to grasp the larger conception of the duties of government, who are not prepared to destroy the Empire to buy a party majority, or who steadily decline to buy, for example, thirty seats in Lancashire, by the sacrifice of Indian fiscal interests. To such men she gives her support and encouragement, and she has consequently been, throughout her long reign, a steady influence with both parties on the side of prefering national to party ends.

That she has achieved much in this direction is undoubted, and it is also undoubted that she has achieved it mainly by the absolute sincerity of her own character, and by its spontaneous power of distinguishing between the false and the true, the noble[Pg 255] and the ignoble. With all the temptations of her position, the possession of almost unlimited power from girlhood, she has chosen to live simply and to live laboriously; with everything before her that wealth could offer in the way of pleasure, she has never found her amusements in pursuits that bring to others sorrow and misery. She has ever been the true woman, and because a true woman therefore a great Queen.

In the earlier chapters of this little book an attempt was made to indicate the formative influences on the Queen’s character, and a chief place was given, in this connection, to Baron Stockmar and to the Prince Consort. The bed-rock of the character of all three is the value they put on Love and Duty. Stockmar, towards the close of his life, wrote:—

With a similar unconscious self-revelation, the Prince Consort wrote to his eldest daughter, almost immediately after her marriage, counselling her not to think of herself, but to think of duty and service. “If,” he said, “you have succeeded in winning people’s hearts by friendliness, simplicity, and courtesy, the secret lay in this, that you were not thinking of yourself. Hold fast this mystic power; it is a spark from heaven.” The Queen’s nature was full of responsive sympathy with these “spirits finely touched to fine issues.” In her correspondence she too gives her conception of the secret of happiness. Characteristically enough, she finds her illustration in the person of her husband, and says how people are[Pg 256] struck, not only by his great power and energy, but also by his great self-denial, and constant wish to work for others. And “this,” adds the Queen, “is the happiest life. Pining for what one cannot have, and trying to run after what is pleasantest, invariably end in disappointment.”

This is the spirit which has enabled Her Majesty to fill her great position so worthily, and to have been, therefore, of untold service to the country she has loved so well.

• Early Years of the Prince Consort.
• Life of the Prince Consort.
• Memoir of Princess Alice.
• Leaves from a Journal of our Life in the Highlands.
• More Leaves.
• Earl of Malmesbury’s Autobiography.
• The Greville Memoirs.
• History of Our Own Times. By Mr. J. McCarthy, M. P.
• Life and Letters of Dean Stanley.
• Life of Archbishop Tait.
• Lady Bloomfield’s Reminiscences.
• Diary of a Lady of Quality.
• Miss Martineau’s Thirty Years’ Peace.
• Two Noble Lives.
• Life of the Earl of Shaftesbury.
• Life of Bishop Wilberforce.
• Life of Viscount Palmerston. By Hon. Evelyn Ashley.
• Life of Baron Stockmar.

[Pg 262]

• Aberdeen, Earl of, 85, 145, 175, 182.
• Aberdeen, unveiling of Prince Consort’s statue at, 221.
• Addresses of the French colonels, 1858, 198.
• Adelaide, Princess, of Hohenlohe, asked in marriage by Napoleon III., 168.
• Adelaide, Queen, 12, 13, 27, 28.
• Albany, Duke of. See Leopold.
• Albert, Prince, birth of, 14;
• childhood of, 25, 65;
• education of, 65;
• first visit to England of, 62;
• character of, 64, 81, 86, 89, 255;
• projected marriage, 25, 65;
• tour in Italy, 65;
• second visit to England, betrothal to the Queen, 66, 70;
• rumored to be a Roman Catholic, 71;
• allowance cut down in House of Commons, 74;
• precedence disallowed in House of Lords, 75, 76;
• marriage of, 79;
• favorable impression produced by, 80, 90, 91;
• difficulties of position of, 80;
• growing political influence of, 85;
• Queen’s devotion to, 67, 69, 85;
• political opinions of, 86, 178;
• religious views of, 87;
• accomplishments and tastes of, 91, 92;
• McLeod, Dr., on, 89;
• Stockmar’s influence on, 112, 118;
• title of Prince Consort conferred on, 115;
• devotion of, to his children and home, 120, 143;
• on the strength of Constitutionalism, 153;
• consults Lord Shaftesbury, 154;
• and Lord Palmerston, 156, 171, 209;
• outbreak of unpopularity against, 157, 182, 183;
• and the Great Exhibition, 173;
• on betrothal of his eldest daughter, 188;
• at Cherbourg, 196-7;
• despatch of, on Trent affair, 208;
• death of, 201-12;
• unveiling of statue of, 221.
• Alexandra, Princess of Wales, 206, 217, 228, 239.
• Alfred, Prince, Duke of Edinburgh and Duke of Coburg, 124, 131, 137, 232, 233.
• Alice, Princess, Grand Duchess of Hesse, 119, 123, 130, 201, 212, 215, 216, 220, 230, 231, 233, 234, 235.
• Alix, Princess of Hesse Darmstadt, 136.
• Anti-Corn Law agitation, 58, 99, 101.
• Arthur, Prince, Duke of Connaught, 127.
• Ashley, Lord. See Shaftesbury.
• Assassination, attempted, of Prince Alfred in Australia, 232.
• Attempts on the Queen’s life, 89, 90, 119, 139, 140, 141.

• Balmoral, 135, 136, 137, 138.
• Beatrice, Princess Henry of Battenberg, 127, 128.
• Bedchamber question, 60, 72.
• Belgians, King of the. See Leopold.
• Bloomfield, Lady, 91 n., 142;
• on betrothal of Prince Frederick William and Princess Royal, 187;
• on Princess Alice, 233.
• Bright, the Rt. Hon. John, 29, 101, 177, 207, 222.
• Brocket, Greville at, 95 n.
• Brougham, Lord, 57, 62.
• Brown, Mr. John, 223.
• Bunsen, Baron, letter from Stockmar to, 116.
• Bunsen, Baroness, 33.

• Cambridge, marriage of Duke of, 12.
• Cambridge, Princess Mary of, 169, 234.
• Cambridge, Prince of Wales at, 210.
• Canada, insurrection in, 56.
• Canning, Lady, 97, 127, 135.
• Canning, Lord, in India, 192, 194.
• Carlyle, Mr. Thomas, on the Queen, 33, 224-6.
• Caroline, Queen, 19, 23.
• Cart, death of, the Prince’s valet, 35.
• Castlereagh, Viscount, 107.
• Catholic Emancipation, 41.
• Charlotte, Princess, 12, 16, 17, 107-110.
• Charlotte, Princess of Prussia, 127.
• Charlotte, Queen, 107.
• Chartism, 58-74 n., 126.
• Cholera, 170.
• Christmas-trees, 120.
• [Pg 264]
• Civil War in the United States, Trent affair, 208.
• Claremont, 109, 166.
• Clarence, Duke of. See William IV.
• Clarence, Duke of, Prince Albert Victor of Wales, 239.
• Clarendon, Earl of, 170, 171, 177.
• Cobden, Richard, 101, 147, 148, 177, 207.
• Coburg, Duchess of, 13, 25.
• Coburg, death of Duke of, 143.
• Coburg, Duke Alfred of. See Alfred.
• Connaught, Duke of. See Arthur.
• Corn Laws, repeal of, 99-101.
• Coronation of George IV., 19.
• Coronation of William IV., 16.
• Coronation of Queen Victoria, 39.
• Coronation service, 39.
• Coup d’état, 106, 162, 163.
• Crimean War, 157, 169, 170, 171, 175-187.
• Cumberland, Ernest, Duke of, 11, 18, 41, 45, 47, 76, 107, 122, 123.

• Darmstadt, diphtheria at, 237.
• Davys, Rev. George. See Peterborough, Bishop of.
• Derby, Earl of, 90, 169, 199, 247.
• Disraeli, the Rt. Hon. B., Earl of Beaconsfield, 163, 170, 195, 250, 252.
• Dufferin, Marchioness of, and medical women in India, 236.
• Durham, Earl of, 56.

• “Early Years of Prince Consort,” 63.
• East India Company extinguished, 193.
• Edinburgh, Duke of. See Alfred.
• Empress Eugénie, 184, 197, 237.
• Empress Frederick, 117, 120, 131, 133, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 221.
• Eôs, the Prince’s greyhound, 82.
• Exhibition of 1851, 173.

• Financial Reforms of Sir Robert Peel, 103.
• Fortifications of south coast, 207.
• France, death of Prince Imperial of, 237.
• Franco-German War, 232.
• Frederick William I., King of Prussia, 122, 178.
• Frederick William II., King of Prussia and Emperor of Germany, 187, 228, 239.

• Garibaldi, 206.
• General Election, 1837, 51.
•    “           “           1841, 95.
•    “           “           1857, 198.
•    “           “           1859, 247.
• George III., 12.
• George IV., 11, 16, 18.
• German Unity, 86, 105, 107, 117, 178, 239.
• Gladstone, the Right Hon. W. E., 103, 182, 207, 248, 249.
• Gordon, death of General, 238.
• Graham, Sir James, Home Secretary, 96.
• Granville, Earl, 164, 169, 218.
• Greville’s account of Queen’s accession, 47;
• description of Queen’s announcement of her betrothal, 69;
• on Royal Family at Balmoral, 138.
• Grey, Earl, 101.
• Guizot and the Spanish marriages, 145.

• Hanover, Ernest, King of. See Cumberland.
• Hartley Colliery explosion, 218.
• Hastings, Lady Flora, 59, 72.
• Haynau, General, 159-161.
• Helen, Princess of Waldeck, Duchess of Albany, 238.
• Helena, Princess (Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein), 125, 230.
• Herbert, the Hon. Sidney, 180.
• Hesse, Prince Louis of, 202, 217, 225, 228.
• Hesse, Princess Louis of. See Alice, Princess.
• Hohenlohe, Princess Adelaide of, 168.
• Hohenlohe, Princess Feodore of, 138, 139, 218.
• Holland, Lady, 71.
• Holloway College opened by the Queen, 236.
• Hume, Mr. Joseph, 41, 74.

• Imperial, death of Prince, 237.
• India, Empress of, 194.
• India, medical women for, 236.
• India, Queen’s proclamation after Mutiny, 192.
• Indian Mutiny, 187, 193.
• Ireland, Queen’s visits to, 124, 125, 205.
• Irish Church Disestablishment Bill, 248-51.
• Irish famine, 100, 149.
• Italy, Victor Emmanuel, King of, 206.

• Jameson, Mrs., on the Queen, 38.
• Jordan, Mrs., 17.
• Juarez, 237.
• Jubilee, the Queen’s, 236, 239, 244.

• Kennington Common, Chartist assembly on, in 1848, 151.
• [Pg 265]
• Kent, Duchess of, 16, 17, 20, 21, 29, 35, 37, 79, 123, 200, 201.
• Kent, Duke of, 12, 15, 16, 107.
• Kossuth in England, 161.

• “Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands,” 34, 188.
• Lehzen, Baroness, 30, 37, 61, 111.
• Leiningen, Prince Charles of, 138.
• Leopold, Prince, afterwards King of the Belgians, 16, 20, 23, 24, 25, 30, 54, 63, 106, 108, 109, 110, 166, 202, 212, 213, 236.
• Leopold, Prince, Duke of Albany, 24, 128, 206, 212, 236.
• “Life of the Prince Consort,” 76.
• Lorne, Marquis of, 124, 220.
• Louis Philippe, 144, 146, 147, 165, 166.
• Louise, Princess, Marchioness of Lorne, 125, 153, 220.
• Lyndhurst, Lord, 57.
• Lyttleton, the Dowager Lady, 124.

• Malmesbury, Earl of, 91, 165, 169, 193, 229, 253.
• Marie, Archduchess of Russia, Duchess of Coburg, 136, 232.
• Martineau, Miss Harriet, on Queen’s early training, 31;
• on Queen’s accession, 49.
• McLeod, Dr., 89, 220.
• Medical women in India, 236.
• Melbourne, Viscount, 52, 60, 78, 94, 95 n., 99 n., 111, 121.
• Mendelssohn on the Queen’s singing, 36.
• Mexico, Emperor Maximilian and Empress Charlotte, 237.
• Mill, Mr. J. S., 56.
• Mitchel, Mr. John, 150.
• “More Leaves from a Journal of our Life in the Highlands,” 34, 223.

• Napoleon III., 162, 166, 167, 168, 184, 185, 195-8.
• Neale’s, Mr., legacy to the Queen, 139.
• Neapolitan insurrection and Lord Palmerston, 159.
• Newcastle, Duke of, 183.
• New Poor Law of 1834, 58.
• Nicholas I., Emperor of Russia, 108, 134, 176, 181.
• Nicholas II., Emperor of Russia, 136.
• Nightingale, Miss Florence, 180.
• Nursery establishment, the Queen’s, 117, 119-131.

• Oaks Colliery explosion, letter from widows to Queen, 240.
• O’Connell, Daniel, 44, 149.
• Orange plot in 1835, 41.
• Orleans family, the, 126, 166.
• Orsini plot, the, 198.
• Osborne, purchase of, 135;
• gardens of, 92, 136;
• Swiss cottage at, 135, 136.
• Oxford’s attempt on the Queen’s life, 90, 119.

• Palmerston Administration, defeat of, in 1858, 198, 199.
• Palmerston, Viscount, 91, 101, 118, 146 n., 156-172, 177, 184, 207-209.
• Paris, Queen’s visit to, 185.
• Peel, Sir Robert, 45, 58, 61, 74, 83, 85, 95-103, 134, 142.
• Peterborough, Bishop of, Queen’s preceptor, 29.
• Portugal, death of King of, 210.
• Precedence of Prince Albert disallowed in House of Lords, 77.
• Press attacks on Prince Albert, 183;
• on Princess Royal’s betrothal, 188.
• Prince Consort. See Albert.
• Prince of Wales. See Wales.
• Princess Royal. See Empress Frederick.
• Prussia, Frederick William I., King of. See Frederick William I.
• Prussia, Prince of. See William I., King of, and Emperor of Germany.
• Prussia, Frederick William, King of, and Emperor of Germany. See Frederick William II.

• Queen. See Victoria.
• Queen’s Titles Act, 195.
• Queen’s Jubilee, 236, 239, 244.

• Reform Bill, Lord Palmerston’s objections to, 171.
• Regency Bill, 1830, 37.
• Regency Bill, 1840, 89.
• Royal Household, reform of, 132-4.
• Russell, Lord John, 42, 61, 62, 101, 158, 161, 163, 171, 229.
• Russell Administration defeated, 1852, 169.
• Russell, Lady William, 171.
• Russell, Dr. W. H., 180.

• Schleswig-Holstein War, 228.
• Schleswig-Holstein, Prince Christian of, 230.
• Schleswig-Holstein, Princess Christian of. See Helena.
• Scotland, disturbances in, in 1848, 151.
• Scotland, Queen’s love of, 137, 219, 223.
• [Pg 266]
• Scott, Sir Walter, reference to Princess Victoria, 37.
• Scottish Church, Queen’s reverence for, 220.
• Sebastopol, 183, 186.
• Seeley, Sir John, 252.
• Shaftesbury, Earl of, 59, 83, 99, 154, 155.
• Spanish marriages, the, 145-8, 166.
• Stanley, Dean, 35, 174, 233.
• Stanley, Lady Augusta, 136, 203.
• Stockmar, Baron, 54, 55, 62, 65, 66, 73, 77, 85, 104-118, 145, 148, 191, 202, 255.
• Sussex, Duke of, 19, 47, 89, 90.

• Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury, 248.
• Teck, Duchess of. See Cambridge.
• Teck, Princess Victoria Mary of, 234, 240.
• Tory Party, outbreak of disloyalty in, 73.

• United Irishman, The, 150.
• United States, Civil War, Trent affair, 208.

• Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy, 206.
• Victoria, Queen, birth of, 13;
• christening of, 14;
• education of, 20, 28, 34;
• great affection of, for her uncle Leopold, 25;
• appearance of, 32, 33;
• Carlyle on, 33, 224-6;
• Baroness Bunsen on, 33;
• care of, for her household and servants, 34;
• as a musician, 36;
• Whig sympathies of, 44, 71;
• accession of, 46;
• consideration of, for Queen Adelaide, 49, 50;
• on the bedchamber question, 62;
• wishes to defer her marriage, 62, 63;
• betrothal to Prince Albert, 66;
• announces her engagement to the Council, 69;
• unpopularity with the Tories, 72, 77;
• marriage of, 79;
• efforts of, to preserve the purity of her Court, 83;
• religious views of, 88, 130, 131, 219;
• and Lord Melbourne, 52, 53, 94;
• and Sir James Graham, 96;
• and Sir Robert Peel, 61, 72, 94-103;
• Stockmar’s influence on, 111-118;
• attempts on life of, 90, 119, 139, 140, 141;
• birth of children, 119-128;
• magnanimity of, 123;
• good health of, 129, 137;
• as a mother, 129, 130, 131;
• legacy to, 139;
• a good sailor, 142, 143;
• first visit to France, 144;
• and Viscount Palmerston, 156-172;
• on the Haynau incident, 161;
• at the opening of the Great Exhibition, 173, 175;
• and Emperor Nicholas, 176;
• disapproves of Day of Humiliation for Crimean War, 178;
• visits Paris, 185;
• and Cherbourg, 196, 197;
• on her daughter’s marriage, 189;
• Indian Proclamation, 193, 194;
• reviews the Volunteers, 199, 200;
• death of mother, 201;
• death of husband, 201-211;
• unveiling the Prince’s statue at Aberdeen, 221;
• children’s marriages, 227;
• prevents war with Germany, 229;
• interest in providing medical women for India, 236;
• letter of, to Miss Gordon, 238;
• letter of, to the nation, on death of Duke of Clarence, 242;
• activity of, in preventing disputes between the Houses of Parliament, 246-252;
• on the secret of happiness, 255.
• Villiers, the Hon. Charles, 101.
• Volunteer movement, the, 198.

• Wales, Prince of, 117, 121, 185, 187, 205, 217, 228, 239.
• Wales, Princess of, 206, 215, 228, 239.
• Wellington, Duke of, 18, 41, 42, 45, 57, 60, 71, 107, 125, 151, 161, 175.
• Whigs, the Queen’s sympathies with, 44, 72.
• Wilberforce, Bishop of Winchester, 29, 88, 188, 228.
• William I., King of Prussia and Emperor of Germany, 178, 239.
• William II., King of Prussia and Emperor of Germany, 205, 228, 239.
• William IV., 12, 16, 17, 18, 20, 22, 23, 24, 46, 51, 111.
• Windsor, housekeeping at, 134.
• Wynn, Miss, account by, of Queen’s accession, 47.

• York, Duchess of, 243.
• York, Duke of, Queen’s uncle, 17.
• York, Duke of, Prince George of Wales, 243.
• York, Prince Edward of, 243.

THE RIGHT HONORABLE
WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE

A Study from Life

By HENRY W. LUCY.

12mo. Cloth. Portrait. Price, $1.25.

The obvious difficulty of writing within the limits of this volume a sketch of the career of Mr. Gladstone is the superabundance of material. The task is akin to that of a builder having had placed at his disposal materials for a palace, with instructions to erect a cottage residence, leaving out nothing essential to the larger plan. I have been content, keeping this condition in mind, rapidly to sketch, in chronological order, the main course of a phenomenally busy life, enriching the narrative wherever possible with autobiographical scraps to be found in the library of Mr. Gladstone’s public speeches, supplementing it by personal notes made over a period of twenty years, during which I have had unusual opportunities of studying the subject.—Author’s Preface.

Mr. Lucy begins with the boyhood and early home life of his subject, and in a series of twenty-six graphic chapters, some of the titles of which are “Member for Newark,” “Chancellor of the Exchequer,” “Premier,” “Pamphleteer,” “The Bradlaugh Blight,” “Egypt,” “The Kilmainham Treaty,” “The Stop-Gap Government,” “Home Rule,” “In the House and Out,” Mr. Lucy has drawn, we believe, the most accurate portrait of one of the greatest men of the century yet drawn, and has told most graphically, tersely, and at the same time comprehensively, the story of a great career not yet finished. We have nowhere seen a better description of Mr. Gladstone’s methods, of his strength and weakness as a debater, than Mr. Lucy gives us.—Boston Advertiser.

Mr. Lucy entitles his new book on Gladstone “A Study from Life.” It is more than this, for the book covers rapidly his whole life, from birth to the present time, describing with tolerable clearness the great events of which he has been a part. For an outline biography the reader will find this narrative satisfactory and readable. But the greatest interest attaches to those incidents in Gladstone’s life of which the writer has been an eye-witness. He describes with great vivacity the parliamentary function known as “drawing old Gladstone out.”—Advance.

Roberts Brothers, Boston, have just published an interesting book by Henry W. Lucy, entitled “Right Honorable W. E. Gladstone: A Study from Life.” Though not necessarily so intended, this history of Gladstone is virtually the history of his country during the period of his ascendency at least, and the book is valuable from that standpoint, because it is evidently fairly conceived and executed. The sketch of Mr. Gladstone is that of an admirer, but that will not tell against it with the world at large, which is alone an admirer of the “Grand Old Man.” Beginning with his boyhood, it pictures him with friendly but faithful hand to the end of his career as head of the English Government, in language which gives an additional charm to the book, tracing his course from the day he became Member of Parliament till he was the acknowledged champion of Home Rule, and showing how, as his mind developed with experience, it cast off original errors growing larger day by day.—Brooklyn Citizen.

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PRINCE BISMARCK

By CHARLES LOWE, M.A.,

Author of Alexander III. of Russia, &c.

12mo. Cloth. Portrait. Price, $1.25.

This work of Mr. Lowe’s responds fully to the need that has been felt, particularly in this country, for a brief but comprehensive life of Bismarck. It comes to us from an author of acknowledged reputation, who has studied the career of the Iron Chancellor with great care, and undoubtedly possesses knowledge of his subject equal to that of any other person. It is the second biography he has written of the Chancellor. His other work appeared about ten years ago in two large volumes, in which the story of Bismarck’s life and public success was told exhaustively, full use being made of all material available at that time.

The work under notice is in no sense an abridgment of the earlier biography, but is entirely new. In writing it, though, the author has had the advantage growing out of his previous undertaking, of knowing his man thoroughly, and this advantage has enabled him to write in a free and bold style, which is the great charm in a biographical work. The new work is better than the old in another important respect also,—it is up to date. In the ten years that have elapsed since the earlier biography was written, a good deal has been learned about Bismarck and his associates, and the work they were engaged in, that runs contrary to the theories and estimates of ten years ago. Mr. Lowe has made use of this new material.

Still another advantage has been the knowledge that Bismarck’s political career has ended. The view that is now presented to us is that of a finished whole,—Bismarck may be spared for years to enjoy the love of his countrymen and the high esteem of the world, but he never again will serve the Empire of Germany in a public capacity.

Mr. Lowe’s story closes with an account of the reconciliation between Emperor William and Bismarck, which was completed a little over a year ago, when the Emperor sent that famous steel cuirass to Friedrichsruh. “May the solid steel,” wrote his Majesty, “which is to cover your breast be regarded as the symbol of German gratitude which enfolds you with its steadfast loyalty, and to which I, too, desire to give my eloquent expression.” “I shall don this new breastplate,” replied the statesman Prince, “as the symbol of your Majesty’s gracious favor, and leave it to my children as a lasting memento of the same.”

Mr. Lowe is a warm admirer of Bismarck, and his admiration shows itself in almost every page of his book. We fail to notice, however, that his prejudice has warped his judgment of persons and events. He has written a biography that is as fair as anybody could write at this time, and the fact that he has a warm place in his heart for the Iron Chancellor certainly is not to his discredit as a man and a historian.—New York Times.

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THE GREAT GOD PAN AND THE
INMOST LIGHT.

BY ARTHUR MACHEN.

KEYNOTES SERIES.

16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.

A couple of tales by Arthur Machen, presumably an Englishman, published æsthetically in this country by Roberts Brothers. They are horror stories, the horror being of the vague psychologic kind and dependent, in each case, upon a man of science who tries to effect a change in individual personality by an operation upon the brain cells. The implied lesson is that it is dangerous and unwise to seek to probe the mystery separating mind and matter. These sketches are extremely strong and we guarantee the “shivers” to anyone who reads them.—Hartford Courant.

For two stories of the most marvelous and improbable character, yet told with wonderful realism and naturalness, the palm for this time will have to be awarded to Arthur Machen, for “The Great God Pan and the Inmost Light,” two stories just published in one book. They are fitting companions to the famous stories by Edgar Allan Poe both in matter and style. “The Great God Pan” is founded upon an experiment made upon a girl by which she was enabled for a moment to see the god Pan, but with most disastrous results, the most wonderful of which is revealed at the end of the story, and which solution the reader will eagerly seek to reach. From the first mystery or tragedy follow in rapid succession. “The Inmost Light” is equally as remarkable for its imaginative power and perfect air of probability. Anything in the legitimate line of psychology utterly pales before these stories of such plausibility.—Boston Home Journal.

Precisely who the great god Pan of Mr. Machen’s first tale is, we did not quite discover when we read it, or, discovering, we have forgotten; but our impression is that under the idea of that primitive great deity he impersonated, or meant to impersonate, the evil influences that attach to woman, the fatality of feminine beauty, which, like the countenance of the great god Pan, is deadly to all who behold it. His heroine is a beautiful woman, who ruins the souls and bodies of those over whom she casts her spells, being as good as a Suicide Club, if we may say so, to those who love her; and to whom she is Death. Something like this, if not this exactly, is, we take it, the interpretation of Mr. Machen’s uncanny parable, which is too obscure to justify itself as an imaginative creation and too morbid to be the production of a healthy mind. The kind of writing which it illustrates is a bad one, and this is one of the worst of the kind. It is not terrible, but horrible.—R. H. S. in Mail and Express.

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DISCORDS.
A Volume of Stories.

By GEORGE EGERTON, author of “Keynotes.”

AMERICAN COPYRIGHT EDITION.

16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.

George Egerton’s new volume entitled “Discords,” a collection of short stories, is more talked about, just now, than any other fiction of the day. The collection is really stories for story-writers. They are precisely the quality which literary folk will wrangle over. Harold Frederic cables from London to the “New York Times” that the book is making a profound impression there. It is published on both sides, the Roberts House bringing it out in Boston. George Egerton, like George Eliot and George Sand, is a woman’s nom de plume. The extraordinary frankness with which life in general is discussed in these stories not unnaturally arrests attention.—Lilian Whiting.

The English woman, known as yet only by the name of George Egerton, who made something of a stir in the world by a volume of strong stories called “Keynotes,” has brought out a new book under the rather uncomfortable title of “Discords.” These stories show us pessimism run wild; the gloomy things that can happen to a human being are so dwelt upon as to leave the impression that in the author’s own world there is no light. The relations of the sexes are treated of in bitter irony, which develops into actual horror as the pages pass. But in all this there is a rugged grandeur of style, a keen analysis of motive, and a deepness of pathos that stamp George Egerton as one of the greatest women writers of the day. “Discords” has been called a volume of stories; it is a misnomer, for the book contains merely varying episodes in lives of men and women, with no plot, no beginning nor ending.—Boston Traveller.

This is a new volume of psychological stories from the pen and brains of George Egerton, the author of “Keynotes.” Evidently the titles of the author’s books are selected according to musical principles. The first story in the book is “A Psychological Moment at Three Periods.” It is all strength rather than sentiment. The story of the child, of the girl, and of the woman is told, and told by one to whom the mysteries of the life of each are familiarly known. In their very truth, as the writer has so subtly analyzed her triple characters, they sadden one to think that such things must be; yet as they are real, they are bound to be disclosed by somebody and in due time. The author betrays remarkable penetrative skill and perception, and dissects the human heart with a power from whose demonstration the sensitive nature may instinctively shrink even while fascinated with the narration and hypnotized by the treatment exhibited.—Courier.

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PRINCE ZALESKI.

BY M. P. SHIEL.

Keynotes Series. American Copyright Edition.

16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.

The three stories by M. P. Shiel, which have just been published in the Keynotes series, make one of the most remarkable books of the time. Prince Zaleski, who figures in each, is a striking character, most artistically and dramatically presented. “The Race of Orven,” the first story, is one of great power, and it were hardly possible to tell it more skilfully. “The Stone of the Edmundsbury Monks” is in something the same vein, mysterious and gruesome. It is in “S. S.,” however, that the author most fully discloses his marvellous power as a story-teller. We have read nothing like it since the tales of E. A. Poe; but it is not an imitation of Poe. We much doubt if the latter ever wrote a story so strong and thrillingly dramatic.—Boston Advertiser.

The first of the three tales composing this little volume is entitled “The Race of Orven,” which supplies the character from whom is taken the title of the book. The other two are, “The Stone of the Edmundsbury Monks” and “The S. S.” There are three maxims on the titlepage, probably one for each of the tales,—one from Isaiah, one from Cervantes, and one from Sophocles,—but they are a triple key to the spirit of book altogether. The Prince, however, rules the contents entirely, pervading them with mysticism of every imaginable character. The “S. S.” tale is decidedly after the manner of Poe, full of mysterious problems in murders and suicides, to be treated with ingenious solutions. There is a morbid tendency running through the entire trinity, the author seeming to invent characters and complications only to exhibit his ingenuity in unravelling them, and in stringing on these ingenious theories the spiritual conceptions in which he is wont to indulge his thought. But the thought is both magnetic and bold, and rarely illusive. Hermitages, recluses, silences and funereal glooms, and the entire family of grotesque thoughts and things, are not merely wrought into the writer’s canvas, but are his very staple, the warp and woof composing it. It is an across-the-seas collection of conceits, skilfully strung on one glittering thread by a matured thinker. The attempt is made to carve out the mystery of things from the heart of the outward existence. The men and women on whom the scalpel is made to work are real flesh-and-blood entities, of such strong points of character as to be actually necessary in developing the author’s thought as much as his purpose. The book belongs to the increasing class that has come in with the introversive habit of modern thought and speculation—call it spiritual or something else.—Boston Courier.

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THE WOMAN WHO DID.

BY GRANT ALLEN.

Keynotes Series. American Copyright Edition.

16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.

A very remarkable story, which in a coarser hand than its refined and gifted author could never have been effectively told; for such a hand could not have sustained the purity of motive, nor have portrayed the noble, irreproachable character of Herminia Barton.—Boston Home Journal.

“The Woman Who Did” is a remarkable and powerful story. It increases our respect for Mr. Allen’s ability, nor do we feel inclined to join in throwing stones at him as a perverter of our morals and our social institutions. However widely we may differ from Mr. Allen’s views on many important questions, we are bound to recognize his sincerity, and to respect him accordingly. It is powerful and painful, but it is not convincing. Herminia Barton is a woman whose nobleness both of mind and of life we willingly concede; but as she is presented to us by Mr. Allen, there is unmistakably a flaw in her intellect. This in itself does not detract from the reality of the picture.—The Speaker.

In the work itself, every page, and in fact every line, contains outbursts of intellectual passion that places this author among the giants of the nineteenth century.—American Newsman.

Interesting, and at times intense and powerful.—Buffalo Commercial.

No one can doubt the sincerity of the author.—Woman’s Journal.

The story is a strong one, very strong, and teaches a lesson that no one has a right to step aside from the moral path laid out by religion, the law, and society.—Boston Times.

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