QUEEN VICTORIA BY LYTTON STRACHEY

NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, 1921

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I.    ANTECEDENTS
II.   CHILDHOOD
III.  LORD MELBOURNE
IV.   MARRIAGE
V.    LORD PALMERSTON
VI.   LAST YEARS OF THE PRINCE CONSORT
VII.  WIDOWHOOD
VIII. MR. GLADSTONE AND LORD BEACONSFIELD
IX.   OLD AGE
X.    THE END
      BIBLIOGRAPHY



QUEEN VICTORIA



CHAPTER I. ANTECEDENTS

I

On November 6, 1817, died the Princess Charlotte, only child of the Prince
Regent, and heir to the crown of England. Her short life had hardly been a
happy one. By nature impulsive, capricious, and vehement, she had always
longed for liberty; and she had never possessed it. She had been brought up
among violent family quarrels, had been early separated from her disreputable
and eccentric mother, and handed over to the care of her disreputable and
selfish father. When she was seventeen, he decided to marry her off to the
Prince of Orange; she, at first, acquiesced; but, suddenly falling in love
with Prince Augustus of Prussia, she determined to break off the engagement.
This was not her first love affair, for she had previously carried on a
clandestine correspondence with a Captain Hess. Prince Augustus was already
married, morganatically, but she did not know it, and he did not tell her.
While she was spinning out the negotiations with the Prince of Orange, the
allied sovereign--it was June, 1814--arrived in London to celebrate their
victory. Among them, in the suite of the Emperor of Russia, was the young and
handsome Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. He made several attempts to attract
the notice of the Princess, but she, with her heart elsewhere, paid very
little attention. Next month the Prince Regent, discovering that his daughter
was having secret meetings with Prince Augustus, suddenly appeared upon the
scene and, after dismissing her household, sentenced her to a strict seclusion
in Windsor Park. "God Almighty grant me patience!" she exclaimed, falling on
her knees in an agony of agitation: then she jumped up, ran down the
backstairs and out into the street, hailed a passing cab, and drove to her
mother's house in Bayswater. She was discovered, pursued, and at length,
yielding to the persuasions of her uncles, the Dukes of York and Sussex, of
Brougham, and of the Bishop of Salisbury, she returned to Carlton House at two
o'clock in the morning. She was immured at Windsor, but no more was heard of
the Prince of Orange. Prince Augustus, too, disappeared. The way was at last
open to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg.

This Prince was clever enough to get round the Regent, to impress the
Ministers, and to make friends with another of the Princess's uncles, the Duke
of Kent. Through the Duke he was able to communicate privately with the
Princess, who now declared that he was necessary to her happiness. When, after
Waterloo, he was in Paris, the Duke's aide-de-camp carried letters backwards
and forwards across the Channel. In January 1816 he was invited to England,
and in May the marriage took place.

The character of Prince Leopold contrasted strangely with that of his wife.
The younger son of a German princeling, he was at this time twenty-six years
of age; he had served with distinction in the war against Napoleon; he had
shown considerable diplomatic skill at the Congress of Vienna; and he was now
to try his hand at the task of taming a tumultuous Princess. Cold and formal
in manner, collected in speech, careful in action, he soon dominated the wild,
impetuous, generous creature by his side. There was much in her, he found, of
which he could not approve. She quizzed, she stamped, she roared with
laughter; she had very little of that self-command which is especially
required of princes; her manners were abominable. Of the latter he was a good
judge, having moved, as he himself explained to his niece many years later, in
the best society of Europe, being in fact "what is called in French de la
fleur des pois." There was continual friction, but every scene ended in the
same way. Standing before him like a rebellious boy in petticoats, her body
pushed forward, her hands behind her back, with flaming cheeks and sparkling
eyes, she would declare at last that she was ready to do whatever he wanted.
"If you wish it, I will do it," she would say. "I want nothing for myself," he
invariably answered; "When I press something on you, it is from a conviction
that it is for your interest and for your good."

Among the members of the household at Claremont, near Esher, where the royal
pair were established, was a young German physician, Christian Friedrich
Stockmar. He was the son of a minor magistrate in Coburg, and, after taking
part as a medical officer in the war, he had settled down as a doctor in his
native town. Here he had met Prince Leopold, who had been struck by his
ability, and, on his marriage, brought him to England as his personal
physician. A curious fate awaited this young man; many were the gifts which
the future held in store for him--many and various--influence, power, mystery,
unhappiness, a broken heart. At Claremont his position was a very humble one;
but the Princess took a fancy to him, called him "Stocky," and romped with him
along the corridors. Dyspeptic by constitution, melancholic by temperament, he
could yet be lively on occasion, and was known as a wit in Coburg. He was
virtuous, too, and served the royal menage with approbation. "My master," he
wrote in his diary, "is the best of all husbands in all the five quarters of
the globe; and his wife bears him an amount of love, the greatness of which
can only be compared with the English national debt." Before long he gave
proof of another quality--a quality which was to colour the whole of his
life-cautious sagacity. When, in the spring of 1817, it was known that the
Princess was expecting a child, the post of one of her physicians-in-ordinary
was offered to him, and he had the good sense to refuse it. He perceived that
his colleagues would be jealous of him, that his advice would probably not be
taken, but that, if anything were to go wrong, it would be certainly the
foreign doctor who would be blamed. Very soon, indeed, he came to the opinion
that the low diet and constant bleedings, to which the unfortunate Princess
was subjected, were an error; he drew the Prince aside, and begged him to
communicate this opinion to the English doctors; but it was useless. The
fashionable lowering treatment was continued for months. On November 5, at
nine o'clock in the evening, after a labour of over fifty hours, the Princess
was delivered of a dead boy. At midnight her exhausted strength gave way.
When, at last, Stockmar consented to see her; he went in, and found her
obviously dying, while the doctors were plying her with wine. She seized his
hand and pressed it. "They have made me tipsy," she said. After a little he
left her, and was already in the next room when he heard her call out in her
loud voice: "Stocky! Stocky!" As he ran back the death-rattle was in her
throat. She tossed herself violently from side to side; then suddenly drew up
her legs, and it was over.

The Prince, after hours of watching, had left the room for a few moments'
rest; and Stockmar had now to tell him that his wife was dead. At first he
could not be made to realise what had happened. On their way to her room he
sank down on a chair while Stockmar knelt beside him: it was all a dream; it
was impossible. At last, by the bed, he, too, knelt down and kissed the cold
hands. Then rising and exclaiming, "Now I am quite desolate. Promise me never
to leave me," he threw himself into Stockmar's arms.

II

The tragedy at Claremont was of a most upsetting kind. The royal kaleidoscope
had suddenly shifted, and nobody could tell how the new pattern would arrange
itself. The succession to the throne, which had seemed so satisfactorily
settled, now became a matter of urgent doubt.

George III was still living, an aged lunatic, at Windsor, completely
impervious to the impressions of the outer world. Of his seven sons, the
youngest was of more than middle age, and none had legitimate offspring. The
outlook, therefore, was ambiguous. It seemed highly improbable that the Prince
Regent, who had lately been obliged to abandon his stays, and presented a
preposterous figure of debauched obesity, could ever again, even on the
supposition that he divorced his wife and re-married, become the father of a
family. Besides the Duke of Kent, who must be noticed separately, the other
brothers, in order of seniority, were the Dukes of York, Clarence, Cumberland,
Sussex, and Cambridge; their situations and prospects require a brief
description. The Duke of York, whose escapades in times past with Mrs. Clarke
and the army had brought him into trouble, now divided his life between London
and a large, extravagantly ordered and extremely uncomfortable country house
where he occupied himself with racing, whist, and improper stories. He was
remarkable among the princes for one reason: he was the only one of them--so
we are informed by a highly competent observer--who had the feelings of a
gentleman. He had been long married to the Princess Royal of Prussia, a lady
who rarely went to bed and was perpetually surrounded by vast numbers of dogs,
parrots, and monkeys. They had no children. The Duke of Clarence had lived for
many years in complete obscurity with Mrs. Jordan, the actress, in Bushey
Park. By her he had had a large family of sons and daughters, and had
appeared, in effect to be married to her, when he suddenly separated from her
and offered to marry Miss Wykeham, a crazy woman of large fortune, who,
however, would have nothing to say to him. Shortly afterwards Mrs. Jordan died
in distressed circumstances in Paris. The Duke of Cumberland was probably the
most unpopular man in England. Hideously ugly, with a distorted eye, he was
bad-tempered and vindictive in private, a violent reactionary in politics, and
was subsequently suspected of murdering his valet and of having carried on an
amorous intrigue of an extremely scandalous kind. He had lately married a
German Princess, but there were as yet no children by the marriage. The Duke
of Sussex had mildly literary tastes and collected books. He had married Lady
Augusta Murray, by whom he had two children, but the marriage, under the Royal
Marriages Act, was declared void. On Lady Augusta's death, he married Lady
Cecilia Buggin; she changed her name to Underwood, but this marriage also was
void. Of the Duke of Cambridge, the youngest of the brothers, not very much
was known. He lived in Hanover, wore a blonde wig, chattered and fidgeted a
great deal, and was unmarried.

Besides his seven sons, George III had five surviving daughters. Of these,
two--the Queen of Wurtemberg and the Duchess of Gloucester--were married and
childless. The three unmarried princesses--Augusta, Elizabeth, and
Sophia--were all over forty.

III

The fourth son of George III was Edward, Duke of Kent. He was now fifty years
of age--a tall, stout, vigorous man, highly-coloured, with bushy eyebrows, a
bald top to his head, and what hair he had carefully dyed a glossy black. His
dress was extremely neat, and in his whole appearance there was a rigidity
which did not belie his character. He had spent his early life in the army--at
Gibraltar, in Canada, in the West Indies--and, under the influence of military
training, had become at first a disciplinarian and at last a martinet. In
1802, having been sent to Gibraltar to restore order in a mutinous garrison,
he was recalled for undue severity, and his active career had come to an end.
Since then he had spent his life regulating his domestic arrangements with
great exactitude, busying himself with the affairs of his numerous dependents,
designing clocks, and struggling to restore order to his finances, for, in
spite of his being, as someone said who knew him well "regle comme du papier a
musique," and in spite of an income of L24,000 a year, he was hopelessly in
debt. He had quarrelled with most of his brothers, particularly with the
Prince Regent, and it was only natural that he should have joined the
political Opposition and become a pillar of the Whigs.

What his political opinions may actually have been is open to doubt; it has
often been asserted that he was a Liberal, or even a Radical; and, if we are
to believe Robert Owen, he was a necessitarian Socialist. His relations with
Owen--the shrewd, gullible, high-minded, wrong-headed, illustrious and
preposterous father of Socialism and Co-operation--were curious and
characteristic. He talked of visiting the Mills at New Lanark, he did, in
fact, preside at one of Owen's public meetings; he corresponded with him on
confidential terms, and he even (so Owen assures us) returned, after his
death, from "the sphere of spirits" to give encouragement to the Owenites on
earth. "In an especial manner," says Owen, "I have to name the very anxious
feelings of the spirit of his Royal Highness the Late Duke of Kent (who early
informed me that there were no titles in the spititual spheres into which he
had entered), to benefit, not a class, a sect, a party, or any particular
country, but the whole of the human race, through futurity." "His whole
spirit-proceeding with me has been most beautiful," Owen adds, "making his own
appointments; and never in one instance has this spirit not been punctual to
the minute he had named." But Owen was of a sanguine temperament. He also
numbered among his proselytes President Jefferson, Prince Metternich, and
Napoleon; so that some uncertainty must still linger over the Duke of Kent's
views. But there is no uncertainty about another circumstance: his Royal
Highness borrowed from Robert Owen, on various occasions, various sums of
money which were never repaid and amounted in all to several hundred pounds.

After the death of the Princess Charlotte it was clearly important, for more
than one reason, that the Duke of Kent should marry. From the point of view of
the nation, the lack of heirs in the reigning family seemed to make the step
almost obligatory; it was also likely to be highly expedient from the point of
view of the Duke. To marry as a public duty, for the sake of the royal
succession, would surely deserve some recognition from a grateful country.
When the Duke of York had married he had received a settlement of L25,000 a
year. Why should not the Duke of Kent look forward to an equal sum? But the
situation was not quite simple. There was the Duke of Clarence to be
considered; he was the elder brother, and, if HE married, would clearly have
the prior claim. On the other hand, if the Duke of Kent married, it was
important to remember that he would be making a serious sacrifice: a lady was
involved.

The Duke, reflecting upon all these matters with careful attention, happened,
about a month after his niece's death, to visit Brussels, and learnt that Mr.
Creevey was staying in the town. Mr. Creevey was a close friend of the leading
Whigs and an inveterate gossip; and it occurred to the Duke that there could
be no better channel through which to communicate his views upon the situation
to political circles at home. Apparently it did not occur to him that Mr.
Creevey was malicious and might keep a diary. He therefore sent for him on
some trivial pretext, and a remarkable conversation ensued.

After referring to the death of the Princess, to the improbability of the
Regent's seeking a divorce, to the childlessness of the Duke of York, and to
the possibility of the Duke of Clarence marrying, the Duke adverted to his own
position. "Should the Duke of Clarence not marry," he said, "the next prince
in succession is myself, and although I trust I shall be at all times ready to
obey any call my country may make upon me, God only knows the sacrifice it
will be to make, whenever I shall think it my duty to become a married man. It
is now seven and twenty years that Madame St. Laurent and I have lived
together: we are of the same age, and have been in all climates, and in all
difficulties together, and you may well imagine, Mr. Creevey, the pang it will
occasion me to part with her. I put it to your own feelings--in the event of
any separation between you and Mrs. Creevey... As for Madame St. Laurent
herself, I protest I don't know what is to become of her if a marriage is to
be forced upon me; her feelings are already so agitated upon the subject." The
Duke went on to describe how, one morning, a day or two after the Princess
Charlotte's death, a paragraph had appeared in the Morning Chronicle, alluding
to the possibility of his marriage. He had received the newspaper at breakfast
together with his letters, and "I did as is my constant practice, I threw the
newspaper across the table to Madame St. Laurent, and began to open and read
my letters. I had not done so but a very short time, when my attention was
called to an extraordinary noise and a strong convulsive movement in Madame
St. Laurent's throat. For a short time I entertained serious apprehensions for
her safety; and when, upon her recovery, I enquired into the occasion of this
attack, she pointed to the article in the Morning Chronicle."

The Duke then returned to the subject of the Duke of Clarence. "My brother the
Duke of Clarence is the elder brother, and has certainly the right to marry if
he chooses, and I would not interfere with him on any account. If he wishes to
be king--to be married and have children, poor man--God help him! Let him do
so. For myself--I am a man of no ambition, and wish only to remain as I am...
Easter, you know, falls very early this year--the 22nd of March. If the Duke
of Clarence does not take any step before that time, I must find some pretext
to reconcile Madame St. Laurent to my going to England for a short time. When
once there, it will be easy for me to consult with my friends as to the proper
steps to be taken. Should the Duke of Clarence do nothing before that time as
to marrying it will become my duty, no doubt, to take some measures upon the
subject myself." Two names, the Duke said, had been mentioned in this
connection--those of the Princess of Baden and the Princess of Saxe-Coburg.
The latter, he thought, would perhaps be the better of the two, from the
circumstance of Prince Leopold being so popular with the nation; but before
any other steps were taken, he hoped and expected to see justice done to
Madame St. Laurent. "She is," he explained, "of very good family, and has
never been an actress, and I am the first and only person who ever lived with
her. Her disinterestedness, too, has been equal to her fidelity. When she
first came to me it was upon L100 a year. That sum was afterwards raised to
L400 and finally to L1000; but when my debts made it necessary for me to
sacrifice a great part of my income, Madame St. Laurent insisted upon again
returning to her income of L400 a year. If Madame St. Laurent is to return to
live amongst her friends, it must be in such a state of independence as to
command their respect. I shall not require very much, but a certain number of
servants and a carriage are essentials." As to his own settlement, the Duke
observed that he would expect the Duke of York's marriage to be considered the
precedent. "That," he said, "was a marriage for the succession, and L25,000
for income was settled, in addition to all his other income, purely on that
account. I shall be contented with the same arrangement, without making any
demands grounded on the difference of the value of money in 1792 and at
present. As for the payment of my debts," the Duke concluded, "I don't call
them great. The nation, on the contrary, is greatly my debtor." Here a clock
struck, and seemed to remind the Duke that he had an appointment; he rose, and
Mr. Creevey left him.

Who could keep such a communication secret? Certainly not Mr. Creevey. He
hurried off to tell the Duke of Wellington, who was very much amused, and he
wrote a long account of it to Lord Sefton, who received the letter "very
apropos," while a surgeon was sounding his bladder to ascertain whether he had
a stone. "I never saw a fellow more astonished than he was," wrote Lord Sefton
in his reply, "at seeing me laugh as soon as the operation was over. Nothing
could be more first-rate than the royal Edward's ingenuousness. One does not
know which to admire most--the delicacy of his attachment to Madame St.
Laurent, the refinement of his sentiments towards the Duke of Clarence, or his
own perfect disinterestedness in pecuniary matters."

As it turned out, both the brothers decided to marry. The Duke of Kent,
selecting the Princess of Saxe-Coburg in preference to the Princess of Baden,
was united to her on May 29, 1818. On June 11, the Duke of Clarence followed
suit with a daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. But they were disappointed
in their financial expectations; for though the Government brought forward
proposals to increase their allowances, together with that of the Duke of
Cumberland, the motions were defeated in the House of Commons. At this the
Duke of Wellington was not surprised. "By God!" he said, "there is a great
deal to be said about that. They are the damnedest millstones about the necks
of any Government that can be imagined. They have insulted--PERSONALLY
insulted--two-thirds of the gentlemen of England, and how can it be wondered
at that they take their revenge upon them in the House of Commons? It is their
only opportunity, and I think, by God! they are quite right to use it."
Eventually, however, Parliament increased the Duke of Kent's annuity by L6000.
The subsequent history of Madame St. Laurent has not transpired.

IV

The new Duchess of Kent, Victoria Mary Louisa, was a daughter of Francis, Duke
of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and a sister of Prince Leopold. The family was an
ancient one, being a branch of the great House of Wettin, which since the
eleventh century had ruled over the March of Meissen on the Elbe. In the
fifteenth century the whole possessions of the House had been divided between
the Albertine and Ernestine branches: from the former descended the electors
and kings of Saxony; the latter, ruling over Thuringia, became further
subdivided into five branches, of which the duchy of Saxe-Coburg was one. This
principality was very small, containing about 60,000 inhabitants, but it
enjoyed independent and sovereign rights. During the disturbed years which
followed the French Revolution, its affairs became terribly involved. The Duke
was extravagant, and kept open house for the swarms of refugees, who fled
eastward over Germany as the French power advanced. Among these was the Prince
of Leiningen, an elderly beau, whose domains on the Moselle had been seized by
the French, but who was granted in compensation the territory of Amorbach in
Lower Franconia. In 1803 he married the Princess Victoria, at that time
seventeen years of age. Three years later Duke Francis died a ruined man. The
Napoleonic harrow passed over Saxe-Coburg. The duchy was seized by the French,
and the ducal family were reduced to beggary, almost to starvation. At the
same time the little principality of Amorbach was devastated by the French,
Russian, and Austrian armies, marching and counter-marching across it. For
years there was hardly a cow in the country, nor enough grass to feed a flock
of geese. Such was the desperate plight of the family which, a generation
later, was to have gained a foothold in half the reigning Houses of Europe.
The Napoleonic harrow had indeed done its work, the seed was planted; and the
crop would have surprised Napoleon. Prince Leopold, thrown upon his own
resources at fifteen, made a career for himself and married the heiress of
England. The Princess of Leiningen, struggling at Amorbach with poverty,
military requisitions, and a futile husband, developed an independence of
character and a tenacity of purpose which were to prove useful in very
different circumstances. In 1814, her husband died, leaving her with two
children and the regency of the principality. After her brother's marriage
with the Princess Charlotte, it was proposed that she should marry the Duke of
Kent; but she declined, on the ground that the guardianship of her children
and the management of her domains made other ties undesirable. The Princess
Charlotte's death, however, altered the case; and when the Duke of Kent
renewed his offer, she accepted it. She was thirty-two years old--short,
stout, with brown eyes and hair, and rosy cheeks, cheerful and voluble, and
gorgeously attired in rustling silks and bright velvets.

She was certainly fortunate in her contented disposition; for she was fated,
all through her life, to have much to put up with. Her second marriage, with
its dubious prospects, seemed at first to be chiefly a source of difficulties
and discomforts. The Duke, declaring that he was still too poor to live in
England, moved about with uneasy precision through Belgium and Germany,
attending parades and inspecting barracks in a neat military cap, while the
English notabilities looked askance, and the Duke of Wellington dubbed him the
Corporal. "God damme!" he exclaimed to Mr. Creevey, "d'ye know what his
sisters call him? By God! they call him Joseph Surface!" At Valenciennes,
where there was a review and a great dinner, the Duchess arrived with an old
and ugly lady-in-waiting, and the Duke of Wellington found himself in a
difficulty. "Who the devil is to take out the maid of honour?" he kept asking;
but at last he thought of a solution. "Damme, Freemantle, find out the mayor
and let him do it." So the Mayor of Valenciennes was brought up for the
purpose, and--so we learn from Mr. Creevey--"a capital figure he was." A few
days later, at Brussels, Mr. Creevey himself had an unfortunate experience. A
military school was to be inspected--before breakfast. The company assembled;
everything was highly satisfactory; but the Duke of Kent continued for so long
examining every detail and asking meticulous question after meticulous
question, that Mr. Creevey at last could bear it no longer, and whispered to
his neighbour that he was damned hungry. The Duke of Wellington heard him, and
was delighted. "I recommend you," he said, "whenever you start with the royal
family in a morning, and particularly with THE CORPORAL, always to breakfast
first." He and his staff, it turned out, had taken that precaution, and the
great man amused himself, while the stream of royal inquiries poured on, by
pointing at Mr. Creevey from time to time with the remark, "Voila le monsieur
qui n'a pas dejeune!"

Settled down at last at Amorbach, the time hung heavily on the Duke's hands.
The establishment was small, the country was impoverished; even clock-making
grew tedious at last. He brooded--for in spite of his piety the Duke was not
without a vein of superstition--over the prophecy of a gipsy at Gibraltar who
told him that he was to have many losses and crosses, that he was to die in
happiness, and that his only child was to be a great queen. Before long it
became clear that a child was to be expected: the Duke decided that it should
be born in England. Funds were lacking for the journey, but his determination
was not to be set aside. Come what might, he declared, his child must be
English-born. A carriage was hired, and the Duke himself mounted the box.
Inside were the Duchess, her daughter Feodora, a girl of fourteen, with maids,
nurses, lap-dogs, and canaries. Off they drove--through Germany, through
France: bad roads, cheap inns, were nothing to the rigorous Duke and the
equable, abundant Duchess. The Channel was crossed, London was reached in
safety. The authorities provided a set of rooms in Kensington Palace; and
there, on May 24, 1819, a female infant was born.



CHAPTER II. CHILDHOOD

I

The child who, in these not very impressive circumstances, appeared in the
world, received but scant attention. There was small reason to foresee her
destiny. The Duchess of Clarence, two months before, had given birth to a
daughter, this infant, indeed, had died almost immediately; but it seemed
highly probable that the Duchess would again become a mother; and so it
actually fell out. More than this, the Duchess of Kent was young, and the Duke
was strong; there was every likelihood that before long a brother would
follow, to snatch her faint chance of the succession from the little princess.

Nevertheless, the Duke had other views: there were prophecies... At any rate,
he would christen the child Elizabeth, a name of happy augury. In this,
however, he reckoned without the Regent, who, seeing a chance of annoying his
brother, suddenly announced that he himself would be present at the baptism,
and signified at the same time that one of the godfathers was to be the
Emperor Alexander of Russia. And so when the ceremony took place, and the
Archbishop of Canterbury asked by what name he was to baptise the child, the
Regent replied "Alexandria." At this the Duke ventured to suggest that another
name might be added. "Certainly," said the Regent; "Georgina?" "Or Elizabeth?"
said the Duke. There was a pause, during which the Archbishop, with the baby
in his lawn sleeves, looked with some uneasiness from one Prince to the other.
"Very well, then," said the Regent at last, "call her after her mother. But
Alexandrina must come first." Thus, to the disgust of her father, the child
was christened Alexandrina Victoria.

The Duke had other subjects of disgust. The meagre grant of the Commons had by
no means put an end to his financial distresses. It was to be feared that his
services were not appreciated by the nation. His debts continued to grow. For
many years he had lived upon L7000 a year; but now his expenses were exactly
doubled; he could make no further reductions; as it was, there was not a
single servant in his meagre grant establishment who was idle for a moment
from morning to night. He poured out his griefs in a long letter to Robert
Owen, whose sympathy had the great merit of being practical. "I now candidly
state," he wrote, "that, after viewing the subject in every possible way, I am
satisfied that, to continue to live in England, even in the quiet way in which
we are going on, WITHOUT SPLENDOUR, and WITHOUT SHOW, NOTHING SHORT OF
DOUBLING THE SEVEN THOUSAND POUNDS WILL DO, REDUCTION BEING IMPOSSIBLE." It
was clear that he would be obliged to sell his house for L51,300, if that
failed, he would go and live on the Continent. "If my services are useful to
my country, it surely becomes THOSE WHO HAVE THE POWER to support me in
substantiating those just claims I have for the very extensive losses and
privations I have experienced, during the very long period of my professional
servitude in the Colonies; and if this is not attainable, IT IS A CLEAR PROOF
TO ME THAT THEY ARE THEY ARE NOT APPRECIATED; and under that impression I
shall not scruple, in DUE time, to resume my retirement abroad, when the
Duchess and myself shall have fulfilled our duties in establishing the ENGLISH
birth of my child, and giving it material nutriment on the soil of Old
England; and which we shall certainly repeat, if Providence destines, to give
us any further increase of family."

In the meantime, he decided to spend the winter at Sidmouth, "in order," he
told Owen, "that the Duchess may have the benefit of tepid sea bathing, and
our infant that of sea air, on the fine coast of Devonshire, during the months
of the year that are so odious in London." In December the move was made. With
the new year, the Duke remembered another prophecy. In 1820, a fortune-teller
had told him, two members of the Royal Family would die. Who would they be? He
speculated on the various possibilities: The King, it was plain, could not
live much longer; and the Duchess of York had been attacked by a mortal
disease. Probably it would be the King and the Duchess of York; or perhaps the
King and the Duke of York; or the King and the Regent. He himself was one of
the healthiest men in England. "My brothers," he declared, "are not so strong
as I am; I have lived a regular life. I shall outlive them all. The crown will
come to me and my children." He went out for a walk, and got his feet wet. On
coming home, he neglected to change his stockings. He caught cold,
inflammation of the lungs set in, and on January 22 he was a dying man. By a
curious chance, young Dr. Stockmar was staying in the house at the time; two
years before, he had stood by the death-bed of the Princess Charlotte; and now
he was watching the Duke of Kent in his agony. On Stockmar's advice, a will
was hastily prepared. The Duke's earthly possessions were of a negative
character; but it was important that the guardianship of the unwitting child,
whose fortunes were now so strangely changing, should be assured to the
Duchess. The Duke was just able to understand the document, and to append his
signature. Having inquired whether his writing was perfectly clear, he became
unconscious, and breathed his last on the following morning! Six days later
came the fulfilment of the second half of the gipsy's prophecy. The long,
unhappy, and inglorious life of George the Third of England was ended.

II

Such was the confusion of affairs at Sidmouth, that the Duchess found herself
without the means of returning to London. Prince Leopold hurried down, and
himself conducted his sister and her family, by slow and bitter stages, to
Kensington. The widowed lady, in her voluminous blacks, needed all her
equanimity to support her. Her prospects were more dubious than ever. She had
L6000 a year of her own; but her husband's debts loomed before her like a
mountain. Soon she learnt that the Duchess of Clarence was once more expecting
a child. What had she to look forward to in England? Why should she remain in
a foreign country, among strangers, whose language she could not speak, whose
customs she could not understand? Surely it would be best to return to
Amorbach, and there, among her own people, bring up her daughters in
economical obscurity. But she was an inveterate optimist; she had spent her
life in struggles, and would not be daunted now; and besides, she adored her
baby. "C'est mon bonheur, mes delices, mon existence," she declared; the
darling should be brought up as an English princess, whatever lot awaited her.
Prince Leopold came forward nobly with an offer of an additional L3000 a year;
and the Duchess remained at Kensington.

The child herself was extremely fat, and bore a remarkable resemblance to her
grandfather. "C'est l'image du feu Roi!" exclaimed the Duchess. "C'est le Roi
Georges en jupons," echoed the surrounding ladies, as the little creature
waddled with difficulty from one to the other.

Before long, the world began to be slightly interested in the nursery at
Kensington. When, early in 1821, the Duchess of Clarence's second child, the
Princess Elizabeth, died within three months of its birth, the interest
increased. Great forces and fierce antagonisms seemed to be moving, obscurely,
about the royal cradle. It was a time of faction and anger, of violent
repression and profound discontent. A powerful movement, which had for long
been checked by adverse circumstances, was now spreading throughout the
country. New passions, new desires, were abroad; or rather old passions and
old desires, reincarnated with a new potency: love of freedom, hatred of
injustice, hope for the future of man. The mighty still sat proudly in their
seats, dispensing their ancient tyranny; but a storm was gathering out of the
darkness, and already there was lightning in the sky. But the vastest forces
must needs operate through frail human instruments; and it seemed for many
years as if the great cause of English liberalism hung upon the life of the
little girl at Kensington. She alone stood between the country and her
terrible uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, the hideous embodiment of reaction.
Inevitably, the Duchess of Kent threw in her lot with her husband's party;
Whig leaders, Radical agitators, rallied round her; she was intimate with the
bold Lord Durham, she was on friendly terms with the redoubtable O'Connell
himself. She received Wilberforce-though, to be sure, she did not ask him to
sit down. She declared in public that she put her faith in "the liberties of
the People." It was certain that the young Princess would be brought up in the
way that she should go; yet there, close behind the throne, waiting, sinister,
was the Duke of Cumberland. Brougham, looking forward into the future in his
scurrilous fashion, hinted at dreadful possibilities. "I never prayed so
heartily for a Prince before," he wrote, on hearing that George IV had been
attacked by illness. "If he had gone, all the troubles of these villains [the
Tory Ministers] went with him, and they had Fred. I [the Duke of York] their
own man for his life. He [Fred. I] won't live long either; that Prince of
Blackguards, 'Brother William,' is as bad a life, so we come in the course of
nature to be ASSASSINATED by King Ernest I or Regent Ernest [the Duke of
Cumberland]." Such thoughts were not peculiar to Brougham; in the seething
state of public feeling, they constantly leapt to the surface; and, even so
late as the year previous to her accession, the Radical newspapers were full
of suggestions that the Princess Victoria was in danger from the machinations
of her wicked uncle.

But no echo of these conflicts and forebodings reached the little Drina--for
so she was called in the family circle--as she played with her dolls, or
scampered down the passages, or rode on the donkey her uncle York had given
her along the avenues of Kensington Gardens The fair-haired, blue-eyed child
was idolised by her nurses, and her mother's ladies, and her sister Feodora;
and for a few years there was danger, in spite of her mother's strictness, of
her being spoilt. From time to time, she would fly into a violent passion,
stamp her little foot, and set everyone at defiance; whatever they might say,
she would not learn her letters--no, she WOULD NOT; afterwards, she was very
sorry, and burst into tears; but her letters remained unlearnt. When she was
five years old, however, a change came, with the appearance of Fraulein
Lehzen. This lady, who was the daughter of a Hanoverian clergyman, and had
previously been the Princess Feodora's governess, soon succeeded in instilling
a new spirit into her charge. At first, indeed, she was appalled by the little
Princess's outbursts of temper; never in her life, she declared, had she seen
such a passionate and naughty child. Then she observed something else; the
child was extraordinarily truthful; whatever punishment might follow, she
never told a lie. Firm, very firm, the new governess yet had the sense to see
that all the firmness in the world would be useless, unless she could win her
way into little Drina's heart. She did so, and there were no more
difficulties. Drina learnt her letters like an angel; and she learnt other
things as well. The Baroness de Spath taught her how to make little board
boxes and decorate them with tinsel and painted flowers; her mother taught her
religion. Sitting in the pew every Sunday morning, the child of six was seen
listening in rapt attention to the clergyman's endless sermon, for she was to
be examined upon it in the afternoon. The Duchess was determined that her
daughter, from the earliest possible moment, should be prepared for her high
station in a way that would commend itself to the most respectable; her good,
plain, thrifty German mind recoiled with horror and amazement from the
shameless junketings at Carlton House; Drina should never be allowed to forget
for a moment the virtues of simplicity, regularity, propriety, and devotion.
The little girl, however, was really in small need of such lessons, for she
was naturally simple and orderly, she was pious without difficulty, and her
sense of propriety was keen. She understood very well the niceties of her own
position. When, a child of six, Lady Jane Ellice was taken by her grandmother
to Kensington Palace, she was put to play with the Princess Victoria, who was
the same age as herself. The young visitor, ignorant of etiquette, began to
make free with the toys on the floor, in a way which was a little too
familiar; but "You must not touch those," she was quickly told, "they are
mine; and I may call you Jane, but you must not call me Victoria." The
Princess's most constant playmate was Victoire, the daughter of Sir John
Conroy, the Duchess's major-domo. The two girls were very fond of one another;
they would walk hand in hand together in Kensington Gardens. But little Drina
was perfectly aware for which of them it was that they were followed, at a
respectful distance, by a gigantic scarlet flunkey.

Warm-hearted, responsive, she loved her dear Lehzen, and she loved her dear
Feodora, and her dear Victoire, and her dear Madame de Spath. And her dear
Mamma, of course, she loved her too; it was her duty; and yet--she could not
tell why it was--she was always happier when she was staying with her Uncle
Leopold at Claremont. There old Mrs. Louis, who, years ago, had waited on her
Cousin Charlotte, petted her to her heart's content; and her uncle himself was
wonderfully kind to her, talking to her seriously and gently, almost as if she
were a grown-up person. She and Feodora invariably wept when the too-short
visit was over, and they were obliged to return to the dutiful monotony, and
the affectionate supervision of Kensington. But sometimes when her mother had
to stay at home, she was allowed to go out driving all alone with her dear
Feodora and her dear Lehzen, and she could talk and look as she liked, and it
was very delightful.

The visits to Claremont were frequent enough; but one day, on a special
occasion, she paid one of a rarer and more exciting kind. When she was seven
years old, she and her mother and sister were asked by the King to go down to
Windsor. George IV, who had transferred his fraternal ill-temper to his
sister-in-law and her family, had at last grown tired of sulking, and decided
to be agreeable. The old rip, bewigged and gouty, ornate and enormous, with
his jewelled mistress by his side and his flaunting court about him, received
the tiny creature who was one day to hold in those same halls a very different
state. "Give me your little paw," he said; and two ages touched. Next morning,
driving in his phaeton with the Duchess of Gloucester, he met the Duchess of
Kent and her child in the Park. "Pop her in," were his orders, which, to the
terror of the mother and the delight of the daughter, were immediately obeyed.
Off they dashed to Virginia Water, where there was a great barge, full of
lords and ladies fishing, and another barge with a band; and the King ogled
Feodora, and praised her manners, and then turned to his own small niece.
"What is your favourite tune? The band shall play it." "God save the King,
sir," was the instant answer. The Princess's reply has been praised as an
early example of a tact which was afterwards famous. But she was a very
truthful child, and perhaps it was her genuine opinion.

III

In 1827 the Duke of York, who had found some consolation for the loss of his
wife in the sympathy of the Duchess of Rutland, died, leaving behind him the
unfinished immensity of Stafford House and L200,000 worth of debts. Three
years later George IV also disappeared, and the Duke of Clarence reigned in
his stead. The new Queen, it was now clear, would in all probability never
again be a mother; the Princess Victoria, therefore, was recognised by
Parliament as heir-presumptive; and the Duchess of Kent, whose annuity had
been doubled five years previously, was now given an additional L10,000 for
the maintenance of the Princess, and was appointed regent, in case of the
death of the King before the majority of her daughter. At the same time a
great convulsion took place in the constitution of the State. The power of the
Tories, who had dominated England for more than forty years, suddenly began to
crumble. In the tremendous struggle that followed, it seemed for a moment as
if the tradition of generations might be snapped, as if the blind tenacity of
the reactionaries and the determined fury of their enemies could have no other
issue than revolution. But the forces of compromise triumphed: the Reform Bill
was passed. The centre of gravity in the constitution was shifted towards the
middle classes; the Whigs came into power; and the complexion of the
Government assumed a Liberal tinge. One of the results of this new state of
affairs was a change in the position of the Duchess of Kent and her daughter.
From being the protegees of an opposition clique, they became assets of the
official majority of the nation. The Princess Victoria was henceforward the
living symbol of the victory of the middle classes.

The Duke of Cumberland, on the other hand, suffered a corresponding eclipse:
his claws had been pared by the Reform Act. He grew insignificant and almost
harmless, though his ugliness remained; he was the wicked uncle still--but
only of a story.

The Duchess's own liberalism was not very profound. She followed naturally in
the footsteps of her husband, repeating with conviction the catchwords of her
husband's clever friends and the generalisations of her clever brother
Leopold. She herself had no pretensions to cleverness; she did not understand
very much about the Poor Law and the Slave Trade and Political Economy; but
she hoped that she did her duty; and she hoped--she ardently hoped--that the
same might be said of Victoria. Her educational conceptions were those of Dr.
Arnold, whose views were just then beginning to permeate society. Dr. Arnold's
object was, first and foremost, to make his pupils "in the highest and truest
sense of the words, Christian gentlemen," intellectual refinements might
follow. The Duchess felt convinced that it was her supreme duty in life to
make quite sure that her daughter should grow up into a Christian queen. To
this task she bent all her energies; and, as the child developed, she
flattered herself that her efforts were not unsuccessful. When the Princess
was eleven, she desired the Bishops of London and Lincoln to submit her
daughter to an examination, and report upon the progress that had been made.
"I feel the time to be now come," the Duchess explained, in a letter obviously
drawn up by her own hand, "that what has been done should be put to some test,
that if anything has been done in error of judgment it may be corrected, and
that the plan for the future should be open to consideration and revision... I
attend almost always myself every lesson, or a part; and as the lady about the
Princess is a competent person, she assists Her in preparing Her lessons, for
the various masters, as I resolved to act in that manner so as to be Her
Governess myself. When she was at a proper age she commenced attending Divine
Service regularly with me, and I have every feeling that she has religion at
Her heart, that she is morally impressed with it to that degree, that she is
less liable to error by its application to her feelings as a Child capable of
reflection." "The general bent of Her character," added the Duchess, "is
strength of intellect, capable of receiving with ease, information, and with a
peculiar readiness in coming to a very just and benignant decision on any
point Her opinion is asked on. Her adherence to truth is of so marked a
character that I feel no apprehension of that Bulwark being broken down by any
circumstances." The Bishops attended at the Palace, and the result of their
examination was all that could be wished. "In answering a great variety of
questions proposed to her," they reported, "the Princess displayed an accurate
knowledge of the most important features of Scripture History, and of the
leading truths and precepts of the Christian Religion as taught by the Church
of England, as well as an acquaintance with the Chronology and principal facts
of English History remarkable in so young a person. To questions in Geography,
the use of the Globes, Arithmetic, and Latin Grammar, the answers which the
Princess returned were equally satisfactory." They did not believe that the
Duchess's plan of education was susceptible of any improvement; and the
Archbishop of Canterbury, who was also consulted, came to the same gratifying
conclusion.

One important step, however, remained to be taken. So far, as the Duchess
explained to the Bishops, the Princess had been kept in ignorance of the
station that she was likely to fill. "She is aware of its duties, and that a
Sovereign should live for others; so that when Her innocent mind receives the
impression of Her future fate, she receives it with a mind formed to be
sensible of what is to be expected from Her, and it is to be hoped, she will
be too well grounded in Her principles to be dazzled with the station she is
to look to." In the following year it was decided that she should be
enlightened on this point. The well--known scene followed: the history lesson,
the genealogical table of the Kings of England slipped beforehand by the
governess into the book, the Princess's surprise, her inquiries, her final
realisation of the facts. When the child at last understood, she was silent
for a moment, and then she spoke: "I will be good," she said. The words were
something more than a conventional protestation, something more than the
expression of a superimposed desire; they were, in their limitation and their
intensity, their egotism and their humility, an instinctive summary of the
dominating qualities of a life. "I cried much on learning it," her Majesty
noted long afterwards. No doubt, while the others were present, even her dear
Lehzen, the little girl kept up her self-command; and then crept away
somewhere to ease her heart of an inward, unfamiliar agitation, with a
handkerchief, out of her mother's sight.

But her mother's sight was by no means an easy thing to escape. Morning and
evening, day and night, there was no relaxation of the maternal vigilance. The
child grew into the girl, the girl into the young woman; but still she slept
in her mother's bedroom; still she had no place allowed her where she might
sit or work by herself. An extraordinary watchfulness surrounded her every
step: up to the day of her accession, she never went downstairs without
someone beside her holding her hand. Plainness and regularity ruled the
household. The hours, the days, the years passed slowly and methodically by.
The dolls--the innumerable dolls, each one so neatly dressed, each one with
its name so punctiliously entered in the catalogue--were laid aside, and a
little music and a little dancing took their place. Taglioni came, to give
grace and dignity to the figure, and Lablache, to train the piping treble upon
his own rich bass. The Dean of Chester, the official preceptor, continued his
endless instruction in Scripture history, while the Duchess of Northumberland,
the official governess, presided over every lesson with becoming solemnity.
Without doubt, the Princess's main achievement during her school-days was
linguistic. German was naturally the first language with which she was
familiar; but English and French quickly followed; and she became virtually
trilingual, though her mastery of English grammar remained incomplete. At the
same time, she acquired a working knowledge of Italian and some smattering of
Latin. Nevertheless, she did not read very much. It was not an occupation that
she cared for; partly, perhaps, because the books that were given her were all
either sermons, which were very dull, or poetry, which was incomprehensible.
Novels were strictly forbidden. Lord Durham persuaded her mother to get her
some of Miss Martineau's tales, illustrating the truths of Political Economy,
and they delighted her; but it is to be feared that it was the unaccustomed
pleasure of the story that filled her mind, and that she never really mastered
the theory of exchanges or the nature of rent.

It was her misfortune that the mental atmosphere which surrounded her during
these years of adolescence was almost entirely feminine. No father, no
brother, was there to break in upon the gentle monotony of the daily round
with impetuosity, with rudeness, with careless laughter and wafts of freedom
from the outside world. The Princess was never called by a voice that was loud
and growling; never felt, as a matter of course, a hard rough cheek on her own
soft one; never climbed a wall with a boy. The visits to Claremont--delicious
little escapes into male society--came to an end when she was eleven years old
and Prince Leopold left England to be King of the Belgians. She loved him
still; he was still "il mio secondo padre or, rather, solo padre, for he is
indeed like my real father, as I have none;" but his fatherliness now came to
her dimly and indirectly, through the cold channel of correspondence.
Henceforward female duty, female elegance, female enthusiasm, hemmed her
completely in; and her spirit, amid the enclosing folds, was hardly reached by
those two great influences, without which no growing life can truly
prosper--humour and imagination. The Baroness Lehzen--for she had been raised
to that rank in the Hanoverian nobility by George IV before he died--was the
real centre of the Princess's world. When Feodora married, when Uncle Leopold
went to Belgium, the Baroness was left without a competitor. The Princess gave
her mother her dutiful regards; but Lehzen had her heart. The voluble, shrewd
daughter of the pastor in Hanover, lavishing her devotion on her royal charge,
had reaped her reward in an unbounded confidence and a passionate adoration.
The girl would have gone through fire for her "PRECIOUS Lehzen," the "best and
truest friend," she declared, that she had had since her birth. Her journal,
begun when she was thirteen, where she registered day by day the small
succession of her doings and her sentiments, bears on every page of it the
traces of the Baroness and her circumambient influence. The young creature
that one sees there, self-depicted in ingenuous clarity, with her sincerity,
her simplicity, her quick affections and pious resolutions, might almost have
been the daughter of a German pastor herself. Her enjoyments, her admirations,
her engouements were of the kind that clothed themselves naturally in
underlinings and exclamation marks. "It was a DELIGHTFUL ride. We cantered a
good deal. SWEET LITTLE ROSY WENT BEAUTIFULLY!! We came home at a 1/4 past
1... At 20 minutes to 7 we went out to the Opera... Rubini came on and sang a
song out of 'Anna Boulena' QUITE BEAUTIFULLY. We came home at 1/2 past 11." In
her comments on her readings, the mind of the Baroness is clearly revealed.
One day, by some mistake, she was allowed to take up a volume of memoirs by
Fanny Kemble. "It is certainly very pertly and oddly written. One would
imagine by the style that the authoress must be very pert, and not well bred;
for there are so many vulgar expressions in it. It is a great pity that a
person endowed with so much talent, as Mrs. Butler really is, should turn it
to so little account and publish a book which is so full of trash and nonsense
which can only do her harm. I stayed up till 20 minutes past 9." Madame de
Sevigne's letters, which the Baroness read aloud, met with more approval. "How
truly elegant and natural her style is! It is so full of naivete, cleverness,
and grace." But her highest admiration was reserved for the Bishop of
Chester's 'Exposition of the Gospel of St. Matthew.' "It is a very fine book
indeed. Just the sort of one I like; which is just plain and comprehensible
and full of truth and good feeling. It is not one of those learned books in
which you have to cavil at almost every paragraph. Lehzen gave it me on the
Sunday that I took the Sacrament." A few weeks previously she had been
confirmed, and she described the event as follows: "I felt that my
confirmation was one of the most solemn and important events and acts in my
life; and that I trusted that it might have a salutary effect on my mind. I
felt deeply repentant for all what I had done which was wrong and trusted in
God Almighty to strengthen my heart and mind; and to forsake all that is bad
and follow all that is virtuous and right. I went with the firm determination
to become a true Christian, to try and comfort my dear Mamma in all her
griefs, trials, and anxieties, and to become a dutiful and affectionate
daughter to her. Also to be obedient to DEAR Lehzen, who has done so much for
me. I was dressed in a white lace dress, with a white crepe bonnet with a
wreath of white roses round it. I went in the chariot with my dear Mamma and
the others followed in another carriage." One seems to hold in one's hand a
small smooth crystal pebble, without a flaw and without a scintillation, and
so transparent that one can see through it at a glance.

Yet perhaps, after all, to the discerning eye, the purity would not be
absolute. The careful searcher might detect, in the virgin soil, the first
faint traces of an unexpected vein. In that conventual existence visits were
exciting events; and, as the Duchess had many relatives, they were not
infrequent; aunts and uncles would often appear from Germany, and cousins too.
When the Princess was fourteen she was delighted by the arrival of a couple of
boys from Wurtemberg, the Princes Alexander and Ernst, sons of her mother's
sister and the reigning duke. "They are both EXTREMELY TALL," she noted,
"Alexander is VERY HANDSOME, and Ernst has a VERY KIND EXPRESSION. They are
both extremely AMIABLE." And their departure filled her with corresponding
regrets. "We saw them get into the barge, and watched them sailing away for
some time on the beach. They were so amiable and so pleasant to have in the
house; they were ALWAYS SATISFIED, ALWAYS GOOD-HUMOURED; Alexander took such
care of me in getting out of the boat, and rode next to me; so did Ernst." Two
years later, two other cousins arrived, the Princes Ferdinand and Augustus.
"Dear Ferdinand," the Princess wrote, "has elicited universal admiration from
all parties... He is so very unaffected, and has such a very distinguished
appearance and carriage. They are both very dear and charming young men.
Augustus is very amiable, too, and, when known, shows much good sense." On
another occasion, Dear Ferdinand came and sat near me and talked so dearly and
sensibly. I do SO love him. Dear Augustus sat near me and talked with me, and
he is also a dear good young man, and is very handsome." She could not quite
decide which was the handsomer of the two. "On the whole," she concluded, "I
think Ferdinand handsomer than Augustus, his eyes are so beautiful, and he has
such a lively clever expression; BOTH have such a sweet expression; Ferdinand
has something QUITE BEAUTIFUL in his expression when he speaks and smiles, and
he is SO good." However, it was perhaps best to say that they were "both very
handsome and VERY DEAR." But shortly afterwards two more cousins arrived, who
threw all the rest into the shade. These were the Princes Ernest and Albert,
sons of her mother's eldest brother, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg. This time the
Princess was more particular in her observations. "Ernest," she remarked," is
as tall as Ferdinand and Augustus; he has dark hair, and fine dark eyes and
eyebrows, but the nose and mouth are not good; he has a most kind, honest, and
intelligent expression in his countenance, and has a very good figure. Albert,
who is just as tall as Ernest but stouter, is extremely handsome; his hair is
about the same colour as mine; his eyes are large and blue, and he has a
beautiful nose and a very sweet mouth with fine teeth; but the charm of his
countenance is his expression, which is most delightful; c'est a la fois full
of goodness and sweetness, and very clever and intelligent." "Both my
cousins," she added, "are so kind and good; they are much more formes and men
of the world than Augustus; they speak English very well, and I speak it with
them. Ernest will be 18 years old on the 21st of June, and Albert 17 on the
26th of August. Dear Uncle Ernest made me the present of a most delightful
Lory, which is so tame that it remains on your hand and you may put your
finger into its beak, or do anything with it, without its ever attempting to
bite. It is larger than Mamma's grey parrot." A little later, "I sat between
my dear cousins on the sofa and we looked at drawings. They both draw very
well, particularly Albert, and are both exceedingly fond of music; they play
very nicely on the piano. The more I see them the more I am delighted with
them, and the more I love them... It is delightful to be with them; they are
so fond of being occupied too; they are quite an example for any young
person." When, after a stay of three weeks, the time came for the young men
and their father to return to Germany, the moment of parting was a melancholy
one. "It was our last HAPPY HAPPY breakfast, with this dear Uncle and those
DEAREST beloved cousins, whom I DO love so VERY VERY dearly; MUCH MORE DEARLY
than any other cousins in the WORLD. Dearly as I love Ferdinand, and also good
Augustus, I love Ernest and Albert MORE than them, oh yes, MUCH MORE... They
have both learnt a good deal, and are very clever, naturally clever,
particularly Albert, who is the most reflecting of the two, and they like very
much talking about serious and instructive things and yet are so VERY VERY
merry and gay and happy, like young people ought to be; Albert always used to
have some fun and some clever witty answer at breakfast and everywhere; he
used to play and fondle Dash so funnily too... Dearest Albert was playing on
the piano when I came down. At 11 dear Uncle, my DEAREST BELOVED cousins, and
Charles, left us, accompanied by Count Kolowrat. I embraced both my dearest
cousins most warmly, as also my dear Uncle. I cried bitterly, very bitterly."
The Princes shared her ecstasies and her italics between them; but it is clear
enough where her secret preference lay. "Particularly Albert!" She was just
seventeen; and deep was the impression left upon that budding organism by the
young man's charm and goodness and accomplishments, and his large blue eyes
and beautiful nose, and his sweet mouth and fine teeth.

IV

King William could not away with his sister-in-law, and the Duchess fully
returned his antipathy. Without considerable tact and considerable forbearance
their relative positions were well calculated to cause ill-feeling; and there
was very little tact in the composition of the Duchess, and no forbearance at
all in that of his Majesty. A bursting, bubbling old gentleman, with
quarterdeck gestures, round rolling eyes, and a head like a pineapple, his
sudden elevation to the throne after fifty-six years of utter insignificance
had almost sent him crazy. His natural exuberance completely got the best of
him; he rushed about doing preposterous things in an extraordinary manner,
spreading amusement and terror in every direction, and talking all the time.
His tongue was decidedly Hanoverian, with its repetitions, its
catchwords--"That's quite another thing! That's quite another thing!"--its
rattling indomitability, its loud indiscreetness. His speeches, made
repeatedly at the most inopportune junctures, and filled pell-mell with all
the fancies and furies that happened at the moment to be whisking about in his
head, were the consternation of Ministers. He was one part blackguard, people
said, and three parts buffoon; but those who knew him better could not help
liking him--he meant well; and he was really good-humoured and kind-hearted,
if you took him the right way. If you took him the wrong way, however, you
must look out for squalls, as the Duchess of Kent discovered.

She had no notion of how to deal with him--could not understand him in the
least. Occupied with her own position, her own responsibilities, her duty, and
her daughter, she had no attention to spare for the peppery susceptibilities
of a foolish, disreputable old man. She was the mother of the heiress of
England; and it was for him to recognise the fact--to put her at once upon a
proper footing--to give her the precedence of a dowager Princess of Wales,
with a large annuity from the privy purse. It did not occur to her that such
pretensions might be galling to a king who had no legitimate child of his own,
and who yet had not altogether abandoned the hope of having one. She pressed
on, with bulky vigour, along the course she had laid out. Sir John Conroy, an
Irishman with no judgment and a great deal of self-importance, was her
intimate counsellor, and egged her on. It was advisable that Victoria should
become acquainted with the various districts of England, and through several
summers a succession of tours--in the West, in the Midlands, in Wales--were
arranged for her. The intention of the plan was excellent, but its execution
was unfortunate. The journeys, advertised in the Press, attracting
enthusiastic crowds, and involving official receptions, took on the air of
royal progresses. Addresses were presented by loyal citizens, the delighted
Duchess, swelling in sweeping feathers and almost obliterating the diminutive
Princess, read aloud, in her German accent, gracious replies prepared
beforehand by Sir John, who, bustling and ridiculous, seemed to be mingling
the roles of major-domo and Prime Minister. Naturally the King fumed over his
newspaper at Windsor. "That woman is a nuisance!" he exclaimed. Poor Queen
Adelaide, amiable though disappointed, did her best to smooth things down,
changed the subject, and wrote affectionate letters to Victoria; but it was
useless. News arrived that the Duchess of Kent, sailing in the Solent, had
insisted that whenever her yacht appeared it should be received by royal
salutes from all the men-of-war and all the forts. The King declared that
these continual poppings must cease; the Premier and the First Lord of the
Admiralty were consulted; and they wrote privately to the Duchess, begging her
to waive her rights. But she would not hear of it; Sir John Conroy was
adamant. "As her Royal Highness's CONFIDENTIAL ADVISER," he said, "I cannot
recommend her to give way on this point." Eventually the King, in a great
state of excitement, issued a special Order in Council, prohibiting the firing
of royal salutes to any ships except those which carried the reigning
sovereign or his consort on board.

When King William quarrelled with his Whig Ministers the situation grew still
more embittered, for now the Duchess, in addition to her other shortcomings,
was the political partisan of his enemies. In 1836 he made an attempt to
prepare the ground for a match between the Princess Victoria and one of the
sons of the Prince of Orange, and at the same time did his best to prevent the
visit of the young Coburg princes to Kensington. He failed in both these
objects; and the only result of his efforts was to raise the anger of the King
of the Belgians, who, forgetting for a moment his royal reserve, addressed an
indignant letter on the subject to his niece. "I am really ASTONISHED," he
wrote, "at the conduct of your old Uncle the King; this invitation of the
Prince of Orange and his sons, this forcing him on others, is very
extraordinary... Not later than yesterday I got a half-official communication
from England, insinuating that it would be HIGHLY desirable that the visit of
YOUR relatives SHOULD NOT TAKE PLACE THIS YEAR--qu'en dites-vous? The
relations of the Queen and the King, therefore, to the God-knows-what degree,
are to come in shoals and rule the land, when YOUR RELATIONS are to be
FORBIDDEN the country, and that when, as you know, the whole of your relations
have ever been very dutiful and kind to the King. Really and truly I never
heard or saw anything like it, and I hope it will a LITTLE ROUSE YOUR SPIRIT;
now that slavery is even abolished in the British Colonies, I do not
comprehend WHY YOUR LOT ALONE SHOULD BE TO BE KEPT A WHITE LITTLE SLAVEY IN
ENGLAND, for the pleasure of the Court, who never bought you, as I am not
aware of their ever having gone to any expense on that head, or the King's
ever having SPENT A SIXPENCE FOR YOUR EXISTENCE... Oh, consistency and
political or OTHER HONESTY, where must one look for you!"

Shortly afterwards King Leopold came to England himself, and his reception was
as cold at Windsor as it was warm at Kensington. "To hear dear Uncle speak on
any subject," the Princess wrote in her diary, "is like reading a highly
instructive book; his conversation is so enlightened, so clear. He is
universally admitted to be one of the first politicians now extant. He speaks
so mildly, yet firmly and impartially, about politics. Uncle tells me that
Belgium is quite a pattern for its organisation, its industry, and prosperity;
the finances are in the greatest perfection. Uncle is so beloved and revered
by his Belgian subjects, that it must be a great compensation for all his
extreme trouble." But her other uncle by no means shared her sentiments. He
could not, he said, put up with a water-drinker; and King Leopold would touch
no wine. "What's that you're drinking, sir?" he asked him one day at dinner.
"Water, sir." "God damn it, sir!" was the rejoinder. "Why don't you drink
wine? I never allow anybody to drink water at my table."

It was clear that before very long there would be a great explosion; and in
the hot days of August it came. The Duchess and the Princess had gone down to
stay at Windsor for the King's birthday party, and the King himself, who was
in London for the day to prorogue Parliament, paid a visit at Kensington
Palace in their absence. There he found that the Duchess had just
appropriated, against his express orders, a suite of seventeen apartments for
her own use. He was extremely angry, and, when he returned to Windsor, after
greeting the Princess with affection, he publicly rebuked the Duchess for what
she had done. But this was little to what followed. On the next day was the
birthday banquet; there were a hundred guests; the Duchess of Kent sat on the
King's right hand, and the Princess Victoria opposite. At the end of the
dinner, in reply to the toast of the King's health, he rose, and, in a long,
loud, passionate speech, poured out the vials of his wrath upon the Duchess.
She had, he declared, insulted him--grossly and continually; she had kept the
Princess away from him in the most improper manner; she was surrounded by evil
advisers, and was incompetent to act with propriety in the high station which
she filled; but he would bear it no longer; he would have her to know he was
King; he was determined that his authority should be respected; henceforward
the Princess should attend at every Court function with the utmost regularity;
and he hoped to God that his life might be spared for six months longer, so
that the calamity of a regency might be avoided, and the functions of the
Crown pass directly to the heiress-presumptive instead of into the hands of
the "person now near him," upon whose conduct and capacity no reliance
whatever could be placed. The flood of vituperation rushed on for what seemed
an interminable period, while the Queen blushed scarlet, the Princess burst
into tears, and the hundred guests sat aghast. The Duchess said not a word
until the tirade was over and the company had retired; then in a tornado of
rage and mortification, she called for her carriage and announced her
immediate return to Kensington. It was only with the utmost difficulty that
some show of a reconciliation was patched up, and the outraged lady was
prevailed upon to put off her departure till the morrow.

Her troubles, however, were not over when she had shaken the dust of Windsor
from her feet. In her own household she was pursued by bitterness and vexation
of spirit. The apartments at Kensington were seething with subdued
disaffection, with jealousies and animosities virulently intensified by long
years of propinquity and spite.

There was a deadly feud between Sir John Conroy and Baroness Lehzen. But that
was not all. The Duchess had grown too fond of her Major-Domo. There were
familiarities, and one day the Princess Victoria discovered the fact. She
confided what she had seen to the Baroness, and to the Baroness's beloved
ally, Madame de Spath. Unfortunately, Madame de Spath could not hold her
tongue, and was actually foolish enough to reprove the Duchess; whereupon she
was instantly dismissed. It was not so easy to get rid of the Baroness. That
lady, prudent and reserved, maintained an irreproachable demeanour. Her
position was strongly entrenched; she had managed to secure the support of the
King; and Sir John found that he could do nothing against her. But
henceforward the household was divided into two camps.[*] The Duchess
supported Sir John with all the abundance of her authority; but the Baroness,
too, had an adherent who could not be neglected. The Princess Victoria said
nothing, but she had been much attached to Madame de Spath, and she adored her
Lehzen. The Duchess knew only too well that in this horrid embroilment her
daughter was against her. Chagrin, annoyance, moral reprobation, tossed her to
and fro. She did her best to console herself with Sir John's affectionate
loquacity, or with the sharp remarks of Lady Flora Hastings, one of her maids
of honour, who had no love for the Baroness. The subject lent itself to
satire; for the pastor's daughter, with all her airs of stiff superiority, had
habits which betrayed her origin. Her passion for caraway seeds, for instance,
was uncontrollable. Little bags of them came over to her from Hanover, and she
sprinkled them on her bread and butter, her cabbage, and even her roast beef.
Lady Flora could not resist a caustic observation; it was repeated to the
Baroness, who pursed her lips in fury, and so the mischief grew.

[*] Greville, IV, 21; and August 15, 1839 (unpublished). "The cause of the
Queen's alienation from the Duchess and hatred of Conroy, the Duke [of
Wellington] said, was unquestionably owing to her having witnessed some
familiarities between them. What she had seen she repeated to Baroness Spaeth,
and Spaeth not only did not hold her tongue, but (he thinks) remonstrated with
the Duchess herself on the subject. The consequence was that they got rid of
Spaeth, and they would have got rid of Lehzen, too, if they had been able, but
Lehzen, who knew very well what was going on, was prudent enough not to commit
herself, and who was, besides, powerfully protected by George IV and William
IV, so that they did not dare to attempt to expel her."

V

The King had prayed that he might live till his niece was of age; and a few
days before her eighteenth birthday--the date of her legal majority--a sudden
attack of illness very nearly carried him off. He recovered, however, and the
Princess was able to go through her birthday festivities--a state ball and a
drawing-room--with unperturbed enjoyment. "Count Zichy," she noted in her
diary, "is very good-looking in uniform, but not in plain clothes. Count
Waldstein looks remarkably well in his pretty Hungarian uniform." With the
latter young gentleman she wished to dance, but there was an insurmountable
difficulty. "He could not dance quadrilles, and, as in my station I
unfortunately cannot valse and gallop, I could not dance with him." Her
birthday present from the King was of a pleasing nature, but it led to a
painful domestic scene. In spite of the anger of her Belgian uncle, she had
remained upon good terms with her English one. He had always been very kind to
her, and the fact that he had quarrelled with her mother did not appear to be
a reason for disliking him. He was, she said, "odd, very odd and singular,"
but "his intentions were often ill interpreted." He now wrote her a letter,
offering her an allowance of L10,000 a year, which he proposed should be at
her own disposal, and independent of her mother. Lord Conyngham, the Lord
Chamberlain, was instructed to deliver the letter into the Princess's own
hands. When he arrived at Kensington, he was ushered into the presence of the
Duchess and the Princess, and, when he produced the letter, the Duchess put
out her hand to take it. Lord Conyngham begged her Royal Highness's pardon,
and repeated the King's commands. Thereupon the Duchess drew back, and the
Princess took the letter. She immediately wrote to her uncle, accepting his
kind proposal. The Duchess was much displeased; L4000 a year, she said, would
be quite enough for Victoria; as for the remaining L6000, it would be only
proper that she should have that herself.

King William had thrown off his illness, and returned to his normal life. Once
more the royal circle at Windsor--their Majesties, the elder Princesses, and
some unfortunate Ambassadress or Minister's wife--might be seen ranged for
hours round a mahogany table, while the Queen netted a purse, and the King
slept, occasionally waking from his slumbers to observe "Exactly so, ma'am,
exactly so!" But this recovery was of short duration. The old man suddenly
collapsed; with no specific symptoms besides an extreme weakness, he yet
showed no power of rallying; and it was clear to everyone that his death was
now close at hand.

All eyes, all thoughts, turned towards the Princess Victoria; but she still
remained, shut away in the seclusion of Kensington, a small, unknown figure,
lost in the large shadow of her mother's domination. The preceding year had in
fact been an important one in her development. The soft tendrils of her mind
had for the first time begun to stretch out towards unchildish things. In this
King Leopold encouraged her. After his return to Brussels, he had resumed his
correspondance in a more serious strain; he discussed the details of foreign
politics; he laid down the duties of kingship; he pointed out the iniquitous
foolishness of the newspaper press. On the latter subject, indeed, he wrote
with some asperity. "If all the editors," he said, "of the papers in the
countries where the liberty of the press exists were to be assembled, we
should have a crew to which you would NOT confide a dog that you would value,
still less your honour and reputation." On the functions of a monarch, his
views were unexceptionable. "The business of the highest in a State," he
wrote, "is certainly, in my opinion, to act with great impartiality and a
spirit of justice for the good of all." At the same time the Princess's tastes
were opening out. Though she was still passionately devoted to riding and
dancing, she now began to have a genuine love of music as well, and to drink
in the roulades and arias of the Italian opera with high enthusiasm. She even
enjoyed reading poetry--at any rate, the poetry of Sir Walter Scott.

When King Leopold learnt that King William's death was approaching, he wrote
several long letters of excellent advice to his niece. "In every letter I
shall write to you," he said, "I mean to repeat to you, as a FUNDAMENTAL RULE,
TO BE FIRM, AND COURAGEOUS, AND HONEST, AS YOU HAVE BEEN TILL NOW." For the
rest, in the crisis that was approaching, she was not to be alarmed, but to
trust in her "good natural sense and the TRUTH" of her character; she was to
do nothing in a hurry; to hurt no one's amour-propre, and to continue her
confidence in the Whig administration! Not content with letters, however, King
Leopold determined that the Princess should not lack personal guidance, and
sent over to her aid the trusted friend whom, twenty years before, he had
taken to his heart by the death-bed at Claremont. Thus, once again, as if in
accordance with some preordained destiny, the figure of Stockmar is
discernible--inevitably present at a momentous hour.

On June 18, the King was visibly sinking. The Archbishop of Canterbury was by
his side, with all the comforts of the church. Nor did the holy words fall
upon a rebellious spirit; for many years his Majesty had been a devout
believer. "When I was a young man," he once explained at a public banquet, "as
well as I can remember, I believed in nothing but pleasure and folly--nothing
at all. But when I went to sea, got into a gale, and saw the wonders of the
mighty deep, then I believed; and I have been a sincere Christian ever since."
It was the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, and the dying man remembered
it. He should be glad to live, he said, over that day; he would never see
another sunset. "I hope your Majesty may live to see many," said Dr. Chambers.
"Oh! that's quite another thing, that's quite another thing," was the answer.
One other sunset he did live to see; and he died in the early hours of the
following morning. It was on June 20, 1837.

When all was over, the Archbishop and the Lord Chamberlain ordered a carriage,
and drove post-haste from Windsor to Kensington. They arrived at the Palace at
five o'clock, and it was only with considerable difficulty that they gained
admittance. At six the Duchess woke up her daughter, and told her that the
Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham were there, and wished to see her.
She got out of bed, put on her dressing-gown, and went, alone, into the room
where the messengers were standing. Lord Conyngham fell on his knees, and
officially announced the death of the King; the Archbishop added some personal
details. Looking at the bending, murmuring dignitaries before her, she knew
that she was Queen of England. "Since it has pleased Providence," she wrote
that day in her journal, "to place me in this station, I shall do my utmost to
fulfil my duty towards my country; I am very young, and perhaps in many,
though not in all things, inexperienced, but I am sure, that very few have
more real good will and more real desire to do what is fit and right than I
have." But there was scant time for resolutions and reflections. At once,
affairs were thick upon her. Stockmar came to breakfast, and gave some good
advice. She wrote a letter to her uncle Leopold, and a hurried note to her
sister Feodora. A letter came from the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne,
announcing his approaching arrival. He came at nine, in full court dress, and
kissed her hand. She saw him alone, and repeated to him the lesson which, no
doubt, the faithful Stockmar had taught her at breakfast. "It has long been my
intention to retain your Lordship and the rest of the present Ministry at the
head of affairs;" whereupon Lord Melbourne again kissed her hand and shortly
after left her. She then wrote a letter of condolence to Queen Adelaide. At
eleven, Lord Melbourne came again; and at half-past eleven she went downstairs
into the red saloon to hold her first Council. The great assembly of lords and
notables, bishops, generals, and Ministers of State, saw the doors thrown open
and a very short, very slim girl in deep plain mourning come into the room
alone and move forward to her seat with extraordinary dignity and grace; they
saw a countenance, not beautiful, but prepossessing--fair hair, blue prominent
eyes, a small curved nose, an open mouth revealing the upper teeth, a tiny
chin, a clear complexion, and, over all, the strangely mingled signs of
innocence, of gravity, of youth, and of composure; they heard a high
unwavering voice reading aloud with perfect clarity; and then, the ceremony
was over, they saw the small figure rise and, with the same consummate grace,
the same amazing dignity, pass out from among them, as she had come in, alone.



CHAPTER III. LORD MELBOURNE

I

The new queen was almost entirely unknown to her subjects. In her public
appearances her mother had invariably dominated the scene. Her private life
had been that of a novice in a convent: hardly a human being from the outside
world had ever spoken to her; and no human being at all, except her mother and
the Baroness Lehzen, had ever been alone with her in a room. Thus it was not
only the public at large that was in ignorance of everything concerning her;
the inner circles of statesmen and officials and high-born ladies were equally
in the dark. When she suddenly emerged from this deep obscurity, the
impression that she created was immediate and profound. Her bearing at her
first Council filled the whole gathering with astonishment and admiration; the
Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, even the savage Croker, even the cold and
caustic Greville--all were completely carried away. Everything that was
reported of her subsequent proceedings seemed to be of no less happy augury.
Her perceptions were quick, her decisions were sensible, her language was
discreet; she performed her royal duties with extraordinary facility. Among
the outside public there was a great wave of enthusiasm. Sentiment and romance
were coming into fashion; and the spectacle of the little girl-queen,
innocent, modest, with fair hair and pink cheeks, driving through her capital,
filled the hearts of the beholders with raptures of affectionate loyalty.
What, above all, struck everybody with overwhelming force was the contrast
between Queen Victoria and her uncles. The nasty old men, debauched and
selfish, pig-headed and ridiculous, with their perpetual burden of debts,
confusions, and disreputabilities--they had vanished like the snows of winter,
and here at last, crowned and radiant, was the spring. Lord John Russell, in
an elaborate oration, gave voice to the general sentiment. He hoped that
Victoria might prove an Elizabeth without her tyranny, an Anne without her
weakness. He asked England to pray that the illustrious Princess who had just
ascended the throne with the purest intentions and the justest desires might
see slavery abolished, crime diminished, and education improved. He trusted
that her people would henceforward derive their strength, their conduct, and
their loyalty from enlightened religious and moral principles, and that, so
fortified, the reign of Victoria might prove celebrated to posterity and to
all the nations of the earth.

Very soon, however, there were signs that the future might turn out to be not
quite so simple and roseate as a delighted public dreamed. The "illustrious
Princess" might perhaps, after all, have something within her which squared
ill with the easy vision of a well-conducted heroine in an edifying
story-book. The purest intentions and the justest desires? No doubt; but was
that all? To those who watched closely, for instance, there might be something
ominous in the curious contour of that little mouth. When, after her first
Council, she crossed the ante-room and found her mother waiting for her, she
said, "And now, Mamma, am I really and truly Queen?" "You see, my dear, that
it is so." "Then, dear Mamma, I hope you will grant me the first request I
make to you, as Queen. Let me be by myself for an hour." For an hour she
remained in solitude. Then she reappeared, and gave a significant order: her
bed was to be moved out of her mother's room. It was the doom of the Duchess
of Kent. The long years of waiting were over at last; the moment of a lifetime
had come; her daughter was Queen of England; and that very moment brought her
own annihilation. She found herself, absolutely and irretrievably, shut off
from every vestige of influence, of confidence, of power. She was surrounded,
indeed, by all the outward signs of respect and consideration; but that only
made the inward truth of her position the more intolerable. Through the
mingled formalities of Court etiquette and filial duty, she could never
penetrate to Victoria. She was unable to conceal her disappointment and her
rage. "I1 n'y a plus d'avenir pour moi," she exclaimed to Madame de Lieven;
"je ne suis plus rien." For eighteen years, she said, this child had been the
sole object of her existence, of her thoughts, her hopes, and now--no! she
would not be comforted, she had lost everything, she was to the last degree
unhappy. Sailing, so gallantly and so pertinaciously, through the buffeting
storms of life, the stately vessel, with sails still swelling and pennons
flying, had put into harbour at last; to find there nothing--a land of bleak
desolation.

Within a month of the accession, the realities of the new situation assumed a
visible shape. The whole royal household moved from Kensington to Buckingham
Palace, and, in the new abode, the Duchess of Kent was given a suite of
apartments entirely separate from the Queen's. By Victoria herself the change
was welcomed, though, at the moment of departure, she could afford to be
sentimental. "Though I rejoice to go into B. P. for many reasons," she wrote
in her diary, "it is not without feelings of regret that I shall bid adieu for
ever to this my birthplace, where I have been born and bred, and to which I am
really attached!" Her memory lingered for a moment over visions of the past:
her sister's wedding, pleasant balls and delicious concerts and there were
other recollections. "I have gone through painful and disagreeable scenes
here, 'tis true," she concluded, "but still I am fond of the poor old palace.

At the same time she took another decided step. She had determined that she
would see no more of Sir John Conroy. She rewarded his past services with
liberality: he was given a baronetcy and a pension of L3000 a year; he
remained a member of the Duchess's household, but his personal intercourse
with the Queen came to an abrupt conclusion.

II

It was clear that these interior changes--whatever else they might
betoken--marked the triumph of one person--the Baroness Lehzen. The pastor's
daughter observed the ruin of her enemies. Discreet and victorious, she
remained in possession of the field. More closely than ever did she cleave to
the side of her mistress, her pupil, and her friend; and in the recesses of
the palace her mysterious figure was at once invisible and omnipresent. When
the Queen's Ministers came in at one door, the Baroness went out by another;
when they retired, she immediately returned. Nobody knew--nobody ever will
know--the precise extent and the precise nature of her influence. She herself
declared that she never discussed public affairs with the Queen, that she was
concerned with private matters only--with private letters and the details of
private life. Certainly her hand is everywhere discernible in Victoria's early
correspondence. The Journal is written in the style of a child; the Letters
are not so simple; they are the work of a child, rearranged--with the minimum
of alteration, no doubt, and yet perceptibly--by a governess. And the
governess was no fool: narrow, jealous, provincial, she might be; but she was
an acute and vigorous woman, who had gained by a peculiar insight, a peculiar
ascendancy. That ascendancy she meant to keep. No doubt it was true that
technically she took no part in public business; but the distinction between
what is public and what is private is always a subtle one; and in the case of
a reigning sovereign--as the next few years were to show--it is often
imaginary. Considering all things--the characters of the persons, and the
character of the times--it was something more than a mere matter of private
interest that the bedroom of Baroness Lehzen at Buckingham Palace should have
been next door to the bedroom of the Queen.

But the influence wielded by the Baroness, supreme as it seemed within its own
sphere, was not unlimited; there were other forces at work. For one thing, the
faithful Stockmar had taken up his residence in the palace. During the twenty
years which had elapsed since the death of the Princess Charlotte, his
experiences had been varied and remarkable. The unknown counsellor of a
disappointed princeling had gradually risen to a position of European
importance. His devotion to his master had been not only whole--hearted but
cautious and wise. It was Stockmar's advice that had kept Prince Leopold in
England during the critical years which followed his wife's death, and had
thus secured to him the essential requisite of a point d'appui in the country
of his adoption. It was Stockmar's discretion which had smoothed over the
embarrassments surrounding the Prince's acceptance and rejection of the Greek
crown. It was Stockmar who had induced the Prince to become the constitutional
Sovereign of Belgium. Above all, it was Stockmar's tact, honesty, and
diplomatic skill which, through a long series of arduous and complicated
negotiations, had led to the guarantee of Belgian neutrality by the Great
Powers. His labours had been rewarded by a German barony and by the complete
confidence of King Leopold. Nor was it only in Brussels that he was treated
with respect and listened to with attention. The statesmen who governed
England--Lord Grey, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, Lord Melbourne--had
learnt to put a high value upon his probity and his intelligence. "He is one
of the cleverest fellows I ever saw," said Lord Melbourne, "the most discreet
man, the most well-judging, and most cool man." And Lord Palmerston cited
Baron Stockmar as the only absolutely disinterested man he had come across in
life, At last he was able to retire to Coburg, and to enjoy for a few years
the society of the wife and children whom his labours in the service of his
master had hitherto only allowed him to visit at long intervals for a month or
two at a time. But in 1836 he had been again entrusted with an important
negotiation, which he had brought to a successful conclusion in the marriage
of Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, a nephew of King Leopold's, with Queen
Maria II of Portugal. The House of Coburg was beginning to spread over Europe;
and the establishment of the Baron at Buckingham Palace in 1837 was to be the
prelude of another and a more momentous advance.

King Leopold and his counsellor provide in their careers an example of the
curious diversity of human ambitions. The desires of man are wonderfully
various; but no less various are the means by which those desires may reach
satisfaction: and so the work of the world gets done. The correct mind of
Leopold craved for the whole apparatus of royalty. Mere power would have held
no attractions for him; he must be an actual king--the crowned head of a
people. It was not enough to do; it was essential also to be recognised;
anything else would not be fitting. The greatness that he dreamt of was
surrounded by every appropriate circumstance. To be a Majesty, to be a cousin
of Sovereigns, to marry a Bourbon for diplomatic ends, to correspond with the
Queen of England, to be very stiff and very punctual, to found a dynasty, to
bore ambassadresses into fits, to live, on the highest pinnacle, an exemplary
life devoted to the public service--such were his objects, and such, in fact,
were his achievements. The "Marquis Peu-a-peu," as George IV called him, had
what he wanted. But this would never have been the case if it had not happened
that the ambition of Stockmar took a form exactly complementary to his own.
The sovereignty that the Baron sought for was by no means obvious. The
satisfaction of his essential being lay in obscurity, in invisibility--in
passing, unobserved, through a hidden entrance, into the very central chamber
of power, and in sitting there, quietly, pulling the subtle strings that set
the wheels of the whole world in motion. A very few people, in very high
places, and exceptionally well-informed, knew that Baron Stockmar was a most
important person: that was enough. The fortunes of the master and the servant,
intimately interacting, rose together. The Baron's secret skill had given
Leopold his unexceptionable kingdom; and Leopold, in his turn, as time went
on, was able to furnish the Baron with more and more keys to more and more
back doors.

Stockmar took up his abode in the Palace partly as the emissary of King
Leopold, but more particularly as the friend and adviser of a queen who was
almost a child, and who, no doubt, would be much in need of advice and
friendship. For it would be a mistake to suppose that either of these two men
was actuated by a vulgar selfishness. The King, indeed, was very well aware on
which side his bread was buttered; during an adventurous and chequered life he
had acquired a shrewd knowledge of the world's workings; and he was ready
enough to use that knowledge to strengthen his position and to spread his
influence. But then, the firmer his position and the wider his influence, the
better for Europe; of that he was quite certain. And besides, he was a
constitutional monarch; and it would be highly indecorous in a constitutional
monarch to have any aims that were low or personal.

As for Stockmar, the disinterestedness which Palmerston had noted was
undoubtedly a basic element in his character. The ordinary schemer is always
an optimist; and Stockmar, racked by dyspepsia and haunted by gloomy
forebodings, was a constitutionally melancholy man. A schemer, no doubt, he
was; but he schemed distrustfully, splenetically, to do good. To do good! What
nobler end could a man scheme for? Yet it is perilous to scheme at all.

With Lehzen to supervise every detail of her conduct, with Stockmar in the
next room, so full of wisdom and experience of affairs, with her Uncle
Leopold's letters, too, pouring out so constantly their stream of
encouragements, general reflections, and highly valuable tips, Victoria, even
had she been without other guidance, would have stood in no lack of private
counsellor. But other guidance she had; for all these influences paled before
a new star, of the first magnitude, which, rising suddenly upon her horizon,
immediately dominated her life.

III

William Lamb, Viscount Melbourne, was fifty-eight years of age, and had been
for the last three years Prime Minister of England. In every outward respect
he was one of the most fortunate of mankind. He had been born into the midst
of riches, brilliance, and power. His mother, fascinating and intelligent, had
been a great Whig hostess, and he had been bred up as a member of that radiant
society which, during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, concentrated
within itself the ultimate perfections of a hundred years of triumphant
aristocracy. Nature had given him beauty and brains; the unexpected death of
an elder brother brought him wealth, a peerage, and the possibility of high
advancement. Within that charmed circle, whatever one's personal disabilities,
it was difficult to fail; and to him, with all his advantages, success was
well-nigh unavoidable. With little effort, he attained political eminence. On
the triumph of the Whigs he became one of the leading members of the
Government; and when Lord Grey retired from the premiership he quietly stepped
into the vacant place. Nor was it only in the visible signs of fortune that
Fate had been kind to him. Bound to succeed, and to succeed easily, he was
gifted with so fine a nature that his success became him. His mind, at once
supple and copious, his temperament, at once calm and sensitive, enabled him
not merely to work, but to live with perfect facility and with the grace of
strength. In society he was a notable talker, a captivating companion, a
charming man. If one looked deeper, one saw at once that he was not ordinary,
that the piquancies of his conversation and his manner--his free-and-easy
vaguenesses, his abrupt questions, his lollings and loungings, his innumerable
oaths--were something more than an amusing ornament, were the outward
manifestation of an individuality that was fundamental.

The precise nature of this individuality was very difficult to gauge: it was
dubious, complex, perhaps self--contradictory. Certainly there was an ironical
discordance between the inner history of the man and his apparent fortunes. He
owed all he had to his birth, and his birth was shameful; it was known well
enough that his mother had passionately loved Lord Egremont, and that Lord
Melbourne was not his father. His marriage, which had seemed to be the crown
of his youthful ardours, was a long, miserable, desperate failure: the
incredible Lady Caroline, "With pleasures too refined to please, With too much
spirit to be e'er at ease, With too much quickness to be ever taught, With too
much thinking to have common thought," was very nearly the destruction of his
life. When at last he emerged from the anguish and confusion of her folly, her
extravagance, her rage, her despair, and her devotion, he was left alone with
endless memories of intermingled farce and tragedy, and an only son, who was
an imbecile. But there was something else that he owed to Lady Caroline. While
she whirled with Byron in a hectic frenzy of love and fashion, he had stayed
at home in an indulgence bordering on cynicism, and occupied his solitude with
reading. It was thus that he had acquired those habits of study, that love of
learning, and that wide and accurate knowledge of ancient and modern
literature, which formed so unexpected a part of his mental equipment. His
passion for reading never deserted him; even when he was Prime Minister he
found time to master every new important book. With an incongruousness that
was characteristic, his favourite study was theology. An accomplished
classical scholar, he was deeply read in the Fathers of the Church; heavy
volumes of commentary and exegesis he examined with scrupulous diligence; and
at any odd moment he might be found turning over the pages of the Bible. To
the ladies whom he most liked, he would lend some learned work on the
Revelation, crammed with marginal notes in his own hand, or Dr. Lardner's
"Observations upon the Jewish Errors with respect to the Conversion of Mary
Magdalene." The more pious among them had high hopes that these studies would
lead him into the right way; but of this there were no symptoms in his
after-dinner conversations.

The paradox of his political career was no less curious. By temperament an
aristocrat, by conviction a conservative, he came to power as the leader of
the popular party, the party of change. He had profoundly disliked the Reform
Bill, which he had only accepted at last as a necessary evil; and the Reform
Bill lay at the root of the very existence, of the very meaning, of his
government. He was far too sceptical to believe in progress of any kind.
Things were best as they were or rather, they were least bad. "You'd better
try to do no good," was one of his dictums, "and then you'll get into no
scrapes." Education at best was futile; education of the poor was positively
dangerous. The factory children? "Oh, if you'd only have the goodness to leave
them alone!" Free Trade was a delusion; the ballot was nonsense; and there was
no such thing as a democracy.

Nevertheless, he was not a reactionary; he was simply an opportunist. The
whole duty of government, he said, was "to prevent crime and to preserve
contracts." All one could really hope to do was to carry on. He himself
carried on in a remarkable manner--with perpetual compromises, with
fluctuations and contradictions, with every kind of weakness, and yet with
shrewdness, with gentleness, even with conscientiousness, and a light and airy
mastery of men and of events. He conducted the transactions of business with
extraordinary nonchalance. Important persons, ushered up for some grave
interview, found him in a towselled bed, littered with books and papers, or
vaguely shaving in a dressing-room; but, when they went downstairs again, they
would realise that somehow or other they had been pumped. When he had to
receive a deputation, he could hardly ever do so with becoming gravity. The
worthy delegates of the tallow-chandlers, or the Society for the Abolition of
Capital Punishment, were distressed and mortified when, in the midst of their
speeches, the Prime Minister became absorbed in blowing a feather, or suddenly
cracked an unseemly joke. How could they have guessed that he had spent the
night before diligently getting up the details of their case? He hated
patronage and the making of appointments--a feeling rare in Ministers. "As for
the Bishops," he burst out, "I positively believe they die to vex me." But
when at last the appointment was made, it was made with keen discrimination.
His colleagues observed another symptom--was it of his irresponsibility or his
wisdom? He went to sleep in the Cabinet.

Probably, if he had been born a little earlier, he would have been a simpler
and a happier man. As it was, he was a child of the eighteenth century whose
lot was cast in a new, difficult, unsympathetic age. He was an autumn rose.
With all his gracious amenity, his humour, his happy-go-lucky ways, a deep
disquietude possessed him. A sentimental cynic, a sceptical believer, he was
restless and melancholy at heart. Above all, he could never harden himself;
those sensitive petals shivered in every wind. Whatever else he might be, one
thing was certain: Lord Melbourne was always human, supremely human--too
human, perhaps.

And now, with old age upon him, his life took a sudden, new, extraordinary
turn. He became, in the twinkling of an eye, the intimate adviser and the
daily companion of a young girl who had stepped all at once from a nursery to
a throne. His relations with women had been, like everything else about him,
ambiguous. Nobody had ever been able quite to gauge the shifting, emotional
complexities of his married life; Lady Caroline vanished; but his peculiar
susceptibilities remained. Female society of some kind or other was necessary
to him, and he did not stint himself; a great part of every day was invariably
spent in it. The feminine element in him made it easy, made it natural and
inevitable for him to be the friend of a great many women; but the masculine
element in him was strong as well. In such circumstances it is also easy, it
is even natural, perhaps it is even inevitable, to be something more than a
friend. There were rumours and combustions. Lord Melbourne was twice a
co-respondent in a divorce action; but on each occasion he won his suit. The
lovely Lady Brandon, the unhappy and brilliant Mrs. Norton... the law
exonerated them both. Beyond that hung an impenetrable veil. But at any rate
it was clear that, with such a record, the Prime Minister's position in
Buckingham Palace must be a highly delicate one. However, he was used to
delicacies, and he met the situation with consummate success. His behaviour
was from the first moment impeccable. His manner towards the young Queen
mingled, with perfect facility, the watchfulness and the respect of a
statesman and a courtier with the tender solicitude of a parent. He was at
once reverential and affectionate, at once the servant and the guide. At the
same time the habits of his life underwent a surprising change. His
comfortable, unpunctual days became subject to the unaltering routine of a
palace; no longer did he sprawl on sofas; not a single "damn" escaped his
lips. The man of the world who had been the friend of Byron and the regent,
the talker whose paradoxes had held Holland House enthralled, the cynic whose
ribaldries had enlivened so many deep potations, the lover whose soft words
had captivated such beauty and such passion and such wit, might now be seen,
evening after evening, talking with infinite politeness to a schoolgirl, bolt
upright, amid the silence and the rigidity of Court etiquette.

IV

On her side, Victoria was instantaneously fascinated by Lord Melbourne. The
good report of Stockmar had no doubt prepared the way; Lehzen was wisely
propitiated; and the first highly favourable impression was never afterwards
belied. She found him perfect; and perfect in her sight he remained. Her
absolute and unconcealed adoration was very natural; what innocent young
creature could have resisted, in any circumstances, the charm and the devotion
of such a man? But, in her situation, there was a special influence which gave
a peculiar glow to all she felt. After years of emptiness and dullness and
suppression, she had come suddenly, in the heyday of youth, into freedom and
power. She was mistress of herself, of great domains and palaces; she was
Queen of England. Responsibilities and difficulties she might have, no doubt,
and in heavy measure; but one feeling dominated and absorbed all others--the
feeling of joy. Everything pleased her. She was in high spirits from morning
till night. Mr. Creevey, grown old now, and very near his end, catching a
glimpse of her at Brighton, was much amused, in his sharp fashion, by the
ingenuous gaiety of "little Vic." "A more homely little being you never
beheld, when she is at her ease, and she is evidently dying to be always more
so. She laughs in real earnest, opening her mouth as wide as it can go,
showing not very pretty gums... She eats quite as heartily as she laughs, I
think I may say she gobbles... She blushes and laughs every instant in so
natural a way as to disarm anybody." But it was not merely when she was
laughing or gobbling that she enjoyed herself; the performance of her official
duties gave her intense satisfaction. "I really have immensely to do," she
wrote in her Journal a few days after her accession; "I receive so many
communications from my Ministers, but I like it very much." And again, a week
later, "I repeat what I said before that I have so many communications from
the Ministers, and from me to them, and I get so many papers to sign every
day, that I have always a very great deal to do. I delight in this work."
Through the girl's immaturity the vigorous predestined tastes of the woman
were pushing themselves into existence with eager velocity, with delicious
force.

One detail of her happy situation deserves particular mention. Apart from the
splendour of her social position and the momentousness of her political one,
she was a person of great wealth. As soon as Parliament met, an annuity of
L385,000 was settled upon her. When the expenses of her household had been
discharged, she was left with L68,000 a year of her own. She enjoyed besides
the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster, which amounted annually to over
L27,000. The first use to which she put her money was characteristic: she paid
off her father's debts. In money matters, no less than in other matters, she
was determined to be correct. She had the instincts of a man of business; and
she never could have borne to be in a position that was financially unsound.

With youth and happiness gilding every hour, the days passed merrily enough.
And each day hinged upon Lord Melbourne. Her diary shows us, with undiminished
clarity, the life of the young sovereign during the early months of her
reign--a life satisfactorily regular, full of delightful business, a life of
simple pleasures, mostly physical--riding, eating, dancing--a quick, easy,
highly unsophisticated life, sufficient unto itself. The light of the morning
is upon it; and, in the rosy radiance, the figure of "Lord M." emerges,
glorified and supreme. If she is the heroine of the story, he is the hero; but
indeed they are more than hero and heroine, for there are no other characters
at all. Lehzen, the Baron, Uncle Leopold, are unsubstantial shadows--the
incidental supers of the piece. Her paradise was peopled by two persons, and
surely that was enough. One sees them together still, a curious couple,
strangely united in those artless pages, under the magical illumination of
that dawn of eighty years ago: the polished high fine gentleman with the
whitening hair and whiskers and the thick dark eyebrows and the mobile lips
and the big expressive eyes; and beside him the tiny Queen--fair, slim,
elegant, active, in her plain girl's dress and little tippet, looking up at
him earnestly, adoringly, with eyes blue and projecting, and half-open mouth.
So they appear upon every page of the Journal; upon every page Lord M. is
present, Lord M. is speaking, Lord M. is being amusing, instructive,
delightful, and affectionate at once, while Victoria drinks in the honied
words, laughs till she shows her gums, tries hard to remember, and runs off,
as soon as she is left alone, to put it all down. Their long conversations
touched upon a multitude of topics. Lord M. would criticise books, throw out a
remark or two on the British Constitution, make some passing reflections on
human life, and tell story after story of the great people of the eighteenth
century. Then there would be business a despatch perhaps from Lord Durham in
Canada, which Lord M. would read. But first he must explain a little. "He said
that I must know that Canada originally belonged to the French, and was only
ceded to the English in 1760, when it was taken in an expedition under Wolfe:
'a very daring enterprise,' he said. Canada was then entirely French, and the
British only came afterwards... Lord M. explained this very clearly (and much
better than I have done) and said a good deal more about it. He then read me
Durham's despatch, which is a very long one and took him more than 1/2 an hour
to read. Lord M. read it beautifully with that fine soft voice of his, and
with so much expression, so that it is needless to say I was much interested
by it." And then the talk would take a more personal turn. Lord M. would
describe his boyhood, and she would learn that "he wore his hair long, as all
boys then did, till he was 17; (how handsome he must have looked!)." Or she
would find out about his queer tastes and habits--how he never carried a
watch, which seemed quite extraordinary. "'I always ask the servant what
o'clock it is, and then he tells me what he likes,' said Lord M." Or, as the
rooks wheeled about round the trees, "in a manner which indicated rain," he
would say that he could sit looking at them for an hour, and "was quite
surprised at my disliking them. M. said, ' The rooks are my delight.'"

The day's routine, whether in London or at Windsor, was almost invariable. The
morning was devoted to business and Lord M. In the afternoon the whole Court
went out riding. The Queen, in her velvet riding--habit and a top-hat with a
veil draped about the brim, headed the cavalcade; and Lord M. rode beside her.
The lively troupe went fast and far, to the extreme exhilaration of Her
Majesty. Back in the Palace again, there was still time for a little more fun
before dinner--a game of battledore and shuttlecock perhaps, or a romp along
the galleries with some children. Dinner came, and the ceremonial decidedly
tightened. The gentleman of highest rank sat on the right hand of the Queen;
on her left--it soon became an established rule--sat Lord Melbourne. After the
ladies had left the dining-room, the gentlemen were not permitted to remain
behind for very long; indeed, the short time allowed them for their
wine-drinking formed the subject--so it was rumoured--of one of the very few
disputes between the Queen and her Prime Minister;[*] but her determination
carried the day, and from that moment after-dinner drunkenness began to go out
of fashion. When the company was reassembled in the drawing-room the etiquette
was stiff. For a few moments the Queen spoke in turn to each one of her
guests; and during these short uneasy colloquies the aridity of royalty was
apt to become painfully evident. One night Mr. Greville, the Clerk of the
Privy Council, was present; his turn soon came; the middle-aged, hard-faced
viveur was addressed by his young hostess. "Have you been riding to-day, Mr.
Greville?" asked the Queen. "No, Madam, I have not," replied Mr. Greville. "It
was a fine day," continued the Queen. "Yes, Madam, a very fine day," said Mr.
Greville. "It was rather cold, though," said the Queen. "It was rather cold,
Madam," said Mr. Greville. "Your sister, Lady Frances Egerton, rides, I think,
doesn't she?" said the Queen. "She does ride sometimes, Madam," said Mr.
Greville. There was a pause, after which Mr. Greville ventured to take the
lead, though he did not venture to change the subject. "Has your Majesty been
riding today?" asked Mr. Greville. "Oh yes, a very long ride," answered the
Queen with animation. "Has your Majesty got a nice horse?" said Mr. Greville.
"Oh, a very nice horse," said the Queen. It was over. Her Majesty gave a smile
and an inclination of the head, Mr. Greville a profound bow, and the next
conversation began with the next gentleman. When all the guests had been
disposed of, the Duchess of Kent sat down to her whist, while everybody else
was ranged about the round table. Lord Melbourne sat beside the Queen, and
talked pertinaciously--very often a propos to the contents of one of the large
albums of engravings with which the round table was covered--until it was
half-past eleven and time to go to bed.

[*] The Duke of Bedford told Greville he was "sure there was a battle between
her and Melbourne... He is sure there was one about the men's sitting after
dinner, for he heard her say to him rather angrily, 'it is a horrid custom-'
but when the ladies left the room (he dined there) directions were given that
the men should remain five minutes longer." Greville Memoirs, February 26,
1840 (unpublished).

Occasionally, there were little diversions: the evening might be spent at the
opera or at the play. Next morning the royal critic was careful to note down
her impressions. "It was Shakespeare's tragedy of Hamlet, and we came in at
the beginning of it. Mr. Charles Kean (son of old Kean) acted the part of
Hamlet, and I must say beautifully. His conception of this very difficult, and
I may almost say incomprehensible, character is admirable; his delivery of all
the fine long speeches quite beautiful; he is excessively graceful and all his
actions and attitudes are good, though not at all good-looking in face... I
came away just as Hamlet was over." Later on, she went to see Macready in King
Lear. The story was new to her; she knew nothing about it, and at first she
took very little interest in what was passing on the stage; she preferred to
chatter and laugh with the Lord Chamberlain. But, as the play went on, her
mood changed; her attention was fixed, and then she laughed no more. Yet she
was puzzled; it seemed a strange, a horrible business. What did Lord M. think?
Lord M. thought it was a very fine play, but to be sure, "a rough, coarse
play, written for those times, with exaggerated characters." "I'm glad you've
seen it," he added. But, undoubtedly, the evenings which she enjoyed most were
those on which there was dancing. She was always ready enough to seize any
excuse--the arrival of cousins--a birthday--a gathering of young people--to
give the command for that. Then, when the band played, and the figures of the
dancers swayed to the music, and she felt her own figure swaying too, with
youthful spirits so close on every side--then her happiness reached its
height, her eyes sparkled, she must go on and on into the small hours of the
morning. For a moment Lord M. himself was forgotten.

V

The months flew past. The summer was over: "the pleasantest summer I EVER
passed in MY LIFE, and I shall never forget this first summer of my reign."
With surprising rapidity, another summer was upon her. The coronation came and
went--a curious dream. The antique, intricate, endless ceremonial worked
itself out as best it could, like some machine of gigantic complexity which
was a little out of order. The small central figure went through her
gyrations. She sat; she walked; she prayed; she carried about an orb that was
almost too heavy to hold; the Archbishop of Canterbury came and crushed a ring
upon the wrong finger, so that she was ready to cry out with the pain; old
Lord Rolle tripped up in his mantle and fell down the steps as he was doing
homage; she was taken into a side chapel, where the altar was covered with a
table-cloth, sandwiches, and bottles of wine; she perceived Lehzen in an upper
box and exchanged a smile with her as she sat, robed and crowned, on the
Confessor's throne. "I shall ever remember this day as the PROUDEST of my
life," she noted. But the pride was soon merged once more in youth and
simplicity. When she returned to Buckingham Palace at last she was not tired;
she ran up to her private rooms, doffed her splendours, and gave her dog Dash
its evening bath.

Life flowed on again with its accustomed smoothness--though, of course, the
smoothness was occasionally disturbed. For one thing, there was the
distressing behaviour of Uncle Leopold. The King of the Belgians had not been
able to resist attempting to make use of his family position to further his
diplomatic ends. But, indeed, why should there be any question of resisting?
Was not such a course of conduct, far from being a temptation, simply "selon
les regles?" What were royal marriages for, if they did not enable sovereigns,
in spite of the hindrances of constitutions, to control foreign politics? For
the highest purposes, of course; that was understood. The Queen of England was
his niece--more than that--almost his daughter; his confidential agent was
living, in a position of intimate favour, at her court. Surely, in such
circumstances, it would be preposterous, it would be positively incorrect, to
lose the opportunity of bending to his wishes by means of personal influence,
behind the backs of the English Ministers, the foreign policy of England.

He set about the task with becoming precautions. He continued in his letters
his admirable advice. Within a few days of her accession, he recommended the
young Queen to lay emphasis, on every possible occasion, upon her English
birth; to praise the English nation; "the Established Church I also recommend
strongly; you cannot, without PLEDGING yourself to anything PARTICULAR, SAY
TOO MUCH ON THE SUBJECT." And then "before you decide on anything important I
should be glad if you would consult me; this would also have the advantage of
giving you time;" nothing was more injurious than to be hurried into wrong
decisions unawares. His niece replied at once with all the accustomed warmth
of her affection; but she wrote hurriedly--and, perhaps, a trifle vaguely too.
"YOUR advice is always of the GREATEST IMPORTANCE to me," she said.

Had he, possibly, gone too far? He could not be certain; perhaps Victoria HAD
been hurried. In any case, he would be careful; he would draw back--"pour
mieux sauter" he added to himself with a smile. In his next letters he made no
reference to his suggestion of consultations with himself; he merely pointed
out the wisdom, in general, of refusing to decide upon important questions
off-hand. So far, his advice was taken; and it was noticed that the Queen,
when applications were made to her, rarely gave an immediate answer. Even with
Lord Melbourne, it was the same; when he asked for her opinion upon any
subject, she would reply that she would think it over, and tell him her
conclusions next day.

King Leopold's counsels continued. The Princess de Lieven, he said, was a
dangerous woman; there was reason to think that she would make attempts to pry
into what did not concern her, let Victoria beware. "A rule which I cannot
sufficiently recommend is NEVER TO PERMIT people to speak on subjects
concerning yourself or your affairs, without you having yourself desired them
to do so." Should such a thing occur, "change the conversation, and make the
individual feel that he has made a mistake." This piece of advice was also
taken; for it fell out as the King had predicted. Madame de Lieven sought an
audience, and appeared to be verging towards confidential topics; whereupon
the Queen, becoming slightly embarrassed, talked of nothing but commonplaces.
The individual felt that she had made a mistake.

The King's next warning was remarkable. Letters, he pointed out, are almost
invariably read in the post. This was inconvenient, no doubt; but the fact,
once properly grasped, was not without its advantages. "I will give you an
example: we are still plagued by Prussia concerning those fortresses; now to
tell the Prussian Government many things, which we SHOULD NOT LIKE to tell
them officially, the Minister is going to write a despatch to our man at
Berlin, sending it BY POST; the Prussians ARE SURE to read it, and to learn in
this way what we wish them to hear. Analogous circumstances might very
probably occur in England. I tell you the TRICK," wrote His Majesty, "that you
should be able to guard against it." Such were the subtleties of
constitutional sovereignty.

It seemed that the time had come for another step. The King's next letter was
full of foreign politics--the situation in Spain and Portugal, the character
of Louis Philippe; and he received a favourable answer. Victoria, it is true,
began by saying that she had shown the POLITICAL PART of his letter to Lord
Melbourne; but she proceeded to a discussion of foreign affairs. It appeared
that she was not unwilling to exchange observations on such matters with her
uncle. So far so good. But King Leopold was still cautious; though a crisis
was impending in his diplomacy, he still hung back; at last, however, he could
keep silence no longer. It was of the utmost importance to him that, in his
manoeuvrings with France and Holland, he should have, or at any rate appear to
have, English support. But the English Government appeared to adopt a neutral
attitude; it was too bad; not to be for him was to be against him, could they
not see that? Yet, perhaps, they were only wavering, and a little pressure
upon them from Victoria might still save all. He determined to put the case
before her, delicately yet forcibly--just as he saw it himself. "All I want
from your kind Majesty," he wrote, "is, that you will OCCASIONALLY express to
your Ministers, and particularly to good Lord Melbourne, that, as far as it is
COMPATIBLE with the interests of your own dominions, you do NOT wish that your
Government should take the lead in such measures as might in a short time
bring on the DESTRUCTION of this country, as well as that of your uncle and
his family." The result of this appeal was unexpected; there was dead silence
for more than a week. When Victoria at last wrote, she was prodigal of her
affection." It would, indeed, my dearest Uncle, be VERY WRONG of you, if you
thought my feelings of warm and devoted attachment to you, and of great
affection for you, could be changed--nothing can ever change them"--but her
references to foreign politics, though they were lengthy and elaborate, were
non-committal in the extreme; they were almost cast in an official and
diplomatic form. Her Ministers, she said, entirely shared her views upon the
subject; she understood and sympathised with the difficulties of her beloved
uncle's position; and he might rest assured "that both Lord Melbourne and Lord
Palmerston are most anxious at all times for the prosperity and welfare of
Belgium." That was all. The King in his reply declared himself delighted, and
re-echoed the affectionate protestations of his niece. "My dearest and most
beloved Victoria," he said, "you have written me a VERY DEAR and long letter,
which has given me GREAT PLEASURE AND SATISFACTION." He would not admit that
he had had a rebuff.

A few months later the crisis came. King Leopold determined to make a bold
push, and to carry Victoria with him, this time, by a display of royal vigour
and avuncular authority. In an abrupt, an almost peremptory letter, he laid
his case, once more, before his niece. "You know from experience," he wrote,
"that I NEVER ASK ANYTHING OF YOU... But, as I said before, if we are not
careful we may see serious consequences which may affect more or less
everybody, and THIS ought to be the object of our most anxious attention. I
remain, my dear Victoria, your affectionate uncle, Leopold R." The Queen
immediately despatched this letter to Lord Melbourne, who replied with a
carefully thought-out form of words, signifying nothing whatever, which, he
suggested, she should send to her uncle. She did so, copying out the elaborate
formula, with a liberal scattering of "dear Uncles" interspersed; and she
concluded her letter with a message of "affectionate love to Aunt Louise and
the children." Then at last King Leopold was obliged to recognise the facts.
His next letter contained no reference at all to politics. "I am glad," he
wrote, "to find that you like Brighton better than last year. I think Brighton
very agreeable at this time of the year, till the east winds set in. The
pavilion, besides, is comfortable; that cannot be denied. Before my marriage,
it was there that I met the Regent. Charlotte afterwards came with old Queen
Charlotte. How distant all this already, but still how present to one's
memory." Like poor Madame de Lieven, His Majesty felt that he had made a
mistake.

Nevertheless, he could not quite give up all hope. Another opportunity
offered, and he made another effort--but there was not very much conviction in
it, and it was immediately crushed. "My dear Uncle," the Queen wrote, "I have
to thank you for your last letter which I received on Sunday. Though you seem
not to dislike my political sparks, I think it is better not to increase them,
as they might finally take fire, particularly as I see with regret that upon
this one subject we cannot agree. I shall, therefore, limit myself to my
expressions of very sincere wishes for the welfare and prosperity of Belgium."
After that, it was clear that there was no more to be said. Henceforward there
is audible in the King's letters a curiously elegiac note. "My dearest
Victoria, your DELIGHTFUL little letter has just arrived and went like AN
ARROW TO MY HEART. Yes, my beloved Victoria! I DO LOVE YOU TENDERLY... I love
you FOR YOURSELF, and I love in you the dear child whose welfare I tenderly
watched." He had gone through much; yet, if life had its disappointments, it
had its satisfactions too. "I have all the honours that can be given, and I
am, politically speaking, very solidly established." But there were other
things besides politics, there were romantic yearnings in his heart. "The only
longing I still have is for the Orient, where I perhaps shall once end my
life, rising in the west and setting in the east." As for his devotion to his
niece, that could never end. "I never press my services on you, nor my
councils, though I may say with some truth that from the extraordinary fate
which the higher powers had ordained for me, my experience, both political and
of private life, is great. I am ALWAYS READY to be useful to you when and
where and it may be, and I repeat it, ALL I WANT IN RETURN IS SOME LITTLE
SINCERE AFFECTION FROM YOU."

VI

The correspondence with King Leopold was significant of much that still lay
partly hidden in the character of Victoria. Her attitude towards her uncle had
never wavered for a moment. To all his advances she had presented an
absolutely unyielding front. The foreign policy of England was not his
province; it was hers and her Ministers'; his insinuations, his entreaties,
his struggles--all were quite useless; and he must understand that this was
so. The rigidity of her position was the more striking owing to the
respectfulness and the affection with which it was accompanied. From start to
finish the unmoved Queen remained the devoted niece. Leopold himself must have
envied such perfect correctitude; but what may be admirable in an elderly
statesman is alarming in a maiden of nineteen. And privileged observers were
not without their fears. The strange mixture of ingenuous light-heartedness
and fixed determination, of frankness and reticence, of childishness and
pride, seemed to augur a future that was perplexed and full of dangers. As
time passed the less pleasant qualities in this curious composition revealed
themselves more often and more seriously. There were signs of an imperious, a
peremptory temper, an egotism that was strong and hard. It was noticed that
the palace etiquette, far from relaxing, grew ever more and more inflexible.
By some, this was attributed to Lehzen's influence; but, if that was so,
Lehzen had a willing pupil; for the slightest infringements of the freezing
rules of regularity and deference were invariably and immediately visited by
the sharp and haughty glances of the Queen. Yet Her Majesty's eyes, crushing
as they could be, were less crushing than her mouth. The self-will depicted in
those small projecting teeth and that small receding chin was of a more
dismaying kind than that which a powerful jaw betokens; it was a self--will
imperturbable, impenetrable, unintelligent; a self-will dangerously akin to
obstinacy. And the obstinacy of monarchs is not as that of other men.

Within two years of her accession, the storm-clouds which, from the first, had
been dimly visible on the horizon, gathered and burst. Victoria's relations
with her mother had not improved. The Duchess of Kent, still surrounded by all
the galling appearances of filial consideration, remained in Buckingham Palace
a discarded figure, powerless and inconsolable. Sir John Conroy, banished from
the presence of the Queen, still presided over the Duchess's household, and
the hostilities of Kensington continued unabated in the new surroundings. Lady
Flora Hastings still cracked her malicious jokes; the animosity of the
Baroness was still unappeased. One day, Lady Flora found the joke was turned
against her. Early in 1839, travelling in the suite of the Duchess, she had
returned from Scotland in the same carriage with Sir John. A change in her
figure became the subject of an unseemly jest; tongues wagged; and the jest
grew serious. It was whispered that Lady Flora was with child. The state of
her health seemed to confirm the suspicion; she consulted Sir James Clark, the
royal physician, and, after the consultation, Sir James let his tongue wag,
too. On this, the scandal flared up sky-high. Everyone was talking; the
Baroness was not surprised; the Duchess rallied tumultuously to the support of
her lady; the Queen was informed. At last the extraordinary expedient of a
medical examination was resorted to, during which Sir James, according to Lady
Flora, behaved with brutal rudeness, while a second doctor was extremely
polite. Finally, both physicians signed a certificate entirely exculpating the
lady. But this was by no means the end of the business. The Hastings family,
socially a very powerful one, threw itself into the fray with all the fury of
outraged pride and injured innocence; Lord Hastings insisted upon an audience
of the Queen, wrote to the papers, and demanded the dismissal of Sir James
Clark. The Queen expressed her regret to Lady Flora, but Sir James Clark was
not dismissed. The tide of opinion turned violently against the Queen and her
advisers; high society was disgusted by all this washing of dirty linen in
Buckingham Palace; the public at large was indignant at the ill-treatment of
Lady Flora. By the end of March, the popularity, so radiant and so abundant,
with which the young Sovereign had begun her reign, had entirely disappeared.

There can be no doubt that a great lack of discretion had been shown by the
Court. Ill-natured tittle-tattle, which should have been instantly nipped in
the bud, had been allowed to assume disgraceful proportions; and the Throne
itself had become involved in the personal malignities of the palace. A
particularly awkward question had been raised by the position of Sir James
Clark. The Duke of Wellington, upon whom it was customary to fall back, in
cases of great difficulty in high places, had been consulted upon this
question, and he had given it as his opinion that, as it would be impossible
to remove Sir James without a public enquiry, Sir James must certainly stay
where he was. Probably the Duke was right; but the fact that the peccant
doctor continued in the Queen's service made the Hastings family
irreconcilable and produced an unpleasant impression of unrepentant error upon
the public mind. As for Victoria, she was very young and quite inexperienced;
and she can hardly be blamed for having failed to control an extremely
difficult situation. That was clearly Lord Melbourne's task; he was a man of
the world, and, with vigilance and circumspection, he might have quietly put
out the ugly flames while they were still smouldering. He did not do so; he
was lazy and easy-going; the Baroness was persistent, and he let things slide.
But doubtless his position was not an easy one; passions ran high in the
palace; and Victoria was not only very young, she was very headstrong, too.
Did he possess the magic bridle which would curb that fiery steed? He could
not be certain. And then, suddenly, another violent crisis revealed more
unmistakably than ever the nature of the mind with which he had to deal.

VII

The Queen had for long been haunted by a terror that the day might come when
she would be obliged to part with her Minister. Ever since the passage of the
Reform Bill, the power of the Whig Government had steadily declined. The
General Election of 1837 had left them with a very small majority in the House
of Commons; since then, they had been in constant difflculties--abroad, at
home, in Ireland; the Radical group had grown hostile; it became highly
doubtful how much longer they could survive. The Queen watched the development
of events in great anxiety. She was a Whig by birth, by upbringing, by every
association, public and private; and, even if those ties had never existed,
the mere fact that Lord M. was the head of the Whigs would have amply sufficed
to determine her politics. The fall of the Whigs would mean a sad upset for
Lord M. But it would have a still more terrible consequence: Lord M. would
have to leave her; and the daily, the hourly, presence of Lord M. had become
an integral part of her life. Six months after her accession she had noted in
her diary "I shall be very sorry to lose him even for one night;" and this
feeling of personal dependence on her Minister steadily increased. In these
circumstances it was natural that she should have become a Whig partisan. Of
the wider significance of political questions she knew nothing; all she saw
was that her friends were in office and about her, and that it would be
dreadful if they ceased to be so. "I cannot say," she wrote when a critical
division was impending, "(though I feel confident of our success) how low, how
sad I feel, when I think of the possibility of this excellent and truly kind
man not remaining my Minister! Yet I trust ferventIy that He who has so
wonderfully protected me through such manifold difficulties will not now
desert me! I should have liked to have expressed to Lord M. my anxiety, but
the tears were nearer than words throughout the time I saw him, and I felt I
should have choked, had I attempted to say anything." Lord Melbourne realised
clearly enough how undesirable was such a state of mind in a constitutional
sovereign who might be called upon at any moment to receive as her Ministers
the leaders of the opposite party; he did what he could to cool her ardour;
but in vain.

With considerable lack of foresight, too, he had himself helped to bring about
this unfortunate condition of affairs. From the moment of her accession, he
had surrounded the Queen with ladies of his own party; the Mistress of the
Robes and all the Ladies of the Bedchamber were Whigs. In the ordinary course,
the Queen never saw a Tory: eventually she took pains never to see one in any
circumstances. She disliked the whole tribe; and she did not conceal the fact.
She particularly disliked Sir Robert Peel, who would almost certainly be the
next Prime Minister. His manners were detestable, and he wanted to turn out
Lord M. His supporters, without exception, were equally bad; and as for Sir
James Graham, she could not bear the sight of him; he was exactly like Sir
John Conroy.

The affair of Lady Flora intensified these party rumours still further. The
Hastings were Tories, and Lord Melbourne and the Court were attacked by the
Tory press in unmeasured language. The Queen's sectarian zeal proportionately
increased. But the dreaded hour was now fast approaching. Early in May the
Ministers were visibly tottering; on a vital point of policy they could only
secure a majority of five in the House of Commons; they determined to resign.
When Victoria heard the news she burst into tears. Was it possible, then, that
all was over? Was she, indeed, about to see Lord M. for the last time? Lord M.
came; and it is a curious fact that, even in this crowning moment of misery
and agitation, the precise girl noted, to the minute, the exact time of the
arrival and the departure of her beloved Minister. The conversation was
touching and prolonged; but it could only end in one way--the Queen must send
for the Duke of Wellington. When, next morning, the Duke came, he advised her
Majesty to send for Sir Robert Peel. She was in "a state of dreadful grief,"
but she swallowed down her tears, and braced herself, with royal resolution,
for the odious, odious interview.

Peel was by nature reserved, proud, and shy. His manners were not perfect, and
he knew it; he was easily embarrassed, and, at such moments, he grew even more
stiff and formal than before, while his feet mechanically performed upon the
carpet a dancing-master's measure. Anxious as he now was to win the Queen's
good graces, his very anxiety to do so made the attainment of his object the
more difficult. He entirely failed to make any headway whatever with the
haughty hostile girl before him. She coldly noted that he appeared to be
unhappy and "put out," and, while he stood in painful fixity, with an
occasional uneasy pointing of the toe, her heart sank within her at the sight
of that manner, "Oh! how different, how dreadfully different, to the frank,
open, natural, and most kind warm manner of Lord Melbourne." Nevertheless, the
audience passed without disaster. Only at one point had there been some slight
hint of a disagreement. Peel had decided that a change would be necessary in
the composition of the royal Household: the Queen must no longer be entirely
surrounded by the wives and sisters of his opponents; some, at any rate, of
the Ladies of the Bedchamber should be friendly to his Government. When this
matter was touched upon, the Queen had intimated that she wished her Household
to remain unchanged; to which Sir Robert had replied that the question could
be settled later, and shortly afterwards withdrew to arrange the details of
his Cabinet. While he was present, Victoria had remained, as she herself said,
"very much collected, civil and high, and betrayed no agitation;" but as soon
as she was alone she completely broke down. Then she pulled herself together
to write to Lord Melbourne an account of all that had happened, and of her own
wretchedness. "She feels," she said, "Lord Melbourne will understand it,
amongst enemies to those she most relied on and most esteemed; but what is
worst of all is the being deprived of seeing Lord Melbourne as she used to
do."

Lord Melbourne replied with a very wise letter. He attempted to calm the Queen
and to induce her to accept the new position gracefully; and he had nothing
but good words for the Tory leaders. As for the question of the Ladies of the
Household, the Queen, he said, should strongly urge what she desired, as it
was a matter which concerned her personally, "but," he added, "if Sir Robert
is unable to concede it, it will not do to refuse and to put off the
negotiation upon it." On this point there can be little doubt that Lord
Melbourne was right. The question was a complicated and subtle one, and it had
never arisen before; but subsequent constitutional practice has determined
that a Queen Regnant must accede to the wishes of her Prime Minister as to the
personnel of the female part of her Household. Lord Melbourne's wisdom,
however, was wasted. The Queen would not be soothed, and still less would she
take advice. It was outrageous of the Tories to want to deprive her of her
Ladies, and that night she made up her mind that, whatever Sir Robert might
say, she would refuse to consent to the removal of a single one of them.
Accordingly, when, next morning, Peel appeared again, she was ready for
action. He began by detailing the Cabinet appointments, and then he added
"Now, ma'am, about the Ladies-" when the Queen sharply interrupted him. "I
cannot give up any of my Ladies," she said. "What, ma'am!" said Sir Robert,
"does your Majesty mean to retain them all?" "All," said the Queen. Sir
Robert's face worked strangely; he could not conceal his agitation. "The
Mistress of the Robes and the Ladies of the Bedchamber?" he brought out at
last. "All," replied once more her Majesty. It was in vain that Peel pleaded
and argued; in vain that he spoke, growing every moment more pompous and
uneasy, of the constitution, and Queens Regnant, and the public interest; in
vain that he danced his pathetic minuet. She was adamant; but he, too, through
all his embarrassment, showed no sign of yielding; and when at last he left
her nothing had been decided--the whole formation of the Government was
hanging in the wind. A frenzy of excitement now seized upon Victoria. Sir
Robert, she believed in her fury, had tried to outwit her, to take her friends
from her, to impose his will upon her own; but that was not all: she had
suddenly perceived, while the poor man was moving so uneasily before her, the
one thing that she was desperately longing for--a loop-hole of escape. She
seized a pen and dashed off a note to Lord Melbourne.

"Sir Robert has behaved very ill," she wrote, "he insisted on my giving up my
Ladies, to which I replied that I never would consent, and I never saw a man
so frightened... I was calm but very decided, and I think you would have been
pleased to see my composure and great firmness; the Queen of England will not
submit to such trickery. Keep yourself in readiness, for you may soon be
wanted." Hardly had she finished when the Duke of Wellington was announced.
"Well, Ma'am," he said as he entered, "I am very sorry to find there is a
difficulty." "Oh!" she instantly replied, "he began it, not me." She felt that
only one thing now was needed: she must be firm. And firm she was. The
venerable conqueror of Napoleon was outfaced by the relentless equanimity of a
girl in her teens. He could not move the Queen one inch. At last, she even
ventured to rally him. "Is Sir Robert so weak," she asked, "that even the
Ladies must be of his opinion?" On which the Duke made a brief and humble
expostulation, bowed low, and departed.

Had she won? Time would show; and in the meantime she scribbled down another
letter. "Lord Melbourne must not think the Queen rash in her conduct... The
Queen felt this was an attempt to see whether she could be led and managed
like a child."[*] The Tories were not only wicked but ridiculous. Peel,
having, as she understood, expressed a wish to remove only those members of
the Household who were in Parliament, now objected to her Ladies. "I should
like to know," she exclaimed in triumphant scorn, "if they mean to give the
Ladies seats in Parliament?"

[*] The exclamation "They wished to treat me like a girl, but I will show them
that I am Queen of England!" often quoted as the Queen's, is apocryphal. It is
merely part of Greville's summary of the two letters to Melbourne. It may be
noted that the phrase "the Queen of England will not submit to such trickery"
is omitted in "Girlhood," and in general there are numerous verbal
discrepancies between the versions of the journal and the letters in the two
books.

The end of the crisis was now fast approaching. Sir Robert returned, and told
her that if she insisted upon retaining all her Ladies he could not form a
Government. She replied that she would send him her final decision in writing.
Next morning the late Whig Cabinet met. Lord Melbourne read to them the
Queen's letters, and the group of elderly politicians were overcome by an
extraordinary wave of enthusiasm. They knew very well that, to say the least,
it was highly doubtful whether the Queen had acted in strict accordance with
the constitution; that in doing what she had done she had brushed aside Lord
Melbourne's advice; that, in reality, there was no public reason whatever why
they should go back upon their decision to resign. But such considerations
vanished before the passionate urgency of Victoria. The intensity of her
determination swept them headlong down the stream of her desire. They
unanimously felt that "it was impossible to abandon such a Queen and such a
woman." Forgetting that they were no longer her Majesty's Ministers, they took
the unprecedented course of advising the Queen by letter to put an end to her
negotiation with Sir Robert Peel. She did so; all was over; she had triumphed.
That evening there was a ball at the Palace. Everyone was present. "Peel and
the Duke of Wellington came by looking very much put out." She was perfectly
happy; Lord M. was Prime Minister once more, and he was by her side.

VIII

Happiness had returned with Lord M., but it was happiness in the midst of
agitation. The domestic imbroglio continued unabated, until at last the Duke,
rejected as a Minister, was called in once again in his old capacity as moral
physician to the family. Something was accomplished when, at last, he induced
Sir John Conroy to resign his place about the Duchess of Kent and leave the
Palace for ever; something more when he persuaded the Queen to write an
affectionate letter to her mother. The way seemed open for a reconciliation,
but the Duchess was stormy still. She didn't believe that Victoria had written
that letter; it was not in her handwriting; and she sent for the Duke to tell
him so. The Duke, assuring her that the letter was genuine, begged her to
forget the past. But that was not so easy. "What am I to do if Lord Melbourne
comes up to me?" "Do, ma'am? Why, receive him with civility." Well, she would
make an effort... "But what am I to do if Victoria asks me to shake hands with
Lehzen?" "Do, ma'am? Why, take her in your arms and kiss her." "What!" The
Duchess bristled in every feather, and then she burst into a hearty laugh.
"No, ma'am, no," said the Duke, laughing too. "I don't mean you are to take
Lehzen in your arms and kiss her, but the Queen." The Duke might perhaps have
succeeded, had not all attempts at conciliation been rendered hopeless by a
tragical event. Lady Flora, it was discovered, had been suffering from a
terrible internal malady, which now grew rapidly worse. There could be little
doubt that she was dying. The Queen's unpopularity reached an extraordinary
height. More than once she was publicly insulted. "Mrs. Melbourne," was
shouted at her when she appeared at her balcony; and, at Ascot, she was hissed
by the Duchess of Montrose and Lady Sarah Ingestre as she passed. Lady Flora
died. The whole scandal burst out again with redoubled vehemence; while, in
the Palace, the two parties were henceforth divided by an impassable, a
Stygian, gulf.

Nevertheless, Lord M. was back, and every trouble faded under the enchantment
of his presence and his conversation. He, on his side, had gone through much;
and his distresses were intensified by a consciousness of his own
shortcomings. He realised clearly enough that, if he had intervened at the
right moment, the Hastings scandal might have been averted; and, in the
bedchamber crisis, he knew that he had allowed his judgment to be overruled
and his conduct to be swayed by private feelings and the impetuosity of
Victoria. But he was not one to suffer too acutely from the pangs of
conscience. In spite of the dullness and the formality of the Court, his
relationship with the Queen had come to be the dominating interest in his
life; to have been deprived of it would have been heartrending; that dread
eventuality had been--somehow--avoided; he was installed once more, in a kind
of triumph; let him enjoy the fleeting hours to the full! And so, cherished by
the favour of a sovereign and warmed by the adoration of a girl, the autumn
rose, in those autumn months of 1839, came to a wondrous blooming. The petals
expanded, beautifully, for the last time. For the last time in this
unlooked--for, this incongruous, this almost incredible intercourse, the old
epicure tasted the exquisiteness of romance. To watch, to teach, to restrain,
to encourage the royal young creature beside him--that was much; to feel with
such a constant intimacy the impact of her quick affection, her radiant
vitality--that was more; most of all, perhaps, was it good to linger vaguely
in humorous contemplation, in idle apostrophe, to talk disconnectedly, to make
a little joke about an apple or a furbelow, to dream. The springs of his
sensibility, hidden deep within him, were overflowing. Often, as he bent over
her hand and kissed it, he found himself in tears.

Upon Victoria, with all her impermeability, it was inevitable that such a
companionship should have produced, eventually, an effect. She was no longer
the simple schoolgirl of two years since. The change was visible even in her
public demeanour. Her expression, once "ingenuous and serene," now appeared to
a shrewd observer to be "bold and discontented." She had learnt something of
the pleasures of power and the pains of it; but that was not all. Lord
Melbourne with his gentle instruction had sought to lead her into the paths of
wisdom and moderation, but the whole unconscious movement of his character had
swayed her in a very different direction. The hard clear pebble, subjected for
so long and so constantly to that encircling and insidious fluidity, had
suffered a curious corrosion; it seemed to be actually growing a little soft
and a little clouded. Humanity and fallibility are infectious things; was it
possible that Lehzen's prim pupil had caught them? That she was beginning to
listen to siren voices? That the secret impulses of self-expression, of
self-indulgence even, were mastering her life? For a moment the child of a new
age looked back, and wavered towards the eighteenth century. It was the most
critical moment of her career. Had those influences lasted, the development of
her character, the history of her life, would have been completely changed.

And why should they not last? She, for one, was very anxious that they should.
Let them last for ever! She was surrounded by Whigs, she was free to do
whatever she wanted, she had Lord M.; she could not believe that she could
ever be happier. Any change would be for the worse; and the worst change of
all... no, she would not hear of it; it would be quite intolerable, it would
upset everything, if she were to marry. And yet everyone seemed to want her
to--the general public, the Ministers, her Saxe-Coburg relations--it was
always the same story. Of course, she knew very well that there were excellent
reasons for it. For one thing, if she remained childless, and were to die, her
uncle Cumberland, who was now the King of Hanover, would succeed to the Throne
of England. That, no doubt, would be a most unpleasant event; and she entirely
sympathised with everybody who wished to avoid it. But there was no hurry;
naturally, she would marry in the end--but not just yet--not for three or four
years. What was tiresome was that her uncle Leopold had apparently determined,
not only that she ought to marry, but that her cousin Albert ought to be her
husband. That was very like her uncle Leopold, who wanted to have a finger in
every pie; and it was true that long ago, in far-off days, before her
accession even, she had written to him in a way which might well have
encouraged him in such a notion. She had told him then that Albert possessed
"every quality that could be desired to render her perfectly happy," and had
begged her "dearest uncle to take care of the health of one, now so dear to
me, and to take him under your special protection," adding, "I hope and trust
all will go on prosperously and well on this subject of so much importance to
me." But that had been years ago, when she was a mere child; perhaps, indeed,
to judge from the language, the letter had been dictated by Lehzen; at any
rate, her feelings, and all the circumstances, had now entirely changed.
Albert hardly interested her at all.

In later life the Queen declared that she had never for a moment dreamt of
marrying anyone but her cousin; her letters and diaries tell a very different
story. On August 26, 1837, she wrote in her journal: "To-day is my dearest
cousin Albert's 18th birthday, and I pray Heaven to pour its choicest
blessings on his beloved head!" In the subsequent years, however, the date
passes unnoticed. It had been arranged that Stockmar should accompany the
Prince to Italy, and the faithful Baron left her side for that purpose. He
wrote to her more than once with sympathetic descriptions of his young
companion; but her mind was by this time made up. She liked and admired Albert
very much, but she did not want to marry him. "At present," she told Lord
Melbourne in April, 1839, "my feeling is quite against ever marrying." When
her cousin's Italian tour came to an end, she began to grow nervous; she knew
that, according to a long-standing engagement, his next journey would be to
England. He would probably arrive in the autumn, and by July her uneasiness
was intense. She determined to write to her uncle, in order to make her
position clear. It must be understood she said, that "there is no no
engagement between us." If she should like Albert, she could "make no final
promise this year, for, at the very earliest, any such event could not take
place till two or three years hence." She had, she said, "a great repugnance"
to change her present position; and, if she should not like him, she was "very
anxious that it should be understood that she would not be guilty of any
breach of promise, for she never gave any." To Lord Melbourne she was more
explicit. She told him that she "had no great wish to see Albert, as the whole
subject was an odious one;" she hated to have to decide about it; and she
repeated once again that seeing Albert would be "a disagreeable thing." But
there was no escaping the horrid business; the visit must be made, and she
must see him. The summer slipped by and was over; it was the autumn already;
on the evening of October 10 Albert, accompanied by his brother Ernest,
arrived at Windsor.

Albert arrived; and the whole structure of her existence crumbled into
nothingness like a house of cards. He was beautiful--she gasped--she knew no
more. Then, in a flash, a thousand mysteries were revealed to her; the past,
the present, rushed upon her with a new significance; the delusions of years
were abolished, and an extraordinary, an irresistible certitude leapt into
being in the light of those blue eyes, the smile of that lovely mouth. The
succeeding hours passed in a rapture. She was able to observe a few more
details--the "exquisite nose," the "delicate moustachios and slight but very
slight whiskers," the "beautiful figure, broad in the shoulders and a fine
waist." She rode with him, danced with him, talked with him, and it was all
perfection. She had no shadow of a doubt. He had come on a Thursday evening,
and on the following Sunday morning she told Lord Melbourne that she had "a
good deal changed her opinion as to marrying." Next morning, she told him that
she had made up her mind to marry Albert. The morning after that, she sent for
her cousin. She received him alone, and "after a few minutes I said to him
that I thought he must be aware why I wished them to come here--and that it
would make me too happy if be would consent to what I wished (to marry me.)"
Then "we embraced each other, and he was so kind, so affectionate." She said
that she was quite unworthy of him, while he murmured that he would be very
happy "Das Leben mit dir zu zubringen." They parted, and she felt "the
happiest of human beings," when Lord M. came in. At first she beat about the
bush, and talked of the weather, and indifferent subjects. Somehow or other
she felt a little nervous with her old friend. At last, summoning up her
courage, she said, "I have got well through this with Albert." "Oh! you have,"
said Lord M.



CHAPTER IV. MARRIAGE

I

It was decidedly a family match. Prince Francis Charles Augustus Albert
Emmanuel of Saxe-Coburg--Gotha--for such was his full title--had been born
just three months after his cousin Victoria, and the same midwife had assisted
at the two births. The children's grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Coburg,
had from the first looked forward to their marriage, as they grew up, the
Duke, the Duchess of Kent, and King Leopold came equally to desire it. The
Prince, ever since the time when, as a child of three, his nurse had told him
that some day "the little English May flower" would be his wife, had never
thought of marrying anyone else. When eventually Baron Stockmar himself
signified his assent, the affair seemed as good as settled.

The Duke had one other child--Prince Ernest, Albert's senior by one year, and
heir to the principality. The Duchess was a sprightly and beautiful woman,
with fair hair and blue eyes; Albert was very like her and was her declared
favourite. But in his fifth year he was parted from her for ever. The ducal
court was not noted for the strictness of its morals; the Duke was a man of
gallantry, and it was rumoured that the Duchess followed her husband's
example. There were scandals: one of the Court Chamberlains, a charming and
cultivated man of Jewish extraction, was talked of; at last there was a
separation, followed by a divorce. The Duchess retired to Paris, and died
unhappily in 1831. Her memory was always very dear to Albert.

He grew up a pretty, clever, and high-spirited boy. Usually well-behaved, he
was, however, sometimes violent. He had a will of his own, and asserted it;
his elder brother was less passionate, less purposeful, and, in their
wrangles, it was Albert who came out top. The two boys, living for the most
part in one or other of the Duke's country houses, among pretty hills and
woods and streams, had been at a very early age--Albert was less than
four--separated from their nurses and put under a tutor, in whose charge they
remained until they went to the University. They were brought up in a simple
and unostentatious manner, for the Duke was poor and the duchy very small and
very insignificant. Before long it became evident that Albert was a model lad.
Intelligent and painstaking, he had been touched by the moral earnestness of
his generation; at the age of eleven he surprised his father by telling him
that he hoped to make himself "a good and useful man." And yet he was not
over-serious; though, perhaps, he had little humour, he was full of fun--of
practical jokes and mimicry. He was no milksop; he rode, and shot, and fenced;
above all did he delight in being out of doors, and never was he happier than
in his long rambles with his brother through the wild country round his
beloved Rosenau--stalking the deer, admiring the scenery, and returning laden
with specimens for his natural history collection. He was, besides,
passionately fond of music. In one particular it was observed that he did not
take after his father: owing either to his peculiar upbringing or to a more
fundamental idiosyncrasy he had a marked distaste for the opposite sex. At the
age of five, at a children's dance, he screamed with disgust and anger when a
little girl was led up to him for a partner; and though, later on, he grew
more successful in disguising such feelings, the feelings remained.

The brothers were very popular in Coburg, and, when the time came for them to
be confirmed, the preliminary examination which, according to ancient custom,
was held in public in the "Giants' Hall" of the Castle, was attended by an
enthusiastic crowd of functionaries, clergy, delegates from the villages of
the duchy, and miscellaneous onlookers. There were also present, besides the
Duke and the Dowager Duchess, their Serene Highnesses the Princes Alexander
and Ernest of Wurtemberg, Prince Leiningen, Princess Hohenlohe-Langenburg, and
Princess Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst. Dr. Jacobi, the Court chaplain, presided
at an altar, simply but appropriately decorated, which had been placed at the
end of the hall; and the proceedings began by the choir singing the first
verse of the hymn, "Come, Holy Ghost." After some introductory remarks, Dr.
Jacobi began the examination. "The dignified and decorous bearing of the
Princes," we are told in a contemporary account, "their strict attention to
the questions, the frankness, decision, and correctness of their answers,
produced a deep impression on the numerous assembly. Nothing was more striking
in their answers than the evidence they gave of deep feeling and of inward
strength of conviction. The questions put by the examiner were not such as to
be met by a simple "yes" or "no." They were carefully considered in order to
give the audience a clear insight into the views and feelings of,the young
princes. One of the most touching moments was when the examiner asked the
hereditary prince whether he intended steadfastly to hold to the Evangelical
Church, and the Prince answered not only "Yes!" but added in a clear and
decided tone: "I and my brother are firmly resolved ever to remain faithful to
the acknowledged truth." The examination having lasted an hour, Dr. Jacobi
made some concluding observations, followed by a short prayer; the second and
third verses of the opening hymn were sung; and the ceremony was over. The
Princes, stepping down from the altar, were embraced by the Duke and the
Dowager Duchess; after which the loyal inhabitants of Coburg dispersed, well
satisfied with their entertainment.

Albert's mental development now proceeded apace. In his seventeenth year he
began a careful study of German literature and German philosophy. He set
about, he told his tutor, "to follow the thoughts of the great Klopstock into
their depths--though in this, for the most part," he modestly added, "I do not
succeed." He wrote an essay on the "Mode of Thought of the Germans, and a
Sketch of the History of German Civilisation," "making use," he said, "in its
general outlines, of the divisions which the treatment of the subject itself
demands," and concluding with "a retrospect of the shortcomings of our time,
with an appeal to every one to correct those shortcomings in his own case, and
thus set a good example to others." Placed for some months under the care of
King Leopold at Brussels, he came under the influence of Adolphe Quetelet, a
mathematical professor, who was particularly interested in the application of
the laws of probability to political and moral phenomena; this line of inquiry
attracted the Prince, and the friendship thus begun continued till the end of
his life. From Brussels he went to the University of Bonn, where he was
speedily distinguished both by his intellectual and his social activities; his
energies were absorbed in metaphysics, law, political economy, music, fencing,
and amateur theatricals. Thirty years later his fellow--students recalled with
delight the fits of laughter into which they had been sent by Prince Albert's
mimicry. The verve with which his Serene Highness reproduced the tones and
gestures of one of the professors who used to point to a picture of a row of
houses in Venice with the remark, "That is the Ponte-Realte," and of another
who fell down in a race and was obliged to look for his spectacles, was
especially appreciated.

After a year at Bonn, the time had come for a foreign tour, and Baron Stockmar
arrived from England to accompany the Prince on an expedition to Italy. The
Baron had been already, two years previously, consulted by King Leopold as to
his views upon the proposed marriage of Albert and Victoria. His reply had
been remarkable. With a characteristic foresight, a characteristic absence of
optimism, a characteristic sense of the moral elements in the situation,
Stockmar had pointed out what were, in his opinion, the conditions essential
to make the marriage a success. Albert, he wrote, was a fine young fellow,
well grown for his age, with agreeable and valuable qualities; and it was
probable that in a few years he would turn out a strong handsome man, of a
kindly, simple, yet dignified demeanour." Thus, externally, he possesses all
that pleases the sex, and at all times and in all countries must please."
Supposing, therefore, that Victoria herself was in favour of the marriage, the
further question arose as to whether Albert's mental qualities were such as to
fit him for the position of husband of the Queen of England. On this point,
continued the Baron, one heard much to his credit; the Prince was said to be
discreet and intelligent; but all such judgments were necessarily partial, and
the Baron preferred to reserve his opinion until he could come to a
trustworthy conclusion from personal observation. And then he added: "But all
this is not enough. The young man ought to have not merely great ability, but
a right ambition, and great force of will as well. To pursue for a lifetime a
political career so arduous demands more than energy and inclination--it
demands also that earnest frame of mind which is ready of its own accord to
sacrifice mere pleasure to real usefulness. If he is not satisfied hereafter
with the consciousness of having achieved one of the most influential
positions in Europe, how often will he feel tempted to repent his adventure!
If he does not from the very outset accept it as a vocation of grave
responsibility, on the efficient performance of which his honour and happiness
depend, there is small likelihood of his succeeding."

Such were the views of Stockmar on the qualifications necessary for the due
fulfilment of that destiny which Albert's family had marked out for him; and
he hoped, during the tour in Italy, to come to some conclusion as to how far
the prince possessed them. Albert on his side was much impressed by the Baron,
whom he had previously seen but rarely; he also became acquainted, for the
first time in his life, with a young Englishman, Lieutenant Francis Seymour,
who had been engaged to accompany him, whom he found sehr liebens-wurdig, and
with whom he struck up a warm friendship. He delighted in the galleries and
scenery of Florence, though with Rome he was less impressed. "But for some
beautiful palaces," he said, "it might just as well be any town in Germany."
In an interview with Pope Gregory XVI, he took the opportunity of displaying
his erudition. When the Pope observed that the Greeks had taken their art from
the Etruscans, Albert replied that, on the contrary, in his opinion, they had
borrowed from the Egyptians: his Holiness politely acquiesced. Wherever he
went he was eager to increase his knowledge, and, at a ball in Florence, he
was observed paying no attention whatever to the ladies, and deep in
conversation with the learned Signor Capponi. "Voila un prince dont nous
pouvons etre fiers," said the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who was standing by: "la
belle danseuse l'attend, le savant l'occupe."

On his return to Germany, Stockmar's observations, imparted to King Leopold,
were still critical. Albert, he said, was intelligent, kind, and amiable; he
was full of the best intentions and the noblest resolutions, and his judgment
was in many things beyond his years. But great exertion was repugnant to him;
he seemed to be too willing to spare himself, and his good resolutions too
often came to nothing. It was particularly unfortunate that he took not the
slightest interest in politics, and never read a newspaper. In his manners,
too, there was still room for improvement. "He will always," said the Baron,
"have more success with men than with women, in whose society he shows too
little empressement, and is too indifferent and retiring." One other feature
of the case was noted by the keen eye of the old physician: the Prince's
constitution was not a strong one. Yet, on the whole, he was favourable to the
projected marriage. But by now the chief obstacle seemed to lie in another
quarter, Victoria was apparently determined to commit herself to nothing. And
so it happened that when Albert went to England he had made up his mind to
withdraw entirely from the affair. Nothing would induce him, he confessed to a
friend, to be kept vaguely waiting; he would break it all off at once. His
reception at Windsor threw an entirely new light upon the situation. The wheel
of fortune turned with a sudden rapidity; and he found, in the arms of
Victoria, the irrevocable assurance of his overwhelming fate.

II

He was not in love with her. Affection, gratitude, the natural reactions to
the unqualified devotion of a lively young cousin who was also a queen--such
feelings possessed him, but the ardours of reciprocal passion were not his.
Though he found that he liked Victoria very much, what immediately interested
him in his curious position was less her than himself. Dazzled and delighted,
riding, dancing, singing, laughing, amid the splendours of Windsor, he was
aware of a new sensation--the stirrings of ambition in his breast. His place
would indeed be a high, an enviable one! And then, on the instant, came
another thought. The teaching of religion, the admonitions of Stockmar, his
own inmost convictions, all spoke with the same utterance. He would not be
there to please himself, but for a very different purpose--to do good. He must
be "noble, manly, and princely in all things," he would have "to live and to
sacrifice himself for the benefit of his new country;" to "use his powers and
endeavours for a great object--that of promoting the welfare of multitudes of
his fellowmen." One serious thought led on to another. The wealth and the
bustle of the English Court might be delightful for the moment, but, after
all, it was Coburg that had his heart. "While I shall be untiring," he wrote
to his grandmother, "in my efforts and labours for the country to which I
shall in future belong, and where I am called to so high a position, I shall
never cease ein treuer Deutscher, Coburger, Gothaner zu sein." And now he must
part from Coburg for ever! Sobered and sad, he sought relief in his brother
Ernest's company; the two young men would shut themselves up together, and,
sitting down at the pianoforte, would escape from the present and the future
in the sweet familiar gaiety of a Haydn duet.

They returned to Germany; and while Albert, for a few farewell months,
enjoyed, for the last time, the happiness of home, Victoria, for the last
time, resumed her old life in London and Windsor. She corresponded daily with
her future husband in a mingled flow of German and English; but the accustomed
routine reasserted itself; the business and the pleasures of the day would
brook no interruption; Lord M. was once more constantly beside her; and the
Tories were as intolerable as ever. Indeed, they were more so. For now, in
these final moments, the old feud burst out with redoubled fury. The impetuous
sovereign found, to her chagrin, that there might be disadvantages in being
the declared enemy of one of the great parties in the State. On two occasions,
the Tories directly thwarted her in a matter on which she had set her heart.
She wished her husband's rank to be axed by statute, and their opposition
prevented it. She wished her husband to receive a settlement from the nation
of L50,000 a year; and, again owing to the Tories, he was only allowed
L30,000. It was too bad. When the question was discussed in Parliament, it had
been pointed out that the bulk of the population was suffering from great
poverty, and that L30,000 was the whole revenue of Coburg; but her uncle
Leopold had been given L50,000, and it would be monstrous to give Albert less.
Sir Robert Peel--it might have been expected--had had the effrontery to speak
and vote for the smaller sum. She was very angry; and determined to revenge
herself by omitting to invite a single Tory to her wedding. She would make an
exception in favour of old Lord Liverpool, but even the Duke of Wellington she
refused to ask. When it was represented to her that it would amount to a
national scandal if the Duke were absent from her wedding, she was angrier
than ever. "What! That old rebel! I won't have him:" she was reported to have
said. Eventually she was induced to send him an invitation; but she made no
attempt to conceal the bitterness of her feelings, and the Duke himself was
only too well aware of all that had passed.

Nor was it only against the Tories that her irritation rose. As the time for
her wedding approached, her temper grew steadily sharper and more arbitrary.
Queen Adelaide annoyed her. King Leopold, too, was "ungracious" in his
correspondence; "Dear Uncle," she told Albert, "is given to believe that he
must rule the roost everywhere. "However," she added with asperity, "that is
not a necessity." Even Albert himself was not impeccable. Engulfed in Coburgs,
he failed to appreciate the complexity of English affairs. There were
difficulties about his household. He had a notion that he ought not to be
surrounded by violent Whigs; very likely, but he would not understand that the
only alternatives to violent Whigs were violent Tories; and it would be
preposterous if his Lords and Gentlemen were to be found voting against the
Queen's. He wanted to appoint his own Private Secretary. But how could he
choose the right person? Lord M. was obviously best qualified to make the
appointment; and Lord M. had decided that the Prince should take over his own
Private Secretary--George Anson, a staunch Whig. Albert protested, but it was
useless; Victoria simply announced that Anson was appointed, and instructed
Lehzen to send the Prince an explanation of the details of the case.

Then, again, he had written anxiously upon the necessity of maintaining
unspotted the moral purity of the Court. Lord M's pupil considered that dear
Albert was strait-laced, and, in a brisk Anglo-German missive, set forth her
own views. "I like Lady A. very much," she told him, "only she is a little
strict awl particular, and too severe towards others, which is not right; for
I think one ought always to be indulgent towards other people, as I always
think, if we had not been well taken care of, we might also have gone astray.
That is always my feeling. Yet it is always right to show that one does not
like to see what is obviously wrong; but it is very dangerous to be too
severe, and I am certain that as a rule such people always greatly regret that
in their youth they have not been so careful as they ought to have been. I
have explained this so badly and written it so badly, that I fear you will
hardly be able to make it out."

On one other matter she was insistent. Since the affair of Lady Flora
Hastings, a sad fate had overtaken Sir James Clark. His flourishing practice
had quite collapsed; nobody would go to him any more. But the Queen remained
faithful. She would show the world how little she cared for their disapproval,
and she desired Albert to make "poor Clark" his physician in ordinary. He did
as he was told; but, as it turned out, the appointment was not a happy one.

The wedding-day was fixed, and it was time for Albert to tear himself away
from his family and the scenes of his childhood. With an aching heart, he had
revisited his beloved haunts--the woods and the valleys where he had spent so
many happy hours shooting rabbits and collecting botanical specimens; in deep
depression, he had sat through the farewell banquets in the Palace and
listened to the Freischutz performed by the State band. It was time to go. The
streets were packed as he drove through them; for a short space his eyes were
gladdened by a sea of friendly German faces, and his ears by a gathering
volume of good guttural sounds. He stopped to bid a last adieu to his
grandmother. It was a heartrending moment. "Albert! Albert!" she shrieked, and
fell fainting into the arms of her attendants as his carriage drove away. He
was whirled rapidly to his destiny. At Calais a steamboat awaited him, and,
together with his father and his brother, he stepped, dejected, on board. A
little later, he was more dejected still. The crossing was a very rough one;
the Duke went hurriedly below; while the two Princes, we are told, lay on
either side of the cabin staircase "in an almost helpless state." At Dover a
large crowd was collected on the pier, and "it was by no common effort that
Prince Albert, who had continued to suffer up to the last moment, got up to
bow to the people." His sense of duty triumphed. It was a curious omen: his
whole life in England was foreshadowed as he landed on English ground.

Meanwhile Victoria, in growing agitation, was a prey to temper and to nerves.
She grew feverish, and at last Sir James Clark pronounced that she was going
to have the measles. But, once again, Sir James's diagnosis was incorrect. It
was not the measles that were attacking her, but a very different malady; she
was suddenly prostrated by alarm, regret, and doubt. For two years she had
been her own mistress--the two happiest years, by far, of her life. And now it
was all to end! She was to come under an alien domination--she would have to
promise that she would honour and obey... someone, who might, after all,
thwart her, oppose her--and how dreadful that would be! Why had she embarked
on this hazardous experiment? Why had she not been contented with Lord M.? No
doubt, she loved Albert; but she loved power too. At any rate, one thing was
certain: she might be Albert's wife, but she would always be Queen of England.
He reappeared, in an exquisite uniform, and her hesitations melted in his
presence like mist before the sun. On February 10, 1840, the marriage took
place. The wedded pair drove down to Windsor; but they were not, of course,
entirely alone. They were accompanied by their suites, and, in particular, by
two persons--the Baron Stockmar and the Baroness Lehzen.

III

Albert had foreseen that his married life would not be all plain sailing; but
he had by no means realised the gravity and the complication of the
difficulties which he would have to face. Politically, he was a cipher. Lord
Melbourne was not only Prime Minister, he was in effect the Private Secretary
of the Queen, and thus controlled the whole of the political existence of the
sovereign. A queen's husband was an entity unknown to the British
Constitution. In State affairs there seemed to be no place for him; nor was
Victoria herself at all unwilling that this should be so. "The English," she
had told the Prince when, during their engagement, a proposal had been made to
give him a peerage, "are very jealous of any foreigner interfering in the
government of this country, and have already in some of the papers expressed a
hope that you would not interfere. Now, though I know you never would, still,
if you were a Peer, they would all say, the Prince meant to play a political
part. I know you never would!" In reality, she was not quite so certain; but
she wished Albert to understand her views. He would, she hoped, make a perfect
husband; but, as for governing the country, he would see that she and Lord M.
between them could manage that very well, without his help.

But it was not only in politics that the Prince discovered that the part cut
out for him was a negligible one. Even as a husband, he found, his functions
were to be of an extremely limited kind. Over the whole of Victoria's private
life the Baroness reigned supreme; and she had not the slightest intention of
allowing that supremacy to be diminished by one iota. Since the accession, her
power had greatly increased. Besides the undefined and enormous influence
which she exercised through her management of the Queen's private
correspondence, she was now the superintendent of the royal establishment and
controlled the important office of Privy Purse. Albert very soon perceived
that he was not master in his own house. Every detail of his own and his
wife's existence was supervised by a third person: nothing could be done until
the consent of Lehzen had first been obtained. And Victoria, who adored Lehzen
with unabated intensity, saw nothing in all this that was wrong.

Nor was the Prince happier in his social surroundings. A shy young foreigner,
awkward in ladies' company, unexpansive and self-opinionated, it was
improbable that, in any circumstances, he would have been a society success.
His appearance, too, was against him. Though in the eyes of Victoria he was
the mirror of manly beauty, her subjects, whose eyes were of a less Teutonic
cast, did not agree with her. To them--and particularly to the high-born
ladies and gentlemen who naturally saw him most--what was immediately and
distressingly striking in Albert's face and figure and whole demeanour was his
un-English look. His features were regular, no doubt, but there was something
smooth and smug about them; he was tall, but he was clumsily put together, and
he walked with a slight slouch. Really, they thought, this youth was more like
some kind of foreign tenor than anything else. These were serious
disadvantages; but the line of conduct which the Prince adopted from the first
moment of his arrival was far from calculated to dispel them. Owing partly to
a natural awkwardness, partly to a fear of undue familiarity, and partly to a
desire to be absolutely correct, his manners were infused with an
extraordinary stiffness and formality. Whenever he appeared in company, he
seemed to be surrounded by a thick hedge of prickly etiquette. He never went
out into ordinary society; he never walked in the streets of London; he was
invariably accompanied by an equerry when he rode or drove. He wanted to be
irreproachable and, if that involved friendlessness, it could not be helped.
Besides, he had no very high opinion of the English. So far as he could see,
they cared for nothing but fox-hunting and Sunday observances; they oscillated
between an undue frivolity and an undue gloom; if you spoke to them of
friendly joyousness they stared; and they did not understand either the Laws
of Thought or the wit of a German University. Since it was clear that with
such people he could have very little in common, there was no reason whatever
for relaxing in their favour the rules of etiquette. In strict privacy, he
could be natural and charming; Seymour and Anson were devoted to him, and he
returned their affection; but they were subordinates--the receivers of his
confidences and the agents of his will. From the support and the solace of
true companionship he was utterly cut off.

A friend, indeed, he had--or rather, a mentor. The Baron, established once
more in the royal residence, was determined to work with as wholehearted a
detachment for the Prince's benefit as, more than twenty years before, he had
worked for his uncle's. The situations then and now, similar in many respects,
were yet full of differences. Perhaps in either case the difficulties to be
encountered were equally great; but the present problem was the more complex
and the more interesting. The young doctor who, unknown and insignificant, had
nothing at the back of him but his own wits and the friendship of an
unimportant Prince, had been replaced by the accomplished confidant of kings
and ministers, ripe in years, in reputation, and in the wisdom of a vast
experience. It was possible for him to treat Albert with something of the
affectionate authority of a father; but, on the other hand, Albert was no
Leopold. As the Baron was very well aware, he had none of his uncle's rigidity
of ambition, none of his overweening impulse to be personally great. He was
virtuous and well-intentioned; he was clever and well-informed; but he took no
interest in politics, and there were no signs that he possessed any commanding
force of character. Left to himself, he would almost certainly have subsided
into a high-minded nonentity, an aimless dilettante busy over culture, a
palace appendage without influence or power. But he was not left to himself:
Stockmar saw to that. For ever at his pupil's elbow, the hidden Baron pushed
him forward, with tireless pressure, along the path which had been trod by
Leopold so many years ago. But, this time, the goal at the end of it was
something more than the mediocre royalty that Leopold had reached. The prize
which Stockmar, with all the energy of disinterested devotion, had determined
should be Albert's was a tremendous prize indeed.

The beginning of the undertaking proved to be the most arduous part of it.
Albert was easily dispirited: what was the use of struggling to perform in a
role which bored him and which, it was quite clear, nobody but the dear good
Baron had any desire that he should take up? It was simpler, and it saved a
great deal of trouble, to let things slide. But Stockmar would not have it.
Incessantly, he harped upon two strings--Albert's sense of duty and his
personal pride. Had the Prince forgotten the noble aims to which his life was
to be devoted? And was he going to allow himself, his wife, his family, his
whole existence, to be governed by Baroness Lehzen? The latter consideration
was a potent one. Albert had never been accustomed to giving way; and now,
more than ever before, it would be humiliating to do so. Not only was he
constantly exasperated by the position of the Baroness in the royal household;
there was another and a still more serious cause of complaint. He was, he knew
very well, his wife's intellectual superior, and yet he found, to his intense
annoyance, that there were parts of her mind over which he exercised no
influence. When, urged on by the Baron, he attempted to discuss politics with
Victoria, she eluded the subject, drifted into generalities, and then began to
talk of something else. She was treating him as she had once treated their
uncle Leopold. When at last he protested, she replied that her conduct was
merely the result of indolence; that when she was with him she could not bear
to bother her head with anything so dull as politics. The excuse was worse
than the fault: was he the wife and she the husband? It almost seemed so. But
the Baron declared that the root of the mischief was Lehzen: that it was she
who encouraged the Queen to have secrets; who did worse--undermined the
natural ingenuousness of Victoria, and induced her to give, unconsciously no
doubt, false reasons to explain away her conduct.

Minor disagreements made matters worse. The royal couple differed in their
tastes. Albert, brought up in a regime of Spartan simplicity and early hours,
found the great Court functions intolerably wearisome, and was invariably
observed to be nodding on the sofa at half-past ten; while the Queen's
favourite form of enjoyment was to dance through the night, and then, going
out into the portico of the Palace, watch the sun rise behind St. Paul's and
the towers of Westminster. She loved London and he detested it. It was only in
Windsor that he felt he could really breathe; but Windsor too had its terrors:
though during the day there he could paint and walk and play on the piano,
after dinner black tedium descended like a pall. He would have liked to summon
distinguished scientific and literary men to his presence, and after
ascertaining their views upon various points of art and learning, to set forth
his own; but unfortunately Victoria "had no fancy to encourage such people;"
knowing that she was unequal to taking a part in their conversation, she
insisted that the evening routine should remain unaltered; the regulation
interchange of platitudes with official persons was followed as usual by the
round table and the books of engravings, while the Prince, with one of his
attendants, played game after game of double chess.

It was only natural that in so peculiar a situation, in which the elements of
power, passion, and pride were so strangely apportioned, there should have
been occasionally something more than mere irritation--a struggle of angry
wills. Victoria, no more than Albert, was in the habit of playing second
fiddle. Her arbitrary temper flashed out. Her vitality, her obstinacy, her
overweening sense of her own position, might well have beaten down before them
his superiorities and his rights. But she fought at a disadvantage; she was,
in very truth, no longer her own mistress; a profound preoccupation dominated
her, seizing upon her inmost purposes for its own extraordinary ends. She was
madly in love. The details of those curious battles are unknown to us; but
Prince Ernest, who remained in England with his brother for some months, noted
them with a friendly and startled eye. One story, indeed, survives,
ill-authenticated and perhaps mythical, yet summing up, as such stories often
do, the central facts of the case. When, in wrath, the Prince one day had
locked himself into his room, Victoria, no less furious, knocked on the door
to be admitted. "Who is there?" he asked. "The Queen of England" was the
answer. He did not move, and again there was a hail of knocks. The question
and the answer were repeated many times; but at last there was a pause, and
then a gentler knocking. "Who is there?" came once more the relentless
question. But this time the reply was different. "Your wife, Albert." And the
door was immediately opened.

Very gradually the Prince's position changed. He began to find the study of
politics less uninteresting than he had supposed; he read Blackstone, and took
lessons in English Law; he was occasionally present when the Queen interviewed
her Ministers; and at Lord Melbourne's suggestion he was shown all the
despatches relating to Foreign Affairs. Sometimes he would commit his views to
paper, and read them aloud to the Prime Minister, who, infinitely kind and
courteous, listened with attention, but seldom made any reply. An important
step was taken when, before the birth of the Princess Royal, the Prince,
without any opposition in Parliament, was appointed Regent in case of the
death of the Queen. Stockmar, owing to whose intervention with the Tories this
happy result had been brought about, now felt himself at liberty to take a
holiday with his family in Coburg; but his solicitude, poured out in
innumerable letters, still watched over his pupil from afar. "Dear Prince," he
wrote, "I am satisfied with the news you have sent me. Mistakes,
misunderstandings, obstructions, which come in vexatious opposition to one's
views, are always to be taken for just what they are--namely, natural
phenomena of life, which represent one of its sides, and that the shady one.
In overcoming them with dignity, your mind has to exercise, to train, to
enlighten itself; and your character to gain force, endurance, and the
necessary hardness." The Prince had done well so far; but he must continue in
the right path; above all, he was "never to relax." "Never to relax in putting
your magnanimity to the proof; never to relax in logical separation of what is
great and essential from what is trivial and of no moment; never to relax in
keeping yourself up to a high standard--in the determination, daily renewed,
to be consistent, patient, courageous." It was a hard programme perhaps, for a
young man of twenty-one; and yet there was something in it which touched the
very depths of Albert's soul. He sighed, but he listened--listened as to the
voice of a spiritual director inspired with divine truth. "The stars which are
needful to you now," the voice continued, "and perhaps for some time to come,
are Love, Honesty, Truth. All those whose minds are warped, or who are
destitute of true feeling, will BE APT TO MISTAKE YOU, and to persuade
themselves and the world that you are not the man you are--or, at least, may
become... Do you, therefore, be on the alert be times, with your eyes open in
every direction... I wish for my Prince a great, noble, warm, and true heart,
such as shall serve as the richest and surest basis for the noblest views of
human nature, and the firmest resolve to give them development."

Before long, the decisive moment came. There was a General Election, and it
became certain that the Tories, at last, must come into power. The Queen
disliked them as much as ever; but, with a large majority in the House of
Commons, they would now be in a position to insist upon their wishes being
attended to. Lord Melbourne himself was the first to realise the importance of
carrying out the inevitable transition with as little friction as possible;
and with his consent, the Prince, following up the rapprochement which had
begun over the Regency Act, opened, through Anson, a negotiation with Sir
Robert Peel. In a series of secret interviews, a complete understanding was
reached upon the difficult and complex question of the Bedchamber. It was
agreed that the constitutional point should not be raised, but that on the
formation of the Tory Government, the principal Whig ladies should retire, and
their places be filled by others appointed by Sir Robert. Thus, in effect,
though not in form, the Crown abandoned the claims of 1839, and they have
never been subsequently put forward. The transaction was a turning point in
the Prince's career. He had conducted an important negotiation with skill and
tact; he had been brought into close and friendly relations with the new Prime
Minister; it was obvious that a great political future lay before him.
Victoria was much impressed and deeply grateful. "My dearest Angel," she told
King Leopold, "is indeed a great comfort to me. He takes the greatest interest
in what goes on, feeling with and for me, and yet abstaining as he ought from
biasing me either way, though we talk much on the subject, and his judgment
is, as you say, good and mild." She was in need of all the comfort and
assistance he could give her. Lord M. was going, and she could hardly bring
herself to speak to Peel. Yes; she would discuss everything with Albert now!

Stockmar, who had returned to England, watched the departure of Lord Melbourne
with satisfaction. If all went well, the Prince should now wield a supreme
political influence over Victoria. But would all go well?? An unexpected
development put the Baron into a serious fright. When the dreadful moment
finally came, and the Queen, in anguish, bade adieu to her beloved Minister,
it was settled between them that, though it would be inadvisable to meet very
often, they could continue to correspond. Never were the inconsistencies of
Lord Melbourne's character shown more clearly than in what followed. So long
as he was in office, his attitude towards Peel had been irreproachable; he had
done all he could to facilitate the change of government, he had even, through
more than one channel, transmitted privately to his successful rival advice as
to the best means of winning the Queen's good graces. Yet, no sooner was he in
opposition than his heart failed him. He could not bear the thought of
surrendering altogether the privilege and the pleasure of giving counsel to
Victoria--of being cut off completely from the power and the intimacy which
had been his for so long and in such abundant measure. Though he had declared
that he would be perfectly discreet in his letters, he could not resist taking
advantage of the opening they afforded. He discussed in detail various public
questions, and, in particular, gave the Queen a great deal of advice in the
matter of appointments. This advice was followed. Lord Melbourne recommended
that Lord Heytesbury, who, he said, was an able man, should be made Ambassador
at Vienna; and a week later the Queen wrote to the Foreign Secretary urging
that Lord Heytesbury, whom she believed to be a very able man, should be
employed "on some important mission." Stockmar was very much alarmed. He wrote
a memorandum, pointing out the unconstitutional nature of Lord Melbourne's
proceedings and the unpleasant position in which the Queen might find herself
if they were discovered by Peel; and he instructed Anson to take this
memorandum to the ex-Minister. Lord Melbourne, lounging on a sofa, read it
through with compressed lips. "This is quite an apple-pie opinion," he said.
When Anson ventured to expostulate further, suggesting that it was unseemly in
the leader of the Opposition to maintain an intimate relationship with the
Sovereign, the old man lost his temper. "God eternally damn it!" he exclaimed,
leaping up from his sofa, and dashing about the room. "Flesh and blood cannot
stand this!" He continued to write to the Queen, as before; and two more
violent bombardments from the Baron were needed before he was brought to
reason. Then, gradually, his letters grew less and less frequent, with fewer
and fewer references to public concerns; at last, they were entirely
innocuous. The Baron smiled; Lord M. had accepted the inevitable.

The Whig Ministry resigned in September, 1841; but more than a year was to
elapse before another and an equally momentous change was effected--the
removal of Lehzen. For, in the end, the mysterious governess was conquered.
The steps are unknown by which Victoria was at last led to accept her
withdrawal with composure--perhaps with relief; but it is clear that Albert's
domestic position must have been greatly strengthened by the appearance of
children. The birth of the Princess Royal had been followed in November, 1841,
by that of the Prince of Wales; and before very long another baby was
expected. The Baroness, with all her affection, could have but a remote share
in such family delights. She lost ground perceptibly. It was noticed as a
phenomenon that, once or twice, when the Court travelled, she was left behind
at Windsor. The Prince was very cautious; at the change of Ministry, Lord
Melbourne had advised him to choose that moment for decisive action; but he
judged it wiser to wait. Time and the pressure of inevitable circumstances
were for him; every day his predominance grew more assured--and every night.
At length he perceived that he need hesitate no longer--that every wish, every
velleity of his had only to be expressed to be at once Victoria's. He spoke,
and Lehzen vanished for ever. No more would she reign in that royal heart and
those royal halls. No more, watching from a window at Windsor, would she
follow her pupil and her sovereign walking on the terrace among the obsequious
multitude, with the eye of triumphant love. Returning to her native Hanover
she established herself at Buckeburg in a small but comfortable house, the
walls of which were entirely covered by portraits of Her Majesty. The Baron,
in spite of his dyspepsia, smiled again: Albert was supreme.



IV

The early discords had passed away completely--resolved into the absolute
harmony of married life. Victoria, overcome by a new, an unimagined
revelation, had surrendered her whole soul to her husband. The beauty and the
charm which so suddenly had made her his at first were, she now saw, no more
than but the outward manifestation of the true Albert. There was an inward
beauty, an inward glory which, blind that she was, she had then but dimly
apprehended, but of which now she was aware in every fibre of her being--he
was good--he was great! How could she ever have dreamt of setting up her will
against his wisdom, her ignorance against his knowledge, her fancies against
his perfect taste? Had she really once loved London and late hours and
dissipation? She who now was only happy in the country, she who jumped out of
bed every morning--oh, so early!--with Albert, to take a walk, before
breakfast, with Albert alone! How wonderful it was to be taught by him! To be
told by him which trees were which; and to learn all about the bees! And then
to sit doing cross-stitch while he read aloud to her Hallam's Constitutional
History of England! Or to listen to him playing on his new organ "The organ is
the first of instruments," he said); or to sing to him a song by Mendelssohn,
with a great deal of care over the time and the breathing, and only a very
occasional false note! And, after dinner, to--oh, how good of him! He had
given up his double chess! And so there could be round games at the round
table, or everyone could spend the evening in the most amusing way
imaginable--spinning counters and rings.' When the babies came it was still
more wonderful. Pussy was such a clever little girl ("I am not Pussy! I am the
Princess Royal!" she had angrily exclaimed on one occasion); and Bertie--well,
she could only pray MOST fervently that the little Prince of Wales would grow
up to "resemble his angelic dearest Father in EVERY, EVERY respect, both in
body and mind." Her dear Mamma, too, had been drawn once more into the family
circle, for Albert had brought about a reconciliation, and the departure of 
Lehzen had helped to obliterate the past. In Victoria's eyes, life had become 
an idyll, and, if the essential elements of an idyll are happiness, love and
simplicity, an idyll it was; though, indeed, it was of a kind that might have
disconcerted Theocritus.  "Albert brought in dearest little Pussy," wrote Her
Majesty in her journal, "in such a smart white merino dress trimmed with blue,
which Mamma had given her, and a pretty cap, and placed her on my bed, seating
himself next to 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."

The past--the past of only three years since--when she looked back upon it,
seemed a thing so remote and alien that she could explain it to herself in no
other way than as some kind of delusion--an unfortunate mistake. Turning over
an old volume of her diary, she came upon this sentence--"As for 'the
confidence of the Crown,' God knows! No MINISTER, NO FRIEND, EVER possessed it
so entirely as this truly excellent Lord Melbourne possesses mine!" A pang
shot through her--she seized a pen, and wrote upon the margin--"Reading this
again, I cannot forbear remarking what an artificial sort of happiness MINE
was THEN, and what a blessing it is I have now in my beloved Husband REAL and
solid happiness, which no Politics, no worldly reverses CAN change; it could
not have lasted long as it was then, for after all, kind and excellent as Lord
M. is, and kind as he was to me, it was but in Society that I had amusement,
and I was only living on that superficial resource, which I THEN FANCIED was
happiness! Thank God! for ME and others, this is changed, and I KNOW WHAT REAL
HAPPINESS IS--V. R." How did she know? What is the distinction between
happiness that is real and happiness that is felt? So a philosopher--Lord M.
himself perhaps--might have inquired. But she was no philosopher, and Lord M.
was a phantom, and Albert was beside her, and that was enough.

Happy, certainly, she was; and she wanted everyone to know it. Her letters to
King Leopold are sprinkled thick with raptures. "Oh! my dearest uncle, I am
sure if you knew HOW happy, how blessed I feel, and how PROUD I feel in
possessing SUCH a perfect being as my husband..." such ecstasies seemed to
gush from her pen unceasingly and almost of their own accord. When, one day,
without thinking, Lady Lyttelton described someone to her as being "as happy
as a queen," and then grew a little confused, "Don't correct yourself, Lady
Lyttelton," said Her Majesty. "A queen IS a very happy woman."

But this new happiness was no lotus dream. On the contrary, it was bracing,
rather than relaxing. Never before had she felt so acutely the necessity for
doing her duty. She worked more methodically than ever at the business of
State; she watched over her children with untiring vigilance. She carried on a
large correspondence; she was occupied with her farm--her dairy--a whole
multitude of household avocations--from morning till night. Her active, eager
little body hurrying with quick steps after the long strides of Albert down
the corridors and avenues of Windsor, seemed the very expression of her
spirit. Amid all the softness, the deliciousness of unmixed joy, all the
liquescence, the overflowings of inexhaustible sentiment, her native rigidity
remained. "A vein of iron," said Lady Lyttelton, who, as royal governess, had
good means of observation, "runs through her most extraordinary character."
Sometimes the delightful routine of domestic existence had to be interrupted.
It was necessary to exchange Windsor for Buckingham Palace, to open
Parliament, or to interview official personages, or, occasionally, to
entertain foreign visitors at the Castle. Then the quiet Court put on a sudden
magnificence, and sovereigns from over the seas--Louis Philippe, or the King
of Prussia, or the King of Saxony--found at Windsor an entertainment that was
indeed a royal one. Few spectacles in Europe, it was agreed, produced an
effect so imposing as the great Waterloo banqueting hall, crowded with guests
in sparkling diamonds and blazing uniforms, the long walls hung with the
stately portraits of heroes, and the tables loaded with the gorgeous gold
plate of the kings of England. But, in that wealth of splendour, the most
imposing spectacle of all was the Queen. The little hausfrau, who had spent
the day before walking out with her children, inspecting her livestock,
practicing shakes at the piano, and filling up her journal with adoring
descriptions of her husband, suddenly shone forth, without art, without
effort, by a spontaneous and natural transition, the very culmination of
Majesty. The Tsar of Russia himself was deeply impressed. Victoria on her side
viewed with secret awe the tremendous Nicholas. "A great event and a great
compliment HIS visit certainly is," she told her uncle, "and the people HERE
are extremely flattered at it. He is certainly a VERY STRIKING man; still very
handsome. His profile is BEAUTIFUL and his manners MOST dignified and
graceful; extremely civil--quite alarmingly so, as he is so full of attentions
and POLITENESS. But the expression of the EYES is FORMIDABLE and unlike
anything I ever saw before." She and Albert and "the good King of Saxony," who
happened to be there at the same time, and whom, she said, "we like much--he
is so unassuming-" drew together like tame villatic fowl in the presence of
that awful eagle. When he was gone, they compared notes about his face, his
unhappiness, and his despotic power over millions. Well! She for her part
could not help pitying him, and she thanked God she was Queen of England.

When the time came for returning some of these visits, the royal pair set
forth in their yacht, much to Victoria's satisfaction. "I do love a ship!" she
exclaimed, ran up and down ladders with the greatest agility, and cracked
jokes with the sailors. The Prince was more aloof. They visited Louis Philippe
at the Chateau d'Eu; they visited King Leopold in Brussels. It happened that a
still more remarkable Englishwoman was in the Belgian capital, but she was not
remarked; and Queen Victoria passed unknowing before the steady gaze of one of
the mistresses in M. Heger's pensionnat. "A little stout, vivacious lady, very
plainly dressed--not much dignity or pretension about her," was Charlotte
Bronte's comment as the royal carriage and six flashed by her, making her wait
on the pavement for a moment, and interrupting the train of her reflections.
Victoria was in high spirits, and even succeeded in instilling a little
cheerfulness into her uncle's sombre Court. King Leopold, indeed, was
perfectly contented. His dearest hopes had been fulfilled; all his ambitions
were satisfied; and for the rest of his life he had only to enjoy, in
undisturbed decorum, his throne, his respectability, the table of precedence,
and the punctual discharge of his irksome duties. But unfortunately the
felicity of those who surrounded him was less complete. His Court, it was
murmured, was as gloomy as a conventicle, and the most dismal of all the
sufferers was his wife. "Pas de plaisanteries, madame!" he had exclaimed to
the unfortunate successor of the Princess Charlotte, when, in the early days
of their marriage, she had attempted a feeble joke. Did she not understand
that the consort of a constitutional sovereign must not be frivolous? She
understood, at last, only too well; and when the startled walls of the state
apartments re-echoed to the chattering and the laughter of Victoria, the poor
lady found that she had almost forgotten how to smile.

Another year, Germany was visited, and Albert displayed the beauties of his
home. When Victoria crossed the frontier, she was much excited--and she was
astonished as well. "To hear the people speak German," she noted in her diary,
"and to see the German soldiers, etc., seemed to me so singular." Having
recovered from this slight shock, she found the country charming. She was
feted everywhere, crowds of the surrounding royalties swooped down to welcome
her, and the prettiest groups of peasant children, dressed in their best
clothes, presented her with bunches of flowers. The principality of Coburg,
with its romantic scenery and its well-behaved inhabitants, particularly
delighted her; and when she woke up one morning to find herself in "dear
Rosenau, my Albert's birthplace," it was "like a beautiful dream." On her
return home, she expatiated, in a letter to King Leopold, upon the pleasures
of the trip, dwelling especially upon the intensity of her affection for
Albert's native land. "I have a feeling," she said, "for our dear little
Germany, which I cannot describe. I felt it at Rosenau so much. It is a
something which touches me, and which goes to my heart, and makes me inclined
to cry. I never felt at any other place that sort of pensive pleasure and
peace which I felt there. I fear I almost like it too much."

V

The husband was not so happy as the wife. In spite of the great improvement in
his situation, in spite of a growing family and the adoration of Victoria,
Albert was still a stranger in a strange land, and the serenity of spiritual
satisfaction was denied him. It was something, no doubt, to have dominated his
immediate environment; but it was not enough; and, besides, in the very
completeness of his success, there was a bitterness. Victoria idolised him;
but it was understanding that he craved for, not idolatry; and how much did
Victoria, filled to the brim though she was with him, understand him? How much
does the bucket understand the well? He was lonely. He went to his organ and
improvised with learned modulations until the sounds, swelling and subsiding
through elaborate cadences, brought some solace to his heart. Then, with the
elasticity of youth, he hurried off to play with the babies, or to design a
new pigsty, or to read aloud the "Church History of Scotland" to Victoria, or
to pirouette before her on one toe, like a ballet-dancer, with a fixed smile,
to show her how she ought to behave when she appeared in public places. Thus
did he amuse himself; but there was one distraction in which he did not
indulge. He never flirted--no, not with the prettiest ladies of the Court.
When, during their engagement, the Queen had remarked with pride to Lord
Melbourne that the Prince paid no attention to any other woman, the cynic had
answered, "No, that sort of thing is apt to come later;" upon which she had
scolded him severely, and then hurried off to Stockmar to repeat what Lord M.
had said. But the Baron had reassured her; though in other cases, he had
replied, that might happen, he did not think it would in Albert's. And the
Baron was right. Throughout their married life no rival female charms ever had
cause to give Victoria one moment's pang of jealosy

What more and more absorbed him--bringing with it a curious comfort of its
own--was his work. With the advent of Peel, he began to intervene actively in
the affairs of the State. In more ways than one--in the cast of their
intelligence, in their moral earnestness, even in the uneasy formalism of
their manners--the two men resembled each other; there was a sympathy between
them; and thus Peel was ready enough to listen to the advice of Stockmar, and
to urge the Prince forward into public life. A royal commission was about to
be formed to enquire whether advantage might not be taken of the rebuilding of
the Houses of Parliament to encourage the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom; and
Peel, with great perspicacity, asked the Prince to preside over it. The work
was of a kind which precisely suited Albert: his love of art, his love of
method, his love of coming into contact--close yet dignified--with
distinguished men--it satisfied them all; and he threw himself into it con
amore. Some of the members of the commission were somewhat alarmed when, in
his opening speech, he pointed out the necessity of dividing the subjects to
be considered into "categories-" the word, they thought, smacked dangerously
of German metaphysics; but their confidence returned when they observed His
Royal Highness's extraordinary technical acquaintance with the processes of
fresco painting. When the question arose as to whether the decorations upon
the walls of the new buildings should, or should not, have a moral purpose,
the Prince spoke strongly for the affirmative. Although many, he observed,
would give but a passing glance to the works, the painter was not therefore to
forget that others might view them with more thoughtful eyes. This argument
convinced the commission, and it was decided that the subjects to be depicted
should be of an improving nature. The frescoes were carried out in accordance
with the commission's instructions, but unfortunately before very long they
had become, even to the most thoughtful eyes, totally invisible. It seems that
His Royal Highness's technical acquaintance with the processes of fresco
painting was incomplete!

The next task upon which the Prince embarked was a more arduous one: he
determined to reform the organisation of the royal household. This reform had
been long overdue. For years past the confusion, discomfort, and extravagance
in the royal residences, and in Buckingham Palace particularly, had been
scandalous; no reform had been practicable under the rule of the Baroness; but
her functions had now devolved upon the Prince, and in 1844, he boldly
attacked the problem. Three years earlier, Stockmar, after careful enquiry,
had revealed in an elaborate memorandum an extraordinary state of affairs. The
control of the household, it appeared, was divided in the strangest manner
between a number of authorities, each independent of the other, each possessed
of vague and fluctuating powers, without responsibility, and without
co-ordination. Of these authorities, the most prominent were the Lord Steward
and the Lord Chamberlain--noblemen of high rank and political importance, who
changed office with every administration, who did not reside with the Court,
and had no effective representatives attached to it. The distribution of their
respective functions was uncertain and peculiar. In Buckingham Palace, it was
believed that the Lord Chamberlain had charge of the whole of the rooms, with
the exception of the kitchen, sculleries, and pantries, which were claimed by
the Lord Steward. At the same time, the outside of the Palace was under the
control of neither of these functionaries--but of the Office of Woods and
Forests; and thus, while the insides of the windows were cleaned by the
Department of the Lord Chamberlain--or possibly, in certain cases, of the Lord
Steward--the Office of Woods and Forests cleaned their outsides. Of the
servants, the housekeepers, the pages, and the housemaids were under the
authority of the Lord Chamberlain; the clerk of the kitchen, the cooks, and
the porters were under that of the Lord Steward; but the footmen, the
livery-porters, and the under-butlers took their orders from yet another
official--the Master of the Horse. Naturally, in these circumstances the
service was extremely defective and the lack of discipline among the servants
disgraceful. They absented themselves for as long as they pleased and whenever
the fancy took them; "and if," as the Baron put it, "smoking, drinking, and
other irregularities occur in the dormitories, where footmen, etc., sleep ten
and twelve in each room, no one can help it." As for Her Majesty's guests,
there was nobody to show them to their rooms, and they were often left, having
utterly lost their way in the complicated passages, to wander helpless by the
hour. The strange divisions of authority extended not only to persons but to
things. The Queen observed that there was never a fire in the dining-room. She
enquired why. The answer was "the Lord Steward lays the fire, and the Lord
Chamberlain lights it;" the underlings of those two great noblemen having
failed to come to an accommodation, there was no help for it--the Queen must
eat in the cold.

A surprising incident opened everyone's eyes to the confusion and negligence
that reigned in the Palace. A fortnight after the birth of the Princess Royal
the nurse heard a suspicious noise in the room next to the Queen's bedroom.
She called to one of the pages, who, looking under a large sofa, perceived
there a crouching figure "with a most repulsive appearance." It was "the boy
Jones." This enigmatical personage, whose escapades dominated the newspapers
for several ensuing months, and whose motives and character remained to the
end ambiguous, was an undersized lad of 17, the son of a tailor, who had
apparently gained admittance to the Palace by climbing over the garden wall
and walking in through an open window. Two years before he had paid a similar
visit in the guise of a chimney-sweep. He now declared that he had spent three
days in the Palace, hiding under various beds, that he had "helped himself to
soup and other eatables," and that he had "sat upon the throne, seen the
Queen, and heard the Princess Royal squall." Every detail of the strange
affair was eagerly canvassed. The Times reported that the boy Jones had "from
his infancy been fond of reading," but that "his countenance is exceedingly
sullen." It added: "The sofa under which the boy Jones was discovered, we
understand, is one of the most costly and magnificent material and
workmanship, and ordered expressly for the accommodation of the royal and
illustrious visitors who call to pay their respects to Her Majesty." The
culprit was sent for three months to the "House of Correction." When he
emerged, he immediately returned to Buckingham Palace. He was discovered, and
sent back to the "House of Correction" for another three months, after which
he was offered L4 a week by a music hall to appear upon the stage. He refused
this offer, and shortly afterwards was found by the police loitering round
Buckingham Palace. The authorities acted vigorously, and, without any trial or
process of law, shipped the boy Jones off to sea. A year later his ship put
into Portsmouth to refit, and he at once disembarked and walked to London. He
was re-arrested before he reached the Palace, and sent back to his ship, the
Warspite. On this occasion it was noticed that he had "much improved in
personal appearance and grown quite corpulent;" and so the boy Jones passed
out of history, though we catch one last glimpse of him in 1844 falling
overboard in the night between Tunis and Algiers. He was fished up again; but
it was conjectured--as one of the Warspite's officers explained in a letter to
The Times--that his fall had not been accidental, but that he had deliberately
jumped into the Mediterranean in order to "see the life-buoy light burning."
Of a boy with such a record, what else could be supposed?

But discomfort and alarm were not the only results of the mismanagement of the
household; the waste, extravagance, and peculation that also flowed from it
were immeasurable. There were preposterous perquisites and malpractices of
every kind. It was, for instance, an ancient and immutable rule that a candle
that had once been lighted should never be lighted again; what happened to the
old candles, nobody knew. Again, the Prince, examining the accounts, was
puzzled by a weekly expenditure of thirty-five shillings on "Red Room Wine."
He enquired into the matter, and after great difficulty discovered that in the
time of George III a room in Windsor Castle with red hangings had once been
used as a guard-room, and that five shillings a day had been allowed to
provide wine for the officers. The guard had long since been moved elsewhere,
but the payment for wine in the Red Room continued, the money being received
by a half-pay officer who held the sinecure position of under-butler.

After much laborious investigation, and a stiff struggle with the multitude of
vested interests which had been brought into being by long years of neglect,
the Prince succeeded in effecting a complete reform. The various conflicting
authorities were induced to resign their powers into the hands of a single
official, the Master of the Household, who became responsible for the entire
management of the royal palaces. Great economies were made, and the whole
crowd of venerable abuses was swept away. Among others, the unlucky half-pay
officer of the Red Room was, much to his surprise, given the choice of
relinquishing his weekly emolument or of performing the duties of an
under-butler. Even the irregularities among the footmen, etc., were greatly
diminished. There were outcries and complaints; the Prince was accused of
meddling, of injustice, and of saving candle-ends; but he held on his course,
and before long the admirable administration of the royal household was
recognised as a convincing proof of his perseverance and capacity.

At the same time his activity was increasing enormously in a more important
sphere. He had become the Queen's Private Secretary, her confidential adviser,
her second self. He was now always present at her interviews with Ministers.
He took, like the Queen, a special interest in foreign policy; but there was
no public question in which his influence was not felt. A double process was
at work; while Victoria fell more and more absolutely under his intellectual
predominance, he, simultaneously, grew more and more completely absorbed by
the machinery of high politics--the incessant and multifarious business of a
great State. Nobody any more could call him a dilettante; he was a worker, a
public personage, a man of affairs. Stockmar noted the change with exultation.
"The Prince," he wrote, "has improved very much lately. He has evidently a
head for politics. He has become, too, far more independent. His mental
activity is constantly on the increase, and he gives the greater part of his
time to business, without complaining."

"The relations between husband and wife," added the Baron, "are all one could
desire."

Long before Peel's ministry came to an end, there had been a complete change
in Victoria's attitude towards him. His appreciation of the Prince had
softened her heart; the sincerity and warmth of his nature, which, in private
intercourse with those whom he wished to please, had the power of gradually
dissipating the awkwardness of his manners, did the rest. She came in time to
regard him with intense feelings of respect and attachment. She spoke of "our
worthy Peel," for whom, she said, she had "an EXTREME admiration" and who had
shown himself "a man of unbounded LOYALTY, COURAGE patriotism, and
HIGH-MINDEDNESS, and his conduct towards me has been CHIVALROUS almost, I
might say." She dreaded his removal from office almost as frantically as she
had once dreaded that of Lord M. It would be, she declared, a GREAT CALAMITY.
Six years before, what would she have said, if a prophet had told her that the
day would come when she would be horrified by the triumph of the Whigs? Yet
there was no escaping it; she had to face the return of her old friends. In
the ministerial crises of 1845 and 1846, the Prince played a dominating part.
Everybody recognised that he was the real centre of the negotiations--the
actual controller of the forces and the functions of the Crown. The process by
which this result was reached had been so gradual as to be almost
imperceptible; but it may be said with certainty that, by the close of Peel's
administration, Albert had become, in effect, the King of England.



VI

With the final emergence of the Prince came the final extinction of Lord
Melbourne. A year after his loss of office, he had been struck down by a
paralytic seizure; he had apparently recovered, but his old elasticity had
gone for ever. Moody, restless, and unhappy, he wandered like a ghost about
the town, bursting into soliloquies in public places, or asking odd questions,
suddenly, a propos de bottes. "I'll be hanged if I do it for you, my Lord," he
was heard to say in the hall at Brooks's, standing by himself, and addressing
the air after much thought. "Don't you consider," he abruptly asked a
fellow-guest at Lady Holland's, leaning across the dinner-table in a pause of
the conversation, "that it was a most damnable act of Henri Quatre to change
his religion with a view to securing the Crown?" He sat at home, brooding for
hours in miserable solitude. He turned over his books--his classics and his
Testaments--but they brought him no comfort at all. He longed for the return
of the past, for the impossible, for he knew not what, for the devilries of
Caro, for the happy platitudes of Windsor. His friends had left him, and no
wonder, he said in bitterness--the fire was out. He secretly hoped for a
return to power, scanning the newspapers with solicitude, and occasionally
making a speech in the House of Lords. His correspondence with the Queen
continued, and he appeared from time to time at Court; but he was a mere
simulacrum of his former self; "the dream," wrote Victoria, "is past." As for
his political views, they could no longer be tolerated. The Prince was an
ardent Free Trader, and so, of course, was the Queen; and when, dining at
Windsor at the time of the repeal of the Corn Laws, Lord Melbourne suddenly
exclaimed, "Ma'am, it's a damned dishonest act!" everyone was extremely
embarrassed. Her Majesty laughed and tried to change the conversation, but
without avail; Lord Melbourne returned to the charge again and again with--"I
say, Ma'am, it's damned dishonest!"--until the Queen said "Lord Melbourne, I
must beg you not to say anything more on this subject now;" and then he held
his tongue. She was kind to him, writing him long letters, and always
remembering his birthday; but it was kindness at a distance, and he knew it.
He had become "poor Lord Melbourne." A profound disquietude devoured him. He
tried to fix his mind on the condition of Agriculture and the Oxford Movement.
He wrote long memoranda in utterly undecipherable handwriting. He was
convinced that he had lost all his money, and could not possibly afford to be
a Knight of the Garter. He had run through everything, and yet--if Peel went
out, he might be sent for--why not? He was never sent for. The Whigs ignored
him in their consultations, and the leadership of the party passed to Lord
John Russell. When Lord John became Prime Minister, there was much politeness,
but Lord Melbourne was not asked to join the Cabinet. He bore the blow with
perfect amenity; but he understood, at last, that that was the end.

For two years more he lingered, sinking slowly into unconsciousness and
imbecility. Sometimes, propped up in his chair, he would be heard to murmur,
with unexpected appositeness, the words of Samson:--

   "So much I feel my general spirit droop,     My hopes all flat, nature
within me seems,     In all her functions weary of herself,     My race of
glory run, and race of shame,     And I shall shortly be with them that rest."

A few days before his death, Victoria, learning that there was no hope of his
recovery, turned her mind for a little towards that which had once been Lord
M. "You will grieve to hear," she told King Leopold, "that our good, dear, old
friend Melbourne is dying... One cannot forget how good and kind and amiable
he was, and it brings back so many recollections to my mind, though, God
knows! I never wish that time back again."

She was in little danger. The tide of circumstance was flowing now with
irresistible fullness towards a very different consummation. The seriousness
of Albert, the claims of her children, her own inmost inclinations, and the
movement of the whole surrounding world, combined to urge her forward along
the narrow way of public and domestic duty. Her family steadily increased.
Within eighteen months of the birth of the Prince of Wales the Princess Alice
appeared, and a year later the Prince Alfred, and then the Princess Helena,
and, two years afterwards, the Princess Louise; and still there were signs
that the pretty row of royal infants was not complete. The parents, more and
more involved in family cares and family happiness, found the pomp of Windsor
galling, and longed for some more intimate and remote retreat. On the advice
of Peel they purchased the estate of Osborne, in the Isle of Wight. Their
skill and economy in financial matters had enabled them to lay aside a
substantial sum of money; and they could afford, out of their savings, not
merely to buy the property but to build a new house for themselves and to
furnish it at a cost of L200,000. At Osborne, by the sea-shore, and among the
woods, which Albert, with memories of Rosenau in his mind, had so carefully
planted, the royal family spent every hour that could be snatched from Windsor
and London--delightful hours of deep retirement and peaceful work. The public
looked on with approval. A few aristocrats might sniff or titter; but with the
nation at large the Queen was now once more extremely popular. The
middle-classes, in particular, were pleased. They liked a love-match; they
liked a household which combined the advantages of royalty and virtue, and in
which they seemed to see, reflected as in some resplendent looking-glass, the
ideal image of the very lives they led themselves. Their own existences, less
exalted, but oh! so soothingly similar, acquired an added excellence, an added
succulence, from the early hours, the regularity, the plain tuckers, the round
games, the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding oft Osborne. It was indeed a model
Court. Not only were its central personages the patterns of propriety, but no
breath of scandal, no shadow of indecorum, might approach its utmost
boundaries. For Victoria, with all the zeal of a convert, upheld now the
standard of moral purity with an inflexibility surpassing, if that were
possible, Albert's own. She blushed to think how she had once believed--how
she had once actually told HIM--that one might be too strict and particular in
such matters, and that one ought to be indulgent towards other people's
dreadful sins. But she was no longer Lord M's pupil: she was Albert's wife.
She was more--the embodiment, the living apex of a new era in the generations
of mankind. The last vestige of the eighteenth century had disappeared;
cynicism and subtlety were shrivelled into powder; and duty, industry,
morality, and domesticity triumphed over them. Even the very chairs and tables
had assumed, with a singular responsiveness, the forms of prim solidity. The
Victorian Age was in full swing.

VII

Only one thing more was needed: material expression must be given to the new
ideals and the new forces so that they might stand revealed, in visible glory,
before the eyes of an astonished world. It was for Albert to supply this want.
He mused, and was inspired: the Great Exhibition came into his head.

Without consulting anyone, he thought out the details of his conception with
the minutest care. There had been exhibitions before in the world, but this
should surpass them all. It should contain specimens of what every country
could produce in raw materials, in machinery and mechanical inventions, in
manufactures, and in the applied and plastic arts. It should not be merely
useful and ornamental; it should teach a high moral lesson. It should be an
international monument to those supreme blessings of civilisation--peace,
progress, and prosperity. For some time past the Prince had been devoting much
of his attention to the problems of commerce and industry. He had a taste for
machinery of every kind, and his sharp eye had more than once detected, with
the precision of an expert, a missing cog-wheel in some vast and complicated
engine. A visit to Liverpool, where he opened the Albert Dock, impressed upon
his mind the immensity of modern industrial forces, though in a letter to
Victoria describing his experiences, he was careful to retain his customary
lightness of touch. "As I write," he playfully remarked, "you will be making
your evening toilette, and not be ready in time for dinner. I must set about
the same task, and not, let me hope, with the same result... The loyalty and
enthusiasm of the inhabitants are great; but the heat is greater still. I am
satisfied that if the population of Liverpool had been weighed this morning,
and were to be weighed again now, they would be found many degrees lighter.
The docks are wonderful, and the mass of shipping incredible. In art and
science he had been deeply interested since boyhood; his reform of the
household had put his talent for organisation beyond a doubt; and thus from
every point of view the Prince was well qualified for his task. Having matured
his plans, he summoned a small committee and laid an outline of his scheme
before it. The committee approved, and the great undertaking was set on foot
without delay.

Two years, however, passed before it was completed. For two years the Prince
laboured with extraordinary and incessant energy. At first all went smoothly.
The leading manufacturers warmly took up the idea; the colonies and the East
India Company were sympathetic; the great foreign nations were eager to send
in their contributions; the powerful support of Sir Robert Peel was obtained,
and the use of a site in Hyde Park, selected by the Prince, was sanctioned by
the Government. Out of 234 plans for the exhibition building, the Prince chose
that of Joseph Paxton, famous as a designer of gigantic conservatories; and
the work was on the point of being put in hand when a series of unexpected
difficulties arose. Opposition to the whole scheme, which had long been
smouldering in various quarters, suddenly burst forth. There was an outcry,
headed by The Times, against the use of the park for the exhibition; for a
moment it seemed as if the building would be relegated to a suburb; but, after
a fierce debate in the House, the supporters of the site in the Park won the
day. Then it appeared that the project lacked a sufficient financial backing;
but this obstacle, too, was surmounted, and eventually L200,000 was subscribed
as a guarantee fund. The enormous glass edifice rose higher and higher,
covering acres and enclosing towering elm trees beneath its roof: and then the
fury of its enemies reached a climax. The fashionable, the cautious, the
Protectionists, the pious, all joined in the hue and cry. It was pointed out
that the Exhibition would serve as a rallying point for all the ruffians in
England, for all the malcontents in Europe; and that on the day of its opening
there would certainly be a riot and probably a revolution. It was asserted
that the glass roof was porous, and that the droppings of fifty million
sparrows would utterly destroy every object beneath it. Agitated
nonconformists declared that the Exhibition was an arrogant and wicked
enterprise which would infallibly bring down God's punishment upon the nation.
Colonel Sibthorpe, in the debate on the Address, prayed that hail and
lightning might descend from heaven on the accursed thing. The Prince, with
unyielding perseverance and infinite patience, pressed on to his goal. His
health was seriously affected; he suffered from constant sleeplessness; his
strength was almost worn out. But he remembered the injunctions of Stockmar
and never relaxed. The volume of his labours grew more prodigious every day;
he toiled at committees, presided over public meetings, made speeches, and
carried on communications with every corner of the civilised world--and his
efforts were rewarded. On May 1, 1851, the Great Exhibition was opened by the
Queen before an enormous concourse of persons, amid scenes of dazzling
brilliancy and triumphant enthusiasm.

Victoria herself was in a state of excitement which bordered on delirium. She
performed her duties in a trance of joy, gratitude, and amazement, and, when
it was all over, her feelings poured themselves out into her journal in a
torrential flood. The day had been nothing but an endless succession of
glories--or rather one vast glory--one vast radiation of Albert. Everything
she had seen, everything she had felt or heard, had been so beautiful, so
wonderful that even the royal underlinings broke down under the burden of
emphasis, while her remembering pen rushed on, regardless, from splendour to
splendour--the huge crowds, so well--behaved and loyal-flags of all the
nations floating--the inside of the building, so immense, with myriads of
people and the sun shining through the roof--a little side room, where we left
our shawls--palm-trees and machinery--dear Albert--the place so big that we
could hardly hear the organ--thankfulness to God--a curious assemblage of
political and distinguished men--the March from Athalie--God bless my dearest
Albert, God bless my dearest country!--a glass fountain--the Duke and Lord
Anglesey walking arm in arm--a beautiful Amazon, in bronze, by Kiss--Mr.
Paxton, who might be justly proud, and rose from being a common gardener's
boy--Sir George Grey in tears, and everybody astonished and delighted.

A striking incident occurred when, after a short prayer by the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the choir of 600 voices burst into the "Hallelujah Chorus." At
that moment a Chinaman, dressed in full national costume, stepped out into the
middle of the central nave, and, advancing slowly towards the royal group, did
obeisance to Her Majesty. The Queen, much impressed, had no doubt that he was
an eminent mandarin; and, when the final procession was formed, orders were
given that, as no representative of the Celestial Empire was present, he
should be included in the diplomatic cortege. He accordingly, with the utmost
gravity, followed immediately behind the Ambassadors. He subsequently
disappeared, and it was rumoured, among ill-natured people, that, far from
being a mandarin, the fellow was a mere impostor. But nobody ever really
discovered the nature of the comments that had been lurking behind the
matchless impassivity of that yellow face.

A few days later Victoria poured out her heart to her uncle. The first of May,
she said, was "the GREATEST day in our history, the most BEAUTIFUL and
IMPOSING and TOUCHING spectacle ever seen, and the triumph of my beloved
Albert... It was the HAPPIEST, PROUDEST day in my life, and I can think of
nothing else. Albert's dearest name is immortalised with this GREAT
conception, HIS own, and my OWN dear country SHOWED she was WORTHY of it. The
triumph is IMMENSE."

It was. The enthusiasm was universal; even the bitterest scoffers were
converted, and joined in the chorus of praise. Congratulations from public
bodies poured in; the City of Paris gave a great fete to the Exhibition
committee; and the Queen and the Prince made a triumphal progress through the
North of England. The financial results were equally remarkable. The total
profit made by the Exhibition amounted to a sum of L165,000, which was
employed in the purchase of land for the erection of a permanent National
Museum in South Kensington. During the six months of its existence in Hyde
Park over six million persons visited it, and not a single accident occurred.
But there is an end to all things; and the time had come for the Crystal
Palace to be removed to the salubrious seclusion of Sydenham. Victoria, sad
but resigned, paid her final visit. "It looked so beautiful," she said. "I
could not believe it was the last time I was to see it. An organ, accompanied
by a fine and powerful wind instrument called the sommerophone, was being
played, and it nearly upset me. The canvas is very dirty, the red curtains are
faded and many things are very much soiled, still the effect is fresh and new
as ever and most beautiful. The glass fountain was already removed... and the
sappers and miners were rolling about the little boxes just as they did at the
beginning. It made us all very melancholy." But more cheerful thoughts
followed. When all was over, she expressed her boundless satisfaction in a
dithyrambic letter to the Prime Minister. Her beloved husband's name, she
said, was for ever immortalised, and that this was universally recognised by
the country was a source to her of immense happiness and gratitude. "She feels
grateful to Providence," Her Majesty concluded, "to have permitted her to be
united to so great, so noble, so excellent a Prince, and this year will ever
remain the proudest and happiest of her life. The day of the closing of the
Exhibition (which the Queen regretted much she could not witness), was the
twelfth anniversary of her betrothal to the Prince, which is a curious
coincidence."



CHAPTER V. LORD PALMERSTON

I

In 1851 the Prince's fortunes reached their high-water mark. The success of
the Great Exhibition enormously increased his reputation and seemed to assure
him henceforward a leading place in the national life. But before the year was
out another triumph, in a very different sphere of action, was also his. This
triumph, big with fateful consequences, was itself the outcome of a series of
complicated circumstances which had been gathering to a climax for many years.


The unpopularity of Albert in high society had not diminished with time.
Aristocratic persons continued to regard him with disfavour; and he on his
side, withdrew further and further into a contemptuous reserve. For a moment,
indeed, it appeared as if the dislike of the upper classes was about to be
suddenly converted into cordiality; for they learnt with amazement that the
Prince, during a country visit, had ridden to hounds and acquitted himself
remarkably well. They had always taken it for granted that his horsemanship
was of some second-rate foreign quality, and here he was jumping five-barred
gates and tearing after the fox as if he had been born and bred in
Leicestershire. They could hardly believe it; was it possible that they had
made a mistake, and that Albert was a good fellow after all? Had he wished to
be thought so he would certainly have seized this opportunity, purchased
several hunters, and used them constantly. But he had no such desire; hunting
bored him, and made Victoria nervous. He continued, as before, to ride, as he
himself put it, for exercise or convenience, not for amusement; and it was
agreed that though the Prince, no doubt, could keep in his saddle well enough,
he was no sportsman.

This was a serious matter. It was not merely that Albert was laughed at by
fine ladies and sneered at by fine gentlemen; it was not merely that Victoria,
who before her marriage had cut some figure in society, had, under her
husband's influence, almost completely given it up. Since Charles the Second
the sovereigns of England had, with a single exception, always been
unfashionable; and the fact that the exception was George the Fourth seemed to
give an added significance to the rule. What was grave was not the lack of
fashion, but the lack of other and more important qualities. The hostility of
the upper classes was symptomatic of an antagonism more profound than one of
manners or even of tastes. The Prince, in a word, was un-English. What that
word precisely meant it was difficult to say; but the fact was patent to every
eye. Lord Palmerston, also, was not fashionable; the great Whig aristocrats
looked askance at him, and only tolerated him as an unpleasant necessity
thrust upon them by fate. But Lord Palmerston was English through and through,
there was something in him that expressed, with extraordinary vigour, the
fundamental qualities of the English race. And he was the very antithesis of
the Prince. By a curious chance it so happened that this typical Englishman
was brought into closer contact than any other of his countrymen with the
alien from over the sea. It thus fell out that differences which, in more
fortunate circumstances, might have been smoothed away and obliterated, became
accentuated to the highest pitch. All the mysterious forces in Albert's soul
leapt out to do battle with his adversary, and, in the long and violent
conflict that followed, it almost seemed as if he was struggling with England
herself.

Palmerston's whole life had been spent in the government of the country. At
twenty-two he had been a Minister; at twenty-five he had been offered the
Chancellorship of the Exchequer, which, with that prudence which formed so
unexpected a part of his character, he had declined to accept. His first spell
of office had lasted uninterruptedly for twenty-one years. When Lord Grey came
into power he received the Foreign Secretaryship, a post which he continued to
occupy, with two intervals, for another twenty-one years. Throughout this
period his reputation with the public had steadily grown, and when, in 1846,
he became Foreign Secretary for the third time, his position in the country
was almost, if not quite, on an equality with that of the Prime Minister, Lord
John Russell. He was a tall, big man of sixty-two, with a jaunty air, a large
face, dyed whiskers, and a long sardonic upper lip. His private life was far
from respectable, but he had greatly strengthened his position in society by
marrying, late in life, Lady Cowper, the sister of Lord Melbourne, and one of
the most influential of the Whig hostesses. Powerful, experienced, and
supremely self-confident, he naturally paid very little attention to Albert.
Why should he? The Prince was interested in foreign affairs? Very well, then;
let the Prince pay attention to him--to him, who had been a Cabinet Minister
when Albert was in the cradle, who was the chosen leader of a great nation,
and who had never failed in anything he had undertaken in the whole course of
his life. Not that he wanted the Prince's attention--far from it: so far as he
could see, Albert was merely a young foreigner, who suffered from having no
vices, and whose only claim to distinction was that he had happened to marry
the Queen of England. This estimate, as he found out to his cost, was a
mistaken one. Albert was by no means insignificant, and, behind Albert, there
was another figure by no means insignificant either--there was Stockmar.

But Palmerston, busy with his plans, his ambitions, and the management of a
great department, brushed all such considerations on one side; it was his
favourite method of action. He lived by instinct--by a quick eye and a strong
hand, a dexterous management of every crisis as it arose, a half-unconscious
sense of the vital elements in a situation. He was very bold; and nothing gave
him more exhilaration than to steer the ship of state in a high wind, on a
rough sea, with every stitch of canvas on her that she could carry. But there
is a point beyond which boldness becomes rashness--a point perceptible only to
intuition and not to reason; and beyond that point Palmerston never went. When
he saw that the cast demanded it, he could go slow--very slow indeed in fact,
his whole career, so full of vigorous adventure, was nevertheless a masterly
example of the proverb, "tout vient a point a qui sait attendre." But when he
decided to go quick, nobody went quicker. One day, returning from Osborne, he
found that he had missed the train to London; he ordered a special, but the
station master told him that to put a special train upon the line at that time
of day would be dangerous and he could not allow it. Palmerston insisted
declaring that he had important business in London, which could not wait. The
station-master supported by all the officials, continued to demur the company,
he said, could not possibly take the responsibility. "On MY responsibility,
then!" said Palmerston, in his off-hand, peremptory way whereupon the
station-master ordered up the train and the Foreign Secretary reached London
in time for his work, without an accident. The story, is typical of the happy
valiance with which he conducted both his own affairs and those of the nation.
"England," he used to say, "is strong enough to brave consequences."
Apparently, under Palmerston's guidance, she was. While the officials
protested and shook in their shoes, he would wave them away with his airy "MY
responsibility!" and carry the country swiftly along the line of his choice,
to a triumphant destination--without an accident. His immense popularity was
the result partly of his diplomatic successes, partly of his extraordinary
personal affability, but chiefly of the genuine intensity with which he
responded to the feelings and supported the interests of his countrymen. The
public knew that it had in Lord Palmerston not only a high-mettled master, but
also a devoted servant--that he was, in every sense of the word, a public man.
When he was Prime Minister, he noticed that iron hurdles had been put up on
the grass in the Green Park; he immediately wrote to the Minister responsible,
ordering, in the severest language, their instant removal, declaring that they
were "an intolerable nuisance," and that the purpose of the grass was "to be
walked upon freely and without restraint by the people, old and young, for
whose enjoyment the parks are maintained." It was in this spirit that, as
Foreign Secretary, he watched over the interests of Englishmen abroad. Nothing
could be more agreeable for Englishmen; but foreign governments were less
pleased. They found Lord Palmerston interfering, exasperating, and alarming.
In Paris they spoke with bated breath of "ce terrible milord Palmerston;" and
in Germany they made a little song about him--

       "Hat der Teufel einen Sohn,
        So ist er sicher Palmerston."

But their complaints, their threats, and their agitations were all in vain.
Palmerston, with his upper lip sardonically curving, braved consequences, and
held on his course.

The first diplomatic crisis which arose after his return to office, though the
Prince and the Queen were closely concerned with it, passed off without
serious disagreement between the Court and the Minister. For some years past a
curious problem had been perplexing the chanceries of Europe. Spain, ever
since the time of Napoleon a prey to civil convulsions, had settled down for a
short interval to a state of comparative quiet under the rule of Christina,
the Queen Mother, and her daughter Isabella, the young Queen. In 1846, the
question of Isabella's marriage, which had for long been the subject of
diplomatic speculations, suddenly became acute. Various candidates for her
hand were proposed--among others, two cousins of her own, another Spanish
prince, and Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, a first cousin of Victoria's and
Albert's; for different reasons, however, none of these young men seemed
altogether satisfactory. Isabella was not yet sixteen; and it might have been
supposed that her marriage could be put off for a few years more; but this was
considered to be out of the question. "Vous ne savez pas," said a high
authority, "ce que c'est que ces princesses espagnoles; elles ont le diable au
corps, et on a toujours dit que si nous ne nous hations pas, l'heritier
viendrait avant le mari." It might also have been supposed that the young
Queen's marriage was a matter to be settled by herself, her mother, and the
Spanish Government; but this again was far from being the case. It had become,
by one of those periodical reversions to the ways of the eighteenth century,
which, it is rumoured, are still not unknown in diplomacy, a question of
dominating importance in the foreign policies both of France and England. For
several years, Louis Philippe and his Prime Minister Guizot had been privately
maturing a very subtle plan. It was the object of the French King to repeat
the glorious coup of Louis XIV, and to abolish the Pyrenees by placing one of
his grandsons on the throne of Spain. In order to bring this about, he did not
venture to suggest that his younger son, the Duc de Montpensier, should marry
Isabella; that would have been too obvious a move, which would have raised
immediate and insurmountable opposition. He therefore proposed that Isabella
should marry her cousin, the Duke of Cadiz, while Montpensier married
Isabella's younger sister, the Infanta Fernanda; and pray, what possible
objection could there be to that? The wily old King whispered into the chaste
ears of Guizot the key to the secret; he had good reason to believe that the
Duke of Cadiz was incapable of having children, and therefore the offspring of
Fernanda would inherit the Spanish crown. Guizot rubbed his hands, and began
at once to set the necessary springs in motion; but, of course, the whole
scheme was very soon divulged and understood. The English Government took an
extremely serious view of the matter; the balance of power was clearly at
stake, and the French intrigue must be frustrated at all hazards. A diplomatic
struggle of great intensity followed; and it occasionally appeared that a
second War of the Spanish Succession was about to break out. This was avoided,
but the consequences of this strange imbroglio were far-reaching and
completely different from what any of the parties concerned could have
guessed.

In the course of the long and intricate negotiations there was one point upon
which Louis Philippe laid a special stress--the candidature of Prince Leopold
of Saxe-Coburg. The prospect of a marriage between a Coburg Prince and the
Queen of Spain was, he declared, at least as threatening to the balance of
power in Europe as that of a marriage between the Duc de Montpensier and the
Infanta; and, indeed, there was much to be said for this contention. The ruin
which had fallen upon the House of Coburg during the Napoleonic wars had
apparently only served to multiply its vitality, for that princely family had
by now extended itself over Europe in an extraordinary manner. King Leopold
was firmly fixed in Belgium; his niece was Queen of England; one of his
nephews was the husband of the Queen of England, and another the husband of
the Queen of Portugal; yet another was Duke of Wurtemberg. Where was this to
end? There seemed to be a Coburg Trust ready to send out one of its members at
any moment to fill up any vacant place among the ruling families of Europe.
And even beyond Europe there were signs of this infection spreading. An
American who had arrived in Brussels had assured King Leopold that there was a
strong feeling in the United States in favour of monarchy instead of the
misrule of mobs, and had suggested, to the delight of His Majesty, that some
branch of the Coburg family might be available for the position. That danger
might, perhaps, be remote; but the Spanish danger was close at hand; and if
Prince Leopold were to marry Queen Isabella the position of France would be
one of humiliation, if not of positive danger. Such were the asseverations of
Louis Philippe. The English Government had no wish to support Prince Leopold,
and though Albert and Victoria had some hankerings for the match, the wisdom
of Stockmar had induced them to give up all thoughts of it. The way thus
seemed open for a settlement: England would be reasonable about Leopold, if
France would be reasonable about Montpensier. At the Chateau d'Eu, the
agreement was made, in a series of conversations between the King and Guizot
on the one side, and the Queen, the Prince, and Lord Aberdeen on the other.
Aberdeen, as Foreign Minister, declared that England would neither recognise
nor support Prince Leopold as a candidate for the hand of the Queen of Spain;
while Louis Philippe solemnly promised, both to Aberdeen and to Victoria, that
the Duc de Montpensier should not marry the Infanta Fernanda until after the
Queen was married and had issue. All went well, and the crisis seemed to be
over, when the whole question was suddenly re-opened by Palmerston, who had
succeeded Aberdeen at the Foreign Office. In a despatch to the English
Minister at Madrid, he mentioned, in a list of possible candidates for Queen
Isabella's hand, Prince Leopold of Coburg; and at the same time he took
occasion to denounce in violent language the tyranny and incompetence of the
Spanish Government. This despatch, indiscreet in any case, was rendered
infinitely more so by being communicated to Guizot. Louis Philippe saw his
opportunity and pounced on it. Though there was nothing in Palmerston's
language to show that he either recognised or supported Prince Leopold, the
King at once assumed that the English had broken their engagement, and that he
was therefore free to do likewise. He then sent the despatch to the Queen
Mother, declared that the English were intriguing for the Coburg marriage,
bade her mark the animosity of Palmerston against the Spanish Government, and
urged her to escape from her difficulties and ensure the friendship of France
by marrying Isabella to the Duke of Cadiz and Fernanda to Montpensier. The
Queen Mother, alarmed and furious, was easily convinced. There was only one
difficulty: Isabella loathed the very sight of her cousin. But this was soon
surmounted; there was a wild supper-party at the Palace, and in the course of
it the young girl was induced to consent to anything that was asked of her.
Shortly after, and on the same day, both the marriages took place.

The news burst like a bomb on the English Government, who saw with rage and
mortification that they had been completely outmanoeuvred by the crafty King.
Victoria, in particular, was outraged. Not only had she been the personal
recipient of Louis Philippe's pledge, but he had won his way to her heart by
presenting the Prince of Wales with a box of soldiers and sending the Princess
Royal a beautiful Parisian doll with eyes that opened and shut. And now insult
was added to injury. The Queen of the French wrote her a formal letter, calmly
announcing, as a family event in which she was sure Victoria would be
interested, the marriage of her son, Montpensier--"qui ajoutera a notre
bonheur interieur, le seul vrai dans ce monde, et que vous, madame, savez si
bien apprecier." But the English Queen had not long to wait for her revenge.
Within eighteen months the monarchy of Louis Philippe, discredited, unpopular,
and fatally weakened by the withdrawal of English support, was swept into
limbo, while he and his family threw themselves as suppliant fugitives at the
feet of Victoria.

II

In this affair both the Queen and the Prince had been too much occupied with
the delinquencies of Louis Philippe to have any wrath to spare for those of
Palmerston; and, indeed, on the main issue, Palmerston's attitude and their
own had been in complete agreement. But in this the case was unique. In every
other foreign complication--and they were many and serious--during the ensuing
years, the differences between the royal couple and the Foreign Secretary were
constant and profound. There was a sharp quarrel over Portugal, where
violently hostile parties were flying at each other's throats. The royal
sympathy was naturally enlisted on behalf of the Queen and her Coburg husband,
while Palmerston gave his support to the progressive elements in the country.
It was not until 1848, however, that the strain became really serious. In that
year of revolutions, when, in all directions and with alarming frequency,
crowns kept rolling off royal heads, Albert and Victoria were appalled to find
that the policy of England was persistently directed--in Germany, in
Switzerland, in Austria, in Italy, in Sicily--so as to favour the insurgent
forces. The situation, indeed, was just such a one as the soul of Palmerston
loved. There was danger and excitement, the necessity of decision, the
opportunity for action, on every hand. A disciple of Canning, with an English
gentleman's contempt and dislike of foreign potentates deep in his heart, the
spectacle of the popular uprisings, and of the oppressors bundled
ignominiously out of the palaces they had disgraced, gave him unbounded
pleasure, and he was determined that there should be no doubt whatever, all
over the Continent, on which side in the great struggle England stood. It was
not that he had the slightest tincture in him of philosophical radicalism; he
had no philosophical tinctures of any kind; he was quite content to be
inconsistent--to be a Conservative at home and a Liberal abroad. There were
very good reasons for keeping the Irish in their places; but what had that to
do with it? The point was this--when any decent man read an account of the
political prisons in Naples his gorge rose. He did not want war; but he saw
that without war a skilful and determined use of England's power might do much
to further the cause of the Liberals in Europe. It was a difficult and a
hazardous game to play, but he set about playing it with delighted alacrity.
And then, to his intense annoyance, just as he needed all his nerve and all
possible freedom of action, he found himself being hampered and distracted at
every turn by... those people at Osborne. He saw what it was; the opposition
was systematic and informed, and the Queen alone would have been incapable of
it; the Prince was at the bottom of the whole thing. It was exceedingly
vexatious; but Palmerston was in a hurry, and could not wait; the Prince, if
he would insist upon interfering, must be brushed on one side.

Albert was very angry. He highly disapproved both of Palmerston's policy and
of his methods of action. He was opposed to absolutism; but in his opinion
Palmerston's proceedings were simply calculated to substitute for absolutism,
all over Europe, something no better and very possibly worse--the anarchy of
faction and mob violence. The dangers of this revolutionary ferment were
grave; even in England Chartism was rampant--a sinister movement, which might
at any moment upset the Constitution and abolish the Monarchy. Surely, with
such dangers at home, this was a very bad time to choose for encouraging
lawlessness abroad. He naturally took a particular interest in Germany. His
instincts, his affections, his prepossessions, were ineradicably German;
Stockmar was deeply involved in German politics; and he had a multitude of
relatives among the ruling German families, who, from the midst of the
hurly-burly of revolution, wrote him long and agitated letters once a week.
Having considered the question of Germany's future from every point of view,
he came to the conclusion, under Stockmar's guidance, that the great aim for
every lover of Germany should be her unification under the sovereignty of
Prussia. The intricacy of the situation was extreme, and the possibilities of
good or evil which every hour might bring forth were incalculable; yet he saw
with horror that Palmerston neither understood nor cared to understand the
niceties of this momentous problem, but rushed on blindly, dealing blows to
right and left, quite--so far as he could see--without system, and even
without motive--except, indeed, a totally unreasonable distrust of the
Prussian State.

But his disagreement with the details of Palmerston's policy was in reality
merely a symptom of the fundamental differences between the characters of the
two men. In Albert's eyes Palmerston was a coarse, reckless egotist, whose
combined arrogance and ignorance must inevitably have their issue in folly and
disaster. Nothing could be more antipathetic to him than a mind so strangely
lacking in patience, in reflection, in principle, and in the habits of
ratiocination. For to him it was intolerable to think in a hurry, to jump to
slapdash decisions, to act on instincts that could not be explained.
Everything must be done in due order, with careful premeditation; the premises
of the position must first be firmly established; and he must reach the
correct conclusion by a regular series of rational steps. In complicated
questions--and what questions, rightly looked at, were not complicated?--to
commit one's thoughts to paper was the wisest course, and it was the course
which Albert, laborious though it might be, invariably adopted. It was as
well, too, to draw up a reasoned statement after an event, as well as before
it; and accordingly, whatever happened, it was always found that the Prince
had made a memorandum. On one occasion he reduced to six pages of foolscap the
substance of a confidential conversation with Sir Robert Peel, and, having
read them aloud to him, asked him to append his signature; Sir Robert, who
never liked to commit himself, became extremely uneasy; upon which the Prince,
understanding that it was necessary to humour the singular susceptibilities of
Englishmen, with great tact dropped that particular memorandum into the fire.
But as for Palmerston, he never even gave one so much as a chance to read him
a memorandum, he positively seemed to dislike discussion; and, before one knew
where one was, without any warning whatever, he would plunge into some
hare-brained, violent project, which, as likely as not, would logically
involve a European war. Closely connected, too, with this cautious,
painstaking reasonableness of Albert's, was his desire to examine questions
thoroughly from every point of view, to go down to the roots of things, and to
act in strict accordance with some well-defined principle. Under Stockmar's
tutelage he was constantly engaged in enlarging his outlook and in
endeavouring to envisage vital problems both theoretically and
practically--both with precision and with depth. To one whose mind was thus
habitually occupied, the empirical activities of Palmerston, who had no notion
what a principle meant, resembled the incoherent vagaries of a tiresome child.
What did Palmerston know of economics, of science, of history? What did he
care for morality and education? How much consideration had he devoted in the
whole course of his life to the improvement of the condition of the
working-classes and to the general amelioration of the human race? The answers
to such questions were all too obvious; and yet it is easy to imagine, also,
what might have been Palmerston's jaunty comment. "Ah! your Royal Highness is
busy with fine schemes and beneficent calculations exactly! Well, as for me, I
must say I'm quite satisfied with my morning's work--I've had the iron hurdles
taken out of the Green Park."

The exasperating man, however, preferred to make no comment, and to proceed in
smiling silence on his inexcusable way. The process of "brushing on one side"
very soon came into operation. Important Foreign Office despatches were either
submitted to the Queen so late that there was no time to correct them, or they
were not submitted to her at all; or, having been submitted, and some passage
in them being objected to and an alteration suggested, they were after all
sent off in their original form. The Queen complained, the Prince complained:
both complained together. It was quite useless. Palmerston was most
apologetic--could not understand how it had occurred--must give the clerks a
wigging--certainly Her Majesty's wishes should be attended to, and such a
thing should never happen again. But, of course, it very soon happened again,
and the royal remonstrances redoubled. Victoria, her partisan passions
thoroughly aroused, imported into her protests a personal vehemence which
those of Albert lacked. Did Lord Palmerston forget that she was Queen of
England? How could she tolerate a state of affairs in which despatches written
in her name were sent abroad without her approval or even her knowledge? What
could be more derogatory to her position than to be obliged to receive
indignant letters from the crowned heads to whom those despatches were
addressed--letters which she did not know how to answer, since she so
thoroughly agreed with them? She addressed herself to the Prime Minister. "No
remonstrance has any effect with Lord Palmerston," she said. "Lord
Palmerston," she told him on another occasion, "has as usual pretended not to
have had time to submit the draft to the Queen before he had sent it off." She
summoned Lord John to her presence, poured out her indignation, and
afterwards, on the advice of Albert, noted down what had passed in a
memorandum: "I said that I thought that Lord Palmerston often endangered the
honour of England by taking a very prejudiced and one-sided view of a
question; that his writings were always as bitter as gall and did great harm,
which Lord John entirely assented to, and that I often felt quite ill from
anxiety." Then she turned to her uncle. "The state of Germany," she wrote in a
comprehensive and despairing review of the European situation, "is dreadful,
and one does feel quite ashamed about that once really so peaceful and happy
country. That there are still good people there I am sure, but they allow
themselves to be worked upon in a frightful and shameful way. In France a
crisis seems at hand. WHAT a very bad figure we cut in this mediation! Really
it is quite immoral, with Ireland quivering in our grasp and ready to throw
off her allegiance at any moment, for us to force Austria to give up her
lawful possessions. What shall we say if Canada, Malta, etc., begin to trouble
us? It hurts me terribly." But what did Lord Palmerston care?

Lord John's position grew more and more irksome. He did not approve of his
colleague's treatment of the Queen. When he begged him to be more careful, he
was met with the reply that 28,000 despatches passed through the Foreign
Office in a single year, that, if every one of these were to be subjected to
the royal criticism, the delay would be most serious, that, as it was, the
waste of time and the worry involved in submitting drafts to the meticulous
examination of Prince Albert was almost too much for an overworked Minister,
and that, as a matter of fact, the postponement of important decisions owing
to this cause had already produced very unpleasant diplomatic consequences.
These excuses would have impressed Lord John more favourably if he had not
himself had to suffer from a similar neglect. As often as not Palmerston
failed to communicate even to him the most important despatches. The Foreign
Secretary was becoming an almost independent power, acting on his own
initiative, and swaying the policy of England on his own responsibility. On
one occasion, in 1847, he had actually been upon the point of threatening to
break off diplomatic relations with France without consulting either the
Cabinet or the Prime Minister. And such incidents were constantly recurring.
When this became known to the Prince, he saw that his opportunity had come. If
he could only drive in to the utmost the wedge between the two statesmen, if
he could only secure the alliance of Lord John, then the suppression or the
removal of Lord Palmerston would be almost certain to follow. He set about the
business with all the pertinacity of his nature. Both he and the Queen put
every kind of pressure upon the Prime Minister. They wrote, they harangued,
they relapsed into awful silence. It occurred to them that Lord Clarendon, an
important member of the Cabinet, would be a useful channel for their griefs.
They commanded him to dine at the Palace, and, directly the meal was over,
"the Queen," as he described it afterwards, "exploded, and went with the
utmost vehemence and bitterness into the whole of Palmerston's conduct, all
the effects produced all over the world, and all her own feelings and
sentiments about it." When she had finished, the Prince took up the tale, with
less excitement, but with equal force. Lord Clarendon found himself in an
awkward situation; he disliked Palmerston's policy, but he was his colleague,
and he disapproved of the attitude of his royal hosts. In his opinion, they
were "wrong in wishing that courtiers rather than Ministers should conduct the
affairs of the country," and he thought that they "laboured under the curious
mistake that the Foreign Office was their peculiar department, and that they
had the right to control, if not to direct, the foreign policy of England."
He, therefore, with extreme politeness, gave it to be understood that he would
not commit himself in any way. But Lord John, in reality, needed no pressure.
Attacked by his Sovereign, ignored by his Foreign Secretary, he led a
miserable life. With the advent of the dreadful Schleswig-Holstein
question--the most complex in the whole diplomatic history of Europe--his
position, crushed between the upper and the nether mill-stones, grew
positively unbearable. He became anxious above all things to get Palmerston
out of the Foreign Office. But then--supposing Palmerston refused to go?

In a memorandum made by the Prince, at about this time, of an interview
between himself, the Queen, and the Prime Minister, we catch a curious glimpse
of the states of mind of those three high personages--the anxiety and
irritation of Lord John, the vehement acrimony of Victoria, and the reasonable
animosity of Albert--drawn together, as it were, under the shadow of an unseen
Presence, the cause of that celestial anger--the gay, portentous Palmerston.
At one point in the conversation Lord John observed that he believed the
Foreign Secretary would consent to a change of offices; Lord Palmerston, he
said, realised that he had lost the Queen's confidence--though only on public,
and not on personal, grounds. But on that, the Prince noted, "the Queen
interrupted Lord John by remarking that she distrusted him on PERSONAL grounds
also, but I remarked that Lord Palmerston had so far at least seen rightly;
that he had become disagreeable to the Queen, not on account of his person,
but of his political doings--to which the Queen assented." Then the Prince
suggested that there was a danger of the Cabinet breaking up, and of Lord
Palmerston returning to office as Prime Minister. But on that point Lord John
was reassuring: he "thought Lord Palmerston too old to do much in the future
(having passed his sixty-fifth year)." Eventually it was decided that nothing
could be done for the present, but that the UTMOST SECRECY must be observed;
and so the conclave ended.

At last, in 1850, deliverance seemed to be at hand. There were signs that the
public were growing weary of the alarums and excursions of Palmerston's
diplomacy; and when his support of Don Pacifico, a British subject, in a
quarrel with the Greek Government, seemed to be upon the point of involving
the country in a war not only with Greece but also with France, and possibly
with Russia into the bargain, a heavy cloud of distrust and displeasure
appeared to be gathering and about to burst over his head. A motion directed
against him in the House of Lords was passed by a substantial majority. The
question was next to be discussed in the House of Commons, where another
adverse vote was not improbable, and would seal the doom of the Minister.
Palmerston received the attack with complete nonchalance, and then, at the
last possible moment, he struck. In a speech of over four hours, in which
exposition, invective, argument, declamation, plain talk and resounding
eloquence were mingled together with consummate art and extraordinary
felicity, he annihilated his enemies. The hostile motion was defeated, and
Palmerston was once more the hero of the hour. Simultaneously, Atropos herself
conspired to favour him. Sir Robert Peel was thrown from his horse and killed.
By this tragic chance, Palmerston saw the one rival great enough to cope with
him removed from his path. He judged--and judged rightly--that he was the most
popular man in England; and when Lord John revived the project of his
exchanging the Foreign Office for some other position in the Cabinet, he
absolutely refused to stir.

Great was the disappointment of Albert; great was the indignation of Victoria.
"The House of Commons," she wrote, "is becoming very unmanageable and
troublesome." The Prince, perceiving that Palmerston was more firmly fixed in
the saddle than ever, decided that something drastic must be done. Five months
before, the prescient Baron had drawn up, in case of emergency, a memorandum,
which had been carefully docketed, and placed in a pigeon-hole ready to hand.
The emergency had now arisen, and the memorandum must be used. The Queen
copied out the words of Stockmar, and sent them to the Prime Minister,
requesting him to show her letter to Palmerston. "She thinks it right," she
wrote, "in order TO PREVENT ANY MISTAKE for the FUTURE, shortly to explain
WHAT IT IS SHE EXPECTS FROM HER FOREIGN SECRETARY. She requires: (1) That he
will distinctly state what he proposes in a given case, in order that the
Queen may know as distinctly to WHAT she has given her Royal sanction; (2)
Having ONCE GIVEN her sanction to a measure, that it be not arbitrarily
altered or modified by the Minister; such an act she must consider as failing
in sincerity towards the Crown, and justly to be visited by the exercise of
her Constitutional right of dismissing that Minister." Lord John Russell did
as he was bid, and forwarded the Queen's letter to Lord Palmerston. This
transaction, which was of grave constitutional significance, was entirely
unknown to the outside world.

If Palmerston had been a sensitive man, he would probably have resigned on the
receipt of the Queen's missive. But he was far from sensitive; he loved power,
and his power was greater than ever; an unerring instinct told him that this
was not the time to go. Nevertheless, he was seriously perturbed. He
understood at last that he was struggling with a formidable adversary, whose
skill and strength, unless they were mollified, might do irreparable injury to
his career. He therefore wrote to Lord John, briefly acquiescing in the
Queen's requirements--"I have taken a copy of this memorandum of the Queen and
will not fail to attend to the directions which it contains"--and at the same
time, he asked for an interview with the Prince. Albert at once summoned him
to the Palace, and was astonished to observe, as he noted in a memorandum,
that when Palmerston entered the room "he was very much agitated, shook, and
had tears in his eyes, so as quite to move me, who never under any
circumstances had known him otherwise than with a bland smile on his face."
The old statesman was profuse in protestations and excuses; the young one was
coldly polite. At last, after a long and inconclusive conversation, the
Prince, drawing himself up, said that, in order to give Lord Palmerston "an
example of what the Queen wanted," he would "ask him a question point-blank."
Lord Palmerston waited in respectful silence, while the Prince proceeded as
follows: "You are aware that the Queen has objected to the Protocol about
Schleswig, and of the grounds on which she has done so. Her opinion has been
overruled, the Protocol stating the desire of the Great Powers to see the
integrity of the Danish monarchy preserved has been signed, and upon this the
King of Denmark has invaded Schleswig, where the war is raging. If Holstein is
attacked also, which is likely, the Germans will not be restrained from flying
to her assistance; Russia has menaced to interfere with arms, if the
Schleswigers are successful. What will you do, if this emergency arises
(provoking most likely an European war), and which will arise very probably
when we shall be at Balmoral and Lord John in another part of Scotland? The
Queen expects from your foresight that you have contemplated this possibility,
and requires a categorical answer as to what you would do in the event
supposed." Strangely enough, to this pointblank question, the Foreign
Secretary appeared to be unable to reply. The whole matter, he said, was
extremely complicated, and the contingencies mentioned by His Royal Highness
were very unlikely to arise. The Prince persisted; but it was useless; for a
full hour he struggled to extract a categorical answer, until at length
Palmerston bowed himself out of the room. Albert threw up his hands in shocked
amazement: what could one do with such a man?

What indeed? For, in spite of all his apologies and all his promises, within a
few weeks the incorrigible reprobate was at his tricks again. The Austrian
General Haynau, notorious as a rigorous suppressor of rebellion in Hungary and
Italy, and in particular as a flogger of women, came to England and took it
into his head to pay a visit to Messrs. Barclay and Perkins's brewery. The
features of "General Hyena," as he was everywhere called--his grim thin face,
his enormous pepper-and-salt moustaches--had gained a horrid celebrity; and it
so happened that among the clerks at the brewery there was a refugee from
Vienna, who had given his fellow-workers a first-hand account of the General's
characteristics. The Austrian Ambassador, scenting danger, begged his friend
not to appear in public, or, if he must do so, to cut off his moustaches
first. But the General would take no advice. He went to the brewery, was
immediately recognised, surrounded by a crowd of angry draymen, pushed about,
shouted at, punched in the ribs, and pulled by the moustaches until, bolting
down an alley with the mob at his heels brandishing brooms and roaring
"Hyena!" he managed to take refuge in a public house, whence he was removed
under the protection of several policemen. The Austrian Government was angry
and demanded explanations. Palmerston, who, of course, was privately delighted
by the incident, replied regretting what had occurred, but adding that in his
opinion the General had "evinced a want of propriety in coming to England at
the present moment;" and he delivered his note to the Ambassador without
having previously submitted it to the Queen or to the Prime Minister.
Naturally, when this was discovered, there was a serious storm. The Prince was
especially indignant; the conduct of the draymen he regarded, with disgust and
alarm, as "a slight foretaste of what an unregulated mass of illiterate people
is capable;" and Palmerston was requested by Lord John to withdraw his note,
and to substitute for it another from which all censure of the General had
been omitted. On this the Foreign Secretary threatened resignation, but the
Prime Minister was firm. For a moment the royal hopes rose high, only to be
dashed to the ground again by the cruel compliance of the enemy. Palmerston,
suddenly lamblike, agreed to everything; the note was withdrawn and altered,
and peace was patched up once more.

It lasted for a year, and then, in October, 1851, the arrival of Kossuth in
England brought on another crisis. Palmerston's desire to receive the
Hungarian patriot at his house in London was vetoed by Lord John; once more
there was a sharp struggle; once more Palmerston, after threatening
resignation, yielded. But still the insubordinate man could not keep quiet. A
few weeks later a deputation of Radicals from Finsbury and Islington waited on
him at the Foreign Office and presented him with an address, in which the
Emperors of Austria and Russia were stigmatised as "odious and detestable
assassins" and "merciless tyrants and despots." The Foreign Secretary in his
reply, while mildly deprecating these expressions, allowed his real sentiments
to appear with a most undiplomatic insouciance There was an immediate scandal,
and the Court flowed over with rage and vituperation. "I think," said the
Baron, "the man has been for some time insane." Victoria, in an agitated
letter, urged Lord John to assert his authority. But Lord John perceived that
on this matter the Foreign Secretary had the support of public opinion, and he
judged it wiser to bide his time.

He had not long to wait. The culmination of the long series of conflicts,
threats, and exacerbations came before the year was out. On December 2, Louis
Napoleon's coup d'etat took place in Paris; and on the following day
Palmerston, without consulting anybody, expressed in a conversation with the
French Ambassador his approval of Napoleon's act. Two days later, he was
instructed by the Prime Minister, in accordance with a letter from the Queen,
that it was the policy of the English Government to maintain an attitude of
strict neutrality towards the affairs of France. Nevertheless, in an official
despatch to the British Amambassador in Paris, he repeated the approval of the
coup d'etat which he had already given verbally to the French Ambassador in
London. This despatch was submitted neither to the Queen nor to the Prime
Minister. Lord John's patience, as he himself said, "was drained to the last
drop." He dismissed Lord Palmerston.

Victoria was in ecstasies; and Albert knew that the triumph was his even more
than Lord John's. It was his wish that Lord Granville, a young man whom he
believed to be pliant to his influence, should be Palmerston's successor; and
Lord Granville was appointed. Henceforward, it seemed that the Prince would
have his way in foreign affairs. After years of struggle and mortification,
success greeted him on every hand. In his family, he was an adored master; in
the country, the Great Exhibition had brought him respect and glory; and now
in the secret seats of power he had gained a new supremacy. He had wrestled
with the terrible Lord Palmerston, the embodiment of all that was most hostile
to him in the spirit of England, and his redoubtable opponent had been
overthrown. Was England herself at his feet? It might be so; and yet... it is
said that the sons of England have a certain tiresome quality: they never know
when they are beaten. It was odd, but Palmerston was positively still jaunty.
Was it possible? Could he believe, in his blind arro--gance, that even his
ignominious dismissal from office was something that could be brushed aside?

III

The Prince's triumph was short-lived. A few weeks later, owing to Palmerston's
influence, the Government was defeated in the House, and Lord John resigned.
Then, after a short interval, a coalition between the Whigs and the followers
of Peel came into power, under the premiership of Lord Aberdeen. Once more,
Palmerston was in the Cabinet. It was true that he did not return to the
Foreign Office; that was something to the good; in the Home Department it
might be hoped that his activities would be less dangerous and disagreeable.
But the Foreign Secretary was no longer the complacent Granville; and in Lord
Clarendon the Prince knew that he had a Minister to deal with, who, discreet
and courteous as he was, had a mind of his own. These changes, however, were
merely the preliminaries of a far more serious development.

Events, on every side, were moving towards a catastrophe. Suddenly the nation
found itself under the awful shadow of imminent war. For several months, amid
the shifting mysteries of diplomacy and the perplexed agitations of politics,
the issue grew more doubtful and more dark, while the national temper was
strained to the breaking-point. At the very crisis of the long and ominous
negotiations, it was announced that Lord Palmerston had resigned. Then the
pent-up fury of the people burst forth. They had felt that in the terrible
complexity of events they were being guided by weak and embarrassed counsels;
but they had been reassured by the knowledge that at the centre of power there
was one man with strength, with courage, with determination, in whom they
could put their trust. They now learnt that that man was no longer among their
leaders. Why? In their rage, anxiety, and nervous exhaustion, they looked
round desperately for some hidden and horrible explanation of what had
occurred. They suspected plots, they smelt treachery in the air. It was easy
to guess the object upon which their frenzy would vent itself. Was there not a
foreigner in the highest of high places, a foreigner whose hostility to their
own adored champion was unrelenting and unconcealed? The moment that
Palmerston's resignation was known, there was a universal outcry and an
extraordinary tempest of anger and hatred burst, with unparalleled violence,
upon the head of the Prince.

It was everywhere asserted and believed that the Queen's husband was a traitor
to the country, that he was a tool of the Russian Court, that in obedience to
Russian influences he had forced Palmerston out of the Government, and that he
was directing the foreign policy of England in the interests of England's
enemies. For many weeks these accusations filled the whole of the press;
repeated at public meetings, elaborated in private talk, they flew over the
country, growing every moment more extreme and more improbable. While
respectable newspapers thundered out their grave invectives, halfpenny
broadsides, hawked through the streets of London, re-echoed in doggerel
vulgarity the same sentiments and the same suspicions[*]. At last the wildest
rumours began to spread.

[*]"The Turkish war both far and near      Has played the very deuce then,   
And little Al, the royal pal,      They say has turned a Russian;    Old
Aberdeen, as may be seen,      Looks woeful pale and yellow,    And Old John
Bull had his belly full      Of dirty Russian tallow."

Chorus:    "We'll send him home and make him groan,      Oh, Al! you've played
the deuce then;    The German lad has acted sad     And turned tail with the
Russians."          *   *    *   *   *   *    "Last Monday night, all in a
fright,      Al out of bed did tumble.    The German lad was raving mad,     
How he did groan and grumble!    He cried to Vic, 'I've cut my stick:      To
St. Petersburg go right slap.'    When Vic, 'tis said, jumped out of bed,     
And wopped him with her night-cap."

From Lovely Albert! a broadside preserved at the British Museum.


In January, 1854, it was whispered that the Prince had been seized, that he
had been found guilty of high treason, that he was to be committed to the
Tower. The Queen herself, some declared, had been arrested, and large crowds
actually collected round the Tower to watch the incarceration of the royal
miscreants.[*]

[*]"You Jolly Turks, now go to work,
And show the Bear your power.
It is rumoured over Britain's isle
That A------ is in the Tower;
The postmen some suspicion had,
And opened the two letters,
'Twas a pity sad the German lad
 Should not have known much better!" 
                  Lovely Albert!


These fantastic hallucinations, the result of the fevered atmosphere of
approaching war, were devoid of any basis in actual fact. Palmerston's
resignition had been in all probability totally disconnected with foreign
policy; it had certainly been entirely spontaneous, and had surprised the
Court as much as the nation. Nor had Albert's influence been used in any way
to favour the interests of Russia. As often happens in such cases, the
Government had been swinging backwards and forwards between two incompatible
policies--that of non-interference and that of threats supported by
force--either of which, if consistently followed, might well have had a
successful and peaceful issue, but which, mingled together, could only lead to
war. Albert, with characteristic scrupulosity, attempted to thread his way
through the complicated labyrinth of European diplomacy, and eventually was
lost in the maze. But so was the whole of the Cabinet; and, when war came, his
anti-Russian feelings were quite as vehement as those of the most bellicose of
Englishmen.

Nevertheless, though the specific charges levelled against the Prince were
without foundation, there were underlying elements in the situation which
explained, if they did not justify, the popular state of mind. It was true
that the Queen's husband was a foreigner, who had been brought up in a foreign
Court, was impregnated with foreign ideas, and was closely related to a
multitude of foreign princes. Clearly this, though perhaps an unavoidable, was
an undesirable, state of affairs; nor were the objections to it merely
theoretical; it had in fact produced unpleasant consequences of a serious
kind. The Prince's German proclivities were perpetually lamented by English
Ministers; Lord Palmerston, Lord Clarendon, Lord Aberdeen, all told the same
tale; and it was constantly necessary, in grave questions of national policy,
to combat the prepossessions of a Court in which German views and German
sentiments held a disproportionate place. As for Palmerston, his language on
this topic was apt to be unbridled. At the height of his annoyance over his
resignation, he roundly declared that he had been made a victim to foreign
intrigue. He afterwards toned down this accusation; but the mere fact that
such a suggestion from such a quarter was possible at all showed to what
unfortunate consequences Albert's foreign birth and foreign upbringing might
lead.

But this was not all. A constitutional question of the most profound
importance was raised by the position of the Prince in England. His presence
gave a new prominence to an old problem--the precise definition of the
functions and the powers of the Crown. Those functions and powers had become,
in effect, his; and what sort of use was he making of them? His views as to
the place of the Crown in the Constitution are easily ascertainable; for they
were Stockmar's; and it happens that we possess a detailed account of
Stockmar's opinions upon the subject in a long letter addressed by him to the
Prince at the time of this very crisis, just before the outbreak of the
Crimean War. Constitutional Monarchy, according to the Baron, had suffered an
eclipse since the passing of the Reform Bill. It was now "constantly in danger
of becoming a pure Ministerial Government." The old race of Tories, who "had a
direct interest in upholding the prerogatives of the Crown," had died out; and
the Whigs were "nothing but partly conscious, partly unconscious Republicans,
who stand in the same relation to the Throne as the wolf does to the lamb."
There was a rule that it was unconstitutional to introduce "the name and
person of the irresponsible Sovereign" into parliamentary debates on
constitutional matters; this was "a constitutional fiction, which, although
undoubtedly of old standing, was fraught with danger"; and the Baron warned
the Prince that "if the English Crown permit a Whig Ministry to follow this
rule in practice, without exception, you must not wonder if in a little time
you find the majority of the people impressed with the belief that the King,
in the view of the law, is nothing but a mandarin figure, which has to nod its
head in assent, or shake it in denial, as his Minister pleases." To prevent
this from happening, it was of extreme importance, said the Baron, "that no
opportunity should be let slip of vindicating the legitimate position of the
Crown." "And this is not hard to do," he added, "and can never embarrass a
Minister where such straightforward loyal personages as the Queen and the
Prince are concerned." In his opinion, the very lowest claim of the Royal
Prerogative should include "a right on the part of the King to be the
permanent President of his Ministerial Council." The Sovereign ought to be "in
the position of a permanent Premier, who takes rank above the temporary head
of the Cabinet, and in matters of discipline exercises supreme authority." The
Sovereign "may even take a part in the initiation and the maturing of the
Government measures; for it would be unreasonable to expect that a king,
himself as able, as accomplished, and as patriotic as the best of his
Ministers, should be prevented from making use of these qualities at the
deliberations of his Council." "The judicious exercise of this right,"
concluded the Baron, "which certainly requires a master mind, would not only
be the best guarantee for Constitutional Monarchy, but would raise it to a
height of power, stability, and symmetry, which has never been attained."

Now it may be that this reading of the Constitution is a possible one, though
indeed it is hard to see how it can be made compatible with the fundamental
doctrine of ministerial responsibility. William III presided over his Council,
and he was a constitutional monarch; and it seems that Stockmar had in his
mind a conception of the Crown which would have given it a place in the
Constitution analogous to that which it filled at the time of William III. But
it is clear that such a theory, which would invest the Crown with more power
than it possessed even under George III, runs counter to the whole development
of English public life since the Revolution; and the fact that it was held by
Stockmar, and instilled by him into Albert, was of very serious importance.
For there was good reason to believe not only that these doctrines were held
by Albert in theory, but that he was making a deliberate and sustained attempt
to give them practical validity. The history of the struggle between the Crown
and Palmerston provided startling evidence that this was the case. That
struggle reached its culmination when, in Stockmar's memorandum of 1850, the
Queen asserted her "constitutional right" to dismiss the Foreign Secretary if
he altered a despatch which had received her sanction. The memorandum was, in
fact, a plain declaration that the Crown intended to act independently of the
Prime Minister. Lord John Russell, anxious at all costs to strengthen himself
against Palmerston, accepted the memorandum, and thereby implicitly allowed
the claim of the Crown. More than that; after the dismissal of Palmerston,
among the grounds on which Lord John justified that dismissal in the House of
Commons he gave a prominent place to the memorandum of 1850. It became
apparent that the displeasure of the Sovereign might be a reason for the
removal of a powerful and popular Minister. It seemed indeed as if, under the
guidance of Stockmar and Albert, the "Constitutional Monarchy" might in very
truth be rising "to a height of power, stability, and symmetry, which had
never been attained."

But this new development in the position of the Crown, grave as it was in
itself, was rendered peculiarly disquieting by the unusual circumstances which
surrounded it. For the functions of the Crown were now, in effect, being
exercised by a person unknown to the Constitution, who wielded over the
Sovereign an undefined and unbounded influence. The fact that this person was
the Sovereign's husband, while it explained his influence and even made it
inevitable, by no means diminished its strange and momentous import. An
ambiguous, prepotent figure had come to disturb the ancient, subtle, and
jealously guarded balance of the English Constitution. Such had been the
unexpected outcome of the tentative and fainthearted opening of Albert's
political life. He himself made no attempt to minimise either the multiplicity
or the significance of the functions he performed. He considered that it was
his duty, he told the Duke of Wellington in 1850, to "sink his OWN INDIVIDUAL
existence in that of his wife--assume no separate responsibility before the
public, but make his position entirely a part of hers--fill up every gap
which, as a woman, she would naturally leave in the exercise of her regal
functions--continually and anxiously watch every part of the public business,
in order to be able to advise and assist her at any moment in any of the
multifarious and difficult questions or duties brought before her, sometimes
international, sometimes political, or social, or personal. As the natural
head of her family, superintendent of her household, manager of her private
affairs, sole CONFIDENTIAL adviser in politics, and only assistant in her
communications with the officers of the Government, he is, besides, the
husband of the Queen, the tutor of the royal children, the private secretary
of the Sovereign, and her permanent minister." Stockmar's pupil had assuredly
gone far and learnt well. Stockmar's pupil!--precisely; the public, painfully
aware of Albert's predominance, had grown, too, uneasily conscious that
Victoria's master had a master of his own. Deep in the darkness the Baron
loomed. Another foreigner! Decidedly, there were elements in the situation
which went far to justify the popular alarm. A foreign Baron controlled a
foreign Prince, and the foreign Prince controlled the Crown of England. And
the Crown itself was creeping forward ominously; and when, from under its
shadow, the Baron and the Prince had frowned, a great Minister, beloved of the
people, had fallen. Where was all this to end?

Within a few weeks Palmerston withdrew his resignation, and the public frenzy
subsided as quickly as it had arisen. When Parliament met, the leaders of both
the parties in both the Houses made speeches in favour of the Prince,
asserting his unimpeachable loyalty to the country and vindicating his right
to advise the Sovereign in all matters of State. Victoria was delighted. "The
position of my beloved lord and master," she told the Baron, "has been defined
for once amid all and his merits have been acknowledged on all sides most
duly. There was an immense concourse of people assembled when we went to the
House of Lords, and the people were very friendly." Immediately afterwards,
the country finally plunged into the Crimean War. In the struggle that
followed, Albert's patriotism was put beyond a doubt, and the animosities of
the past were forgotten. But the war had another consequence, less gratifying
to the royal couple: it crowned the ambition of Lord Palmerston. In 1855, the
man who five years before had been pronounced by Lord John Russell to be "too
old to do much in the future," became Prime Minister of England, and, with one
short interval, remained in that position for ten years.



CHAPTER VI. LAST YEARS OF PRINCE CONSORT

I

The weak-willed youth who took no interest in polities and never read a
newspaper had grown into a man of unbending determination whose tireless
energies were incessantly concentrated upon the laborious business of
government and the highest questions of State. He was busy now from morning
till night. In the winter, before the dawn, he was to be seen, seated at his
writing-table, working by the light of the green reading--lamp which he had
brought over with him from Germany, and the construction of which he had much
improved by an ingenious device. Victoria was early too, but she was not so
early as Albert; and when, in the chill darkness, she took her seat at her own
writing-table, placed side by side with his, she invariably found upon it a
neat pile of papers arranged for her inspection and her signature. The day,
thus begun, continued in unremitting industry. At breakfast, the
newspapers--the once hated newspapers--made their appearance, and the Prince,
absorbed in their perusal, would answer no questions, or, if an article struck
him, would read it aloud. After, that there were ministers and secretaries to
interview; there was a vast correspondence to be carried on; there were
numerous memoranda to be made. Victoria, treasuring every word, preserving
every letter, was all breathless attention and eager obedience. Sometimes
Albert would actually ask her advice. He consulted her about his English:
"Lese recht aufmerksam, und sage wenn irgend ein Fehler ist,"[*] he would say;
or, as he handed her a draft for her signature, he would observe, "Ich hab'
Dir hier ein Draft gemacht, lese es mal! Ich dachte es ware recht so."[**]
Thus the diligent, scrupulous, absorbing hours passed by. Fewer and fewer grew
the moments of recreation and of exercise. The demands of society were
narrowed down to the smallest limits, and even then but grudgingly attended
to. It was no longer a mere pleasure, it was a positive necessity, to go to
bed as early as possible in order to be up and at work on the morrow betimes.

[*] "Read this carefully, and tell me if there are any mistakes in it."

[**] "Here is a draft I have made for you. Read it. I should think this would
do."

The important and exacting business of government, which became at last the
dominating preoccupation in Albert's mind, still left unimpaired his old
tastes and interests; he remained devoted to art, to science, to philosophy,
and a multitude of subsidiary activities showed how his energies increased as
the demands upon them grew. For whenever duty called, the Prince was all
alertness. With indefatigable perseverance he opened museums, laid the
foundation stones of hospitals, made speeches to the Royal Agricultural
Society, and attended meetings of the British Association. The National
Gallery particularly interested him: he drew up careful regulations for the
arrangement of the pictures according to schools; and he attempted--though in
vain--to have the whole collection transported to South Kensington. Feodora,
now the Princess Hohenlohe, after a visit to England, expressed in a letter to
Victoria her admiration of Albert both as a private and a public character.
Nor did she rely only on her own opinion. "I must just copy out," she said,
"what Mr. Klumpp wrote to me some little time ago, and which is quite
true--'Prince Albert is one of the few Royal personages who can sacrifice to
any principle (as soon as it has become evident to them to be good and noble)
all those notions (or sentiments) to which others, owing to their
narrow-mindedness, or to the prejudices of their rank, are so thoroughly
inclined strongly to cling.' There is something so truly religious in this,"
the Princess added, "as well as humane and just, most soothing to my feelings
which are so often hurt and disturbed by what I hear and see."

Victoria, from the depth of her heart, subscribed to all the eulogies of
Feodora and Mr. Klumpp. She only found that they were insufficient. As she
watched her beloved Albert, after toiling with state documents and public
functions, devoting every spare moment of his time to domestic duties, to
artistic appreciation, and to intellectual improvements; as she listened to
him cracking his jokes at the luncheon table, or playing Mendelssohn on the
organ, or pointing out the merits of Sir Edwin Landseer's pictures; as she
followed him round while he gave instructions about the breeding of cattle, or
decided that the Gainsboroughs must be hung higher up so that the
Winterhalters might be properly seen--she felt perfectly certain that no other
wife had ever had such a husband. His mind was apparently capable of
everything, and she was hardly surprised to learn that he had made an
important discovery for the conversion of sewage into agricultural manure.
Filtration from below upwards, he explained, through some appropriate medium,
which retained the solids and set free the fluid sewage for irrigation, was
the principle of the scheme. "All previous plans," he said, "would have cost
millions; mine costs next to nothing." Unfortunately, owing to a slight
miscalculation, the invention proved to be impracticable; but Albert's
intelligence was unrebuffed, and he passed on, to plunge with all his
accustomed ardour into a prolonged study of the rudiments of lithography.

But naturally it was upon his children that his private interests and those of
Victoria were concentrated most vigorously. The royal nurseries showed no sign
of emptying. The birth of the Prince Arthur in 1850 was followed, three years
later, by that of the Prince Leopold; and in 1857 the Princess Beatrice was
born. A family of nine must be, in any circumstances, a grave responsibility;
and the Prince realised to the full how much the high destinies of his
offspring intensified the need of parental care. It was inevitable that he
should believe profoundly in the importance of education; he himself had been
the product of education; Stockmar had made him what he was; it was for him,
in his turn, to be a Stockmar--to be even more than a Stockmar--to the young
creatures he had brought into the world. Victoria would assist him; a
Stockmar, no doubt, she could hardly be; but she could be perpetually
vigilant, she could mingle strictness with her affection, and she could always
set a good example. These considerations, of course, applied pre-eminently to
the education of the Prince of Wales. How tremendous was the significance of
every particle of influence which went to the making of the future King of
England! Albert set to work with a will. But, watching with Victoria the
minutest details of the physical, intellectual, and moral training of his
children, he soon perceived, to his distress, that there was something
unsatisfactory in the development of his eldest son. The Princess Royal was an
extremely intelligent child; but Bertie, though he was good-humoured and
gentle, seemed to display a deep-seated repugnance to every form of mental
exertion. This was most regrettable, but the remedy was obvious: the parental
efforts must be redoubled; instruction must be multiplied; not for a single
instant must the educational pressure be allowed to relax. Accordingly, more
tutors were selected, the curriculum was revised, the time-table of studies
was rearranged, elaborate memoranda dealing with every possible contingency
were drawn up. It was above all essential that there should be no slackness:
"Work," said the Prince, " must be work." And work indeed it was. The boy grew
up amid a ceaseless round of paradigms, syntactical exercises, dates,
genealogical tables, and lists of capes. Constant notes flew backwards and
forwards between the Prince, the Queen, and tile tutors, with inquiries, with
reports of progress, with detailed recommendations; and these notes were all
carefully preserved for future reference. It was, besides, vital that the heir
to the throne should be protected from the slightest possibility of
contamination from the outside world. The Prince of Wales was not as other
boys; he might, occasionally, be allowed to invite some sons of the nobility,
boys of good character, to play with him in the garden of Buckingham Palace;
but his father presided, with alarming precision, over their sports. In short,
every possible precaution was taken, every conceivable effort was made. Yet,
strange to say, the object of all this vigilance and solicitude continued to
be unsatisfactory--appeared, in fact, to be positively growing worse. It was
certainly very odd: the more lessons that Bertie had to do, the less he did
them; and the more carefully he was guarded against excitements and
frivolities, the more desirous of mere amusement he seemed to become. Albert
was deeply grieved and Victoria was sometimes very angry; but grief and anger
produced no more effect than supervision and time-tables. The Prince of Wales,
in spite of everything, grew up into manhood without the faintest sign of
"adherence to and perseverance in the plan both of studies and life-" as one
of the Royal memoranda put it--which had been laid down with such
extraordinary forethought by his father.

II

Against the insidious worries of politics, the boredom of society functions,
and the pompous publicity of state ceremonies, Osborne had afforded a welcome
refuge; but it soon appeared that even Osborne was too little removed from the
world. After all, the Solent was a feeble barrier. Oh, for some distant, some
almost inaccessible sanctuary, where, in true domestic privacy, one could make
happy holiday, just as if--or at least very, very, nearly--one were anybody
else! Victoria, ever since, together with Albert, she had visited Scotland in
the early years of her marriage, had felt that her heart was in the Highlands.
She had returned to them a few years later, and her passion had grown. How
romantic they were! And how Albert enjoyed them too! His spirits rose quite
wonderfully as soon as he found himself among the hills and the conifers. "It
is a happiness to see him," she wrote. "Oh! What can equal the beauties of
nature!" she exclaimed in her journal, during one of these visits. "What
enjoyment there is in them! Albert enjoys it so much; he is in ecstasies
here." "Albert said," she noted next day, "that the chief beauty of mountain
scenery consists in its frequent changes. We came home at six o'clock." Then
she went on a longer expedition--up to the very top of a high hill. "It was
quite romantic. Here we were with only this Highlander behind us holding the
ponies (for we got off twice and walked about). . . . We came home at
half-past eleven,--the most delightful, most romantic ride and walk I ever
had. I had never been up such a mountain, and then the day was so fine." The
Highlanders, too, were such astonishing people. They "never make
difficulties," she noted, "but are cheerful, and happy, and merry, and ready
to walk, and run, and do anything." As for Albert he "highly appreciated the
good-breeding, simplicity, and intelligence, which make it so pleasant and
even instructive to talk to them." "We were always in the habit," wrote Her
Majesty, "of conversing with the Highlanders--with whom one comes so much in
contact in the Highlands." She loved everything about them--their customs,
their dress, their dances, even their musical instruments. "There were nine
pipers at the castle," she wrote after staying with Lord Breadalbane;
"sometimes one and sometimes three played. They always played about
breakfast-time, again during the morning, at luncheon, and also whenever we
went in and out; again before dinner, and during most of dinner-time. We both
have become quite fond of the bag-pipes.

It was quite impossible not to wish to return to such pleasures again and
again; and in 1848 the Queen took a lease of Balmoral House, a small residence
near Braemar in the wilds of Aberdeenshire. Four years later she bought the
place outright. Now she could be really happy every summer; now she could be
simple and at her ease; now she could be romantic every evening, and dote upon
Albert, without a single distraction, all day long. The diminutive scale of
the house was in itself a charm. Nothing was more amusing than to find oneself
living in two or three little sitting--rooms, with the children crammed away
upstairs, and the minister in attendance with only a tiny bedroom to do all
his work in. And then to be able to run in and out of doors as one liked, and
to sketch, and to walk, and to watch the red deer coming so surprisingly
close, and to pay visits to the cottagers! And occasionally one could be more
adventurous still--one could go and stay for a night or two at the Bothie at
Alt-na-giuthasach--a mere couple of huts with "a wooden addition"--and only
eleven people in the whole party! And there were mountains to be climbed and
cairns to be built in solemn pomp. "At last, when the cairn, which is, I
think, seven or eight feet high, was nearly completed, Albert climbed up to
the top of it, and placed the last stone; after which three cheers were given.
It was a gay, pretty, and touching sight; and I felt almost inclined to cry.
The view was so beautiful over the dear hills; the day so fine; the whole so
gemuthlich." And in the evening there were sword-dances and reels.

But Albert had determined to pull down the little old house, and to build in
its place a castle of his own designing. With great ceremony, in accordance
with a memorandum drawn up by the Prince for the occasion, the
foundation-stone of the new edifice was laid, and by 1855 it was habitable.
Spacious, built of granite in the Scotch baronial style, with a tower 100 feet
high, and minor turrets and castellated gables, the castle was skilfully
arranged to command the finest views of the surrounding mountains and of the
neighbouring river Dee. Upon the interior decorations Albert and Victoria
lavished all their care. The wall and the floors were of pitch-pine, and
covered with specially manufactured tartars. The Balmoral tartan, in red and
grey, designed by the Prince, and the Victoria tartan, with a white stripe,
designed by the Queen, were to be seen in every room: there were tartan
curtains, and tartan chair-covers, and even tartan linoleums. Occasionally the
Royal Stuart tartan appeared, for Her Majesty always maintained that she was
an ardent Jacobite. Water-colour sketches by Victoria hung upon the walls,
together with innumerable stags' antlers, and the head of a boar, which had
been shot by Albert in Germany. In an alcove in the hall, stood a life-sized
statue of Albert in Highland dress.

Victoria declared that it was perfection. "Every year," she wrote, "my heart
becomes more fixed in this dear paradise, and so much more so now, that ALL
has become my dear Albert's own creation, own work, own building, own
lay-out... and his great taste, and the impress of his dear hand, have been
stamped everywhere."

And here, in very truth, her happiest days were passed. In after years, when
she looked back upon them, a kind of glory, a radiance as of an unearthly
holiness, seemed to glow about these golden hours. Each hallowed moment stood
out clear, beautiful, eternally significant. For, at the time, every
experience there, sentimental, or grave, or trivial, had come upon her with a
peculiar vividness, like a flashing of marvellous lights. Albert's
stalkings--an evening walk when she lost her way--Vicky sitting down on a
wasps' nest--a torchlight dance--with what intensity such things, and ten
thousand like them, impressed themselves upon her eager consciousness! And how
she flew to her journal to note them down! The news of the Duke's death! What
a moment--when, as she sat sketching after a picnic by a loch in the lonely
hills, Lord Derby's letter had been brought to her, and she had learnt that
"ENGLAND'S, or rather BRITAIN'S pride, her glory, her hero, the greatest man
she had ever produced, was no morel." For such were here reflections upon the
"old rebel" of former days. But that past had been utterly obliterated--no
faintest memory of it remained. For years she had looked up to the Duke as a
figure almost superhuman. Had he not been a supporter of good Sir Robert? Had
he not asked Albert to succeed him as commander-in-chief? And what a proud
moment it had been when he stood as sponsor to her son Arthur, who was born on
his eighty-first birthday! So now she filled a whole page of her diary with
panegyrical regrets. "His position was the highest a subject ever had--above
party--looked up to by all--revered by the whole nation--the friend of the
Sovereign... The Crown never possessed--and I fear never WILL--so DEVOTED,
loyal, and faithful a subject, so staunch a supporter! To US his loss is
IRREPARABLE... To Albert he showed the greatest kindness and the utmost
confidence... Not an eye will be dry in the whole country." These were serious
thoughts; but they were soon succeeded by others hardly less moving--by events
as impossible to forget--by Mr. MacLeod's sermon on Nicodemus--by the gift of
a red flannel petticoat to Mrs. P. Farquharson, and another to old Kitty Kear.

But, without doubt, most memorable, most delightful of all were the
expeditions--the rare, exciting expeditions up distant mountains, across broad
rivers, through strange country, and lasting several days. With only two
gillies--Grant and Brown--for servants, and with assumed names. It was more
like something in a story than real life. "We had decided to call ourselves
LORD AND LADY CHURCHILL AND AND PARTY--Lady Churchill passing as MISS SPENCER
and General Grey as DR. GREY! Brown once forgot this and called me 'Your
Majesty' as I was getting into the carriage, and Grant on the box once called
Albert 'Your Royal Highness,' which set us off laughing, but no one observed
it." Strong, vigorous, enthusiastic, bringing, so it seemed, good fortune with
her--the Highlanders declared she had "a lucky foot"--she relished
everything--the scrambles and the views and the contretemps and the rough inns
with their coarse fare and Brown and Grant waiting at table. She could have
gone on for ever and ever, absolutely happy with Albert beside her and Brown
at her pony's head. But the time came for turning homewards, alas! the time
came for going back to England. She could hardly bear it; she sat disconsolate
in her room and watched the snow falling. The last day! Oh! If only she could
be snowed up!

III

The Crimean War brought new experiences, and most of them were pleasant ones.
It was pleasant to be patriotic and pugnacious, to look out appropriate
prayers to be read in the churches, to have news of glorious victories, and to
know oneself, more proudly than ever, the representative of England. With that
spontaneity of feeling which was so peculiarly her own, Victoria poured out
her emotion, her admiration, her pity, her love, upon her "dear soldiers."
When she gave them their medals her exultation knew no bounds. "Noble
fellows!" she wrote to the King of the Belgians, "I own I feel as if these
were MY OWN CHILDREN; my heart beats for THEM as for my NEAREST and DEAREST.
They were so touched, so pleased; many, I hear, cried--and they won't hear of
giving up their medals to have their names engraved upon them for fear they
should not receive the IDENTICAL ONE put into THEIR HANDS BY ME, which is
quite touching. Several came by in a sadly mutilated state." She and they were
at one. They felt that she had done them a splendid honour, and she, with
perfect genuineness, shared their feeling. Albert's attitude towards such
things was different; there was an austerity in him which quite prohibited the
expansions of emotion. When General Williams returned from the heroic defence
of Kars and was presented at Court, the quick, stiff, distant bow with which
the Prince received him struck like ice upon the beholders. He was a stranger
still.

But he had other things to occupy him, more important, surely, than the
personal impressions of military officers and people who went to Court. He was
at work--ceaselessly at work--on the tremendous task of carrying through the
war to a successful conclusion. State papers, despatches, memoranda, poured
from him in an overwhelming stream. Between 1853 and 1857 fifty folio volumes
were filled with the comments of his pen upon the Eastern question. Nothing
would induce him to stop. Weary ministers staggered under the load of his
advice; but his advice continued, piling itself up over their writing-tables,
and flowing out upon them from red box after red box. Nor was it advice to be
ignored. The talent for administration which had reorganised the royal palaces
and planned the Great Exhibition asserted itself no less in the confused
complexities of war. Again and again the Prince's suggestions, rejected or
unheeded at first, were adopted under the stress of circumstances and found to
be full of value. The enrolment of a foreign legion, the establishment of a
depot for troops at Malta, the institution of periodical reports and tabulated
returns as to the condition of the army at Sebastopol--such were the
contrivances and the achievements of his indefatigable brain. He went further:
in a lengthy minute he laid down the lines for a radical reform in the entire
administration of the army. This was premature, but his proposal that "a camp
of evolution" should be created, in which troops should be concentrated and
drilled, proved to be the germ of Aldershot.

Meanwhile Victoria had made a new friend: she had suddenly been captivated by
Napoleon III. Her dislike of him had been strong at first. She considered that
he was a disreputable adventurer who had usurped the throne of poor old Louis
Philippe; and besides he was hand-in-glove with Lord Palmerston. For a long
time, although he was her ally, she was unwilling to meet him; but at last a
visit of the Emperor and Empress to England was arranged. Directly he appeared
at Windsor her heart began to soften. She found that she was charmed by his
quiet manners, his low, soft voice, and by the soothing simplicity of his
conversation. The good-will of England was essential to the Emperor's position
in Europe, and he had determined to fascinate the Queen. He succeeded. There
was something deep within her which responded immediately and vehemently to
natures that offered a romantic contrast with her own. Her adoration of Lord
Melbourne was intimately interwoven with her half-unconscious appreciation of
the exciting unlikeness between herself and that sophisticated, subtle,
aristocratical old man. Very different was the quality of her unlikeness to
Napoleon; but its quantity was at least as great. From behind the vast
solidity of her respectability, her conventionality, her established
happiness, she peered out with a strange delicious pleasure at that
unfamiliar, darkly-glittering foreign object, moving so meteorically before
her, an ambiguous creature of wilfulness and Destiny. And, to her surprise,
where she had dreaded antagonisms, she discovered only sympathies. He was, she
said, "so quiet, so simple, naif even, so pleased to be informed about things
he does not know, so gentle, so full of tact, dignity, and modesty, so full of
kind attention towards us, never saying a word, or doing a thing, which could
put me out... There is something fascinating, melancholy, and engaging which
draws you to him, in spite of any prevention you may have against him, and
certainly without the assistance of any outward appearance, though I like his
face." She observed that he rode "extremely well, and looks well on horseback,
as he sits high." And he danced "with great dignity and spirit." Above all, he
listened to Albert; listened with the most respectful attention; showed, in
fact, how pleased he was "to be informed about things he did not know;" and
afterwards was heard to declare that he had never met the Prince's equal. On
one occasion, indeed--but only on one--he had seemed to grow slightly restive.
In a diplomatic conversation, "I expatiated a little on the Holstein
question," wrote the Prince in a memorandum, "which appeared to bore the
Emperor as 'tres compliquee.'"

Victoria, too, became much attached to the Empress, whose looks and graces she
admired without a touch of jealousy. Eugenie, indeed, in the plenitude of her
beauty, exquisitely dressed in wonderful Parisian crinolines which set off to
perfection her tall and willowy figure, might well have caused some
heart-burning in the breast of her hostess, who, very short, rather stout,
quite plain, in garish middle-class garments, could hardly be expected to feel
at her best in such company. But Victoria had no misgivings. To her it
mattered nothing that her face turned red in the heat and that her purple
pork-pie hat was of last year's fashion, while Eugenie, cool and modish,
floated in an infinitude of flounces by her side. She was Queen of England,
and was not that enough? It certainly seemed to be; true majesty was hers, and
she knew it. More than once, when the two were together in public, it was the
woman to whom, as it seemed, nature and art had given so little, who, by the
sheer force of an inherent grandeur, completely threw her adorned and
beautiful companion into the shade.

There were tears when the moment came for parting, and Victoria felt "quite
wehmuthig," as her guests went away from Windsor. But before long she and
Albert paid a return visit to France, where everything was very delightful,
and she drove incognito through the streets of Paris in a "common bonnet," and
saw a play in the theatre at St. Cloud, and, one evening, at a great party
given by the Emperor in her honour at the Chateau of Versailles, talked a
little to a distinguished-looking Prussian gentleman, whose name was Bismarck.
Her rooms were furnished so much to her taste that she declared they gave her
quite a home feeling--that, if her little dog were there, she should really
imagine herself at home. Nothing was said, but three days later her little dog
barked a welcome to her as she entered the apartments. The Emperor himself,
sparing neither trouble nor expense, had personally arranged the charming
surprise. Such were his attentions. She returned to England more enchanted
than ever. "Strange indeed," she exclaimed, "are the dispensations and ways of
Providence!"

The alliance prospered, and the war drew towards a conclusion. Both the Queen
and the Prince, it is true, were most anxious that there should not be a
premature peace. When Lord Aberdeen wished to open negotiations Albert
attacked him in a "geharnischten" letter, while Victoria rode about on
horseback reviewing the troops. At last, however, Sebastopol was captured. The
news reached Balmoral late at night, and "in a few minutes Albert and all the
gentlemen in every species of attire sallied forth, followed by all the
servants, and gradually by all the population of the village-keepers, gillies,
workmen--"up to the top of the cairn." A bonfire was lighted, the pipes were
played, and guns were shot off. "About three-quarters of an hour after Albert
came down and said the scene had been wild and exciting beyond everything. The
people had been drinking healths in whisky and were in great ecstasy." The
"great ecstasy," perhaps, would be replaced by other feelings next morning;
but at any rate the war was over--though, to be sure, its end seemed as
difficult to account for as its beginning. The dispensations and ways of
Providence continued to be strange.

IV

An unexpected consequence of the war was a complete change in the relations
between the royal pair and Palmerston. The Prince and the Minister drew
together over their hostility to Russia, and thus it came about that when
Victoria found it necessary to summon her old enemy to form an administration
she did so without reluctance. The premiership, too, had a sobering effect
upon Palmerston; he grew less impatient and dictatorial; considered with
attention the suggestions of the Crown, and was, besides, genuinely impressed
by the Prince's ability and knowledge. Friction, no doubt, there still
occasionally was, for, while the Queen and the Prince devoted themselves to
foreign politics as much as ever, their views, when the war was over, became
once more antagonistic to those of the Prime Minister. This was especially the
case with regard to Italy. Albert, theoretically the friend of constitutional
government, distrusted Cavour, was horrified by Garibaldi, and dreaded the
danger of England being drawn into war with Austria. Palmerston, on the other
hand, was eager for Italian independence; but he was no longer at the Foreign
Office, and the brunt of the royal displeasure had now to be borne by Lord
John Russell. In a few years the situation had curiously altered. It was Lord
John who now filled the subordinate and the ungrateful role; but the Foreign
Secretary, in his struggle with the Crown, was supported, instead of opposed,
by the Prime Minister. Nevertheless the struggle was fierce, and the policy,
by which the vigorous sympathy of England became one of the decisive factors
in the final achievement of Italian unity, was only carried through in face of
the violent opposition of the Court.

Towards the other European storm-centre, also, the Prince's attitude continued
to be very different to that of Palmerston. Albert's great wish was for a
united Germany under the leadership of a constitutional and virtuous Prussia;
Palmerston did not think that there was much to be said for the scheme, but he
took no particular interest in German politics, and was ready enough to agree
to a proposal which was warmly supported by both the Prince and the
Queen--that the royal Houses of England and Prussia should be united by the
marriage of the Princess Royal with the Prussian Crown Prince. Accordingly,
when the Princess was not yet fifteen, the Prince, a young man of twenty-four,
came over on a visit to Balmoral, and the betrothal took place. Two years
later, in 1857, the marriage was celebrated. At the last moment, however, it
seemed that there might be a hitch. It was pointed out in Prussia that it was
customary for Princes of the blood royal to be married in Berlin, and it was
suggested that there was no reason why the present case should be treated as
an exception. When this reached the ears of Victoria, she was speechless with
indignation. In a note, emphatic even for Her Majesty, she instructed the
Foreign Secretary to tell the Prussian Ambassador "not to ENTERTAIN the
POSSIBILITY of such a question... The Queen NEVER could consent to it, both
for public and for private reasons, and the assumption of its being TOO MUCH
for a Prince Royal of Prussia to come over to marry the Princess Royal of
Great Britain in England is too ABSURD to say the least. . . Whatever may be
the usual practice of Prussian princes, it is not EVERY day that one marries
the eldest daughter of the Queen of England. The question must therefore be
considered as settled and closed." It was, and the wedding took place in St.
James's Chapel. There were great festivities--illuminations, state concerts,
immense crowds, and general rejoicings. At Windsor a magnificent banquet was
given to the bride and bridegroom in the Waterloo room, at which, Victoria
noted in her diary, "everybody was most friendly and kind about Vicky and full
of the universal enthusiasm, of which the Duke of Buccleuch gave us most
pleasing instances, he having been in the very thick of the crowd and among
the lowest of the low." Her feelings during several days had been growing more
and more emotional, and when the time came for the young couple to depart she
very nearly broke down--but not quite. "Poor dear child!" she wrote
afterwards. "I clasped her in my arms and blessed her, and knew not what to
say. I kissed good Fritz and pressed his hand again and again. He was unable
to speak and the tears were in his eyes. I embraced them both again at the
carriage door, and Albert got into the carriage, an open one, with them and
Bertie... The band struck up. I wished good-bye to the good Perponchers.
General Schreckenstein was much affected. I pressed his hand, and the good
Dean's, and then went quickly upstairs."

Albert, as well as General Schreckenstein, was much affected. He was losing
his favourite child, whose opening intelligence had already begun to display a
marked resemblance to his own--an adoring pupil, who, in a few years, might
have become an almost adequate companion. An ironic fate had determined that
the daughter who was taken from him should be sympathetic, clever, interested
in the arts and sciences, and endowed with a strong taste for memoranda, while
not a single one of these qualities could be discovered in the son who
remained. For certainly the Prince of Wales did not take after his father.
Victoria's prayer had been unanswered, and with each succeeding year it became
more obvious that Bertie was a true scion of the House of Brunswick. But these
evidences of innate characteristics only served to redouble the efforts of his
parents; it still might not be too late to incline the young branch, by
ceaseless pressure and careful fastenings, to grow in the proper direction.
Everything was tried. The boy was sent on a continental tour with a picked
body of tutors, but the results were unsatisfactory. At his father's request
he kept a diary which, on his return, was inspected by the Prince. It was
found to be distressingly meagre: what a multitude of highly interesting
reflections might have been arranged under the heading: "The First Prince of
Wales visiting the Pope!" But there was not a single one. "Le jeune prince
plaisit a tout le monde," old Metternich reported to Guizot, "mais avait l'air
embarrasse et tres triste." On his seventeenth birthday a memorandum was drawn
up over the names of the Queen and the Prince informing their eldest son that
he was now entering upon the period of manhood, and directing him henceforward
to perform the duties of a Christian gentleman. "Life is composed of duties,"
said the memorandum, "and in the due, punctual and cheerful performance of
them the true Christian, true soldier, and true gentleman is recognised... A
new sphere of life will open for you in which you will have to be taught what
to do and what not to do, a subject requiring study more important than any in
which you have hitherto been engaged." On receipt of the memorandum Bertie
burst into tears. At the same time another memorandum was drawn up, headed
"confidential: for the guidance of the gentlemen appointed to attend on the
Prince of Wales." This long and elaborate document laid down "certain
principles" by which the "conduct and demeanour" of the gentlemen were to be
regulated "and which it is thought may conduce to the benefit of the Prince of
Wales." "The qualities which distinguish a gentleman in society," continued
this remarkable paper, "are:--

  (1) His appearance, his deportment and dress.   (2) The character of his
relations with, and treatment of, others.   (3) His desire and power to acquit
himself creditably in conversation or whatever is the occupation of the
society with which he mixes."

A minute and detailed analysis of these subheadings followed, filling several
pages, and the memorandum ended with a final exhortation to the gentlemen: "If
they will duly appreciate the responsibility of their position, and taking the
points above laid down as the outline, will exercise their own good sense in
acting UPON ALL OCCASIONS all upon these principles, thinking no point of
detail too minute to be important, but maintaining one steady consistent line
of conduct they may render essential service to the young Prince and justify
the flattering selection made by the royal parents." A year later the young
Prince was sent to Oxford, where the greatest care was taken that he should
not mix with the undergraduates. Yes, everything had been tried--everything...
with one single exception. The experiment had never been made of letting
Bertie enjoy himself. But why should it have been? "Life is composed of
duties." What possible place could there be for enjoyment in the existence of
a Prince of Wales?

The same year which deprived Albert of the Princess Royal brought him another
and a still more serious loss. The Baron had paid his last visit to England.
For twenty years, as he himself said in a letter to the King of the Belgians,
he had performed "the laborious and exhausting office of a paternal friend and
trusted adviser" to the Prince and the Queen. He was seventy; he was tired,
physically and mentally; it was time to go. He returned to his home in Coburg,
exchanging, once for all, the momentous secrecies of European statecraft for
the little-tattle of a provincial capital and the gossip of family life. In
his stiff chair by the fire he nodded now over old stories--not of emperors
and generals--but of neighbours and relatives and the domestic adventures of
long ago--the burning of his father's library--and the goat that ran upstairs
to his sister's room and ran twice round the table and then ran down again.
Dyspepsia and depression still attacked him; but, looking back over his life,
he was not dissatisfied. His conscience was clear. "I have worked as long as I
had strength to work," he said, "and for a purpose no one can impugn. The
consciousness of this is my reward--the only one which I desired to earn."

Apparently, indeed, his "purpose" had been accomplished. By his wisdom, his
patience, and his example he had brought about, in the fullness of time, the
miraculous metamorphosis of which he had dreamed. The Prince was his creation.
An indefatigable toiler, presiding, for the highest ends, over a great
nation--that was his achievement; and he looked upon his work and it was good.
But had the Baron no misgivings? Did he never wonder whether, perhaps, he
might have accomplished not too little but too much? How subtle and how
dangerous are the snares which fate lays for the wariest of men! Albert,
certainly, seemed to be everything that Stockmar could have wished--virtuous,
industrious, persevering, intelligent. And yet--why was it--all was not well
with him? He was sick at heart.

For in spite of everything he had never reached to happiness. His work, for
which at last he came to crave with an almost morbid appetite, was a solace
and not a cure; the dragon of his dissatisfaction devoured with dark relish
that ever-growing tribute of laborious days and nights; but it was hungry
still. The causes of his melancholy were hidden, mysterious, unanalysable
perhaps--too deeply rooted in the innermost recesses of his temperament for
the eye of reason to apprehend. There were contradictions in his nature,
which, to some of those who knew him best, made him seem an inexplicable
enigma: he was severe and gentle; he was modest and scornful; he longed for
affection and he was cold. He was lonely, not merely with the loneliness of
exile but with the loneliness of conscious and unrecognised superiority. He
had the pride, at once resigned and overweening, of a doctrinaire. And yet to
say that he was simply a doctrinaire would be a false description; for the
pure doctrinaire rejoices always in an internal contentment, and Albert was
very far from doing that. There was something that he wanted and that he could
never get. What was it? Some absolute, some ineffable sympathy? Some
extraordinary, some sublime success? Possibly, it was a mixture of both. To
dominate and to be understood! To conquer, by the same triumphant influence,
the submission and the appreciation of men--that would be worth while indeed!
But, to such imaginations, he saw too clearly how faint were the responses of
his actual environment. Who was there who appreciated him, really and truly?
Who COULD appreciate him in England? And, if the gentle virtue of an inward
excellence availed so little, could he expect more from the hard ways of skill
and force? The terrible land of his exile loomed before him a frigid, an
impregnable mass. Doubtless he had made some slight impression: it was true
that he had gained the respect of his fellow workers, that his probity, his
industry, his exactitude, had been recognised, that he was a highly
influential, an extremely important man. But how far, how very far, was all
this from the goal of his ambitions! How feeble and futile his efforts seemed
against the enormous coagulation of dullness, of folly, of slackness, of
ignorance, of confusion that confronted him! He might have the strength or the
ingenuity to make some small change for the better here or there--to rearrange
some detail, to abolish some anomaly, to insist upon some obvious reform; but
the heart of the appalling organism remained untouched. England lumbered on,
impervious and self-satisfied, in her old intolerable course. He threw himself
across the path of the monster with rigid purpose and set teeth, but he was
brushed aside. Yes! even Palmerston was still unconquered--was still there to
afflict him with his jauntiness, his muddle-headedness, his utter lack of
principle. It was too much. Neither nature nor the Baron had given him a
sanguine spirit; the seeds of pessimism, once lodged within him, flourished in
a propitious soil. He

       "questioned things, and did not find
        One that would answer to his mind;
        And all the world appeared unkind."

He believed that he was a failure and he began to despair.

Yet Stockmar had told him that he must "never relax," and he never would. He
would go on, working to the utmost and striving for the highest, to the bitter
end. His industry grew almost maniacal. Earlier and earlier was the green lamp
lighted; more vast grew the correspondence; more searching the examination of
the newspapers; the interminable memoranda more punctilious, analytical, and
precise. His very recreations became duties. He enjoyed himself by time-table,
went deer-stalking with meticulous gusto, and made puns at lunch--it was the
right thing to do. The mechanism worked with astonishing efficiency, but it
never rested and it was never oiled. In dry exactitude the innumerable
cog-wheels perpetually revolved. No, whatever happened, the Prince would not
relax; he had absorbed the doctrines of Stockmar too thoroughly. He knew what
was right, and, at all costs, he would pursue it. That was certain. But alas!
in this our life what are the certainties? "In nothing be over-zealous!" says
an old Greek. "The due measure in all the works of man is best. For often one
who zealously pushes towards some excellence, though he be pursuing a gain, is
really being led utterly astray by the will of some Power, which makes those
things that are evil seem to him good, and those things seem to him evil that
are for his advantage." Surely, both the Prince and the Baron might have
learnt something from the frigid wisdom of Theognis.

Victoria noticed that her husband sometimes seemed to be depressed and
overworked. She tried to cheer him up. Realising uneasily that he was still
regarded as a foreigner, she hoped that by conferring upon him the title of
Prince Consort (1857) she would improve his position in the country. "The
Queen has a right to claim that her husband should be an Englishman," she
wrote. But unfortunately, in spite of the Royal Letters Patent, Albert
remained as foreign as before; and as the years passed his dejection deepened.
She worked with him, she watched over him, she walked with him through the
woods at Osborne, while he whistled to the nightingales, as he had whistled
once at Rosenau so long ago. When his birthday came round, she took the
greatest pains to choose him presents that he would really like. In 1858, when
he was thirty-nine, she gave him "a picture of Beatrice, life-size, in oil, by
Horsley, a complete collection of photographic views of Gotha and the country
round, which I had taken by Bedford, and a paper-weight of Balmoral granite
and deers' teeth, designed by Vicky." Albert was of course delighted, and his
merriment at the family gathering was more pronounced than ever: and yet...
what was there that was wrong?

No doubt it was his health. He was wearing himself out in the service of the
country; and certainly his constitution, as Stockmar had perceived from the
first, was ill-adapted to meet a serious strain. He was easily upset; he
constantly suffered from minor ailments. His appearance in itself was enough
to indicate the infirmity of his physical powers. The handsome youth of twenty
years since with the flashing eyes and the soft complexion had grown into a
sallow, tired-looking man, whose body, in its stoop and its loose fleshiness,
betrayed the sedentary labourer, and whose head was quite bald on the top.
Unkind critics, who had once compared Albert to an operatic tenor, might have
remarked that there was something of the butler about him now. Beside
Victoria, he presented a painful contrast. She, too, was stout, but it was
with the plumpness of a vigorous matron; and an eager vitality was everywhere
visible--in her energetic bearing, her protruding, enquiring glances, her
small, fat, capable, and commanding hands. If only, by some sympathetic magic,
she could have conveyed into that portly, flabby figure, that desiccated and
discouraged brain, a measure of the stamina and the self-assurance which were
so pre-eminently hers!

But suddenly she was reminded that there were other perils besides those of
ill-health. During a visit to Coburg in 1860, the Prince was very nearly
killed in a carriage accident. He escaped with a few cuts and bruises; but
Victoria's alarm was extreme, though she concealed it. "It is when the Queen
feels most deeply," she wrote afterwards, "that she always appears calmest,
and she could not and dared not allow herself to speak of what might have
been, or even to admit to herself (and she cannot and dare not now) the entire
danger, for her head would turn!" Her agitation, in fact, was only surpassed
by her thankfulness to God. She felt, she said, that she could not rest
"without doing something to mark permanently her feelings," and she decided
that she would endow a charity in Coburg. "L1,000, or even L2,000, given
either at once, or in instalments yearly, would not, in the Queen's opinion,
be too much." Eventually, the smaller sum having been fixed upon, it was
invested in a trust, called the "Victoria-Stift," in the name of the
Burgomaster and chief clergyman of Coburg, who were directed to distribute the
interest yearly among a certain number of young men and women of exemplary
character belonging to the humbler ranks of life.

Shortly afterwards the Queen underwent, for the first time in her life, the
actual experience of close personal loss. Early in 1861 the Duchess of Kent
was taken seriously ill, and in March she died. The event overwhelmed
Victoria. With a morbid intensity, she filled her diary for pages with minute
descriptions of her mother's last hours, her dissolution, and her corpse,
interspersed with vehement apostrophes, and the agitated outpourings of
emotional reflection. In the grief of the present the disagreements of the
past were totally forgotten. It was the horror and the mystery of
Death--Death, present and actual--that seized upon the imagination of the
Queen. Her whole being, so instinct with vitality, recoiled in agony from the
grim spectacle of the triumph of that awful power. Her own mother, with whom
she had lived so closely and so long that she had become a part almost of her
existence, had fallen into nothingness before her very eyes! She tried to
forget, but she could not. Her lamentations continued with a strange
abundance, a strange persistency. It was almost as if, by some mysterious and
unconscious precognition, she realised that for her, in an especial manner,
that grisly Majesty had a dreadful dart in store.

For indeed, before the year was out, a far more terrible blow was to fall upon
her. Albert, who had for long been suffering from sleeplessness, went, on a
cold and drenching day towards the end of November, to inspect the buildings
for the new Military Academy at Sandhurst. On his return, it was clear that
the fatigue and exposure to which he had been subjected had seriously affected
his health. He was attacked by rheumatism, his sleeplessness continued, and he
complained that he felt thoroughly unwell. Three days later a painful duty
obliged him to visit Cambridge. The Prince of Wales, who had been placed at
that University in the previous year, was behaving in such a manner that a
parental visit and a parental admonition had become necessary. The
disappointed father, suffering in mind and body, carried through his task;
but, on his return journey to Windsor, he caught a fatal chill. During the
next week he gradually grew weaker and more miserable. Yet, depressed and
enfeebled as he was, he continued to work. It so happened that at that very
moment a grave diplomatic crisis had arisen. Civil war had broken out in
America, and it seemed as if England, owing to a violent quarrel with the
Northern States, was upon the point of being drawn into the conflict. A severe
despatch by Lord John Russell was submitted to the Queen; and the Prince
perceived that, if it was sent off unaltered, war would be the almost
inevitable consequence. At seven o'clock on the morning of December 1, he rose
from his bed, and with a quavering hand wrote a series of suggestions for the
alteration of the draft, by which its language might be softened, and a way
left open for a peaceful solution of the question. These changes were accepted
by the Government, and war was averted. It was the Prince's last memorandum.

He had always declared that he viewed the prospect of death with equanimity.
"I do not cling to life," he had once said to Victoria. "You do; but I set no
store by it." And then he had 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." He had judged correctly. Before he had been ill many days, he told a
friend that he was convinced he would not recover. He sank and sank.
Nevertheless, if his case had been properly understood and skilfully treated
from the first, he might conceivably have been saved; but the doctors failed
to diagnose his symptoms; and it is noteworthy that his principal physician
was Sir James Clark. When it was suggested that other advice should be taken,
Sir James pooh-poohed the idea: "there was no cause for alarm," he said. But
the strange illness grew worse. At last, after a letter of fierce remonstrance
from Palmerston, Dr. Watson was sent for; and Dr. Watson saw at once that he
had come too late The Prince was in the grip of typhoid fever. "I think that
everything so far is satisfactory," said Sir James Clark.[*]

[*] Clarendon, II, 253-4: "One cannot speak with certainty; but it is horrible
to think that such a life MAY have been sacrificed to Sir J. Clark's selfish
jealousy of every member of his profession." The Earl of Clarendon to the
Duchess of Manchester, December 17, 1861.


The restlessness and the acute suffering of the earlier days gave place to a
settled torpor and an ever--deepening gloom. Once the failing patient asked
for music--"a fine chorale at a distance;" and a piano having been placed in
the adjoining room, Princess Alice played on it some of Luther's hymns, after
which the Prince repeated "The Rock of Ages." Sometimes his mind wandered;
sometimes the distant past came rushing upon him; he heard the birds in the
early morning, and was at Rosenau again, a boy. Or Victoria would come and
read to him "Peveril of the Peak," and he showed that he could follow the
story, and then she would bend over him, and he would murmur "liebes Frauchen"
and "gutes Weibchen," stroking her cheek. Her distress and her agitation were
great, but she was not seriously frightened. Buoyed up by her own abundant
energies, she would not believe that Albert's might prove unequal to the
strain. She refused to face such a hideous possibility. She declined to see
Dr. Watson. Why should she? Had not Sir James Clark assured her that all would
be well? Only two days before the end, which was seen now to be almost
inevitable by everyone about her, she wrote, full of apparent confidence, to
the King of the Belgians: "I do not sit up with him at night," she said, "as I
could be of no use; and there is nothing to cause alarm." The Princess Alice
tried to tell her the truth, but her hopefulness would not be daunted. On the
morning of December 14, Albert, just as she had expected, seemed to be better;
perhaps the crisis was over. But in the course of the day there was a serious
relapse. Then at last she allowed herself to see that she was standing on the
edge of an appalling gulf. The whole family was summoned, and, one after
another, the children took a silent farewell of their father. "It was a
terrible moment," Victoria wrote in her diary, "but, thank God! I was able to
command myself, and to be perfectly calm, and remained sitting by his side."
He murmured something, but she could not hear what it was; she thought he was
speaking in French. Then all at once he began to arrange his hair, "just as he
used to do when well and he was dressing." "Es kleines Frauchen," she
whispered to him; and he seemed to understand. For a moment, towards the
evening, she went into another room, but was immediately called back; she saw
at a glance that a ghastly change had taken place. As she knelt by the bed, he
breathed deeply, breathed gently, breathed at last no more. His features
became perfectly rigid; she shrieked one long wild shriek that rang through
the terror-stricken castle and understood that she had lost him for ever.



CHAPTER VII. WIDOWHOOD

I

The death of the Prince Consort was the central turning-point in the history
of Queen Victoria. She herself felt that her true life had ceased with her
husband's, and that the remainder of her days upon earth was of a twilight
nature--an epilogue to a drama that was done. Nor is it possible that her
biographer should escape a similar impression. For him, too, there is a
darkness over the latter half of that long career. The first forty--two years
of the Queen's life are illuminated by a great and varied quantity of
authentic information. With Albert's death a veil descends. Only occasionally,
at fitful and disconnected intervals, does it lift for a moment or two; a few
main outlines, a few remarkable details may be discerned; the rest is all
conjecture and ambiguity. Thus, though the Queen survived her great
bereavement for almost as many years as she had lived before it, the chronicle
of those years can bear no proportion to the tale of her earlier life. We must
be content in our ignorance with a brief and summary relation.

The sudden removal of the Prince was not merely a matter of overwhelming
personal concern to Victoria; it was an event of national, of European
importance. He was only forty-two, and in the ordinary course of nature he
might have been expected to live at least thirty years longer. Had he done so
it can hardly be doubted that the whole development of the English polity
would have been changed. Already at the time of his death he filled a unique
place in English public life; already among the inner circle of politicians he
was accepted as a necessary and useful part of the mechanism of the State.
Lord Clarendon, for instance, spoke of his death as "a national calamity of
far greater importance than the public dream of," and lamented the loss of his
"sagacity and foresight," which, he declared, would have been "more than ever
valuable" in the event of an American war. And, as time went on, the Prince's
influence must have enormously increased. For, in addition to his intellectual
and moral qualities, he enjoyed, by virtue of his position, one supreme
advantage which every other holder of high office in the country was without:
he was permanent. Politicians came and went, but the Prince was perpetually
installed at the centre of affairs. Who can doubt that, towards the end of the
century, such a man, grown grey in the service of the nation, virtuous,
intelligent, and with the unexampled experience of a whole life-time of
government, would have acquired an extraordinary prestige? If, in his youth,
he had been able to pit the Crown against the mighty Palmerston and to come
off with equal honours from the contest, of what might he not have been
capable in his old age? What Minister, however able, however popular, could
have withstood the wisdom, the irreproachability, the vast prescriptive
authority, of the venerable Prince? It is easy to imagine how, under such a
ruler, an attempt might have been made to convert England into a State as
exactly organised, as elaborately trained, as efficiently equipped, and as
autocratically controlled, as Prussia herself. Then perhaps, eventually, under
some powerful leader--a Gladstone or a Bright--the democratic forces in the
country might have rallied together, and a struggle might have followed in
which the Monarchy would have been shaken to its foundations. Or, on the other
hand, Disraeli's hypothetical prophecy might have come true. "With Prince
Albert," he said, "we have buried our... sovereign. This German Prince has
governed England for twenty-one years with a wisdom and energy such as none of
our kings have ever shown. If he had outlived some of our "old stagers" he
would have given us the blessings of absolute government."

The English Constitution--that indescribable entity--is a living thing,
growing with the growth of men, and assuming ever-varying forms in accordance
with the subtle and complex laws of human character. It is the child of wisdom
and chance. The wise men of 1688 moulded it into the shape we know, but the
chance that George I could not speak English gave it one of its essential
peculiarities--the system of a Cabinet independent of the Crown and
subordinate to the Prime Minister. The wisdom of Lord Grey saved it from
petrifaction and destruction, and set it upon the path of Democracy. Then
chance intervened once more; a female sovereign happened to marry an able and
pertinacious man; and it seemed likely that an element which had been
quiescent within it for years--the element of irresponsible administrative
power--was about to become its predominant characteristic and to change
completely the direction of its growth. But what chance gave chance took away.
The Consort perished in his prime; and the English Constitution, dropping the
dead limb with hardly a tremor, continued its mysterious life as if he had
never been.

One human being, and one alone, felt the full force of what had happened. The
Baron, by his fireside at Coburg, suddenly saw the tremendous fabric of his
creation crash down into sheer and irremediable ruin. Albert was gone, and he
had lived in vain. Even his blackest hypochondria had never envisioned quite
so miserable a catastrophe. Victoria wrote to him, visited him, tried to
console him by declaring with passionate conviction that she would carry on
her husband's work. He smiled a sad smile and looked into the fire. Then he
murmured that he was going where Albert was--that he would not be long. He
shrank into himself. His children clustered round him and did their best to
comfort him, but it was useless: the Baron's heart was broken. He lingered for
eighteen months, and then, with his pupil, explored the shadow and the dust.

II

With appalling suddenness Victoria had exchanged the serene radiance of
happiness for the utter darkness of woe. In the first dreadful moments those
about her had feared that she might lose her reason, but the iron strain
within her held firm, and in the intervals between the intense paroxysms of
grief it was observed that the Queen was calm. She remembered, too, that
Albert had always disapproved of exaggerated manifestations of feeling, and
her one remaining desire was to do nothing but what he would have wished. Yet
there were moments when her royal anguish would brook no restraints. One day
she sent for the Duchess of Sutherland, and, leading her to the Prince's room,
fell prostrate before his clothes in a flood of weeping, while she adjured the
Duchess to tell her whether the beauty of Albert's character had ever been
surpassed. At other times a feeling akin to indignation swept over her. "The
poor fatherless baby of eight months," she wrote to the King of the Belgians,
"is now the utterly heartbroken and crushed widow of forty-two! My LIFE as a
HAPPY one is ENDED! The world is gone for ME!... Oh! to be cut off in the
prime of life--to see our pure, happy, quiet, domestic life, which ALONE
enabled me to bear my MUCH disliked position, CUT OFF at forty-two--when I HAD
hoped with such instinctive certainty that God never WOULD part us, and would
let us grow old together (though HE always talked of the shortness of
life)--is TOO AWFUL, too cruel!" The tone of outraged Majesty seems to be
discernible. Did she wonder in her heart of hearts how the Deity could have
dared?

But all other emotions gave way before her overmastering determination to
continue, absolutely unchanged, and for the rest of her life on earth, her
reverence, her obedience, her idolatry. "I am anxious to repeat ONE thing,"
she told her uncle, "and THAT ONE is my firm resolve, my IRREVOCABLE DECISION,
viz., that HIS wishes--HIS plans--about everything, HIS views about EVERY
thing are to be MY LAW! And NO HUMAN POWER will make me swerve from WHAT HE
decided and wished." She grew fierce, she grew furious, at the thought of any
possible intrusion between her and her desire. Her uncle was coming to visit
her, and it flashed upon her that HE might try to interfere with her and seek
to "rule the roost" as of old. She would give him a hint. "I am ALSO
DETERMINED," she wrote, "that NO ONE person--may HE be ever so good, ever so
devoted among my servants--is to lead or guide or dictate TO ME. I know HOW he
would disapprove it... Though miserably weak and utterly shattered, my spirit
rises when I think ANY wish or plan of his is to be touched or changed, or I
am to be MADE TO DO anything." She ended her letter in grief and affection.
She was, she said, his "ever wretched but devoted child, Victoria R." And then
she looked at the date: it was the 24th of December. An agonising pang
assailed her, and she dashed down a postcript--"What a Xmas! I won't think of
it."

At first, in the tumult of her distresses, she declared that she could not see
her Ministers, and the Princess Alice, assisted by Sir Charles Phipps, the
keeper of the Privy Purse, performed, to the best of her ability, the
functions of an intermediary. After a few weeks, however, the Cabinet, through
Lord John Russell, ventured to warn the Queen that this could not continue.
She realised that they were right: Albert would have agreed with them; and so
she sent for the Prime Minister. But when Lord Palmerston arrived at Osborne,
in the pink of health, brisk, with his whiskers freshly dyed, and dressed in a
brown overcoat, light grey trousers, green gloves, and blue studs, he did not
create a very good impression.

Nevertheless, she had grown attached to her old enemy, and the thought of a
political change filled her with agitated apprehensions. The Government, she
knew, might fall at any moment; she felt she could not face such an
eventuality; and therefore, six months after the death of the Prince, she took
the unprecedented step of sending a private message to Lord Derby, the leader
of the Opposition, to tell him that she was not in a fit state of mind or body
to undergo the anxiety of a change of Government, and that if he turned the
present Ministers out of office it would be at the risk of sacrificing her
life--or her reason. When this message reached Lord Derby he was considerably
surprised. "Dear me!" was his cynical comment. "I didn't think she was so fond
of them as THAT."

Though the violence of her perturbations gradually subsided, her cheerfulness
did not return. For months, for years, she continued in settled gloom. Her
life became one of almost complete seclusion. Arrayed in thickest crepe, she
passed dolefully from Windsor to Osborne, from Osborne to Balmoral. Rarely
visiting the capital, refusing to take any part in the ceremonies of state,
shutting herself off from the slightest intercourse with society, she became
almost as unknown to her subjects as some potentate of the East. They might
murmur, but they did not understand. What had she to do with empty shows and
vain enjoyments? No! She was absorbed by very different preoccupations. She
was the devoted guardian of a sacred trust. Her place was in the inmost shrine
of the house of mourning--where she alone had the right to enter, where she
could feel the effluence of a mysterious presence, and interpret, however
faintly and feebly, the promptings of a still living soul. That, and that only
was her glorious, her terrible duty. For terrible indeed it was. As the years
passed her depression seemed to deepen and her loneliness to grow more
intense. "I am on a dreary sad pinnacle of solitary grandeur," she said. Again
and again she felt that she could bear her situation no longer--that she would
sink under the strain. And then, instantly, that Voice spoke: and she braced
herself once more to perform, with minute conscientiousness, her grim and holy
task.

Above all else, what she had to do was to make her own the master-impulse of
Albert's life--she must work, as he had worked, in the service of the country.
That vast burden of toil which he had taken upon his shoulders it was now for
her to bear. She assumed the gigantic load; and naturally she staggered under
it. While he had lived, she had worked, indeed, with regularity and
conscientiousness; but it was work made easy, made delicious, by his care, his
forethought, his advice, and his infallibility. The mere sound of his voice,
asking her to sign a paper, had thrilled her; in such a presence she could
have laboured gladly for ever. But now there was a hideous change. Now there
were no neat piles and docketings under the green lamp; now there were no
simple explanations of difficult matters; now there was nobody to tell her
what was right and what was wrong. She had her secretaries, no doubt: there
were Sir Charles Phipps, and General Grey, and Sir Thomas Biddulph; and they
did their best. But they were mere subordinates: the whole weight of
initiative and responsibility rested upon her alone. For so it had to be. "I
am DETERMINED"--had she not declared it?--"that NO ONE person is to lead or
guide or dictate to ME;" anything else would be a betrayal of her trust. She
would follow the Prince in all things. He had refused to delegate authority;
he had examined into every detail with his own eyes; he had made it a rule
never to sign a paper without having first, not merely read it, but made notes
on it too. She would do the same. She sat from morning till night surrounded
by huge heaps of despatch--boxes, reading and writing at her desk--at her
desk, alas! which stood alone now in the room.

Within two years of Albert's death a violent disturbance in foreign politics
put Victoria's faithfulness to a crucial test. The fearful Schleswig-Holstein
dispute, which had been smouldering for more than a decade, showed signs of
bursting out into conflagration. The complexity of the questions at issue was
indescribable. "Only three people," said Palmerston, "have ever really
understood the Schleswig-Holstein business--the Prince Consort, who is dead--a
German professor, who has gone mad--and I, who have forgotten all about it."
But, though the Prince might be dead, had he not left a vicegerent behind him?
Victoria threw herself into the seething embroilment with the vigour of
inspiration. She devoted hours daily to the study of the affair in all its
windings; but she had a clue through the labyrinth: whenever the question had
been discussed, Albert, she recollected it perfectly, had always taken the
side of Prussia. Her course was clear. She became an ardent champion of the
Prussian point of view. It was a legacy from the Prince, she said. She did not
realise that the Prussia of the Prince's day was dead, and that a new Prussia,
the Prussia of Bismarck, was born. Perhaps Palmerston, with his queer
prescience, instinctively apprehended the new danger; at any rate, he and Lord
John were agreed upon the necessity of supporting Denmark against Prussia's
claims. But opinion was sharply divided, not only in the country but in the
Cabinet. For eighteen months the controversy raged; while the Queen, with
persistent vehemence, opposed the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary.
When at last the final crisis arose--when it seemed possible that England
would join forces with Denmark in a war against Prussia--Victoria's agitation
grew febrile in its intensity. Towards her German relatives she preserved a
discreet appearance of impartiality; but she poured out upon her Ministers a
flood of appeals, protests, and expostulations. She invoked the sacred cause
of Peace. "The only chance of preserving peace for Europe," she wrote, "is by
not assisting Denmark, who has brought this entirely upon herself. The Queen
suffers much, and her nerves are more and more totally shattered... But though
all this anxiety is wearing her out, it will not shake her firm purpose of
resisting any attempt to involve this country in a mad and useless combat."
She was, she declared, "prepared to make a stand," even if the resignation of
the Foreign Secretary should follow. "The Queen," she told Lord Granville, "is
completely exhausted by the anxiety and suspense, and misses her beloved
husband's help, advice, support, and love in an overwhelming manner." She was
so worn out by her efforts for peace that she could "hardly hold up her head
or hold her pen." England did not go to war, and Denmark was left to her fate;
but how far the attitude of the Queen contributed to this result it is
impossible, with our present knowledge, to say. On the whole, however, it
seems probable that the determining factor in the situation was the powerful
peace party in the Cabinet rather than the imperious and pathetic pressure of
Victoria.

It is, at any rate, certain that the Queen's enthusiasm for the sacred cause
of peace was short-lived. Within a few months her mind had completely altered.
Her eyes were opened to the true nature of Prussia, whose designs upon Austria
were about to culminate in the Seven Weeks' War. Veering precipitately from
one extreme to the other, she now urged her Ministers to interfere by force of
arms in support of Austria. But she urged in vain.

Her political activity, no more than her social seclusion, was approved by the
public. As the years passed, and the royal mourning remained as unrelieved as
ever, the animadversions grew more general and more severe. It was observed
that the Queen's protracted privacy not only cast a gloom over high society,
not only deprived the populace of its pageantry, but also exercised a highly
deleterious effect upon the dressmaking, millinery, and hosiery trades. This
latter consideration carried great weight. At last, early in 1864, the rumour
spread that Her Majesty was about to go out of mourning, and there was much
rejoicing in the newspapers; but unfortunately it turned out that the rumour
was quite without foundation. Victoria, with her own hand, wrote a letter to
The Times to say so. "This idea," she declared, "cannot be too explicitly
contradicted. "The Queen," the letter continued, "heartily appreciates the
desire of her subjects to see her, and whatever she CAN do to gratify them in
this loyal and affectionate wish, she WILL do... But there are other and
higher duties than those of mere representation which are now thrown upon the
Queen, alone and unassisted--duties which she cannot neglect without injury to
the public service, which weigh unceasingly upon her, overwhelming her with
work and anxiety." The justification might have been considered more cogent
had it not been known that those "other and higher duties" emphasised by the
Queen consisted for the most part of an attempt to counteract the foreign
policy of Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell. A large section--perhaps a
majority--of the nation were violent partisans of Denmark in the
Schleswig-Holstein quarrel; and Victoria's support of Prussia was widely
denounced. A wave of unpopularity, which reminded old observers of the period
preceding the Queen's marriage more than twenty-five years before, was
beginning to rise. The press was rude; Lord Ellenborough attacked the Queen in
the House of Lords; there were curious whispers in high quarters that she had
had thoughts of abdicating--whispers followed by regrets that she had not done
so. Victoria, outraged and injured, felt that she was misunderstood. She was
profoundly unhappy. After Lord Ellenborough's speech, General Grey declared
that he "had never seen the Queen so completely upset." "Oh, how fearful it
is," she herself wrote to Lord Granville, "to be suspected--uncheered--
unguided and unadvised--and how alone the poor Queen feels! " Nevertheless,
suffer as she might, she was as resolute as ever; she would not move by a
hair's breadth from the course that a supreme obligation marked out for her;
she would be faithful to the end.

And so, when Schleswig-Holstein was forgotten, and even the image of the
Prince had begun to grow dim in the fickle memories of men, the solitary
watcher remained immutably concentrated at her peculiar task. The world's
hostility, steadily increasing, was confronted and outfaced by the
impenetrable weeds of Victoria. Would the world never understand? It was not
mere sorrow that kept her so strangely sequestered; it was devotion, it was
self-immolation; it was the laborious legacy of love. Unceasingly the pen
moved over the black-edged paper. The flesh might be weak, but that vast
burden must be borne. And fortunately, if the world would not understand,
there were faithful friends who did. There was Lord Granville, and there was
kind Mr. Theodore Martin. Perhaps Mr. Martin, who was so clever, would find
means to make people realise the facts. She would send him a letter, pointing
out her arduous labours and the difficulties under which she struggled, and
then he might write an article for one of the magazines. "It is not," she told
him in 1863, "the Queen's SORROW that keeps her secluded. It is her
OVERWHELMING WORK and her health, which is greatly shaken by her sorrow, and
the totally overwhelming amount of work and responsibility--work which she
feels really wears her out. Alice Helps was wonderfully struck at the Queen's
room; and if Mrs. Martin will look at it, she can tell Mr. Martin what
surrounds her. From the hour she gets out of bed till she gets into it again
there is work, work, work,--letter-boxes, questions, etc., which are
dreadfully exhausting--and if she had not comparative rest and quiet in the
evening she would most likely not be ALIVE. Her brain is constantly
overtaxed." It was too true.

III

To carry on Albert's work--that was her first duty; but there was another,
second only to that, and yet nearer, if possible, to her heart--to impress the
true nature of his genius and character upon the minds of her subjects. She
realised that during his life he had not been properly appreciated; the full
extent of his powers, the supreme quality of his goodness, had been
necessarily concealed; but death had removed the need of barriers, and now her
husband, in his magnificent entirety, should stand revealed to all. She set to
work methodically. She directed Sir Arthur Helps to bring out a collection of
the Prince's speeches and addresses, and the weighty tome appeared in 1862.
Then she commanded General Grey to write an account of the Prince's early
years--from his birth to his marriage; she herself laid down the design of the
book, contributed a number of confidential documents, and added numerous
notes; General Grey obeyed, and the work was completed in 1866. But the
principal part of the story was still untold, and Mr. Martin was forthwith
instructed to write a complete biography of the Prince Consort. Mr. Martin
laboured for fourteen years. The mass of material with which he had to deal
was almost incredible, but he was extremely industrious, and he enjoyed
throughout the gracious assistance of Her Majesty. The first bulky volume was
published in 1874; four others slowly followed; so that it was not until 1880
that the monumental work was finished.

Mr. Martin was rewarded by a knighthood; and yet it was sadly evident that
neither Sir Theodore nor his predecessors had achieved the purpose which the
Queen had in view. Perhaps she was unfortunate in her coadjutors, but, in
reality, the responsibility for the failure must lie with Victoria herself.
Sir Theodore and the others faithfully carried out the task which she had set
them--faithfully put before the public the very image of Albert that filled
her own mind. The fatal drawback was that the public did not find that image
attractive. Victoria's emotional nature, far more remarkable for vigour than
for subtlety, rejecting utterly the qualifications which perspicuity, or
humour, might suggest, could be satisfied with nothing but the absolute and
the categorical. When she disliked she did so with an unequivocal emphasis
which swept the object of her repugnance at once and finally outside the pale
of consideration; and her feelings of affection were equally unmitigated. In
the case of Albert her passion for superlatives reached its height. To have
conceived of him as anything short of perfect--perfect in virtue, in wisdom,
in beauty, in all the glories and graces of man--would have been an
unthinkable blasphemy: perfect he was, and perfect he must be shown to have
been. And so, Sir Arthur, Sir Theodore, and the General painted him. In the
circumstances, and under such supervision, to have done anything else would
have required talents considerably more distinguished than any that those
gentlemen possessed. But that was not all. By a curious mischance Victoria was
also able to press into her service another writer, the distinction of whose
talents was this time beyond a doubt. The Poet Laureate, adopting, either from
complaisance or conviction, the tone of his sovereign, joined in the chorus,
and endowed the royal formula with the magical resonance of verse. This
settled the matter. Henceforward it was impossible to forget that Albert had
worn the white flower of a blameless life.

The result was doubly unfortunate. Victoria, disappointed and chagrined, bore
a grudge against her people for their refusal, in spite of all her efforts, to
rate her husband at his true worth. She did not understand that the picture of
an embodied perfection is distasteful to the majority of mankind. The cause of
this is not so much an envy of the perfect being as a suspicion that he must
be inhuman; and thus it happened that the public, when it saw displayed for
its admiration a figure resembling the sugary hero of a moral story-book
rather than a fellow man of flesh and blood, turned away with a shrug, a
smile, and a flippant ejaculation. But in this the public was the loser as
well as Victoria. For in truth Albert was a far more interesting personage
than the public dreamed. By a curious irony an impeccable waxwork had been
fixed by the Queen's love in the popular imagination, while the creature whom
it represented--the real creature, so full of energy and stress and torment,
so mysterious and so unhappy, and so fallible and so very human--had
altogether disappeared.

IV

Words and books may be ambiguous memorials; but who can misinterpret the
visible solidity of bronze and stone? At Frogmore, near Windsor, where her
mother was buried, Victoria constructed, at the cost of L200,000, a vast and
elaborate mausoleum for herself and her husband. But that was a private and
domestic monument, and the Queen desired that wherever her subjects might be
gathered together they should be reminded of the Prince. Her desire was
gratified; all over the country--at Aberdeen, at Perth, and at
Wolverhampton--statues of the Prince were erected; and the Queen, making an
exception to her rule of retirement, unveiled them herself. Nor did the
capital lag behind. A month after the Prince's death a meeting was called
together at the Mansion House to discuss schemes for honouring his memory.
Opinions, however, were divided upon the subject. Was a statue or an
institution to be preferred? Meanwhile a subscription was opened; an
influential committee was appointed, and the Queen was consulted as to her
wishes in the matter. Her Majesty replied that she would prefer a granite
obelisk, with sculptures at the base, to an institution. But the committee
hesitated: an obelisk, to be worthy of the name, must clearly be a monolith;
and where was the quarry in England capable of furnishing a granite block of
the required size? It was true that there was granite in Russian Finland; but
the committee were advised that it was not adapted to resist exposure to the
open air. On the whole, therefore, they suggested that a Memorial Hall should
be erected, together with a statue of the Prince. Her Majesty assented; but
then another difficulty arose. It was found that not more than L60,000 had
been subscribed--a sum insufficient to defray the double expense. The Hall,
therefore, was abandoned; a statue alone was to be erected; and certain
eminent architects were asked to prepare designs. Eventually the committee had
at their disposal a total sum of L120,000, since the public subscribed another
L10,000, while L50,000 was voted by Parliament. Some years later a joint stock
company was formed and built, as a private speculation, the Albert Hall.

The architect whose design was selected, both by the committee and by the
Queen, was Mr. Gilbert Scott, whose industry, conscientiousness, and genuine
piety had brought him to the head of his profession. His lifelong zeal for the
Gothic style having given him a special prominence, his handiwork was
strikingly visible, not only in a multitude of original buildings, but in most
of the cathedrals of England. Protests, indeed, were occasionally raised
against his renovations; but Mr. Scott replied with such vigour and unction in
articles and pamphlets that not a Dean was unconvinced, and he was permitted
to continue his labours without interruption. On one occasion, however, his
devotion to Gothic had placed him in an unpleasant situation. The Government
offices in Whitehall were to be rebuilt; Mr. Scott competed, and his designs
were successful. Naturally, they were in the Gothic style, combining "a
certain squareness and horizontality of outline" with pillar-mullions, gables,
high-pitched roofs, and dormers; and the drawings, as Mr. Scott himself
observed, "were, perhaps, the best ever sent in to a competition, or nearly
so." After the usual difficulties and delays the work was at last to be put in
hand, when there was a change of Government and Lord Palmerston became Prime
Minister. Lord Palmerston at once sent for Mr. Scott. "Well, Mr. Scott," he
said, in his jaunty way, "I can't have anything to do with this Gothic style.
I must insist on your making a design in the Italian manner, which I am sure
you can do very cleverly." Mr. Scott was appalled; the style of the Italian
renaissance was not only unsightly, it was positively immoral, and he sternly
refused to have anything to do with it. Thereupon Lord Palmerston assumed a
fatherly tone. "Quite true; a Gothic architect can't be expected to put up a
Classical building; I must find someone else." This was intolerable, and Mr.
Scott, on his return home, addressed to the Prime Minister a strongly-worded
letter, in which he dwelt upon his position as an architect, upon his having
won two European competitions, his being an A.R.A., a gold medallist of the
Institute, and a lecturer on architecture at the Royal Academy; but it was
useless--Lord Palmerston did not even reply. It then occurred to Mr. Scott
that, by a judicious mixture, he might, while preserving the essential
character of the Gothic, produce a design which would give a superficial
impression of the Classical style. He did so, but no effect was produced upon
Lord Palmerston. The new design, he said, was "neither one thing nor
'tother--a regular mongrel affair--and he would have nothing to do with it
either." After that Mr. Scott found it necessary to recruit for two months at
Scarborough, "with a course of quinine." He recovered his tone at last, but
only at the cost of his convictions. For the sake of his family he felt that
it was his unfortunate duty to obey the Prime Minister; and, shuddering with
horror, he constructed the Government offices in a strictly Renaissance style.

Shortly afterwards Mr. Scott found some consolation in building the St.
Pancras Hotel in a style of his own.

And now another and yet more satisfactory task was his. "My idea in designing
the Memorial," he wrote, "was to erect a kind of ciborium to protect a statue
of the Prince; and its special characteristic was that the ciborium was
designed in some degree on the principles of the ancient shrines. These
shrines were models of imaginary buildings, such as had never in reality been
erected; and my idea was to realise one of these imaginary structures with its
precious materials, its inlaying, its enamels, etc. etc." His idea was
particularly appropriate since it chanced that a similar conception, though in
the reverse order of magnitude, had occurred to the Prince himself, who had
designed and executed several silver cruet-stands upon the same model. At the
Queen's request a site was chosen in Kensington Gardens as near as possible to
that of the Great Exhibition; and in May, 1864, the first sod was turned. The
work was long, complicated, and difficult; a great number of workmen were
employed, besides several subsidiary sculptors and metal--workers under Mr.
Scott's direction, while at every stage sketches and models were submitted to
Her Majesty, who criticised all the details with minute care, and constantly
suggested improvements. The frieze, which encircled the base of the monument,
was in itself a very serious piece of work. "This," said Mr. Scott, "taken as
a whole, is perhaps one of the most laborious works of sculpture ever
undertaken, consisting, as it does, of a continuous range of figure-sculpture
of the most elaborate description, in the highest alto-relievo of life-size,
of more than 200 feet in length, containing about 170 figures, and executed in
the hardest marble which could be procured." After three years of toil the
memorial was still far from completion, and Mr. Scott thought it advisable to
give a dinner to the workmen, "as a substantial recognition of his
appreciation of their skill and energy." "Two long tables," we are told,
"constructed of scaffold planks, were arranged in the workshops, and covered
with newspapers, for want of table-cloths. Upwards of eighty men sat down.
Beef and mutton, plum pudding and cheese were supplied in abundance, and each
man who desired it had three pints of beer, gingerbeer and lemonade being
provided for the teetotalers, who formed a very considerable proportion...
Several toasts were given and many of the workmen spoke, almost all of them
commencing by "Thanking God that they enjoyed good health;" some alluded to
the temperance that prevailed amongst them, others observed how little
swearing was ever heard, whilst all said how pleased and proud they were to be
engaged on so great a work."

Gradually the edifice approached completion. The one hundred and seventieth
life-size figure in the frieze was chiselled, the granite pillars arose, the
mosaics were inserted in the allegorical pediments, the four colossal statues
representing the greater Christian virtues, the four other colossal statues
representing the greater moral virtues, were hoisted into their positions, the
eight bronzes representing the greater sciences--Astronomy, Chemistry,
Geology, Geometry, Rhetoric, Medicine, Philosophy, and Physiology--were fixed
on their glittering pinnacles, high in air. The statue of Physiology was
particularly admired. "On her left arm," the official description informs us,
"she bears a new-born infant, as a representation of the development of the
highest and most perfect of physiological forms; her hand points towards a
microscope, the instrument which lends its assistance for the investigation of
the minuter forms of animal and vegetable organisms." At last the gilded cross
crowned the dwindling galaxies of superimposed angels, the four continents in
white marble stood at the four corners of the base, and, seven years after its
inception, in July, 1872, the monument was thrown open to the public.

But four more years were to elapse before the central figure was ready to be
placed under its starry canopy. It was designed by Mr. Foley, though in one
particular the sculptor's freedom was restricted by Mr. Scott. "I have chosen
the sitting posture," Mr. Scott said, "as best conveying the idea of dignity
befitting a royal personage." Mr. Foley ably carried out the conception of his
principal. "In the attitude and expression," he said, "the aim has been, with
the individuality of portraiture, to embody rank, character, and
enlightenment, and to convey a sense of that responsive intelligence
indicating an active, rather than a passive, interest in those pursuits of
civilisation illustrated in the surrounding figures, groups, and relievos...
To identify the figure with one of the most memorable undertakings of the
public life of the Prince--the International Exhibition of 1851--a catalogue
of the works collected in that first gathering of the industry of all nations,
is placed in the right hand." The statue was of bronze gilt and weighed nearly
ten tons. It was rightly supposed that the simple word "Albert," cast on the
base, would be a sufficient means of identification.



CHAPTER VIII. GLADSTONE AND LORD BEACONSFIELD

I

Lord Palmerston's laugh--a queer metallic "Ha! ha! ha!" with reverberations in
it from the days of Pitt and the Congress of Vienna--was heard no more in
Piccadilly; Lord John Russell dwindled into senility; Lord Derby tottered from
the stage. A new scene opened; and new protagonists--Mr. Gladstone and Mr.
Disraeli--struggled together in the limelight. Victoria, from her post of
vantage, watched these developments with that passionate and personal interest
which she invariably imported into politics. Her prepossessions were of an
unexpected kind. Mr. Gladstone had been the disciple of her revered Peel, and
had won the approval of Albert; Mr. Disraeli had hounded Sir Robert to his
fall with hideous virulence, and the Prince had pronounced that he "had not
one single element of a gentleman in his composition." Yet she regarded Mr.
Gladstone with a distrust and dislike which steadily deepened, while upon his
rival she lavished an abundance of confidence, esteem, and affection such as
Lord Melbourne himself had hardly known.

Her attitude towards the Tory Minister had suddenly changed when she found
that he alone among public men had divined her feelings at Albert's death. Of
the others she might have said "they pity me and not my grief;" but Mr.
Disraeli had understood; and all his condolences had taken the form of
reverential eulogies of the departed. The Queen declared that he was "the only
person who appreciated the Prince." She began to show him special favour; gave
him and his wife two of the coveted seats in St. George's Chapel at the Prince
of Wales's wedding, and invited him to stay a night at Windsor. When the grant
for the Albert Memorial came before the House of Commons, Disraeli, as leader
of the Opposition, eloquently supported the project. He was rewarded by a copy
of the Prince's speeches, bound in white morocco, with an inscription in the
royal hand. In his letter of thanks he "ventured to touch upon a sacred
theme," and, in a strain which re-echoed with masterly fidelity the sentiments
of his correspondent, dwelt at length upon the absolute perfection of Albert.
"The Prince," he said, "is the only person whom Mr. Disraeli has ever known
who realised the Ideal. None with whom he is acquainted have ever approached
it. There was in him a union of the manly grace and sublime simplicity, of
chivalry with the intellectual splendour of the Attic Academe. The only
character in English history that would, in some respects, draw near to him is
Sir Philip Sidney: the same high tone, the same universal accomplishments, the
same blended tenderness and vigour, the same rare combination of romantic
energy and classic repose." As for his own acquaintance with the Prince, it
had been, he said, "one of the most satisfactory incidents of his life: full
of refined and beautiful memories, and exercising, as he hopes, over his
remaining existence, a soothing and exalting influence." Victoria was much
affected by "the depth and delicacy of these touches," and henceforward
Disraeli's place in her affections was assured. When, in 1866, the
Conservatives came into office, Disraeli's position as Chancellor of the
Exchequer and leader of the House necessarily brought him into a closer
relation with the Sovereign. Two years later Lord Derby resigned, and
Victoria, with intense delight and peculiar graciousness, welcomed Disraeli as
her First Minister.

But only for nine agitated months did he remain in power. The Ministry, in a
minority in the Commons, was swept out of existence by a general election. Yet
by the end of that short period the ties which bound together the Queen and
her Premier had grown far stronger than ever before; the relationship between
them was now no longer merely that between a grateful mistress and a devoted
servant: they were friends. His official letters, in which the personal
element had always been perceptible, developed into racy records of political
news and social gossip, written, as Lord Clarendon said, "in his best novel
style." Victoria was delighted; she had never, she declared, had such letters
in her life, and had never before known EVERYTHING. In return, she sent him,
when the spring came, several bunches of flowers, picked by her own hands. He
despatched to her a set of his novels, for which, she said, she was "most
grateful, and which she values much." She herself had lately published her
"Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands," and it was observed
that the Prime Minister, in conversing with Her Majesty at this period,
constantly used the words "we authors, ma'am." Upon political questions, she
was his staunch supporter. "Really there never was such conduct as that of the
Opposition," she wrote. And when the Government was defeated in the House she
was "really shocked at the way in which the House of Commons go on; they
really bring discredit on Constitutional Government." She dreaded the prospect
of a change; she feared that if the Liberals insisted upon disestablishing the
Irish Church, her Coronation Oath might stand in the way. But a change there
had to be, and Victoria vainly tried to console herself for the loss of her
favourite Minister by bestowing a peerage upon Mrs. Disraeli.

Mr. Gladstone was in his shirt-sleeves at Hawarden, cutting down a tree, when
the royal message was brought to him. "Very significant," he remarked, when he
had read the letter, and went on cutting down his tree. His secret thoughts on
the occasion were more explicit, and were committed to his diary. "The
Almighty," he wrote, "seems to sustain and spare me for some purpose of His
own, deeply unworthy as I know myself to be. Glory be to His name."

The Queen, however, did not share her new Minister's view of the Almighty's
intentions. She could not believe that there was any divine purpose to be
detected in the programme of sweeping changes which Mr. Gladstone was
determined to carry out. But what could she do? Mr. Gladstone, with his
daemonic energy and his powerful majority in the House of Commons, was
irresistible; and for five years (1869-74) Victoria found herself condemned to
live in an agitating atmosphere of interminable reform--reform in the Irish
Church and the Irish land system, reform in education, reform in parliamentary
elections, reform in the organisation of the Army and the Navy, reform in the
administration of justice. She disapproved, she struggled, she grew very
angry; she felt that if Albert had been living things would never have
happened so; but her protests and her complaints were alike unavailing. The
mere effort of grappling with the mass of documents which poured in upon her
in an ever-growing flood was terribly exhausting. When the draft of the
lengthy and intricate Irish Church Bill came before her, accompanied by an
explanatory letter from Mr. Gladstone covering a dozen closely-written quarto
pages, she almost despaired. She turned from the Bill to the explanation, and
from the explanation back again to the Bill, and she could not decide which
was the most confusing. But she had to do her duty: she had not only to read,
but to make notes. At last she handed the whole heap of papers to Mr. Martin,
who happened to be staying at Osborne, and requested him to make a precis of
them. When he had done so, her disapproval of the measure became more marked
than ever; but, such was the strength of the Government, she actually found
herself obliged to urge moderation upon the Opposition, lest worse should
ensue.

In the midst of this crisis, when the future of the Irish Church was hanging
in the balance, Victoria's attention was drawn to another proposed reform. It
was suggested that the sailors in the Navy should henceforward be allowed to
wear beards. "Has Mr. Childers ascertained anything on the subject of the
beards?" the Queen wrote anxiously to the First Lord of the Admiralty. On the
whole, Her Majesty was in favour of the change. "Her own personal feeling,"
she wrote, "would be for the beards without the moustaches, as the latter have
rather a soldierlike appearance; but then the object in view would not be
obtained, viz. to prevent the necessity of shaving. Therefore it had better be
as proposed, the entire beard, only it should be kept short and very clean."
After thinking over the question for another week, the Queen wrote a final
letter. She wished, she said, "to make one additional observation respecting
the beards, viz. that on no account should moustaches be allowed without
beards. That must be clearly understood."

Changes in the Navy might be tolerated; to lay hands upon the Army was a more
serious matter. From time immemorial there had been a particularly close
connection between the Army and the Crown; and Albert had devoted even more
time and attention to the details of military business than to the processes
of fresco-painting or the planning of sanitary cottages for the deserving
poor. But now there was to be a great alteration: Mr. Gladstone's fiat had
gone forth, and the Commander-in-Chief was to be removed from his direct
dependence upon the Sovereign, and made subordinate to Parliament and the
Secretary of State for War. Of all the liberal reforms this was the one which
aroused the bitterest resentment in Victoria. She considered that the change
was an attack upon her personal position--almost an attack upon the personal
position of Albert. But she was helpless, and the Prime Minister had his way.
When she heard that the dreadful man had yet another reform in
contemplation--that he was about to abolish the purchase of military
commissions--she could only feel that it was just what might have been
expected. For a moment she hoped that the House of Lords would come to the
rescue; the Peers opposed the change with unexpected vigour; but Mr.
Gladstone, more conscious than ever of the support of the Almighty, was ready
with an ingenious device. The purchase of commissions had been originally
allowed by Royal Warrant; it should now be disallowed by the same agency.
Victoria was faced by a curious dilemma: she abominated the abolition of
purchase; but she was asked to abolish it by an exercise of sovereign power
which was very much to her taste. She did not hesitate for long; and when the
Cabinet, in a formal minute, advised her to sign the Warrant, she did so with
a good grace.

Unacceptable as Mr. Gladstone's policy was, there was something else about him
which was even more displeasing to Victoria. She disliked his personal
demeanour towards herself. It was not that Mr. Gladstone, in his intercourse
with her, was in any degree lacking in courtesy or respect. On the contrary,
an extraordinary reverence impregnated his manner, both in his conversation
and his correspondence with the Sovereign. Indeed, with that deep and
passionate conservatism which, to the very end of his incredible career, gave
such an unexpected colouring to his inexplicable character, Mr. Gladstone
viewed Victoria through a haze of awe which was almost religious--as a
sacrosanct embodiment of venerable traditions--a vital element in the British
Constitution--a Queen by Act of Parliament. But unfortunately the lady did not
appreciate the compliment. The well-known complaint--"He speaks to me as if I
were a public meeting-" whether authentic or no--and the turn of the sentence
is surely a little too epigrammatic to be genuinely Victorian--undoubtedly
expresses the essential element of her antipathy. She had no objection to
being considered as an institution; she was one, and she knew it. But she was
a woman too, and to be considered ONLY as an institution--that was unbearable.
And thus all Mr. Gladstone's zeal and devotion, his ceremonious phrases, his
low bows, his punctilious correctitudes, were utterly wasted; and when, in the
excess of his loyalty, he went further, and imputed to the object of his
veneration, with obsequious blindness, the subtlety of intellect, the wide
reading, the grave enthusiasm, which he himself possessed, the
misunderstanding became complete. The discordance between the actual Victoria
and this strange Divinity made in Mr. Gladstone's image produced disastrous
results. Her discomfort and dislike turned at last into positive animosity,
and, though her manners continued to be perfect, she never for a moment
unbent; while he on his side was overcome with disappointment, perplexity, and
mortification.

Yet his fidelity remained unshaken. When the Cabinet met, the Prime Minister,
filled with his beatific vision, would open the proceedings by reading aloud
the letters which he had received from the Queen upon the questions of the
hour. The assembly sat in absolute silence while, one after another, the royal
missives, with their emphases, their ejaculations, and their grammatical
peculiarities, boomed forth in all the deep solemnity of Mr. Gladstone's
utterance. Not a single comment, of any kind, was ever hazarded; and, after a
fitting pause, the Cabinet proceeded with the business of the day.

II

Little as Victoria appreciated her Prime Minister's attitude towards her, she
found that it had its uses. The popular discontent at her uninterrupted
seclusion had been gathering force for many years, and now burst out in a new
and alarming shape. Republicanism was in the air. Radical opinion in England,
stimulated by the fall of Napoleon III and the establishment of a republican
government in France, suddenly grew more extreme than it ever had been since
1848. It also became for the first time almost respectable. Chartism had been
entirely an affair of the lower classes; but now Members of Parliament,
learned professors, and ladies of title openly avowed the most subversive
views. The monarchy was attacked both in theory and in practice. And it was
attacked at a vital point: it was declared to be too expensive. What benefits,
it was asked, did the nation reap to counterbalance the enormous sums which
were expended upon the Sovereign? Victoria's retirement gave an unpleasant
handle to the argument. It was pointed out that the ceremonial functions of
the Crown had virtually lapsed; and the awkward question remained whether any
of the other functions which it did continue to perform were really worth
L385,000 per annum. The royal balance-sheet was curiously examined. An
anonymous pamphlet entitled "What does she do with it?" appeared, setting
forth the financial position with malicious clarity. The Queen, it stated, was
granted by the Civil List L60,000 a year for her private use; but the rest of
her vast annuity was given, as the Act declared, to enable her "to defray the
expenses of her royal household and to support the honour and dignity of the
Crown." Now it was obvious that, since the death of the Prince, the
expenditure for both these purposes must have been very considerably
diminished, and it was difficult to resist the conclusion that a large sum of
money was diverted annually from the uses for which it had been designed by
Parliament, to swell the private fortune of Victoria. The precise amount of
that private fortune it was impossible to discover; but there was reason to
suppose that it was gigantic; perhaps it reached a total of five million
pounds. The pamphlet protested against such a state of affairs, and its
protests were repeated vigorously in newspapers and at public meetings. Though
it is certain that the estimate of Victoria's riches was much exaggerated, it
is equally certain that she was an exceedingly wealthy woman. She probably
saved L20,000 a year from the Civil List, the revenues of the Duchy of
Lancaster were steadily increasing, she had inherited a considerable property
from the Prince Consort, and she had been left, in 1852, an estate of half a
million by Mr. John Neild, an eccentric miser. In these circumstances it was
not surprising that when, in 1871, Parliament was asked to vote a dowry of
L30,000 to the Princess Louise on her marriage with the eldest son of the Duke
of Argyle, together with an annuity of L6,000, there should have been a
serious outcry[*].

[*] In 1889 it was officially stated that the Queen's total savings from the
Civil List amounted to L824,025, but that out of this sum much had been spent
on special entertainments to foreign visitors. Taking into consideration the
proceeds from the Duchy of Lancaster, which were more than L60,000 a year, the
savings of the Prince Consort, and Mr. Neild's legacy, it seems probable that,
at the time of her death, Victoria's private fortune approached two million
pounds.


In order to conciliate public opinion, the Queen opened Parliament in person,
and the vote was passed almost unanimously. But a few months later another
demand was made: the Prince Arthur had come of age, and the nation was asked
to grant him an annuity of L15,000. The outcry was redoubled. The newspapers
were filled with angry articles; Bradlaugh thundered against "princely
paupers" to one of the largest crowds that had ever been seen in Trafalgar
Square; and Sir Charles Dilke expounded the case for a republic in a speech to
his constituents at Newcastle. The Prince's annuity was ultimately sanctioned
in the House of Commons by a large majority; but a minority of fifty members
voted in favour of reducing the sum to L10,000.

Towards every aspect of this distasteful question, Mr. Gladstone presented an
iron front. He absolutely discountenanced the extreme section of his
followers. He declared that the whole of the Queen's income was justly at her
personal disposal, argued that to complain of royal savings was merely to
encourage royal extravagance, and successfully convoyed through Parliament the
unpopular annuities, which, he pointed out, were strictly in accordance with
precedent. When, in 1872, Sir Charles Dilke once more returned to the charge
in the House of Commons, introducing a motion for a full enquiry into the
Queen's expenditure with a view to a root and branch reform of the Civil List,
the Prime Minister brought all the resources of his powerful and ingenious
eloquence to the support of the Crown. He was completely successful; and amid
a scene of great disorder the motion was ignominiously dismissed. Victoria was
relieved; but she grew no fonder of Mr. Gladstone.

It was perhaps the most miserable moment of her life. The Ministers, the
press, the public, all conspired to vex her, to blame her, to misinterpret her
actions, to be unsympathetic and disrespectful in every way. She was "a
cruelly misunderstood woman," she told Mr. Martin, complaining to him bitterly
of the unjust attacks which were made upon her, and declaring that "the great
worry and anxiety and hard work for ten years, alone, unaided, with increasing
age and never very strong health" were breaking her down, and "almost drove
her to despair." The situation was indeed deplorable. It seemed as if her
whole existence had gone awry; as if an irremediable antagonism had grown up
between the Queen and the nation. If Victoria had died in the early seventies,
there can be little doubt that the voice of the world would have pronounced
her a failure.

III

But she was reserved for a very different fate. The outburst of republicanism
had been in fact the last flicker of an expiring cause. The liberal tide,
which had been flowing steadily ever since the Reform Bill, reached its height
with Mr. Gladstone's first administration; and towards the end of that
administration the inevitable ebb began. The reaction, when it came, was
sudden and complete. The General Election of 1874 changed the whole face of
politics. Mr. Gladstone and the Liberals were routed; and the Tory party, for
the first time for over forty years, attained an unquestioned supremacy in
England. It was obvious that their surprising triumph was pre-eminently due to
the skill and vigour of Disraeli. He returned to office, no longer the dubious
commander of an insufficient host, but with drums beating and flags flying, a
conquering hero. And as a conquering hero Victoria welcomed her new Prime
Minister.

Then there followed six years of excitement, of enchantment, of felicity, of
glory, of romance. The amazing being, who now at last, at the age of seventy,
after a lifetime of extraordinary struggles, had turned into reality the
absurdest of his boyhood's dreams, knew well enough how to make his own, with
absolute completeness, the heart of the Sovereign Lady whose servant, and
whose master, he had so miraculously become. In women's hearts he had always
read as in an open book. His whole career had turned upon those curious
entities; and the more curious they were, the more intimately at home with
them he seemed to be. But Lady Beaconsfield, with her cracked idolatry, and
Mrs. Brydges-Williams, with her clogs, her corpulence, and her legacy, were
gone: an even more remarkable phenomenon stood in their place. He surveyed
what was before him with the eye of a past-master; and he was not for a moment
at a loss. He realised everything--the interacting complexities of
circumstance and character, the pride of place mingled so inextricably with
personal arrogance, the superabundant emotionalism, the ingenuousness of
outlook, the solid, the laborious respectability, shot through so
incongruously by temperamental cravings for the coloured and the strange, the
singular intellectual limitations, and the mysteriously essential female
elements impregnating every particle of the whole. A smile hovered over his
impassive features, and he dubbed Victoria "the Faery." The name delighted
him, for, with that epigrammatic ambiguity so dear to his heart, it precisely
expressed his vision of the Queen. The Spenserian allusion was very
pleasant--the elegant evocations of Gloriana; but there was more in it than
that: there was the suggestion of a diminutive creature, endowed with
magical--and mythical--properties, and a portentousness almost ridiculously
out of keeping with the rest of her make-up. The Faery, he determined, should
henceforward wave her wand for him alone. Detachment is always a rare quality,
and rarest of all, perhaps, among politicians; but that veteran egotist
possessed it in a supreme degree. Not only did he know what he had to do, not
only did he do it; he was in the audience as well as on the stage; and he took
in with the rich relish of a connoisseur every feature of the entertaining
situation, every phase of the delicate drama, and every detail of his own
consummate performance.

The smile hovered and vanished, and, bowing low with Oriental gravity and
Oriental submissiveness, he set himself to his task. He had understood from
the first that in dealing with the Faery the appropriate method of approach
was the very antithesis of the Gladstonian; and such a method was naturally
his. It was not his habit to harangue and exhort and expatiate in official
conscientiousness; he liked to scatter flowers along the path of business, to
compress a weighty argument into a happy phrase, to insinuate what was in his
mind with an air of friendship and confidential courtesy. He was nothing if
not personal; and he had perceived that personality was the key that opened
the Faery's heart. Accordingly, he never for a moment allowed his intercourse
with her to lose the personal tone; he invested all the transactions of State
with the charms of familiar conversation; she was always the royal lady, the
adored and revered mistress, he the devoted and respectful friend. When once
the personal relation was firmly established, every difficulty disappeared.
But to maintain that relation uninterruptedly in a smooth and even course a
particular care was necessary: the bearings had to be most assiduously oiled.
Nor was Disraeli in any doubt as to the nature of the lubricant. "You have
heard me called a flatterer," he said to Matthew Arnold, "and it is true.
Everyone likes flattery, and when you come to royalty you should lay it on
with a trowel." He practiced what he preached. His adulation was incessant,
and he applied it in the very thickest slabs. "There is no honor and no
reward," he declared, "that with him can ever equal the possession of your
Majesty's kind thoughts. All his own thoughts and feelings and duties and
affections are now concentrated in your Majesty, and he desires nothing more
for his remaining years than to serve your Majesty, or, if that service
ceases, to live still on its memory as a period of his existence most
interesting and fascinating." "In life," he told her, "one must have for one's
thoughts a sacred depository, and Lord Beaconsfield ever presumes to seek that
in his Sovereign Mistress." She was not only his own solitary support; she was
the one prop of the State. "If your Majesty is ill," he wrote during a grave
political crisis, "he is sure he will himself break down. All, really, depends
upon your Majesty." "He lives only for Her," he asseverated, "and works only
for Her, and without Her all is lost." When her birthday came he produced an
elaborate confection of hyperbolic compliment. "To-day Lord Beaconsfield ought
fitly, perhaps, to congratulate a powerful Sovereign on her imperial sway, the
vastness of her Empire, and the success and strength of her fleets and armies.
But he cannot, his mind is in another mood. He can only think of the
strangeness of his destiny that it has come to pass that he should be the
servant of one so great, and whose infinite kindness, the brightness of whose
intelligence and the firmness of whose will, have enabled him to undertake
labours to which he otherwise would be quite unequal, and supported him in all
things by a condescending sympathy, which in the hour of difficulty alike
charms and inspires. Upon the Sovereign of many lands and many hearts may an
omnipotent Providence shed every blessing that the wise can desire and the
virtuous deserve!" In those expert hands the trowel seemed to assume the
qualities of some lofty masonic symbol--to be the ornate and glittering
vehicle of verities unrealised by the profane.

Such tributes were delightful, but they remained in the nebulous region of
words, and Disraeli had determined to give his blandishments a more
significant solidity. He deliberately encouraged those high views of her own
position which had always been native to Victoria's mind and had been
reinforced by the principles of Albert and the doctrines of Stockmar. He
professed to a belief in a theory of the Constitution which gave the Sovereign
a leading place in the councils of government; but his pronouncements upon the
subject were indistinct; and when he emphatically declared that there ought to
be "a real Throne," it was probably with the mental addition that that throne
would be a very unreal one indeed whose occupant was unamenable to his
cajoleries. But the vagueness of his language was in itself an added stimulant
to Victoria. Skilfully confusing the woman and the Queen, he threw, with a
grandiose gesture, the government of England at her feet, as if in doing so he
were performing an act of personal homage. In his first audience after
returning to power, he assured her that "whatever she wished should be done."
When the intricate Public Worship Regulation Bill was being discussed by the
Cabinet, he told the Faery that his "only object" was "to further your
Majesty's wishes in this matter." When he brought off his great coup over the
Suez Canal, he used expressions which implied that the only gainer by the
transaction was Victoria. "It is just settled," he wrote in triumph; "you have
it, Madam... Four millions sterling! and almost immediately. There was only
one firm that could do it--Rothschilds. They behaved admirably; advanced the
money at a low rate, and the entire interest of the Khedive is now yours,
Madam." Nor did he limit himself to highly-spiced insinuations. Writing with
all the authority of his office, he advised the Queen that she had the
constitutional right to dismiss a Ministry which was supported by a large
majority in the House of Commons, he even urged her to do so, if, in her
opinion, "your Majesty's Government have from wilfulness, or even from
weakness, deceived your Majesty." To the horror of Mr. Gladstone, he not only
kept the Queen informed as to the general course of business in the Cabinet,
but revealed to her the part taken in its discussions by individual members of
it. Lord Derby, the son of the late Prime Minister and Disraeli's Foreign
Secretary, viewed these developments with grave mistrust. "Is there not," he
ventured to write to his Chief, "just a risk of encouraging her in too large
ideas of her personal power, and too great indifference to what the public
expects? I only ask; it is for you to judge."

As for Victoria, she accepted everything--compliments, flatteries, Elizabethan
prerogatives--without a single qualm. After the long gloom of her bereavement,
after the chill of the Gladstonian discipline, she expanded to the rays of
Disraeli's devotion like a flower in the sun. The change in her situation was
indeed miraculous. No longer was she obliged to puzzle for hours over the
complicated details of business, for now she had only to ask Mr. Disraeli for
an explanation, and he would give it her in the most concise, in the most
amusing, way. No longer was she worried by alarming novelties; no longer was
she put out at finding herself treated, by a reverential gentleman in high
collars, as if she were some embodied precedent, with a recondite knowledge of
Greek. And her deliverer was surely the most fascinating of men. The strain of
charlatanism, which had unconsciously captivated her in Napoleon III,
exercised the same enchanting effect in the case of Disraeli. Like a
dram-drinker, whose ordinary life is passed in dull sobriety, her
unsophisticated intelligence gulped down his rococo allurements with peculiar
zest. She became intoxicated, entranced. Believing all that he told her of
herself, she completely regained the self-confidence which had been slipping
away from her throughout the dark period that followed Albert's death. She
swelled with a new elation, while he, conjuring up before her wonderful
Oriental visions, dazzled her eyes with an imperial grandeur of which she had
only dimly dreamed. Under the compelling influence, her very demeanour
altered. Her short, stout figure, with its folds of black velvet, its muslin
streamers, its heavy pearls at the heavy neck, assumed an almost menacing air.
In her countenance, from which the charm of youth had long since vanished, and
which had not yet been softened by age, the traces of grief, of
disappointment, and of displeasure were still visible, but they were overlaid
by looks of arrogance and sharp lines of peremptory hauteur. Only, when Mr.
Disraeli appeared, the expression changed in an instant, and the forbidding
visage became charged with smiles. For him she would do anything. Yielding to
his encouragements, she began to emerge from her seclusion; she appeared in
London in semi-state, at hospitals and concerts; she opened Parliament; she
reviewed troops and distributed medals at Aldershot. But such public signs of
favour were trivial in comparison with her private attentions. During his
flours of audience, she could hardly restrain her excitement and delight. "I
can only describe my reception," he wrote to a friend on one occasion, "by
telling you that I really thought she was going to embrace me. She was
wreathed with smiles, and, as she tattled, glided about the room like a bird."
In his absence, she talked of him perpetually, and there was a note of unusual
vehemence in her solicitude for his health. "John Manners," Disraeli told Lady
Bradford, "who has just come from Osborne, says that the Faery only talked of
one subject, and that was her Primo. According to him, it was her gracious
opinion that the Government should make my health a Cabinet question. Dear
John seemed quite surprised at what she said; but you are used to these
ebullitions." She often sent him presents; an illustrated album arrived for
him regularly from Windsor on Christmas Day. But her most valued gifts were
the bunches of spring flowers which, gathered by herself and her ladies in the
woods at Osborne, marked in an especial manner the warmth and tenderness of
her sentiments. Among these it was, he declared, the primroses that he loved
the best. They were, he said, "the ambassadors of Spring, the gems and jewels
of Nature." He liked them, he assured her, "so much better for their being
wild; they seem an offering from the Fauns and Dryads of Osborne." "They
show," he told her, "that your Majesty's sceptre has touched the enchanted
Isle." He sat at dinner with heaped-up bowls of them on every side, and told
his guests that "they were all sent to me this morning by the Queen from
Osborne, as she knows it is my favorite flower."

As time went on, and as it became clearer and clearer that the Faery's
thraldom was complete, his protestations grew steadily more highly--coloured
and more unabashed. At last he ventured to import into his blandishments a
strain of adoration that was almost avowedly romantic. In phrases of baroque
convolution, he conveyed the message of his heart. The pressure of business,
he wrote, had "so absorbed and exhausted him, that towards the hour of post he
has not had clearness of mind, and vigour of pen, adequate to convey his
thoughts and facts to the most loved and illustrious being, who deigns to
consider them." She sent him some primroses, and he replied that he could
"truly say they are 'more precious than rubies,' coming, as they do, and at
such a moment, from a Sovereign whom he adores." She sent him snowdrops, and
his sentiment overflowed into poetry. "Yesterday eve," he wrote, "there
appeared, in Whitehall Gardens, a delicate-looking case, with a royal
superscription, which, when he opened, he thought, at first, that your Majesty
had graciously bestowed upon him the stars of your Majesty's principal orders.
And, indeed, he was so impressed with this graceful illusion, that, having a
banquet, where there were many stars and ribbons, he could not resist the
temptation, by placing some snowdrops on his heart, of showing that, he, too,
was decorated by a gracious Sovereign.

Then, in the middle of the night, it occurred to him, that it might all be an
enchantment, and that, perhaps, it was a Faery gift and came from another
monarch: Queen Titania, gathering flowers, with her Court, in a soft and
sea-girt isle, and sending magic blossoms, which, they say, turn the heads of
those who receive them.

A Faery gift! Did he smile as he wrote the words? Perhaps; and yet it would be
rash to conclude that his perfervid declarations were altogether without
sincerity. Actor and spectator both, the two characters were so intimately
blended together in that odd composition that they formed an inseparable
unity, and it was impossible to say that one of them was less genuine than the
other. With one element, he could coldly appraise the Faery's intellectual
capacity, note with some surprise that she could be on occasion "most
interesting and amusing," and then continue his use of the trowel with an
ironical solemnity; while, with the other, he could be overwhelmed by the
immemorial panoply of royalty, and, thrilling with the sense of his own
strange elevation, dream himself into a gorgeous phantasy of crowns and powers
and chivalric love. When he told Victoria that "during a somewhat romantic and
imaginative life, nothing has ever occurred to him so interesting as this
confidential correspondence with one so exalted and so inspiring," was he not
in earnest after all? When he wrote to a lady about the Court, "I love the
Queen--perhaps the only person in this world left to me that I do love," was
he not creating for himself an enchanted palace out of the Arabian Nights,
full of melancholy and spangles, in which he actually believed? Victoria's
state of mind was far more simple; untroubled by imaginative yearnings, she
never lost herself in that nebulous region of the spirit where feeling and
fancy grow confused. Her emotions, with all their intensity and all their
exaggeration, retained the plain prosaic texture of everyday life. And it was
fitting that her expression of them should be equally commonplace. She was,
she told her Prime Minister, at the end of an official letter, "yours aff'ly
V. R. and I." In such a phrase the deep reality of her feeling is instantly
manifest. The Faery's feet were on the solid earth; it was the ruse cynic who
was in the air.

He had taught her, however, a lesson, which she had learnt with alarming
rapidity. A second Gloriana, did he call her? Very well, then, she would show
that she deserved the compliment. Disquieting symptoms followed fast. In May,
1874, the Tsar, whose daughter had just been married to Victoria's second son,
the Duke of Edinburgh, was in London, and, by an unfortunate error, it had
been arranged that his departure should not take place until two days after
the date on which his royal hostess had previously decided to go to Balmoral.
Her Majesty refused to modify her plans. It was pointed out to her that the
Tsar would certainly be offended, that the most serious consequences might
follow; Lord Derby protested; Lord Salisbury, the Secretary of State for
India, was much perturbed. But the Faery was unconcerned; she had settled to
go to Balmoral on the 18th, and on the 18th she would go. At last Disraeli,
exercising all his influence, induced her to agree to stay in London for two
days more. "My head is still on my shoulders," he told Lady Bradford. "The
great lady has absolutely postponed her departure! Everybody had failed, even
the Prince of Wales... and I have no doubt I am not in favour. I can't help
it. Salisbury says I have saved an Afghan War, and Derby compliments me on my
unrivalled triumph." But before very long, on another issue, the triumph was
the Faery's. Disraeli, who had suddenly veered towards a new Imperialism, had
thrown out the suggestion that the Queen of England ought to become the
Empress of India. Victoria seized upon the idea with avidity, and, in season
and out of season, pressed upon her Prime Minister the desirability of putting
his proposal into practice. He demurred; but she was not to be baulked; and in
1876, in spite of his own unwillingness and that of his entire Cabinet, he
found himself obliged to add to the troubles of a stormy session by
introducing a bill for the alteration of the Royal Title. His compliance,
however, finally conquered the Faery's heart. The measure was angrily attacked
in both Houses, and Victoria was deeply touched by the untiring energy with
which Disraeli defended it. She was, she said, much grieved by "the worry and
annoyance" to which he was subjected; she feared she was the cause of it; and
she would never forget what she owed to "her kind, good, and considerate
friend." At the same time, her wrath fell on the Opposition. Their conduct,
she declared, was "extraordinary, incomprehensible, and mistaken," and, in an
emphatic sentence which seemed to contradict both itself and all her former
proceedings, she protested that she "would be glad if it were more generally
known that it was HER wish, as people WILL have it, that it has been FORCED
UPON HER!" When the affair was successfully over, the imperial triumph was
celebrated in a suitable manner. On the day of the Delhi Proclamation, the new
Earl of Beaconsfield went to Windsor to dine with the new Empress of India.
That night the Faery, usually so homely in her attire, appeared in a
glittering panoply of enormous uncut jewels, which had been presented to her
by the reigning Princes of her Raj. At the end of the meal the Prime Minister,
breaking through the rules of etiquette, arose, and in a flowery oration
proposed the health of the Queen-Empress. His audacity was well received, and
his speech was rewarded by a smiling curtsey.

These were significant episodes; but a still more serious manifestation of
Victoria's temper occurred in the following year, during the crowning crisis
of Beaconsfield's life. His growing imperialism, his desire to magnify the
power and prestige of England, his insistence upon a "spirited foreign
policy," had brought him into collision with Russia; the terrible Eastern
Question loomed up; and when war broke out between Russia and Turkey, the
gravity of the situation became extreme. The Prime Minister's policy was
fraught with difficulty and danger. Realising perfectly the appalling
implications of an Anglo-Russian war, he was yet prepared to face even that
eventuality if he could obtain his ends by no other method; but he believed
that Russia in reality was still less desirous of a rupture, and that, if he
played his game with sufficient boldness and adroitness, she would yield, when
it came to the point, all that he required without a blow. It was clear that
the course he had marked out for himself was full of hazard, and demanded an
extraordinary nerve; a single false step, and either himself, or England,
might be plunged in disaster. But nerve he had never lacked; he began his
diplomatic egg-dance with high assurance; and then he discovered that, besides
the Russian Government, besides the Liberals and Mr. Gladstone, there were two
additional sources of perilous embarrassment with which he would have to
reckon. In the first place there was a strong party in the Cabinet, headed by
Lord Derby, the Foreign Secretary, which was unwilling to take the risk of
war; but his culminating anxiety was the Faery.

From the first, her attitude was uncompromising. The old hatred of Russia,
which had been engendered by the Crimean War, surged up again within her; she
remembered Albert's prolonged animosity; she felt the prickings of her own
greatness; and she flung herself into the turmoil with passionate heat. Her
indignation with the Opposition--with anyone who ventured to sympathise with
the Russians in their quarrel with the Turks--was unbounded. When anti-Turkish
meetings were held in London, presided over by the Duke of Westminster and
Lord Shaftesbury, and attended by Mr. Gladstone and other prominent Radicals,
she considered that "the Attorney-General ought to be set at these men;" "it
can't," she exclaimed, "be constitutional." Never in her life, not even in the
crisis over the Ladies of the Bedchamber, did she show herself a more furious
partisan. But her displeasure was not reserved for the Radicals; the
backsliding Conservatives equally felt its force. She was even discontented
with Lord Beaconsfield himself. Failing entirely to appreciate the delicate
complexity of his policy, she constantly assailed him with demands for
vigorous action, interpreted each finesse as a sign of weakness, and was ready
at every juncture to let slip the dogs of war. As the situation developed, her
anxiety grew feverish. "The Queen," she wrote, "is feeling terribly anxious
lest delay should cause us to be too late and lose our prestige for ever! It
worries her night and day." "The Faery," Beaconsfield told Lady Bradford,
"writes every day and telegraphs every hour; this is almost literally the
case." She raged loudly against the Russians. "And the language," she cried,
"the insulting language--used by the Russians against us! It makes the Queen's
blood boil!" "Oh," she wrote a little later, "if the Queen were a man, she
would like to go and give those Russians, whose word one cannot believe, such
a beating! We shall never be friends again till we have it out. This the Queen
feels sure of."

The unfortunate Prime Minister, urged on to violence by Victoria on one side,
had to deal, on the other, with a Foreign Secretary who was fundamentally
opposed to any policy of active interference at all. Between the Queen and
Lord Derby he held a harassed course. He gained, indeed, some slight
satisfaction in playing on the one against the other--in stimulating Lord
Derby with the Queen's missives, and in appeasing the Queen by repudiating
Lord Derby's opinions; on one occasion he actually went so far as to compose,
at Victoria's request, a letter bitterly attacking his colleague, which Her
Majesty forthwith signed, and sent, without alteration, to the Foreign
Secretary. But such devices only gave a temporary relief; and it soon became
evident that Victoria's martial ardour was not to be sidetracked by
hostilities against Lord Derby; hostilities against Russia were what she
wanted, what she would, what she must, have. For now, casting aside the last
relics of moderation, she began to attack her friend with a series of
extraordinary threats. Not once, not twice, but many times she held over his
head the formidable menace of her imminent abdication. "If England," she wrote
to Beaconsfield, "is to kiss Russia's feet, she will not be a party to the
humiliation of England and would lay down her crown," and she added that the
Prime Minister might, if he thought fit, repeat her words to the Cabinet.
"This delay," she ejaculated, "this uncertainty by which, abroad, we are
losing our prestige and our position, while Russia is advancing and will be
before Constantinople in no time! Then the Government will be fearfully blamed
and the Queen so humiliated that she thinks she would abdicate at once. Be
bold!" "She feels," she reiterated, "she cannot, as she before said, remain
the Sovereign of a country that is letting itself down to kiss the feet of the
great barbarians, the retarders of all liberty and civilisation that exists."
When the Russians advanced to the outskirts of Constantinople she fired off
three letters in a day demanding war; and when she learnt that the Cabinet had
only decided to send the Fleet to Gallipoli she declared that "her first
impulse" was "to lay down the thorny crown, which she feels little
satisfaction in retaining if the position of this country is to remain as it
is now." It is easy to imagine the agitating effect of such a correspondence
upon Beaconsfield. This was no longer the Faery; it was a genie whom he had
rashly called out of her bottle, and who was now intent upon showing her
supernal power. More than once, perplexed, dispirited, shattered by illness,
he had thoughts of withdrawing altogether from the game. One thing alone, he
told Lady Bradford, with a wry smile, prevented him. "If I could only," he
wrote, "face the scene which would occur at headquarters if I resigned, I
would do so at once."

He held on, however, to emerge victorious at last. The Queen was pacified;
Lord Derby was replaced by Lord Salisbury; and at the Congress of Berlin der
alte Jude carried all before him. He returned to England in triumph, and
assured the delighted Victoria that she would very soon be, if she was not
already, the "Dictatress of Europe."

But soon there was an unexpected reverse. At the General Election of 1880 the
country, mistrustful of the forward policy of the Conservatives, and carried
away by Mr. Gladstone's oratory, returned the Liberals to power. Victoria was
horrified, but within a year she was to be yet more nearly hit. The grand
romance had come to its conclusion. Lord Beaconsfield, worn out with age and
maladies, but moving still, an assiduous mummy, from dinner-party to
dinner-party, suddenly moved no longer. When she knew that the end was
inevitable, she seemed, by a pathetic instinct, to divest herself of her
royalty, and to shrink, with hushed gentleness, beside him, a woman and
nothing more. "I send some Osborne primroses," she wrote to him with touching
simplicity, "and I meant to pay you a little visit this week, but I thought it
better you should be quite quiet and not speak. And I beg you will be very
good and obey the doctors." She would see him, she said, "when we, come back
from Osborne, which won't be long." "Everyone is so distressed at your not
being well," she added; and she was, "Ever yours very aff'ly V.R.I." When the
royal letter was given him, the strange old comedian, stretched on his bed of
death, poised it in his hand, appeared to consider deeply, and then whispered
to those about him, "This ought to be read to me by a Privy Councillor."



CHAPTER IX. OLD AGE

I

Meanwhile in Victoria's private life many changes and developments had taken
place. With the marriages of her elder children her family circle widened;
grandchildren appeared; and a multitude of new domestic interests sprang up.
The death of King Leopold in 1865 had removed the predominant figure of the
older generation, and the functions he had performed as the centre and adviser
of a large group of relatives in Germany and in England devolved upon
Victoria. These functions she discharged with unremitting industry, carrying
on an enormous correspondence, and following with absorbed interest every
detail in the lives of the ever-ramifying cousinhood. And she tasted to the
full both the joys and the pains of family affection. She took a particular
delight in her grandchildren, to whom she showed an indulgence which their
parents had not always enjoyed, though, even to her grandchildren, she could
be, when the occasion demanded it, severe. The eldest of them, the little
Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, was a remarkably headstrong child; he dared to be
impertinent even to his grandmother; and once, when she told him to bow to a
visitor at Osborne, he disobeyed her outright. This would not do: the order
was sternly repeated, and the naughty boy, noticing that his grandmama had
suddenly turned into a most terrifying lady, submitted his will to hers, and
bowed very low indeed.

It would have been well if all the Queen's domestic troubles could have been
got over as easily. Among her more serious distresses was the conduct of the
Prince of Wales. The young man was now independent and married; he had shaken
the parental yoke from his shoulders; he was positively beginning to do as he
liked. Victoria was much perturbed, and her worst fears seemed to be justified
when in 1870 he appeared as a witness in a society divorce case. It was clear
that the heir to the throne had been mixing with people of whom she did not at
all approve. What was to be done? She saw that it was not only her son that
was to blame--that it was the whole system of society; and so she despatched a
letter to Mr. Delane, the editor of The Times, asking him if he would
"frequently WRITE articles pointing out the IMMENSE danger and evil of the
wretched frivolity and levity of the views and lives of the Higher Classes."
And five years later Mr. Delane did write an article upon that very subject.
Yet it seemed to have very little effect.

Ah! if only the Higher Classes would learn to live as she lived in the
domestic sobriety of her sanctuary at Balmoral! For more and more did she find
solace and refreshment in her Highland domain; and twice yearly, in the spring
and in the autumn, with a sigh of relief, she set her face northwards, in
spite of the humble protests of Ministers, who murmured vainly in the royal
ears that to transact the affairs of State over an interval of six hundred
miles added considerably to the cares of government. Her ladies, too, felt
occasionally a slight reluctance to set out, for, especially in the early
days, the long pilgrimage was not without its drawbacks. For many years the
Queen's conservatism forbade the continuation of the railway up Deeside, so
that the last stages of the journey had to be accomplished in carriages. But,
after all, carriages had their good points; they were easy, for instance, to
get in and out of, which was an important consideration, for the royal train
remained for long immune from modern conveniences, and when it drew up, on
some border moorland, far from any platform, the highbred dames were obliged
to descend to earth by the perilous foot-board, the only pair of folding steps
being reserved for Her Majesty's saloon. In the days of crinolines such
moments were sometimes awkward; and it was occasionally necessary to summon
Mr. Johnstone, the short and sturdy Manager of the Caledonian Railway, who,
more than once, in a high gale and drenching rain with great difficulty
"pushed up"--as he himself described it--some unlucky Lady Blanche or Lady
Agatha into her compartment. But Victoria cared for none of these things. She
was only intent upon regaining, with the utmost swiftness, her enchanted
Castle, where every spot was charged with memories, where every memory was
sacred, and where life was passed in an incessant and delightful round of
absolutely trivial events.

And it was not only the place that she loved; she was equally attached to "the
simple mountaineers," from whom, she said, "she learnt many a lesson of
resignation and faith." Smith and Grant and Ross and Thompson--she was devoted
to them all; but, beyond the rest, she was devoted to John Brown. The Prince's
gillie had now become the Queen's personal attendant--a body servant from whom
she was never parted, who accompanied her on her drives, waited on her during
the day, and slept in a neighbouring chamber at night. She liked his strength,
his solidity, the sense he gave her of physical security; she even liked his
rugged manners and his rough unaccommodating speech. She allowed him to take
liberties with her which would have been unthinkable from anybody else. To
bully the Queen, to order her about, to reprimand her--who could dream of
venturing upon such audacities? And yet, when she received such treatment from
John Brown, she positively seemed to enjoy it. The eccentricity appeared to be
extraordinary; but, after all, it is no uncommon thing for an autocratic
dowager to allow some trusted indispensable servant to adopt towards her an
attitude of authority which is jealously forbidden to relatives or friends:
the power of a dependent still remains, by a psychological sleight-of-hand,
one's own power, even when it is exercised over oneself. When Victoria meekly
obeyed the abrupt commands of her henchman to get off her pony or put on her
shawl, was she not displaying, and in the highest degree, the force of her
volition? People might wonder; she could not help that; this was the manner in
which it pleased her to act, and there was an end of it. To have submitted her
judgment to a son or a Minister might have seemed wiser or more natural; but
if she had done so, she instinctively felt, she would indeed have lost her
independence. And yet upon somebody she longed to depend. Her days were heavy
with the long process of domination. As she drove in silence over the moors
she leaned back in the carriage, oppressed and weary; but what a relief--John
Brown was behind on the rumble, and his strong arm would be there for her to
lean upon when she got out.

He had, too, in her mind, a special connection with Albert. In their
expeditions the Prince had always trusted him more than anyone; the gruff,
kind, hairy Scotsman was, she felt, in some mysterious way, a legacy from the
dead. She came to believe at last--or so it appeared--that the spirit of
Albert was nearer when Brown was near. Often, when seeking inspiration over
some complicated question of political or domestic import, she would gaze with
deep concentration at her late husband's bust. But it was also noticed that
sometimes in such moments of doubt and hesitation Her Majesty's looks would
fix themselves upon John Brown.

Eventually, the "simple mountaineer" became almost a state personage. The
influence which he wielded was not to be overlooked. Lord Beaconsfield was
careful, from time to time, to send courteous messages to "Mr. Brown" in his
letters to the Queen, and the French Government took particular pains to
provide for his comfort during the visits of the English Sovereign to France.
It was only natural that among the elder members of the royal family he should
not have been popular, and that his failings--for failings he had, though
Victoria would never notice his too acute appreciation of Scotch
whisky--should have been the subject of acrimonious comment at Court. But he
served his mistress faithfully, and to ignore him would be a sign of
disrespect to her biographer. For the Queen, far from making a secret of her
affectionate friendship, took care to publish it to the world. By her orders
two gold medals were struck in his honour; on his death, in 1883, a long and
eulogistic obituary notice of him appeared in the Court Circular; and a Brown
memorial brooch--of gold, with the late gillie's head on one side and the
royal monogram on the other--was designed by Her Majesty for presentation to
her Highland servants and cottagers, to be worn by them on the anniversary of
his death, with a mourning scarf and pins. In the second series of extracts
from the Queen's Highland Journal, published in 1884, her "devoted personal
attendant and faithful friend" appears upon almost every page, and is in
effect the hero of the book. With an absence of reticence remarkable in royal
persons, Victoria seemed to demand, in this private and delicate matter, the
sympathy of the whole nation; and yet--such is the world--there were those who
actually treated the relations between their Sovereign and her servant as a
theme for ribald jests.

II

The busy years hastened away; the traces of Time's unimaginable touch grew
manifest; and old age, approaching, laid a gentle hold upon Victoria. The grey
hair whitened; the mature features mellowed; the short firm figure amplified
and moved more slowly, supported by a stick. And, simultaneously, in the whole
tenour of the Queen's existence an extraordinary transformation came to pass.
The nation's attitude towards her, critical and even hostile as it had been
for so many years, altogether changed; while there was a corresponding
alteration in the temper of--Victoria's own mind.

Many causes led to this result. Among them were the repeated strokes of
personal misfortune which befell the Queen during a cruelly short space of
years. In 1878 the Princess Alice, who had married in 1862 the Prince Louis of
HesseDarmstadt, died in tragic circumstances. In the following year the Prince
Imperial, the only son of the Empress Eugenie, to whom Victoria, since the
catastrophe of 1870, had become devotedly attached, was killed in the Zulu
War. Two years later, in 1881, the Queen lost Lord Beaconsfield, and, in 1883,
John Brown. In 1884 the Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, who had been an
invalid from birth, died prematurely, shortly after his marriage. Victoria's
cup of sorrows was indeed overflowing; and the public, as it watched the
widowed mother weeping for her children and her friends, displayed a
constantly increasing sympathy.

An event which occurred in 1882 revealed and accentuated the feelings of the
nation. As the Queen, at Windsor, was walking from the train to her carriage,
a youth named Roderick Maclean fired a pistol at her from a distance of a few
yards. An Eton boy struck up Maclean's arm with an umbrella before the pistol
went off; no damage was done, and the culprit was at once arrested. This was
the last of a series of seven attempts upon the Queen--attempts which, taking
place at sporadic intervals over a period of forty years, resembled one
another in a curious manner. All, with a single exception, were perpetrated by
adolescents, whose motives were apparently not murderous, since, save in the
case of Maclean, none of their pistols was loaded. These unhappy youths, who,
after buying their cheap weapons, stuffed them with gunpowder and paper, and
then went off, with the certainty of immediate detection, to click them in the
face of royalty, present a strange problem to the psychologist. But, though in
each case their actions and their purposes seemed to be so similar, their
fates were remarkably varied. The first of them, Edward Oxford, who fired at
Victoria within a few months of her marriage, was tried for high treason,
declared to be insane, and sent to an asylum for life. It appears, however,
that this sentence did not commend itself to Albert, for when, two years
later, John Francis committed the same of fence, and was tried upon the same
charge, the Prince propounced that there was no insanity in the matter. "The
wretched creature," he told his father, was "not out of his mind, but a
thorough scamp." "I hope," he added, "his trial will be conducted with the
greatest strictness." Apparently it was; at any rate, the jury shared the view
of the Prince, the plea of insanity was, set aside, and Francis was found
guilty of high treason and condemned to death; but, as there was no proof of
an intent to kill or even to wound, this sentence, after a lengthened
deliberation between the Home Secretary and the Judges, was commuted for one
of transportation for life. As the law stood, these assaults, futile as they
were, could only be treated as high treason; the discrepancy between the
actual deed and the tremendous penalties involved was obviously grotesque; and
it was, besides, clear that a jury, knowing that a verdict of guilty implied a
sentence of death, would tend to the alternative course, and find the prisoner
not guilty but insane--a conclusion which, on the face of it, would have
appeared to be the more reasonable. In 1842, therefore, an Act was passed
making any attempt to hurt the Queen a misdemeanor, punishable by
transportation for seven years, or imprisonment, with or without hard labour,
for a term not exceeding three years--the misdemeanant, at the discretion of
the Court, "to be publicly or privately whipped, as often, and in such manner
and form, as the Court shall direct, not exceeding thrice." The four
subsequent attempts were all dealt with under this new law; William Bean, in
1842, was sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment; William Hamilton, in
1849, was transported for seven years; and, in 1850, the same sentence was
passed upon Lieutenant Robert Pate, who struck the Queen on the head with his
cane in Piccadilly. Pate, alone among these delinquents, was of mature years;
he had held a commission in the Army, dressed himself as a dandy, and was, the
Prince declared, "manifestly deranged." In 1872 Arthur O'Connor, a youth of
seventeen, fired an unloaded pistol at the Queen outside Buckingham Palace; he
was immediately seized by John Brown, and sentenced to one year's imprisonment
and twenty strokes of the birch rod. It was for his bravery upon this occasion
that Brown was presented with one of his gold medals. In all these cases the
jury had refused to allow the plea of insanity; but Roderick Maclean's attempt
in 1882 had a different issue. On this occasion the pistol was found to have
been loaded, and the public indignation, emphasised as it was by Victoria's
growing popularity, was particularly great. Either for this or for some other
reason the procedure of the last forty years was abandoned, and Maclean was
tried for high treason. The result was what might have been expected: the jury
brought in a verdict of "not guilty, but insane"; and the prisoner was sent to
an asylum during Her Majesty's pleasure. Their verdict, however, produced a
remarkable consequence. Victoria, who doubtless carried in her mind some
memory of Albert's disapproval of a similar verdict in the case of Oxford, was
very much annoyed. What did the jury mean, she asked, by saying that Maclean
was not guilty? It was perfectly clear that he was guilty--she had seen him
fire off the pistol herself. It was in vain that Her Majesty's constitutional
advisers reminded her of the principle of English law which lays down that no
man can be found guilty of a crime unless he be proved to have had a criminal
intention. Victoria was quite unconvinced. "If that is the law," she said,
"the law must be altered:" and altered it was. In 1883 an Act was passed
changing the form of the verdict in cases of insanity, and the confusing
anomaly remains upon the Statute Book to this day.

But it was not only through the feelings--commiserating or indignant--of
personal sympathy that the Queen and her people were being drawn more nearly
together; they were beginning, at last, to come to a close and permanent
agreement upon the conduct of public affairs. Mr. Gladstone's second
administration (1880-85) was a succession of failures, ending in disaster and
disgrace; liberalism fell into discredit with the country, and Victoria
perceived with joy that her distrust of her Ministers was shared by an
ever-increasing number of her subjects. During the crisis in the Sudan, the
popular temper was her own. She had been among the first to urge the necessity
of an expedition to Khartoum, and, when the news came of the catastrophic
death of General Gordon, her voice led the chorus of denunciation which raved
against the Government. In her rage, she despatched a fulminating telegram to
Mr. Gladstone, not in the usual cypher, but open; and her letter of condolence
to Miss Gordon, in which she attacked her Ministers for breach of faith, was
widely published. It was rumoured that she had sent for Lord Hartington, the
Secretary of State for War, and vehemently upbraided him. "She rated me," he
was reported to have told a friend, "as if I'd been a footman." "Why didn't
she send for the butler?" asked his friend. "Oh," was the reply, "the butler
generally manages to keep out of the way on such occasions."

But the day came when it was impossible to keep out of the way any longer. Mr.
Gladstone was defeated, and resigned. Victoria, at a final interview, received
him with her usual amenity, but, besides the formalities demanded by the
occasion, the only remark which she made to him of a personal nature was to
the effect that she supposed Mr. Gladstone would now require some rest. He
remembered with regret how, at a similar audience in 1874, she had expressed
her trust in him as a supporter of the throne; but he noted the change without
surprise. "Her mind and opinions," he wrote in his diary afterwards, "have
since that day been seriously warped."

Such was Mr. Gladstone's view,; but the majority of the nation by no means
agreed with him; and, in the General Election of 1886, they showed decisively
that Victoria's politics were identical with theirs by casting forth the
contrivers of Home Rule--that abomination of desolation--into outer darkness,
and placing Lord Salisbury in power. Victoria's satisfaction was profound. A
flood of new unwonted hopefulness swept over her, stimulating her vital
spirits with a surprising force. Her habit of life was suddenly altered;
abandoning the long seclusion which Disraeli's persuasions had only
momentarily interrupted, she threw herself vigorously into a multitude of
public activities. She appeared at drawing-rooms, at concerts, at reviews; she
laid foundation-stones; she went to Liverpool to open an international
exhibition, driving through the streets in her open carriage in heavy rain
amid vast applauding crowds. Delighted by the welcome which met her
everywhere, she warmed to her work. She visited Edinburgh, where the ovation
of Liverpool was repeated and surpassed. In London, she opened in high state
the Colonial and Indian Exhibition at South Kensington. On this occasion the
ceremonial was particularly magnificent; a blare of trumpets announced the
approach of Her Majesty; the "Natiohal Anthem" followed; and the Queen, seated
on a gorgeous throne of hammered gold, replied with her own lips to the
address that was presented to her. Then she rose, and, advancing upon the
platform with regal port, acknowledged the acclamations of the great assembly
by a succession of curtseys, of elaborate and commanding grace.

Next year was the fiftieth of her reign, and in June the splendid anniversary
was celebrated in solemn pomp. Victoria, surrounded by the highest dignitaries
of her realm, escorted by a glittering galaxy of kings and princes, drove
through the crowded enthusiasm of the capital to render thanks to God in
Westminster Abbey. In that triumphant hour the last remaining traces of past
antipathies and past disagreements were altogether swept away. The Queen was
hailed at once as the mother of her people and as the embodied symbol of their
imperial greatness; and she responded to the double sentiment with all the
ardour of her spirit. England and the people of England, she knew it, she felt
it, were, in some wonderful and yet quite simple manner, hers. Exultation,
affection, gratitude, a profound sense of obligation, an unbounded pride--such
were her emotions; and, colouring and intensifying the rest, there was
something else. At last, after so long, happiness--fragmentary, perhaps, and
charged with gravity, but true and unmistakable none the less--had returned to
her. The unaccustomed feeling filled and warmed her consciousness. When, at
Buckingham Palace again, the long ceremony over, she was asked how she was, "I
am very tired, but very happy," she said.

III

And so, after the toils and tempests of the day, a long evening
followed--mild, serene, and lighted with a golden glory. For an unexampled
atmosphere of success and adoration invested the last period of Victoria's
life. Her triumph was the summary, the crown, of a greater triumph--the
culminating prosperity of a nation. The solid splendour of the decade between
Victoria's two jubilees can hardly be paralleled in the annals of England. The
sage counsels of Lord Salisbury seemed to bring with them not only wealth and
power, but security; and the country settled down, with calm assurance, to the
enjoyment of an established grandeur. And--it was only natural--Victoria
settled down too. For she was a part of the establishment--an essential part
as it seemed--a fixture--a magnificent, immovable sideboard in the huge saloon
of state. Without her the heaped-up banquet of 1890 would have lost its
distinctive quality--the comfortable order of the substantial unambiguous
dishes, with their background of weighty glamour, half out of sight.

Her own existence came to harmonise more and more with what was around her.
Gradually, imperceptibly, Albert receded. It was not that he was
forgotten--that would have been impossible--but that the void created by his
absence grew less agonising, and even, at last, less obvious. At last Victoria
found it possible to regret the bad weather without immediately reflecting
that her "dear Albert always said we could not alter it, but must leave it as
it was;" she could even enjoy a good breakfast without considering how "dear
Albert" would have liked the buttered eggs. And, as that figure slowly faded,
its place was taken, inevitably, by Victoria's own. Her being, revolving for
so many years round an external object, now changed its motion and found its
centre in itself. It had to be so: her domestic position, the pressure of her
public work, her indomitable sense of duty, made anything else impossible. Her
egotism proclaimed its rights. Her age increased still further the surrounding
deference; and her force of character, emerging at length in all its
plenitude, imposed absolutely upon its environment by the conscious effort of
an imperious will.

Little by little it was noticed that the outward vestiges of Albert's
posthumous domination grew less complete. At Court the stringency of mourning
was relaxed. As the Queen drove through the Park in her open carriage with her
Highlanders behind her, nursery-maids canvassed eagerly the growing patch of
violet velvet in the bonnet with its jet appurtenances on the small bowing
head.

It was in her family that Victoria's ascendancy reached its highest point. All
her offspring were married; the number of her descendants rapidly increased;
there were many marriages in the third generation; and no fewer than
thirty-seven of her great-grandchildren were living at the time of her death.
A picture of the period displays the royal family collected together in one of
the great rooms at Windsor--a crowded company of more than fifty persons, with
the imperial matriarch in their midst. Over them all she ruled with a most
potent sway. The small concerns of the youngest aroused her passionate
interest; and the oldest she treated as if they were children still. The
Prince of Wales, in particular, stood in tremendous awe of his mother. She had
steadily refused to allow him the slightest participation in the business of
government; and he had occupied himself in other ways. Nor could it be denied
that he enjoyed himself--out of her sight; but, in that redoubtable presence,
his abounding manhood suffered a miserable eclipse. Once, at Osborne, when,
owing to no fault of his, he was too late for a dinner party, he was observed
standing behind a pillar and wiping the sweat from his forehead, trying to
nerve himself to go up to the Queen. When at last he did so, she gave him a
stiff nod, whereupon he vanished immediately behind another pillar, and
remained there until the party broke up. At the time of this incident the
Prince of Wales was over fifty years of age.

It was inevitable that the Queen's domestic activities should occasionally
trench upon the domain of high diplomacy; and this was especially the case
when the interests of her eldest daughter, the Crown Princess of Prussia, were
at stake. The Crown Prince held liberal opinions; he was much influenced by
his wife; and both were detested by Bismarck, who declared with scurrilous
emphasis that the Englishwoman and her mother were a menace to the Prussian
State. The feud was still further intensified when, on the death of the old
Emperor (1888), the Crown Prince succeeded to the throne. A family
entanglement brought on a violent crisis. One of the daughters of the new
Empress had become betrothed to Prince Alexander of Battenberg, who had lately
been ejected from the throne of Bulgaria owing to the hostility of the Tsar.
Victoria, as well as the Empress, highly approved of the match. Of the two
brothers of Prince Alexander, the elder had married another of her
grand-daughters, and the younger was the husband of her daughter, the Princess
Beatrice; she was devoted to the handsome young man; and she was delighted by
the prospect of the third brother--on the whole the handsomest, she thought,
of the three--also becoming a member of her family. Unfortunately, however,
Bismarck was opposed to the scheme. He perceived that the marriage would
endanger the friendship between Germany and Russia, which was vital to his
foreign policy, and he announced that it must not take place. A fierce
struggle between the Empress and the Chancellor followed. Victoria, whose
hatred of her daughter's enemy was unbounded, came over to Charlottenburg to
join in the fray. Bismarck, over his pipe and lager, snorted out his alarm.
The Queen of England's object, he said, was clearly political--she wished to
estrange Germany and Russia--and very likely she would have her way. "In
family matters," he added, "she is not used to contradiction;" she would
"bring the parson with her in her travelling bag and the bridegroom in her
trunk, and the marriage would come off on the spot." But the man of blood and
iron was not to be thwarted so easily, and he asked for a private interview
with the Queen. The details of their conversation are unknown; but it is
certain that in the course of it Victoria was forced to realise the meaning of
resistance to that formidable personage, and that she promised to use all her
influence to prevent the marriage. The engagement was broken off; and in the
following year Prince Alexander of Battenberg united himself to Fraulein
Loisinger, an actress at the court theatre of Darmstad.

But such painful incidents were rare. Victoria was growing very old; with no
Albert to guide her, with no Beaconsfield to enflame her, she was willing
enough to abandon the dangerous questions of diplomacy to the wisdom of Lord
Salisbury, and to concentrate her energies upon objects which touched her more
nearly and over which she could exercise an undisputed control. Her home--her
court--the monuments at Balmoral--the livestock at Windsor--the organisation
of her engagements--the supervision of the multitudinous details of her daily
routine--such matters played now an even greater part in her existence than
before. Her life passed in an extraordinary exactitude. Every moment of her
day was mapped out beforehand; the succession of her engagements was immutably
fixed; the dates of her journeys--to Osborne, to Balmoral, to the South of
France, to Windsor, to London--were hardly altered from year to year. She
demanded from those who surrounded her a rigid precision in details, and she
was preternaturally quick in detecting the slightest deviation from the rules
which she had laid down. Such was the irresistible potency of her personality,
that anything but the most implicit obedience to her wishes was felt to be
impossible; but sometimes somebody was unpunctual; and unpunctuality was one
of the most heinous of sins. Then her displeasure--her dreadful
displeasure--became all too visible. At such moments there seemed nothing
surprising in her having been the daughter of a martinet.

But these storms, unnerving as they were while they lasted, were quickly over,
and they grew more and more exceptional. With the return of happiness a gentle
benignity flowed from the aged Queen. Her smile, once so rare a visitant to
those saddened features, flitted over them with an easy alacrity; the blue
eyes beamed; the whole face, starting suddenly from its pendulous
expressionlessness, brightened and softened and cast over those who watched it
an unforgettable charm. For in her last years there was a fascination in
Victoria's amiability which had been lacking even from the vivid impulse of
her youth. Over all who approached her--or very nearly all--she threw a
peculiar spell. Her grandchildren adored her; her ladies waited upon her with
a reverential love. The honour of serving her obliterated a thousand
inconveniences--the monotony of a court existence, the fatigue of standing,
the necessity for a superhuman attentiveness to the minutia: of time and
space. As one did one's wonderful duty one could forget that one's legs were
aching from the infinitude of the passages at Windsor, or that one's bare arms
were turning blue in the Balmoral cold.

What, above all, seemed to make such service delightful was the detailed
interest which the Queen took in the circumstances of those around her. Her
absorbing passion for the comfortable commonplaces, the small crises, the
recurrent sentimentalities, of domestic life constantly demanded wider fields
for its activity; the sphere of her own family, vast as it was, was not
enough; she became the eager confidante of the household affairs of her
ladies; her sympathies reached out to the palace domestics; even the
housemaids and scullions--so it appeared--were the objects of her searching
inquiries, and of her heartfelt solicitude when their lovers were ordered to a
foreign station, or their aunts suffered from an attack of rheumatism which
was more than usually acute.

Nevertheless the due distinctions of rank were immaculately preserved. The
Queen's mere presence was enough to ensure that; but, in addition, the
dominion of court etiquette was paramount. For that elaborate code, which had
kept Lord Melbourne stiff upon the sofa and ranged the other guests in silence
about the round table according to the order of precedence, was as
punctiliously enforced as ever. Every evening after dinner, the hearth-rug,
sacred to royalty, loomed before the profane in inaccessible glory, or, on one
or two terrific occasions, actually lured them magnetically forward to the
very edge of the abyss. The Queen, at the fitting moment, moved towards her
guests; one after the other they were led up to her; and, while dialogue
followed dialogue in constraint and embarrassment, the rest of the assembly
stood still, without a word. Only in one particular was the severity of the
etiquette allowed to lapse. Throughout the greater part of the reign the rule
that ministers must stand during their audiences with the Queen had been
absolute. When Lord Derby, the Prime Minister, had an audience of Her Majesty
after a serious illness, he mentioned it afterwards, as a proof of the royal
favour, that the Queen had remarked "How sorry she was she could not ask him
to be seated." Subsequently, Disraeli, after an attack of gout and in a moment
of extreme expansion on the part of Victoria, had been offered a chair; but he
had thought it wise humbly to decline the privilege. In her later years,
however, the Queen invariably asked Mr. Gladstone and Lord Salisbury to sit
down.

Sometimes the solemnity of the evening was diversified by a concert, an opera,
or even a play. One of the most marked indications of Victoria's
enfranchisement from the thraldom of widowhood had been her resumption--after
an interval of thirty years--of the custom of commanding dramatic companies
from London to perform before the Court at Windsor. On such occasions her
spirits rose high. She loved acting; she loved a good plot; above all, she
loved a farce. Engrossed by everything that passed upon the stage she would
follow, with childlike innocence, the unwinding of the story; or she would
assume an air of knowing superiority and exclaim in triumph, "There! You
didn't expect that, did you?" when the denouement came. Her sense of humour
was of a vigorous though primitive kind. She had been one of the very few
persons who had always been able to appreciate the Prince Consort's jokes;
and, when those were cracked no more, she could still roar with laughter, in
the privacy of her household, over some small piece of fun--some oddity of an
ambassador, or some ignorant Minister's faux pas. When the jest grew subtle
she was less pleased; but, if it approached the confines of the indecorous,
the danger was serious. To take a liberty called down at once Her Majesty's
most crushing disapprobation; and to say something improper was to take the
greatest liberty of all. Then the royal lips sank down at the corners, the
royal eyes stared in astonished protrusion, and in fact, the royal countenance
became inauspicious in the highest degree. The transgressor shuddered into
silence, while the awful "We are not amused" annihilated the dinner table.
Afterwards, in her private entourage, the Queen would observe that the person
in question was, she very much feared, "not discreet"; it was a verdict from
which there was no appeal.

In general, her aesthetic tastes had remained unchanged since the days of
Mendelssohn, Landseer, and Lablache. She still delighted in the roulades of
Italian opera; she still demanded a high standard in the execution of a
pianoforte duet. Her views on painting were decided; Sir Edwin, she declared,
was perfect; she was much impressed by Lord Leighton's manners; and she
profoundly distrusted Mr. Watts. From time to time she ordered engraved
portraits to be taken of members of the royal family; on these occasions she
would have the first proofs submitted to her, and, having inspected them with
minute particularity, she would point out their mistakes to the artists,
indicating at the same time how they might be corrected. The artists
invariably discovered that Her Majesty's suggestions were of the highest
value. In literature her interests were more restricted. She was devoted to
Lord Tennyson; and, as the Prince Consort had admired George Eliot, she
perused "Middlemarch:" she was disappointed. There is reason to believe,
however, that the romances of another female writer, whose popularity among
the humbler classes of Her Majesty's subjects was at one time enormous,
secured, no less, the approval of Her Majesty. Otherwise she did not read very
much.

Once, however, the Queen's attention was drawn to a publication which it was
impossible for her to ignore. "The Greville Memoirs," filled with a mass of
historical information of extraordinary importance, but filled also with
descriptions, which were by no means flattering, of George IV, William IV, and
other royal persons, was brought out by Mr. Reeve. Victoria read the book, and
was appalled. It was, she declared, a "dreadful and really scandalous book,"
and she could not say "how HORRIFIED and INDIGNANT" she was at Greville's
"indiscretion, indelicacy, ingratitude towards friends, betrayal of confidence
and shameful disloyalty towards his Sovereign." She wrote to Disraeli to tell
him that in her opinion it was "VERY IMPORTANT that the book should be
severely censured and discredited." "The tone in which he speaks of royalty,"
she added, "is unlike anything one sees in history even, and is most
reprehensible." Her anger was directed with almost equal vehemence against Mr.
Reeve for his having published "such an abominable book," and she charged Sir
Arthur Helps to convey to him her deep displeasure. Mr. Reeve, however, was
impenitent. When Sir Arthur told him that, in the Queen's opinion, "the book
degraded royalty," he replied: "Not at all; it elevates it by the contrast it
offers between the present and the defunct state of affairs." But this adroit
defence failed to make any impression upon Victoria; and Mr. Reeve, when he
retired from the public service, did not receive the knighthood which custom
entitled him to expect. Perhaps if the Queen had known how many caustic
comments upon herself Mr. Reeve had quietly suppressed in the published
Memoirs, she would have been almost grateful to him; but, in that case, what
would she have said of Greville? Imagination boggles at the thought. As for
more modern essays upon the same topic, Her Majesty, it is to be feared, would
have characterised them as "not discreet."

But as a rule the leisure hours of that active life were occupied with
recreations of a less intangible quality than the study of literature or the
appreciation of art. Victoria was a woman not only of vast property but of
innumerable possessions. She had inherited an immense quantity of furniture,
of ornaments, of china, of plate, of valuable objects of every kind; her
purchases, throughout a long life, made a formidable addition to these stores;
and there flowed in upon her, besides, from every quarter of the globe, a
constant stream of gifts. Over this enormous mass she exercised an unceasing
and minute supervision, and the arrangement and the contemplation of it, in
all its details, filled her with an intimate satisfaction. The collecting
instinct has its roots in the very depths of human nature; and, in the case of
Victoria, it seemed to owe its force to two of her dominating impulses--the
intense sense, which had always been hers, of her own personality, and the
craving which, growing with the years, had become in her old age almost an
obsession, for fixity, for solidity, for the setting up of palpable barriers
against the outrages of change and time. When she considered the multitudinous
objects which belonged to her, or, better still, when, choosing out some
section of them as the fancy took her, she actually savoured the vivid
richness of their individual qualities, she saw herself deliciously reflected
from a million facets, felt herself magnified miraculously over a boundless
area, and was well pleased. That was just as it should be; but then came the
dismaying thought--everything slips away, crumbles, vanishes; Sevres
dinner-services get broken; even golden basins go unaccountably astray; even
one's self, with all the recollections and experiences that make up one's
being, fluctuates, perishes, dissolves... But no! It could not, should not be
so! There should be no changes and no losses! Nothing should ever
move--neither the past nor the present--and she herself least of all! And so
the tenacious woman, hoarding her valuables, decreed their immortality with
all the resolution of her soul. She would not lose one memory or one pin.

She gave orders that nothing should be thrown away--and nothing was. There, in
drawer after drawer, in wardrobe after wardrobe, reposed the dresses of
seventy years. But not only the dresses --the furs and the mantles and
subsidiary frills and the muffs and the parasols and the bonnets--all were
ranged in chronological order, dated and complete. A great cupboard was
devoted to the dolls; in the china room at Windsor a special table held the
mugs of her childhood, and her children's mugs as well. Mementoes of the past
surrounded her in serried accumulations. In every room the tables were
powdered thick with the photographs of relatives; their portraits, revealing
them at all ages, covered the walls; their figures, in solid marble, rose up
from pedestals, or gleamed from brackets in the form of gold and silver
statuettes. The dead, in every shape--in miniatures, in porcelain, in enormous
life-size oil-paintings--were perpetually about her. John Brown stood upon her
writing-table in solid gold. Her favourite horses and dogs, endowed with a new
durability, crowded round her footsteps. Sharp, in silver gilt, dominated the
dinner table; Boy and Boz lay together among unfading flowers, in bronze. And
it was not enough that each particle of the past should be given the stability
of metal or of marble: the whole collection, in its arrangement, no less than
its entity, should be immutably fixed. There might be additions, but there
might never be alterations. No chintz might change, no carpet, no curtain, be
replaced by another; or, if long use at last made it necessary, the stuffs and
the patterns must be so identically reproduced that the keenest eye might not
detect the difference. No new picture could be hung upon the walls at Windsor,
for those already there had been put in their places by Albert, whose
decisions were eternal. So, indeed, were Victoria's. To ensure that they
should be the aid of the camera was called in. Every single article in the
Queen's possession was photographed from several points of view. These
photographs were submitted to Her Majesty, and when, after careful inspection,
she had approved of them, they were placed in a series of albums, richly
bound. Then, opposite each photograph, an entry was made, indicating the
number of the article, the number of the room in which it was kept, its exact
position in the room and all its principal characteristics. The fate of every
object which had undergone this process was henceforth irrevocably sealed. The
whole multitude, once and for all, took up its steadfast station. And
Victoria, with a gigantic volume or two of the endless catalogue always beside
her, to look through, to ponder upon, to expatiate over, could feel, with a
double contentment, that the transitoriness of this world had been arrested by
the amplitude of her might.

Thus the collection, ever multiplying, ever encroaching upon new fields of
consciousness, ever rooting itself more firmly in the depths of instinct,
became one of the dominating influences of that strange existence. It was a
collection not merely of things and of thoughts, but of states of mind and
ways of living as well. The celebration of anniversaries grew to be an
important branch of it--of birthdays and marriage days and death days, each of
which demanded its appropriate feeling, which, in its turn, must be itself
expressed in an appropriate outward form. And the form, of course--the
ceremony of rejoicing or lamentation--was stereotyped with the rest: it was
part of the collection. On a certain day, for instance, flowers must be strewn
on John Brown's monument at Balmoral; and the date of the yearly departure for
Scotland was fixed by that fact. Inevitably it was around the central
circumstance of death--death, the final witness to human mutability--that
these commemorative cravings clustered most thickly. Might not even death
itself be humbled, if one could recall enough--if one asserted, with a
sufficiently passionate and reiterated emphasis, the eternity of love?
Accordingly, every bed in which Victoria slept had attached to it, at the
back, on the right-hand side, above the pillow, a photograph of the head and
shoulders of Albert as he lay dead, surmounted by a wreath of immortelles. At
Balmoral, where memories came crowding so closely, the solid signs of memory
appeared in surprising profusion. Obelisks, pyramids, tombs, statues, cairns,
and seats of inscribed granite, proclaimed Victoria's dedication to the dead.
There, twice a year, on the days that followed her arrival, a solemn
pilgrimage of inspection and meditation was performed. There, on August
26--Albert's birthday--at the foot of the bronze statue of him in Highland
dress, the Queen, her family, her Court, her servants, and her tenantry, met
together and in silence drank to the memory of the dead. In England the tokens
of remembrance pullulated hardly less. Not a day passed without some addition
to the multifold assemblage--a gold statuette of Ross, the piper--a life-sized
marble group of Victoria and Albert, in medieval costume, inscribed upon the
base with the words: "Allured to brighter worlds and led the way-" a granite
slab in the shrubbery at Osborne, informing the visitor of "Waldmann: the very
favourite little dachshund of Queen Victoria; who brought him from Baden,
April 1872; died, July 11, 1881."

At Frogmore, the great mausoleum, perpetually enriched, was visited almost
daily by the Queen when the Court was at Windsor. But there was another, a
more secret and a hardly less holy shrine. The suite of rooms which Albert had
occupied in the Castle was kept for ever shut away from the eyes of any save
the most privileged. Within those precincts everything remained as it had been
at the Prince's death; but the mysterious preoccupation of Victoria had
commanded that her husband's clothing should be laid afresh, each evening,
upon the bed, and that, each evening, the water should be set ready in the
basin, as if he were still alive; and this incredible rite was performed with
scrupulous regularity for nearly forty years.

Such was the inner worship; and still the flesh obeyed the spirit; still the
daily hours of labour proclaimed Victoria's consecration to duty and to the
ideal of the dead. Yet, with the years, the sense of self-sacrifice faded; the
natural energies of that ardent being discharged themselves with satisfaction
into the channel of public work; the love of business which, from her
girlhood, had been strong within her, reasserted itself in all its vigour,
and, in her old age, to have been cut off from her papers and her boxes would
have been, not a relief, but an agony to Victoria. Thus, though toiling
Ministers might sigh and suffer, the whole process of government continued,
till the very end, to pass before her. Nor was that all; ancient precedent had
made the validity of an enormous number of official transactions dependent
upon the application of the royal sign-manual; and a great proportion of the
Queen's working hours was spent in this mechanical task. Nor did she show any
desire to diminish it. On the contrary, she voluntarily resumed the duty of
signing commissions in the army, from which she had been set free by Act of
Parliament, and from which, during the years of middle life, she had
abstained. In no case would she countenance the proposal that she should use a
stamp. But, at last, when the increasing pressure of business made the delays
of the antiquated system intolerable, she consented that, for certain classes
of documents, her oral sanction should be sufficient. Each paper was read
aloud to her, and she said at the end "Approved." Often, for hours at a time,
she would sit, with Albert's bust in front of her, while the word "Approved"
issued at intervals from her lips. The word came forth with a majestic
sonority; for her voice now--how changed from the silvery treble of her
girlhood--was a contralto, full and strong.

IV

The final years were years of apotheosis. In the dazzled imagination of her
subjects Victoria soared aloft towards the regions of divinity through a
nimbus of purest glory. Criticism fell dumb; deficiencies which, twenty years
earlier, would have been universally admitted, were now as universally
ignored. That the nation's idol was a very incomplete representative of the
nation was a circumstance that was hardly noticed, and yet it was
conspicuously true. For the vast changes which, out of the England of 1837,
had produced the England of 1897, seemed scarcely to have touched the Queen.
The immense industrial development of the period, the significance of which
had been so thoroughly understood by Albert, meant little indeed to Victoria.
The amazing scientific movement, which Albert had appreciated no less, left
Victoria perfectly cold. Her conception of the universe, and of man's place in
it, and of the stupendous problems of nature and philosophy remained,
throughout her life, entirely unchanged. Her religion was the religion which
she had learnt from the Baroness Lehzen and the Duchess of Kent. Here, too, it
might have been supposed that Albert's views might have influenced her. For
Albert, in matters of religion, was advanced. Disbelieving altogether in evil
spirits, he had had his doubts about the miracle of the Gaderene Swine.
Stockmar, even, had thrown out, in a remarkable memorandum on the education of
the Prince of Wales, the suggestion that while the child "must unquestionably
be brought up in the creed of the Church of England," it might nevertheless be
in accordance with the spirit of the times to exclude from his religious
training the inculcation of a belief in "the supernatural doctrines of
Christianity." This, however, would have been going too far; and all the royal
children were brought up in complete orthodoxy. Anything else would have
grieved Victoria, though her own conceptions of the orthodox were not very
precise. But her nature, in which imagination and subtlety held so small a
place, made her instinctively recoil from the intricate ecstasies of High
Anglicanism; and she seemed to feel most at home in the simple faith of the
Presbyterian Church of Scotland. This was what might have been expected; for
Lehzen was the daughter of a Lutheran pastor, and the Lutherans and the
Presbyterians have much in common. For many years Dr. Norman Macleod, an
innocent Scotch minister, was her principal spiritual adviser; and, when he
was taken from her, she drew much comfort from quiet chats about life and
death with the cottagers at Balmoral. Her piety, absolutely genuine, found
what it wanted in the sober exhortations of old John Grant and the devout saws
of Mrs. P. Farquharson. They possessed the qualities, which, as a child of
fourteen, she had so sincerely admired in the Bishop of Chester's "Exposition
of the Gospel of St. Matthew;" they were "just plain and comprehensible and
full of truth and good feeling." The Queen, who gave her name to the Age of
Mill and of Darwin, never got any further than that.

From the social movements of her time Victoria was equally remote. Towards the
smallest no less than towards the greatest changes she remained inflexible.
During her youth and middle age smoking had been forbidden in polite society,
and so long as she lived she would not withdraw her anathema against it. Kings
might protest; bishops and ambassadors, invited to Windsor, might be reduced,
in the privacy of their bedrooms, to lie full-length upon the floor and smoke
up the chimney--the interdict continued! It might have been supposed that a
female sovereign would have lent her countenance to one of the most vital of
all the reforms to which her epoch gave birth--the emancipation of women--but,
on the contrary, the mere mention of such a proposal sent the blood rushing to
her head. In 1870, her eye having fallen upon the report of a meeting in
favour of Women's Suffrage, she wrote to Mr. Martin in royal rage--"The Queen
is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking
this mad, wicked folly of 'Woman's Rights,' with all its attendant horrors, on
which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling
and propriety. Lady--ought to get a GOOD WHIPPING. It is a subject which makes
the Queen so furious that she cannot contain herself. God created men and
women different--then let them remain each in their own position. Tennyson has
some beautiful lines on the difference of men and women in 'The Princess.'
Woman would become the most hateful, heartless, and disgusting of human beings
were she allowed to unsex herself; and where would be the protection which man
was intended to give the weaker sex? The Queen is sure that Mrs. Martin agrees
with her." The argument was irrefutable; Mrs. Martin agreed; and yet the
canker spread.

In another direction Victoria's comprehension of the spirit of her age has
been constantly asserted. It was for long the custom for courtly historians
and polite politicians to compliment the Queen upon the correctness of her
attitude towards the Constitution. But such praises seem hardly to be
justified by the facts. In her later years Victoria more than once alluded
with regret to her conduct during the Bedchamber crisis, and let it be
understood that she had grown wiser since. Yet in truth it is difficult to
trace any fundamental change either in her theory or her practice in
constitutional matters throughout her life. The same despotic and personal
spirit which led her to break off the negotiations with Peel is equally
visible in her animosity towards Palmerston, in her threats of abdication to
Disraeli, and in her desire to prosecute the Duke of Westminster for attending
a meeting upon Bulgarian atrocities. The complex and delicate principles of
the Constitution cannot be said to have come within the compass of her mental
faculties; and in the actual developments which it underwent during her reign
she played a passive part. From 1840 to 1861 the power of the Crown steadily
increased in England; from 1861 to 1901 it steadily declined. The first
process was due to the influence of the Prince Consort, the second to that of
a series of great Ministers. During the first Victoria was in effect a mere
accessory; during the second the threads of power, which Albert had so
laboriously collected, inevitably fell from her hands into the vigorous grasp
of Mr. Gladstone, Lord Beaconsfield, and Lord Salisbury. Perhaps, absorbed as
she was in routine, and difficult as she found it to distinguish at all
clearly between the trivial and the essential, she was only dimly aware of
what was happening. Yet, at the end of her reign, the Crown was weaker than at
any other time in English history. Paradoxically enough, Victoria received the
highest eulogiums for assenting to a political evolution, which, had she
completely realised its import, would have filled her with supreme
displeasure.

Nevertheless it must not be supposed that she was a second George III. Her
desire to impose her will, vehement as it was, and unlimited by any principle,
was yet checked by a certain shrewdness. She might oppose her Ministers with
extraordinary violence, she might remain utterly impervious to arguments and
supplications; the pertinacity of her resolution might seem to be
unconquerable; but, at the very last moment of all, her obstinacy would give
way. Her innate respect and capacity for business, and perhaps, too, the
memory of Albert's scrupulous avoidance of extreme courses, prevented her from
ever entering an impasse. By instinct she understood when the facts were too
much for her, and to them she invariably yielded. After all, what else could
she do?

But if, in all these ways, the Queen and her epoch were profoundly separated,
the points of contact between them also were not few. Victoria understood very
well the meaning and the attractions of power and property, and in such
learning the English nation, too, had grown to be more and more proficient.
During the last fifteen years of the reign--for the short Liberal
Administration of 1892 was a mere interlude imperialism was the dominant creed
of the country. It was Victoria's as well. In this direction, if in no other,
she had allowed her mind to develop. Under Disraeli's tutelage the British
Dominions over the seas had come to mean much more to her than ever before,
and, in particular, she had grown enamoured of the East. The thought of India
fascinated her; she set to, and learnt a little Hindustani; she engaged some
Indian servants, who became her inseparable attendants, and one of whom,
Munshi Abdul Karim, eventually almost succeeded to the position which had once
been John Brown's. At the same time, the imperialist temper of the nation
invested her office with a new significance exactly harmonising with her own
inmost proclivities. The English polity was in the main a common-sense
structure, but there was always a corner in it where common-sense could not
enter--where, somehow or other, the ordinary measurements were not applicable
and the ordinary rules did not apply. So our ancestors had laid it down,
giving scope, in their wisdom, to that mystical element which, as it seems,
can never quite be eradicated from the affairs of men. Naturally it was in the
Crown that the mysticism of the English polity was concentrated--the Crown,
with its venerable antiquity, its sacred associations, its imposing
spectacular array. But, for nearly two centuries, common-sense had been
predominant in the great building, and the little, unexplored, inexplicable
corner had attracted small attention. Then, with the rise of imperialism,
there was a change. For imperialism is a faith as well as a business; as it
grew, the mysticism in English public life grew with it; and simultaneously a
new importance began to attach to the Crown. The need for a symbol--a symbol
of England's might, of England's worth, of England's extraordinary and
mysterious destiny--became felt more urgently than ever before. The Crown was
that symbol: and the Crown rested upon the head of Victoria. Thus it happened
that while by the end of the reign the power of the sovereign had appreciably
diminished, the prestige of the sovereign had enormously grown.

Yet this prestige was not merely the outcome of public changes; it was an
intensely personal matter, too. Victoria was the Queen of England, the Empress
of India, the quintessential pivot round which the whole magnificent machine
was revolving--but how much more besides! For one thing, she was of a great
age--an almost indispensable qualification for popularity in England. She had
given proof of one of the most admired characteristics of the race--persistent
vitality. She had reigned for sixty years, and she was not out. And then, she
was a character. The outlines of her nature were firmly drawn, and, even
through the mists which envelop royalty, clearly visible. In the popular
imagination her familiar figure filled, with satisfying ease, a distinct and
memorable place. It was, besides, the kind of figure which naturally called
forth the admiring sympathy of the great majority of the nation. Goodness they
prized above every other human quality; and Victoria, who had said that she
would be good at the age of twelve, had kept her word. Duty, conscience,
morality--yes! in the light of those high beacons the Queen had always lived.
She had passed her days in work and not in pleasure--in public
responsibilities and family cares. The standard of solid virtue which had been
set up so long ago amid the domestic happiness of Osborne had never been
lowered for an instant. For more than half a century no divorced lady had
approached the precincts of the Court. Victoria, indeed, in her enthusiasm for
wifely fidelity, had laid down a still stricter ordinance: she frowned
severely upon any widow who married again. Considering that she herself was
the offspring of a widow's second marriage, this prohibition might be regarded
as an eccentricity; but, no doubt, it was an eccentricity on the right side.
The middle classes, firm in the triple brass of their respectability, rejoiced
with a special joy over the most respectable of Queens. They almost claimed
her, indeed, as one of themselves; but this would have been an exaggeration.
For, though many of her characteristics were most often found among the middle
classes, in other respects--in her manners, for instance--Victoria was
decidedly aristocratic. And, in one important particular, she was neither
aristocratic nor middle-class: her attitude toward herself was simply regal.

Such qualities were obvious and important; but, in the impact of a
personality, it is something deeper, something fundamental and common to all
its qualities, that really tells. In Victoria, it is easy to discern the
nature of this underlying element: it was a peculiar sincerity. Her
truthfulness, her single-mindedness, the vividness of her emotions and her
unrestrained expression of them, were the varied forms which this central
characteristic assumed. It was her sincerity which gave her at once her
impressiveness, her charm, and her absurdity. She moved through life with the
imposing certitude of one to whom concealment was impossible--either towards
her surroundings or towards herself. There she was, all of her--the Queen of
England, complete and obvious; the world might take her or leave her; she had
nothing more to show, or to explain, or to modify; and, with her peerless
carriage, she swept along her path. And not only was concealment out of the
question; reticence, reserve, even dignity itself, as it sometimes seemed,
might be very well dispensed with. As Lady Lyttelton said: "There is a
transparency in her truth that is very striking--not a shade of exaggeration
in describing feelings or facts; like very few other people I ever knew. Many
may be as true, but I think it goes often along with some reserve. She talks
all out; just as it is, no more and no less." She talked all out; and she
wrote all out, too. Her letters, in the surprising jet of their expression,
remind one of a turned-on tap. What is within pours forth in an immediate,
spontaneous rush. Her utterly unliterary style has at least the merit of being
a vehicle exactly suited to her thoughts and feelings; and even the platitude
of her phraseology carries with it a curiously personal flavour. Undoubtedly
it was through her writings that she touched the heart of the public. Not only
in her "Highland Journals" where the mild chronicle of her private proceedings
was laid bare without a trace either of affectation or of embarrassment, but
also in those remarkable messages to the nation which, from time to time, she
published in the newspapers, her people found her very close to them indeed.
They felt instinctively Victoria's irresistible sincerity, and they responded.
And in truth it was an endearing trait.

The personality and the position, too--the wonderful combination of
them--that, perhaps, was what was finally fascinating in the case. The little
old lady, with her white hair and her plain mourning clothes, in her wheeled
chair or her donkey-carriage--one saw her so; and then--close behind--with
their immediate suggestion of singularity, of mystery, and of power--the
Indian servants. That was the familiar vision, and it was admirable; but, at
chosen moments, it was right that the widow of Windsor should step forth
apparent Queen. The last and the most glorious of such occasions was the
Jubilee of 1897. Then, as the splendid procession passed along, escorting
Victoria through the thronged re-echoing streets of London on her progress of
thanksgiving to St. Paul's Cathedral, the greatness of her realm and the
adoration of her subjects blazed out together. The tears welled to her eyes,
and, while the multitude roared round her, "How kind they are to me! How kind
they are!" she repeated over and over again. That night her message flew over
the Empire: "From my heart I thank my beloved people. May God bless them!" The
long journey was nearly done. But the traveller, who had come so far, and
through such strange experiences, moved on with the old unfaltering step. The
girl, the wife, the aged woman, were the same: vitality, conscientiousness,
pride, and simplicity were hers to the latest hour.



CHAPTER X. THE END

The evening had been golden; but, after all, the day was to close in cloud and
tempest. Imperial needs, imperial ambitions, involved the country in the South
African War. There were checks, reverses, bloody disasters; for a moment the
nation was shaken, and the public distresses were felt with intimate
solicitude by the Queen. But her spirit was high, and neither her courage nor
her confidence wavered for a moment. Throwing her self heart and soul into the
struggle, she laboured with redoubled vigour, interested herself in every
detail of the hostilities, and sought by every means in her power to render
service to the national cause. In April 1900, when she was in her eighty-first
year, she made the extraordinary decision to abandon her annual visit to the
South of France, and to go instead to Ireland, which had provided a
particularly large number of recruits to the armies in the field. She stayed
for three weeks in Dublin, driving through the streets, in spite of the
warnings of her advisers, without an armed escort; and the visit was a
complete success. But, in the course of it, she began, for the first time, to
show signs of the fatigue of age.

For the long strain and the unceasing anxiety, brought by the war, made
themselves felt at last. Endowed by nature with a robust constitution,
Victoria, though in periods of depression she had sometimes supposed herself
an invalid, had in reality throughout her life enjoyed remarkably good health.
In her old age, she had suffered from a rheumatic stiffness of the joints,
which had necessitated the use of a stick, and, eventually, a wheeled chair;
but no other ailments attacked her, until, in 1898, her eyesight began to be
affected by incipient cataract. After that, she found reading more and more
difficult, though she could still sign her name, and even, with some
difflculty, write letters. In the summer of 1900, however, more serious
symptoms appeared. Her memory, in whose strength and precision she had so long
prided herself, now sometimes deserted her; there was a tendency towards
aphasia; and, while no specific disease declared itself, by the autumn there
were unmistakable signs of a general physical decay. Yet, even in these last
months, the strain of iron held firm. The daily work continued; nay, it
actually increased; for the Queen, with an astonishing pertinacity, insisted
upon communicating personally with an ever-growing multitude of men and women
who had suffered through the war.

By the end of the year the last remains of her ebbing strength had almost
deserted her; and through the early days of the opening century it was clear
that her dwindling forces were only kept together by an effort of will. On
January 14, she had at Osborne an hour's interview with Lord Roberts, who had
returned victorious from South Africa a few days before. She inquired with
acute anxiety into all the details of the war; she appeared to sustain the
exertion successfully; but, when the audience was over, there was a collapse.
On the following day her medical attendants recognised that her state was
hopeless; and yet, for two days more, the indomitable spirit fought on; for
two days more she discharged the duties of a Queen of England. But after that
there was an end of working; and then, and not till then, did the last
optimism of those about her break down. The brain was failing, and life was
gently slipping away. Her family gathered round her; for a little more she
lingered, speechless and apparently insensible; and, on January 22, 1901, she
died.

When, two days previously, the news of the approaching end had been made
public, astonished grief had swept over the country. It appeared as if some
monstrous reversal of the course of nature was about to take place. The vast
majority of her subjects had never known a time when Queen Victoria had not
been reigning over them. She had become an indissoluble part of their whole
scheme of things, and that they were about to lose her appeared a scarcely
possible thought. She herself, as she lay blind and silent, seemed to those
who watched her to be divested of all thinking--to have glided already,
unawares, into oblivion. Yet, perhaps, in the secret chambers of
consciousness, she had her thoughts, too. Perhaps her fading mind called up
once more the shadows of the past to float before it, and retraced, for the
last time, the vanished visions of that long history--passing back and back,
through the cloud of years, to older and ever older memories--to the spring
woods at Osborne, so full of primroses for Lord Beaconsfield--to Lord
Palmerston's queer clothes and high demeanour, and Albert's face under the
green lamp, and Albert's first stag at Balmoral, and Albert in his blue and
silver uniform, and the Baron coming in through a doorway, and Lord M.
dreaming at Windsor with the rooks cawing in the elm-trees, and the Archbishop
of Canterbury on his knees in the dawn, and the old King's turkey-cock
ejaculations, and Uncle Leopold's soft voice at Claremont, and Lehzen with the
globes, and her mother's feathers sweeping down towards her, and a great old
repeater-watch of her father's in its tortoise-shell case, and a yellow rug,
and some friendly flounces of sprigged muslin, and the trees and the grass at
Kensington.



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End Project Gutenberg Etext of Queen Victoria by Lytton Strachey