Queen Victoria
by
Lytton Strachey
Part 2 out of 4
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;
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