THE LADIES.
Pray remember
The tenth of November.
It then proceeded to give news of various Court ladies who were emulating, or hoping to emulate, the example of the Queen, running something as below:—“The Hon. Mrs. Leicester Stanhope intends to go to Brighton in the autumn, and has retained the services of the celebrated Dr. Bradwell for early in November. The Duchess of Somerset has accepted invitations, for she feels sure that there are no family reasons to interfere. Lady Cork thinks she might as well stay in London.” “Yes,” replies the grim Lord Allen, “the London fogs will shelter you from observation,” &c.
Lord Melbourne was facetiously reported as giving a dinner-party on Her Majesty’s birthday, and proposing a toast in the following terms:—
“Fill up to the brim, a bright Burgundy bumper,
With the drain of the goblet resound the loud cheer,
Here’s luck in November, and may a braw thumper
In the shape of a Prince glad the close of the year.”
In June the Queen seemed to have come to a rather uncomfortable, not to say morbid, decision; for Admiral Knox tells us that she felt sure that she should die in her confinement, and she also made up her mind to let the event happen at Claremont, where she had everything replaced just as it had been in Princess Charlotte’s time, even to the furniture in the bedroom in which she died. These little plans absorbed her thoughts, and she was constantly running down to Claremont. Of course, her frame of mind and her curious intention were the subjects of gossip in the streets, and gruesome caricatures were published, one representing Victoria lying dead in bed with a dead child in her arms, and November printed beneath. We do not hear quite so much talk about “the good old times” as we did in my childhood, but I really think we should, in the good present times, have no social brutality to offer which would vie with this.
Fortunately there were many considerations which would necessarily defeat the Claremont House scheme, and the little Princess—who was born just after the trouble in the East, making her mother laughingly suggest that Turko-Egypto should be added to her names—first saw the light in Buckingham Palace. After the birth, as the Duke of Wellington was leaving the Palace he met Lord Hill, who made the usual inquiries about Her Majesty and the “little stranger,” to which the old Duke answered:
“Very fine child, and very red, very red; nearly as red as you, Hill!”—an allusion to Lord Hill’s claret-coloured complexion.
The Queen made a rapid recovery, and really behaved in such a healthy, normal way that the King of Hanover must at last have given up all hope of the English Throne. In the light of after events it is interesting to note that Victoria wrote to Leopold:—“I think, dearest uncle, you cannot really wish me to be the ‘mamma of a numerous family,’ for I think you will see with me the great inconvenience a large family would be to all of us, and particularly to the country, independent of the hardship and inconvenience to myself; men never think, at least seldom think, what a hard task it is for us women to go through this very often.”
The married life of the Queen was as methodical as her life had been from 1837 to 1840, but the Prince found the round of the Court too fatiguing and full of change, desiring to reduce Victoria’s programme to greater simplicity. He thought the late hours very trying, and though he was a lover of music would fall asleep before the evening ended. Lady Normanby gave a concert at which—wrote a Court lady to a friend—all “sang divinely, the Queen was charmed, and Cousin Albert looked beautiful and slept as quietly as usual, sitting by Lady Normanby.” I have also come across such comments as these: “We hear a great deal of the beauty and pleasing qualities of Prince Albert, who seems to be admired by all.” Stockmar recorded about this time, “The Prince improves morally and politically. I can say with truth that I love him like my son, and that he deserves it.”
It is not generally realised that when he came to England the Prince’s knowledge of English was not very good, and this, added to his generally reticent character, helped to make social life difficult for him, especially with men. He used to be very glad when Miss Spring-Rice was in waiting, as she spoke German fluently, so that he could talk with her of his home. Yet he slowly gained good will among the nobility, for he was known to be a good man, though he was never really popular with a large number. Our aristocrats were but just emerging from the bondage of the hard drinking, high gaming, loud swearing, and promiscuous love-making which had debased the Courts of the Georges and the last family of Princes, and they could not like a man who lived cleanly, did not swear, drink, bet or gamble, knew nothing of sport, and actually disliked horse-racing. The Prince was neither rash nor docile; he went his own way largely, and did not trouble enough to make friends with men, though he gradually attracted a few staunch loyalists of sober life. Between him and others there grew a barrier of frigid reserve, which in only rare cases was ever broken. The papers did all they could to accentuate this difference; his inability to ride well was made the subject of constant comment, and his musical and literary tastes amused the scoffer. He tried, however, to please when he could, and he determined to show that he could ride as well as most men; but in April he had what might have been a very bad accident. He rode to a staghound meeting at Ascot, on a horse which was a vicious thoroughbred, and it bolted as soon as the Prince mounted. He kept his seat and turned the animal round several times in the hope of stopping it, but at last he was knocked off against a tree, fortunately not sustaining much injury. Later he followed the hunt and drove four-in-hand; but it is almost pathetic to realise how the Queen must have scanned the papers and grieved at every sneer levelled at her husband, while she constantly urged him to remedy anything which to English eyes seemed a defect.
Indeed, the tendency all round was to press him into a mould, to treat him as the Mrs. Gamps of old thought it right to treat the heads of new-born babes: to press here and massage there, in an endeavour to present a good round even surface; and the Queen was just as busy as the Press in her endeavour to work on the skull of Albert’s habits and leanings. He had really no use for society in the ordinary sense; he had no small talk, he could not expand or be confidential. But he had very definite tastes of his own; he would have liked to surround himself with literary and scientific people, artists, and musicians; for recreation he loved a game of double chess, in which he was proficient, but even double chess every night began to pall. As for the rest, it had to be given up, not because the critics of society disapproved, but because his little wife had no fancy for the invasion of their home by intellectual people. She felt that she could not sustain conversation on abstruse subjects, and she always liked to be in the centre of the picture; any other place she would have looked upon as an insult. It is curious that we have had imposed upon us such fulsome laudations of Victoria’s education, for she showed little evidence of superiority in that respect. She could speak French, play the piano, sing prettily, and paint a little, but none of these things really touch the mind, and her mind had been as neglected as were the minds of most of the women of her time. Thus the society around her knew of nothing better than small talk and twiddling the keynotes of a piano; and to this the Prince had to succumb, even at last giving up his chess to join the Queen’s circle in a round game of cards!
They played vingt-et-un for money, everyone being desired to have new coins with which to play, and Victoria loved some curious game called nainjaune. They spun counters and rings; Georgiana Liddell, when she became a Maid of Honour, wrote of this:—
“The Prince began spinning counters, so I took to spinning rings, and the Queen was delighted. It always entertains me to see the little things that amuse Her Majesty and the Prince, instead of their looking bored as people so often do in English society.”
It is wonderful that people never seemed to realise that there might be something more for grown-up people than a choice between spinning rings or round games and boredom. But there is something very attractive in the picture of this healthy young pair playing their childish games, wandering in the Home Park at Windsor, with pigeons alighting on their shoulders, feeding the animals and rare aquatic birds imported by the Prince, and showing kindness to all their great household; the married lovers sometimes having tête-à-tête dinners without watchful or obsequious eyes upon them, and just beginning to take politics seriously. For Melbourne, the beloved tutor and friend, was gone, and the Queen was beginning to think and decide for herself, with her husband’s help.
Once a riddle, purporting to be from the Bishop of Salisbury, who was said to offer a reward to anyone who solved it, was sent to the Queen. She and her husband spent four days over it, and then called in the assistance of Charles Murray, Comptroller of the Household, who found out for them that the Bishop knew nothing of the matter, had not sent the riddle, and believed the whole thing to be a hoax.
Queen Victoria seems to have been thoroughly liked by her Maids of Honour, of whom there were eight—two waiting at a time for a period of three months—and who were generally expected to be good pianists. Often they would be called upon to play duets with the Queen and Prince Consort, and one of them made the remark, after playing a difficult Beethoven piece, “It was quite a relief to find that we all played the last bar at the same time”; adding, “I enjoy nothing so much as seeing the Queen in this quiet way, and I often wish that those who don’t know Her Majesty could see how kind and gracious she is when she is perfectly at her ease, and able to throw off the restraint and form which must and ought to be observed when she is in public.”
QUEEN VICTORIA.
From a Drawing by Drummond, 1842.
Victoria would say politely to one of these girls, “If it is convenient, come down any evening and try some music,” “But I might come down at the wrong moment,” answered Miss Liddell on one occasion. “Then I will send for you, and if you are at home you can come,” replied the Queen. “I did laugh in my sleeve,” commented Georgiana, in recording this, “for except when I go to St. George’s, by no chance do I go anywhere.”
It was this young lady who said, on coming back to her duty, “Everything else changes, but the life here never does, and is always exactly the same from day to day, and year to year.” She also tells us that the Maid of Honour’s chief duty seemed to be to offer the Queen her bouquet before dinner each night. The Maids of Honour were each given a good sitting-room, with a piano in it, which they occupied when not on duty, and there was a special room downstairs in which they could receive guests, for such were not allowed in their private rooms.
But despite the distressing sameness and stability at Court, these girls saw everyone who came. It was also one of their duties to receive any important lady, such as the Duchess of Kent, on her arrival, and to take her to her room, and the Maid in Waiting always sat to the left of the Queen, being generally taken in to dinner by Melbourne. When the King of Prussia came over to the christening of the Prince of Wales in January, 1842, he brought various Germans with him, among them being Colonel von Brauhitch, a young-looking man and a great flirt. He paid much attention to Georgiana Liddell, and asked when he might be allowed to pay his respects to her. The girl laughed, and told him no visitors were allowed into her sitting-room, not even her brother. The Colonel could not believe this; surely, surely she had mistaken her instructions! Oh, but he must ask the Baroness. So he went off to Baroness Lehzen, who confirmed what Miss Liddell had said, much to his sorrow and disgust at the “tyranny” exercised. He went on paying her such marked attention that one day old General Neumann came up to them, saying, “But, my dear friend, do you forget that you are a grandfather?” Which made the flirtatious Colonel extremely indignant, as it happened to be true.
Queen Victoria revived the old practice, so popular with George III., of walking on the terrace at Windsor on Sunday afternoons, and of allowing her loyal subjects free ingress thereto. “You never saw anything like the crowds of people. It was rather unpleasant when Her Majesty walked among them, for, though the gentlemen tried to give way, the people pressed up so, it was difficult to keep them back. I suppose it is right that the Queen should show herself to her subjects sometimes, but I am always glad when these walks are over.” So said Miss Liddell after she became Lady Bloomfield.
CHAPTER XIV
QUEEN VICTORIA’S TORY MINISTRY
“And statesmen at her council met
Who knew the seasons when to take
Occasion by the hand, and make
The bounds of freedom wider yet
By shaping some august decree,
Which kept her throne unshaken still,
Broad-based upon her people’s will,
And compass’d by the inviolate sea.”
—Tennyson.
In September, 1841, the Queen found herself face to face with another political crisis, and Melbourne tendered his resignation once more. He went to Windsor to accomplish this dread deed, and it is said that he showed no appearance of depression, but seemed to consider the change only as it might affect the Queen.
“For four years I have seen you every day,” he said, “but it is so different now from what it would have been in 1839; the Prince understands everything so well.” Indeed, he warmed the Queen’s affectionate heart by the way he both spoke and wrote of Albert. “I have formed the highest opinion of His Royal Highness’s judgment, temper, and discretion, and cannot but feel a great consolation and security in the reflection that your Majesty has the inestimable advantage of such advice and assistance. I feel certain that your Majesty cannot do better than have recourse to it whenever it is needed, and rely upon it with confidence.” This made the Queen very pleased and proud, coming as it did from a man who was, as she herself said, no flatterer.
Thenceforth Melbourne had to endure not only loss of occupation, but of the society of one whom he had grown to love as a daughter, and in whose company he had for years passed several hours each day. “He consorted constantly with the Queen on the most easy and delightful footing, and he is continually banished from her presence.”
However, he fell naturally into those habits which were his before his long spell of power, and ere a year had passed he had a slight stroke of paralysis, which kept him a prisoner for months.
The resignation of the Whig Government naturally brought once more to the front the vexed question of the Bedchamber Ladies. Extraordinary care was taken that the Queen’s susceptibilities should not be hurt; Melbourne, on the one hand, conferring with the Royal pair and with Anson and Peel, and being approached by the last-named with pacific suggestions. Peel was terribly nervous, and desirous to do nothing that would give pain to Her Majesty, saying, “I would waive every pretension to office, I declare to God, sooner than that my acceptance of it should be attended with any personal humiliation to the Queen.”
The Mistress of the Robes, the sweet-natured Duchess of Sutherland, sent in her resignation, she being the only person who for the future would be required to be of the same party as the Government, and she was replaced by the Duchess of Buccleuch. The exclusively Whig character of the Household had been broken soon after the crisis in 1839 by the Queen’s invitation to Lady Sandwich, the wife of a Tory peer, to fill a vacant post. The Duchess of Bedford (i.e., Lady Tavistock) and Lady Normanby also resigned, and with these changes Peel was content. Thus the principle that the ladies about the Queen should belong to the governing party, and be changed when the party changed, was never established, and after that time the Queen’s ladies were chosen irrespective of political considerations, excepting the Mistress of the Robes.
Victoria was desolate at the loss of Melbourne. Writing to King Leopold, she said: “You don’t say that you sympathise with me in my present heavy trial, the heaviest I have ever had to endure, and which will be a sad heart-breaking to me”—and Melbourne did his utmost to cheer her and to insist upon her showing friendly feelings towards the new Government. But she spent the last evening on which the old Household remained in a sorrowful silence. “Scarcely a word was spoken at dinner, but later on tears and regrets broke forth with little restraint.”
In considering the ways of Queen Victoria during her early career, I am forced to recognise the fact that when once she really accepted an impression she could not let it fade. This is curiously exemplified in several ways, small as well as large. Thus when at the end of August most of the arrangements had been made for the formation of a Tory Administration, she somewhat frightened her husband by telling him that, seeing how the Tories had treated him nearly two years earlier in the matter of the annuity, he ought now to keep them at a distance. They would be sure to come and see him and to flatter him, and his part was to resist them and refuse to see them, at least for some time. A most extraordinary piece of advice! The curious fact about it is that Prince Albert did not laugh at it; he was really troubled, and told his secretary to repeat this to Melbourne, and ask him to influence Her Majesty to different thoughts.
Victoria’s treatment of her mother and her uncle Leopold arose, I feel convinced, from the same limitation, aided, perhaps, by a strong dislike to appear in leading-strings to anyone. The articles in The Times could hardly have had influence enough to cause this dislike, which was probably the outcome of her character, but those articles may have indicated a certain policy to her which she followed too rigidly. This led her to slight her mother and to exclude her uncle, as he reminded her, from the ceremonies attending her accession, her coronation, and her marriage. In his letter written in January, 1841, a slight bitterness of spirit and a wounded heart is shown when he says:—
“I should not have bored you by my presence, but the act of christening is, in my eyes, a sort of closing of the first cyclus of your dear life.” He then reminds her of his actions at her father’s death, how he went down to Sidmouth two days before that happened, and how so great was the Duchess’s need that she could not have left Sidmouth had he not been there to settle everything for her; and how, when the little party arrived in London, they were treated very unkindly by George IV. The copy of this letter, which is to be found in “The Letters of Queen Victoria,” recently published by command of His late Majesty, ends with: “I wished to assist at the christening of the little Princess, an event which is of great importance....” It is something of a relief to know that he was one of the sponsors to the Princess Royal.
When about a year later the Prince of Wales was christened, a great debate arose as to who should be the chief godfather, and Stockmar advised the exclusion of Leopold on the ground that both he and the King of Hanover could not be invited, and if the Belgian King were sponsor the Hanoverian King would be very angry; so to avoid this a mutually friendly Sovereign was asked to stand, and the King of Prussia accepted the invitation, Ernest of Hanover being furiously angry and considering himself slighted. This led to an attempt at pacification when Princess Alice was christened, and he was then invited to be sponsor. He promised to fill the post, and arrived in London two or three days after that fixed for the ceremony, “everyone asking why the King did not arrive or why the christening was not put off.” He stayed some weeks, showing that he resented the fact that Victoria occupied the throne of his fathers, and trying to belittle Prince Albert. During his visit Princess Augusta, daughter of the Duke of Cambridge, was married to the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. All the Royalties were at the wedding, and there was a little amusing byplay in the vestry when names were appended to the register. While Victoria was signing the King of Hanover slipped to her side, intending to take the pen from her and add his name in front of Prince Albert; but the Queen saw his design and moved quickly round the table to where the Prince stood, had the book passed to her there, made her signature, and then gave the pen to the Prince, so by the time Ernest had also got round the table the deed was done. Once while in London the King asked the Prince to go for a walk with him, but the latter objected that they might be troubled with crowds.
“Oh, never mind that,” replied the King; “I was still more unpopular than you are now, and used to walk about with perfect impunity.”
Altogether he seems to have annoyed his niece very much, for she refused to go to Ascot that year, and it was currently reported that the reason was that she would have been obliged to have a houseparty at Windsor, which would have necessitated the inclusion of the King of Hanover among her guests.
While writing of christenings, I might tell the story of how the escort for the King of Prussia went to fetch him from Ostend. The squadron was under the command of Lord Hardwick, and it had a series of adventures which ought to justify the theory of ill-luck. His ship was the Firebrand, and it, with several other steamers and frigates, prepared to start on the Tuesday. Just as steam got up the Firebrand upheld its name by bursting its boiler. This was repaired during the day, and they started at night, promptly going aground in the darkness without getting damaged; but in the fog, which was very thick, one of the companion steamers ran into the Firebrand and broke off its figure-head. The third steamer ran ashore and could not be moved. In defiance of the advice of the pilots, Lord Hardwick insisted upon pushing on to the Nore. There it was found that the two frigates would, though the reason was not given, be unable to cross the Channel, and the second steamer broke her paddles, so the Firebrand steamed alone into Ostend Harbour at about the time that the King arrived there. The King decided to remain with the King of the Belgians that night, and Lord Hardwick remained on his ship. Just as he got to bed his cook walked over the ship’s side into the water, and one of the sailors slipped down the ladder and got hold of him. Lord Hardwick rushed on deck in his shirt, and, shouting for a boat, threw out a rope to the sailor and asked if he had got the cook safe.
“Yes,” said the man, who was so deep in the water that it was up to his neck, “yes, I’ve got his head tight between my knees.”
Fortunately at that moment a boat took them both in, the cook apparently dead. However, hot blankets, rubbing, and the pump restored animation, and Lord Hardwick was the longest sufferer, as he caught a very severe cold.
The economic conditions were so bad at this time that scarcely anything could raise the mob to enthusiasm. Why should a man with an empty stomach throw his hat in the air and shout for joy because his Queen passes him in the street? It is far more likely that he will scowl and say, “She has every luxury; I have nothing,” as he would say it of any rich person. Fanny Kemble discoursed upon the attitude of the people during the visit of the King of Prussia, saying that the concourse was immense, but that she was much surprised at the entire want of excitement and enthusiasm in the vast multitude who thronged and all but choked up the Queen’s way. All hats were lifted, but there was not a hatful of cheers, and the whole thing produced a disagreeable effect of coldness, indifference, and constraint. She went on to say that one person believed that it was nineteenth-century breeding which was too exquisite to allow of the mob shouting; and another person, who was a very warm Whig, thought the silence was to be accounted for by Paisley starvation and Windsor banquets. She concluded that when Horace Wilson was crossing the Park at the time that the Queen was driving through it, there was some, but not much, decided hissing.
When Queen Victoria found herself compelled to accept Peel as her chief Minister, she did not attempt to break off all intercourse with Lord Melbourne, though great pressure was put upon her from all sides, and especially by Stockmar, to make her refrain from either seeing him or writing to him. Both she absolutely refused to do, and for a time letters passed constantly between them. The German Baron grew almost hysterical over these letters, and did not hesitate to convey to Lord Melbourne his conviction that he was acting dishonourably and jeopardising the Queen’s honour, for nothing would convince him that Melbourne was not basely discussing politics with Her Majesty, doing all in his power to undermine Peel’s work, and nursing the prospect of a return to the headship of affairs himself. Stockmar acted always upon the supposition that men were evil, and Melbourne’s honour and magnanimity had no weight with him. Peel, however, was more just. Before he went to the Queen, Melbourne sent him a message, advising him of the things that the Queen liked or disliked, and doing his utmost to help his rival to obtain the Queen’s favour. On the receipt of this message Peel said how kind it was of Lord Melbourne, and, on the subject of the Queen’s friendship for her old Minister being mentioned, added that it was ridiculous to suppose that he could feel any jealousy, that he had full reliance on the Queen’s fairness, and that implicit confidence was the wisest course.
It is worthy of note that at the first dinner-party given to her new Ministers the programme of the evening was changed. The Queen was very gracious and good-humoured with Aberdeen, Peel, the Duke, and others. But when they went into the drawing-room Melbourne’s chair was gone, and, instead of showing herself interested in her guests, all the Ministers were set down to whist, so that there was no possibility of conversation. Victoria herself sat at her round table with Lady de la Warr and Lady Portman, and there was practically silence. That an exchange of ideas, not on political matters, might have been pleasant to the gentlemen, did not enter the little lady’s head.
Melbourne behaved with great courtesy to Stockmar, but he did not promise not to write to the Queen nor to answer her letters. Of all the people he knew, he loved her best; for four years he had been her constant companion and adviser; he had watched her with fatherly care through her trials, her mistakes, and her good fortune, and he took a pride in the development of character which he detected. He was ambitious for her, and believed that she was capable of greatness, and he did not in the least share Stockmar’s Teutonic hope that the Queen would be gradually absorbed in the nursery and leave affairs of State to other minds. The letters that passed between them had little or no reference to State affairs, and could have in no way been objected to by Peel if he had seen them.
From this time until his death there was an element of tragedy in the life of the ex-Premier. He was given by Stockmar—who first instructed the Prince as to his decisions and what he should say, and then acted as the mouthpiece for the Prince’s borrowed sentiments—the alternative either of obliterating himself as a politician, or of banishing himself entirely from the Queen’s friendship. A short time after the change of Government Victoria asked him to come and stay a few days at Windsor, and not knowing how this would be regarded, yet wishing to accept, Melbourne wrote to Prince Albert to know if such a visit would be feasible. Albert was afraid to accept the responsibility, and consulted Stockmar, who wrote a memorandum charging the late Prime Minister with committing an essential injustice to Sir Robert Peel by continuing to correspond with the Queen, and also by asking the Prince to give an opinion upon this suggested visit.
He sent Anson, who admired and loved his old master, to deliver this condemnation. Melbourne read the memorandum twice attentively with compressed lips. Then Anson repeated the lesson Stockmar had taught him in addition, saying that he had better meet the Queen first in general society in London, that the Prince thought that Melbourne’s own sense of right should have enabled him to decide about his visit, and that his recent speech in the House of Lords, which identified him with the Opposition, added another impediment to his seeing Her Majesty.
Melbourne had been sitting on a sofa, and at this he jumped up, striding up and down the room exclaiming “in a violent frenzy,” I quote from Baron Stockmar, “God eternally damn it!—&c., &c. Flesh and blood cannot stand this. I only spoke upon the defensive, which Ripon’s speech at the beginning of the session rendered quite necessary. I cannot be expected to give up my position in the country, neither do I think that it is to the Queen’s interest that I should.”
Melbourne continued to lead the Opposition, and when affairs were more settled he occasionally went to see the Queen, but after he had a slight stroke he seemed a broken man, never recovering his strength. In December, 1843, Georgiana Liddell wrote of him: “Lord Melbourne goes away to-day. He was not well yesterday, and had a slight touch of gout; it always makes me sad to see him, he is so changed.” When the Queen visited Chatsworth Melbourne was invited to make one of the guests, which gave him great pleasure, though it was doubtful whether the excitement was good for him, for a dreadful depression seized upon him afterwards, for he knew that his day was over, and chafed and fretted under the knowledge.
Another man who was beginning to show many signs of age was the Duke of Wellington, of whom Greville said, I think erroneously, that “he was a great man in little things, but a little man in great matters.” All through the years from about 1834 Society seems to have been watching for the Duke’s collapse. In June, 1838, one diarist remarked: “It is a sad thing to see how the Duke is altered in appearance, and what a stride old age has made upon him. He is much deafer than he was, he is whiter, his head is bent, his shoulders are raised, and there are muscular twitches in his face, not altogether new, but of a more marked character.”
Prince Albert had the good sense to make a personal friend of this the most remarkable man in the kingdom. Someone gives an account of the two pacing the garden together in earnest conversation, and on passing them being amused to find that the Duke was giving a long discourse about larders, “it might have been a French cook instead of the great hero of Waterloo.” When the changes of administration occurred in 1841, it was the Duke who gave expression to Albert’s desire that those who came into office should be of “spotless character.” However strongly Wellington at one time opposed the repeal of the Corn Laws, he lived to be proud of the deed, for his death did not take place until 1852.
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.
As to the “spotless character” upon which the Prince insisted from the men forming the new Tory Administration, it naturally caused terrible mortification and anger among those able men who could not show a clean bill morally; and in spite of the excellent principle it contained it was likely to be a public danger, as it is by no means proved that the most moral man is also the best statesman. However, the Prince adhered to this all his life, thus doing much to purify English society, and after his death the Queen became much more strict than he had been on this point; indeed, it is doubtful whether Mrs. Norton would have been as kindly received in 1870 as she was in 1840. Lady Cardigan remarks that in 1857 “the Court was as narrow-minded as when poor Flora Hastings had been the victim of its lying slander.” But there was a difference; in 1839 the persecution of Flora Hastings had nothing to do with principle, it was caused by impulse and prejudice; in later years it became a principle that no woman, innocent or guilty, against whom slander had breathed, should set foot within the Palace. It was not so much a horror of sin itself as a conventional idea that the Court must set a good example, and according to the lax standard of Victorian times it was enough that the woman should suffer, the man was only banished if he were extremely and publicly bad. Even now our standard has risen, and we are beginning to think a light man as odious as a light woman, and are certainly not in favour of punishing one and letting the other off.
One curious prejudice that the Queen developed was her strong sentiment against a second marriage, she herself being the child of a happy second marriage, and feeling a great affection for her half-sister. This must have arisen from the sentimental side of her love for her husband, making her feel that so intimate a union as that of marriage could only be possible with one person, only she translated “possible” into “moral.” I do not think it was caused by any excess of religious convictions, for the Queen was not a slave to religious form, though she was devout. In 1844 she held a Drawing Room on the 25th of March, which was not only in Lent, but on the day of the Annunciation. “The Calverts are so shocked, and seem to think that Her Majesty will come to a sense of the enormity she is committing as Head of the Church and put off the Drawing Room. However, that remains to be seen!” writes a chronicler of small events.
Victoria gradually became absorbed in her new Government and new Prime Minister, and by 1844 had forgotten the old party almost as though it did not exist; indeed, in spite of the desire for aloofness from party politics expressed by Albert, she now seemed to regard the Whigs much as she once had regarded the Tories. Thus when the Russian Emperor came to England, and she gave parties in his honour, she invited all the Tories to meet him, and made a sparing choice among her old friends. So Lord John Russell, the then most noted leader among the Whigs, was left out of everything, and was never presented to the Emperor at all. Melbourne was, however, included, and the Emperor thanked him for coming to the breakfast and affording him the opportunity of meeting him.
But as the years went, Her Majesty saw less and less of the man without whom at one time she seemed unable to exist; the letters between them became restricted to the briefest notes at long intervals, and four years after their official parting a contemporary noted that Melbourne could not speak of the Queen without tears in his eyes, and another remarked, “She never cared a farthing for any of the late Cabinet but Melbourne, and has apparently ceased to care for him.”
This was not really according to fact; the Queen always felt an affection for her old Prime Minister, but as she grew more experienced she realised that his advice, though the best he could give, had not always been perfect, and that she in her girlish enthusiasm had not always seen things in their right proportion; thus, too late, she grew critical, and that somewhat altered her estimation of him. She also became more and more confident of Peel’s power to help her, and had little time to spend in writing to the man who was no longer of importance. “She never forgot to write him on his birthday,” one biographer announces triumphantly, but she did more than that, though the poor lonely Melbourne brooded sometimes until he felt himself neglected. It was unfortunate that he allowed his mind to dwell so much on his few years of Royal companionship and favour, that he found the knowledge of his failing powers so painful, and that he ever dreamed of taking the leadership of the House again. When the O’Connell trial was nearing its close, he remarked:
“There is not much chance of the House of Commons coming to a vote against Government; but still such a thing is possible, and I was kept awake half the night thinking, suppose such a thing did occur, and I was sent for to Windsor, what advice I should give the Queen.”... “It kept me awake,” he repeated, “and I determined that I would advise her not to let Mr. O’Connell be brought up for judgment.”
Once the Queen’s prejudice against Peel had disappeared, she felt more comfortable under his Government and its large majorities than she had done with the Whigs; and when Peel resigned at the end of 1845 in consequence of the publication by Delane of his new Corn Law policy, she felt as upset, they say, as when Melbourne resigned in 1839. She could do nothing, however, but send for Lord John Russell, and knowing how Melbourne would feel about being left out she wrote to him, saying that she knew that his health would preclude his taking office, but she hoped he would come and give her his counsel. She was at Cowes at the time, and he replied that he could not face the little crossing, it would be as bad for him as a voyage over the ocean. However, in spite of Russell’s gallant attempts, the somewhat overbearing Palmerston stood in the way of a Whig Cabinet. The Queen feared his foreign policy, and many of his colleagues disliked him. “Lord Palmerston is redeemed from the last extremity of political degradation by his cook,” was the spiteful saying of one of his opponents. So Peel came to the Queen’s assistance, and she received him back as joyfully almost as she had received Melbourne in 1839. It was not the Queen’s ladies this time, but the Queen’s Foreign Minister, who reinstated the old Government.
In 1842 the Queen and the Prince went on a visit to Scotland by boat. They were from all accounts charming on the journey, which was a slow one, taking three days; they took great interest in the ship, dining on deck in the midst of the sailors, making them dance, talking to the boatswain, &c. But Victoria got tired and impatiently wanted to land; as it was useless to do that before she arrived at Grantham Pier she became annoyed; as Greville says, her fault was impatience, inability to bear contradiction, and a desire always to go ahead. Thus as soon as she got into her carriage at Edinburgh, orders were given that the coachman should drive as fast as possible. At first they could scarcely move, for in its enthusiasm the crowd broke all bounds, pressed the soldiers out of the procession, and crushed close up to the carriage. When at last it was disengaged, the coachman went at a gallop through the city, the Queen being seen by no one. People had then, as now, been foolish enough to give great sums for windows and seats, the crowds which lined the streets had been waiting for hours, great labour had been spent to decorate the place, and all that a carriage might dash along bearing a Queen who did not see her subjects through a multitude of people who did not believe that she would have treated them so badly.
Honestly I think the explanation of her motive given by Greville and others is wrong, and that the dash through Edinburgh was caused by nervousness. Paisley was looked upon as one of the centres of disaffection, and Peel was in a state of fear about the whole expedition, acknowledging at the end of one day that “we have just completed the very nervous operation of taking the Queen in a low open carriage from Dalkeith to Dalway, sixteen miles through Canongate and High Street, and back by Leith in the evening.”
Thus when the street crowd hustled the soldiers and pressed so unceremoniously upon the Royal cortège, I think the whole party was inspired with fear for the Queen’s safety, and got out of the town as quickly as possible. This very nearly brought about the result dreaded, for the Edinburgh people were very angry; they talked of abandoning the illuminations, and a public riot nearly took place. This was prevented, however, by the immediate arrangement being made for a great procession on another day.
In 1843 the Royal pair went to visit the French King at Eu, Victoria’s first visit to the Continent. Everything was done to please the visitors, but Lady Bloomfield gives an amusing account of the details. She says that there were curious contradictions in the stateliness of the arrangements made by the King for their comfort. The carriages sent to fetch the Royal party from the shore were char-a-bancs, and though the first was drawn by twelve caparisoned horses they were large and clumsy animals. There was but one driver in front, and three footmen in State livery behind, with many outriders in all kinds of liveries on all sorts of horses, some of them wretched beasts. The chief amusement each day was to go for a picnic, driving for several hours to a wood or a ruin over unmade roads with deep ruts and huge stones, the folk in the char-a-bancs being bumped and shaken to pieces. One night the Corps de l’Opera came from Paris to play before the visitors, and brought with them two pieces for selection, one ridiculing the English, and the other too improper to be acted before the Queen.
It was on the 29th of May in 1842 that a second mad attempt was made on Her Majesty’s life, and it needed but one instance of this sort to prove how courageous were both the Queen and her husband. She was returning from church on the Sunday, and the ladies in the second carriage noticed that the Royal carriage stopped in Birdcage Walk. On reaching the Palace they also noticed that the Prince looked very annoyed and went away with the equerries; the Queen, who was quite calm and collected, going as usual up the grand staircase to her apartments, talking to her ladies, discussing the sermon and dismissing them as was her custom. The next day Matilda Paget and Georgiana Liddell remained all the afternoon expecting a summons to drive with the Queen, but none came, and at about six o’clock Her Majesty departed with Prince Albert in an open carriage. Georgiana went for a walk in the Palace gardens, grumbling that she had been kept in for nothing, but when she got back she was horrified to learn that the Queen had been shot at by a lad named Francis. In the evening Victoria broke off a conversation with Sir Robert Peel to say:
“I dare say, Georgy, you were surprised at not driving with me this afternoon, but as we returned from church yesterday a man presented a pistol at the carriage window, which flashed in the pan; we were so taken by surprise that he had time to escape, so I knew what was hanging over me, and was determined to expose no life but my own.” She added that when the young man had fired again that afternoon the report had been less loud than it was when Oxford fired at her, and that she should not have noticed it had she not been expecting it the whole time she was driving.
This youth of twenty was transported, but six weeks later a hunchback named Bean was seen to present a pistol at Her Majesty, and was taken into custody, but there was a difficulty in that the police would not at first believe in the charge, and let the man go. Thus, when convinced that the matter was serious, they collected all the hunchbacks they could find until they had about sixty at the police station. Admiral Knox says of this in one of his letters:
“Did you see in the papers the account of the attempt on the life of the Queen? You know it was by a hunchback boy, and I heard that when the police set out in pursuit of him, all the hunchbacks in the neighbourhood were arrested. There were no less than fifty or sixty assembled at the station house, and they were all quarrelling and fighting, each saying to the other, ‘Now confess that you did it, and let us off.’ I think it must have been a most absurd scene.”
Bean, however, was recognised, and as his attempt had been only of a half-hearted sort, he was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment. These foolish actions were really induced by a desire for notoriety, and they bring to mind the boy Jones who on several occasions was found secreted in the palace, his inquisitiveness leading to definite results and much needed reform.
This boy, when about fifteen, first appeared in December of 1838, in the dress of a sweep, being found in the marble hall of Buckingham Palace at five o’clock in the morning. He made a dart for the door, but was captured in the Palace gardens. He had either come down a chimney or tried to get up one, for marks of soot were found in many bedrooms. A sword and some linen had been taken from one room, in another he had well larded himself with bear’s-grease, in another he had broken a valuable picture of Queen Victoria and abstracted two letters. He told various tales, saying that he had lived in the Palace for months and had been behind a chair when Cabinet meetings had been held, also that he came from Hertfordshire. However, he was proved to be the son of a tailor named Jones, who lived in York Street, Westminster, and it was also proved that he had always stated a determination to see the inside of the Palace. When he was tried the matter was regarded as an escapade, and he went free.
This youth had been entirely forgotten when, eleven days after the birth of the Princess Royal in 1841, a young man was discovered lying under the sofa in the Queen’s dressing-room, which adjoined the chamber in which she lay. He was short, dirty, repulsive-looking, and about seventeen. It was Jones again, who said he had entered the Palace twice by scaling the wall and getting in at a window, and had been there from Tuesday night to one o’clock on Thursday morning, secreting himself under different beds. He said he had sat on the throne and heard the baby cry. His punishment was three months in the House of Correction. Of him Samuel Rogers said he must be a descendant of In-i-go Jones, and The Satirist and other papers treated him to a few remarks, among them being:—
“Now he in chains and in the prison garb is
Mourning the crime that couples Jones with darbies.”
Jones left prison on March 2nd, and on the 15th of that month one of the extra sergeants of police put on in the Palace in consequence of these incursions, saw someone peeping through a glass door in the Marble Hall. It was Jones again, who had raided the pantries and carried a selection of food to a Royal apartment, where he had been feasting. He had another three months in the House of Correction with the addition of hard labour, and when that was over he was persuaded—persuaded sounds better than compelled, though it sometimes means the same thing—to go to sea. Punch gave an amusing account of his exploits, which ended with the following lines:—
“One night, returnin’ home to bed,
I walked through Pim-li-co,
And twiggin’ of the Palass, sed,
‘I’m Jones, and In-i-go.’
But afore I could get out, my boys,
Polliseman 20A,
He caught me by the corderoys,
And lugged me right away.
My cuss upon Lord Melbun, and
On Johnny Russ-al-so,
That forced me from my native land
Across the vaves to go-o-oh.
But all their spiteful arts is vain
My spirits down to keep;
I hope I’ll soon git back again,
To take another peep.”
CHAPTER XV
QUEEN VICTORIA’S HOME
“I am born to this position; I must take it, and neither you nor I can help or hinder me. Surely, then, I need not fret myself to guard my own dignity.”—Emerson.
This incident of an ordinary street boy getting three times into Buckingham Palace without being seen, spending hours there each time and wandering at will about the building, was naturally the talk of London. It was found that there was a space between the Marble Arch—which then formed the entrance in front of the Palace—and its gates which a boy could easily get through, but this was no excuse for the opportunity he seems to have had of entering the building itself. Extra police and watchmen were put on at night, but Stockmar considered the matter serious enough to warrant study, and he discovered a most curious state of things in the arrangement of the Royal Household, a discovery which led to a general and much needed domestic revolution; and in consequence, through the executive ability of Stockmar and the alleged economic spirit of Prince Albert, to years of dissension and discontent among the servants, great and little; from which at last arose a system of domestic comfort which allowed the Queen to be mistress in her own house. In actual fact, the conditions under which the Household had been run would have made a splendid subject for a Gilbertian opera.
BARON STOCKMAR.
The chief officers of the Household were in the same position and doing the same tasks as they had filled and done for centuries, and though all the details of their work had changed gradually no new rules had been made for their guidance. These chief officers were the Lord High Steward, the Lord Chamberlain, and the Master of the Horse. These three were also great officers of State, were changed with every Ministry—between 1830 and 1844 one was changed five and another six times—they could not reside at the Palace, and often could not be in the same place as the Court. They were chosen by the Ministers for their political strength and opinions, without any reference to their powers as good housekeepers, good organisers, or good masters. This led to the curious situation that the Masters of the Queen’s Household could rarely attend to their duties, which had to be deputed to people who were perhaps incapable, or also not on the spot, and that in many trivial ways Victoria had no authority in her own home. There was no domestic to whom she could give orders, because the servants were under absentee masters, and neither she nor the Prince could ensure having a well-warmed room to live in. She was, in fact, so great a personage that it was arranged that every order to the servants should pass through other lips than hers, and as those other lips were generally miles away from the Royal domestic scene, the orders, if they were of a serious nature and outside the sphere of ordinary servants, were not given at all. So the Queen sat and shivered in her drawing-room, paid enormously for candles to light a room which would be in darkness when needed, and could not from inside tell the state of the weather because of the dirt on the windows.
There was also a lack of co-operation or agreement among these three high officials, so that there was never any unity of action. This was the more absurd, as the labour had to be delegated or re-delegated to actual servants who dwelt on the spot, and who did not seem to have the wit to do their work in conjunction. In no part of the Royal Household was there any real discipline, order, or dignity about the domestic work. The servants themselves often did not know who was responsible for certain duties, and, servant-like, were always careful never to do anyone’s work but their own. The great officials themselves were said not to know which parts of the Castle or Palace were under the charge of the Lord Steward or the Lord Chamberlain. When George III. was King the Lord Steward had charge of the whole Palace except the Royal apartments; in the next two reigns he was also held accountable for the ground floor, including the hall and the dining-rooms. But when Victoria came to the throne he gave over the grand hall and other lower rooms to the Lord Chamberlain, which seems to have left the mastership of the kitchen, sculleries, and pantries vague.
The authority over a room conferred responsibility over the most trivial matters, such as the laying of the fire, the cleaning of the windows, the brushing of the carpet. This authority had no place outside the room, nor outside the house; thus the Lord Chamberlain or his deputy might order the windows of the Queen’s boudoir to be cleaned inside, yet it remained for the Master of the Horse, who had authority over the woods and forests, to arrange when the outside should be cleaned. This sort of thing was complicated by the fact that the housekeepers, pages, housemaids, &c., were required to give obedience to the Lord Chamberlain, while the footmen, livery porters, and under butlers, being clothed and paid by the Master of the Horse, owned allegiance to him; and the rest of the servants, cooks, porters, &c., obeyed the Lord Steward.
In contemporary writings one frequently comes across hints of the discomfort of the Royal palaces, the draughts, the cold, the bad lighting, and it is scarcely to be wondered at, seeing the curious arrangements made by Her Majesty’s Ministers for her comfort. Victoria, feeling the cold especially one day, sent a messenger to Sir Frederick Watson, then Master of the Household, complaining that the dining-room was always cold. That perplexed gentleman, who either had no initiative or who knew that interference would be useless, replied gravely to the messenger:
“You see, properly speaking, it is not our fault, for the Lord Steward lays the fire and the Lord Chamberlain lights it.”
As to the lighting of the Palace, it was the duty of the Lord Chamberlain to buy the lamps, and see that there were sufficient both of them and of candles; but the Lord Steward was responsible for filling, cleaning, cutting, and lighting them.
Supposing a pane of glass was broken, so involved were the conditions for getting it repaired that it might be weeks before the necessary authority could be obtained. If the kitchen window happened to be smashed, the following process would have to be gone through. The chief cook would write and sign a request for the replacing of the glass, definitely describing where it was needed; this was countersigned by the Clerk of the Kitchen, then it had to be signed by the Master of the Household; from him it was taken to the Lord Chamberlain’s office, where it awaited his presence and pleasure. Having received his invaluable signature, it was then laid before the Clerk of the Works under the Woods and Forest Department. By the time the workman was ordered to put in the window it was not improbable that months had elapsed, and one really wonders whether the Queen’s cook did not resort to the time-honoured use of brown paper.
It is true that while these anomalies were going on there was a Master of the Household, but then his authority, which was of an attenuated character, was confined to the Lord Steward’s Department, and was there quite undefined; while the servants under the Lord Chamberlain, comprising the housemaids, housekeepers, and pages, were entirely outside his jurisdiction.
This naturally had its bad effect upon the servants, who were left without any real master. They went off duty when they chose, remained absent for hours on the day when they were especially expected to be in attendance, and committed any irregularity without anyone to reprimand them. The footmen, who slept ten or twelve in a dormitory, might smoke or drink there, but if anyone were the wiser, certainly there was no one who was in a position to remonstrate.
It is almost impossible to imagine a worse regulated establishment than that of the little lady who was the First Person in the Kingdom, yet who had not power to ensure decent attendance from her servants. I wonder if she was quite conscious of the inconvenience and indignity of it all, whether she knew the straits to which her visitors were sometimes reduced, and whether she felt a pang of shame at her enforced position of inaction. Guests might arrive at Windsor, and find no one to welcome them or to show them their rooms. Proper communication was not established among the innumerable servants; for the housemaids who obeyed the Lord Chamberlain, and who prepared the rooms, did not come into communication with the guests; and the footmen, who were under the Lord Steward, were not authorised to see to this matter; indeed, it was quite possible that most of the footmen were, in light and irresponsible fashion, seeing to their own business when the guests appeared. It all seems to have depended upon the right housekeeper being more or less accidentally in the right spot at the right moment, and she was not in the department of the Master of the Household. The usual course in such a case was to send a servant, if one could be found, to the porter’s lodge, where a list of rooms, &c., was kept. It was also no unusual thing for a visitor to be at a loss to find the drawing-room at night. He or she would start from the bedroom with more or less confidence, perhaps take a wrong turn, and wander about helpless and alone, one account says for an hour, finding no servants to give assistance to them, and coming across no one of whom the way could be asked.
When “The Boy Jones”—as Punch delighted to name him—made his surreptitious visits, the public blamed those on whom depended the regulations for protecting the Queen. But there was no responsible person in the Palace at the time. The Lord Chamberlain was in Staffordshire, and the porters were not in his department; the Lord Steward was not in the Palace, and had nothing to do with the pages and other people nearest to the Royal person; nor could the responsibility be fixed on the Master of the Household, who was only a subordinate officer in the Lord Steward’s department. It did not occur to any of these good people, nor to the Government, that something more was needed than the adding of an iron bar to the front gate or placing an extra policeman in the front hall; and it was left to Stockmar to cause the whole arrangements of the Palace to be reconstructed. He advised that the three great officers of the Court, with their respective departments, should retain their connection with the political system of the country, but that each should in his own sphere be induced to delegate as much of his authority as was necessary to the maintenance of the order, security, and discipline of the Palace to one official, who should always live at Court, and be responsible to the three departmental chiefs, but at the same time be able to secure unity of action in the use of the powers delegated to him.
As the abuses had been going on for many years, Stockmar’s suggestions and interference gave rise to violent feeling and much bitterness, and it was some years before the storm subsided into calm. I have come across an account of King William’s going to Ascot in 1833, when the Royal Household seems to have been absolutely disreputable, for all the King’s grooms got drunk every day, excepting (seemingly) one man, and he was killed going home from the races. What an argument for the virtue of drunkenness! The person who described the event added that no one exercised any authority over these servants, and the household ran riot. Favourite abuses of this kind were not easily abolished, but the Prince Consort accepted Stockmar’s advice and carried his suggestions into effect, firmly resisting all attempts to evade them, and appointing the Master of the Household as the delegate of the three departmental chiefs.
One interference in the Household led to another, and soon remarkable changes were made. Stockmar was doubtless at the back of them all, but upon the Prince Consort fell the odium. He had been brought up too economically not to know the value of money, and, like any other sensible person, he abhorred waste. There was one little matter which was particularly fastened upon him by his detractors. I remember an old lady speaking of him to me years ago with energetic scorn, and on my asking why, she replied: “Oh, I remember him! He was one of the meanest of people, for he actually saved the candle-ends.” “Well, why not, if he had the chance of doing it?” I asked. On looking up this matter I found that the great rooms were lit by hundreds of candles, and that some upper servant had acquired the perquisite of every day emptying all the receptacles and replacing the pieces by fresh candles; further, if a room had not been used, the candles were changed just the same, and the licensed looter carried off a rich booty. Prince Albert enforced a rule that this should no longer be done, and that the candles should remain to be burnt within a reasonable limit. Being an economist myself, I quite sympathise with him.
The lowering of salaries, however, created a tremendous furore. Thus there were about forty housemaids at Windsor, and the same number at Buckingham Palace, whose wages had been for many years £45 per annum. In the general revision this was reduced to £12 a year on commencing duties, with a gradual rise to £18, beyond which a housemaid could not go. A little book, “Sketches of Her Majesty’s Household,” published anonymously in 1848, shows that some of the economies were peculiarly unfair, as in the case of the sixteen gentlemen of the Chapel Royal who chanted the services, and who were given £73 a year each. They were required to attend on Sundays every other month and on saints’ days, &c. From each salary four shillings in the pound was deducted as land tax, which, added to further deduction for income tax, reduced the salary to £56. The same course was pursued with the organist, composers—all getting a nominal £73—and other people connected with the Chapel who received less. Think of the violinist who had to regard himself as “passing rich on forty pounds a year,” minus eight pounds deducted as land tax! It is a little difficult to realise this, for what could the land tax have to do with the chapel music?
From the same source we learn the regulations imposed upon the members of the Queen’s Private Band, who were paid from the Privy Purse. Their salaries were reduced from £130, with supper and wine, to £80 and £90, with no supper, in lieu of which a small sum was given at each nightly attendance. Sometimes a vacancy occurred in the State Band, which was paid by the State, and then a piece of very sharp practice was indulged in. The vacancy would be filled by a member of the Private Band, and as a consequence of this promotion the man had to play in both bands, for which he should have received an extra £40 for his services in the State Band. He duly received that £40, but when his salary was paid him as a member of the Private Band he would find that the sum of £40 had been carefully deducted before it was handed to him—on the assumption that he had already received it!
In this description of the anomalies in the Royal Household I have mostly given Stockmar’s view of the case. There was, of course, another aspect, and the English officially gave voice to it. In 1846 the Earl de la Warr, who was then Lord Chamberlain, said that he experienced such an “extraordinary interference in the performance of his official duties from parties at Court,” that he determined to resign, so he made “Free Trade in Corn” the excuse, and the day after Her Majesty’s accouchement the announcement took place. Several noblemen refused the post, and at last it was semi-officially announced that Sir Robert Peel, in consequence of the uncertainty as to the life of the Government, would not at present fill up the appointment. So Lord de la Warr was virtually bribed to hold office for a time—that is to say, until Lord John Russell and the Whigs came in in July. One of De la Warr’s sons, Mortimer West, was given a commission in the Grenadier Guards; another, Charles, was made military secretary to the Commander-in-Chief in India; and a third, Reginald, was gazetted Chaplain-in-Ordinary to Her Majesty.
When Russell formed his Administration it was even then very difficult to fill the Lord Chamberlain’s office, everyone shrinking from the unofficial interference of Stockmar and the Prince. The Duke of Bedford, the Duke of Devonshire, and the Earl of Uxbridge all declined, but Earl Spencer was at last prevailed upon to take the responsibility.
The Inspector of the Palace was named Henry Saunders, and he gave in his resignation in March, 1844, because of “extraordinary interference with him in the performance of his duties by members of the Household unconnected with the Lord Chamberlain’s department”; but Lord de la Warr persuaded him to remain until the Prince Consort, who was visiting his home, returned from Germany. Saunders was believed by Anson to have given information of Palace doings to the Press, as many things had been made public, particularly about the wholesale discharge of servants in Saunders’s department, as well as other matters which had formed subjects of private inquiry. He was pensioned at the end of 1845 on £500 a year. After that different Inspectors were appointed for each Palace, to superintend the care of the furniture and to make arrangements for the reception of the Court and of Her Majesty’s visitors.
There was naturally a tremendous jealousy of the many German servants introduced by the Prince, and in 1848 it was pointed out by a newspaper that Richard the Second’s Chamberlain was impeached for introducing aliens into the King’s Household; the writer advocated a similar proceeding, though he added a belief that the Lord Chamberlain was not really responsible for the numerous appointments of foreigners.
Among these foreigners was a man named Heller, who came to England with the Prince as courier, and who was appointed by the Prince in 1842 to be Page of the Chambers, the impression being that among his other duties he was to be the “overlooker” of the other pages. These others, being English, bitterly resented this, and there were frequent rows between Heller and the other men. Once a page named Kinnaird was so enraged that, in spite of Albert’s presence, he threatened to throw Heller over the banisters, telling the Prince that he “would not be insulted by a foreigner.”
Another change made, and a very sensible one, was the abolition of fees for seeing the interior of Windsor Castle. Lady Mary Fox, a daughter of William IV. and wife of Major-General Fox, Surveyor-General of the Ordnance, was the State Housekeeper, receiving a residence in the Norman Tower, a salary of £320 a year, and all the fees from the visitors, amounting from £1,200 to £1,500 a year. This post she held until the end of 1845, when she was duly compensated for relinquishing it.
Various matters relating to the Household becoming public made the Prince very angry, and he complained to the Duke of Bedford of the way in which the proceedings at Court were publicly known and discussed. He said that on the Continent it was the Government which knew by its secret agents what its people were doing; while in England it was the people who knew what the Court was about—the Court knowing nothing about other people’s affairs. He did not seem to realise that this was the tax great people had to pay for their position, and that as the public was curious about them the newspapers could and did secure all the information there was to be had. All his life in England Albert hated the “fierce light that beats upon the throne,” and his exclusiveness tended to make the Court unpopular with the multitude. It also led to trouble and annoyance among those who immediately surrounded the Throne, for the Prince and Queen would arrange very important matters in utter secrecy, news of which would leak into the daily papers, while the Queen’s advisers were in entire ignorance. Thus when they went to visit Louise Philippe at the Château d’Eu, the Duke of Wellington and others constantly about the Court knew nothing of it until two or three days beforehand. Yet this visit must have been a long-laid plan, for lawyers had to be consulted as to the necessity of forming a Regency during Her Majesty’s absence. Greville noted of this, “the Queen is to embark on Monday.... On Thursday I mentioned it to Arbuthnot, who said it could not be true. He asked the Duke the same day, who told him he had never heard a word of any such thing.”
In this case it was not difficult to keep the matter quiet, as the yacht Victoria and Albert had just been finished and fitted up most gorgeously—gorgeously is really just the right word—and was in readiness for use. Concerning this yacht, by the way, there was very sore feeling among the officers, who found that their comfort had been sacrificed that the Royal flunkeys might travel in serenity. Thus two officers had to sleep in a little berth measuring seven feet by five, while the pages, who were really footmen, were given a large room with their berths ranged round it. The officers protested respectfully, and, willing to concede their dignity, implored to be allowed half the berths in the pages’ room, the displaced men sleeping on one of the attendant steamers, but their prayer was not granted, as it was thought inconvenience might arise if all the servants were not together.
I could write a book double this size if I included all the stories in which Queen Victoria figured, but I have come to the end of the space allotted me. Yet some of these stories are very tempting, among them being one told by Sir Robert Peel about the Lord Mayor, when the Royal pair went to a banquet at the Guildhall in 1844. It was of this event that Barham wrote:—
“Doctor Darling! think how grand is
Such a sight! The great Lord May’r
Heading all the City dandies
There on horseback takes the air.
Chains and maces all attend, he
Rides all glorious to be seen;
‘Lad o’ wax!’ great heaven forfend he
Don’t get spilt before the Queen.”
He did not get spilt as did one of the Aldermen seven years earlier, but he had a curious mishap. It was muddy weather, and he put on enormous jack-boots over his dandy shoes and stockings to keep them clean. Waiting at Temple Bar, he tried to take off the boots when Her Majesty was near, but they were too tight, and would not move. One of the spurs caught an Alderman’s robe and tore it, so his friends came to his aid, the Lord Mayor standing on one leg while they tugged. One boot came off, and they started on the other, but it remained firm, the crowd watching in uproarious glee. When at last the Queen was but a few paces away, the agonised City King roared, “For God’s sake, put my boot on again!” So, backed by half a dozen friends and tugged at by another half dozen, he recovered the displaced boot, and had to wear both of them until after the banquet, when a less frantic effort removed them.
When the Whigs came back to power in 1846, for Peel’s return to office was of short duration, the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, found that he had to deal with a two-in-one Monarch. He was never received alone by the Queen. She and the Prince were always together, and both of them always said, We. This was far better than the early exclusion of the Prince, though it naturally led at once to the assertion on the part of the men that while the Queen bore the title, the Prince discharged the function of the Sovereign. The Prince had devoted himself to her and to her country with marvellous assiduity and rectitude; indeed, if he had taken the work more lightly and interfered less in the detail of matters, he might not have succumbed as he practically did to hard work. In 1862 the Duke of Gotha said that his brother, Prince Albert, had killed himself with hard work, and that from the time he came to England he did not know what it was to have “a joyous day.” Stockmar’s influence in this respect was to be deplored. He was like a Dutch art student with whom I once worked: “You paint the trees and get their character,” she said, “but I—I see all the little leafs, and must paint them.”
After the Prince’s death Lord Clarendon wrote:—“There is a vague belief that his influence was great and useful; but there is a very dim perception of the modus operandi.... Peel certainly took the Prince into council much more than Melbourne, who had his own established position with the Queen before the Prince came to this country; but I cannot tell you whether it was Peel who first gave him a Cabinet key. My impression is that Lord Duncannon, during the short time he was Home Secretary, sent the Prince a key when the Queen was confined, and the contents of the boxes had to be read and signed by her.”
Among those who helped to form Lord John Russell’s Government was the historian Macaulay, who became Paymaster-General; under Melbourne he had been Secretary at War. He could talk for hours without stopping, and Fanny Kemble said of him, “He is like nothing in the world but Bayle’s Dictionary, continued down to the present time, and purified from all objectionable matter. Such a Niagara of information did surely never pour from the lips of mortal man!” Someone else remarked that, “Macaulay is laying waste society with his waterspouts of talk; people in his company burst for want of an opportunity of dropping in a word;” and Sydney Smith also once said of him to Melbourne that he was a book in breeches. This, of course, Melbourne repeated to the Queen, so for a long time after whenever she saw her Secretary at War she went into fits of laughter. She once at Windsor offered him a horse to ride, drawing from him the remark, “If I ride anything, it must be an elephant”—thus alluding to his inability to remain on a horse if he once mounted. After dining at the Palace in March, 1850, he wrote: “The Queen was most gracious to me. She talked much about my book, and owned that she had nothing to say for her poor ancestor James the Second. ‘Not your Majesty’s ancestor,’ said I; ‘your Majesty’s predecessor.’ I hope this was not an uncourtly correction. I meant it as a compliment, and she seemed to take it so.”
When Peel resigned office in 1846 he begged the Queen to grant him one favour, and that was never to ask him to take service again; however, his political ardour was too great a habit to be repressed, and he was speedily leading the Opposition. He fell from his horse in 1850, and died four days after the accident.
As for Brougham, when office was suggested again to him, he shook his head, saying that now he was getting old, and he had nothing left for which to live; but he showed great activity still in the cause of law reform, and took great interest in the Social Science Association. He died at Cannes in 1868, at the age of ninety.
Lord Melbourne died twenty years earlier. He had refused all honours several times, begging the Queen not to press her intention of bestowing the Garter upon him. It was enough that he had lived honourably and done his duty, he said. His character was once summed up in the following couplet:—
“For a patriot too cool, for a drudge disobedient,
And too fond of the right to pursue the expedient.”
But as in his youth he had never sought favour, so in his age no one sought favour from him. The stirring world in which he had always lived had something more to do than to trouble about an old and ailing man, and he laboured under a sense of neglect, chafing daily at the indifference which was shown him by those who for years had pressed their friendship upon him. In real fact he was suffering from his lonely state; neither wife nor child was there to give him company, and his only two relatives seem to have been his sister, Lady Palmerston, and his brother. In happier domestic circumstances his end would have been happier and his sorrows non-existent. In November, 1848, he had another attack of illness, and died in unconsciousness at the age of seventy. He was a very remarkable man, more perhaps from his extreme honesty in a difficult position than for his great attainments, though those were sufficiently noteworthy. He was the most lovable man who had moved in the Queen’s circle, one who would never wittingly commit an injustice to anybody. When he was dead a letter from him was handed to his brother, in which he left a command that a certain sum of money should be given to Mrs. Norton, to help to some extent to show his sorrow for the trouble which his thoughtless friendship had brought her; and in this he solemnly declared that she and he were innocent of all evil in that friendship.
Queen Victoria was now, in a sense, in calm waters; she was happy domestically, she adored her husband, and in spite of her protest had a large family of children; the terrible leakage in her income, which had at one time threatened her with disastrous debt, had been stopped, and she was growing rich, though she was never so rich as the malcontents would have liked to believe, and did in many cases believe. George Anson told Greville in 1847 that the Queen’s affairs were so well managed that she would be able to provide for the expenses of Osborne out of her income, and those expenses would be £200,000. He also said that the Prince of Wales would not have less than £70,000 a year from his Duchy of Cornwall, and £100,000 had already been saved from it.
Though the Queen retained for a long time her Whiggish sympathies, she was now well on the road to strict Toryism, to the end of her life showing especial favour to her Conservative leaders, and more or less ignoring their rivals. This was caused more by the difference in their views upon foreign affairs than by her sentiments on home politics, and also by her keen sense of the dignity of the Crown. Though when displeased the Tories had shown themselves capable of dragging that dignity through the mire, yet when they were pleased they paid it all lip-service and outward homage. The Whigs, on the other hand, though inclined to take Royal disfavour with more equanimity, were also inclined to question the doings of Royalty in a calmer and, therefore from her point of view, more deadly way. When the party in power changed from time to time, she parted from Russell in anger, from Gladstone in coldness, from Aberdeen—whom she had detested on her accession—with a pang, and from Disraeli in deep dejection. It is the whirligig of time exemplified in the mind of a woman.
She had great Ministers to advise her in her work, but she was also a great Queen, for though she was no genius and had no surpassing intellect, she never shirked, she worked step by step through every difficulty, she was essentially a climber, and when more talented people might have given up she went bravely on, so that, to use the slang phrase, she always got there. Yes, Queen Victoria was absolutely admirable in her conscientiousness and in her determination to do well. It angered her ever to be likened to Queen Elizabeth, who was an historical bête noire to her, yet she had something of Elizabeth’s greatness as well as more than a touch of her arrogance, added to a more intimately personal greatness of her own, that which comes from recognising the importance of little things. This did not come to its strength until after the death of Prince Albert, but it began in the days when, as a girl of eighteen, she sat surrounded by despatch-boxes while her maid was doing her hair.
THE END.
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