III
These Journals were commenced in the year 1832, a year memorable in our history for the fruition of hopes deeply cherished by the political party that had arisen, under the auspices of Canning, after the close of the struggle with Napoleon.
During the year when the first Reform Bill became the law of the land, the passions of men had been deeply stirred throughout Great Britain. The political struggle, begun seventeen years before, had come to a head. The classes still paramount had found themselves face to face with the desires and aspirations of classes hitherto subordinate to have a share in the government of the country. These feelings had grown fiercer year by year, and, encouraged by the Whig party headed by Earl Grey, had found ultimate expression in the Reform Bill of 1832, framed under the ægis of that Minister. All over Europe the stream of change and reform, loosed by the French Revolution and subsequently checked by the Congress of Vienna, began once more to flow. During the sixteen years that followed Princess Victoria’s first entry in these Journals, the waters of Revolution had flooded Europe. Thrones and institutions in every European country were shaken, many of them to their foundations, and some with disastrous results. Fortunately for Great Britain, her statesmen had anticipated the events of 1848, and the Reform Bill had so far satisfied the aspirations of the hitherto unenfranchised classes as to render innocuous the frothing of agitators during that tragic year of revolution. In aptitude for anticipating social and political change and avoiding violent manifestations of popular will, the English race stands pre-eminent. Our people as well as our statesmen have from the earliest times proved themselves to be experts in the art of government, and the history of Europe is a commentary upon that gift of the British nation.
There have, of course, been moments when the atmosphere of politics has been highly charged with electricity. Such a moment occurred in 1832. A storm broke with unusual violence over the head of William IV. The House of Lords was bitterly hostile to a Bill, accepted by the House of Commons and supported with enthusiasm by the majority of his subjects. There was no machinery existing under the Constitution for adjusting these differences except that of creating a sufficient number of Peers to ensure the passage of the Reform Bill through the House of Lords. The King therefore found himself in the unpleasant position of having to place his prerogative of creating peers in the hands of his Ministers, or else by his own act to dispense with their services. The choice found him undecided and left him baffled. He was not acute enough to see that in the existing state of public opinion he had no choice. If he had possessed wit to read the signs of the times, it is doubtful whether he would have had sufficient single-minded courage to take immediate action in accordance with the opinion he had formed. Penetrating vision the King lacked, and responsibility was distasteful to him. Consequently he was not only weak, but he showed weakness. It was clear that the Government of Lord Grey held unimpaired the confidence of the House of Commons and possessed the full approval of the country. Every intelligent observer realised that the Reform Bill, in spite of its aristocratic foes, in spite of the prophets of evil, and in spite of its inherent defects, was bound to be passed into law. King William, however, conceived it to be his duty to endeavour to find an alternative Government. It was as certain as anything could be in politics, that Sir Robert Peel would not, and that the Duke of Wellington could not, come to his assistance. There was something pitiful about the spectacle of the old sailor-King casting about for a safe anchorage, and finding one cable parting after another. Security was only to be found in the Ministers who had advised him, in the last resort, to use his prerogative for the purpose of swamping a majority in the House of Lords that hesitated to bow to the will of the people. Ultimately he was constrained to accept their advice, but it was only after a loss of personal dignity and a distinct weakening of the authority of the Crown. The King, men said, had touted about to find Ministers to serve him, and had failed to find them. This humiliation, at least, King William might have avoided, had he possessed a clearer vision of possibilities and greater firmness of character.
The political storms of 1832 appear to have broken noiselessly against the walls of Kensington Palace, for in the little Princess’s Journals there is no sign that she was aware of them. The King’s worries, however, so affected his temper, that it was impossible for the Princess and her mother not to feel its reflex action. In the Journals no mention is made of the domestic troubles which have been described elsewhere, and we know, from expressions of Queen Victoria’s in later years, that she had purposely refrained, in compiling her Journals, from referring to her mother’s worries and her own.
During the four years that immediately preceded Princess Victoria’s accession to the Throne, from 1832 to 1836, these Journals give us the picture of a young life passed amid the tranquil surroundings of Kensington Palace, its educational monotony only varied by attendance at the opera or the theatre, by autumnal trips into the provinces, or by welcome visits from foreign cousins. These autumnal trips were the “royal progresses,” as he called them, against which King William was wont to protest in vehement language. They evidently gave intense pleasure to the Princess. Her Journals contain records of them all. Some examples have been given, in these extracts, of her method of describing her visits to provincial cities and towns, to seaside summer resorts, and to a few of the great homes of those who were afterwards to be her Ministers or subjects.
It was during this period that she got her first glimpse of the Isle of Wight, where so much of her life was afterwards to be spent. The fact that Sir John Conroy, whom she disliked, lived for many years at Osborne Lodge seems not to have prevented her from subsequently becoming deeply attached to that quiet home amid beautiful surroundings created by her and Prince Albert upon the site where Osborne Lodge had stood. Whippingham Church, to be so closely connected with her and her children, was first visited in the year 1833.
Enough has been included in these extracts to show her liking for the opera and for the theatre, her pleasure in music, her devotion to the pursuit of riding, and that love for animals which characterised her through life.
When she was sixteen she went to Ascot for the first time, and figured in the royal procession. It began to be recognised that the young Princess had passed the threshold of girlhood. In that year her Confirmation took place at the Chapel Royal, St. James’s, and Archbishop Howley, believed to be the last prelate who wore a wig, officiated. During the autumn she visited Yorkshire and stayed with Archbishop Harcourt at Bishopthorpe and with Lord Fitzwilliam at Wentworth. Coming south, she was the guest of the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir, of Lord Exeter at Burghley, and of Lord Leicester at Holkham. In the following year, 1836, she met for the first time her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. He and his elder brother Ernest visited Kensington Palace at the instance of her uncle Leopold. The fact that Prince Albert had been thought of years before by the King of the Belgians as a possible husband for Princess Victoria was sufficient to set King William IV. against the match. The King, however, was not uncivil to the brothers when they visited London, but he had ideas of his own about the future of his niece, and he tried hard to lay the foundations of an alliance between the young Princess and the younger son of the Prince of Orange. Prince Albert on this occasion made no deep impression upon Princess Victoria’s mind or heart, but her loyalty to her uncle Leopold and her regard for his opinion led her to show the graceful young Coburg Prince marked preference over the somewhat ungainly candidate of King William. Her heart was clearly untouched, but she was willing to be guided by the advice of that counsellor and friend to whom in preference to every one she had already begun to turn for help and guidance. As this became obvious to King William, his jealousy and dislike for the Duchess of Kent increased; and in the autumn of this year, 1836, having invited his sister-in-law to a state banquet, he scandalised Society by delivering an after-dinner speech charged with recrimination and insult to his guest.
This was the Princess’s penultimate year as a minor. King William had for a long time been haunted with the fear that he would die before his niece came of age, and that a regency would devolve upon his hated sister-in-law. He was spared what he would have considered this final humiliation, for on May 24, 1837, the young Princess came of age, just a month before the King died at Windsor.
During the final years of her minority she was thrown freely into the society of many of the eminent and distinguished persons soon to be her subjects. The Duchess gave a series of entertainments at Kensington Palace, and the Princess was brought into contact with her mother’s guests. Accounts of these dinners and concerts, and full lists of the guests, are all minutely recorded in the Journals. Comments, however, beyond an occasional expression of delight at the music and admiration for its performers, are excluded. Her life was still the life of a child, and her days were mostly spent with her preceptors, under the auspices of the Duchess of Northumberland, her official governess, and of the Dean of Chester, her tutor.
She had been parted some years before from her half brother and sister by the usual exigencies of time. Prince Charles of Leiningen had become a sea-officer, and Princess Feodore was married. Into the inner orbit of her young life there penetrated only Sir John Conroy, whose person was odious to her, and Baroness Lehzen, the daughter of a Hanoverian clergyman, who had been the Princess’s governess since 1824, and to whom she was deeply attached. Lablache, her singing-master, a man of some originality and charm, was a constant source of interest and amusement to the young Princess, and she preferred his lessons to all others.
It was during these last few years before her accession that the final touches were given to her character by the subtle influences of her environment. The position occupied by Sir John Conroy in her mother’s house inspired and fortified her subsequent resolve to avoid intimacies with members of her household. She became distant and reserved to those about her, and her relations with her mother were chilled. Her mind acquired an impression that family ties, however binding from the point of view of duty, might be superseded by those of friendship. It is undoubtedly the case that Baroness Lehzen occupied at this time the first place in her pupil’s thoughts and affections; while the dawning necessity felt by Princess Victoria for sympathy, and for those intimate communings so attractive to sentimental natures, had a very distinct influence upon the mind and conduct of the Queen in subsequent years. Her Journals afford proof, if proof had been wanting, that, in spite of the opinions of her attainments vouchsafed by eminent clerics, the Princess had not been afforded an education specially designed to fit her for the situation she was to occupy.
She was, at eighteen, as moderately and indifferently equipped as the average girl of her age. If her conversation was not brilliant, her heart was kindly and her judgment sound. She was shrewd and eminently truthful. In spite of her small stature, she was curiously dignified and impressive. Her voice was musical and carried far. And above all things, her rectitude was unassailable, and her sense of duty so keen and high that it supplied any lack of imagination or spiritual deficiency. She was humble-minded, but not, perhaps, very tender. She was passionate and imperious, but always faithful. She was supremely conscious of the responsibilities and prerogatives of her calling, which she was convinced, then and always, were her appanage by the gift of God.
There is nothing in her Journals or elsewhere to show that before she was eighteen years old she had ever talked seriously and at any length to any man or woman of exceptional gifts. It was only when her uncle King Leopold heard of the illness of William IV. that Stockmar was instructed to speak with due gravity upon important matters to the young girl whose accession to the Throne appeared imminent. Her mind at that time was a blank page in so far as questions of high politics or of administration were concerned. In point of fact, this was a fortunate circumstance, and rendered easier the task of those who were bound in the nature of things, and under the constitution of these islands, to use this youthful Princess as one of the chief instruments of government. Her mind was free from any political bias or complexion, and ready to receive the impress of her constitutional Ministers. When, within less than a month of her eighteenth birthday, King William died, and when on June 20, 1837, the Queen found herself face to face with those Whig statesmen in whose hands the destinies of the country had been placed for the time being, their task was unhampered by preconceived ideas or by foregone prejudice in their pupil. For the Queen a new chapter of life was opened. She at once threw off the trammels of pupilage. Not only was she able immediately and without effort to shake herself clear of the domestic influences she had resented and disliked, but for the first time she was enabled to meet and to question distinguished men, with whose names she was familiar, but whose standards of thought and conversation were far higher than any to which she had been accustomed.