IV
It was “in a palace in a garden, meet scene for youth and innocence,” as one in later years to be her favoured Minister wrote, that Princess Victoria received the news of her accession to a Throne overlooking “every sea and nations in every zone.” The scene and the circumstances in which her accession was announced to her by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conynghame are described by the Queen in her Journal. She has also recorded her impressions of what followed when for the first time she met the Privy Council. What the Queen has not described is the effect produced upon those present by her personality, her youthful charm, her self-possession and perfect modesty, in such strong contrast to everything which her Privy Councillors had been accustomed to find in their former Sovereigns. The Queen was not aware of the interest and curiosity she then excited in the minds of her subjects. She had been brought up in such comparative seclusion, that both to “Society” and to the great world outside her character was an enigma and even her appearance very little known. Her sex and youth rendered her personality exciting to a public satiated with the elderly vagaries of her uncles. It was noticed at her first Council that her manner was very graceful and engaging. It was particularly observed that after she had read her speech in a clear and singularly firm voice, when the two surviving sons of George III., the Dukes of Cumberland and Sussex, knelt before her, swearing allegiance, she blushed up to the eyes as if she felt the contrast between their public and private relations, between their august age and her inexperienced youth. It was also noticed that she spoke to no one, and that not the smallest difference in her manner could be detected, even by sharp watching eyes, between her attitude towards Lord Melbourne and the Ministers on the one hand, and towards the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel on the other. The Queen does not mention, for she was not then aware of it, that Lord Melbourne was charmed and Sir Robert Peel amazed at her demeanour. They spoke afterwards with emotion of her modesty, firmness, and evident deep sense of her situation. She did not know then, although she knew later, that the Duke of Wellington said that had she been his own daughter he could not have desired to see her perform her part better.
These Journals only accentuate what is already known from many sources, that the Queen showed in difficult circumstances not only good taste and good feeling, but admirable good sense. Her attention to details, which some might consider trifles, but which differentiate the careful from the thoughtless mind, was noticed with approval and surprise by her Ministers. She exhibited caution in her treatment of those persons who had been about her since childhood, and she made no appeal to any of them for advice or guidance. Nor did she permit advice to be proffered. Sir John Conroy was dismissed at once from her surroundings. Baroness Lehzen she retained, as before, about her person, and she speaks of her, throughout these Journals, with deep feeling. It was noticed, whenever she was asked to decide some difficult matter, her customary reply was that she would think it over, and give her answer on the morrow. Onlookers, knowing that she relied on the advice of Lord Melbourne, generally assumed that she referred to him in the interval. He, however, declared that to many of his questions a similar reply was given. In point of fact, she was obeying one of the precepts of her uncle, the King of the Belgians.
It will be obvious to the readers of this book that a potent influence over the mind and actions of the young Queen was exercised by Lord Melbourne. It was the natural outcome of the business relation between a very charming and experienced man of the world who happened to be her Prime Minister and a very young girl isolated in the solitary atmosphere of the Throne. From the Queen’s accession to the day of her marriage the table-talk of Lord Melbourne fills the largest space in her journals. Her description of their intercourse confirms what we know from other sources, that Lord Melbourne became absorbed by the novel and striking duty that had fallen to his lot. His temperament and his antecedents rendered him peculiarly sensitive to the fascinating influences of the strange relation in which he stood to this young Queen. Lord Melbourne’s life had been chequered by curious experiences, and his mind had been thoroughly well trained, for a man of his station, according to the lights of those days. A classical education, the privilege from youth upwards of free intercourse with every one worth knowing, the best Whig connection, and an inherited capacity for governing men under oligarchic institutions, had equipped his intellect and judgment with everything that was necessary to enable him carefully to watch and safeguard the blossoming of the character of the girl who was both his pupil and his Sovereign.
He was no longer young, but he was not old. His person was attractive. According to Leslie, no mean judge, his head was a truly noble one, and he was a fine specimen of manly beauty in the meridian of life. Not only were his features handsome, but his expression was in the highest degree intellectual. His laugh was frequent and the most joyous possible, his voice so deep and musical that to hear him say the most ordinary thing was a pleasure; and his frankness, his freedom from affectation, and his peculiar humour rendered almost everything he said, however easy and natural, quite original. Chantrey’s bust and the well-known portraits of Melbourne corroborate the descriptions given by his contemporaries.
The Queen’s Journals afford us some illustrations of the extent of his memory and reading. In his knowledge of political history he was unsurpassed by any living Englishman, and among the statesmen of that day there were none by age, character, and experience so well qualified for the task of making the Queen acquainted with the art of government, or better able to give her a correct interpretation of the laws and spirit of the constitution. He understood perfectly the importance of training her to work straightforwardly but secretly with that small committee of active politicians, representing the parliamentary majority of the day, which goes by the name of the Cabinet. Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington, the Leaders of the Opposition, felt and admitted that for her initiation into the mysteries of Kingcraft, the Queen could not have been in wiser hands. It will be obvious from these Journals that the Queen drifted into political partisanship. She lived in dread of losing her Whig Ministers, and she got “to hate” the Tories. This only meant—and under all the circumstances it was natural—that she ardently desired to retain her mentor at her side. It is to the credit of Lord Melbourne that he was constantly discouraging his Sovereign’s bias towards the Whig Party, of which he was the head, and that he never lost an opportunity of smoothing the way for the advent of Sir Robert Peel which he knew to be inevitable. He was, not inaptly, called a Regius Professor with no professorial disqualifications, and it was precisely from this point of view that the Tory leaders recognised the indispensable nature of his task, and approved his manner of performing it. He was a Whig no doubt, says his biographer, but at any rate he was an honest-hearted Englishman, and, in no merely conventional sense, a gentleman on whose perfect honour no one hesitated to place reliance.
He treated the Queen with unbounded consideration and respect, yet he did not hesitate to administer reproof. He consulted her tastes and her wishes, but he checked her inclination to be headstrong and arbitrary. He knew well how to chide with parental firmness, but he did so with a deference that could not fail to fascinate any young girl in a man of his age and attainments. The Queen was completely under his charm. The ease of his frank and natural manners, his quaint epigrams and humorous paradox, his romantic bias and worldly shrewdness, were magnified by her into the noblest manly virtues.
He saw her every day, but never appeared to weary of her society. She certainly never tired of his. Yet he was fifty-eight years old, a time-worn politician, and she was a girl of eighteen. He was her confidential servant and at the same time her guardian. She was his ward and at the same time his Sovereign. The situation was full of the possibilities of drama, yet nothing can be more delightful than the high comedy revealed in the passages of the Journals that refer to Lord Melbourne. That he should have happened to be First Minister of the Crown when King William died was a rare piece of good fortune for the new Sovereign and for the country. With all the immense powers of head and heart which the Queen came later to discover in Sir Robert Peel, we may take leave to doubt if he could so lightly and so wisely have assumed and fulfilled the duties imposed upon his predecessor.
It is impossible to exaggerate the effect produced upon the mind and character of the Queen by the apostolic letters of her uncle. Even the sound constitutional dogma of Stockmar might have failed to influence one naturally inclined to be autocratic. Those, however, who were to reap the profit in later years of the shrewd daily culture of the Queen’s mind, of the skilful pruning away of ideas dangerous in a British Sovereign, of the respectful explanation of her duties, of the humorous rallying upon slight weaknesses which might have developed into awkward habits, were deeply indebted, as these Journals show, to the sagacity of Lord Melbourne.