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.