“Poor young creature! at eighteen to bear such a burden of responsibility! I should think the mere state and grandeur, and slow-paced solemnity of her degree enough to strike a girl of that age into a melancholy, without all the other graver considerations and causes for care and anxiety which belong to it. I dare say, whatever she may think now, before many years are over, she would be glad to have a small pension of £30,000 a year, and leave to ‘go and play,’ like common folk of fortune. But, to be sure, if noblesse oblige, Royalty must do so still more, or, at any rate, on a wider scale; and so I take up my burden again—poor young Queen of England.”
If anyone ever was, by nature, position, and training, born to a life of hard work, that person was Queen Victoria, and so long as she had the spirit and the ability to meet her life bravely, I cannot see that there was any need to pity her. It was inevitable that she should make mistakes and repent of them, for by such comes growth. If she had great responsibilities, she was surrounded by those who upheld her arms and practically took all those responsibilities upon their shoulders.
Carlyle only mentioned Queen Victoria two or three times in his letters, always with a fatherly, personal note, which yet held more than a hint of pity, indicating that he saw some immediate cause for disquiet. A few months after her accession he wrote: “Yesterday, going through one of the Parks, I saw the poor little Queen. She was in an open carriage, preceded by three or four swift red-coated troopers; all off for Windsor just as I happened to pass. Another carriage or carriages followed with maids of honour, &c.; the whole drove very fast. It seemed to me the poor little Queen was a bit modest, nice, sonsy little lassie; blue eyes, light hair, white skin; of extremely small stature: she looked timid, anxious, almost frightened; for the people looked at her in perfect silence; one old liveryman alone touched his hat to her: I was heartily sorry for the poor bairn—though perhaps she might have said, as Parson Swan did, ‘Greet not for me, brethren; for verily, yea verily, I greet not for mysel’.’”
At that first Privy Council, the day after the death of King William, a somewhat curious document was prepared or passed in the form of a proclamation from Queen Victoria: “For the Encouragement of Piety and Virtue, and for the Prevention and Punishing of Vice, Profaneness, and Immorality.” George III. had issued such a proclamation, and whether it had been the custom for all our Sovereigns to do so I do not know, but this one seems curious enough to be noted. Part of it ran as follows:
“To the intent therefore that religion, piety, and good manners may (according to Our most Hearty desire) flourish and increase under our administration and government, We have thought fit by the advice of our Privy Council to issue this Our Royal Proclamation, and do hereby declare Our Royal Purpose and Resolution to discountenance and punish all manner of Vice, Profaneness, and Immorality in all persons of whatsoever degree or Quality within this Our Realm, and particularly in such as are employed near Our Royal Person; and that, for the encouragement of Religion and morality, We will upon all occasions distinguish persons of piety and virtue by marks of Our Royal Favour. And We do expect and require that all persons of honour, or in place of authority, will give good example by their own virtue and piety, and to their utmost contribute to the discountenancing persons of dissolute and debauched lives, that they, being reduced by that means to shame and contempt for their loose and evil actions and behaviour, may be thereby also enforced the sooner to reform their ill habits and practices, and that the visible displeasure of good men towards them may (so far as it is possible) supply what the laws (probably) cannot altogether prevent.”
This lengthy document went on to deal with the observance of the Lord’s Day, with gambling, card-playing, and drinking.
One wonders whether the Queen or her advisers believed that such a proclamation could lead to any raising of the standard of morals. The Queen, in her youthfulness, might think so, but the men around her must have been very doubtful of it even while doing the will of their Sovereign, or conforming to a custom, by letting such a document be issued. Yet it is a notable thing that this proclamation embodies in a paragraph the form which improvement in social manners took during the Queen’s reign.
The Proclaiming of the Sovereign was the next ceremony in the new life which was opening up for this young person, and she drove to St. James’s Palace with the Duchess of Kent and another lady, while in the carriage which preceded her were the Earl of Jersey, Lord Conyngham, the Lord Chamberlain, and Lord Albemarle, the Master of the Horse; in the third carriage were Sir John Conroy and Lady Flora Hastings. Lady Flora had attended the Duchess for some years, and should have been thoroughly well known to the Queen, but yet two years later she had the misfortune to be grievously misjudged and tragically ill-used by her Sovereign.
There were moments at the commencement of her reign when Queen Victoria felt horribly nervous, but she had more than enough self-control to prevent herself from being overcome by emotion. When she came out of the door at Kensington Palace arrayed in black, she looked a veritable child. Her eyes were full of tears, her hands clasped and unclasped, and she trembled at the ordeal before her; yet she turned and looked at the body of Guards drawn up on either side of her door, and bowed in acknowledgment of their salute. Lord Melbourne was by her side, watching her with a fatherly look, and so began that cordial friendship between the Queen and the peer which lasted for years, and ended only in death on one side and something like forgetfulness on the other.
On the route to St. James’s, Greville says, there was very little shouting and very few hats were raised, but other recorders tell of the repeated cheers of the multitude. In the courtyard, as has been said, there was no cheering until a given signal, when Daniel O’Connell led the way, and the noise was then so hearty that the Queen burst into tears.