CHAPTER VI
QUEEN VICTORIA’S ADVISERS
“Conservatism stands on man’s confessed limitations; reform on his indisputable infinitude; conservatism on circumstance; liberalism on power.”—Emerson.
Among the deputations that came to wish the new Queen well was one from the Society of Friends, led by Joseph Sturge. Asked afterwards if he kissed the Queen’s hand, he answered; “Oh, yes, and found that act of homage no hardship, I assure thee. It was a fair, soft, delicate little hand.” He added that Her Majesty was “a nice, pleasant, modest little woman, graceful though a little shy, and, on the whole, comely.”
Among the investitures that took place was that of the Duke of Leiningen, Queen Victoria’s half-brother, who was invested with the Order of the Garter; Prince Esterhazy, that lover of jewels, was invested with the Military Order of the Bath, and the Queen held a Chapter for the purpose, wearing the mantle of the Order, the ribbon and the badge. All the Knights Grand Cross appeared on this splendid occasion.
Queen Victoria had probably no wish to change her Parliament, but custom decreed that it should be prorogued, and she decided to prorogue it in person, much to the alarm of the Duchess her mother, who begged her not to do so, fearing the effect that the excitement might have on her health. But the child was already three weeks away from her leading-strings; she was beginning to feel the glories of independence, and she would no longer submit blindly to the will of another. The word excitement displeased her, and she is said to have answered: “That is a word I do not like to hear; all these successive ceremonies interest and please me, but have no such effect on my mind as that which I understand by excitement.”
So the Queen went in State to the House of Lords, where the old Throne devoted to the use of old Sovereigns was banished, and replaced by a new one bedizened with the Royal Arms in gold, and the words “Victoria Regina” also in gold. With girlish delight in her new state, Her Majesty donned “a white satin kirtle embroidered in gold, a robe of crimson velvet trimmed with ermine stripes and gold lace, confined at the waist and shoulders with gold cord, and having an ermine cape attached (this was in July!) a stomacher of diamonds, a tiara and bracelets of diamonds, the Garter round her arm, and the Ribbon of the Garter over her shoulder completed the outward attire.” One evening paper commented upon the Queen and her dress as follows: “Her emotion was plainly discernible in the rapid heaving of her bosom and the brilliancy of her diamond stomacher, which sparkled out occasionally from the dark recess in which the throne was placed, like the sun on the swell of the smooth ocean as the billows rise and fall.” The earliest Victorian journalists knew something of the gentle art of high falutin’!
The Queen acquitted herself well in this trying position, and we are told that the Duchess of Kent wept tears of joy on seeing the way in which “her august daughter” acquitted herself. Other tears seem also to have been shed, for Lord Grey declared that he actually cried from pleasure at the Queen’s voice and speech; and he added that, after seeing and hearing three Sovereigns of England, the latest surpassed them all, easily, in every respect.
One of the sentimentalists of the day wrote concerning the Duchess and her daughter, “the first separation that had ever taken place between Her Majesty and her Royal mother was decreed by the immutable (?) laws of Royal etiquette on this occasion, and doubtless it was felt as no slight trial by both.” Yet they were both in the same room!
Another contemporary tells us that the impertinent old Lady Jersey took powerful opera-glasses with her to the House of Lords, and through them fixed her eyes relentlessly on the Queen, which, according to the laws of etiquette in those days, was a direct personal affront if applied to people of high rank.
While King William was ill, there had been many private conferences among members of the Government as to the right course to pursue when the Princess came to the throne. Sir Robert Peel had given it as his opinion that the young Queen should retain Lord Melbourne as her chief adviser and rely frankly on his guidance, and the Duke of Wellington (also a Tory) was strongly in favour of the same course. Victoria was probably but obeying her uncle Sussex’s promptings when on the morning after the King’s death she sent for Melbourne and put herself in his hands.