Peel came also, but both he and the Duke found their young Monarch immovable, and ready with answers to all that they advanced. She foresaw, as any astute woman would have done, that in allowing this innovation she would be opening the door for a host of petty troubles in the future; she blinked the fact that she was King as well as Queen, and that a King was required to change all his officers. So the two politicians left her presence defeated, and Peel called his friends together that afternoon.
In the meanwhile, Russell begged Melbourne to do nothing of himself, but to call the Cabinet together; and at nine that night the Ministers were gathered from all places—dinners, the theatres, opera, and clubs. Before them Melbourne laid a letter from the Queen, in which she is reported to have said, though probably the correct text of this letter has been given above:
“Do not fear that I was not calm and composed. They wanted to deprive me of my Ladies, and I suppose they would deprive me next of my dressers and housemaids! They wished to treat me like a girl, but I will show them I am Queen of England.”
Lord John, the most diplomatic member of the Cabinet, wanted the Queen to be advised to get from Peel his precise demands, for, as is usual in a quarrel, the actual details had never been elucidated. This, however, was overruled, and a letter was concocted for the Queen to send to Peel. It was short and to the point:—
“The Queen, having considered the proposal made to her yesterday by Sir Robert Peel to remove the Ladies of her Bedchamber, cannot consent to adopt a course which she conceives to be contrary to usage, and which is repugnant to her feelings.”
While these events were happening, the report of them spread far and wide, and was hotly commented on in all the papers. The Queen may have let drop a remark that Peel wished to drive from her all the friends of her childhood, for this was the note the Whig papers sounded. Anger, condolence, appreciation were all expressed, while on the other side anger was mixed with disloyalty and with an assumption that the Queen must give way to a righteous and politic course.
“We can state,” said one of the Tory journals, “that there is not the slightest hesitation or feeling of annoyance on the part of our Conservative leaders. For the sake of Royalty they may regret the untoward interference of female meddlers in State matters of most awful importance (this was surely a hit at the Queen as well as at her ladies!); but for themselves they know that the Sovereign cannot do without appealing to their loyalty to save her from ‘her friends,’ and they will not fail in their duty. In a few days Sir Robert Peel’s triumph will be complete.”
A few of the most extreme papers begged the “female nobility of England to abstain from going to Court,” to refuse “to sanction by their presence a patronage of persons whom they themselves would not tolerate in private life.”
The “persons” who were not to be “patronised” by the “female nobility” included the Duchess of Sutherland and the Countess of Burlington, both sisters of Lord Morpeth, a Cabinet Minister and Secretary for Ireland; the Marchioness of Normanby, wife of the Secretary of State; the Marchioness of Tavistock, Lord John Russell’s sister-in-law; the Marchioness of Breadalbane, whose husband had received his title from the Whigs; Lady Portman, wife of another Whig-made peer; Lady Lyttelton, sister of Earl Spencer; and the Countess of Charlemont, wife of an Irish Earl.
It was whispered, though probably only scandalously, that Melbourne had in his pocket the resignations of the Marchioness of Tavistock and Lady Portman, but kept them from the Queen. There may have been some truth in this, however, as those ladies were most unpopular with all classes, and probably thought their wisest course would be to resign before worse happened.