It is said that Leopold did not mention the marriage unreservedly to his nephew until the Prince visited Brussels in February of 1838. In March of that year Leopold wrote to Stockmar as follows: “I have had a long conversation with Albert, and have put the whole case honestly and kindly before him. He looks at the question from its most elevated and honourable point of view; he considers that troubles are inseparable from all human positions, and that, therefore, if one must be subjected to plagues and annoyances, it is better to be so for some great or worthy object than for trifles and miseries. I have told him that his great youth would make it necessary to postpone the marriage for a few years. I found him very sensible on all these points. But one thing he observed with truth: ‘I am ready,’ he said, ‘to submit to this delay, if I have only some certain assurance to go upon. But if after waiting, perhaps, for three years I should find that the Queen no longer desired the marriage, it would place me in a very ridiculous position, and would to a certain extent ruin all the prospects of my future life.”
The Whigs seemed to take this matter quite philosophically, but the Tories had not a good word to say either of Leopold or of Albert. Thus The Times in December, 1838, said: “There is no foreigner who sets his foot in England less welcome to the people generally, or looked at with more distrust or alienation than Leopold, the Brummagem King of Belgium, who is nothing better than a provisional prefect of France, on whose ruler his marriage has made him doubly dependent.”
In Paris it was regarded as a most extraordinary thing that the Queen had not married long before, and having decided that she was not going to marry her Prime Minister, the gossipers in the salons suggested that Queen Victoria was not to be allowed to marry at all, as Lord Melbourne feared he might so lose his influence. “Therefore, his anxiety is to keep Her Majesty single.” They added that if, however, the country insisted on their Sovereign’s marrying, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg was being trained for the honour, under the especial guidance “of that moral gentleman, Stockmar.”
A month later, that is to say in January, 1839, the following jubilant paragraph appeared in The Sun:—
“The country will learn with delight that the most interesting part in the Speech from the Throne, to both Houses of Parliament and the country at large, will be the announcement of Her Majesty’s intended marriage. The happy object of Queen Victoria’s choice is Prince Albert, son of the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg, and cousin of Her Majesty. Prince Albert is handsome and about twenty-two years of age.”
The Times asked next day if someone had not been hoaxing the editor of The Sun. “We suspect so, though we do not profess to have any knowledge on the subject.”
The Morning Chronicle—Melbourne’s paper—replied: “We are authorised to give the most positive contradiction to the above announcement.”
The comment of The Age upon the matter was of the “I told you so” type, and then it proceeded to libels and defamation. “Prince Albert is known to be a youth of most untoward disposition.... As far as we can learn, Prince Albert is suspicious, crafty, and, like his uncle, Leopold, never looks anyone full in the face.
“Yet this is he who is to be ‘the happy object of Queen Victoria’s choice.’ Choice, indeed! The Baroness Lehzen has acted well upon the instructions given her by Leopold just before good King William’s death; and the virtues, beauty, worth, and amiabilities of this young Prince have been dinned hourly in the Royal Ear.
“We think Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg intellectually and morally most unfit to be trusted with the happiness of our young Queen; and because he belongs to a family which is either Protestant or Papist as it suits their interest; thus Albert’s father is a Protestant, his uncle Ferdinand is a Papist, and his son is Papist Connubial King of Portugal; Leopold is anything, Protestant to an English princess, Papist to a French princess. And we object to Prince Albert because he is being thrust upon the Queen, who is in such a state of vassalage, induced by the cunning influence of the Baroness Lehzen, as to be publicly talked of in the salons of Paris as the mere puppet of her uncle Leopold.”